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Lumos Chapter Fifty-Eight: “Duel”

Part I: Birch

“A temperamental wood, which holds a grudge. Most powerful in the hands of those who seek to inflict pain or who operate most principally from a place of bitterness, and it contains a great propensity for misuse. Only inexperienced wandmakers utilize birch, for it stores up all its acerbity and reacts unpredictably, often at the height of its power.”

#

The Personal Diary of One Gilderoy Lockhart
September 1999

Finally! After months locked into a set of rooms the size of a dreary broom cupboard, today, I finally sprang from my keep. Unimaginable, the conditions, but even this was an improvement from before.

For a time after my arrival, I was kept in a state like sleep, shut inside a small box under some sort of stasis. Once woken, I could only discern how long it’d been by the growth on my face and the hair around my shoulders. I was left to pace a tiny room like a cell until someone finally recognized me and sent for me.

Quite the hero I made, today, bucking and tearing at the hold of my captors. Truthfully, I feared some bitter end. It’s not often that someone other than the healer’s assistant comes to see me, and the accommodations have been medieval. I could hardly be blamed for my reaction and assumptions. They might’ve brought a spot of tea, or taken me for a walk above the grounds, but no. Fair fortune had thus evaded Gilderoy Lockhart. A terrible turn of events unseated me from the school, and my crowning ability—the very spell that had earned me reputation and Galleons—backfired.

Even now, I am not what I was. Thoughts stick in my mind, and occasionally I find myself wandering through chambers of smoke. A prisoner to my own confusion. I am perhaps the only person strong enough to break me free from such a powerful force.

In proper form, I’d have unhanded myself, obviously. But it is this dratted spell damage. It’s ruined me, and only time will reveal how long it might take to reform what’s been dashed and squandered.

Brought me down in the glory of my youth.

A shame.

Seeing as I’ve been reduced, I was justly concerned when the fellows who fetched me from the empty place spoke not a word. Claggy walls and dim torches swooped past to my right and left. No one would tell me much, only hurrying me forward on either side. Handling me, like I was still in that bloody hospital, that realm of wicked nightmares and feverish delusion.

“Excuse me,” I said to the fellow on my right. “I don’t believe that’s entirely necessary.”

I received a rough look in return, followed by more manhandling. More pulling.

“I’d like to know where we are going,” I said. I spoke clearly, in the case that they were simpletons, and still nothing. I reminded them delicately that I’ve connections that would stagger them.

The proper name to mention is a bit of an art, and one I’ve not lost my talents for. When I first came to, I was in a state of disorientation. Albus Dumbledore was the first wizard I thought of. Of course, that title didn’t get me very far. After carefully weighing my options and the Gregorovitch-make of one of the fellows’ wands, I said, “My grandfather, Erich Luckhardt, would turn in his grave at such treatment.”

Then, the two brutes dragging me along stopped, just as we came to a large, imposing door. Not iron. Some other kind of metal. The one on the left raised a fist and knocked with clang, clang, clang that shimmied up my spine and loosened my teeth.

From there, things got a bit more civilized. A draft of cloying perfume, and walls plastered with pink parchment and printed china. (Very twee, but a welcome change.)

A witch sat before me behind a broad, rosy-wooded desk. Tweed pink from her skirt hem to her minicape, with a hat to match. She held a small broach in her fingers, which she tapped lightly on the desk as she gave me a smile.

“That will be all, Sigmund,” she said. Unlike the others, she looked right at me. Pleasantly.

Raised as a gentleman, I attempted to right the conditions of my robes.

This seemed to please her more, and she watched like a bird on a perch as I hastily pulled my over robe smooth and swept my hair back. A bit patchy and groggy I am, but I’ve not yet lost my charm.

Giving her my best grin, I offered my hand.

“How are you feeling, Gilderoy?” she asked. I felt that sharp gaze travel over me. Assessing.

“Much better, thank you,” I assured her. T’was the only hope of seeing the door of this place, and she appeared to hold some authority on the matter. “May I enquire as to our location?”

She hummed a bit and looked down at her papers, then back up, as if that was an answer.

She didn’t take my hand, and sensing the offer improper, I retracted it.

“A safe haven,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. A clunky reply, yes. But I was taken aback at the notion.

Safe from what? I asked as much.

She gave me a pitying smile, and it curdled in my stomach, though I didn’t let it show. “Much has changed in the time you’ve been unwell,” she said, rather apologetically. “The world is—” She paused, then delicately settled on “—a different place than you might remember.”

I hardly liked to hear that. I’d no idea how long I’d been lost as a raving lunatic.

Years?

The thought struck me dumb, and I sank into the offered desk chair, opposite her own.

Her smile pursed into concern. “I’m afraid it’s very terrible,” she said. I suppose she was trying to be soothing, but I was quite overwhelmed by the impulse to shake her until she had out with it.

A gentleman, I repressed the urge.

“You remember your accident?” she prodded.

My hands curled into fists. “Quite,” I said.

Despite this, she proceeded to review it to me in sordid detail. How she obtained such information, I can’t imagine. It’s as if she poked a probe into my mind. The sudden betrayal of my teaching cohort. The girl in the chamber. The idiot children. The stupid wand.

She then informed me that those children are now quite grown. Knowing of my indiscretion, I’m hardly free to step into public again unless I fancy a trip to Azkaban. I’ve only narrowly avoided it due to my own insanity.

The words thickened into a slurry; it felt like I was taking blow after blow, until I was quite overcome. The small quarters were not a punishment, but a last resort. The escorts’ lack of manners a matter of exhaustion and stress. We are, all of us, cornered and down to the last stand.

“Is there no good turn, then?” I asked, weakly laughing. I flexed my hand where I’d propped my face—more to hide the desolation gathering in the silky blue of my eyes than to gesture. “Is there no recourse?”

Her head tilted to the left, and she gave me a small, pitying smile. Made aware of my dire position, I found the pity more welcome.

A strange glint flared in her eyes. “What would you do?”

The question had weight to it. I sensed for myself an opportunity.

“I don’t know. There must be something. Anything—”

She leaned forward, lips pursing and brows narrowing down with a fiery purpose. “Order must be restored,” she whispered.

Finally. A route to salvation. I gathered my courage and reached for it, nodding. “Anything,” I repeated. “Madame, I am at your disposal.”

She tapped her broach to the desk, or rather, the file folders on top of it. Her eyes drank in my presence, like a woman dying of thirst. Like it was something she wished she didn’t have to place upon me, she made a confession. “We do need you, Gilderoy,” she whispered. Sincerity and urgency poured from her every word.

I straightened my shoulders to affect the appearance of competence, for ladies appreciate such things. “Madame,” I said, slipping my hand beneath hers. “You have only to give word, and I shall put myself to your cause.”

She squeezed my fingers before letting me go. Her touch felt a bit cold, but women of her sort are often unaccustomed to the usual, welcome affections.

I determined quickly that she might be charmed, if given proper time. While our purposes align, her admiration would be a boon.

“You look familiar,” I said, leaning back in my seat to study her, and if my index finger trailed a bit over my lower lip as I examined her, it was wholly by accident.

If I were to bestow her a chief compliment, it would be tidiness. Her hair styled in smooth curls about her face, grey nearly hidden by the perch of a small hat. I have vague recollections of stuffy social gatherings from my early youth, perhaps a fleeting glimpse of her in the papers or in the Ministry. Extended travel and time in that bloody castle have withdrawn me from most Wizarding society, outside necessary promotional events.

She was not a frequent attendee at my signings, I know that much. Pity. She might not be so cold now.

“I am familiar with your history of work in Obliviation,” she said, and it felt like a small correction. Almost patronizing.

I bristled.

But there was more understanding in her eyes than in anyone’s I’ve yet seen discover my talents. For she didn’t castigate me or demand recompense for harmless and even insignificant events long in the past. “Those are the talents we need you to contribute,” she said.

I’ll admit. I was surprised.

I’d have thought my connections, perhaps seeking funds, would be more useful. But she seemed so eager and intent that I didn’t care to dissuade her.

I lifted both hands and smiled. “Happily.” Really, I’ve always been too soft hearted for my own good—a people pleaser, you might say.

First, she had me swear an oath—quite an old and stuffy one, if I’m not mistaken. (I’d have been offended by her lack of trust in my word, but I understand one must never be too careful in times like these.)

Then, she told me of a spell. A development upon the basis of Obliviation.

Entranced, I sat in fascination as she laid it out for me. Theoretical, but if anyone should be capable of it, it would be me. Quite a robust team, they’ve assembled. Yet they need me most of all, for even their best Arithmancy experts and most competent Potions masters cannot accomplish the experimental work necessary to carry the development through.

This assurance eased my heart. I prefer to know where I stand, like most people.

“Capital.” I grinned. “And these changes you’ve mentioned,” I mused. “I suppose you’ve some ideas for their eventual use?”

She laid her brooch down on a file marked “Granger.” Her eyes searched over the other open files, the sea of pictures. “Gilderoy, how familiar are you with Dementors?”

A shiver rolled down my spine. “They guard the grounds of Azkaban,” I said.

“To keep the wrongdoers in,” she said. Her trimmed nail clicked on the lone, closed file. “We have need of them now.”

She flipped the file open, dragging the finger down the top sheet.

It was the same as all the others. A bit of wrinkled Ministry paper marked with red stamps. Rather than ginger hair like many of the other pictured subjects, the photograph held a young lady blinking woodenly at the camera.

There was a flicker of recognition. Something I couldn’t quite put a finger on.

I peered at the name. “One of my students,” I said.

“A mudblood,” she said crisply.

I glanced up without moving away. Most of that sentiment wasn’t to my particular taste, but to each their own.

This girl had studied my works closer than any of the others, reciting my writings back to me with near perfect accuracy. I’d come to look at her a bit fondly, though it did grow a touch irritating when she went on too long.

Perhaps the madame read some of my thoughts on my face, for she said: “She works with the boys responsible for your condition. I assure you, she would condemn you to ruin just as quickly.”

She sifted a photograph near the top. The trio was foreign, yet familiar. Grown older. Challenge and arrogance emanated from their posture as they waved from a platform. “Mudblood she might be, but the others are too incompetent to make headway without her.”

I hardly heard the last bit, still stuck on what she had said before it.

Fame can be fickle. But to be thus discarded was a disappointing draft. I took pains to present the young lady in question with opportunity to further herself. A waste, apparently.

I skimmed the other photographs. There were many of her with the two boys, but loads more of her and a taller redheaded fellow unknown to me.

In one, they slipped into a shop in what looks like Diagon Alley. In another, they were locked in a steamy embrace, just out of reach of a streetlamp. The one on top showed them climbing some mountain surrounded by fjords with a group of others. A silhouette of either goblin or house elf walked near the front. The image was too blurry to see clearly.

“Our messengers brought that back just this morning,” she said tightly.

“This morning?” I asked. I didn’t see quite the need for the fixation.

“She’s favored to take the Minister’s seat,” she snapped.

That made a bit more sense, for an abundance of caution is always merited in relationship to power. I flipped through the other papers because it seemed she expected me to. Some headlines. More photographs.

The same young woman who glared at crowds and turned her nose up at handshakes with well-established council members in press conference images goggled at the freckly, gamboling man in more candid shots. Absolutely no instincts for public relations, then. To further prove my point, it appeared this indiscriminate fling wasn’t her first. Not surprising, a girl prone to silly infatuations would turn on one brother for another.

“She seems immature,” I remarked, for the madame appeared to be awaiting my assessment. Privately, I question whether the girl is a passing fad, that might fade if ignored. But I am conscious enough to not render myself useless to my new allies, so I kept the reflection quiet.

Her lips pursed, and I leaned back in my seat again.

I seemed to have not spoken strongly enough.

Quickly, I righted the mistake. “An unfortunately poor influence on the young persons of our community.”

Her expression smoothed, and she made a small noise—a short hum.

I shifted in my seat to better arrange my robes. “What next, then?”

“You see to your task,” she said, buttery and pleasant. “Contribute to that end, and we will correct the injustice done to your person.”

I smiled.

There was a knock at the door.

“A moment,” she said, terse.

I blinked.

“Is there anything you’d require?” she added. “For your research and undertaking?”

I cocked my head. “A larger work space,” I said. “Food and lodging, obviously.” I listed some mere trinkets—elements of the most base form of accommodations. Books. A volume to write in. My favourite chocolates from the precious, little shop near the corner of Place Cachée. A monthly allotment for wardrobe and grooming. In short, all things necessary for my focus.

My benefactor nodded stiffly, scribing the list down.

A balm to my soul, that list. I was to be kept happy. In better comfort.

Amazing, what that will do to one’s motivation.

“In the meantime,” I said. “What further needs to be done? What are our plans?”

“We wait.” Umbridge said. She sat even more upright in her squeaky, upholstered office chair and folded her hands atop the desk. Her eyes sparkled as she tipped her chin to and fro, examining the headshots, the ink smudges, the lines of records.

Another knock sounded.

She uttered a small, satisfied sigh as she pinned the broach to her cape, and her appearance transformed. The grey bled down the remaining length of her hair, and the shape of her face quite changed. All the while, those eyes pierced the files under her hands with shrewd concentration. “Come in,” she said.

The door cracked open, and the shape of a slight, pale man appeared, with a cane in his hand. “We have the votes.” He quieted upon seeing me.

The madame lifted her wand and gave a soft incantation and gentle wave. The folders closed themselves up, then floated before her like ducks, ordered into a row. They marched into the stack of cabinets behind her desk.

At the very top of each drawer handle, there was a well-mannered, lacy script labelling: “To Be Punished.”

My benefactor beamed at us. “It appears we have everything in order.”

###

Part II: Silver Fir

*“There is no doubt that this wood, coming as it does from the most resilient of trees, produces wands that demand staying power and strength of purpose in their true owners…”

George

September 30, 1999

George had talked himself and Freddie out of his fair share of scrapes. Likely more than his fair share. If he was the one talking just now, they might’ve gotten somewhere.

Shame, that.

His wife—his wife—had done her own bit of rebellion, yes. But she wasn’t used to confronting an authority figure worth admiring who also didn’t buy into her “reluctant accomplice” reputation.

And in such dire straits, Hermione Jean floundered.

Half-buzzy, half-abashed, not quite following the line of questioning before her, sticking like Extra-Strength Spellotape to a poor story.

Bless her. He’d heard her less flustered asking for another bog roll through the cracked loo door. Not that he could do much better, presently. Every time he opened his lips to cut in, he started laughing like a prat.

“A Lumos spell,” Aberforth said flatly.

George scratched the back of his neck.

Hermione nodded. “Yes!”

Bugger, he loved his wife, but she was a dead awful liar.

Hermione sneezed a burst of purple sparks, eyes lit with the same colour.

“The two of you vanish into the dark for hours, not a word of where you’d gone—”

Helga’s bloomers. Aberforth could do a frightening impression of Mum. Worse, he there was no breaking his concentration with six other children running amuck.

“—I’m only losing my d—” A bird call from overhead drown out the sound of Aberforth swearing. “—head at camp, hunting for the ink to tell your families you’d tripped off a cliff—”

That was one way of putting it. George couldn’t help the snort.

Aberforth’s eyes slitted. “—and then you come back and try to tell me that the cosmic blast ripping the sky in half at bloody half-seven in the morning is—” He stopped, not a feature moving save for his chest that rose and fell in a fortifying breath. “—a Lumos spell.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, exactly.” A giddy giggle erupting from her lips.

Ecstatic glow bubbled up his ribs, and George’s own laughter slipped as well.

It was pointless, wasn’t it? It’s not as if Aberforth didn’t know.

Then they were laughing together, like two ickle kiddies caught sneaking a bit of Christmas fudge, only what they’d snuck was far, far better.

“A Lumos spell,” George wheezed, nodding. His vision blurred around the tears in his eyes. It didn’t sound like he believed the tale Granger was spinning any better than she did.

The portkeys had swept the family back home, but the scorching path the ceremony had left in the clouds was still fading.

It’d taken the creativity of every attendee to help get them back on the ground.

Finally, Fred had fashioned a bit of netting, and Angie had thrown it out to reel them in like fish.

Hermione’s hair was still an absolute disaster, and Merlin, if George smiled any harder, he’d pull a muscle.

Aberforth’s eyes were half-open, pupils fixed with utter listlessness on Hermione as she lied to his face.

Grumpy though he was, he looked golden. The whole campsite did. The whole world.

Aberforth blinked slowly, then turned to glance over his shoulder at the beacon of fire—like a pillar blazing from the mountaintop they’d married on. “A Lumos spell.”

Hermione hiccupped. “Of sorts.”

Aberforth slowly turned back to face them. “That’s the best you can do.” He sounded as if the very words required an infinite pool of patience.

Hermione couldn’t quite button her grin back. She nodded. It was excruciating. Never in his life had he had such difficulty playing it somber.

“A big one,” she added.

George doubled over, clasping his hands on his knees. “Good Godric,” he cried.

“Have you fallen down a barrel of Ogden’s?” Aberforth barked. Not impressed, then.

A lost cause.

George gave up and beamed. Merlin, he couldn’t catch his breath, but in the best of ways. “Ogden’s doesn’t come close, Mate.” His heart was a runaway train, and Granger kept laying right on that whistle.

Hermione found his quip quite hilarious and had to stuff her hand over her mouth to keep back another outburst. George found her hand, and flecks of delight soaked into his skin. “I’m a train—” he wheezed.

Hermione burst into giggles, nodding.

The clouds—the clouds—they were in the clouds. Every piece of him twined around sky and love and—Heavens, she was doing the thing again. He staggered.

“Easy—easy—slow train—” He scarcely managed to loop his arm around Hermione’s shoulders to prop himself upright. Flecks of surprise mixed with the thrum of joy pressing into his hand, and Hermione’s gaze tracked that same spot, rounding. Did she know she was doing it again?

Aberforth’s stern front fractured, just a hair. A twitch upwards at the corner of his mouth, then submerged again in the war between amusement and whatever dour gloom he insisted on holding.

Incomprehensible, that.

To George, the world had never been so lovely as it was just now. Right at this moment.

She felt the same, he knew. Somehow, the buzzing loop between them had faded, but little shimmers kept sneaking through his skin every time he touched her or she touched him, and they carried—carried little pieces of Granger with them.

Dad hadn’t said it’d be like this. George hadn’t realized—

Merlin, he couldn’t breathe from the elation. He tripped forward. He had to kiss her. Now. But when he cupped her cheeks, another tide washed through the both of them, and they only ended up gawkishly grinning at each other, noses squished close as they broke into yet more laughter.

Aberforth’s gaze had flattened, and he backed towards the dingy tent, rubbing his sleeve over his brow and muttering.

Another zip of happiness brough George’s attention back, this time from the brush of Hermione’s thumb on his ear. “Look at you,” she whispered, like it was a lovely secret.

Intent, focused warmth swept through her sparks, coating them with honey-chamomile. When he stitched the emotions together, it felt like appreciation—no—like treasuring. Like she was intent on noticing every detail. Loving him.

The campsite seemed to fade into a distant plane.

George’s feet twisted.

Like an itch that worked through his ankles, all the way into his heart and mind. Hermione laughed all the harder and mimicked his movement.

Teasing him—oh, she was teasing him, was she?

A twist of understanding fluttered through the next burst of magic.

Mischief.

Mirth.

Excitement.

She knew just what made him twitchy—how to rally joy that crowded the rest out and made him need to move.

George nudged his forehead to hers. “I see how it is.” His voice was low and breathless and fast.

A piercing song-call lilted over the clifftops. Brilliant, fiery wings crested the distant peaks, circling towards the beacon they’d left behind.

Senseless with it, George twirled Hermione under his arm in a tight, rapid spin.

Hermione’s laughter floated through the cliffs.

It was their wedding day.

People danced on their wedding days.

George didn’t know precisely what he was doing, but the train that had been chugging along in his heart for ages and ages seemed to have a better idea.

His feet sped to the drum of wheels on a skylit track, and he twirled and stomped her to the whistle and fiddle that ricocheted through his mind.

Drunk on their own laughter, they jigged around the spent firepit—more stumbling than prancing.

Yes, the footwork was all rubbish, but Hermione felt real as sunlight in his arms.

Oh—oh—they were quite good at catching each other, weren’t they? Again and again.

He didn’t realize what dance they’d begun until they were halfway through a Weasley stomp.

Faintly, he knew Aberforth was watching them with incredulity near the tents. Soon, Luna would return from scouting with Newt. Soon, they’d have responsibilities. Soon, the need for discretion would become real again. But not yet.

Hermione’s curls flared around her shoulders. Her laugh crystallized like an etching along his heart.

So very, very bright. Every time he touched her, with every broad smile and hop and jumping turn—that glow built.

Never in his entire life had George been so happy.

Someday, when he died, he’d see a fragment of this, maybe. Hermione Jean, glowing, dancing without reserve, laughing in his arms on the day he’d married her.

George’s copper fringe flopped, his heart pounded, and his grin went broad as they kicked up dust that looked like shimmering, Galleon-covered clouds.

“Duffers, the both of them,” Aberforth called, more to them than Winky. “Don’t know who they think they’re fooling.”

Winky’s reply was quieter. Wry. “Let these Wheezies dance.”

Wheezies, the both of them, they did.

#

September 31, 1999, 12:31 a.m.

As a tall bloke, George could taper off an occasional glass of Ogden’s or a butterbeer or two with a good meal and a few hours of patience. Take a joke shop sweet under development, and the effects might stretch longer. Depended on the potions and such. The more magic involved, generally, the more unpredictable the recovery period. Basic Potions and Charms theory, that. But size usually played to his strengths, there, as well.

Put it this way: A maximum advisable Giggle Gram dosage for George was the same as it was for everyone—no more than what filled the width of his palm. But George had bigger palms than most people, he usually didn’t tip back boxes of Giggle Grams two at a time, and therefore his system worked through potions and the like with relative efficiency.

He wasn’t Hermione, in other words. And it made Skelegrow a right pain.

Clockwork, his magical metabolism. A good meal, a few hours of patience, and sometimes a kip, but his head would be right as rain (even if boils or other unintended side effects persisted).

Not now.

Dodgy gobstones, the way it abandoned him now. He’d been absolutely grapefruited for hours and hours. Only now, was he coming around enough to recognize how utterly, mindbendingly sozzled he’d been.

Undignified, this.

No one’d bloody warned him that he’d be off his rocker, bogged to his ear holes, hand-the-trolley-to-a-troll inebriated. It was like taking that Dittany blend potion, only more, like the last bit of separation between the magical bits there had been removed, and his system was flipped on its head from it. Maybe he should’ve guessed, but he hadn’t.

He’d have prepared. Somehow. But the buzzy-happy-gone-mindless feeling had only swelled and swelled, as if fed on by each second, before it’d finally started to ebb into pockets of dazed, sticky-sweet confusion that floated through his consciousness like bubbles.

Any scrap of a chance at keeping things discreet had gone right out the window long before the shreds of awareness began to return. Luna knew. Newt knew. Winky and Aberforth obviously knew.

Lucky Bill hadn’t come along. Merlin.

George lolled his head against the campground and peered at Luna’s lupine form. She guarded the southern edge of their group, with Aberforth and Winky taking east and west, and Newt at the north. The horizon past Luna’s pointed ears was all darkness, though the cresting fjords echoed somewhere in that direction. Newt still hunched over his papers. How the old man could read them at this hour was beyond George.

“We might sleep under the stars tonight,” Scamander had said. “It’ll help shed some of that human-y smell, and they won’t find us as spook-worthy.”

Not quite the usual wedding night, but this was proper cozy. Plenty warm. They’d aligned a few bedrolls, and the stars swam like comet tails over their heads. He had his right hand around Hermione’s left; both were clasped to his chest like a pillow under her head. While she dreamed, little bubbles seeped through the surface of her consciousness and seemed to drift along the trail of that looping tie—one that he could feel rather than see, now. Little, pleasant shivers, glowing flecks of happiness, pieces of scattered memory from the day.

Another sudden, happy fuzz coasted over George’s ribs, and he felt his mind start to fog delight yet again.

Was that Hermione’s magic—or his? George hummed a bit, grasping for focus. This was—was like the others. Swirling bits of both of their happiness, all jumbled up together.

It carried a foggy picture: George, swirling Hermione in a circle amidst a snowy vista. Muggle ski gear formed a small mountain behind them, and their skin looked pink and merry from the cold, or the kissing, perhaps. There were slips of sound, crackled like through a wireless speaker—George’s breath, his low hums, the ghosted sensation of fingers clasping the small of her back.

It took him a moment to gather he was peeking in on her dream, or rather, she was accidentally sending bits of it to him. That might’ve been worrisome, if he’d had the clarity to worry.

George couldn’t worry if he tried, just now.

The fuzz seemed to soak up his spine and down to his feet. So soft he’d melt into it. The constellations looked like soft, crystal lacework set in the night above him. Light bleeding into dark like milk in tea to form brilliant paths.

Curls nuzzled his chin when she shifted. George’s hand trembled as he lifted a finger to trace the bridge of her nose.

Oh, looking at her nearly hurt, it felt so nice. Hermione, all cuddled against his side. So special. So incredible. So—

A branch in the fire snapped, and Hermione winced. George blinked. The swirling depths of his magical stupor seemed to pause a bit as the magical trickle between them shuddered to a halt.

Wait.

Blimey.

George strained to concentrate, index finger hovering on the outside of her nostril. They were all wrapped up in a pair. In the open. Not strictly “friendly.”

And Mr. Scamander, Winky, Aberforth, and Luna were here—

“Luna,” George rasped, twisting his head.

Luna lifted her fuzzy wolf chin with a sleepy blink. She looked right at them. Right at them. George clutched Hermione’s shoulder as she slept.

Anxiety thickened his throat, made his eyes round. “You can’t tell anyone,” George whispered, careful to enunciate each syllable. She had to understand. It wasn’t ready for the rest of everyone, yet. They had—there was something to work out—

“We know.” Aberforth’s voice was more growl than anything else.

Did they? Impossible to remember who knew and who didn’t. George tried to count in his head, but the information kept slipping away.

“You can’t tell my mum, at least until we do,” George said. Was he talking slowly? “Or the reporters. Or especially Ron.” He pulled a gulp of air in, having run clean out of it while speaking the last few bits. “Ron will murder me. And cry. And we’ve got to—” Another breath. “—got to fix it first.”

He couldn’t recall how. A problem for future George.

Aberforth made an odd, clipped grumbly sound and punched his bedroll. Then hissed, “We. Know.”

Hermione snuggled closer. George’s eyelashes fluttered, his head tipping back of its own accord. “And not the reporters,” he said, straining for the horridly important thing he’d meant to—

Mmm. Hermione felt like melty honey.

“Or the—um—” George trailed off. “—y’know, the reporters, or the—”  

“Shut up already,” Aberforth cut him off before he could finish his thought.

Rude.

Aberforth grunted.

Oh. He’d said that aloud. But it wasn’t like Aberforth to be this short, not when it was important.

George glanced at Hermione, safe in his arms.

He frowned. Looked around.

Had Aberforth noticed?

The sod was glaring right at them.

George gulped, opening his mouth. “You can’t—”

Aberforth shoved his pillow over his head.

Wait. Had they been over this already? Even to him, he sounded a bit strange.

Tricky thing, being magic-sozzled. Smart enough to know he was being a git, yet not nimble enough to avoid it.

He peeked across the scattered bedrolls and snapping firelight.

Luna’s eyes twinkled, and her tail wagged.

George lifted his index finger to his lips.

Mumbling, Hermione rolled to shift a bit closer under the crook of George’s arm. Her nose brushed his pulse-point, and the incandescent heat in his chest seemed to swirl. Yet another lump rose in George’s throat. “Oh, I love her so much,” he wheezed.

A rustle. Aberforth’s wrinkled, scraggle-bearded face popped up on the other side of the fire as he sat upright. “That’s it,” he muttered. “A langlock, or—”

Luna shifted to her paws and stepped between them, haunches drawing tight around her shoulders as her ears flattened.

Aberforth drew a long breath in through his ancient, crooked nose, then shoved himself back into his bedroll. Luna settled once more.

Strange.

They were outside.

Hadn’t they brought tents? They’d had the tents… they’d had them, but—the phoenixes, that was right.

Also, certain parties weren’t to be trusted alone yet. Something about them nearly dancing right off the edge of a cliff, earlier. The faint memory of Aberforth setting a caterwauling charm into the campsite ward boundary flickered back to him.

There was something toasty and nice about that. He’d brainlessly frolicked onto many a ledge, and usually the only person caring or present enough to offer a safety net was right beside him.

But Aberforth had noticed, hadn’t he? Even if George and Hermione didn’t know the particulars of this magic yet, Aberforth and their friends cared enough to not let them traipse into oblivion.

“Aberforth,” George whispered.

“I’ll strangle him,” Aberforth said flatly.

“Thanks, Mate,” George said.

Aberforth fell quiet. Then, he grunted.

Properly satisfied, George settled in to enjoy the quiet. Wind brushed the long grasses, and waves whooshed far below. Hermione’s breaths were hushed bows dragged over a cello string made of spidersilk—soft yet powerful music.

Newt was on his third candle, sketching some bit of dung he’d found and bottled. Winky snored, and Luna’s paws scraped in the dirt as she adjusted her angle towards the fire.

George tip-tap-traced his pointer finger against Hermione’s smooth, flushed cheek. Holding her felt as big as the universe and as small as a bluebell charm.

He leaned quite close and whispered as quiet as he could, “I have loved you for so long, and I’m going to do my best job. Promise.”

At this, he meant. At being her husband.

No grumbling.

“Promise. Heavens as witness.” George’s speech eased into drowsy silence as he scooped her closer. If he’d had a wishing charm, it might have vanished, then.

No way to know for certain, though. Only to do as he wished.

George slipped off on that thought, whimsical and soft.

And the Heavens looked down, listening, every pinprick of light a bit shooting star.

#

October 2, 1999, 5:12 p.m.

“Surprised he’s managed to keep it in so far,” George whispered, ducking his head lower to reach Granger’s ear. “That one’s got a temper like a Torpoint troll, most days.” As he spoke, he rubbed at his neck. Caving wasn’t friendly to the vertically gifted. He’d been hunched for hours while they ventured deep into the moss-covered Phoenix tunnels.

Winky hadn’t been a proper match with any of the grown phoenixes, thus far. They were too busy flapping about, or too disinterested in her plight. She’d chanced a few pecks of interest, but no feathery treasure.

Which meant they’d need to do things the hard way. According to Newt, you didn’t tame a phoenix, a phoenix tamed you. For that to occur, one had to take a liking to you. You earned its respect and affection. When it came to that, the creatures didn’t much care what Winky needed, but rather who she was.

Aberforth had been in a snit about it all day.

The corners of his wife’s mouth tucked upwards with her incredulous, sideways glance. “Aberforth’s hardly a troll.”

She didn’t want to be smiling, and yet she was. George grinned. “How can you be sure?”

Hermione pulled her hair tie free, reaching behind her to gather the large handful of curls into a new attempt at tidiness. She had a sort of earthy, breezy note to her today, rather than the lavender tinge she often carried when she was back in London.

And that hair.

Sweet, merciful Merlin.

The humidity had it in a riot, and George had a bruise on his shin from walking into a bit of rock while he gawked at the way it stuck to her neck and fountained out of the stretchy band she kept bunching it with.

He’d give his last clean shirt for a minute just the two of them.

They were here for Winky’s quest, though. Not for canoodling. The canoodling would keep for later, when they both wouldn’t be distracted by magical history-making and shrieking birds.

His vest stuck to his chest and stomach with sweat, and it made his forearms sticky and claggy. A testament to the pull of Granger’s appeal, that he itched to draw her close.

“I do have some experience in trolls,” she said.

Right. George grimaced on instinct at the memory, but then played it off like a joke. She didn’t seem to want the mood brought down. “But could you really get a proper good look, hiding under a sink?”

“Yes,” she said, flat. “I’d been promised a reel of my best moments before death, and when the moment seemed to find me, all I got was a furious troll. You’d better believe I took a long look.”

George stepped over a thicker patch of cave moss and drew in a half breath, hesitating as he looked at her.

She pushed at his arm. “Pack the melancholy eyes away, Weasley.”

George flared them wide and crossed them for good measure.

Hermione laughed. Then her chin lifted with a smirk. “It was a victory. The first day I realized Ron had truly been listening to all my casting technique advice.”

Right.

Ron.

Her rescuer, but also the reason she’d been down there to begin with.

George lifted his wand to cast a bit more light into her path and cleared his throat. “And Ickle Ronnie’s Charms marks have been forever grateful.”

He frowned at his own quip. He and Fred ought to have helped Ron more with that class. It always came naturally to them. Why hadn’t they?

“Troll grunts are produced closer to the back of the throat,” Newt put in, as if the jest were in earnest. “And Aberforth’s are nearly always intelligible to most humans.” Scamander’s waistcoat carried streaks of dust from the passage they’d shimmied through, but he seemed to be handling the extreme temperature oscillations and random patches of humidity and breeze without issue.

George was already a bit winded, though, and he laughed at Scamander’s comment with a wheeze.

“Hold,” Aberforth called. Luna stopped short just behind him and pressed her wandlight to widen, casting the green, moss-covered rocks in blue glow.

Winky peered down the fork of one passage, then the other. “Winky isn’t sure.” The second had a bit of debris blocking the way, which should’ve made the choice easy. The birds left it there to block off nests and detract natural predators.

Winky, however, was staring at Aberforth with some concern.

“It might be a natural rock fall,” she said, the squeak of her voice softening with the slowness of the observation.

Aberforth’s scar ruffled as his features contorted at her. “Don’t.”

Winky shifted. “Aberforth is quite grey.” She touched her fingertips together, nervous.

George paused. Now that she mentioned it—yes. He’d thought it was a byproduct of Luna’s wandlight, but Aberforth’s complexion could fit right in with the merpeople in the Black Lake.

Didn’t help that this section of the tunnel was stuffy. Other stretches had breezes—bright winds that scooped along and ruffled the moss and their hair. This bit was more cauldron than not.

George hopped forward, spinning his wand in the palm of his hand, then catching it with a snap. “I’ve got it.”

“I’m fine,” Aberforth grunted.

“Eh,” George said, noncommittal as he brushed past. Aberforth had been doing most of the casting all day. Since they’d arrived, really, and that was atop of using whatever sense he had to help track potential phoenixes.

“Fine,” Aberforth repeated—a broken protest, not a retreat. But he rested back against the cavern wall and planted his hands on his knees. “Listen, boy—”

“Don’t be a berk, old man.” George put a bit of lilt into the last two words, lobbing the title back at him with a lift of his brows. “You’ve done enough, and the rest of us have got energy in spades.” George raised his wand and assessed the rubble for a moment.

A careful Depulso ought to do it. Just shift it to the side—

The thought torrented down his arm, and a sudden surge of lightning joined with the charm. Electric, fizzing, a splash of chamomile and heat, then—

Like he’d punched through a thin sheet of plaster, the boulders flung deep into the passage. Some crumbled into the sides of the tunnel, others lodged somewhere in the distant darkness. The gust of wind from the charm thrust over George’s hair and clammy face.

Magic tingled on his fingertips, and his vision flickered gold, like it had yesterday, before it righted itself.

Oh.

George cleared his throat slowly.

“For the love of—” A fist closed on George’s robes over his shoulder, shoving him to the side. “Put your wand down before you hurt yourself,” Aberforth said.

Bits of Granger’s magic had been popping out of him at random since the ceremony, though not so wildly as this. Each time, it felt like Granger herself bolted out of nowhere and leapt through his wand. How, he hadn’t the foggiest. He didn’t know why, what caused it, or whether there was even more of her magic squirreled away in his system, waiting to jump out without warning.

He’d known there were questions to be sorted, obviously, but this was unanticipated.

Hermione’s hurried footsteps brought her to his elbow. “That was a bit excessive,” she said faintly, peering down the tunnel.

George’s brow furrowed as he blinked down at her. Was her magic always like that? So rushing and—and much? He didn’t mind it, exactly, only that he’d lost his usual control. It was a bit disconcerting, reaching for his own magic and getting Hermione’s charging at him instead.

“Nesting phoenixes are quite sensitive about their environment.” Newt scuttled past George, frowning as he tugged on his waistcoat buttons. “Disruptions aren’t healthy for them.” It was the first time Scamander had seemed truly anxious.

The scolding pinched George’s throat closed.

“Sorry,” George said. “I—I didn’t mean to.”

Hermione’s face was a mask of concern. “What happened?”

George faltered. “I—I don’t know, exactly.” Magically, he’d asked for a matchstick and gotten a housefire. He didn’t quite feel like he’d done a Depulso of that intensity, either. After blasting rocks that far back, he ought to be a bit more winded, his magical stores further drained. But he still felt jumped up—stacked with excess energy to burn. All of it loud, none of it distinct.

And by now, anything traceably “Hermione” was vanished—impossible to track in the loud, buzzing network of his body.

“It happens like a random surge,” George muttered. “I don’t get it.”

And why wasn’t it happening to her? Why only him? Hermione didn’t seem to be struggling in the same manner.

“You can’t control it? At all?” Aberforth had half turned, something like anger flashing over his face.

George swallowed. “Um.”

Hermione laced her fingers through his, and the tingles jumped in his palm, as if rewarded by the contact. “To be safe, maybe we should both avoid casting until we’ve sorted this,” she said.

“Lovely,” Aberforth muttered. “Couldn’t ask for better timing.”

Winky trudged forwards.

“Let’s go,” Aberforth continued, heading after her. “We may as well cling to the slight chance that earthquake didn’t frighten off every beast with a ten-league radius.” He cast a backwards glower at George.

But it looked more worried than cross.

#

Their spelunking came to an abrupt halt at the lip of a deep abyss, in a chamber shaped like the round head of a pushpin. A very, very large pushpin. Beyond the cliff, black opened and needled into obscurity below them.

George’s stomach flipped. He didn’t blame Granger for clinging to the back wall.

The ceiling was smooth of stalactites, and the phoenix song seeped from the dark, humming and rolling along the rounded walls that wrapped the space and joined across from them. The chamber seemed about the size of the Great Hall, if the Great Hall featured an infinite pit of darkness.

Now that would’ve been a prank of legends. George inched closer and peered over the edge. “What now?”

Aberforth lifted a hand for quiet.

Winky shifted from foot to foot, adjusting her cloak. Sweaty, grimy fingerprints stamped the silver wand clasp holding the front together.

The song paused, like a deep breath between strands of lullaby.

Light bloomed below and fractured the abyss, giving them a clear view of the bottom. The ground wasn’t so very far after all. Twenty feet, if that. And in the middle, red-orange glow pulsed inside three eggs. Like a flare, almost, but weaker.

Aberforth peered around. “She’s singing close by,” he said. “Go now.”

Winky nodded, clambering over the side of the ledge.

Hermione stepped forwards as Aberforth leaned towards Luna. “Don’t touch anything, and pull her out if it looks bad.” He paused, glancing at the rest of them. “And so we’re understood, if you step down there with corrupted intentions, it’ll be the last walk you take,” he muttered. “You’ve got to be pure of heart.”

Newt drank the scene in with wide eyes, whispering under his breath about temperatures and migration—seasons, magic, something about Tina.

Hermione pressed her hand to George’s arm, then shifted around him. “We’re here for good reason,” she said slowly.

What was she—

Then, without further preamble or debate, she set her pack on the ledge and slipped over the side. George sucked a breath through his teeth.

Blasted—

Granger—

Then he followed.

Miraculously, it held.

Luna landed beside them, then helped Newt down.

“Are you coming, Aberforth?” Luna whispered.

Aberforth’s jaw flexed beneath his beard. “No.”

Newt tilted his head, something wary straightening his posture. He looked at Aberforth like someone else might examine a potentially venomous serpent.

Aberforth offered no explanation.

The group approached the nest—a heaping thing of charcoaled sticks, ashes, and embers, with the eggs tucked snugly in the middle of the bowl.

Winky paused.

“Now, this is the part that always confused me.” Luna murmured, easing closer. “How is it determined if an egg is partial?”

“Every relationship between bird and being is different.” Scamander took another, halting glance back at Aberforth. “But they’re fiercely loyal, so they choose who they favor carefully.”

Even from across the chamber, the creases on Aberforth’s face were sharp as his mouth turned down at the corners.

“Alright, Mate?” George called in a loud whisper.

Aberforth didn’t answer at first.

Then: “Takes a bit of bravery.”

Winky slipped into the nest, and Hermione followed, wand drawn.

Blimey. Right to it, then?

Naturally, George followed too.

Winky paced around the eggs, taking care not to upset the ash nest’s arrangement.

“What kind of bravery?” Hermione asked.

Newt gazed at the nest, twisting his hands this way and that with some sort of eager anticipation. “You have to say hello,” he said.

The nest’s contents washed Luna’s awestruck grin in waves of glow.

Winky drifted closer. After a long moment of consideration, she stretched out her hand, paused, then laid it atop the smallest egg. Apart from a faint flicker of light within, nothing happened. The shell faded to a dull mint shade, flecked with gold and black specks. The pulse of the glow within fell out of beat with the other two.

Newt’s smile widened. “That’s the one,” he whispered.

Really?

Was it so simple?

Curious, George pressed his palm to the larger shell beside it.

“No!” Aberforth shouted, just as heat seared and blistered George’s skin, like he’d palmed a lit stove burner, or a poker left in the fire overnight.

Broken broomsticks—

He gave a strangled howl and toppled forward, right towards the eggs.

A blinding crack echoed, and sudden grip yanked George’s shoulder back. The force pulled him over the lip of the nest and sprawled him flat on his back.

“George?” Hermione’s cry echoed somewhere unseen.

Bloody Hell. Bloody Hell. Bloody Hell. The phrase carouseled in his mind, but George’s lungs were too filled with his agonized yell to form words.

Stars popped across his vision. George clutched his wrist—the muscles in his left hand had locked into a strained, claw-like position. His palm smelled like he’d cooked it.

Wooziness crashed over him.

Ash flecked onto his face as Hermione clambered towards him.

“Don’t—don’t—it’s—” He gasped aloud. Hermione’d locked her hand around his arm.

Fuzziness seeped over the pounding ache, but the burn still pulsed deeper inside him. She hunched over his forearm, back to him as she examined the damage.

George couldn’t look.

Clearly, it was bad. Gawking at it would only make it worse.

Instead, he looked sidewards. Aberforth panted, pressing up from where he’d landed near them, facedown. His eyes locked with George’s, and fury shot through them. “What did I say, b—”

A charm smacked Aberforth’s tongue to the roof of his mouth before he could continue.

Newt appeared next, tidily pocketing his wand into his inner waistcoat. “Phoenix young do not tolerate loud human voices, and Winky will need quiet for the next bit.”

Aberforth spat the Langlock out like a bit of the Grangers’ muggle mouth wash. “I’m aware,” he gritted out.

George fought to steady his breath through the whispers. Aberforth’s expression tightened as he righted himself, then toed the dirt beneath him—faltering when nothing happened. Carefully, he turned back and bent over George and Hermione. The tension in his face made his scar line jagged.

George opened his mouth to apologize, but all that came forth was another harsh gust of breath. He tipped his head back and let it drop to the ground. Newt sighed, and it might as well have been a tongue-lashing.

If all his nerves weren’t gnashed on a griddle, the shame painting him from brow to throat would feel hotter than it did. Stupid, stupid—

“We’ve got to move him,” Hermione whispered.

Trepidation shook George’s voice, or maybe it was pain, but they denied his feeble, broken requests to leave him be a moment. All the better. The further they lifted him from the nest, the less he felt swallowed in the burn.

The group helped him to the ledge, then levitated him over it with a bit of help from Aberforth giving him a boost. Unfortunately, it was just high enough that Granger couldn’t quite reach.

The second Hermione’s hand came free, the damage came screaming into focus.

George bit down on his wand hand to keep from yelping. What came out instead was pitchy, emanating from his chest and throat.

He was shaking on his back. Shaking and cold and all too hot at once. He knew Granger would be having a fit, but it was so awful he couldn’t hide it. Instead, he tried to twist his face away, into the gritty cavern floor.

“It’ll feel worse than it is,” Newt whispered overhead. “A defense mechanism, to protect the egg.”

“Seems that one wasn’t partial to George,” Aberforth said flatly, conjuring a small ladder for the others to use. Granger bobbed up over the lip, then knelt near his hip.

“George.” She looked over him like he was a spread of books on a library table, only the sight of him left her with a bit of panic in her eyes. As gently as possible, she sat, then drew his hand to her lap. Her face was white.

No matter what Newt claimed, he couldn’t bring himself to look at the sight that drained her colour. Hadn’t let himself.

What a stupid way to get hurt. Touching a phoenix egg. Had he gone brainless?

“Serves me right—sticky fingers,” George rasped.

Only quip he could come up with on such short notice, with the shrieking rebuke throttling up his arm bones.

“Darling.” Her voice was preternaturally even and calm. Too calm. “I need you breathe.”

George squeezed his eyes shut, then popped them open, forcing a smile on his face. “Make me.” He felt sweaty and freezing and suffocating with heat. He felt like if she let him go a moment, he might slip away and die. He felt terrified.

Hermione winced, and he realized he was clutching madly at her arm with his un-touched hand.

She looked back at him, but she didn’t seem comforted by his effort. “You don’t need to play jokester. Just breathe.”

He tried. But she lifted her touch to reach for something, and invisible fire engulfed his hand again.

George hissed, shoving his face into her bent knee. Anything—anything.

Contact.

“George?” Hermione whispered.

“Don’t move,” George gasped. “Just—” He bit off another curse. He shouldn’t be able to feel it, if it was this bad. The nerves in his skin ought to be toasted. Yet he did. Pulsing and spiking from his hand, up his wrist.

“Ab,” Hermione said, voice more taunt.

Aberforth was rifling through her pack’s pockets. He pulled a potion roll out, then Hermione freed a small vial from the front.

A quick step, almost a stumble. “No,” Aberforth cut in. “Not that. If that’s got phoenix ash, it’ll be kerosine on fire.” He gestured a bit, the growl nearly faded from his voice. “It won’t react well with this. Better stick with the raw extract.”

Hermione nodded, fumbling for that. Her touch centered just below his elbow, and the worst of it went muffled again.

She popped the cork off, then dribbled it over his skin. The droplets sizzled where they met his hand.

George gagged. It wasn’t the pain. It was the sound—what it meant. “Lovely,” he choked. “That’s right lovely.” His brow twisted against her kneecap.

He hated this. He wasn’t the bloody point, and yet he’d made himself a nuisance. A distraction.

“It’s doing something, at least,” Hermione murmured. She uncorked another plain Dittany vial and spilt it over his hand. “Phoenix ash would aggravate this sort of burn?”

Aberforth’s gaze had crystallized, fixed on George in marked, tense focus. “Phoenixes know themselves down to the last feather and claw. Brewing doesn’t transform that knowledge.” He paused, quieting. “Aggravate one bird, and the others will know.”

She clasped her hand over the back of his neck.

George’s head lolled back at the relief. “Fascinating.”

“Isn’t it just?” Hermione made quick work of another vial. “Magizoology is a vastly underrated field of work.”

George managed a weak hum that didn’t quite pass for interested. Newt was saying something that made Hermione bite down on her lips and lean closer over George’s palm. Luna murmured something to Aberforth.

George counted the seconds between his inhales and exhales and focused on retaining at least one point of contact with Granger at all times.

Best ignore Aberforth’s piercing glare and the whispers swirling between Newt and Hermione. They sounded right worried. Looked it, too.

How much of his skin was gone? Couldn’t be the whole hand, or Granger would be going spare. Right?

His kingdom for a distraction.

“How’s it going, Winky?” George croaked.

“Quiet.” Winky sounded pinched and absent-minded, a bit echoey across the chamber. “Winky is needing quiet.”

To convince the egg to beckon the mother.

Phoenix young must be difficult to communicate with, even for elves. No wonder, if they melted your handshake right off.

“Why’d you touch it?” Aberforth folded his arms over his stomach and scowled.

“It looked nice,” George bit out. He hadn’t been thinking. “I dunno, can you spare me the caning until I’ve got the skin regrown to take it?”

A torrent of magic smashed through his palm like a furious tidal wave. Fear. Worry. A twinge of exasperation, all tinged with a heady scent of chamomile and love burning like a star.

With the brand on his hand, it was too much.

George yelped and drew his arm from Hermione’s hold, only for the magic to rebound and snap over his ribs like a bowstring.

“Merlin alive—” he broke into a string of foul language, panting.

Hermione scrambled away. “I’m sorry!” she cried. “I thought it would help!” As she reeled from his side, the snapping intensified into a sensation like having a tooth pulled, only right in the center of his chest and far more painful than any of his and Fred’s ridiculous door-knob-and-string exploits.

“Wait!” George gasped. “Just—just—” His decent hand closed around her wrist. “Don’t move.” When she stayed close, the awful yanking sensation faded.

A dark silence fell.

Then: “You two know nothing about this at all?” Aberforth spoke in a tight mutter. “How it works?”

George couldn’t clear his head enough to form a suitable answer, so he didn’t say anything at all. Better that than ending up in a bloody duel with a Dumbledore.

After a few minutes, Hermione set to helping George sit up, then wrapping some light, gauzy material around his palm. “Can’t you do something?” she whispered.

It took him a moment to realize she was pleading with Aberforth, not expecting him to right himself. George blinked hard at the spots crowding his vision, now littered with gilded fizz.

“Boy touched a phoenix egg without care,” Aberforth said. “There’s not much to be done, other than wait it out.”

George blinked the spots away. His right palm slipped against his knee. “A warning would’ve been merited.”

“You got a warning,” Aberforth said. “And then you rushed on did whatever you wanted anyway. Without thinking or a teaspoon of planning. As usual.”

George couldn’t see through his grimace. “I thought it was a general, ‘don’t touch anything,’ not a dire ‘don’t touch anything or it’ll cook you’ warning.” He didn’t justify the sod’s deeper meaning with a response, though the implication clamped the muscles in his jaw tight. No. If Aberforth wanted that row, he’d have to wait until George was standing tall enough to swing at his face.

Aberforth sighed. “You keep charging into nonsense you’re not familiar with, you’ll end up—”

“There,” Winky called. “Winky got it.”

Aberforth stared flatly at George, then dismissed him altogether, turning towards Winky.

“What now?” George groped for a sporting tone. He sounded like Percy at school, after racing up the entrance courtyard’s staircases in winter.

Hermione’s hand circled on his back. Luckily, she seemed to have read something off of him, recognizing that he wasn’t upset with her—just in pain. Grateful, he tipped his brow towards her shoulder.

“She’s got to make a choice,” Aberforth murmured. “Face the mother or steal the egg.” The rough homespun at the end of his robes was stained with dust.

“Face the mother?” George straightened, then accepted a pain potion from Hermione, though it likely wouldn’t do a thing.

“She may not approve of Winky’s bond with her young,” Newt added, fascination turning his voice soft.

What then? For the best chance, it had to be a feather from a phoenix that favored her.

George pulled the woody cork between his lips with a wince and spat it free into his lap.

Aberforth watched the chamber’s opposite side, then the opening behind them. “If it goes poorly, we’ll need to run.” He glanced down. “She’ll make that—” He nodded at George’s hand. “—look like a parchment cut.”

Brilliant. The pain potion went down like a quick pull of water, and he struggled to his feet.

Hermione cast him a worried look. George clenched his jaw. “And Winky won’t steal the egg,” he said.

Aberforth shook his head. “It’s the easy way, but it can have a steep price. I only know one idiot who did it, and it never hatched for them.”

George blinked down at the ground where Aberforth stood. Phoenixes were said to find Dumbledores in their hour of need, but he’d not seen great proof of that with man before him.

It all clicked together.

“You,” he said. “The egg didn’t hatch for you?”

Aberforth blinked.

“You don’t have a phoenix, right?” George said. “It was you, then.”

Explained Aberforth’s tension all day, the grey in his face, the reticence he’d had to venture towards the nest.

There was a long moment of quiet. “No,” Aberforth said finally. “It wasn’t.”

“But—” George started, faltering as Hermione helped him to a stand.

“Think what you like,” Aberforth said shortly. “I don’t much care.”

George opened his mouth to reply, but the thrum of wing beats built slowly down the corridor outside. He hissed and stepped back, pressing himself and Hermione to the wall.

“She’s coming,” Newt shouted, in a tone that was equally delighted and horrified.

An angry screech pounded against George’s eardrums. He lurched, clamping his right hand to his good ear, and pressing his shoulder against the bad one. Hermione peeked from around him.

“She’s angry,” Aberforth yelled. “Careful, Winky!”

Heat built up the sides of the chamber in plumes of updraft, and the walls began to pulsate with red light. George craned his neck.

Winky looked ever so small in the middle of the nest. She swallowed and tugged on her makeshift wand holster.

“Are you sure, Winky?” George cried.

Perhaps there was another way. Perhaps this was insanity.

Winky’s eyes were saucers.

But she nodded.

Blistering heat thrust over George’s shoulders, and with a mighty cry, the phoenix burst through the entry to his left and into the open air of the chamber.

Fire leapt from the ground, scorching closer and closer to the ash nest.

Winky wobbled in place. Tears streamed down her wrinkled face from the heat, but she kept her chin tilted up and gaze fixed on the bird.

The “song” it sang now was like steel grinding against steel—piercing and horrid. George’s heartbeat sped, his head going light and drumming.

He tucked Hermione tighter against his chest, attempting to take the brunt of it with his back. But he felt it most keenly in his palm, right where the burn remained.

The phoenix dropped low, flying in tight, swift circles that sped until the feathers and wings blurred into streaks of light and fire like a cyclone. Heat and sound boomed out of it at unbearable levels. It was the sort of volume that drowned the outside world away—that made one forget it had ever existed.

Within the vortex, Winky stumbled a bit, clutching her chest.

Like she couldn’t get a breath.

Fear cranked through his ribs.

“Get her out!” Hermione shrieked. Her hands were scrambling along his ribs and shoulders.

Through the light, Winky seemed to shrink. Like a mirage, her cloak was replaced with wisps of a tea towel, and bloody tracks ran from her nostrils as she careened against the egg.

The song spiked in volume, until it carried meaning that smashed through the rest like a gauntlet hitting the ground.

Who.

Are.

You.

The question beat through every note.

And Winky choked on it, gripping the Crouch family crest on her chest.

“Come on, Winky,” Aberforth yelled. “Answer!”

“This is not Winky,” Winky shouted, eyes squeezed shut. “This is not Winky.”

The phoenix sped and the question seemed to build louder. Winky fell to her knees, knocking into the egg.

Who.

Are.

You.

“She can’t breathe!” Hermione shoved from his hold. “Move!”

“She told you not to intervene,” Aberforth shouted and held out an arm to bar her away. “We can’t decide for her. She’s got to decide on it for herself.”

In the vortex, ash kicked up and swirled.

And then there was a second, little elf in the middle of the fire.

One made of charcoal and embers, who seemed to be wearing a precarious stack of hats and mismatched socks. He looked down, tilted his head, and extended a hand to Winky gently.

“There she is,” Luna breathed.

Then, Winky rose.

Not just to her feet, but in stature. She seemed to grow to occupy more space. The tea towel illusion fell away. The little fellow made of ash pulled the top of his hats free and settled it upon Winky’s head.

It was shaped like a crown.

Winky’s voice swept over the drum of wingbeats and drowned the phoenix song. “Winky is a free elf,” she said.

Her spindly arm extended up, up, up in a fist.

“Winky is a founder. A ruler. A rescuer. A friend.” Something formed in her grip—a strand of light shaped like a stick. “And she will wield a wand.”

The phoenix surged upwards with a triumphant screech. Then it landed with a resounding Fwoom.

The racket cut, like the satisfied silence after the end of a frenzied symphony.

George let out a gasp, falling into the wall.

Utterly calm and quiet, the phoenix nudged the smallest egg towards Winky.

And a crack began to form.

#

Winky’s new friend looked like a naked little parrot, hopping in circles around her. George had mistakenly called it a pet once, only to be castigated by half the company present.

His mistake. Phoenixes were not pets, then, but noble creatures that took up lifelong allegiances, helping their favored along in the meeting of their destinies. Even when they looked like plucked, ickle chickens and ate the owl treats right out of your pockets.

It had put Granger in mind of her own little friend, and their journey back had been quick with that anticipation.

“Soaking it would be best.” Scamander said, tucking his cloak under his arm. The last jaunt of their trip saw them escorting Newt back to his home, with Luna, Aberforth, Winky, and the hatchling departing at other stops already. “But either way, you’ll want to put some more Dittany on it as soon as you can.”

“‘Drectly,” George mumbled, grimacing at the dark silhouette of Newt’s house against the country vista. A stooped woman in a set of overalls stood in the vegetable patch, carrying a familiar half-kneazle while a litter of other cats pranced around her feet.

A few more bushy tails poked out of the reeds along the pond, where pixie glimmer zipped against the bottle-green water and darted above a grindylow’s hand.

Newt lifted his Niffler and gave it a shake. George’s pocket watch, followed by Hermione’s ring, tumbled out.

“Hey!” Hermione said, frowning as she snatched them up.

“Sorry,” Newt said. “He knows better, but doesn’t do better, now does he?” He poked the niffler’s stomach, then released it to let it scurry away.

“Mr. Scamander,” the woman called. American. Headed this way. George’s weary mind caught up to him. Tina. This would be Tina, then.

Newt frowned. “Hm. I’ve done something,” he mumbled. “Haven’t I?” He scratched his wrinkly cheek and frowned.

George shrugged.

“Billywigs were fine, and the glumbumbles…” Newt’s eyes searched the field, like he’d see the answer there, as Mrs. Scamander neared the group.

“The Lacewing flies?” Tina prompted. Crookshanks purred in a low roll as she neared. Like a prince on a throne, that cat. Despite her apparent displeasure with Newt, Tina didn’t stop her continued petting, skipping along the spots that made Crooks finicky and locating the ones he liked best, as if such knowledge was instinctual.

Newt blinked, utterly blank by the looks of it.

“The enclosure glass was left—”

Newt bobbed forward in a satisfied nod, lifting his finger to touch the air. “That’s what it was.” He skated his hand over his white hair. “Yes, I’d meant to tell you that the glass needs to be closed.” His face scrunched in thought. “Thought I’d let them pollinate the greenhouse.”

Tina stroked over Crookshanks’ spine. “Yes, well they’ve pollinated right into our pantry, now.”

Newt flushed. “I’m sorry.”

Tina sighed, lifting her thin, grey brows. “Might you fix it?”

“Immediately,” Newt said, pecking her on the cheek as he marched for the side of the house.

Tina watched him go, then turned to Granger. “Someone’s missed you,” she said, a bit more warmly.

Hermione made a soft, keening sound. “My Crookie-cakes—”

Tina handed Crookshanks over and smiled as he burrowed against Hermione’s chest. The purr held a stuffy rasp.

Tina studied them. “So, how long have the two of you been together?”

Hermione and George’s voices rang out at once:

“Sorry?”

“Oh, ages.”

George’s face heated. Right. She’d meant the cat.

Tina seemed to take Hermione’s answer from the two. Her smile warmed, though she hesitated a moment. “I’d thought so,” she said. “It’s not often we see a half-kneazle so…wizened.”

Hermione, who’d been busy stuffing her grin into Crookshanks’s fur, lifted her face. The grin had frozen in place.

“I took a look at him, like you asked,” Tina said gently. “The um—concerns you mentioned.”

“He’s a bit sluggish, really,” Hermione cut in, nodding. “And just not as active. He doesn’t always  eat everything in his bowl, and he’s stopped hunting, for the most part. Sometimes he sounds a bit stuffed up while he’s breathing, like he’s got a cold.”

Tina pressed her lips together and tilted her head.

George felt the apology coming before she delivered it.

“By my estimates, he’s got to be nearly thirty years old,” Tina said.

Hermione blinked. “And?”

Tina folded her hands. “I gave him some herbs for the cold—it’s just a bit of kneazle sniffles. Quite normal, at his age.” She tilted her head to the other side, speaking the words like one gingerly finding their way. “As for the rest…that’s what comes with having so many years, I’m afraid.”

Hermione clutched Crookshanks a bit tighter, backing a step. “Well, obviously some of it, but—”

George’s stomach got an odd, sinking feeling.

He swore under his breath as the puzzle clarified.

“Kneazles,” Tina started. So, so gentle, she was. “They like having a purpose. That’s why they make excellent companions and guard cats. Give them a job to do, and they’ll follow through with it until they’re quite certain it’s managed.” She smiled and reached forward, scratching Crookshanks on his torn ear. It was evidence of her skill that she didn’t lose the hand. “I think this one’s felt tasked with taking care of you, maybe.” She lifted her gaze to Hermione, eyes softening. “It would explain why he’s stuck with you so long.”

Kneazles fancied a job, did they?

Memories of a warm cat watching over his cold, petrified form washed over him. Of Crookshanks tearing into the woods when no one could find Dennis. Of the little beastie, following Hermione around and keeping her company when there wasn’t much to be found.

George reached up, scritching Crooks’s back. “Not just her.” Salazar. There was a lump the size of a Quaffle working up his throat. “He takes care of all of us.”

Tina’s eyes wrinkled deeply at both corners. “No one knows exactly where they go and what they do when they slip away. Some think it’s to hide and find their final rest. Others believe they have magic that unwinds like a clock and emerges into another lifetime anew.” She peeked up at Granger. “Ancient wizards believed they might walk between worlds.”

For once, Hermione didn’t seem to want more information, looking away without response.

Tina sighed. “Newt and I’ve never followed them when they creep off. It seemed disrespectful, after their lifetime of loyalty.”

George bit down on his lips.

Mrs. Scamander’s voice went gentle and coaxing. “It’s a special time, this,” she said. “When a kneazle gets to relax, before moving on to their next adventure.” She cupped Hermione’s cheek in her weathered hand. “He’s slowing down, leaving less often, because he’s treasuring the moments with you.”

Hermione swallowed.

“It’ll be a while yet,” Tina whispered. “He’s got to make sure you’re alright, doesn’t he?”

Hermione, obviously, burst right into tears.

In George’s universe, Death might come for friends, for children, but a decrepit half-kneazle—it felt as if that creature must go along undisturbed, forever. Death was hungry, but not for cats.

If Crookshanks felt a shadow looming beyond Hermione’s arms, if there was a skeletal hand stretching his way, he seemed to regard it with the same notice he’d give a useless gnat. He faced Death, or change, or whatever awaited him, with utter indifference.

Hermione, though—

Oh, Darling.

Hermione clutched. She trembled. She shied away, as if she felt something vast and terrible creeping close.

And George ached down to his bones. Fix it, bloody fix it—his instincts grappled and stretched for a way to help as he searched her. He came up useless. The second time in a short while. George swallowed.

Newt re-emerged then, dusting his hands on his cloak and freezing up at the tears. “Is everything alright?” he asked Tina.

“It will be,” Tina said quietly. “I promise.”

Hermione turned, hiding a bit behind George’s shoulder. He blinked hard, letting his hand brush the length of her arm.

“Okay,” Hermione choked. “It’s—okay.”

She didn’t sound it.

Tina leaned in and whispered something to Newt. George bent, searching Hermione’s face.

When he touched her chin, she blinked hard and nodded a bit. In her shoes, he wouldn’t want to be mucking around in someone else’s field while he processed news like that.

Alright. Home, then.

One day at a time, they’d manage this and sort the highs and lows together. George would help Hermione along. Whatever she and Crooks needed.

“Thank you, I should say,” Hermione said thickly. “For watching him while we were gone.”

“Of course,” Tina said. “I adore kneazles. They’re terribly loyal, even if they are a bit choosy about their people.” There, she cast a pointed look at Newt, who blinked back at her.

George was fond of Crooks. Loved Crooks. But he knew the care he’d come to feel was nothing compared to the kneazle’s special bond with Granger. His heart ached, sharp and deep down with a pain that radiated up to close his throat.

Hermione loved Crooks dearly, even when everyone else had been put out by the mashed-in face and the claws and hissing. And Crookshanks had loved her back, just as well, and had not faltered in it.

There might be something to learn in that, from a creature who had loved Hermione for ages and ages.

How was Crooks comforting her? The cat had mooshed its face into her shoulder and seemed content to lay cuddled quite close. Simply being there.

That was as good a place to start as any. George nudged closer, and Hermione tucked into his side.

Meanwhile, Newt had put his arm about Tina, their murmurs having taken a different direction. “—sorry about the lacewings.”

“Good trip?” Tina asked.

“Oh, brilliant,” Newt said. “But honestly, I’m glad to be home. I hoard time with you like a niffler when I’m away.” He stretched and eased—the rickety posture melted a bit, as if he was relaxing into his own skin for the first time in days.

Tina smiled, watching him a moment. She looked from Newt to George and Hermione, then back again. Angling, almost.

Newt smiled, brows quirking in question.

Tina laughed under her breath before she turned to George more fully. “Would you two like some tea or coffee before you go?”

“Oh, right.” Newt tilted sideways towards Tina to add in a whisper, “Thank you.”

George rolled his right shoulder in his sling and smiled. “No, thanks,” he said. “I think we’re all a bit tired.”

Newt’s gaze had caught on a glowworm blinking in a distant patch of grass. “You certain?”

George checked Hermione’s face. Her eyes were red rimmed, but at his look, she managed a slight nod. George cleared his throat, still watching. “Yeah,” he said. “Likely for the best.”

“Another time, then,” Tina said. “Please feel free to use the floo, if you’d like.”

George ducked his head. “Cheers.” He placed his left hand on Hermione’s arm, and she sniffed before heading towards the house.

George’s body started to relax.

Finally. The trip was through. A bit weepier than they’d started, and with some heavy news to consider, but no one had fallen off a cliff and died or gotten torn to pieces by a mob of angry beaks. All that remained was to go home and—

Newt scratched the side of his nose as he lent Tina his arm for the porch steps. “Did you know they got married?” he said lightly, as if the thought had just popped into his mind. “While we were away?”

Not a moment later, Newt stilled. “Oh. Oh wait. That’s a secret.”

Blimey.

#

October 2, 1999, 10:00 p.m.

Even with a thirteen-hour reset and day rather twice lived, getting Hermione tucked into bed was a soft science. He made her a cuppa while she showered, and spooned an extra salmon treat into Crooks’s bowl, because the fellow deserved nothing less than the best treatment.

Next, he assembled a bit of a blanket fort over his bed—pinned some sheets and the like using semi-permanent sticking charms on the walls and ceiling. He dug through her boxes until he found her duvet and fluffed it up. He was waiting with it when she stepped into the hallway, towel scrunching her curls.

He waited until she hung the towel before draping the duvet over her head. “Your crown,” he whispered.

Little smile. Not a big one. A drippy, red-nosed, wobble-chin one. But that meant it was real and she wasn’t putting on a show for his benefit.

George inclined his head and tugged her towards the bedroom, where Crooks had stretched over the top of the blankets so as to most effectively distribute his fur.

George nudged Hermione under the canopy, then stepped quickly for the kitchen. “I’ve got your chamomile,” he said.

Nearly burnt his other hand on it, but he managed well enough.

Unfortunately, by the time he brought it back, she was crying again.

George snuck the tea onto the side table. Still crying, Hermione shook her head and pointed. “Coaster.”

George tucked his chin to his chest with a sigh of quiet, incredulous laughter. “Right.” Nevermind the water rings he’d already littered all over the nightstand in his younger days.

George fished a coaster from the coffee table box in the living room, then returned. Heat bit his fingers when he lifted the cup to tuck it under. “Better?”

Hermione nodded, tears streaking down her face like rain on a windscreen. She shuddered. George nudged closer to sit beside her and stretched out his good arm. “Here—”

Hermione wiped at her eyes. “You—you smell like you’ve hiked a dozen miles and rolled in mud.”

George lifted his brows, but he lowered his arm. “It’s a new fragrance I’m trying,” he deadpanned. “S’called ‘hiking a dozen miles and rolling in mud.’”

“Eau d’phoenix tracking,” Hermione said. Her breath kept cutting through her words due to the whole crying thing. The effort, though—commendable and pointless.

“I appreciate your dedication to the craft, Love,” George said gently. “But what would you like from me just now?”

She sighed at herself. “Shower, please.” When her fingers brushed at her soppy cheeks, she tugged them away with a half-hearted grimace.

Careful not to crowd, he leaned forward and nudged a kiss on her brow. “I can do that,” he whispered.

By the time he got out, Hermione had arranged a bowl of Dittany on the other bedside table, and a bluebell charm next to it.

Crooks curled in her arms, chin resting on her blue snowflake pajama bottoms.

Lightning, that sight.

George’s hand slipped on his Henley button.

And she’d pulled his hunter green jumper over her top.

“I think,” she said, a bit squeaky and rough as she looked down at Crooks. “I think it’s my job to hold him.”

George nodded slowly. He crawled into their fort.

It was a bit clumsy, with one hand in a bowl, but they found the right arrangement.

Hermione held Crookshanks, as was her duty.

And George held them both.

Like the little set of nesting dolls Mum kept in the northern window. A little family, they were, stacked up and fit together.

George sucked in a gulp and surrendered to the moment. Some things, a body could feel into the very center of the heart: The sight of Hermione Jean’s greatest pains and joys had always been on that list for him. This night was no different.

Something creaked to life in him, giving voice to the feeling, and George didn’t hold it back. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I love you both, you know? I’m here, Darling—” flowed out of him like warm sips of tea on a cold winter’s night, until the words dripped dry, and then he still stayed.

What a painfully fleeting picture the lot of them made: Three of them together, two of them crying.

Bittersweet. Together. Home, in that little flat above the shop.

###
Part III: Cedar

*“I have never yet met the owner of a cedar wand whom I would care to cross, especially if harm is done to those of whom they are fond. The witch or wizard who is well-matched with cedar carries the potential to be a frightening adversary, which often comes as a shock to those who have thoughtlessly challenged them.”

October 4, 1999

“Think we’ll take some time to get settled before bringing Mum’s wrath upon ourselves.” The wind nipped at his scar in the Kent field. Despite the distance, every time he closed his eyes, he saw the boxes and bins stacked in every corner of the flat, closing in. George scratched the back of his head and stepped over a jagged stone. “Maybe in a week or so—when we next come back for Sunday dinner, maybe.”

Would Bill and Fleur still be in France, then? If not, an upcoming Sunday might not be the choicest occasion. The fewer people that knew before they’d a chance to sort it with Ron, the better.

But he couldn’t recall when their roundtrip portkey departed and returned.

Fred scoffed, quite put out, then nudged him towards the rise of hill a few yards off.

“Oh, come off it,” George muttered. He let his legs carry him into a faster lope. His breath didn’t quite make clouds in the air, but the chilled damp felt at a half-step closer to winter than it ought. “We’ll tell them soon.” He hesitated a moment when they reached the hill, then nodded for Fred to keep holding the control panel. Nothing too strange had happened since the incident in the tunnels, but they’d also mostly refrained from sharing magic since that day—just until they sorted what exactly made it go amok.

Fred flopped down on his stomach behind the hill’s cover and smacked the dirt beside him.

George studied the small bundle of pyrotechnics in the distance for signs of aberration or dangerous tilt. Nothing. He lowered to lay beside Fred. “Mum finds out otherwise, and I might as well kiss my other ear goodbye,” he muttered. “So keep your mouth shut about it, alright?”

Fred toyed with the rectangular box housing the runes and switches he’d arranged to sync with the prototype. “How soon?” he said.

George gave a noncommittal hum. Soon enough that they could sort this magical hiccup. Far enough out that they’d sort a way to—to bloody organize it all. How to say the things.

Every scheme in his history paled in comparison to that task. If this went off poorly, it’d carve a ravine right through the family for years.

“And in the meantime, you’ll just keep skiving off family dinners, is that it?” Fred said when George didn’t submit a retort. He thumbed the top switch they’d already set off two explosions prior, snapping it to and fro with a dramatic sigh. “Mum’ll be heartbroken.”

George flattened his stare. “Not likely.”

Thankfully, Mum had a pregnant Fleur to fawn over, and Teddy besides.

Fred pitched his voice higher and sat upright. “And what am I to do with half a roast, Arthur?” He stiffened and glared down at the controls, propping his other wrist knuckle-down on his waist. It was uncanny, despite the setting and their posture. “Are you planning to eat it? We’re not giving it to the chickens, that’s for certain.”

George lifted his brows, sat upright as well, and tugged the controls out of Fred’s hold. The bloke could get carried away when he started hand waving, and that wasn’t ideal in close proximity to explosives. Even still, he played along, leaning back and looping an arm around his bent knee. “Now, Molly, maybe the Diggories’ll have it.” George pushed his brows together and dropped his chin. Sounded almost like Dad. Almost. The laughter in his voice gave him away.

Fred half-gasped. “The Diggories,” he batted back, going a bit shrieky. “The Diggories have enough to manage as is, and they’ve a cook besides. They don’t want half a roast as much as we don’t.”

George blinked, dropping character. “They really got a household staff over there?”

Fred shrugged.

“Human, or—” George lowered his voice and propped lower onto his elbow.

“Yeah, human,” Fred said. “Think they brough him in last year. Some bloke from Cardiff—he was in Charlie’s year.” He lifted his voice back into his impersonation. “And you know the Lovegoods won’t have it. Little Luna doesn’t care to eat anything with a face.”

“Anything that breathes, Dear,” George corrected, resuming their sport.

“Half a roast, Arty,” Fred repeated. “Half. What’ve I done that’s driven all my children away? Is there something? Arthur, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? Have I—”

George groaned. “Alright, fine,” he said, back to himself. “We’ll be back next dinner, so long as she’s alright with it.” He inclined his head to the cottage where the less inclined towards blast powder were tucked away with tea and Angie’s Quidditch playbooks.

“And you’ll tell ‘em then?” Fred prompted.

George coughed.

Fred sighed. “You’ll have to figure out how to tell them sooner or later,” he said. “And not just Mum and Dad.”

“Yeah, I know,” George said shortly, laying back as he had before. “Eventually.” He nudged the controls back to Fred. Better not risk it.

Fred was quiet. George turned. “What?”

Fred had his arms folded over his matching, plaid suit. Identical to George’s down to the very stitch, save for the green colour where George’s was a deeper red and gold. Not quite the uniform for field work, but this round of testing had been on a bit of a whim.

Fred’s index and middle finger tapped a rhythm on his arm, and his eyes slitted. “It’s not like you to avoid planning.”

It wasn’t. But every time George started to try, the inevitable disaster appeared in the future before him like a wall. He couldn’t imagine much past that point. Just blunt, awful yelling. Some sort of fracture.

There wasn’t a way to tiptoe or sneak or finagle it to avoid Ron’s fallout. That day was coming.

Bloody Hell, was it ever.

And George had become quite proficient at pretending otherwise.

“You alright, Georgie?” Fred said. The suggestion showed Fred’s hand. Evidently, George wasn’t hiding the mess in that corner inside himself quite as well as he’d thought.

“Yeah,” George said. He tugged Fred back down.

Fred looked sideways at him, unbothered. “You could talk to that healer of yours about it.”

George gritted his teeth and shoved Fred’s hand towards the proper switch. “Yeah,” George repeated. “Alright, get on with it.”

He would. But he didn’t quite know what Marcus would say about it, and that made him nervous.

Fred lifted the controls. “You want me to push the button?” he said, light and sweet as Mum’s pie crust. George glowered.

Fred pressed his hand to his heart. “Beg pardon,” he said. “I didn’t know you wanted me to set it off.”

Then, with a satisfied, sharp toothed grin that made George laugh, Fred smacked the switch.

Nothing happened.

Fred tipped his head up, gaze alert and searching. He drew his legs in, pressing up from the ground, but George snaked a hand over and shoved him back down.

The telltale whistle was quieter, but there.

Ka-boom. The noise shook the field.

Not a second later, the sky went purple and bronze. A broomstick twisted through the overcast clouds and crashed into a shimmering bludger before erupting into a massive snitch. The display showed up well enough in the murky daylight due to a bit of charmwork Fred had rigged up while George was abroad.

It left a layer of smoke hanging over them, so thick George could taste it in the air.

He coughed, staring at Fred. Fred stared back.

They burst into exhilarated laughter, falling onto their backs.

“Merlin!” George cried.

Fred was gasping, clutching his hair. “Think I felt that down through my ankle bones.”

“Think we’ll have the DMLE here with a citation,” George gasped.

Fred shoved at him, grinning. “That good, was it?”

George shut his eyes, scrunched his features, and nodded, lifting his hand in a “perfect” gesture.

Together, they twisted to check the cottage. The front door remained closed, and not a windowpane stirred. George frowned. “Just a mo’,” he said. “We’d better check on Hermione and Angie.”

Fred rolled his eyes. “Angelina’s quite accustomed to this,” he said.

George picked himself off the dirt, dusting at his knees. “Yes, but—Hermione, less so.”

She might be worried. It had been a large blast.

“Admit you want another gawk and get on with it.” Fred smirked.

George lifted his brows, all innocence, and jogged for the cottage.

Fred rolled his eyes and followed, vanishing the rubble left behind.

George hop-skip-stepped over a patch of adolescent aconite that had spread from the original planting site, then jumped up the steps. Crookshanks slept in a yet-unassembled vanity table drawer on the porch. A twice re-gifted present from Fleur to Angie, Angie to Ginny, and Ginny to Hermione, the box of remaining parts was open beside it, baking in the patch of sun peeking through the clouds.

Ah. That was right. They’d meant to put the blasted thing together.

Angie, not the least offended that Ginny hadn’t found use for the table either, had kindly lent the cottage for a larger space to sort it along with some of the messier things.

But really, it was more about the support of having a few friendly faces alongside them as they went through every single doodad George couldn’t bring himself to bin. Between the two of them, there were a number of odds and ends that they needn’t own doubles of.

He glanced over his shoulder at the fields. Fire and blast powder were so much more fun than unpacking. Perhaps Granger would be alright if her new table had some sort of hidden whizbang switch?

No. That would be rubbish with the parchments. Because that’s what it’d likely be used for. Hermione wasn’t one to stash little complexion potions all over the place. No. She might indulge from time to time, but her dragon’s hoard was of the paper variety.

The knob turned in his hand.

Two of the three women looked up from the floor, each in what appeared to be a gooey paper mask. George stopped short.

Angie smiled at Fred as she re-tied her silk head band. “Feet,” she mouthed, pointing at the mat.

Fred elbowed George, and they wiped their boots.

Angelina seemed halfway through a box of old files. Ginny seemed halfway to death by boredom. Hermione, meanwhile, had nine small stacks of books arranged around her in a ring, and as she spoke, she swapped two editions, then frowned and swapped them back. “—not strange, really. It’s like…sparklers?” Her head tipped to the side in thought.

Ginny heaved herself up and spun in George’s wooden, wheeled chair. They must’ve fetched that from the Burrow’s attic—squeaky, awful thing that it was. Why?

“Odd.” Ginny eyed George. “Doesn’t feel like eating someone else’s bogeys, using a different magic?” She spun again, so hard it smacked against the lamp they’d found at the secondhand shop down the way from the flat.

“Oi!” George darted forward and reached out. The chair back thumped into his hand and stilled. Granger’d fawned over that bloody lamp. No way was he letting Ginny break it.

“Not really,” Hermione said.

Ginny frowned at George. “Sounds a bit creepy to me.”

Angelina flicked the air in Ginny’s direction and flared her eyes. “What matters is that it suits the two of you,” she said to Hermione. “Ginny thinks Fred and I’s—”

“No—” Ginny said, clapping her hands over her ears. “I can’t hear this again.”

Angelina rolled her eyes. “—thinks it’s creepy that I fancy when Fred teases like we’re Lord and Lady of a Victorian duchy.”

Ginny covered her face with her arms, twisting away like Angelina’s statement was a horror yet unseen.

George turned very, very slowly to Fred. Fred had gone stalk still, colour flooding up his collar like a sweet, Christmas tide.

Was it their birthday?

“Do you?” Hermione said, laughing. “Oh, that’s sweet.”

Angie shrugged, and a small smile tugged on her lips. “It’s just a bit of fun, but he calls me ‘Your Grace,’ sometimes, and nonsense like that.”

Fred glared daggers at George. George lifted his brows. Now that was fascinating. He couldn’t stuff down his grin. Fred kicked him in the ankle, and George grunted.

“And he’s the Duke, then?” Hermione asked, grinning.

Angie quirked her brow at the parchment work as she slotted it into a cabinet drawer. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’m the lonely dowager countess, and he’s the dashing footman.”

“The footman?” George mouthed.

Fred pushed George’s face back and walked past him as Hermione clapped her hands, bursting into laughter.

Ginny groaned in protest. “I might’ve gone my whole life without knowing that.”

Fred dropped into a crouch beside Angie and took a sip of her tea. “You’ll live,” he said dryly. “Not like we enjoy seeing you painted onto Harry every other morning paper.”

Ginny stuck out her tongue and spun the chair free of George’s hand.

“I’m surprised I’m only now hearing of this,” George said. He peered over the stacks. Looked like an organization of Hermione’s wizarding fiction, by date rather than author or genre. She owned less of that than muggle fiction. “Can’t say I blame him for resorting to absurdity while I was off in Scotland.”

Fred set the teacup down and leaned his forearm on Angie’s shoulder. “How’s the organization going?” he said, a bit too brightly to pass for ease.

George folded his arms. He and Fred shared a silent stare.

Did he really think George was going to let it alone?

Fred’s stare said something like, “You will if you fancy wearing clothes without roaches.”

Alright. So maybe Fred knew George would never let it alone and had decided to keep this information from him. Still felt like his brother was dodging a wee taste of his own medicine, but George could wisen up and be the mature one.

“In this situation,” George said, flexing two fingers from his arms in a casual manner. “Does Fred have a special set of shoes for playing footman, or is it more—” He ducked Fred’s Bat Bogey. “—a whole costume?”

Ginny laughed. Fred went for another go, but Angelina confiscated his wand. “Outside, please?” she said.

George issued a taunting grin, dragging his hand through his hair. It came away sticky with blast powder and the smell of smoke.

“Did you need something, Darling?” Hermione asked. “How’s that table coming along?” Her voice was a bit wry and knowing.

Distracted, George blinked back at her. “Oh, um—” He shook his head. “Fred wanted to show me a thing. Got a bit loud. Just wanted to check in.”

Hermione snorted.

Angelina got up for another box. “My point is, everyone’s different, right? Just because we don’t understand, doesn’t mean it’s—”

Her voice faded as Fred muscled George back onto the porch, then shoved the box of parts at him, then dropped into the Adirondack chair. George stooped to pick through it.

Fred reclined with his feet on the railing. George shoved them off and went for the abandoned toolbelt and booklet.

“As I was saying,” Fred started in again.

“Yes, Lord Frederick?” George asked, paging through the instructions. Merlin. Six pages just for the parts list?

Fred’s face went brilliant red, and he stuttered a moment. “Y’know—” For one, blessed moment and only one, Fred was thrown. Then, he squinted and managed a recovery. “Anyways,” he said slowly, quite dry. “As I was saying, you insufferable git—”

Moments later, a gale of feminine laughter fountained from behind the door. This one seemed to resonate most loudly from Gin.

Fred stood and shuffled closer beside him.

George folded his arms. “Y’reckon they’re talking about me?” he muttered.

Hermione’s muffled, delighted call echoed. “Well, Lady Angie—”

George grinned.

Fred dropped his chin to his chest and nicked the booklet. “It’s not embarrassing,” he said. “I know how to make my wife smile, and I make good use of that knowledge. That’s more than loads of berks can say.”

Too right. But still. The silliness of others always seemed a bit more ridiculous than silliness of your own making.

George rubbed his jaw and side glanced at Fred. Which was he today? Footman, or—

Fred must’ve seen the brewing quip on George’s face. He lifted a finger and tapped George’s chest with it. “She,” he said, vehement. “Is the only one who gets to call me that. Say it again, and I’ll clean your clock.”

George nodded, grinning, and prepared for a clock cleaning.

Green flashed through the windows as the mantle inside spluttered out a newcomer.

George wheeled towards it. Fleur swayed on the hearthstone, beating a bit of dust from her hem.

Bugger. Hermione’s boxes and his things were all over, mixed together. Luckily, they didn’t have names on them. But still. It was enough to look suspicious.

George grasped the door and headed back inside without another word.

“Hullo?” George asked. “Everything alright?”

Fleur wasn’t showing yet, but she did look a bit green.

Luna floo-ed in next, smiled at the soot on her own fingertips, then shrugged. Fleur sighed and made to cast some sort of French cleaning charm, but Luna dodged it.

“It’s good luck to have floo soot on a Wednesday,” Luna said. She glanced around, examining the mess on the floor. “Finally.” She smiled at George. “Fourth stop’s the charm.”

Four stops?

“Luna, if you’d owled or—” Hermione looked alarmed, rising to push a chair towards Fleur.

Fleur waved her away. “We are here with notes,” she said, glancing at Ginny, who was shoving a particularly incriminating box of George’s old prototypes and things behind the sofa.

George hesitated. “We’re doing a bit of tidying and organizing,” he said.

Strange. Ginny didn’t know about all the secret work with Winky, and Fleur didn’t know about the wedding. They smiled at each other apologetically, neither the wiser, and George got a dull, throbbing headache in the base of his skull.

“We will go for some lunch, then,” Fleur said, accent sharper than usual as she finished righting herself and seemed to note the silly face masks the others had on. “If this is a good time—” she glanced at Angie, who nodded.

“We can eat,” Angelina said.

Fleur frowned around at the things. “I had thought your home was settled,” she said, sounding quieter and a bit disappointed. “Unless we did something you did not care for?”

Luna stepped closer, whispering behind George’s elbow. “We can wait until the Harpies practice to take out the trip notes,” she said.

George rubbed his temple and nodded.

Meanwhile, Fleur’s hesitance shifted into skepticism. “Where did this all come from? This is not yours, is it?” Blunt as a bludger, she bent to snap up an old necktie with the letter “G” stamped all over it.

George winced and scratched his nose.

Fred leapt forward. “Merlin, George, even more of your things—” he sounded put out and perfectly bemused as he caught the tie and shoved it at him.

George resolved to leave the silly footman nonsense alone.

Luna smiled. “Are you alright, George? You seem anxious.”

He nodded slowly, scanning the room for anything he’d need to tuck away.

Fleur didn’t know. If she knew, she’d be battering him with questions or pointed opinions on how they went about their ceremony.

Instead, Fleur looked about with her lips in a thin line. Her arms folded over her stomach and pinned her cloak tightly over her body. On anyone else, it would look like insecurity. On Fleur, it just looked…like a different person entirely.

In fact, if George had to guess, Fleur wasn’t herself at all. Normally, she held a sharp delicacy and decadence—like she was a ballerina with knives, wielding grace and tact in mindful ways that dizzied the rest of them. Now, it seemed like she might not know the day of the week, let alone whose books crowded her feet. She shoved a frayed strand of hair behind her ear and pulled her posture into a firm line.

She’d been slouching. Slouching.

And she hadn’t even tried to right Luna’s crooked headband. The others had stood to welcome the two, but Fleur emerged from the pack, face drawn. She shoved her light cloak at George to reveal robes that seemed to tug, rather than float. “If Bill asks, tell him—” The comment dropped under her breath, tinged with frustration and grumbling as she marched past him for the loo. “—tout va bien.”

George stared at the cloak.

Brilliant. What the blazes did that mean?

He tilted his head, then flared his eyes at Fred, who wore a similar expression.

“Any ideas?” George mumbled.

Fred shook his head slowly, apparently stupefied. “All French to me.”

Hermione, however, had clambered to her feet and was headed down the hallway after Fleur. Angie, Luna, and Ginny followed at their heels.

George Depulso-ed the cloak to the wall hooks. “Well, if he—”

The floo lit. This time, with a firecall.

George stepped up to the grate and let it through. Bill’s face appeared.

Merlin. That was quick.

“Is Fleur around?” Bill asked. He had a set of robes from the bank on, but the background showed Shell Cottage’s living room.

Hands in pockets, Fred ambled in front of George and crouched down.

Bill blinked, but carried on. “I just—I forgot to ask her— she—I thought she was going over to yours later. I—” he glanced around, then down at the Leaky takeaway bag in his hand. “I came home for lunch a bit late, and she’s not here.”

Is that what had Fleur upset?

Bill shoved at his hair when it fell forward. “There’s a note, but—it could be forged, or—”

Wait. What? Forged? What the Dickens was Bill on about?

His older brother was breathing a bit fast, gripping his hairline as he stared at the floor and muttered on.

George squinted. “She’s alright, Mate. Are you?”

“Are you certain?” Bill said, eyes snapping to George’s. The gaze held a strange, intense urgency, given the situation.

Wasn’t like Bill, this. George squatted and propped his hand on his knee. “What’re you on about?”

A gale of coughing came from down the hall, laced between low, comforting murmurs. George on the balls of his feet to look.

A few things clarified, then.

Fred winced. “She’s here, but she’s not exactly free to come to the floo.”

Bill’s eyes flared. “She’s ill?” He shoved the bag out of sight. “I can hear it—she’s ill.”

“I’m sure if she—”

Bill cut Fred off. “How bad is it? Does she need to go in? How’s her head? Has it been all day, or just—”

“Who’s asking?” Fred cut in pleasantly. “William or the Warden?”

Hard to make out a shift in colouring through the flames, but Bill’s fiery form paused, and the flickers flushed over his cheeks. “Warden?”

His voice sounded a bit scratchy. Went a bit pinched at the end. “Did she say—”

Oh, Salazar. George elbowed Fred.

Then, Bill’s brow folded, and he blinked downwards. “Nevermind. I’m coming through.”

The firecall cut.

A moment later, Bill was nearly on top of them.

George scrambled back like an ickle kid caught poking at the floo powder. “She—she didn’t say that; she said something else,” he put in quickly. “French, though.”

“It often is,” Bill said sharply, not stopping for either of them as he cut a swath through the cottage.

George and Fred crowded into the already packed corridor behind the others, who parted like a tide.

Bill rapped on the door. “Fleur Darling,” he said quietly.

There was a soft sob. “I am monstrous” was the faint, warbling, and thickly accented reply. Bill’s frenetic buzz melted away, and he flipped his wand into the lock, murmuring charms below his breath.

It unclicked after a moment.

Bill paused to glance at the rest of them. The group scattered. Angie, Ginny, and Luna slipped between George and Fred. But when Bill tugged the knob, Hermione emerged through the loo door. He started back as she closed it behind her.

Then, Granger faced down Bill with steely eyes. “She has vomit all over her,” she said softly, though with an edge. Like it was an exam question for which there was a definitively wrong answer.

Bill’s brow folded, and he reached around Granger for the knob.

Hermione cut him off with a little side step. “Do you understand?” she whispered.

Bill’s jaw clenched. He reached forward, then gently but firmly shifted Hermione by her two arms and set her aside. “Darling,” he called through the door. “I’m coming in.”

“I am a disaster!” Fleur wailed, and George flinched, smacking his hands over his lugholes. Right hazardous, Veela breakdowns.

Bill shouldered through the opening. “No,” he said shortly before the door snapped shut and muffled the second part: “You are devastatingly lovely as always, and you shouldn’t have married me if you wanted to clean up your vomit alone.”

Fleur made a softer, sobbing sound.

“Packaged deal,” Bill’s mutter went quieter. Then: “Merlin’s beard, that’s a lot, innit?”

Fleur made a short, indignant sound. “You are supposed to lie to me.” Mercifully, she sounded more disgruntled than truly hurt. Like the teasing was putting her to rights.

Bill laughed. “No. This way, you know I’m honest about the lovely bit.”

Hermione chewed on her lips, backing towards George. She looked lost in thought.

“Alright?” he whispered, reaching for her hand. Bill hadn’t been rough, exactly, but the exchange had startled George a bit. though Hermione didn’t look shaken, exactly.

“I thought she wouldn’t want him to see,” she said quietly. “She barely let me in, and she knows I look a mess more than half the time.”

George nudged her hand with his thumb. “Nah.”

From the loo, there were sounds of charms, some scrubbing, and Fleur’s sniffing voice echoing on the tile. “I liked this fabric,” she said mournfully.

“We shall sing it a eulogy,” Bill replied. He ducked back through the loo door, something silken and damp crushed in his fist. Bits of the fabric looked bitten through with singe marks.

George’s eyes rounded. Bill cut between the onlookers, tossed the spent shirt in the grate with a snap of fire, snagged a random top from the closest old box, and marched back for the corridor.

When Fleur emerged in one of George’s old Hogwarts oxfords, no one batted an eye.

Bill stumbled around the clutter. “How about something light?” he said, nudging books to the side with the edge of his shoe. It was like he didn’t see the room around him, so fixated he was on Fleur’s tentative steps. To be fair, the way Fleur had her face hidden in her cloak was rather worrying.

“Bill, they are uncomfortable,” Fleur murmured, still a bit raspy and thick. “We should—”

“What sounds tolerable?” Angie cut in. “Where would you like to go?”

Fleur slumped. “I don’t know. I wanted—” she shrugged. “It does not matter. I am not myself today.”

“It matters,” Hermione said gently. “Just tell us.”

“I wanted to be pretty and go sit someplace nice,” Fleur whispered. “I have—” Her accent grew choked, swallowing up the whole of her “h.” “—been so tired for weeks. It feels like the world is going on without me.”

Ginny marched forward and snatched Fleur’s hand up, tucking it into her elbow. “Not on my watch,” she said. “We are going out, and we’re going to sit and be beautiful.” She stuck her Quidditch jumper to Fleur’s runny eyes and blotted away the moisture.

Meanwhile, Bill watched Ginny with such fondness that Ginny grimaced at him in return.

“My throat is sore, after—” Fleur trailed off. “Maybe we get something cold?”

Ginny turned to the rest of them. “You heard her.”

So, they went for ice cream in October, the lot of them. Crowded around a big table at Fortescue’s and watched as Bill labored over every step of the undertaking, from arranging something suitable for Fleur’s upset stomach to smoothing the hair back from her brow.

Fleur blossomed under the attentions, her posture relaxing then leaning into Bill. She nibbled at her shaved ice until she nodded off.

“It’s not been often, morning sickness,” Bill said, sighing, arm looped around her. “She’s had more problems with fatigue. Last night, though, there was a bit of a bad storm off the coast, and it brought this on.”

Hermione sat forward. “Really?” she said. “The weather holds that much effect?”

Bill lifted his hand in a helpless gesture, wincing. “Sometimes?”

Hermione lowered her cone. “Have you tried comparing storm conditions to see what seems to prove most reactive?”

Bill blinked. His eyes glazed over a bit. “Um…I don’t—I—We tracked other things—maybe—not, um—” He looked down at Fleur, face tightening. “I should’ve been keeping track,” he mumbled.

George cleared his throat. “Likely a bit involved, recording all that. And you lot have been busy, yeah?”  

Bill’s mouth thinned further. “I should’ve—” His voice dropped off, and he swore under his breath.

George looked at Hermione, wincing a bit.

Hermione glanced between them, then faltered. “Oh, well, I only meant we might help her avoid further bouts,” she said. “Let me know if you’d ever like a hand with it. It sounds fascinating.”

“The Quibbler keeps records of environmental forecasts,” Luna offered. “It’s to help with finding Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and other rare magical creatures, but we keep a column on the rain and storm patterns. I can speak with the astronomy consultant.”

“Perfect,” George said. “And any days that you remember Fleur having issues, we can take a peek at.”

Bill let out a long, steady breath.

Hermione’s hand found his under the table, and George gave it a reassuring squeeze.

They finished up their ice cream, chatting about nonsense at a low volume. A few reporters snapped some photos from across the cobblestones, but it was nothing too invasive, thankfully.

George managed to relax.

At least, until Bill nudged the collar of Fleur’s stolen top, examining the tag. “Think this is mine,” he said.

George faltered. Most of his and Fred’s hand-me-downs were Bill’s or Charlie’s. Each had fit a bit lopsided in their own way, even after the alteration charms. Bill’s were often too snug, Charlie’s too broad and short.

Bill frowned at the collar. “Mind if she holds onto it?” he said, glancing at George.

Bugger. Bill had noticed the things, then.

“Not at all,” Fred said easily.

Bill shook his head. “No, this is one of George’s—must’ve gotten mixed up,” he said, distracted as he pulled Fleur’s cloak into place.

Or maybe he hadn’t?

“They’re bloody identical, Mate,” Fred said, snorting.

Bill picked up Fleur’s shaved ice and began to polish off the melty dredges. “Smells like George,” he said.

George glanced at Fred. Fred bugged his out a moment.

What was that supposed to mean? George tucked his face, sniffing at his collar.

Nothing about it seemed all that distinct.

How Bill could pick a thing like that out without trying, he hadn’t the foggiest. But his brother looked entirely too exhausted to needle about it.

Best let the whole thing go.

He ought to thank his lucky stars that Bill wasn’t aware enough to notice everything else. He didn’t know what to say, yet, if Bill found out and was disappointed.

#

October 5, 1999

George laid on the couch for this appointment. Not as he was meant to, gazing at the ceiling as if it held answers to his miserable tangle of family issues.

No.

He laid like a sot in Knockturn Alley; face down, limbs trailing off every end, nose stuffed where a quantity of bums he didn’t care to think about had preceded him.

“Do take your shoes off,” Marcus said when George had flopped over the couch like a dying fish.

A grunt that’d make Aberforth proud, and George toed off his boots heel by heel. They fell like heavy, dragon leather bricks on the refinished wood floor by the bookcase.

“Would you like to review the positives, or would you rather cut right to the cause of what has you upset?” Marcus spoke above the trickle of pouring tea.

“Got married,” George said into the cushion.

There was a choking sound, followed by coughing as Marcus understandably sputtered out a lungful of steaming liquid. “Beg pardon?”

George twisted his face to look at the healer properly. Sure enough, a splatter stain drenched his notepad and the front of his robes.

“Married?” Marcus cast a silent charm to sop up some of the mess.

“Yes,” George said. “And that’s, you know, positive.” If Marcus’s reaction was any warning, he’d need a bloody slicker when he told Mum.

Marcus refolded his legs, eyes swimming over his notes. “Right, well—congratulations, I suppose.” He paused. “I apologize—I remember you’d mentioned the engagement, but I misunderstood the timeline.”

George breathed a laugh. “Understandable. Had to find some way to keep you on your toes, Mate.” The quip fell a bit flat as he hadn’t enough energy to inject life into it.

Healer Marcus vanished the last puddle of spilt tea. “You seem a bit out of sorts, considering that news.”

George twisted his hands in his hair and shoved his nose into the seat until it bent. “Mmf.”

“Marriage is a big change,” Marcus said. “I know the two of you have been more serious, but that is a large step.”

George popped upright. “That’s not it,” he said. “I’d own it, if it was that. I’m not daft. I know this is a huge deal.”

Marcus lifted his brows, signaling for George to go on.

“It’s what comes with it,” George said. He twitched at his necktie, then skated his palms against the springy cushions on either side of him. The material’s weave felt velvety, but sturdy. “Telling, you know. Everyone. Mum. Dad. Her parents.” He released a huff. “My brothers. Ron, likely.”

“And that has you feeling poorly,” Marcus said.

Bill’s little comment had kept him up half the night, but yes. Poorly was one way of putting it.

“More anxious than sad, I reckon,” George said.

Marcus nodded. “I can understand that,” he said.

George bounced his foot. “We’ve put it off for a while, in the name of keeping things less stressful and complicated, and now it’s turned into a big thing.” He paused. “Well, it’s always been a bit of a big thing, where some parties are concerned.”

“Ron, you mean?” Marcus asked.

Ron, and therefore, everyone else by extension.

Would Bill understand? Percy? And if Ron felt slighted by the idea of their friendship, how would he react to this?

George covered his face with his hands. “Oh, bloody Hell.”

It’d be a nightmare.

Not to mention he was a bit nervous about hurting Mum and Dad’s feelings, now that he was confronted with the task of telling them.

How had Fred managed to stay so lighthearted about it?

Likely, because there were more pressing concerns when he’d eloped. Like, life and death. Tyrannical overlords. Etcetera, etcetera.

And Hermione’s parents—Salazar.

“What do you think?” Marcus said, evidently at the end of a longer suggestion George had been too distracted to absorb.

“Sorry,” George said. “Can you repeat that?” He scratched his stubble with a wince.

Marcus nodded. “Have you thought about how you can open up those conversations?”

Like they were a gift housed in a pretty box?

No. This would be more like uncapping a can of jumping snakes. Or knives. Or hexes.

He was getting ahead of himself, and Marcus’s steady gaze seemed to track his every anxious fidget.

George blinked. “A bit. I don’t know.” He shuffled his feet. “I was hoping you might have ideas.”

Marcus’s brows wrinkled. “You know your family better than I,” he said. “How about we discuss where your instincts lie, here?”

Where your instincts lie. What an ironic phrase, seeing as Ron would likely see their secretive relationship as one big, awful lie.

“I think with Mum and Dad, it might be best to just explain to them the situation, and see how they respond,” George said. “Go slow, listen a bit if they’re hurt?”

Marcus nodded and made a note. “That sounds like a good start.” He tilted his head. “And Ron?”

George drummed his fingers on the front side of the cushion, squinting. “You’re really stuck on Ron, aren’t you?”

Marcus glanced at his notes. “We have spent quite a few sessions discussing him, both directly and indirectly.”

Fair enough.

Maybe George was the one stuck on Ron’s looming explosion.

“I just don’t know how he’ll respond,” George said, gripping a bit of his fringe. He released his hair and let his hand drop. “No—actually, mark that out. I know exactly how he’ll react.”

Marcus lifted both brows.

“Poorly.” George spoke the word with emphasis and folded his arms.

“Poorly,” Marcus said, writing it down. George flicked a piece of lint off his pinstripe suit sleeve. “And you feel confident he won’t surprise you?”

George threw his ankle over his knee. Merlin. His foot was bouncing at the speed of one of his dad’s muggle sewing machines, before it got bogged down by all the bits and pieces. “Not in a good way, no,” he said. “It’s more a matter of degrees to which his reaction will hurt everyone around him.”

Especially Hermione. But also the others.

Marcus paused while writing, clearly mulling something over, so George continued: “He might go silent. Refuse to talk about it.”

Marcus laid the quill down.

George pulled a bit at his necktie because it seemed rather tight. “Might try to blast me halfway to Nantucket.” He jogged his brows. “Fred would likely intervene, though two on one’s not very sporting.”

“There’s no chance he might listen?” Marcus said gently.

George flattened his expression to properly convey the sentiment that bit of fairytale elicited.

“George,” Marcus said firmly.

“Alright,” George tossed and dropped his hands. He leaned forward and tried to command his thoughts to order.

“His established patterns of behavior do not lend themselves to that hope,” George said flatly, tossing out the textbook answer Marcus so clearly wanted. “And I am worried the fallout will land over Hermione, my parents, and my entire family, really.”

Marcus watched him, somber.

“Okay,” Healer Marcus said, finally.

“And you know I can’t control that, what he does, but—” George sighed. “There’s got to be a set of words that will mitigate the impact somehow. Keep his outrage focused on me until this is behind us.” He mopped his hands down his face. “I don’t want him goading the lot of them to pick sides or get involved; that’d make everything worse. But—but I don’t know how I’ll get him to sit still long enough to understand that.”

Marcus hummed, then crossed to his plants. “You’re speaking about him like he’s an unforgiveable you’ve got to jump in front of.”

George paused. “Think that’s a bit dramatic,” he said.

“You think it’s your job to shield everyone else from Ron’s actions?” Marcus prompted.

George scowled. “Whether or not it’s my job, it’s what I’d like to do. They don’t deserve that.”

“Do you deserve it?” Marcus asked.

George tugged his tie off, then resettled it around his collar to fasten it again. “Point taken, but I’d rather we not board that train.”

It led to stormy places, and he was already in the midst of a hurricane.

Before Marcus could push back, he carried on, glowering at Marcus’s back while he re-looped his tie. “Look—I understand partly, why he’d be hurt by all this. I’m his brother, and I can see how that would make this painful for him.”

The fabric cinched all the way to his throat, and breathing got difficult again.

Bugger.

He yanked it free, gave up, and leaned back in his seat. “But I don’t think he’s got a good understanding of the situation, and he’s not going to want to hear how he’s wrong, and that’s going to make it all so much more awful.”

Marcus turned one with a wilting set of leaves towards the shaft of sunlight, and another, with a brown patch, away. “Assuming that’s how it goes, you can’t make someone communicate with you,” he said.

A bit resigned, George leaned back, arms crossed. “Noted.”

“Use force through intimidation or deceptive manipulation, and they’ll often reject you or simply tell you what they think you want to hear.” Marcus turned. “I think it might be a more productive use of your time to establish boundaries, here. Decide how you want to communicate. Let your brother’s reaction be what it may, and establish where you will cease to engage, if that response is untenable. Now is the time for you to mindfully consider how much power you’ll allow him over you.”

Put like that, the whole thing sounded like a simple Arithmancy equation. But people—family—were rarely so orderly.

Marcus tilted his head when George didn’t answer. “You seem reticent to acknowledge any hurt Ron might cause you, specifically.”

George rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m not worried about that.”

Marcus did one of his more trying tactics, where he waited in silence until George popped it.

“The only power he has over me, Mate, is how he might bring others into it,” George muttered.

Marcus nodded. “Well, it might be best to speak with them first. They know Ron, and you’ve said they love the both of you. They could be a help, rather than innocent bystanders in a cataclysmic event.” Marcus’s tone went a bit wry, and George snorted.

Cataclysmic didn’t begin to cover it.

“Hermione might agree with you, there,” George said.

Marcus smiled. “How are things with Hermione?”

George shifted, an easier sensation taking hold in his middle. Like enjoying a warm cuppa or flying a broom on a breezy autumnal afternoon. “It’s a big change, as you said, but good.”

He looped his pocket watch chain through his fingers, ran his thumb over the smooth links. “She likes to kiss me good morning,” George mused. “Done it every day since we got back.” A moment just their own, where she claimed she was able to see him, even when the day held a gauntlet of unpacking and Ministry appointments and endless drudgery.

Sometimes, Hermione used the word “see” when she really meant “cherish.” With a schedule so busy, she had little time to muck about when she stopped to smell roses.

He cleared his throat and smiled at the watch chain. “Silly really, but something about it makes me feel like the sky’s the limit, or maybe further.”

In a world where Hermione Jean loved him, anything could happen. Whatever mess happened, they’d sort the magical bond, the difficult conversations, and the rest. They’d promised as much.

The warm feeling spread right down to his toes.

George lifted his head. “You ever been so happy you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it?”

He didn’t name the little wiggle of worry that remained: Amidst all the complications and reasons why he might be a poor choice, Hermione had asked him anyway. He didn’t want to disappoint her.

#

October 6, 1999, 7:00 a.m.

“Darling, where did you put my—” He paced down the hallway as he wheeled his hand, snapping his fingers in four, rapid clicks. “—um—”

Hermione Jean stood in front of the mirror, formal robes swimming around her shoulders. A tin of Sleekeazy’s balanced on the sink corner, and she worked a handful through her bushy curls, progressively wincing to reveal more of her teeth with each passing moment. “It’s got the texture of troll bogeys, doesn’t it.”

He had to grin at that. “C’mere, you,” he said.

Marriage, George had decided, suited him extremely well. Giggling over calling each other “husband” and “wife,” staying up far too late chatting like a never-ending sleepover complete with take-away midnight feasts, teasing her about her messy hair until she turned puce and choked on her laughter, and developing inside jokes that layered until all sense of meaning was lost to everyone but them.

Hermione would launch into peril without hesitation. When it came to intimacy or romance or commitment—well—she moved more like a person traversing a minefield or—or a river with thin, melty ice over the top. Like a wrong step could be fatal. Like the ground might rupture beneath her at any moment and dump her into ruin, like it had that day at Hogsmeade Pond. As such, she liked to survey. To plan. To consider. Then, she took small steps—creeping quietly and slowly, testing each spot before trusting it with her weight.

A body had to learn to tread so lightly; someone in the past had taught her to move with such caution. And so he’d waited.

To see her bound across that once-hazardous ground now took his blasted breath away.

Sure, they were only a handful of days into marriage, yet. But it made a bloke feel guilty, almost, being this happy.

“Can’t.” Hermione glared at the mirror. “I’ve an electrical storm to tame.”

George snorted. “A very fetching electrical storm.” He inched behind her, then reached around her collar to fix the frills on the tie, which she seemed to have given up on.

“Thanks,” she murmured, attacking the other side of her hair part.

George tucked the ruffles into place. “Anytime, Darling,” he murmured. The formal ministry robes weren’t easy for anyone, but it couldn’t have been simple for someone not raised to put on similar for the occasional funeral or formal event. “What time are you meeting Kings?”

“Thirty minutes,” Hermione said, clamping yet another hair pin between her thinned lips. Stress loomed over her features and pooled in shallow ponds beneath the corners of her downturned mouth.

“What were you looking for, again?” she asked. George blinked, glancing down at himself.

“Search me,” he said. “I’ve no idea.”

Socks? Check. Wand? He had that, too. He patted along his pockets and button down, seeking the very-important-thing-that-mustn’t-be-forgotten-yet-had-been. “Bugger,” he mumbled.

Hermione lifted her brows and swept the last curl into tightly managed bun at the back of her crown. If one hair pin came free, the whole thing might explode.

Rather fetching, that idea. Tempting, too.

Also inadvisable this late in the morning.

She did up his top button, then George gave her a skeptical look as he reached to undo it. “Makes my throat feel like I’m choking if it’s done like that without a necktie.”

“And the necktie helps?” Hermione asked.

He nodded and ducked from the loo. The heady scent of lavender and Hermione dissipated in the hall. “Gives it a reason to be done up,” he called.

He tripped a bit and racked his toe against an as-yet unpacked box of books. George bit on his lip to keep from yelping obscenities.

The boxes were multiplying.

How was it possible there were more than there’d been days ago? Unpack one, and three appeared in its place.

He shoved his hand to the wall, sucked a breath through his nose, then hissed it out, letting his cheeks puff with the flow of air.

They’d already filled the shelves on hand. George blinked through swimming eyes, and the spines blurred into bricklike streaks of red and brown colour.

Nothing for it. They’d need more shelving. Why hadn’t he anticipated that?

“Alright, Darling?” Hermione called.

“Mhm,” George answered, tone a bit wobbly from the shooting agony of a smashed-in toe. He put a bit more weight against his hand. Then, he stared up at the ceiling, rotating his foot and counting slowly until the enflamed nerves settled. “Just a bit slow on the—oh!” He straightened. “Pepper-up!”

Yes. He’d gone to the kitchen to fetch some, and then it hadn’t been there. The whole rack was gone. Vanished. Evanesco-ed right out of the bloody larder. And really. Truly. He didn’t mind.

Except that he did, a bit.

A small, eensy, tiny bit. The bit of him that shifted through morning tasks like a wind-up toy without a brain. The bit that got thrown into confusion when certain things were out of place.

But this was one of those silly, little things that was bound to crop up when two people packed all their rubbish under one roof. If he’d spent most of his life sharing quarters with Frederick Gideon Weasley, Hermione Granger ought to be a breeze.

He resolved himself with a nod, then twisted towards the loo. “You haven’t moved it, have—”

Hermione shifted from the loo, with one of those “Honestly, George, didn’t you know—” smiles on her face, vial of Pepper-Up in her hand. “Here,” she said. “It’s not necessarily safe to keep it with the pantry food.”

So long as everything was cleaned and contained, why did it matter?

George paused, touching his fingertips to the length of his thumbs. “Where’d you read that?”

Hermione gathered up a shoulder bag. The rectangular shape had been packed so full it looked more like a circle. “Here and there, but it seems rather common sense.”

Wrong.

“It’s a consumable, Love,” he said, accepting the vial, then popping the cork. “My family’s always kept the daily potions in the pantry.”

Hermione’s brows twitched together, and she looked behind herself, towards the foggy glass covering the mirror over the sink. “It belongs in a medicine cabinet, where it can’t be easily disturbed by children or animals.”

George cocked a brow. “Crooks leaves it well enough alone, and the customers don’t often visit us upstairs.”

She didn’t seem to track that he was joking on the second bit. “Yes, but things can change. And doesn’t it make more sense in the loo?”

George sighed. “Look. My mum and dad managed just fine with it in the pantry,” he said. “And if it’s not in the pantry, come early mornings, I’ll always be looking for it in a daze, like I’ve been hit with a Confundus or some nonsense.” He added another quip on the end to lighten the crackle of tension. “Not much sense in that, now is there?”

Hermione studied her hands, brow folded as she became engrossed in thought. Just then, a button on her bag popped open. She flinched and squawked as a stack of papers attempted to exit their confines. “Hold on—dratted—” Hermione shoveled them back into place and mended the fastener with a muttered charm.

With a sympathetic wince, George tucked the rack under his arm and carried it back towards the kitchen. “How about I start you some tea?”

There was no answer.

George slowed, settling the potions rack on the island. “Love?”

Hermione came around the corner with a strange, pensive frown on her face. “Is this a democracy?” she asked.

Oh, Bloody Hell.

Not a good sign, that line of questioning. He’d clearly mucked something up.

George propped one hand on the counter, leaned against it, and crossed his right ankle over his left. His tongue poked the inside of his cheek. He squinted at her wryly.

“Well, the Wizengamot and the Ministry are supposed to hold a balance of powers, but they’re doing a bodge job, if you ask me,” he prattled. “Are we a parliamentary system? A republic? A democracy? Can anything be a truly democratic when Galleons hold the strings of fate more than the voice of the people? Who’s to stop the Wizengamot from sticking mucky fingers into things? The press? Now there’s a riot, isn’t there?”

Hermione folded her arms.

George lifted and dropped his hand, frowning. “We’re a powder keg, is what we are. Merlin.”

Not a hint of a laugh.

That routine usually netted an indulgent smile, even when she was stressed to high heaven.

“All very fascinating, but I meant this flat.” She didn’t look put out, but there was a flare of challenge and stubborn objection building behind her eyes. A look that, normally, George found quite bewitching.

Just now, when he was due at the shop in less than a half-hour, and Hermione was going to be late for one of her many critical meetings, he was more struck by the worry that they hadn’t the time to properly sort through this.

“Hmm.” He turned and started on the tea.

“George.” Alright. Now she sounded put out, and a bit taken aback.

“I’m listening, Love,” he said steadily, casting a quick Accio to summon their mugs. “Only multitasking a bit. Continue.”

There was a deep inhale.

“If this is a democracy, then we should both have equal say about matters in this flat,” she said.

Ah.

“Agreed.” He raised his brows a tick. “And democracies have compromises,” George said, plunking tea bags into the cups. He adjusted the kettle on the hob to hurry the water along. “I expect there are some things you’ll get first choice on, and some things I will.”

The Potions rack was such a tiny thing, and over-scheduled as she was, he’d likely be the one stocking it most days. It only made sense.

“Yes,” Hermione said slowly. “But when it comes to whose idea is followed in each particular case, how are we going to—”

George turned, folding his arms. “Hold on, Love. Just—” He winced and scratched his temple. “Is the potions rack that important to you?”

She hesitated. “It’s more what the potions rack represents.”

He glanced to the wall clock. Twenty-two minutes, and she’d need at least seven to walk from the Atrium to Kingsley’s floor. Twenty-two minus seven—fifteen. A quarter hour.

“George?” she prompted.

The kettle began to whistle.

He started, dropping his arms. “Um—right, and what does the—the—” a curl of steam licked at his index finger when he lifted the kettle to pour. He hissed. “—the kettle—” The slight burn shook out alright. No harm done. He exhaled a gust, blinking hard. “Or rather—no, I mean—the Potions rack—”

“That I’ve got a place here, just as you do.” She sounded quite sincere. Hesitant, even.

George lowered the kettle, brows drawing into a block of tension. Boxes and crates stacked along the walls, most of which had been taken from the loft above the Hogsmeade flat. Books. An infinite sea of books. Each and every one of which would find a spot in their two-bedroom flat, if she wanted them there. Without her even asking, he’d moved most of his tinkering and prototype things to the workshop downstairs to accommodate her. The desks had been placed to her preferences in the study, and the dining and coffee tables were hers to command, should she want a change of scenery while working. The bags and boxes of her clothes took up more than half their closet, and he’d packed his things into one quarter of it to make room.

Through the whole place—since he’d moved back in—the furnishings had nearly all been picked with her advice and wishes in mind, the layout arranged for her comfort.

How Hermione could look at the flat and see anything other than a gilded invitation begging her to stay, that was beyond him.

He panned the room slowly, then looked back at her. “I should think that would be clear already,” he said slowly.

Hermione stiffened. A stray hair cracked free from her updo and sprang against her ear. “If it’s too many books, I can—”

Helga’s Garden. What?

“No, Love,” George interrupted. Bugger, he wasn’t being clear. “That’s precisely the opposite of what I mean.” He twisted back to the stove and finished pouring the water. “It’s—it’s—I thought—Merlin.”

The second hand’s ticking seemed to get louder. Or was that his pulse? He glanced up.

Salazar. Twelve minutes.

Hermione chewed at her thumb, shoulders hunched as she glanced around the flat. With every box she looked at, she seemed to shrink a bit more.

How had this gotten so out of order? He was trying to make her life easier, not harder. He didn’t want her worried about this, about him, about them.

“It is a lot, isn’t it,” she said quietly.

“No,” George said shortly. “It isn’t. Not if they’re important to you. That’s my point.” He rubbed his face. Dear Merlin, had he forgotten to shave the right side? “I’m all over the place today.”

Perhaps if the Pepper-Up had been in the right spot—

No. This would be complicated no matter what.

Hermione pulled a deep breath in, then walked to his side. “And I suppose my point is that we should talk about these things, and everyone should get a chance to be heard or convinced, before we come to some sort of decision. Books or otherwise.”

But they’d already come to a sensible decision about the books, hadn’t they? He didn’t mind them. And it’d be more comfortable once he had sorted out more storage space for her.

Perhaps this was one of those times where Hermione had gotten snagged on a smaller issue while on her way to sort a larger, more impossible one. Smaller issues were easier to parse—they didn’t involve corralling a group of fickle Ministry employees into a conference room, or challenging longstanding Wizengamot precedents. Smaller problems were easier to fix and likely looked appealing next to her workday.

He nodded to himself. He could work out a smaller problem with her, but she couldn’t be late. She’d get even more anxious if that happened.

“Noted,” George said. He wiped his hand on his trousers, then reached over her head to pull the leftover egg bake out of the fridge. “Now eat this before you leave.”

Hermione opened her mouth in protest.

“You’ve got ten minutes before you need to floo,” George interrupted. “We don’t have time for a Socratic seminar.” He pressed the stray hair back into the hold of her bun, but it didn’t stay. Hermione huffed and refixed it.

She didn’t comment on his use of the muggle reference, even though she’d stayed up chatting to him about it not two nights before. Usually, that sort of thing made her light up.

George frowned.

“Later, then,” Hermione said, quietly.

He nodded. “The fate of the potions rack will remain in limbo until then.” He caught her eyes. She did seem bothered. “We’ll chat.”

She relaxed a bit, rounding the counter with her tea. George slid the container of food to her, then offered a fork.

Once she had a chance to hear about how it worked best in the pantry, they’d put this behind them. The loo cabinet wasn’t quite big enough for the rack to fit comfortably, anyways, and Fred said that birds had all sorts of bottles and tinctures they liked to fill the loo storage with.

It was practical to have it in the pantry.

His family had always kept it in the pantry, and Mum wouldn’t have put it there if it wasn’t safe.

George managed a faint smile, then poked his own fork into the dish.

Steam puffed from his ears as they whittled away the remaining eight minutes. When she left, she kissed him on the cheek, and he returned the same—a little spritz of sparks that sank no deeper, too pressed for time to summon the bravery to tinker with anything more. There wasn’t much opportunity, yet. Unpredictable, accidental magical explosions were generally frowned upon in public.

They were stuck waiting until they could get a bit of advice from his mum and dad, or until they could find a free set of days to sort what was going haywire with Aberforth.

Shame. A closer look at the unsaid bits and pieces might’ve come in handy, just then.

The moment the thought crossed his mind, George rejected it. If they couldn’t use words, magic wouldn’t lend much help. There was a difference between feeling a feeling and feeling it at someone or because of someone.

Take now, for instance. He had a knot of stress the size of a snitch lodged under his chest. Where from, he couldn’t say. Sure, it’d tightened during the confusion of that morning, but it had been there before, and it still lingered now, co-existing with the mirth and excitement and joy of the last while.

It felt like—like guilt. Worry, from a hundred places at once?

Or like waiting for something bad to happen? Like expecting it, almost?

If George couldn’t sort where a feeling like that originated on his own, how was he supposed to explain it to Granger?

#

October 8, 1999

It wasn’t until a few days after that it all came to a head, really. Feelings, frettings, and all the seemingly insignificant tasks stacked up to barricade the corridors of his mind, each demanding equal attention, each distracting one from another.

Tricky thing about feelings and the like—they weren’t easy to parse. Especially when they were his own.

It started reasonably enough.

George was covered in Sticky Trainer sealant from elbow to fingertips, stuck opening the flat door with a perilous application of his boot to the knob.

When it swung open, a tidy sitting room greeted him. Not a box in sight. Hermione’s slicker hung on the coat rack, her shoes lined beside his trainers on the tray. The only thing out of place was the coffee table, which lay on its side and propped against the far windows. That should’ve been his first clue.

Hermione waited in the cleared-out middle of the space, hands dancing atop a podium. A podium, complete with a sigil in the middle of the oak wood front, where it read “Flat Chats” rather than the Ministry’s scale and wand icon.

Merlin’s Beard. Had she conjured that? And where had all the boxes gone?

George panned the couch and chair with a slow flick of his gaze, then hooked his boot heel around the door to nudge it closed.

“Have a seat,” Hermione said. Benevolent, no—regal, even.

She still wore her formal work robes.

Amusement and exhaustion swam at odds in his chest. Amusement might’ve prevailed if he hadn’t been one, bad stumble from gluing himself to the coatrack.

“In a minute,” George said, marching himself to the loo with a sigh. “My hands will caramelize under this potion blend if I don’t get it off.”

An impatient huff echoed from the living room.

“Patience, Your Honour,” George called, nudging the loo door wide. When he inched through the opening, his forearm caught on his apron, then fastened to it.

“Salazar’s mingy milkman,” George muttered.

He leaned forward and attempted to pull the faucet on with the clean back of his left elbow. Nope. The base of his fist stuck to the backsplash. Worse, the sealant had set, making it water repellant. Cold sink-river coasted over his skin and did nothing to dissolve the stickiness.

Now he was in a pickle.

George coughed, flushing. “Darling?” he called. “I’m—”

A soft footstep cut him off, and Hermione approached with an old, damp dishcloth. Relief flowed through him, and George gave a sheepish wince as she leaned against the doorjamb and took him in.

“You smell like burnt rubber and something sour,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

He’d lost the ability to distinguish the scent before lunch, though his eyes never quite stopped watering. “Just for you,” George said, trying for a grin.

The hallway stretched open and clear behind her. Barren.

Bugger. He’d said they would sort all the boxes together, bit by bit. But she’d done the rest without him. George swallowed.

“What sort of solvent?” Hermione asked.

“Green bottle,” George said.

She pressed her lips together, then walked away.

George’s back twinged over the loo counter, but he held the exposed, tacky skin away from it. Hermione returned moments later, dishrag coated in the substance from under kitchen sink.

Normally, he used it on tough potion stains. It wasn’t strictly safe for the skin, but it was safer than Sticky Trainer sealant.

Hermione kept wincing as she coasted the rag over his forearms, freeing his apron, then his hand. The acidic, goopy burn began to ease, replaced with a coppery smell from the other potion blend.

“Lifesaver,” he murmured, kissing her on the temple before she pulled away.

Hermione’s cheeks went a bit pink, and she bit back a smile. “Come sit down, then,” she said.

Oh. Right.

Dappled in water spill droplets, George vanished his apron to the hamper and shuffled back to the sitting room. Hermione waited for him to drop onto the middle sofa cushion, and he wheeled his hand at her. “Proceed, wife of mine.”

Hermione got more of that pleased, pinked flush about her cheeks and throat, then returned to the podium. She cleared her throat and began to talk, citing something about the importance of dialogue.

None of it was about the absent boxes.

George nodded along, casting scant glances at the sideways coffee table.

It could fall, placed like that. Maybe she’d meant to move it again, but it’d been a bit heavy for her to lift or levitate a second time. Maybe she’d been too worn out after casting all afternoon.

The least he could do is sort it. If it toppled now—really, he could just—

George attempted to maintain eye contact as he slipped from the sofa. “Carry on,” he said faintly.

Hermione lowered her notes. “George.”

George held up a hand, then grasped the table on either side and hoisted it.

“What’re you—”

“Only a moment,” George said, grunting as he laid it on all fours behind the armchair. There. Hazard sorted.

When he turned back around, Hermione had a deep groove between her brows, and her hands were curled tight around her papers.

“I’ve got it, Darling,” George said quickly. He glanced towards the kitchen. “Did you want anything to eat?”

She must be starving, after clearing everything away.

He’d skipped lunch, and his stomach had a distracting pinch. Nearly half-six, and he’d had little more than some hot cereal that morning.

With all she’d done, chances were she hadn’t had time to eat either. If he was hungry, Merlin, she had to be dying.

When he looked to check, her mouth hung part open, and she gawked at him like he’d spoken in Mermish.

“We were going to—to—” Hermione trailed off, sounding lost. The tidy papers fluttered a bit on the podium.

Oh—she thought he wasn’t paying attention.

“I’m listening,” he said, reaching behind him for the fridge. “But do you fancy fish or something heartier?”

Hermione folded her arms. “I fancy you coming back over here.”

He dropped his hand.

Then, his stomach gurgled at precisely the wrong moment.

Hermione’s brows came together. “Oh,” she said. Without further word, she brushed past him towards the pantry.

At first, he thought she might be cross. But then she brushed his cheek with her hand all tender-like, offered a bemused smile, and placed a sack of pub pretzels in his palm. “Can this hold you over?”

George nodded a bit, concerned. “Yeah, but…don’t you want anything?”

“I’m alright.” Brisk and attentive, Hermione prodded him back to the sofa.

He found his previous seat and opened the snack up.

Had a few bites. They tasted woody and dry, and his stomach churned.

She waited, watching him. Not tapping her foot, but wide-eyed and chewing a bit on her lower lip in distraction.

George, meanwhile, was absolutely lost at sea.

Why hadn’t she popped downstairs to ask for a hand? He could’ve closed the till or something. At least for a bit.

Maybe he should’ve ranked all this unpacking higher, chipped away at it a bit more than they had over the week? Was she disappointed, then?

He licked a flake of salt from his thumb and forefinger to keep from fidgeting. “Carry on, then,” he said. Yet somehow, he couldn’t help but add: “Though, um, I should say—it was rubbish of me to leave you all this to do alone. It won’t happen again, Love.” He searched her, hoping for some sign of acknowledgement or understanding.

She only peered at him strangely. “Sorry?”

“Um.” He cleared his throat and lowered the pretzels. “I—I didn’t realize you meant to do all this tidying today, or I’d have made time to—”

Something clicked into place behind her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

He didn’t.

George cleared his throat again. “Care to share with the rest of us?” His tone was teasing, though he felt shaken. That knot in his middle had bunched even tighter.

Hermione schooled her features into that quiet, reflective stare she reserved for important reports and breaking delicate news. “Before we chat about anything else—” She stepped around the podium, right elbow propped on the corner. “You don’t have to be anxious or sorry, Georgie. I did this for you.”  

“Pardon?” He coughed a bit. A damp crumb flew through his lips and landed on his trousers. They reeked like claggy potion, from when one of Fred’s cauldrons had boiled over and spewed Puking Pastille base onto the table and his person.

“The boxes everywhere,” she said gently. “I’ve shrunk them away for now, until we work through this.”

Oh, that’s where they’d gone.

Wait. Work through what?

His confusion must’ve shown, because she pressed her front teeth against her lower lip, like he was a puzzle or a rattled child. It did not inspire a wealth of tranquility. George shifted, hands bunching over his knees.

“It’s just that it’s clearly been stressing you out,” she said and tilted her face to the side. “But it’s been more than that, hasn’t it?” Some sort of apology crept into her tone.

What? No! Not on his account.

George started shaking his head. “No—no, Love, not at all.” There was no need for her to have gone to the effort to tuck it all away. For her to feel unwelcome, or like she’d put him out of his way. He stood, glancing around for where they might all be. “Here, I can—”

“Please allow me to finish,” Hermione said quietly.

George stopped.

Odd, how loud Hermione’s quiet could be.

“This might not need said, but, um, in case it does—” Hermione took a slow, steadying breath, then laced her hands together where the one draped off the side of the podium. “Doing things for me is wonderful as a way to show me you love me, but it’s not a means to argue that you deserve my love in return.”

George’s arms went loose. Silence swallowed him, save for the dull, startled pounding in his ribs.

“That is not something I bill you for.” She took another deep breath. “For example, right now, I think you might be searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful. That you have value in this relationship, in this marriage.”  Hermione tipped her chin down, but didn’t break eye contact. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to prove that to me.”

The knot under his chest broke like a dam, flooding him with a strange, prickly ache.

“And in chatting with Carter—well, I’m worried that I’ve maybe made you feel that way? Like I’m a flight risk, or like—I don’t know—you’re worried I’ll regret marrying you?” She studied him like a textbook, like she could see every scribble in his margins. “There are times you seem a bit stressed or anxious, and it’s often when you’re worried about not having sorted something on my behalf.”

His mouth went utterly, absolutely dry.

Hermione carried on, a bit more quickly. “And you know, after our disagreement the other day, I was thinking back and chatting with Carter. I know we’ve spoken about whether this relationship might prove helpful or more of a distraction from my goals, you know, the things I’ve got to do, but—”

George blinked, then did it again. His hand found his striped tie and went flat over the pounding beneath it.

“—but the most important ones, they’re really our goals, wouldn’t you say? Because it’s not just for me. I see the way you worry about Percy and Winky, about the children. I know you care about those things too.” She spoke fast, now, rambling. “And—and I do value all your help, obviously; sometimes I’d hardly get by without it.” Hermione shifted off of the podium and lifted her arm to gesture at him. “But George, you’ve got to know that you add to my life with your being here alone. What I mean—you don’t need to worry about—”

Had the air half-vanished in his throat? He couldn’t pull it deeper into his lungs.

“—searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful—” Her words chimed through his mind. “That you have value in this relationship, in this marriage.” 

It felt like he’d hit the pause button on her Nintendo, only the other racers were still going round and round, and George was frozen.

“You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to prove that to me.”

Hermione, meanwhile, prattled on. “I don’t want you panicking. I want you to help because you want to—”

“—searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful—”

“—searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful—”

“—searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful—”

“—searching for things to do, to show that you’re helpful—”

Merlin. He—was he about to cry?

“You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to prove that to me.”

The rest of what she was saying was slipping around him, carried off on some wind. George couldn’t follow, not with that phrase planted in his head and growing roots.

It was not shocking to hear. It was shocking to realize how much he might’ve needed to hear it, still.

“—not because you’re worried about, I don’t know, being enough. Because you are—” She lifted her hand and pressed it into the air towards him. Yards away, it landed like a brush along the shaky feeling beneath his breastbone. “—even when you’re tired or distracted or what have you, and because that’s not—I—oh, Darling.”

She hurried over, suddenly taking him into her arms.

The stingy ache burst from him in a gasped exhale. Something hot and wet streaked down his face.

He was crying.

That easily?

He knew. He knew all that. She loved him.

And yet.

George stared at the wall behind her shoulder, swimming in his own tumult. “I don’t understand. I know all that, I do.” His voice was a thick croak. He was breaking down. “But—” It’d happened so bloody fast, he didn’t—he couldn’t—

Apparently, during all that time “seeing” him in the early mornings, Hermione had noted a thing or two.

She pulled him closer, nuzzled his cheek, and it went through his chest like hot tea. “Your actions are appreciated, Georgie, but they’re not required to justify my loving you, is—is what I mean,” she whispered. “You don’t have to convince me. You don’t have to prove that you’re deserving. That’s not the point of love.” Then, very, very softly, she added: “I’m not a flight risk.”

George gripped at the fabric between her shoulder blades. He needed an anchor point in this conversation. He needed—he didn’t know what he needed. “I know,” he said. “I just—” Nothing rose to meet his grasping mind. “I don’t know.”

From time to time, old insecurities rose their gruesome heads. But for a sentiment so simple to flatten him this easily? What was that about?

He finally managed to gather his senses as he stepped back to smear the wet out of his eyes. “Maybe—yes. Maybe it’s a bit that.” He loosened his tie next, eyeing the floor. “I want to be worthy of you, of this. Maybe I’ve been thinking on it a lot since the wedding?” He pressed his hand to his brow, like that could help his mind along. “I don’t want you to look at me someday and wish you’d chosen differently, because you’re fantastic, you are.”

Hermione stepped forward and unfastened the top button of his collar where the tie came loose. “Impossible.”

George closed his eyes slowly. She thought that now, but time and change could burn the strongest foundations.

“You’re important.” The thought shoved through his mouth, and George shrugged a bit as he said it. “That’s another bit. You’re—if I’m not helping you, then what am I doing?”

Hunching over a desk, making trinkets that spewed flatulence noises and chicken squawks when you set them off, that’s what.

“If that’s the case, why me?” he said. “Why me and not—not someone else, I mean.” That concept was too painful to fully unload and name. “And I know what you’ll say. I know you love me, and that’s, rather, I get that. But the thought still comes to my mind, y’know?”

Hermione nodded. Her hands rested on his chest. A balm. A weight of responsibility.

But that wasn’t all, not completely. “And also, I’m so—” He clenched his hand in a fist, exhaling roughly towards her ink-splotched, delicate fingers. “I’m used to seeing everyone make your life harder. I’m tired of watching them fail to accommodate you. I want this—us, rather—to be different for you. I’m—I’m scared you’ll get torn apart out there. That you’ll get tired and want to give up, and I just—” He lifted his shoulders high with a breath. Held them there. “I want to be different.”

When he finally brought his eyes to hers, she’d brought her hands to clasp under her chin. “Georgie,” she said, like she was giving him an apology, with shining eyes and regret and the whole bit.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “None of that.”

Hermione tilted her head. Her brows tipped to an even softer slant. “Georgie—”

George sighed and lifted his palm like he could swipe it away. “That’s—let’s not—”

“For this too, you know what I’m going to say,” she said, at the exact same moment.

George let his head fall back. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Alright.”

“First—we help each other,” she said. “It’s not a one-way street, and we’ve been over that.”

“Right you are, but it’s only fair that I pick up the slack when your tick list has got things like ‘change the ruddy world’ on it.” He folded his arms.

Try to run a shop with an unequitable distribution of labor, and it’d quickly fall apart.

“I factor our outside work into things when I’m looking around for what I ought to be doing. But it feels like—like you undervalue your own labor when you balance the books.”

Hermione laughed. “Yes, well, same to you, Darling.” She tapped his chest, and George’s eyes snapped to the spot. “I’m hardly doing all that alone,” she said. “You’re with me more than half the time, so don’t make it sound otherwise. And the other half of the time, you’re adding joy back into people’s lives. You’re mentoring. You’re exploring. You’re doing what you’re meant to do.”

George shifted back, grimacing. It felt selfish, somehow, to act like their callings were equal. Like joy was something extra, only for the best of times, and a ridiculous indulgence during difficulty.

Bloody Hell. If he truly believed that, then what was he doing? No. No, he didn’t think that. That logic ran counter to several of his most deeply held principles.

Joy was for others, then? It was alright for customers and friends, but when George had something more important to be doing, it was extravagance?

No—that wasn’t—surely not.

Merlin. This was something to unpack with Marcus. He mentally shelved it right between the nightmares with Sarah and Colin and the creeping fear of doom. “Yeah. Alright. Maybe I’m a bit out of sorts with it all,” he mumbled. “Maybe it’s a bit of latent guilt over being alive, or happy, or—I dunno.” He sighed. It felt like tripping along disconnected paths of logic, losing his way in his own piled up rubbish. “I’ll have to think on it.”

“Please do.” She stepped forward with a careful, reassuring touch to his hand. “I like you alive and happy.”

George managed a faint smile. “Ditto.”

“And—” She jogged his hand a bit. “Um, my second point—I won’t regret it,” she said. “But if that should ever, impossibly, happen, I won’t go quietly. I won’t give up easily.” Hermione Jean spoke like it was basic maths. One-bowtruckle-plus-one-bowtruckle-is-two-bowtruckles. “That’s not how I’m made.”

George shuffled closer. The fabric on her sleeves rustled as he drew his hands to her forearms. He reeled her in a bit until he could put his forehead upon hers. “I know,” he relented. “But it’s still something I worry about.”

Hermione nodded, wobbling their skulls. “Then I’ll happily prove you wrong.”

George sighed, letting the lingering tension slip out through his mouth. His fingers traced her ears, then lower, brushing along either side of her neck as it sloped. He paused when his pinkies met with her shoulders.

Sparks flickered across his brow, his hands, where they touched. It might be nice to kiss her. Long. Soft. Lingering. The way she liked it—when he paused just before moving in. When he waited until that pretty flush swept along her cheekbones.

She had that sort of blush now. “And—well—the third thing I was going to say…” she said softly, trailing. “That—that actually relates a bit to what I’d wanted to talk about earlier.”

George’s hands hovered to her arms, next. His nose brushed the curve of hers, and his mouth floated closer. “Which is?” he said quietly.

Hermione brightened, lashes sweeping wide open. “The potions rack.”

The potions rack?

But she was already tugging him towards the sofa again. Half-lidded and three-quarters gone, he had the distinct feeling of gaping like a fish dragged on a hook.

“Hermione?” His question rasped.

She half-turned, glancing along her shoulder towards where she drew him by the hand. “Hm?”

“Um, first—” George hesitated.

Come on, Weasley.

One firm tug on her hand, and she was snapped back to his chest, palms thudding there to catch herself. Her robes twirled in the motion, swishing against his legs. “First—” This time, he said it quiet, half-breath. Trailing on purpose.

He bent down at her flash of a grin.

Prior intentions blasted to the four winds, he went for it like a starving hound. That cloak twisted and tangled with his trousers as George stepped further and further against her. Was it possible to pull someone close enough to combine with them forever? Her face in his hand, her back a smooth, firm surface under his splayed palm while he kissed her—one-two-three, one-two-three. He pulled them from her in reckless turns like a staggered waltz beat. Staggered, because Hermione grabbed him back, hauled him close. Around the shoulders, the back of his head, the fistful of his oxford against the side of his ribs.

Unpredictably temperamental as it was, he’d meant to hold his magic back. But Hermione’s enthusiastic return cracked him right along the seams. It slipped through his defenses, traipsed down his fingers to find her anyway. And flecks seeped into him in return.

She was giddy. Then perplexed. Curious. He drank the glimmers in like he was little again and nicking sips out of Bill’s coffee when he wasn’t looking. Trying to solve for a puzzle of why what he found was the way it was, and not having enough perspective to put it all together.

Then a wave of crackling, delighted tension crashed into him, and George lurched, blinking. Next thing he knew, she was climbing him. Or attempting to, by the looks of it. He fell into the chair at the attempt, but he helped her along regardless.

And then they helped each other, for a good, long while.

An unplanned diversion, that. But a brilliant one.

#

So exuberant was their undertaking that he was properly lost when she hopped right back into her agenda while they righted themselves.

George? George was a man of mostly-organized mind. When Hermione managed to reach all the way into him and uncork the bottle of his control, it took him a minute or two to gather his senses from the puddles of reason left behind. Therefore, he did have to ask twice—no—a third time, what she’d said as he dazedly frowned over his buttons.

“The potions rack, Darling,” Hermione repeated. “And everything else that goes with it.”

George stared hard at her. “Right,” he said.

The potions rack…and everything else.

“We’d said we would chat about it,” she said, taking her place back at the podium. Her curls resisted the pressing swipe of her hand.

That was right.

Okay. Some of the muddle began to clear away.

“I—I didn’t know you meant to do this so formal-like,” George said, eyeing the podium with hesitancy. “Or I’d have—I dunno—prepared some notes?”

Hermione shrugged. “That’s alright. I thought it might be best to review everything thoroughly.”

George lifted his hand to rub his jaw; the muscles in his cauldron-stirring arm ached from the all day in the workshop. Felt like the bone might just fall out of his shoulder socket. “This thoroughly?” He let his gaze flicker up and down the podium sigil, then her thoroughly askew (yet still-formal) robes.

Pensive, she bit down on her top lip, then let it pop free. “Yes. Where we keep the potions rack is important.”

George swallowed down a gulp of air, held it, then nodded. “Alright, then.”

Hermione faltered as she re-braided her hair. “Don’t placate me,” she said. “I don’t want you to placate me.”

What? George blinked and lifted two hands. “I—Hermione, Darling—” he sputtered. “I’m not—that’s not—I mean, you’re standing at a bloody podium in the sitting room.”

Going along with it required a bit of placating, by necessity. That didn’t mean he’d write off what she had to say, though.

Hermione flushed. Not a good flush. Not one where her eyes sparkled. She glanced around, as if reassessing the cleared sitting room, the podium, herself.

Merlin Alive. She’d cleaned the area and gone to all this trouble. He’d meant to sort out the reasoning for her approach, and to tease a bit, but he’d just made her feel awkward.

“We were going to chat about it, and I just—I thought this would be the best way,” Hermione said softly, looking down. “But, well—” She didn’t finish. The red colour had settled around her ears and throat, and she wouldn’t look at him, and—

George’s mouth opened and closed. “I’ve really put my foot in it,” he whispered. “Haven’t I.”

Hermione’s shoulders were a tad stiff, her face resolutely tipped down. Still. “No—it—it is a bit much, isn’t it.”

Bugger. Her hushed tone clobbered him.

“I was meaning to tease, not—not criticize, Love,” he said hastily. “You went to a lot of trouble, is all. I mean, you tidied up this whole space, and um—arranged it all, and I didn’t mean you shouldn’t have, just that I didn’t quite expect—” George faltered at how to describe what stood before him. “—a courtroom situation?” He spoke slowly and carefully, then cleared his throat. “So, I was a little confused, is all.”

Worse, he hadn’t exactly remembered their plan to chat on this matter. He’d meant to. He had. Honest.

But it’d slipped through the gaps in his burgeoning itinerary between supplier meetings, owl orders, and a mountain of chores to get Hermione properly moved in.

She made a half sniff, half laugh noise. “Understandable.”

“Have I hurt you?” George asked quietly.

Hermione shook her head, the side of her index fingers pressed to her mouth. “No, not like—it’s silly.”

“Hermione,” George repeated. His tongue poked between his lips, and he studied her back.

After a moment, she spoke again. “I know your mum keeps it in the pantry.” She shrugged. “My mum keeps medicines and similar things in the loo.” Her finger scratched against the podium’s surface. “And I was rather excited to sort it for ourselves.” A fleeting, bashful hesitance flickered over her face. “We’d planned to have a discussion, and I went overboard, I guess.”

There was something more to this.

Some reason why she’d taken it so very seriously, why she’d been so excited, despite her own packed schedule. But why?

“If it’s that important to you, Love, we can keep it in the loo?” he tried.

Hermione winced. “That’s not what I mean.”

Now he’d lost the plot. George sat back. “Okay. Alright. Um, what then?”

“This requires a structured approach,” she said, dropping into the same voice she’d used with her students, back at Hogwarts. “Where we both talk and listen and review all the reasons.”

George frowned. “Hermione—” He winced, but disguised it as he propped his feet on the hassock. “You don’t need to play Wizengamot here to be listened to.”

Hermione pressed a piece of frizz behind her ear and blinked at the windows. “That’s not what I meant to do. I only—” She paused for a deep breath. “I wanted to be certain there was no stone left unturned. That we were being totally fair and accommodating both of us.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But even trying for fairness, I’m trampling you, aren’t I?”

What?

“Perplexing, maybe. Not trampling,” George said.

Slowly, he pulled one foot, then the other, from the hassock. The chair rustled as he leaned forward. “I’m listening, Love,” he said.

She knit her hands together. “I know your mum had it one way, and mine another,” she said slowly. “But—but I want this flat to be both of ours.”

“Yes?” George frowned. Wasn’t it already?

“I want us both to work together to sort out our lives and our living space as partners,” Hermione clarified. “Not just going with whatever we’re used to or going with what we think the other wants by default.”

She sounded nervous, but she gave him a pointed look over the latter point.

Oh.

“Which is something I think you do even more than I’ve realized,” Hermione said, fidgeting with a loose piece of parchment.

Oh.

And that—what she’d said earlier—and—

Right. Okay. George started to grasp it. She was worried? About him?

“I don’t want you enduring inconvenience on my account without good reason,” she said. “And I also don’t want to walk around like a—a guest—in my own home.” She bit at her lower lip, right near the corner. “I know that sometimes compromise is necessary, and also sometimes our parents and families will influence some choices we make, obviously. But when it comes to dilemmas like this one? It’s more complicated. We’re blending traditions and daily routines just as much as we’re blending families, aren’t we?” She stole a worried glance at him, rubbing her elbow.

The light pouring through the windowpanes washed her in orangey glow. Or was that the traces of butter-gold magic still swirling in his vision?

George’s chest expanded with a quiet, slow drag of breath. “Yes.”

She started to smile again. A shy one, half-giddy one. “Because, um, I’ve always wanted to be a Weasley, and you—you did say you’ve wanted to be a Granger.” Her joined hands twisted, rotating one forearm this way and that, excitement peeking through the gesture. “So we’re sort of bringing the two together,” she spoke a bit faster now, stumbling through it. “And this sort of seemed like an opportunity, to—to begin as we mean to go on.”

Something like sunrise opened in his ribs.

George’s eyes crinkled. “A momentous one, I’d say.”

Hermione let out a quick breath and beamed, nodding quickly.

“Exactly. We’re from our families, aren’t we? But we’re our own, little family, too,” she said. “And I thought—I suppose the Potions rack became a bit of a symbol of that, to me.” She swallowed. “I know where the Grangers might put it if they’d been wizarding, and I know where the Weasleys would. But I wanted to review all the facts and choose where it goes together.”

Her voice dropped to something barely audible. “For, you know, the—the Weasley-Grangers.” She flared her eyes at him like it was silly.

There it was. Said aloud. Properly.

The reason for her excitement.

George’s face split into a grin. “The Weasley-Grangers?” He dropped his hand from his jaw and leaned forward to brace his elbows to his knees.

If he’d thought she was flushed before, now, she put the hint of pink to shame. The colour on her face could outdo the cherry walls downstairs. “With a hyphen?” she said, a bit skittish.

George’s smile was so wide it nearly hurt. “You’d be alright with that? Both of us?”

She nodded.

Godric’s Hollow.

“Get over here.” His voice came out with a rush of breath.

Hermione gave a sheepish smile. “Wait.”

“We can put it wherever you like, no compromise necessary,” he said, low and teasing. “Now get in my arms.”

“George.” His name was a bit of a groan, but at least it was a laughing one. She covered her eyes for a moment, smile going the slightest bit exasperated between her hands. “That’s not—I’m not trying to get my own way, honestly,” she said. “I want to sort what’s best for us, so that’s why—” She trailed off, glancing at her notes.

A lump formed in his throat. “This is a priority for you,” he said through the sweet ache. “That I hold an opinion here.”

Hermione paused a bit, then nodded at him. “Don’t you want to?” A confused wrinkle formed above the bridge of her nose, and he was struck with an urge to kiss it.

Of course this hadn’t been something she took to out of distraction or—or coping with stress. This was important to her as a symbol, as a practice, as a simple decision made together, and oh Merlin. He’d completely misunderstood, the other day and now.

He had to steady his voice. “Start again?” he said. “I’ll stop fancying that I can read your mind without legilimency, and we’ll pick something to do about it together.”

Hermione took a quick breath through her nose, expression sparking with eagerness.

He listened more carefully, this time. Occasionally lifting his hand from his mildly stubbled cheek to raise a counterpoint, nodding along to each of her hypothetical potions situations. Some of which were rather far-fetched disasters, and she tolerated it when he said as much.

Then, he took his own turn. He decided to make his case whilst sitting down, and Hermione consented to being drawn onto his lap proper cozy-like. She listened carefully while he muddled through a set of memories about times the potions rack had been especially convenient in the pantry growing up. Kitchen spills, minor burns, adding a shot of Pepper-Up to go along with the morning tea—that sort of thing.

He gave it his best, even though he’d had his mind and heart settled from the moment he’d realized what the potions rack meant, and once he’d remembered the significance of the loo mirror in the Granger family. (He mentioned that bit too, and she lit right up.)

It wasn’t a battlefield, that rack. It was an uncharted bit of galaxy, meant to be thoroughly explored before it was navigated.

Making room for a person was only a first step. It was what you did with that cleared space that really shaped the nature of the route. And George knew the sort of journey he meant to take with Hermione.

At the end of it, they put the potions in the loo cupboard.

And it wasn’t because he caved out of a desire to make Hermione happy, or because there were good, practical reasons. Deep inside, George didn’t much care that the location afforded more privacy to potential guests in need of Pepper-Up or other solutions, or that the spot was more convenient for early morning rushes and safer than storing it beside the food.

He’d fallen in love with the spot the second he thought of it as theirs. The Weasley-Grangers’.

They kept it there because that’s where they decided on together, and George would’ve fancied storing it under the hearth cinders if that’s what they’d agreed upon.

If Fred asked about it, George’d give him the highlights from the night of debate: Ultimately, they put it there because that was where the Weasley-Grangers kept it.

With that matter settled, they turned to another and meandered rather accidentally into another—how, exactly, they ought to tell the family.

Those fire embers grew dim, and they still did not retire. George and Hermione stayed on that armchair, talking. And talking. And talking.

It was like their previous, monumental discussion of something both big and small had cracked a once-blocked door open, and Hermione and George slipped through the gap. Together. The room was still foggy, but they found a starting place, and that was something.

Some things weren’t meant to be sorted alone. Their home. Their potions. Their news to be shared, and their fears about what could follow.

“I like talking it all through like this. It makes them less frightening, doesn’t it? The worries, I mean,” Hermione said finally, tilting her face against his chest. Their feet twined together on the hassock. “Airing them out, one by one, as my mum would say.”

George held her close and smiled.

#

October 10, 1999, 3:45 p.m.

Wind whisked the long, golden grasses around the topsy-turvy house. George’s palms ran slick with sweat, the necktie at his throat a bit snug for his fancy.

If he asked, Fred would commit magical crimes to draw the heat off George.

George couldn’t ask, though.

Tempting as it was.

A chicken squawk broke his tense silence, and George turned to the coop. Hermione was tugging at her cloak against the breeze. Behind her, the hens fought over a bit of grain on the ground, trumpeting loud like a mocking chorus at his own wobbly knees.

On the other side of the field, Mum had left the porch door cracked open, and a cackle of Teddy’s laughter sang from inside.

“Don’t muck this up,” he whispered to himself.

Mum wouldn’t blame Hermione. Him—maybe. But that was the least of his worries. There were only about a thousand other ways this could go wrong. George sighed, slotted his wand into his coat, and turned to Granger.

“Here,” he muttered. He grasped the velvet trim on her cloak hood and tugged it more securely over her face.

Then, before he lost his nerve, George firmed his jaw, pulled a sweep of the open sky into his lungs, and marched for the house.

As he did, he pulled his ring from the chain in his pocket and slipped it over his fourth finger, on the left hand.

Something eased from it, branching around his finger like a rhythmic pulse—a heartbeat. A small rush of warmth filled his palm. Late at night, he’d noticed the little pulse in the band matched the fluttering in Hermione’s neck. He’d stared at it, awed, awash in a connection he couldn’t begin to explain.

The rings tied them together, or revealed the tie that was already there. Which came first—the solidified magical bond or the paired rings—and how independent they were from another, he wasn’t quite sure.

Hermione had a few theories. More than a few. Something with the coins’ origins—the protean charm—seemed like it’d mixed a bit with the old, unpredictable magic.

Whatever had caused it, it was reassuring having it on. And that reassurance was a boon, just now.

He clung to that soft, steady drum beat as he climbed the porch steps and signaled to Hermione where she ought to stand—just out of sight of the doorframe.

Mum was knelt on the sitting room floor, flour-dusted bunched at her hips as she scooped up a set of teething toys from under the table. Dad had Teddy on the sofa, trying to coax him into a kip.

When George’s boot scuffed the entry, Molly straightened on her knees. “It’s not yet four,” she said, with a glance at one of the time-telling clocks by the china hutch. Her brows constricted, and a look of caution came over her. “Is everything alright?”

George blinked and took a shaken breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Quite.”

Blast. Voice came out a bit hoarse.

Arthur was on his feet in moments, shifting Teddy to the area rug. “Georgie?”

No—that wasn’t the tone he’d meant to set. This wasn’t a funeral.

He shook his head, looking down as he groped for his bearings. “Um—it’s only—”

Look at them.

George forced his chin up and managed a smile. “I wanted to bring someone new to dinner, and I’ve come today to give you time to meet them.”

Molly winced. “New? Well, that’s alright, of course, but I hadn’t planned on extras for dinner. There may not be enough, if they don’t care for roast—” She sighed, tongue poking the inside of her cheek. And then they were away to the races.

“I suppose I can pull together a bit of something else, if they’d rather.” She glanced over her shoulder towards the kitchen, lost in her own fuss. “But we’ll have a bit left over, then. Bill and Fleur are with her family for the weekend, you know, so there won’t be as many to finish what I’ve made as is.” Her distracted tone went flatter. “Truly, George. An owl would’ve been nice. Two hours to supper, and now I’ll be going spare over—”

George clutched his left hand into a tighter fist, clinging to that drumbeat.

“Molly,” Arthur murmured. He watched George’s face with concentration, and George got the feeling he was being “read” like a bit of machinery or one of Hermione’s books.

George coughed. “Yes, well, they’re waiting on the porch.”

Mum’s hand flew to her mouth. “On the porch?” she whisper-shrieked. “And you let me go on—”

George winced and smiled. “Never you mind that,” he said. The shake in his voice made the last word sound wobbly. Apprehension and hope dueled in him.

Please, let this go well. Please.

With a snap decision, George decided that he might let hope win. “Mum—” He stepped back a bit. “Dad—”

He shifted, reaching for the hand he knew would be there.

Magic danced between their palms, warm and familiar. George turned and found the pair of brown eyes peeking at him from beneath the hood. Breathless. Nervous. A touch mirthful. And brimming with pride.

Something tight in his chest eased. Hermione’s hand closed around his.

“—I’d like you to meet my wife.”

He’d meant to proclaim it, tossing the door wide. But it slipped through like a whisper. A distracted afterthought as he drank in her happiness.

She stepped forward with his gentle tug, and somehow, George remembered to snap his fingers—vanishing the cloak.

Hermione swallowed, pink-cheeked as she faced the sitting room. “Surprise,” she said.

Historically, Mum had always been more prone to waterworks. But just now, her face was struck dumb and open. Her mouth dropped, then closed, then wavered.

His dad, on the other hand—Arthur Weasley looked fast between them, brows twitching together. His throat bobbed, and he had that odd, funny bent to his mouth—the one he got when he was proper puzzled. “You two—” Dad started, but didn’t finish. The hitch in his voice already sounded thick with tears.

George’s heart squeezed.

One breath racketed into Dad’s mouth. Then it fountained—no—gushed from his lungs as he bent at the waist. “Thank God,” he croaked.

Molly swatted a hand towards him, face taunt with lines as she searched George and Hermione. “You had better not be joking,” she said finally, hand pressed to the smiling sun-beam embroidery on her apron’s chest.

George found standing under fire easier when Granger slipped under his arm.

“We’re not,” Hermione said.

“You—you’ve gotten married?” Mrs. Weasley said. Her lip began to tremble.

Here it was.

George braced for the storm—joy, hurt, whatever it might be.

Mum burst into tears, waving her hand in front of her face. “Oh—” she said. “Oh—that’s—that’s very bad of you, George.” Her tone wasn’t scolding, however, and something like a smile was peeking through her sobs.

Dad launched at George first. “Blazes, George. For a—a moment, you had me worried.” A strangling, squeezing, sopping hug that nearly cracked his ribs.

“As if I’d marry anyone else?” George gawked, laughing.

Mum flapped her dishrag at him.

George grinned. White flag, that.

Dad went to Hermione, next. “I’m pleased as punch,” he sputtered, holding her face in his hands like a clumsy Hermione-sandwich.

Hermione’s eyes crinkled right up at their corners, and light seemed to pour out of her. “You’re not upset?” she asked.

“Upset?” Arthur repeated. “Why the dickens would I be upset? This is the fantastic news.”

“They’ve eloped, Arty,” Molly babbled into a handkerchief. “Just like Freddie and—”

“Oh,” Arthur said. “Yes.” He battled his weepy grin into a stern line. “That was very bad, you two.” He cleared his throat. “Very, very—” The old sap couldn’t keep himself stoic, and his delighted smile slipped out once again. “—bad.” He gave her head a playful shake.

Hermione laughed.

Dad released her and tugged her in for a proper hug.

Molly bustled over, then, and another round of embraces started.

George let himself soak in a moment of uncomplicated joy. Let himself be ushered into the kitchen, as his dad made to put the kettle on. Let the sounds of Hermione’s happy stutters at Mum’s outpouring plant deep in his chest. “We’ve got to tell my parents, obviously,” she was saying. “And then—you know, everyone else, but eventually, yes. We’d like to do something to celebrate with you all.”

“Did you hear that, Arty?” Molly piped up from around the corner. “They’d like to do a ceremony!”

Merlin. Record time, that. He’d thought there might be a lull between the announcement and the rebirth of the wedding-planning-doxie-swarm that took over his mum’s body when given opportunity.

“Marvelous!” Arthur said, fetching down the mugs. “But first, let’s hear all about it.”

George caught a saucer before it fell, then swung the cupboard door shut. Arthur set the cups up in a line and rubbed his hands together.

George leaned back against the counter. “You were right,” he said, scratching at his ear scar. “About most of it.”

Arthur made a questioning noise, distraction tugging him around the floor as he Accio-ed some tea tins. “You might be too nice to say as much, just now, but I’m man enough to admit it,” George added wryly.

“Oh, I’m hardly nice enough,” Arthur said under his breath. His voice boomed louder. “I say— George was wrong, I was right, and that calls for extra choccy-biscuits!”

Teddy’s shout of triumph echoed from the living room.

George frowned. Teddy knew a few handfuls of words. Choccy-biscuits being one of them, of course.

Did he know “wife?” What were the odds Teddy would talk to Bill or Percy, or even Ron before they could?

Arthur added a box of biscuits to the tea tray. “You carry that,” he said. “I’ll manage the kettle.”

George flicked his wand, and the tray floated up and around the corner.

He rounded to find Mum holding Hermione’s hand, beaming at her with weepy eyes. Then, the four of them settled in for a chat that’d been long-delayed.

“Tell us, then,” Arthur said. “How’s this happened?” He pulled up a chair beside Molly’s rocker and snapped a biscuit in half, passing it down to Teddy.

George opened his mouth. “Well—y’know—” Merlin, he felt shy now that it was time.

Hermione squeezed his hand. “It all started when George came to visit me near the start of last fall term,” she started. “Though, if I’m honest, it might’ve started long before then, though I didn’t see it that way at the time.”

Hermione leaned forward, eyes lighting and she spoke of a cheerful young man who showed up beneath her windowsill, shortly after a long, emotional talk in which she’d been confident she’d likely scared him off.

“See,” Hermione mused. “I was quite intent on keeping my heart detached. But then he was… well…George.”

As though that were explanation in itself. George watched her bashful, glowing smile.

He could understand the sentiment.

#

Before too long, the subject of Ron reared its right ugly head, and the conversation took a turn for the taxing.

“What do you mean, you’re not telling anyone?” Mum goggled at him like he’d suggested dying his hair Slytherin green. “But you’re married—you can’t expect to go on without everyone finding out?”

George winced, scratching at his temple. “Just for a bit,” he said.

“Until we’ve had a proper moment to—” Hermione paused. “To—”

“To tell Ron,” George finished, grim.

Arthur’s mouth opened and closed, then he folded his hands. “Ah. Ronnie. Yes, I’d imagine that will be rather hard.”

“Oh, pish-posh,” Molly said. “Ron will be fine.”

Would he now? Maybe Mum had forgotten.

Incredulous, George smiled.

“Now, Dear,” Arthur stuttered, laying a hand on Mrs. Weasley’s knee.

“He’s a bit fussy, yes,” Molly continued with heart. “But once he sees how the two of you are, he’ll come around.” Her features crinkled in an well-intentioned, reassuring whisper as she patted George’s arm. “I know it. He’d most of all his family to be happy.”

“Molly Dear,” Arthur repeated with a strained laugh. “I’m afraid you’ve not seen the whole of it.”

Molly turned slowly to Arthur. “Arthur Septimus Weasley,” she said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Now she’d get ruffled.

Dad seemed at a loss. He hemmed and hawed a bit, and Molly’s stare narrowed further and further.

“Ron’s made his feelings about Hermione and I clear,” George said, gingerly choosing each word. “And the possibility does not thrill him.”

Mum pursed her lips. “But George—”

Fred chose that brilliant moment to come through the floo. He landed with a twist, took one look at Mrs. Weasley’s streaky cheeks, then said, “It’ll be alright, Mum. There’s yet time to force George into a pinchy set of shoes.” Then he popped a kiss on her head and went for the cupboard. “Tell me there’s good food here; if I eat any more of Ange’s high-protein, leafy green mixes, you’ll have to call me Babbitty Rabbity.”

Teddy burst into giggles, lighting up at a phrase he doubtless finally recognized.

Encouraged, Fred lectured on from the cupboard. “Yes Sir, Rabbity. That’d be me.” He nicked a fruit tart from the fridge, then stacked a cannister of granola under it. “Two ears—” he mumbled. “Twitchy nose—” He added a bit of leftover chips from Dad’s takeaway sack on the bottom shelf. “—and a jump—” Fred kicked the fridge door shut and leapt around the corner, landing in a crouch before Teddy. “—like you wouldn’t believe.” He did a few wee nose flexes to add to the performance.

Teddy cackled.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Weasley said. “There’s dinner waiting in the oven, and you’re—Frederick Gideon!”

Fred shoved a handful of foods into his mouth and bowled his eyes near to the size of grapefruits. Sad, pitiful grapefruits. “I’m starving, Mum,” he said, sniffling where there were no tears to be found. “They’re on a conditioning kick, the Harpies, and there’s hardly anything but hedge clippings and canned air to—”

Angelina floo-ed, Fred snapped his mouth shut into a smile, tucking the haul of snacks behind his back.

Mrs. Weasley scowled at Fred. “All the more reason you’d better wait for dinner.” Her scolding finger lifted, pointing straight up to the sky as she shook it at him.

The lecture was mostly for Teddy’s benefit. Mum had given up on Fred and his penchant for sweets ages ago.

“Merlin Fred, that’s a load of junk, innit?” Angelina said, frowning at Fred’s armful.

Fred clutched it tight to his chest. “It’s my junk,” he said, while Mr. Weasley raised his brows and murmured something like, “is it, now” under his breath.

Poor Dad.

Angie laughed and made to kick her shoes off. “If you say so.”

And then people kept arriving. All the usual lot, except Bill and Fleur, of course.

They had a nice night. No hiding.

Strange, that.

George could drape his arm around the back of Granger’s chair without spooking anyone. There was something peaceful in it, really.

#

After a second helping of cider, George wandered out to the garden with the others. The night was warm, and there weren’t going to be many more of that sort left before winter.

Dad had his old Astronomy kit set up in the field, and Harry and Hermione were helping Teddy look through the eyepiece to spot constellations while Ginny made up fake stories for each of them on the spot.

Mr. Weasley spotted him and angled over, half-gone bottle of Butterbeer loose in his hand. George snorted and accepted the extended, silly clink with his own drink as he approached.

The stars were out, the fields smelled like the colour green, and Hermione’s giggles were dancing across the breeze. Father and son watched the others from a slight distance, and George realized the bit of quiet, just the two of them, was what he’d been waiting for all evening.

He didn’t speak up until his dad snuck a satisfied peek at him.

George lifted his brows. “Alright?”

Mr. Weasley gave a little, chuffed smile.

George sighed and let some of his inner tension slip off his shoulders, facing the fields once more. “Yeah,” he said. “I reckon that went well.”

Mr. Weasley nodded. “Might’ve been worse.”

“Understatement of the century, that,” George muttered.

Arthur patted him on the shoulder blade. A light, affectionate thump.

A dog barked somewhere in the woods. “Molly and I will keep it close to the vest, as you asked,” Arthur said finally. “Truthfully…” He hedged a bit before continuing slowly. “I’m starting to think Bill’s got enough on his plate right now.”

George thumbed the top of his bottle. “Oh?”

His dad’s mouth thinned, the soft outline of his chin tucking down. “A talk for another time, I think.” He sighed. “But he’ll likely try to manage this as he does everything else, and I’d rather not give him another thing to fuss over.”

George snorted. “Fuss? Our Bill?”

Mr. Weasley made a rueful, short hum—one that carried a “Yes, hard to imagine, I know,” sort of lilt, as he flared his eyes. “Spitting image of your mother, that boy,” Arthur said. “Of course, all of you are.”

George grinned. “Pretty, aren’t we?”

Mr. Weasley turned to study him. “Yes.” He said it quite seriously. “But I should hope it won’t be long before you plan to tell your other brothers?”

George took a swallow. “Seems like the sort of thing that’s better said in person.”

Even though the thought turned his stomach.

George lowered his drink, frowning.

“Right,” Arthur said. He sighed. “I rather wish the lot of you’d had a bit more time to grow up.” He pressed his lips into a not-quite-smile. “Feels as if you deserved more opportunity to learn to be in those days, without all the rest of it crowding in.”

George jogged his brows. “Well put.” He toed at a crack in the dirt. “There’s always time now, though.”

That’s what Marcus said. You were never too late to slow down and thrive.

That didn’t seem to make his dad feel any better, though, and a stretch of quiet lingered between them.

He twisted his butterbeer, watching the porchlight’s gleam catch inside the amber fluid. “You reckon that’s best? Ripping the plaster away in one, quick go?”

Arthur winced. His fingers were going mad against his trouser leg, jittering and fidgeting some set of imaginary cogs. The other hand might’ve done the same, if he hadn’t been holding the Butterbeer. Dad was worried. More worried than he thought he was letting on. “Put it this way,” Mr. Weasley said. “I think the longer you wait to be honest with him, the worse it’ll be.”

Bugger.

“Ship’s sailed there, Dad.” The feigned humour stuck in the back of George’s throat.

At the hoarse note in George’s voice, his dad turned. “How’s this—” He gestured at the open air as if indicating an invisible tabletop. “Molly and I will write, invite him back. Then, the two of you can talk it through.”

That tight feeling spread. The urge to duck and hide clawed up his middle. George forced himself to nod anyway. “Cheers.” It didn’t take a Mastery to know Ron wouldn’t come if George asked. “If I wrote on my own, he’d likely bin it.”

Dad’s hand fell. “Hold on now, George,” Arthur said. “You’re brothers.” It wasn’t trite or dismissive. It was more of one of those times his dad put his foot to the ground and didn’t budge.

A bit of correction. A reminder, and direction: “You will find a way through this, the both of you,” his dad meant. A nice dream, that. But likely impossible.

George lifted his brows as a means to redirect. “You parenting me?”

Arthur scratched his cheek and gazed at the field where Harry, Hermione, Teddy, and Ginny were laughing. “I don’t know where you ever got the notion that I’d stop.”

George flared his eyes at the dark horizon, the stars. “Blimey,” he muttered.

Mr. Weasley laughed. Then the laugh slowed into a quiet, wistful sigh. “We would’ve liked to have seen it,” he said. “Though I understand why you chose what you did.”

George’s throat swelled up and he vanished his drink to the porch steps. “Dad—”

“I understand,” Mr. Weasley said. Distant bluebell charms in the grass reflected on his thick glasses. “Better than you might think.”

George fumbled for a way to phrase what he felt. Sorrow—not at having eloped, exactly, but at missing people who might otherwise have been there. But before he could find means to voice it, Mr. Weasley marched right on into some of the more complicated questions he and Hermione had voiced earlier, before dinner and Ginny’s arrival crowded out the conversation.

“As for the magic,” Arthur said. “That’s a bit tricky. Everyone’s different. What you described, with the fire—” He chuckled a bit, sounding somewhat awkward. “Well, I’ve never seen anything like that with Molly and I.”

That was not the reassuring balm George had hoped for. “Not at all?” he asked.

His dad frowned. “Not as such, no.”

George’s cheeks puffed out as an entirely new anxiety lodged in his ribs. “Brilliant. Right.” He sounded shaky despite his best efforts. “You think something’s wrong, then? Is that what’s making it go all rowdy?”

Mr. Weasley frowned. “No. I think your connection’s just got its own nature to it.” He took a short sip then looked down the bottle neck. “Give it time. With practice and care, you’ll make sense of the quirks.”

George Accio-ed his drink, then drained the rest of it. The liquid was halfway down his throat before he realized it was cider, and the charm had nicked the wrong glass. Hermione’s.

George stared hard at it. “And if we blow the roof off accidentally?” he said.

Arthur laughed. “You won’t, Georgie.” His voice went warm and he reached up to take the cup. He disappear-ed it delicately, the glass seeming to fade into nothing rather than pop sharply away. “It’s best to begin slowly, to get your bearings. Share a tiny bit at a time until you sort out what to expect and what’s normal for you both.” He smiled. “Start with a handshake.”

 “A handshake,” George said. “But how?”

Arthur extended his palm.

George took it because he wasn’t a git.

Nothing happened.

“That’s the long and short of it, usually, only this would be absolutely different in every way.” Mr. Weasley grinned like he’d made a brilliant joke, then dropped his grasp and pocketed his hand away. “Not so difficult, is it?”

Brilliant. Thirty years and change of experience, and the man was giving him cryptic hints.

Meanwhile, George’s magic felt like an unpredictable card trick. “Dad,” he said, sighing. “I’m going to need more than that.”

Arthur laughed. “I’ve some things written down, but you’ll have to keep in mind—some of it may not apply. It’s quite deeply personal, as I understand it. You and Hermione’s magics won’t be the same as ours.”

George glared at his palms. “Right,” he said.

A bloody handshake. What was that supposed to mean?

“It’s a bit overwhelming, at first. But it’s like most other relationships. Mind that you give each other the same respect that you might without this.” Mr. Weasley said. “It’s not a quick fix, George. It’s an additional responsibility, and it’s important that you safeguard it. You can’t shortcut proper communication. Otherwise, when things get difficult—and they likely will, as life often does—” His voice went a tinge rueful, there. “—you’ll be lost in a fog of feelings without a frame for understanding what’s truly going on. Finding your way through a place like that—” Here, his dad’s expression shuttered a firm frown over the flicker of something more. “—it’s hard, it is.”

Now that—that seemed relatable. Already, he’d had a bit of worry about that.

George mulled it over in his head. “Right,” he murmured. “Okay.”

Arthur took a sudden, deep drink from his Butterbeer, then placed his hand on George’s shoulder, demanding his eyes. “It seems obvious now, but there’ll be times when it won’t. When it’s easier to just keep your mouth shut and labor through another day than risk things falling to bits once you open up the mess.” His dad’s voice was thick and pained. “But you’ve got to talk about it all,” he said. “Especially the gritty details, even when it’s frightening.”

George’s gaze flickered to his dad’s hand, then his expression. Uncharacteristically emphatic and strained, that face. “Everything alright, Dad?” he asked.

Mr. Weasley straightened, then shifted on his feet. “Sorry.” He laughed a bit. “Only wish someone had said as much to me, when I’d just run off with your mother.”

“Things aren’t falling to bits?” George asked, venturing over the concept like it was covered in blast powder.

Arthur blinked. “I’m afraid I misspoke, George,” he said. “In my experience, it was never the things that fell to bits.” He tucked his chin down and smiled grimly at the dirt. “It was the people tasked with holding them.” A chorus of cheering echoed from the fields—Ginny and Harry as Hermione adjusted the astronomy instruments. “All things considered, we did the best we could, given the situation.” Mr. Weasley met his eyes. “Oh—that is to say…We’re fine, Georgie. But, there were some lessons we learned the hard way.”

George swallowed. He didn’t say a word about the Imperius or Uncles or the hollowing things Charlie had said and Dad had apologized for.

Arthur cleared his throat. “I want better for you,” he said. “Often useless as it is, there’s a part of me that would like it if you all could learn from my mistakes and dodge the painful bits.”

George managed a thin smile. “Appreciate it. I’ve found trouble all on my own, I think. Any more complication and I might implode.”

Mr. Weasley paused for a long while. Long enough that George started to squirm. Then, he followed up with, “Are you still meeting with that healer?” He said it gently, but the question was still jarring.

George blinked. “Marcus?” He shrugged. “We’re shifting towards more of a meet-as-needed schedule now. Why?”

Arthur squinted at the sky. “This is a lot of change, George, and that’s not easy for anyone. It might be good to get some outside perspective.” He released a long breath. “Especially when it comes to your brother.”

“I—I have,” George admitted.

“Good.” His dad’s mouth quirked. “I’m a father to both of you. Feels like every word out of my mouth has an anvil tied to it—made of love, mind, but terribly heavy.” His nose scrunched in distaste. “What I’d tell a friend is different than what I’d tell you—my boy and the brother of my youngest son.”

George followed his father’s eyeline up towards the sky. “I know,” he said.

Loving someone made things complicated.

At once, all the stretched-out quiet reached the end of its final pull, like Zonko’s Tooth-Tingling Taffy draped on a hook. Like Arthur was waiting for something. An answer, maybe, but not one from George.

If he was hoping for a simple way through it, he wasn’t likely to find one.

Salazar. What if things were permanently broken? What if this was the final straw for him and Ron?

His dad seemed to hold hope for otherwise, but George couldn’t fathom Ron making peace with him and Hermione’s marriage. Not after everything.

George blinked, and bright spots overhead bled into fuzzy streaks.

If the stars held an answer, it was too far away to hear.

“I know it’s not the same as being there,” George murmured. “But I wore your mackintosh.”

Mr. Weasley’s eyes crinkled at the stars. “So that’s where it went.” He didn’t sound the least bit surprised, as if he expected missing things to find their way back, after a while.

#

Shortly after, George wandered into the orchard. He’d meant to find a bit of quiet, to start practicing words, maybe, for that eventual doomsday chat.

He made for his favorite tree, the one with the words carved in it, deep near the back. But when he got there, he found the Anglia idling at the edge of a wide footpath beneath the branches. A frizzing, faded red mop hunched over the wheel.

Mum.

George dashed to the closer door—the passenger side—and hauled it open. “You al—”

Music poured out with buttery yellow light from the wand tucked into the console. Mum lifted her head with a start, flattening her palm to her chest. “George.” Her eye sockets were red, puffy, and wet.

“—la-di, ob la da—”

Mum smacked the wireless, and the unit went silent.

George blinked at her.

She shifted her butterbeer bottle behind her, out of his sightline. She scraped at her lashes with a knuckle. “Just a—finding—looking, I mean—”

George climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. “Mum.”

“I’m alright,” she said. “It’s the nerves, is all it really is.” She pinched her lips upwards at each corner. “Long day.”

Didn’t look like nerves. Looked like a bit of a breakdown. One she likely needed.

“Really,” George said slowly. “Because it seems like you snuck back here to cry.”

Molly made a short, indignant huff. “Not—no. That’s—no.” Already, she was dragging her ruffly sleeve over her eyes yet again and forcing a self-deprecating laugh.

“Mum, come on,” George said. He turned in the seat and leaned his shoulder against the back of it. “This is time to share. Let it out.”

She laughed a bit, still dabbing at her face. It was nothing but a convenient excuse to not look at him directly.

“It’s silly,” Molly said. “And—” she said more firmly, nodding at the wheel. “It’s not a fair thought.”

George folded his arms, scrunching closer. “So it’s a right nasty thought?”

Mum rolled her eyes.

“Tell us, then,” George goaded. He kept his voice at a low whisper, though.

Molly heaved a sigh. “I always thought—” her voice wobbled, then broke, and she rolled her eyes yet again.

George waited.

A heroic swallow, and she restarted, scrunching up her features as if it was nothing serious. “You know, I thought I’d be a sight at you and Fred’s weddings—if you had them.” Then, she uttered a rueful laugh, pressing the back of her hand to her cheek. “And not in a good way.”

George shifted to get a bit more comfortable in the seat. “We wind you up, yeah?”

“Oh—” Molly glanced over, and the pinch behind her eyes hollowed into something deeper. “It’s not that, Georgie.”

George lifted his brows.

Mrs. Weasley clucked, then leaned over and touched his chin, then his collar, then the loose knot around his stripey necktie. “You look so like them.” She smiled a bit. “I always worried it’d be nearly impossible for me to go, to see you waiting at the end of the aisle, and not—” Then she seemed to give up on seeming normal, her tone pitching into one of apology. “—not think of them.”

She sighed and shrugged. “Bother, look at me,” she muttered, fussing at her damp sleeve.

“Mum,” George whispered.

Her smile toppled into a pained look. “And they’d have loved to be there, you know?”

George nodded. Even though he didn’t know, not exactly.

Mrs. Weasley blinked down at her lap. “I figured I’d soldier through your wedding day. I’d bring their memory along with me and let no one be the wiser.” Her thumbs shifted and twisted against each other at the tips. “I thought it might be like seeing everything that could’ve happened, along—along with everything that might’ve been missed, had it not been protected.” Her words dropped to a barely audible volume on that last bit.

It took George two tries to swallow properly. “Hex dodged, then,” he said.

Mum’s features contorted, but she schooled them into a pained smile. “Fat lot of good all that worrying did,” she said, tutting a bit at herself. “Should’ve known the both of you would have no part of doing things the old-fashioned way.”

“And Georgie, I know it’s not fair to put that on you,” Mum said softly. “It’s just a daft part of me’s suddenly flipped a switch and is up and feeling like I’ve missed Gideon or Fabian’s wedding all over again.” She kneaded her hands together and wiped her cheek on her shoulder.

Sod it all.

George pulled in a long breath, then sighed.

“I’m not Fabian, Mum,” he murmured.

She nodded at the wheel.

“I look like him, but I’m not him,” George said. “We’re different.”

“I know,” Molly whispered.

“Look at me, Mum,” George said.

She held her breath, then turned.

George searched her face and found it a pitiful mess. His heart twisted.

“Different,” he said. He pointed at his scarred ear. “Different scars,” he said. He angled his hand to the WWW cufflink on his sleeve. “Different livelihood.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “Different heart.”

Molly nodded.

George lifted his brows. “Connected, yeah? But still different.”

Molly cupped his cheek and smiled. “I know, Georgie,” she whispered. Tears swam in her eyes.

Rowena’s cap. This was boggling. He’d never seen her so happy and miserable at once.

George sighed again, leaning back. “But—” he muttered, running his hand along the glove box. “If Fabian were here, what d’you think he’d say?”

Molly scoffed. “He’d wring me out to dry for being this way.”

That wasn’t happening.

George blinked. “What else?”

Molly turned away. “I don’t know, George.”

Quiet turned into Mum sniffing, though she was trying to choke it back. Anxiety built up his chest and throat.

What, then? What?

George smacked the wireless.

“—life goes on—”

It hummed back to life, picking up a spot on a muggle cassette tape.

“It was just on, already, when I turned the key,” Mum said hastily. “Your father must’ve put it in; I don’t know—”

George batted her hand away. “Yeah, well, we’re going to sit here and listen to it and have a good cry.”

Mum faltered.

George reached over her and locked the doors, then fell back into his seat. “Go on, then.”

“We’ll run the battery down,” Molly whispered.

“And Dad will fuse a hand mixer in and fix it,” George said.

Mum fidgeted.

Merlin’s Beard. What would it take with this woman?

“I know you’re upset,” George said shortly. “So bloody be upset and stop tiptoeing with me. I’m a grown, married man.”

No bites.

“I eloped,” George said, lifting a hand. “Stole off into the night without a word, Mum.” He tilted his head to face her and added in a taunting whisper. “There was nary a single centerpiece.”

Mum didn’t cry.

She laughed.

Far harder than the joke deserved.

“That’s hardly the only thing that comes with planning a wedding, George,” she said.

George settled back into his chair. “Centerpieces and cake tastings, all avoided.”

Mum was quiet a bit. Then she bit her lips together. “If you really do have a ceremony, eventually, George—” She paused. “I’ll make you both carrot cake.”

George blinked at her.

Mum smiled through watery eyes.

“Done,” George said.

The tape switched to another song. The tune came to him surprisingly easily, and George hummed along. When the songs ran out, he ejected it and scrubbed a thumb along the ink marking the label.

“Teddy and Grandad’s Driving Mix”

The handwriting—it was Hermione’s.

#

October 11, 1999, 12:59 p.m.

How did one write a letter to an estranged brother?

George mulled the question over as he waded in the mid-afternoon Diagon foot traffic. A sack of fish and chips that he held clipped under his elbow and against his ribs bumped a man’s shoulder in the opposing traffic.

The chatter and bustle seemed miles away, as they often did when he took to inventing or working in his head between meetings and jotting about Floo-Pow’s entire bloody network.

“Dear Ron,

Come home. It’s important; we need to talk.

Best,

George”

No, no. Too short. Lost in thought, he slitted his eyes at Madame Malkin’s across the way.

He also felt dodgy letting Mum and Dad reel Ron back home under false pretenses. Ron ought to know, at least a bit, that George was part of the reason why he needed to visit. But he couldn’t put the whole mess right onto the parchment.

Merlin. If he did that—

First, Ron wouldn’t come back at all, unless in attempt to beat him black and blue. Second, providing Ron mastered that impulse, then he wouldn’t come back at all. The letter would serve the opposite purpose.

Third, Ron deserved to hear it in person, and it would likely do Hermione a bit of good to respond to any comments lobbed her way firsthand, rather than fret over it for days on end while Ron threw a silent, fuming strop halfway across the world.

He could see it now: “Ron Weasley Burns Down Rural Toy Factory While Claiming Vengeance.”

A grease stain seeped through the take away bag, threatening the parchment’s integrity around the base.

No. Ron wouldn’t blast every toy shop owner to smithereens. Just one very specific one.

Not for the first time, George regretted nearly everything about the conundrum. Everything, save the fact that Hermione loved him back, and he’d married her.

He’d never regret that, nor would he allow Ron to force such an apology onto him.

No. He regretted the fact that something so wonderful and lovely would scupper what remained of his and Ron’s relationship to the ruddy ocean floor. And for what reason? So Ron could carry a torch for the idea of a his ex-girlfriend? After all, Ron hadn’t seemed to enjoy the reality of being with her, at least. He’d spent most of the relationship whinging and trying to convince Hermione to go along with whatever he wanted.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair to assume his brother’s feelings.

But regardless of whether Ron still loved Hermione in that fashion, the real wrench was that Ron had seemed to feel entitled to her.

George’s hand tightened on the food bag.

If a Weasley was going to marry Hermione, Ron would doubtless argue it was meant to be him, even if that route would make everyone involved miserable.

And George didn’t have the patience for that.

Now, he only wanted to rip the plaster off. To get it over and done with and start to rebuild from there.

He passed a paper cart, turning his face pointedly away from the contents.

If there was something he needed to see in the gossip pages, Fred knew to point it out to him.

The speculation and frothing at the mouth over silly nonsense wasn’t a good use of his time; it made him feel like a plastic doll customers bought off a shelf to dress up or manipulate how they fancied.

George sold jokes, trivialities, and toys; he was not one himself. He had too much heart for it.

He shouldered into Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes and tossed the sack on the till counter from an impressive distance. Fred pantomimed making a quidditch hoop with his arms while he rung up a lad who couldn’t yet see over the counter properly.

“—the care kit’s there, you see,” Fred said, glancing up to the little bloke’s mum before handing over a pygmy puff. One of the purple ones that Ginny liked best.

George scanned the store—no fires or fretful patrons—then hopped the counter to take the second till. His hand wandered into the lunch bag, and he slotted a sheet of fresh paper onto the cherry wood surface.

Fred went for the fish first, of course. George went for the chips. Licking a bit of sauce off his index fingers, he nicked a sugar quill and set it to the page.

“Hello Ron,

Hope you’re well.”

There. That was the truth.

George stole another chip and popped it into his mouth.

“Was wanting—”

He paused and vanished the last word, then replaced it with “needing.”

“—needing to know when you can next get a bit of personal leave?”

His breath shortened, a touch of the old panic cramming into his lung space and reducing it. Best forge onwards.

“There’s a family thing you’re needed for, and it’s important or I’d not be bothering you.”

There. That was vague yet clear enough. Ron wouldn’t be worried about someone dying, but he’d also understand that time was of the essence.

“Please let us know as soon as you can.”

He propped his chin on his hand, folding one boot top behind the heel of the other as he leant on the counter. “Hmmm.”

“Alright?” Fred spoke on his side, behind his shoulder.

George nodded.

“You look a bit peaky,” Fred said quietly.

George grunted, because it always seemed to shield Aberforth from probing questions. Fred glanced at the parchment.

“Oh,” was all he said.

George sighed.

“It’s the anxious face, then, not the ‘this fish is old’ face,” Fred added.

George lent him a pity-laugh, though Fred grimaced at the courtesy. “What’s got you anxious about it?”

George stared at the paper. Stared at each of the forty-five or so words.

Fred knew bloody well why George might be anxious. There was a tick list of reasons long enough to paper the shop walls. Fred only wanted George to start down this list, so he might object to each and every one, and that wouldn’t make George feel any better just now.

“I dunno,” he murmured. A half-truth. The reasons that used to make his blood run cold now ran him quite a different temperature. The reaction felt like singed earth in his palms and fire climbing out of his ribs, and it didn’t make sense with the other, flinching, hiding impulse he had.

Fred passed him a cold pumpkin juice, still sealed in the bottle. George popped the tin top free and took a swallow. It landed like a thick dollop of sour milk in his stomach.

“Get it over and done with,” Fred said, leaning in with a more somber tone under his breath.

“Y’know, sometimes, the gittish voice in my sounds a bit like you,” George muttered.

Fred laughed.

With a prickle of something sharp and foreboding, George signed:

“Your brother,

George.”

He owled it once the ink dried, leaving a sticky, fish-and-chips thumbprint on the envelop as he released it to Calliope’s talons.

It felt like an invitation to discuss terms of war. A declaration. A precursor to battle—one which would require armor that George sorely resented being made to put on.

He was quick to jump into a fray; that didn’t mean he fancied anticipating one.

#

October 12, 1999, 7:29 p.m.

Predictably, Hermione’s parents took it a bit worse. There was some stammering, confusion. A bit of tears. Hermione gently explained that they’d already begun to plan for another ceremony that would be larger, or if they’d prefer something away from the “…you know,” at which Hermione had indicated multiple years of baggage with a sweeping, hasty hand gesture—as if the presence of magic and its beings might be pressed to the side so easily—they might do a small, muggle reception for her parents’ friends and colleagues.

Now, they’d gone far too quiet. George shifted on his two feet and tried to hold a semblance of eye contact, which neither of her parents offered him.

Truthfully, the Grangers didn’t have much living family. Jane seemed estranged from her side, and both sets of Hermione’s grandparents were long passed. There were a few distant cousins, but none that Hermione could think might bother with coming to a wedding or reception sort of thing anyways.

Jane murmured as much before dropping heavily into an armchair, hand over her mouth.

George fought back a grimace.

After speaking with his mum and dad, he saw it a bit more clearly. It was more the principle of the thing. Parents generally liked to be there for weddings. Amongst other reasons, it was an opportunity to be proud of the person you’d raised, and for the family to be happy for them all together. Understandable, that.

But—Salazar. Her parents got skittish at a levitation charm on a dropped honey jar. They would’ve shrieked in horror, had they been there in New Zealand.

“My parents weren’t there either.” The words shot from his mouth quite heavy and fast and without his anticipating it—like spotting a draft horse moving at a canter.

Hermione flared her eyes at him. Meaning, “George, let me handle it.”

A jolt of regret shot through him.

Jane lifted her head, a bleary pause set upon her rapidly devolving breakdown. “Pardon?”

Sorry, Granger.

“It—it wasn’t only you,” George said. His voice scratched his throat, and he fidgeted the neat, black necktie over his oxford. Worn for their benefit, not the slightest hint of loudness. It was meant to smooth things over, but Hermione had frowned at it when he put it on.

Then again, she’d been frowning all day. Difficult to say what was him and what was worry over this conversation.

“It was quite small,” George continued. It was important, somehow, that the Grangers understood that. “Just—um—just something without the fuss and pomp.”

Jane’s gaze fled to Hermione. “But is that what you wanted, Darling?”

Hermione nodded firmly. “I’ve had enough of crowds staring at me for a lifetime; I didn’t care for it on a day like that.”

“It wasn’t purposeful, and—and it wasn’t to single anyone out,” George said.

“I’d imagine so,” Thomas murmured. He peered into his water glass with a set of red eyes, and his throat bobbed. His cream-coloured shirt matched the quiet furnishings and quieter house.

George’s stomach twisted when the other man didn’t look at him.

All at once, he felt too tall, too freakish, too—too magical for the Granger home. If he felt that awkward after twenty minutes, how terrible must Hermione feel?

“I wanted to tell you so that you’d know,” Hermione said. “It was important to me that you found out with the rest of the family.”

“Rather than telling us before.” Jane’s comment was sharp. Clipped. Her glass didn’t quite bang on the table, but it was louder than polite, the way she set it down.

Now—bloody now, Thomas glanced at George, and it landed like a knife under his ribs. Their talk on that old veranda rushed back to him, and he felt shame heat up his face and the back of his neck.

Hermione’s chest rose and fell, and she did not shrink. If anything, her torso seemed to expand like a shield as she stepped forward, between them.

“I asked him,” Hermione said shortly. “It was my idea. I knew George wanted to be a Granger, so I—I made him one.”

Jane tensed. “Hermione.”

“No.” His wife stood tall as a queen, stared at Jane and Thomas, and said, “Honestly, the both of you—you’re not even looking at him!” She gritted her teeth. “It’s not as if he spirited me away!”

Judging by the veiled tension in Jane and Thomas’s expressions, that was exactly what they feared. And neither of them had the gumption to say as much to his face.

They knew him. They knew he’d never—

“If you’re going to be like this—” Hermione’s voice cracked. “It was my idea, and if you’re going to resent George for it, then you’d better resent me more.” Not a flinch in her face as she spoke. “Either we are both welcome in your home, or neither of us is.” Then, in a bit softer of a tone, like a Bowtruckle peeking from under its branch, she added, “Though I hope it would never come to that.”

Then Mr. Granger lifted his head. The intolerable tension curved into a new dimension. Blimey. The prolonged eye contact was so much worse.

“Of course not,” Jane said, a bit sharply. “I only wonder if you’ve thought it all through.”

“I did,” Hermione said.

Jane lowered her gaze to her hands. “You’re quite young.” Every word sounded brittle.

Hermione swallowed.

What followed might have been more less terrible had they shouted, really. Shouting wouldn’t have been desirable, but it might’ve eased some of the unsaid things swarming about the room. But there were no accusations or fractured confessions about their own hopes for Hermione’s wedding day.

It was a silence you could choke on while Thomas watched George with an unswerving, unreadable stillness.

It burned, that look. Made George itch under his collar, right down his spine between his shoulder blades. Not quite anger. Something else.

His parents had nearly expected so much from him, especially after Fred. But hers…Hermione was not the sort to do such a thing as eloping. And this seemed to land a bit too close to the unpredictable betrayal that Jane and Thomas were yet working to process.

An example of Hermione’s wildness that they seemed to flinch back at.

They snuck glances at her like she might burst into flame.

You couldn’t take the bookworm and the stickler and the work horse parts of Granger without leaving the unpredictable, bright fire behind. They were one and the same. George loved them both. Deeply.

While Jane and Thomas seemed at a bit of a loss. They were all starched collars and leather-bound books and only shouting at football matches on the telly. Not even for this, had they raised their voices.

The silence was louder. It hit like a blunt impact to the lungs; an absence of happy chatter where only stung feelings dwelt.

Yet Hermione did not apologize for marrying him. Not once. As if he was worth this torture.

The words worked up his throat, but he swallowed them back. Because they had promised each other: they would be a united front on this.

George stretched his hand out, and Hermione clasped it. Squeezed tightly.

The pinch between his shoulders loosened, and George rolled them back. Thomas glanced at their twined fingers. At the rings. Then, the older man pivoted to the dining room and slipped his hand into his pocket.

Quietly, Jane began to cry again.

“I understand you’re disappointed,” George said. “But our intention was to accommodate everyone’s comfort, rather than to leave anyone out.” It felt so feeble compared to how it had in the loo mirror.

“It’s your choice,” Thomas said, facing the table. His voice was guttural and rough. Breaking. “I’m not sure what you hope for us to take from the one you made, though.”

That was as good of an admission of hurt as they were likely to get.

“You can be upset,” Hermione said. “But, I only wanted things to be less complicated. We needed to keep things private for the part of things on the day of, and while now I think it might’ve been best to tell you beforehand, I hope you can come to understand our decision.”

Thomas bowed his head. Not a word.

Hermione’s face was splotchy, her voice wobbly. “For the rest—I thought it might be better to do things split into groups? There’s to be—Molly wants to have a sort of ceremony, eventually, and maybe a reception, and you two are welcome to attend.”

Jane hunched forward over her hands.

“But how would you prefer to—or rather, would you prefer to do anything to mark the occasion?” Hermione continued.

Jane looked up. “Would you like that?” she croaked.

Hermione nodded. “We want to include you; it’s important to us.”

Jane shifted. She and Thomas shared a quiet look. It had too many emotions jumbled through it for George to be able to read it properly.

“We didn’t want to leave you out,” George said. “We wouldn’t have flown halfway across the world to beg you to come back, if—if Hermione didn’t want you in her life. That’s not what this was about. That was never something we—y’know. That wasn’t the point.”

Hermione nodded quickly. He squeezed her hand a bit when she rubbed a bit of damp out of her waterline.

Mr. Granger ducked his head back into his hands.

It would be easier if Hermione could explain everything. But that would include things the Grangers didn’t care to learn.

“I want you involved,” Hermione repeated.

Jane glanced at Thomas for a long while.

“Um—we don’t have much remaining family,” Mrs. Granger said hoarsely, though a spark of something had livened her voice. “But maybe we do a special dinner at the house, with some of your father and I’s friends?”

Thomas nodded his forehead against his palms.

Jane looked back at Hermione. “And—and you tell us all about you and—and George.” Her chin lifted, though the whole thing was spoken like a question. You remember the Melton girls?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, breathless and swiping at her cheek. “The Melton girls.”

George had never heard that name in his life.

“And Stacy Keppler? She’s with Bright Smile Family Practice now, but she always did think of you like a niece,” Jane continued, more confidently.

Hermione loosed George’s hand to step closer. “She gave me those little, sugar-free breathmints when I asked.”

George let the clenched-tight anxiety in his chest loosen and slip free with his exhale.

Hermione and Jane began planning. Muted but present, Thomas chimed in a time or two.

Before they left, Jane took Hermione’s face in her hands and kissed her cheek. Thomas looked a bit as though he might cry, but he opened his arms for her anyways. They didn’t understand, but they were trying to, at least.

George stood on the edges, looking in. Hermione might’ve claimed responsibility, but George knew where it’d been placed.

With everything that’d happened, Jane and Thomas wouldn’t be able to put it elsewhere. And that was about as swimmingly as George could’ve hoped for it all to go.

In time, they might even forgive him.

#

October 13, 1999

Winky took aim at the feather laid atop the tree stump. Autumnal breeze shifted the scent of pine needles and dew over the group; far above, a red kite called against the blue sky. Hours pinched into minutes on afternoons like this. Or they lingered for days.

George tucked the purple scarf close to his throat as Granger glanced at him, thin lipped and bundled in a stolen jumper. It was taking longer than they’d expected. But that was alright.

Right lovely, today was. And what an opportunity to be free of Diagon’s furor and the Ministry, as well! George liked a commotion as much as the next Weasley, but it was nice, sometimes, nipping away from it all. Giddy chipmunks seemed to hold his same joy. They chittered and scrambled around a nearby fallen log, and sunlight painted patches of warmth against the frosted grasses.

Each breath brought tranquility, each moment—

Winky roared in frustration, then stomped from the stump. Being a bit smaller, her roar held the pitch of a housecat rather than a griffin, but it was no less unnerving.

“If you’d just try it again,” Hermione said, coaxing. “Wingardium—”

Winky whirled, stabbing the wand at the feather. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

It burst into flames.

Winky’s breath hitched and stumbled, the rise and fall of her chest trembling.

The feather skated away into flecks of ash.

It wasn’t exactly what Winky had been going for.

Winky charged for the copse of trees where they’d stashed supplies, then yanked a water canteen from the pastel-blue pack.

“This one was quite difficult for me,” Luna said. Today, Luna wore a round helmet, though the muggle roller skates she was breaking in had been stuffed deep into Hermione’s bag.

Winky pretended not to hear as she unscrewed the cap and peered into the opening. Her wand tucked under her arm, she flicked her hand, and a replacement feather soared from Fleur’s stash of scrapbooking oddities. Nienna, now a coppery adolescent phoenix, pecked at the blue ribbons and feathery bits with something like disgruntled skepticism.

“Can’t focus,” Winky muttered. “Too loud, too many noises.”

Nienna whistled through her beak, then took to the horizon. Likely off to hunt for flobberworms or small rodents.

George shifted back on his hands and squinted at the sky. The stretch eased up the tension in his lower back and legs, and he rotated his wrist to free it from the stirring aches.

If you asked him, it seemed rather quiet. But he didn’t have an audience watching him try to learn a second way to tie his trainers. Because that was essentially what Winky was about—relearning how to cast through a different means.

Plenty of elven magic was more powerful than wanded casting, but there were certain limitations, mostly tied to the kinds of magic elves weren’t known to often use when bound to houses. They could sort a dinner party faster than any human; fighting took a lot out of them, though.

Rather like something tied up in the enchantment was holding them back.

“Stir,” Aberforth muttered.

George started and looked down.

A small cauldron hung on an iron tripod before him, the Dittany blend simmering over a low flame, though the potion was close to bubbling over. George dunked the ladle back in.

The DMLE had ordered a batch formally, and Hermione’d directed them to WWW, since the shop had the necessary potions distribution licensing. Also the free time.

Winky paced to and fro, and George eyed her as he placed a bit of the solution with the moonstone powder under his tongue, then waited until the faint, buzzy feeling filled his lungs and throat.

With a gentle whistle, he exhaled the stream of his magic into a clear vial, then stoppered it.

Purple light winked between his fingers. Like an owl drawn to the sound of a squeak in the brush, Hermione’s head swiveled towards him.

Found that interesting, did she?

George flashed her a wink before slotting it away to add to the small batch he’d set aside for their personal use.

Winky stuck her wand into a holster across her back, then faced the new feather. “Wingardium Leviosa.” She lifted her hand, imitating the wand motion.

“A bit more flick,” Hermione put in.

Winky ground her jaw, then did it again.

George glanced at Aberforth.

The older man reclined against a craggy pine behind him, watching Winky’s practice through slitted eyes. He hadn’t put a word of advice in since sending a thoroughly put-out Fleur away for safety reasons, but now, he spoke, “You’re teaching her like she’s human.”

Hermione sagged, lifting both hands. “That’s how I learned.”

“It did work once,” Luna said.

“And no further,” Winky grumbled. She pivoted, glaring at the stump, as if it was to blame.

The wand seemed like a petulant child. The more Winky tried to focus with it, the more it resisted. Made no sense, that. Winky’d found more success using Luna or Hermione’s wands, though the results had been spotty and lackluster.

Using another’s wand was a bit like running in a set of boots that were the wrong size. Fine in a pinch, but nearly more trouble than it was worth. Better to bond and practice with your own wand.

Yet the wand custom made for Winky seemed to spite her every move.

Never, not ever, had George had to fight so hard as she was for a single charm.

Hermione sighed. “Again?”

Winky shoved her wool sleeves above her spindly elbows, ground the base of her palm to the corner of her eye, and nodded with a sniff.

George’s heart gave a sharp pang.

“Wingardium—”

The wand backfired, and Winky flung back into the brush with a squeak.

“Winky!” George bolted from his station, and Hermione fell in beside him.

“Quiet!” Winky snapped. George slowed, trainers digging into the soft earth.

Winky stumbled from the bushes and dusted off her rolled trousers. “Winky needs quiet.” She huffed a bit, repositioning as before. A spark of anger flicked through her gaze, and George laid a wordless shield charm between the potions stand and the casting arena.

Hermione took his elbow; her lower lip was chewed into a state. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get one of those sore spots on the inside of it. Quietly, he reached up and touched her arm, then gestured at his mouth with a wince.

Her lip popped free, and she winced back at him. “Thanks,” she whispered.

Winky sucked a deep breath in. “Winky is fine,” she choked. “Winky is—fine.”

George regarded her a moment before deciding to relent. Making a scene at every complication seemed to be wearing on her. Slowly, he returned to his brewing station.

Winky straightened. Pointed the wand again. “Wingar—”

“What, ho!” A sandpapery, rough tone shouted through the clearing. Winky exhaled her stored breath in a sharp hiss, and Aberforth clambered to his feet.

A pack of goblins emerged between the trees on broomback.

But they weren’t regular brooms.

Merlin’s beard. Longing struck George hard between the ribs.

From handle to twigwork, the brooms shone in hues of copper, gold, and silver. One emitted a tuft of sparkling blue smoke as the group curbed and halted a yard above the forest floor. Three broke from the larger entourage, descending to land. Their cloaks were a rich blue, though the one on the right had silvery leather armor on beneath his, and the one on the left sported copper instead. The magical machinery rumbled at an idle behind them like a purring car.

The one in the lead sported a wiry, white mop of hair and a bit of extra height. The two behind her seemed younger; while shorter, their postures were less stooped.

No one said a word.

Then, Winky swore. “Winky isn’t a rabbit to be hunted,” she said, more disgruntled than properly angry.

“Winky, Winky, Winky.” The older goblin pulled a set of broom gloves from her hands and surveyed the clearing. “What have we here?” She grinned, and it was a bit mischievous but not unkind.

Winky kicked a stray pinecone. “Gretel Greybrait shouldn’t poke into fires she doesn’t care to forge with.”

Gretel, apparently, smirked. “Oh, but one does like to keep irons hot.”

Aberforth had since reclined back against the tree, though he watched the group wearily.

“Thought we might say goodbye before leaving, but you seemed to have vanished this morning,” Gretel continued, pacing a circle to nod at Luna. “Only then we saw that lovely bird of yours, and she pointed us the right way.”

Winky muttered under her breath.

“Speak up, Luggy-head, I’m old,” Gretel continued.

“Is Gretel needing anything,” Winky said dully. Her intent was clear: “Go away, please.” She’d tucked the wand away at some point, though the goblins had doubtless already seen.

Gretel laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but the laughter of someone giddy over an incredible sunrise or a new recipe gone very well. Behind her, the younger goblin stared in unabashed fascination at the tree stump, at Winky, and then at Granger, even.

Looked a bit familiar, that one. When his smiling eyes found George, he broke into a grin and stepped forward. “Fancy meeting again here,” he said in a soft burr. He glanced over his shoulder and called something in what sounded rather like a Gaelic-Goblinik variant. The hovering group chuckled.

Then, he turned back to George and lifted both silvery brows. “Must be brave, venturing so close to lands not your own.”

It’d sound like a threat, if the chap didn’t have such a warm, cheeky smile. Like they were sharing a bit of an inside joke.

His companion swatted at him, whispering, and the goblin boy tipped his head back, making his blue hood fall to reveal a knit cap and more silver curls beneath it.

“I ken who they are,” he said, snorting. He shoved away, then meandered to the brewing stand to stare down at it.

Winky had taken Gretel to the side, muttering quietly. The second goblin seemed reticent to part far from Gretel’s hip, as if they’d been given a guard duty and were quite keen to fulfill it.

The third, the familiar one, examined each element of George’s makeshift brewing setup with amusement. His pockets made a jingling sound as he moved to squat.

Hermione cleared her throat, then tugged the jumper sleeves over her hands a bit further. “We—we met in Diagon, right?”

The goblin winced at the brew. “Aye, though it weren’t much meeting.” He glanced up at George again and smiled. “Gable, if you don’t recall.” He stuck out a hand, and George shook it.

“That’s right,” George said. “Gable.” Gable, who he’d been a bit too brainless to properly speak to last time.

“Dad’s said I was good as dead before you showed up,” Gable added good naturedly, pronouncing his “my” like George would’ve said “me.” “But I’m scrappier than he likes to admit.”

George breathed a laugh. “You’d have done brilliantly, I’m sure.”

Gable’s eyes lit with something shrewd and amused. “They tell stories about you, your elf friends,” he said. “Diggy and Sprout have the city convinced you’re half-giant.” He eyed George’s boots, then his shoulders. “Not quite, if you ask me. Bit short if you’re giant, though that Hagrid’s a scrap of a bloke compared to his kin.”

“Generally, I’m one of the tallest of mine,” George said good naturedly. “You’ve been to the hidden city, then?”

A bit of envy stole over him. He’d not seen much of Diggy and Sprout since the rescue near that sodding bridge. Good to know they’d settled in nicely.

Gable nodded. “I didnae believe the old haunt was in use till I saw it with my own eyes. Like one of my grandad’s stories come to life, that.” He beamed. “But I might’ve known better; Winky does what she sets her mind to.” He turned to study the stump. “She won’t say about the wand, but, if you ask me, I think she’s got it already.” The corner of his mouth tugged upwards.

George rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn’t necessarily his business to share. Even if Gable had as good as seen Winky using it.

But Gable didn’t seem to expect confirmation. “Your cauldron is pants, by the way,” he added, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Even for a wizard, you might do better than that.”

Then, he pushed off his knees to stand, bringing him level to George’s seated head. “Say Winky—” Gable strolled towards the elf. “What news have you got for a goblin dignitary?”

Winky snorted. “Gable Grinkit may come back when he finds one.”

Gable laughed, though the third goblin stiffened. “You do him a disrespect,” she said fiercely. “This is the rightful land of his forebearers.” She thrust a finger at the earth. “Grinkit blood watered this ground, Grinkit hands worked the forges, and it was by his ancestor, not yours, that the city found its name. It’s his legacy you take up to—”

“Glenn,” Gable cut in. “Let it be. The Grinkits were hardly the only family around, were they? And the goblins weren’t the only occupants in these parts.” He inclined his head toward Winky, the deference casual and unforced. “Nor were they the only fighters.”

Glenn’s mouth bunched up tightly.

Winky turned to Gretel. “He’s very polite.”

Gretel coughed out a laugh. “When he fancies it, yes. My godson isn’t one for dramatics.” Her expression softened as she glanced at Winky’s wand-lumpy sleeve. “We had hoped to help, Winky.”

Winky’s face flattened. “Winky will share when there is something worth sharing.” She tugged at her sleeve a bit, adding in a lower, regretful voice. “False hopes are worse than absent ones.”

Gretel watched her for several moments, mouth thinned. “Stubborn, are we?” The prickly drawl was a bit less warm, a bit more like a critique.

Winky drew herself up until her chin pointed like a levied blade. “Do not forbid elves the scrap of dignity they have torn from the weavings of great wrong.” The remark was no less fearsome from the still-lingering, frustrated tears in her eyes or the raw scratch in her throat.

Gretel dropped her gaze. “I see.” She sighed. “Well, when you’ve resigned yourself to needing any of our non-wielding assistance, if such an undignified day does arrive, you know where to find us.” With that, she turned to retreat to her group. “With luck, I’ll still be puttering about to see it.”

She crossed to her broom, then whistled to bring it down to her. “Weasley, tell Fleur I’ve said hello.”

George faltered.

Gretel swung her leg over the broom as Gable and Glenn did the same. “And tell William that he’s one snippy comment from getting tossed out of Gringotts on his ear, from the way I hear it.” She cackled, then signaled for departure with a spin of her finger.

Gable dipped into a bow to the lot of them, then tossed himself onto his broom like a muggle might curve over a high jump. The broomstick twisted itself and found his hands.

Moments later, the only sign of them was a dissipating cloud of blue smoke.

George blinked. Hermione craned her head to stare after the group. “I hadn’t connected it before,” she said. “Who Gable was.”

Merlin. Half the streets in Hogsmeade were named after his clan history.

Winky made a sharp, grousing sound without any words, then tossed her wand onto her pack. “Winky is done for the day.”

Hermione whirled. “But Winky, we’ve only been—”

“Winky cannot think or practice with so many eyes watching,” she cut in. Her shoulders curved inwards, and she avoided meeting any of their eyes. “When Winky is ready for human help, Winky will say as much.”

She marched into the thicker grove of pines, away from the village boundaries and towards the wards that likely lined the hidden city’s outskirts.

Luna and Hermione looked at each other, then Luna transformed, loping after Winky with the pack strap in her maw.

Aberforth swore. Then again, with a bit more vehemence.

“Why not have everyone help?” George asked. “They’ve as good as guessed, haven’t they? Their hopes are up already.”

Aberforth rubbed a wrinkled hand along his mouth. “It’s not an easy job, this,” he said. “She scarcely allows us to see her struggle, and we have no magical freedoms riding on her success.” He stared hard at the stump. “Some might take setbacks as a sign that elves aren’t meant for wands at all. They’ll tell her to give it up.” His eyes flashed a darker shade of blue.

Hermione leaned against Aberforth’s abandoned tree. “What now?” she spoke through her hands, tone weary and wrung-out. As if the difficulties had been due to some failure in her teaching.

“We’ll do as she says,” Aberforth said. “Tend to the other projects.” But his gaze was distant, locked on the tree stump covered in scorch marks. “There’s something not—” he halted, eyes narrowing. “—not right.” He finished the thought with a half-gone, pensive tone.

Obviously.

A heaviness soaked through the tree canopy, and George flopped back to recline amidst the fallen needles beside Granger. A bit of stray snow from the village wet his collar and shoulders. “Suppose we might check some more ward stones.”

“And the issue of moonbrands, too,” Hermione mused. “We’ll have to be careful.”

“There’s also the two of you, and the new, ever-present threat that you’ll cast a Scourgify and rip the ground apart,” Aberforth said. “May as well look into that with the time left for today.”

Indeed, they’d assumed Winky’s practice would extend past sunset, and it wasn’t yet afternoon. And Fred had already covered the whole shop shift, in exchange for a full day next week.

Hermione made a quiet hedging sound. What for?

George frowned. Well…she wouldn’t like Aberforth seeing her fumble about. That much was obvious. But he and Hermione both were both too nervous to poke at something so volatile without a safety net, so to speak.

George cleared his throat and leaned to catch her eye, asking a silent question. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe. If Hermione’s up for it.”

If Aberforth could sense the clumsy uncertainty over the subject, he was kind enough not to say so at the moment. Best enjoy that while it lasted.

“Alright,” Hermione said finally. “I suppose.” She crossed to the blue bag and gathered up the supplies spilling out of it. “Honestly, it feels a bit like having the wind taken out of one’s sails. All that work, and I thought we were so close, and—” She stopped short, chasing a bit of feather that slipped from the pocket. With a huff, she crammed it away. “It’s just a bit sad.”

Aberforth grunted, draping his sleeve over his eyes to block out a shard of sun. “That’s life.”

After a moment, he added: “Don’t be rushing Winky. She’ll not have some breakthrough from feeling like she’s let you lot down besides everything else. This isn’t the sort of thing you can headbutt your way through.”

Hermione looked horrified. “Of course not.”

George nodded, though he was a touch deflated as well. The trips across the globe, the hiking and mucky conditions and waiting—it had all piled up into yet more waiting. He’d woken that morning thinking today might be a history-making day. That Winky would finally close her hand around victory, and that there would be a properly wanded elf.

But there wasn’t. Not yet. And they were hardly the most affected. As Marcus liked to say, you could be sad and angry on behalf of someone else, but if you wanted them to be able to have space to work through their own response, it wasn’t considerate to let those empathetic feelings write over what your friend might think or say themselves.

So, instead, he sat upright and made a show of examining the pewter setup before him. “You think this cauldron’s pants, then?”

#

They trudged back to Hog’s Head and sent Fleur’s bag back with Nougat—a screech owl loitering above the roof that Aberforth claimed not to own, but fed regularly anyway.

A glossy flyer stuck to a lamp post near the pub, fluttering in the wind.

“We need YOUR help. Join Young Voices for a Wizarding Tomorrow.”

More of this?

Romilda Vane’s face winked in the center. The text below was even more nauseating: “Make new friends and attend fun events like professional Quidditch matches, The Warring Warlocks concerts, and gobstones game nights! If you care about protecting Wizarding tradition rather than seeing it torn apart, we want YOU for this exclusive new club.

Owl Romilda Vane for details on how to apply; ages fifteen and up.”

It was bright, in a bold font, and charmed to repel snow and rain. The design drew the eye with its pop of Slytherin green and glinting silver amidst the snowy grey stonefaces on this side of Hogsmeade.

He’d created enough adverts to know a solid one when he spotted it. Unfortunately, this one was rather well done. Sleek. Tugging on all the right strings, for the kids who would read it. And the more sinister implications would be muffled beneath the glossy, moneyed promise of expensive fun.

Juggling the box with his brewing kit, George tore it from the lamp. It left a shred of emerald parchment behind, ripping a hole right over Romilda’s left eye.

Oh well.

The eye remained, rather like the cover of one of Hermione’s muggle paperbacks.

She peeked around his shoulder, then sighed. “Oh, that,” she said. “Luna says they’re running it in every Resonant, as well.”

George skirted a lopsided cobble and marched back towards Aberforth’s pub. “Concerts? Quidditch matches? And for what purpose, d’you think?” If the Vanes and that paper were involved… He crunched the paper tighter in his hand. “Wizarding culture isn’t under attack. It’s more of the same rubbish, innit?” More of those putrid attempts for Romilda and her ilk to gather supporters for Vane’s poison.

“Yes.” Hermione sounded worried. “They’re moving for more influence every day.”

Aberforth cocked his head sharply towards the pub’s interior where he held the door. “You’re letting the heat out.”

George crumpled the paper and marched inside. Not stopping to dump the brewing supplies, he cut through the space like an arrow and chucked the balled-up flyer into the hearth, then lit it with a quick charm.

He glanced at Granger. She looked back, equally grim.

Aberforth made for the hob stashed behind the bar and put the kettle on. “Get on with it, then,” he said. “I don’t care about the frills or specifics, so long as you both manage to not kill each other.” He swiped his hand through the air, pointing between them. “You can sort the rest out on your own time.”

Hermione swallowed. “You don’t mean that literally; we’re not going to kill each other.”

It sounded more like a frightened question than a statement. George dropped the brewing supplies’ box on the bartop.

Aberforth dusted his hands, then crossed leisurely to bolt the door and draw the curtains. “Who’s to say.” Then, he began to clear stools, fire pokers, and loose clutter out of the bar room. Altogether, it wasn’t terribly reassuring.

The older man floated George’s box into a small cupboard beneath the counter as George waited for a punchline that wasn’t going to come.

A whistle pierced the air, and George started.

Oh. The kettle.

Hermione had got Aberforth that kettle, as a bit of a “thank you” for the extra help with their magical complications during the Phoenix trip.

He knew because she’d placed the order not a week before—a new model of Tinworth’s Speedy Boiler—which was copper and formed, enchanted, produced, and sold by special order only from a pair of Goblin sisters near the coast.

Aberforth was already using it. Nary a thank you note, but the sight of it on the hob spoke volumes.

The old man tipped his chin in the stove’s direction, and the cooktop rushed to obey. Kettle, spoon, and supplies drifted around the work surface and began to fix a cuppa, mixing tea with something from a dusty, brown bottle. “I hope not,” he said, continuing the earlier train of conversation. “You’ve both made yourselves disgustingly irreplaceable.”

“Aw,” George said.

Aberforth kept talking over him. “I can handle a potent enough spell to put one or both of you under, in the case that serious injury or death appears imminent,” Aberforth swept his hand in a horizontal line over his chest. “That’s it, and it’s not full proof. The rest is up to you, so you’d better mind your limits.”

“And if we’re not certain where those might be?” Hermione said, faltering.

Aberforth’s tone went a bit tight. “Then find out.” He jabbed a finger at them. “If you aim to use this as you’d planned, you’ll need to know how to share magic on a keystone run without losing your head or blowing something up.” He moved to the stove to pick up his tea, adding “—if that’s possible” in a gruff sort of voice, under his breath.

Brilliant. “Quite bracing, seeing him so confident about the odds,” George said.

His hands had never been so deep in his own pockets. He could feel Hermione’s pulse racing like a stampeding centaur in the flutter coming from his ring. Could she sense the same? Sometimes, he grew so used to it that he didn’t even notice. Other times, it was the only thing he could feel, like it sucked all his attention in and held it—the novelty of Hermione’s heart beating under his finger, and the knowledge that she could sense the same in return.

“Is that a matter of concentrating?” Hermione said, digging her journal out of her remaining, old school bag.

“It’s probably not a matter of letting fly with common sense and rational thought.” Aberforth got snippy when he was worried.

“He means me,” George said flatly. “I’ve been having more difficulty there than you.”

Aberforth stirred the spoon in his cup. “From what I’ve seen, you go equally brainless, though it does seem to explode out of you later in more reckless a fashion.” He cast a wary glance at the corner. “Magic doesn’t all move alike. It’s possible you’re not used to the force of hers, yet.”

“Because she’s stronger,” George said. Obvious, that. He was competitive, not blinkered. Granger’s magic didn’t frighten him. Nor did it make him feel small. It was part of her.

And yet Granger looked a bit nervous at the remark.

George lifted his shoulders and brows in unison. “I do fancy you that way, all formidable,” he whispered, then winked.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but a little smile peeked out.

Aberforth cleared his throat, clearly quite done with the both of them. “More that she’s different,” he said flatly. “You’ll see.”

Illuminating.

Hermione twisted her hands a bit. “Where would you recommend starting, exactly?”

It was as if she fancied working through this like it was an assignment. Adorable, but George still needed a longer explanation of whatever “different” meant.

“I’d recommend taking a few years to really find out the whole of what I was getting into,” Aberforth said shortly.

“Yes, thanks,” George cut in.

Aberforth rubbed his face, ire falling away. “I don’t know. Focus on not dying.”

That seemed a bit more concrete than “start with a handshake.”

Hermione squinted down at her journal, clearly still at a loss. “Alright. ‘How not to die,’ then.” She phrased it like a textbook heading as she scrawled it onto a blank page. “Alright, um—okay.”

She seemed shaken. Like she wasn’t quite certain of how to handle all this. Normally, she was a fountain of ideas on a research project. Now, she looked small.

Aberforth watched her for a bit. “Fine.” He set his tea down, picked up a rickety wooden chair, and carried it before a table bolted to the floor. He pointed at George, then jabbed his finger down at the seat. “You, here.”

George shuffled over as Aberforth directed Granger to a second spot, beside the chair. She looked nervous. Was there reason for that? He couldn’t quite tell if Aberforth’s doomsday commentary had been ornery grumbling or sincere.

The chair squeaked as George sat. Aberforth had him put his hand face up on the table, then glared at Hermione before retreating to a stool in the corner. “That’s the end of my direction. You picked this; you sort it.” Upon settling himself there, the older man summoned his cup of tea once again and pulled a small booklet from the inner pocket of his robes, which he began to mutter over and make small marks in.

Granger chewed on her lip. “Are we meant to begin now?”

Aberforth’s reply was wooden: “I’ve got to restock my potions stores, and this is as good a time as any to sort that.” He grunted. “Get on with it. I’ll be here if something goes wrong.”

Hesitating, Hermione laid her journal out, rested the quill below the new header, and then looked at George like he was thin pottery tottering on the edge of a shelf.

Understanding clicked into place.

George tapped the base of his own palm. “I’ve done magical tinkering before,” he said. “I’m quite resilient, you know.”

Hermione sighed.

He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Tiptoeing won’t do us much good. We’ve got to find the limits, then work our way back from there. Aberforth’s right. We can practice more of small stuff just the two of us, but if we’re going to use this time with a minder, I’d rather we sort how to recognize danger than bump into it unawares, on our own.”

Hermione removed a familiar scribble-filled book and laid it down. “I hardly understand a word of it,” she whispered, blinking hard.

The confession seemed to cost her a great deal.

Now, it must be said, as a general sort of aside, that his father’s notes were not terribly clear. If George had been anyone else other than himself or Fred, maybe, there was strong chance he’d have lost the plot.

The man organized his reflections like the subject of conversation were yet another muggle device. He often referred to it interchangeably as such, and tracking which metaphor was being used was a chore for even a fellow tinkerer like himself. The opening pages started simply enough, with bits like

“Battyries hold power, though not indefinitely, and if over charged—”

and

“Eckeltricity’s marvelous, but it does zap the fingers if you’re not mindful.”

But the simplicity eased into puzzling meanderings about fixing jammed cogs or reminders for regular maintenance (as if the bond were a temperamental car), with endless “special notes” and “in the case of’s” and such. The result was a flexible, highly, highly specific ruleset that focused principally on his parents’ exact niche of life experience. Near the end, it became so intricate as to be nearly wholly irrelevant; the metaphors grew to the complexity of clock-making and management, with detailed diagrams and scribbled out bits and water stains like his father had accidentally left the pages out in the rain. George couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It really rather looked like Dad had gotten distracted chatting about the Weasley clock, which was magic, though a magic unrelated to the magical bond the rest of the notes focused on caring for.

At least, that’s what he assumed. Maybe he’d utterly, totally misunderstood.

All through the margins, there were little, jagged and dark-inked exclamation points. “!! Check the apothecary pricing down at Godric’s Hollow” and “!!! Birthday soon—fix stove and see to vault, then Malkin’s” and “!! Martin for dinner next Wednesday; help boys clean the sitting room.” Quick study revealed the pattern: All these seemed to be connected to his mother’s daily work, at least loosely.

As far as George could tell, that meant the magical bond was likely connected in with everything—what each of them were feeling, how tired they might be, whether they were battling a nasty case of Dragon Pox or Grindylow flu. The bond was not an isolated part to be extracted. You couldn’t wrench bits and pieces from a car engine at random and expect it to function. Keeping things in proper magical order meant taking care with the rest of life’s demands, too.

None of that seemed related to not blowing a hole through the wall by accident, though.

“S’alright,” George said. He’d taken up the volume and begun flipping through the pages at random. “When I’m sorting a new charm, I start from the beginning and run through the movements until something goes wrong.” He tossed the book down and held out his hand. “How’s that sound?”

Hermione relented.

After some brief discussion of methods, and a few momentary breaks to consult his dad’s notes (which contained loads of remarks about “patience” and “dialogue” and very little about what to do for this precise situation), they began.

In scant increments, Hermione would let the flow of her magic go, a bit more and more, until George lost control and track of it. That seemed to be where most of his issues lay, so that’s where they’d start.

Simple in theory. Rather impossible in practice.

At first, it was heady and intoxicating and fizzy, even despite the slips of her worry coming through the myriad of lovely, mushy feelings. But George furrowed his brow and looked closer. To have a better idea of how things went wrong, he needed to sort where the magic went and how it moved. It felt like listening for a door closing two rooms over with a wireless blaring beside your head. But if he concentrated, he could keep his senses a bit better than anticipated.

“Alright,” he murmured. “Bit more.”

The stream of light leapt, and the trails of it fountained into heated riptides. It seemed to rush for him, then surge about, tangling and joining with his own. It buzzed, a cacophony demanding action and use. George grit his teeth.

Accepting magic and not giving any back felt like taking on water in a rowboat. Gleaming, sozzling, fantastical water.

Keeping his mind in order and attempting to dictate how her magic moved in his system—as in, begging it to slow down, to settle–that was more like trying to hold a hippogriff back from flight by two hands around a rough lead. You’d strip the skin off your palms and find yourself dangling over your rooftop.

He sat with his left fist clenched round the table, while she shoved a pressurized stream of heat and light through his right wrist.

The books, and his dad’s notes, even their prior encounters with sharing—it hadn’t prepared him for this. Not at all. It was the difference between saying you might drive a car off a cliff and feeling it happen.

Her magic was indescribable. Different. So, so bloody fast. Staggering.

But still, he could manage. He could. She was holding so much back, and they’d never get anywhere if she didn’t give it her all.

“Come on, Granger,” George muttered through his teeth. “I’m not bloody porcelain.”

All at once, it was like being pulled off his feet and thrown headlong into a hurricane.

George’s head wrenched back and his muscles tightened, locking into place. He couldn’t move, or breath, or think to speak, it was—it was—indescribable.

“George?” Her voice was panicked and sharp.

“Not—yet—”

Later, he’d reflect that it was like a warped, delightful version of being fried by a Baubillious or rather like he imagined grabbing a live, muggle power line to feel like. When his dad wrote about “eckeltricity,” it seemed more shocking, startling, or tingly. Not like his very insides might be burned out. But pleasantly. Like he’d perhaps enjoy it.

The edges of his vision began to darken.

There it was.

The limit.

Reeling, he pushed his magic against the current, up towards Hermione’s fingers. At his request, some of her own charged to join, and the trickle carved a small path and pressed back up, through her skin. Scarcely more than a single drop, and Hermione gasped. At once, she lifted her hand. The oncoming flow raging through him cut, leaving an ocean he likely couldn’t hold for more than a minute or two behind.

George fell against the table, gasping.

Then he began to laugh.

Really, it shouldn’t have been hysterical. Only it was.

“Found it,” he croaked. “That’d be my limit.”

Hermione’s face was flushed dark, though any shadow of pink was thoroughly washed out with the golden tint over his vision. He couldn’t catch his breath. His pulse was sprinting, and his head was light.

“I feel—”

“You’re shouting, George,” Hermione said, rather squeaky and faint.

George blinked. “Right,” he said. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. There was so much—so much magic.

“Now settle it, before you blow the pub to bits,” Aberforth groused.

George tried. He did.

Useless, though. Like using a handbrake on a broom to try and stop a train. The effort left him feeling raw and sore, just under his sternum. “I think it’s too much,” he croaked. “If I keep going like this, it feels like something might snap or—or fry.” An odd word, but that’s what it felt like. Instinctually, he grasped for her hand.

His insides felt charged and packed, like energy was shoving against his seams, and if he wasn’t careful, it might splinter him apart.

“Sit—just sit and—” He sucked a breath through his teeth. “I’ve got to give some back.”

Hermione nodded.

Sparks popped around his knuckles.

He tried to send it through gently, but the “brakes,” as it were, had been overtaxed a bit, and he was stuck staggering through a series of clumsy surges that started and stopped as he ripped his hand away.

The absolute lack of dexterity and control made him queasy.

But the feel of Hermione’s magic, that was slowly becoming more and more distinct. He could see, now, what Aberforth meant.

It wasn’t that Hermione had an endless store. It’s that hers charged more easily than it strolled. George’s crept, spun, danced, and wiggled—however he wanted to move it—but managing the sort of force that came naturally to her would be beyond him in most situations.

As he “gave” more of it back, his head cleared enough. After that rush, it felt impossible to say for certain whether any bits of her magic remained. Some tentative casting didn’t net any extreme results. A shiver or a quirk, like an impulse to caste the spell a bit differently than he was accustomed to. But no holes blasted in the wall, yet.

If he paid proper attention, it seemed he could “balance” the magics’ flow better and sort any unpredictable twists with greater control. It was the paying attention that was perishingly hard.

He said as much, so that Hermione could mark it down.

Then they tried the reverse. Without her sharing back at the same time, it was hard to tell what exactly was happening.

She seemed less worried about over-casting, clearly. But her responses were as muddled as his own had been, her smile dreamy and giggly, and her eyes shining bright.

That was the start of their practice. Meager and humble, but brilliant all the same. Despite his occlumency training, it seemed impossible that he’d ever be proficient enough to keep his mind in order when they had sparks flowing between them.

They’d have a long way to go before they were ready to do what they wanted—to use their magic more proficiently together than they might apart.

###

[1/2]