Fred pushed himself up to sit on the counter next to his cup of tea while Molly took her sip, and then found himself irrationally annoyed at his mother in a way that he hadn't been in years - ever since she'd forbade he and George from working on the Skyving Snackboxes and showed her lack of support in what they wanted to do with their lives. It was such a non-answer and exactly what he'd expected from his mother that he hadn't even needed her to say it - he'd already heard it. He had assumed that she would say that she was there for him, that they all were, and so hearing it said didn't change anything.
Because for the most part, it wasn't even true. It was nothing but a nice thought, an ideal in which his Mum believed but that wasn't the case at all.
He sighed and threw his head in his hands. "Ugh, Muuum," he lamented and balled his hands into fists in his hair, tugging on it angrily. Tears prickled at his eyes again. He wanted to scream and leave and stay and throw a fit and get a hug that never ended. Instead, he stayed put, fists in his hair and breathing angrily while he struggled not to cry. "You don't get it! Nobody gets it! People mourning me to my face, people talking about me as though I weren't there, and there's George, playing along with me as I pretend it never happened because it hasn't. Not for me. And it happened for him, and George and I, we're not... we've never had to go through something this big without each other. We've never..."
But it was pointless. The only person who understood - who could possibly understand - was George. He'd been there through absolutely everything, knew him as well as Fred knew himself, could practically read his mind. And yet Fred couldn't bring himself to put this burden on him. It was too heavy, too much even for both of them to shoulder together, he was sure of it. George already had his own burden that he had so far refused to share with Fred... If he knew how Fred felt about it all, it would definitely crush him.
He kept coming back to that joke. Maybe some day, it would be funny.
For a moment, Fred wished he weren't here, that he was still dead, but then the sight of George as he'd first seen him here, leaning heavily on Katie and broken the likes of which no one had ever imagined came to him. No. He could never do that to George again.
He was right back where he'd started, back at the pointless question his Mum had asked and that he didn't have a hope in hell of answering correctly: what should he do? Face it, or pretend it had never happened? All he'd been told was that she would support him no matter what.