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Chapter Text

"Duel (II)"

Part IV: Vinewood

*“I have been intrigued to notice that their owners are nearly always those witches or wizards who seek a greater purpose, who have a vision beyond the ordinary and who frequently astound those who think they know them best.”

#

George

October 14, 1999, 7:45 p.m.

Trouble hunted him, didn’t it.

A bleak thought for a bleak evening, but George indulged it while he restocked Ten Second Pimple Vanisher. It usually got picked clean in Diagon before a weekend, and he’d been too preoccupied to brew more until Fred handled it that morning.

George himself had been a bit wrapped up in a floo call from his dad at the time, or he’d have refilled the display as Fred finished.

“I’m worried about Bill,” Arthur had said. “Doesn’t seem himself. Has he said anything to you?”

No. But Bill wasn’t one to share, and Dad hadn’t given any details.

When pressed, Fred had added a bit more insight: “Yeah. Harry overheard Mum and Dad chatting about it. I guess Dad caught him covered in soot and sleepwalking in the living room at the Burrow—while you lot were in New Zealand. Half-past three in the morning, and Bill was just standing there. Staring at an empty chair.”  

Chilling, that.

George’s stomach twisted at the thought.

Or was that hunger? He snorted downwards, still sorting the inventory. “None of that, now.”

Food later. If he finished this up, he could eat with Hermione when she got through at the Ministry. The last couple of days had left her “loads behind on everything, and I mean, truly, George—everything under the sun.” Likely, it’d be a late evening.

George bit down on his lips.

Fred reckoned Bill was going a bit barmy with Fleur’s pregnancy; Ginny thought it had something to do with Bill’s mild werewolf-ish symptoms. Hermione thought it might be brought on by lack of sleep.

George was less worried about what had caused it and more worried about who it was happening to: The person least likely to accept help in the whole, sodding family. Brilliant.

George plucked another vial from the crate by the little, red topper.

Bill didn’t take intervention kindly when he was in a decent mood. Put him in a foul one, and the odds got no better.

Just that afternoon, Fred had apparently gotten a door to the nose when he’d popped over to “check in” after Dad’s call.

Bill didn’t seem himself, no.

And he wasn’t the only one. According to Hermione, Harry was acting a bit dodgy, too. He wasn’t distant, exactly, but he’d been less chatty about work. He’d put off a meeting he’d promised to attend and hadn’t explained why. Almost like he was cross. Or guilty?

About what, though?

George’s brow knit. Not the wedding. Harry’d seemed keen enough that day and after it. He lifted the crate housing the glassware storage rack a bit higher against his chest.

Were Harry and Gin having problems? Bugger. First Bill, now Harry and Gin.

Was he meant to say something? Charlie wouldn’t, but then Charlie almost never did. What was there to say?

“Stop acting weird.” From him? That’d go down smooth as a cold pint, now wouldn’t it.

A vein behind his eye pinched, like the stress was squeezing down on it. George picked up another four vials, clunked them into the display, and firmed his jaw.

If cracks started showing now, a bludger like Ron’s inevitable upset would shatter the family glass whole.

The bell rang, George called a perfunctory “Welcome in!” while he slotted another handful of little glass vials into the grinning display. Campfire and bitter wormwood pierced his nostrils before he spotted the latecomer.

A muggy, rain-clogged evening, the smoky scent had been mixed with damp and grime. It spread and hung over the shop like a wet cloud as only noxious brew traces could. Distinct from the sharper metallic smell from their fireworks stock and blast powders, this was more organic. Like rotted leaves thrown into an entire vat of bitter Wormwood.

George cleared his throat. “What sort of Mischief or Mayhem for you today?” His voice had a bit of a croak in it, and the contrasting patterns of his own robes began to clench the pinch behind his eye into the talons of a migraine.

Hermione had popped up in the workroom unexpectedly around noon. A lovely bit of necking had ensued in lieu of lunch.

He’d not regret that, but he might’ve taken a break a few hours ago to wolf something down. Now his stomach hurt along with his head and nose. Merlin. Why hadn’t he flipped the sign and locked up a bit early?

Rent.

Galleons were due, and if the store wasn’t open, stragglers heading home from an after-work pint would spend their impulsive coins at Gambol and Japes.

If Fred were mucking about, he’d grin and say, “We’re professionals, brother of mine. Whether someone arrives at opening or ten minutes to close, they’ll get the best Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes treatment.”

In light of that, George swallowed it all down and turned to face the new customer with the same daring, mischief-laden, lopsided smile as always.

A bloke with a patchy beard and patchier cloak stood before the till, gaze dodging from one aisle to the next.

George’s shoulders slumped, but he hid it with a bend to place the Pimple Vanisher stock on the floor.

It wasn’t the fellow’s shabby robes that landed like bricks on the shoulders. George’d worn his fair share of mended things. Nor was it the smell. If someone smelt of that much Wormwood, they likely needed it.

What landed like a load of bricks was the way the sod moved. It was the swiftness of the man’s examination—how it scooped over products to return time and again to the unmanned till. Searching for opportunity. Gauging risk.

That look flickered over many faces. Old. Young. Rich. Poor.

As a shop owner in Diagon, George had faced more than a few sets of sticky fingers. Most of the people daft enough to actually decide to try their luck in his establishment were mere children, though. The others usually backed off when they realized George and Fred were wise to their impulse.

The fellow fingered his cloak pocket with his right hand.

Brilliant.

George sighed. He didn’t have the required brain power left behind his eyes to sort something like this today.

He reached in his apron, only to discover he’d left his wand in the flat during the amorous lunch break.

“Rats.” George mouthed Hermione’s choice curse word, clenching his teeth and glancing aside. How had he not noticed?

He’d been at the books for most of the day or minding the till, then shelving fireworks and potion blends. He fought back a grimace at his own precautions. Inventory with the fragile stock didn’t mix well with magic. Too easy to drop things that must not be dropped under any conditions, and he’d taken to being more careful. Hermione did worry, and—

Right. Well.

What to do, then?

He couldn’t just pop over and get it. He’d come back to a bloody empty till, or this man caught in one of Fred’s non-lethal but horribly complicated magical traps.

Nothing novel came to him; his aching head drew a blank as George glanced over the top of a shelf.

Pale as an arctic pixie, this bloke. Looked a bit gaunt as well, like Percy did after a full moon.

George did a bit of mental maths. Last moon had been over a week or so ago. By now, Perce had usually perked up to his usual standard of wiry irritation.

Percy had work, though. And family to help.

George flipped through options in his head, pretending not to notice the dodgy behavior. “Getting colder, innit?” he called. “My dad would say it’s brass monkeys out, but I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Campfire and wormwood.

Wormwood was common enough in potions, especially healing potions. If they’d brewed one, it hadn’t done enough.

Probably needed help.

Was he hungry?

George cleared his throat and wiped his hands on the front of his apron. One thing at a time.

He could be wrong. It was a bit rotten to assume a customer had ill intentions unless they showed so themselves. He’d been raised better than that. And if the warning signs proved true, this wasn’t a sullen kiddie skirting their mum’s attention during a shopping trip to Diagon.

George’d grown up poor, but he’d never been hungry. Not really. The best way to handle it was to head it off, before any potential ill-thought plan could work itself out. Hermione liked to argue that crimes born from desperation were by and large preventable.

“Don’t think I’ve seen you in here before?” George called. “Care for some tea and a bite? On the house, of course.” He kept his voice open and friendly. “It’s a slow night, and I was about to close up and nip over to the Leaky anyways.”

No reply.

Had he offended him?

Charity could grate. He knew that as well as anyone. Should’ve been more delicate about it.

George paced through the Skiving Snackbox shelving, now searching for the dark blonde mop of hair beneath the knit cap.

“Mate?” he repeated.

Nothing.

George stepped around the back of the aisle display. Then he shifted closer, and the man came into view.

He gripped the till counter with both hands, a single Fever Fudge wrapped in wax paper on the counter before him.

Merlin, the man was even thinner than he’d thought. It wasn’t so visible through the cloak, but with his arms up, the tendons and muscles in his wrist poked out. Skin stuck to his veins like damp tissues.

He didn’t meet George’s eyes. “Just this.” His voice was lightly accented, something vaguely central European. He looked towards the windows a moment, swallowing.

George glanced. The traffic had already slowed for the evening. Only the stray form of a short, retreating woman with shiny, grey curls beneath a tweedy pink hat.

Fewer witnesses.

Fever Fudge, here, could take that as yet another sign of opportunity.

George eased behind the counter. “No tea?”

The customer turned his face down, and George was left staring at the snags on the crown of the other man’s hat. The loose thread near the top had caught and worn away into a hole that would continue to spread if it wasn’t mended.

Pity Fred was at the Harpies’ match. With two of them around, most shoplifters didn’t try.

George made to push the sweet towards the man, over the counter. “Free sample.”

Now, the customer met his eyes; wild, unhinged anger burned behind them.

George’s throat went tight.

The man slapped a few knuts on the counter.

Alright, then. No charity.

George’s face burned as he punched the purchase in. The till drawer popped open.

“Hands in the air,” the man snapped. A wand flashed out of nowhere, jabbing right at George across the counter.

Merlin’s pants.

George clenched his jaw and swore under his breath. The Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts in the drawer winked under the shop’s multicoloured lights. He grimaced down at them as he replied, “You don’t have to do this, Mate.”

A parchment sack dropped beside the till. The man’s hand was shaking as he released it. “All of it,” he croaked. The vague accent slipped away, clearly a bit of poorly done disguise.

Fantastic. Nothing like an inexperienced mugger to liven an evening.

George had never seen someone so terrified to commit a theft. If he tanked it to the floo, he might be able to go for back up without inciting accident, but there were too many explosives on the shelves for that to be a reasonable idea.

Then again, most people weren’t brave enough to point a wand at a Weasley, these days. Sod must’ve been truly desperate.

“Whatever it is you’re needing, I know people,” George said quietly. “I can help.”

“No talking.” Said with even less conviction than before.

George slowly lifted his eyeline, along with his brows. “Food? A place to stay?”

The man was shaking head to foot, and sweating under his hat.

“Aconite?” George murmured.

His assailant’s face contorted. “Shut up!” he roared, lifting his wand from George’s middle to his face. If he was a werewolf, chances were he’d not had access to a shower or proper housing since the last full moon, and that was only if he trusted the Ministry enough to use their current program.

Somehow, that seemed doubtful.

The simplest way to handle it would be to disarm him. George could manage it, likely, even wandless. Poor bloke was so shaken up he hadn’t remembered to even check if George was armed, and that could only mean this one hadn’t much experience when it came to dueling, either. A single, massively-draining-but-wholly-effective snap of his fingers, and the threat could be neutralized.

Provided the sod didn’t accidentally set off a Confringo or something.

And what happened after was a bit trickier. If he could convince the bloke to lower his wand, then—

A door in the back hall slammed open and shut, near the workshop. George stilled.

Oh, Merlin. Let it be Fred. Please, let it be Fred.

“Now!” the man snapped.

As George looked down, he spotted the emergency evacuation button. Blinking and red. Not ideal, but it’d do in a pinch.

George slipped his hand towards it beneath the counter.

Unfortunately, the thief clocked the same gesture. Panic and fear sharpened his gaze, and he jolted forward, hissing. A stinging jinx rebounded off the back of George’s palm, and he hissed, snatching it out of sight.

Shoddy casting. Half the spell had hit his sleeve cuff.

George blinked at the mark. “Thanks a bunch,” he deadpanned.

They ought to move that button—somewhere it wouldn’t look like reaching for a bloody wand. George looked towards the back room without thinking.

“Don’t!” the man cried. “Now stick it in the bag, or—or I’ll blast a hole through your head!”

He was t’d off, and in a fit state to hurt them both.

Exhausted, George nodded. If Fred saw this, he’d not announce himself loudly. Best to keep the attacker calm and satisfied until help could intervene.

George kept his movements slow and predictable so as not to startle, digging into the drawer to grasp a handful of Knuts.

“Galleons first!” Up close, the Wormwood scent was sharper. “Faster!”

George nodded and reached for a roll of gold coins next.

Then, things got infinitely more complicated: Between the bars of music, the wind-up toys’ clicking, and the Pygmy Puff churrs, a squeak echoed. A thud—slight and muffled. Like a book hitting the floor.

A squeak of that resonance came from one source. One. And it was distinctly not a part of the constant chorus of an empty shop. A sound like that came from a muggle trainer, darting against cherry wood flooring.

George’s stomach dropped.

Please let it something else. Anything else, really.

When he snuck a glance at the Wonder Witch aisle, Hermione Jean’s gaze drilled into his.

Wide. Wild. Paperback dropped at her feet.

“Hand it over, or I’ll blow you to—”

One heartbeat, two.

The man twisted.

Force like a hurricane slammed through the shelves.

#

At first, George hadn’t known who cast it.

For as the fellow turned towards his wife, his balance began to shift, and his wand arm twisted, in the infancy of a motion to swing it towards Granger.

And George’s mind had stuck and held on that horrifying image.

But his body—George’s body had moved. Something wild and frightened had leapt up his chest like a river of fire.

In the shock, George had felt the twinge of spellfire—the bite of his fingers snapping. But the protective impulse had led to a different charm, like the magic was cutting down a side-alley it knew better than he did—like it followed a different instinct, almost.

The Stupefy had surged from his flung hand like lightning strike and left a thick, honeyed Chamomile over his tongue.

The bolt of red had blossomed like ink in water against a sudden, cracking blue barrier.

His mind had registered the glowing, translucent shield moments before the after-echo of Hermione’s own, senseless shout. But the magic from her end split—it erupted into a Protego Horribilis, and something—something else.

Something that’d thrown the thief through the seasonal Skiving Snackbox displays in the center aisle, out the multi-paned glass windows.

George didn’t care so much about the windows. He cared about the people. Especially, obviously, his wife. Galleons were a titchy matter; his wife’s safety was less so.

Yet through the blue Protego Horribilis encasing him behind the till, the massive gap in the front window snared at him and filled him with a feeling of cold.

Hermione stepped through it, into the darkened street. From here, even, her pupils looked small, her every muscle tensed and poised like a bloody jaguar. Under the unravelling disillusionment charms tied to her hair pin, the purple, sparking remnants from hours before hadn’t yet faded in her eyes. But the bubbly giggles from their lunch date were nowhere to be seen.

For a moment, it felt as if she should look back at him, she might not know him.

Hermione stood over the flattened man on the pavement with a look of rage, a wand in each fist, and one at her feet. Her shoulders rose and fell in deep swoops, the tick in her jaw sharp enough to cut diamonds.

With a low swoop, she bent a final time, yanking up the fellow’s left sleeve. There was nothing but bare skin. Hermione stilled.

Her expression blanked.

Meanwhile, the dome of shield around George was thicker than his splayed hand, from wrist to fingertip. His jaw went slack at the strength of it. He couldn’t have cast a Protego better himself.

In a way, perhaps he might have. That was his wand in Granger’s left hand. Hers, in her right.

Hermione lifted her chin, throat bobbing as she stepped over the frozen man and back onto the shop floor by way of the massive, gaping hole in the glass.

George’s mind shorted.

“I’ll ring Harry,” she said, like she was proposing a new sandwich shop for dinner. Hermione flipped the sign to “Mischief Managed” and murmured the locking charms under her breath, all of which cast from the tip of the cedar wand under her arm, rather than the vinewood she extended.

As if locks would do any good with the windows done in.

“I don’t know that we need Podmore’s people for this,” George said, voice in rasp. “It wouldn’t have—I mean—the Ministry might—”

Hermione pivoted and crossed to him. The Protego vanished as she held his wand back towards his reach. “He’ll need to see a healer,” she said, seemingly distracted and all business. “I didn’t intend to send him so far.”

“I had it well in hand,” he said quietly. “I was trying to avoid a fight.”

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “And you likely would have, so long as he didn’t flinch and accidentally blow the both of you up.”

She already had her modified muggle phone out, and she held up a hand as George jumped the counter with a coaxing, “Darling, hold on—”

“Yes, Harry,” Hermione said. It was all in the same, unnatural tone. Brittle and dry and sans-inflection.

Bloody Hell. George wheeled around. Bloody Hell, he was still out there.

Quickly, he levitated the poor sod back through the window, lest he get trampled by a passing cart or Hippogriff.

“Someone’s tried to rob the shop; we’ve neutralized the situation, but I thought—” She stepped back over the man as she picked the stray, wrapped Fever Fudge from the floor and charmed it to zip back to its lone, upright bin. “Yes, precisely.”

His hands felt empty, and his chest ached.

She wasn’t meeting his eyes, though, so he stooped to check the man. Wormwood and campfire filled his lungs yet again, and his suspicion mounted.

Sure enough. There it was, peeking from beneath the hem of the rumpled cloak, placed on the opposite arm—the one she hadn’t checked, beneath the torn fabric.

George gave a short whistle, causing Granger to wheel back towards him.

He pointed at the side of the man’s exposed wrist, where a moon brand shone in scar tissue.

Hermione’s face flickered with some emotion that wouldn’t come to the surface. She glanced up at George, watching. For a moment, she seemed frightened. Not at the werewolf, surely. At herself.

But the glimmer was gone before he could sort it out, something steelier taking its place.

George stared back. “Hermione,” he said. There was something low and almost pleading in his voice, though he hadn’t meant for it to be there.

Things like this were right complicated, and the Ministry didn’t do complicated—especially when it came to werewolves.

She seemed to read all this off of him, scanning his face like she would a page in a book.

Hermione’s jaw flexed. She swallowed. “And Harry?” she added, tone a bit shaky. “Send someone discreet. I suspect—” her voice dropped low as she paced for the werewolf to cast some diagnostic runes for vitals and the like.

Meanwhile, George made use of a shoddy charm to gather up the window glass. They’d have to be replaced, likely, but if a reporter stumbled into the mess, there was a high probability of the werewolf getting his face blasted all over the next morning’s papers.

This stretch of street was mercifully empty for now, the majority of their neighbors quite used to loud noises and chaos during operating hours. But once the Leaky’s bar closed, there would be a late surge.

The glass held cracks like spiderwebbing running all through it.

George turned around when he was through.

Hermione knelt over the werewolf, still. But just then, she was staring at the windows, at George.

Like she could see a similar break pattern under his skin.

#

George slumped against the hearth in the emptiness after giving the initial statement to Parvati and another member from the Being Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. They’d taken an account of Hermione’s miscasting, the trouble before it, and transported the fellow to a Mediwitch. (The physical damage hadn’t been permanent, thankfully. A few potions and a bit of charmwork, and the poor sod would make a smooth recovery.)

Had Fred been there, things would’ve been resolved before Granger even arrived. George smoothed his palm down the front of his apron, feeling the smooth curve of his ring on the wrong hand.

His skin felt cold, his chest tight.

Fred would’ve looked at the bloke and clocked the same details.

Together, they might’ve circumnavigated the need for an auror. When faced with two shopkeeps, the man might’ve abandoned his plans and settled for offered help.

But if the situation had been reversed, if he’d stumbled upon a scene like that with his wife on the receiving end of those threats...the other chap wouldn’t be faring nearly so well.

George dragged his feet through the back door, then up the staircase. By the time he reached the flat entry, Hermione’s voice was level and smooth on the other side of the wood. He eased it open and stepped through.

“You’ll need to write up a second report on my actions,” Hermione said, facing the hob. “And it should be reviewed by a neutral party, someone who won’t dismiss it.” She spoke mechanically, like she was reading out of a textbook.

“Even if disproportional, the Ministry doesn’t intervene much in defensive measures taken in one’s own home or place of work,” Harry said.

That was an understatement. You could likely get away with murder if you could trick the victim into stepping over the wrong ward.

Hermione folded her arms. “If there’s no formal recourse available, I’m willing to pay for any care he needs.”

There was a silence. One that George couldn’t quite interpret. He closed the door gently behind himself.

“It might as well have been Remus,” Hermione said.

Then, Harry broke it: “Alright, but—”

“I’m perfectly fine, Harry,” Hermione said, shrugging lowering the kettle. Her voice was quite flippant and high, and the furthest thing from “fine.”

With Hermione, “perfectly fine” usually meant “hiding my panic.”

“Look at me,” she continued, pointing the kettle spout at her brown Ministry robes. “Do I look upset to you?”

Harry shot George a glance that read something like “run while you can.”

Granger smacked the kettle down. “Harry.”

She wasn’t unruffled. No. But that sounded a bit more normal, at least.

Meanwhile, George was a right mess. Hermione had been the one to engage, the one to cast with someone else’s wand, and the one to call it in, the one to handle the messiest bits.

And yet here she stood, making tea and bossing Harry like it was a regular Tuesday. A bit snippy, but not crying her eyes out. Forming sentences and focusing well enough to manage a few cuppas.

He wasn’t reassured.

George swallowed, easing his apron off.

Hermione turned, then clicked her tongue softly. “Oh, Georgie,” she said softly. “You look—” then, like she’d thought better of it, she redirected. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He did.

Harry continued in a hushed, careful tone. “We’ll need George to come in tomorrow for a statement. But my guess is if this was due to extenuating Aconite circumstances, they’ll give him some sort of probation; then try and help him out a bit.”

“You guess or you know?” George loosened his tie with a sharp yank.

Harry sighed.

“I’m the one manning the bloody till,” George said tightly. “If they won’t give him a fair shake, I don’t want it on record.” His pitch sloped up, then dipped back down, breaking over “record.” The effect was a bit more put out than he cared to admit.

“He did try to rob you,” Harry said, with a glance at Hermione. “Remus wouldn’t have done that.”

“Right,” George snapped. “Remus never broke a rule, did he?” Lupin had been a ruddy Marauder, even if he was one of the tamer ones.

Harry folded his arms. “Well—”

“Don’t make him out to be a saint, Harry. It’s not doing Remus or any of them any favors.” George pointed at the windows, adamant, angry. The picture of what’d happened, the man turning from the counter, and the wand shifting towards Hermione both flashed before his eyes.

Hermione folded her arms. “He’s right. You can’t group them all into Greybacks and Lupins, though if you must, this one did seem closer to the second.” Her jaw flexed. “He was quite shaky.”

Harry rubbed the side of his head. “Noted. But half the population believes werewolves are more aggressive and evil by nature. With everything happening at work—” he winced and trailed off before restarting. “I’m happy when the general public can admit good werewolves exist. That werewolves who rob someone at wandpoint aren’t doing it by incurable—um, what’s the word—” he gestured at Hermione.

“Compulsion.”

“Yes, that,” Harry said.

“It’s circumstance, not nature,” George said.

“Yes, George,” Harry said, shortly. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

George glared at Harry. They were arguing the same point, now, yet his chest still felt tight and buzzy with anger.

“You’re being weird,” George said finally. “Acting right dodgy, lately.”

Harry pivoted to fetch his grey cloak. “Really? I feel about as barmy as usual.” He furled it about his shoulders. “You, on the other hand, are looking for a someone to fight, and I’m a bit too tired to play hex dummy.”

A diversion. Harry’s teeth were all locked up, and he was speaking through them like he did when something highly unpleasant was afoot, or like when he was lying. But George didn’t feel like getting into it.

His bloody necktie wouldn’t loosen any further; the knot was snagged, somehow.

He turned to find Hermione’s gaze tracing him with the same intensity as she’d had outside—like a tense cat, waiting to spring to action.

George gave up on the knotted tie and ran his hands over his face. “It would’ve been alright.” In a minute or two, he’d believe it. Maybe.

“Of course.” Hermione crossed to his side. She leaned down and pulled a blinking “W” pin from the depths of the tie folds, then stepped away to place it on the table.

Right.

“Parvati and Edith manage okay?” Harry asked.

George nodded. “Did brilliantly,” he said, after a moment’s thought. Honestly, he didn’t remember much from the brief conversation. His attention had been fixed on what he’d find upstairs.

Harry headed for the floo. “Good. I’ll have a word with them before clocking out,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.” Then he pointed at Granger. “You, sit down. Take a moment to process.”

“I don’t need a moment,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been in Ministry meetings with more danger.”

Harry stared at Hermione. Hermione stared at Harry.

George had too much of a building headache to try to interpret their talking-without-talking. If they meant for him to understand, they’d say it aloud.

Harry gave up, finally, and took his exit via floo.

Hermione waited a good two milliseconds before rushing to the sofa. “George—” she started.

“Mm?” He lifted his head and blinked at her through the pounding in his skull.

“Are you…” She paused and shoved a curl behind her ear.

George pressed his hands over his chest and arms in a show of amused perusal, more for her benefit than his humor. “Right as rain, Love.” Then, he loosened the top button on his oxford.

She faltered, leaning down a bit, then dodging back up. “May I—”

George lifted his brows. This time, he wasn’t sure exactly where the question was going.

“I’m really alright,” Hermione stammered. “But, um, may I just love you for a bit?”

A capital idea.

George let his arms flop at his sides. “Yes, please.”

Hermione surged onto his lap. George responded in kind, hands and arms and breath all held. She was here. Here. The events hadn’t left a scratch on her. Still, he checked all over twice.

Then, he kissed her, gently, carefully, and thoroughly until he could be sure of it. It eased something that’d gone raw and pained when the terrified magic had ripped from his outstretched hand.

Yet once he’d calmed, Hermione continued.

It was like after that rubbish night in the corrections center—when they’d had to peel themselves off of Harry’s office wall.

Only more.

George’s brows went higher and higher, the migraine’s teeth faded to distant memory, and his hair became more of a lost cause than it ever had (almost like residual, Granger-y magic from earlier that day might be crawling through it). He quite forgot himself in the heady, buzzy glow.

The glow didn’t run much deeper, though. She didn’t share any new magic, not even when he kissed a bit into her cheek. Instead, she whispered that she was a bit rattled, if that was alright.

And of course it was.

George didn’t press the matter. She’d had enough of a day already. She’d even cast with his wand, and he’d—well, he’d done something with his hand. That was a substantial amount of not-quite-predictable magic in one evening.

Still, he wedged his nose to her cheek on a shallow breath and held it there, pausing their undertaking. “You alright?”

She darted back in before he could get a proper look at her. “I will be.”

That seemed an honest answer, considering their track record. He’d keep an eye on her, and—and—

Dear Merlin.

She’d finally got that pesky tie undone, and George got a bit distracted.

#

October 15, 1999, 11:30 a.m.

The ringing muggle phone at the unmanned desk trilled in its cradle, and memos flitted amidst the foot traffic. George ducked to the side to dodge a purple slip, then stepped closer to the cramped cubical to better hear the speaker.

“Pressing charges?” Parvati Patil asked each question in a succinct, lowered voice.

George folded his flatcap in his hands. “Um—no,” he said.

The office felt massive and packed, not a sign of Harry or Hermione, though traces of them lingered in the bullpen—muggle pens on some of the desks, a fellow eating takeaway from a non-magical source across the room. Little things that half-bloods and mugglebornes perhaps felt more comfortable bringing to work.

Parvati nodded, retrieved a thick slip of cream parchment, and replaced the other form to the drawer. “Right.”

“Weasley!” A hard smack on the shoulder made him jump. A short man George couldn’t name to save his life gave a smile, already marching down to the hallways leading to the meeting rooms.

And all the while, the phone jangled on and on. Blimey. Did no one answer those things?

“George?” Parvati asked. She already had another paper out.

He blinked. “The phone.” Red, plastic, with a coiled-up cord that looped under the desk. Looked nothing like Granger’s, or Fred’s contraptions. Where did it plug into? Muggle plugs had a plate-thing they went with, like a car stuck into a garage. But the Ministry didn’t have electrical outlets, did it?

Had Harry made a few changes, then? George tilted sideways to glance under the other desk. Not a plate-thing in sight. Outlet. That’s right. Hermione called them outlets.

“What about it,” Parvati said. She sounded so dreadfully put out that George almost didn’t answer the question.

“Well, it’s ringing,” he said, a bit awkwardly. He tried and failed to ease the moment with a joking grin.

Parvati was not amused.

She glanced over her shoulder to her deskmate’s cluttered space, the pilled-up grey cloak draped over the back of the swivel chair. Then, she answered the question he’d only inferred: “They can call back later.”

Later, it turned out, was a matter of seconds rather than hours.

The phone kept ringing.

George squinted. Loud noises were a Fred-and-George speciality, and he didn’t mind them so much when he was the one designing how they went and when they screeched. But the phone tugged at him in an odd way. Set his heart pounding and his hands sweaty.

No one would call a number unless they were muggleborne or close to someone who was, or perhaps a muggle friend or family member, even.

One couldn’t help but picture a taunt-faced Jane and Thomas Granger, pacing around the matching furniture set of their quaint townhouse sitting room, trying not to cry as they wondered what harm had befallen their daughter.

George frowned. “Could be important.”

Parvati sighed, leaned over, and scooped up the phone, staring blankly at him with a slight wrinkle between her brows. “DMLE, Patil speaking.”

A voice echoed through the speaker.

Parvati gave George a jaunty, “told-you-so” smile, drumming her fingers on the desk. “No,” she said pointedly. “This is his deskmate.”

Ah.

“Yeah,” Parvati said. “I’ll be sure to tell him.” She scratched a note onto the back of an old memo, inking over paper plane fold-creases. “You might try calling in a few hours.”

George scratched his jaw while Parvati hung up the line.

“Sometimes people sit when they come in.” Parvati’s arid voice clipped through his thoughts. She angled her head to the squat chair she’d summoned. George snorted and lowered himself into it.

“Let’s cut to the specifics. We’re both busy people. Property damage?” Parvati asked, returning to the second form.

“Um—” he squinted. “I dunno. Not really?” There hadn’t been any shattered product or spilt potions, at least. The shelves had been righted already, and the windows would be sorted by tomorrow. Perhaps a bit of a singe on some of the aisle displays, but all that would buff out with some of his mum’s special polish. None of that was specifically from this sod’s wand, though. “Nothing significant.”

Parvati scooted her quill nib down to another line. “Have you seen the assailant before?”

That was bloody impossible to answer confidently. George hunched over his knees, mopping both hands over his face. “I run a shop in Diagon; I’ve seen more than half the Wizarding people in this corner of the world at some time or another.”

Parvati sighed a bit. “I’ll rephrase. As best you recall, do you have any previous relationship with the man in holding.”

He was being difficult, wasn’t he? And he’d strictly told himself not to be a chore, no matter whoever Harry put him with to talk to. He’d done a whole routine in front of the mirror and everything.

Yet here he was. Being a chore.

Might be easier if the Ministry wasn’t the bloody worst place—

“George?”

George sat up, then flexed his hand against his trousers to still the jittery feeling working through it. His mouth felt a bit dry, and his throat went scratchy. “Um, no.”

He’d give the whole arm to have Granger beside him, but that’d probably draw the wrong sort of attention. George Weasley sitting for a DMLE interrogation with Granger holding his hand like he’d done something truly awful.

No, thanks.

Parvati nodded and scribbled something down. Her question sank deeper into his consciousness.

George leaned forward. “Sorry, he’s in holding?”

Her thick, black plait slipped over her shoulder as she lifted her head. “A secure room at Mungo’s, until he’s recovered. Can’t exactly put him up at the Leaky, now can we?”

George yanked on his tie, folding his shoes beneath his chair. “Secure room? Is that really necessary? I think his motivations were likely—”

“There isn’t a place on the form for your opinion on that,” Parvati said calmly. “But if you’d like to offer a comment, there’s a nice box at the bottom for you to scribble in once we’re through.”

He couldn’t tell if her ire was at the form or him.

Best ask.

“I’m not allowed to offer opinions on his motive?” George said.

“Seeing as you don’t know him? Not on this form, no.” Parvati had the air of someone who could carry a full tea service across a tighrope. Singular focus, utterly unrattled.

George had the air of someone who’d snagged their jumper on a door handle twelve yards back and had yet to look down and notice the draft across his stomach. Jumpy and disturbed without knowing quite why.

George sat back and folded his arms. Sod the form. “He needed money, obviously—”

Merlin. He sounded right like Granger just then.

“—and anyone with eyes would see there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Sorry,” Parvati said through her teeth, lowering the quill with a blunted, bludgeoning sort of forced grin. “If you’d like to do my job, you’ll have to finish a few rounds of training first.”

George blinked.

Parvati’s throat flexed with a silent swallow, then she pursed her lips and hunched over the parchment. “I have bloody eyes.” She snorted a off-sounding laugh and straightened her robe around the collar. “Weasleys.”

He’d have thought she said “Weasley,” like an address, but there was a definite plural on the end of that, there. And the laugh—it was like she meant to pass it off as a joke, but it wasn’t anything she seemed to find actually funny. A sick, uncomfortable suspicion unfolded in his mind, and his stomach pinched.

George worked his jaw. “Something the matter, Parvati?”

One, two, three, four seconds of quiet. Then: “I’d like to get through this form, if you don’t mind.”

George scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, it’s just—see—werewolf bias is a rather significant issue with the Ministry, and I’d rather make sure that the parchment work isn’t a bodge job.”

He winced over the bluntness of the last bit, but it’s what he’d meant, really.

Parvati laid the quill down with deadly intensity. “Are you joking?” It was calm and quiet and said to the metal desk, yet fire stroked through her eyes.

That did it. People like Percy had enough problems, and someone carrying a bit of a grudge from the war likely wasn’t the ideal choice for casework involving lycanthropy. George glanced over his shoulder. “I can sort it with Harry, or—”

Parvati hissed through her teeth. “You’re not sorting it with Harry,” she said, as if that concept itself was offensive. “I am perfectly capable, and it’s on my desk besides.”

Merlin. The room had been a sea of noise minutes before, but now it felt like Parvati’s voice carried all the way to the lifts. The air seemed to close tighter around his head, along with the attention of everyone else around them.

“Look,” George said quietly; he paused to pull a deep breath in and tried to forget that he was in the blasted Ministry of all places. “Lavender was your best mate. Everyone knows that.”

Parvati’s breath had gone shallow, her expression livider each second. Bloody Hell. Maybe he should’ve made an excuse and fetched Harry without warning.

“And—well—you might not be the most, um, unbiased person for this—”

“Stop talking.” Parvati’s hand clenched, and she tucked it quickly beneath the desk, but he could still see the shake in her wrist.

George complied.

Parvati leaned back, soldiered her countenance into something passing for neutrality, and added in a flat, quiet tone: “Had Lavender lived, she would’ve been a werewolf.”

There were a few excruciating moments as Parvati shifted, picked up her quill, then delicately dipped it into the ink stand. “And in that situation, if anyone had treated her less than fairly, I’d have torn their heads off myself.” She scraped the nib a bit on the rim, just before a picture of her, an aging couple, and Padma, standing in front of a house decked in lights. In that photo, Parvati burst into laughter and squeezed Padma in a tight hug.

Scrape. Scrape.

The tension left Parvati’s shoulders with each motion. She lifted the nib to the light and checked it, then lowered it to the parchment again.

George rubbed the back of his neck to cover the prickle of heat seeping out of his collar.

He’d made a blunder, here.

“Personally, I think a bit of positive bias might be useful, considering, but if you think that makes me unfit to see to this case, then I shudder at who you fancy replacing me with.” She straightened the parchment’s position on her desk. “I understand how these forms are read and interpreted, where to place comments, and how to pose theories. If you drench the parchment work with off-topic answers, it’ll draw notice, and someone, somewhere will get it into their heads that werewolves are being permitted to commit unregulated acts of burglary. They’ll call for harsher punishments, for more regulation rather than relief effort.” Parvati sighed. “I know what I’m doing. You can trust that the full context has been and will continue to be accounted for in the proper places in the case documentation, even if I have to make a bloody new set of forms to do it.” She drew a thick line through a blank slot on the current page, then skipped down to the next one. “Moving on, then, if you should wish to report any property damage—”

“Parvati,” George said.

“—you may send owl or schedule with the administrative services desk to—”

“I’m sorry,” George said. “I wasn’t sure if you—you know.”

Parvati quirked her brow and pushed her braid back over her shoulder. “There are good wizards and bad wizards. Good lycanthropes and bad ones.”

“And maybe ones that are facing a nightmare because of the bloody Aconite shortage,” George said.

Parvati paused, scribbled something down, then added quietly, “Those too.”

They waded through the rest of the papers, George taking care to answer the questions as she asked them, then he left a bit of a comment in the provided box.

Something with enough clarity to illuminate the situation, but nothing that would raise brows about their hopes for upcoming werewolf legislation. Parvati was right. If certain members got wind of any politically motivated DMLE action, it’d cast an air of deception over their attempt for Moon Brand regulation repeals.

When they were through, George shuffled the papers over to Parvati and suffered through yet another round of the phone screaming at the nearby desk.

Meanwhile, someone was yelling in Sturgis’s office. Someone that sounded like Harry. But Harry hadn’t gone through that office door?

Must’ve floo-ed directly to the location.

Was everything alright?

Parvati’s gently cleared throat drew his attention back to the papers clutched in his hand. He winced and released them to her.

She began on a cursory glance through them, likely double checking everything, and George took an opportunity to count up a few breaths, holding the pressure in before releasing like Marcus had taught him.

“Didn’t mean to make like you weren’t, um, competent,” George said after he’d settled a bit.

She rolled her eyes, tucking the quill in her braid like Hermione sometimes did. “I didn’t mean to get cross, either. It’s only—” She hesitated.

George motioned for her to go on, even though the Ministry’s charm-filtered air was beating down on him like a Quidditch bat to the lungs.

Parvati turned to the filing cabinet beside her desk and pulled a drawer that expanded across her cubicle. “You lot only have to flash your shiny friendship with Harry to open nearly any door, deserved or not.” She paused in the middle, mouthing a count over folder tabs before she reached the proper one and glanced back to eye him with a squint. “You’re not the only ones who fought in the war, you know?”

“Yes,” George said slowly. “I know.”

Did he ever.

And he knew exactly where she was going with it, too. The papers had done the problem no favors, obviously. The coverage centered prominently around Harry, Ron, and Hermione, branched to feature the Weasley family and their closest friends. Occasionally, it sprinkled around people like McGonagall or Hagrid. Parvati and loads of the others from D.A. hardly got a mention most days.

“Take yesterday. I mean, I'm on my way out of the office, right?” Parvati said. “And they need someone. Harry needs someone, so what do I do but take it?” She dropped her voice. “Can’t trust Clarke with something like this. Bother anyone higher up, and our friend here could end up with a list of charges long enough to skip rope with.”

“I’d like to avoid that,” George said. “Given the current climate.”

Parvati ducked her head, nodding. “Agreed,” she said. “So I pulled my greys back on, owled Padma to tell her to start on dinner without me, and headed out.”

George winced. She’d been at the end of her shift?

 She must have caught the sentiment behind his expression, because she straightened, papers still in hand. “It’s my job,” she said, quieter. “I like it. I like that they look for me when they need someone last minute. That they know I’ll be as fair as I can when others won’t.”

She sounded rather like she was trying to convince herself.

“But when it comes time to consider the bigger assignments—” She bit off the rest, jamming the parchment stack into a file. The charms swallowed it with a dull rattle from deep in the cabinet’s belly. “Anyways. Sorry. I’m all over the place, aren’t I?” She cleared her throat.

George shifted on his feet. “You through training yet? At least the first bit?”

Parvati looked down at her robes. “Does it look that way?” Bone dry, that tone. Then she blinked, as if remembering herself. “Nearly. As good as. Getting my shadowing hours is proving a bit difficult.”

There were a series of stages, some of which could be skipped, but the initial one involved a fair bit of testing, oversight, and hand-holding, until it was all shed along with the clearly demarcated trainee robes for the next level of initiation.

Sort of like getting a healer’s mastery.

Parvati tapped the drawer with her wand, and it rushed back into the cabinet with a loud, low rolling tremor that finished on a tinny clank. “Some days, it feels like they’re wasting me. Utterly wasting me.” She folded her arms and smiled at the ground. “I can do more than petty crimes and accidental wand backfirings.” She lifted the hand tucked over her bicep to indicate his shop robes. “Imagine if you had the potential for this Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes venture, but you got stuck only minding the till at—at Puddifoot’s, or Honeydukes. Gambol and Japes, maybe.”

George nodded.

Parvati sighed. “Loads of ability, and little to apply it to.”

He’d go mad, in her shoes.

She glanced around and ducked a bit closer. “I wanted to do more in intelligence,” she said. “I can do more in intelligence, if they’d let me. But they don’t. And here, I can’t think outside the box, I can’t deliver as well as I could because they’re only sticking me with rubbish cases that don’t require it.” She huffed. “When I do occasionally find something complicated and step out of protocol, I get penalized where other people get pats on the back.”

Merlin. That was hardly fair.

“Have you asked Harry to vouch for you?” George offered. “He’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Parvati’s dulled mask dropped a fraction, and she grimaced at him. “No.” She hesitated, then spoke very slowly and quietly, searching his face like each word was a test step out onto thin ice. “When it comes to Ron—they won’t say he chanced his way into his position, will they? Not loudly, anyways.” She paused.

George nodded. It was true that Ron’d be less likely to face that sort of critique, though it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Parvati continued. “It wouldn’t be like that for me. There’d be comments.” She twisted to glance at a cubicle across the way, where a dour looking senior auror and none other than Clarke spoke over a report. Clarke hovered at the older auror’s elbow, nodding with every word. “I wouldn’t want it unless I’d properly earned it, either.”

George lowered his brows, brought back to the conversation by her meaning. “And Ron hasn’t, you mean?”

Ron was a berk, but he did have a solid amount of experience, after all.

Parvati propped her wrist on her hip and reached her other hand to scratch at her eyebrow. After a moment of silent debate with herself, she cast a Muffliato on the cubicle.

Some of the pressure inside of George’s chest eased, like the buzz muffled the grim history he had with the building.

“You’ll know, already, that the department spends a load of Galleons to make the wizarding world think Ron’s just faffing about Europe,” Parvati said lowly. “The Polyjuice and Quidditch ticket costs alone—” She flared her eyes.

“And you think that money would be best spent elsewhere, sending someone less recognizable to—”

“That’s classified,” Parvati cut in sharply.

“—to his assignment.” George finished, with a bit of enunciation. “I wasn’t about to say where he was.”

Parvati’s jaw flexed. “He’s not supposed to tell you; you shouldn’t know, specifically.”

George shook his head hurriedly. “He didn’t, really.” Not that George had given him much chance. But if Ron’s lack of response to more recent post was any indication, trite “how-are-we” owls wouldn’t have netted any breaches in disclosure.

Her brow furrowed like she was searching him for a lie.

“Ron wouldn’t tell me much of anything,” George said, forcing a laugh. Wasn’t very funny, though.

Merlin. It hurt to swallow.

Parvati shifted forward, still lecturing as if to drive the point home. “There are protocols for a reason,” she said. “Levels of classification for a reason.”

He lifted both hands in defense. “Noted.” Was his discomfort that apparent? Apparently. And apparently, it made him look like a treasonous wretch.

Parvati plowed forward. “If someone blabs to the wrong person, it’ll blow the whole bloody operation.” She folded her arms. “People who can’t keep secrets shouldn’t be involved. It’s not safe.”

A pinch of defensiveness flared in his chest, a shred of protectiveness that’d survived, somehow. “Ron’s not done anything wrong.” George crossed his arms right back. “I only know what he’s allowed to share with family.” Less than that, likely. He knew what Ron deigned to pass along to Percy, that then Percy thought George ought to know. So, really, very, very little. “He’s not done anything against the rules.”

She paused. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.” There was an awkward silence, during which a memo flitted into her hand. Parvati skimmed it, jaw tightening, before she vanished it and turned to pull a large, covered bowl out of an insulated bag. “Vane’s downstairs in the Atrium and I’ve been asked to keep you busy a while.”

She noted the remark so off-handedly that George took a moment to gather her meaning. She offered the memo with a smirk. It read exactly as she’d said.

Harry’s handwriting.

Feigning calm, George folded it and stuck it in his pocket for some later words.

Was that what the yelling had been about? Vane? Or did Harry often yell in the office? This building really did bring the worst out of nearly everyone.

“They don’t want me coming unglued?” he drawled, though the very thought of Magnus several floors below made his chest tight.

“Imagine that,” Parvati said. “Look, you don’t have to listen to me whinge about Ron, but if you do, I’ll give you lunch for it. Most days, Padma floos to eat with me, but she’s got Daphne Greengrass’s little sister in for a last minute gown fitting today.”

George waffled, then relented. The idea of more time in the Ministry went down like a pint of puffskien piss, but storming into the atrium and planting his fist into Vane’s nose wasn’t part of the werewolf advocacy plan.

Besides, Parvati seemed to have a lot on her mind, and George didn’t need food payment to listen to a rant about his brother.

Not when he had one of his own bottled, waiting, and begging to be uncorked.

That thought sobered him a bit, and prompted a bit of feigned skepticism, so as to not look too ready to throw Ron to the wolves. “Depends. What’s lunch?”

“Salad,” Parvati said dryly. “Clarke complains every time I bring hot food.”

“What a git,” George said. “Suppose I’ll suffer with you, anyways.”

“You might make an anonymous complaint to the department with that observation,” Parvati replied. She grinned and unstacked a second bowl, then split the contents between them. He took his and eased back onto the seat she’d fashioned for him. A fork shortly followed.

Parvati settled into her chair and held her bowl in her lap. “Look, I’m not saying Ron’s inept or that his success isn’t somewhat earned.” She speared little bits of greens and cranberries as she went. “He knows his way around a duel, that’s clear enough after his training records. And he’s got some practice with certain dark artefacts. But—” She bit down on her lips and frowned into her food. “There aren’t many postings like his. Not anymore.”

George searched through the dish. “Sorry, I don’t follow.”

“When they started pulling teams in to serve more regionally, they might’ve considered personnel changes.” She shrugged. “As a matter of resource allocation.”

George swallowed and rested his fork in the bowl. “I was right, then. You think someone else might’ve been better, in that spot?”

What would’ve happened, if Ron had returned? Would George still have a ring hidden on the wrong hand? Would Ron have walled him away from Hermione, as he always had before? Or would the whole thing be less tangled up?

“The competition should’ve ruled him out,” Parvati said shortly. “There are a half-dozen senior aurors better qualified, and amongst the younger trainees—” She glanced past the Muffliato barriers, around the bullpen, as if gauging whether they might be watched. “Alright, take me for example. I speak three times as many languages as he does, at least. I made friends during the Triwizard tournament, and I kept up with them after. I’m well-networked and better connected with potential allies. And I’m also less recognizable.” She ticked the list items with little dips of her fork.

“And they picked Ron,” George said, understanding beginning to seep through him.

“Yes,” she said, terse. Her tines clanged against the metal bowl’s base. “They picked Ron.” She exhaled with a thin smile, pausing with a single shred of lettuce before her mouth. “And next time I see him, I might just wring his neck for it.”

George laughed, but it sounded a bit forced.

Parvati gestured the fork into the air in a shrug-like move. “Joking, obviously. It’s not your fault or his, exactly. But when Ron and Harry walked through training schedules and spoke to the leadership, Sturgis and the other senior aurors treated them like—I dunno, like Ron and Harry are the bloody deliverers of the department.” Her cadence sped, salad forgotten. “Harry’s the Chosen One, right? A bit of that’s to be expected, and he’s not grotesque about it.” She made a crumpled face. “Bleh. You imagine if he was?”

Without missing a beat or leaving room for agreement, she chattered on. “But it was also like they’d been waiting for a competent, fighting Weasley to finally show interest in Auror work, and—” She winced, swallowed, then started again. “Look. He’s worked hard, right? But—but…he didn’t get waitlisted for any trainings, for any shadowing shifts and patrols. When they went out on a limb during trainee work, they got commendations rather than shouted down. Harry and Ron got to pick when they took auror exams to fit around their work with Shacklebolt, and they let him and Harry take loads of them early on merit basis.”

George blinked a few times, lifting his brows high. “And they didn’t let you?”

Parvati laughed. “Do you know how many Weasleys and Prewetts are mentioned in the auror training manual?” She broke open a small container and brought forth a flakey, brown, layered pastry. “Anup Patil is mentioned once—in the updated index of takeaway options for meetings in Godric’s Hollow. You know how it is with Harry. And Ron Weasley, well, loads of our coworkers look at him and act like he’s someone to be celebrated on name alone.” She sighed and extended one of the pastry bits. “Khaja?”

George didn’t say no to sweets, on principle. He took it and bit in. Puffy, sugary, and almost delicious enough to make him forget he was in the Ministry while enjoying it.

Parvati bit into hers, gesticulating in a manner that shed a few crumbs over her lap. “It doesn’t matter that to me Ron’s the idiot I grew up with, you know? The one who treated my sister like rubbish during Yule Ball, publicly snogged both my roommates, then harnessed the gall to show up to Lav’s funeral after leaving her for Hermione.” She cast a flat glance at him, as if expecting an opinion on the last bit.

Bloody Hell. George pulled a stick of gum from his waistcoat and folded it into his mouth, then held out the box like some sort of shoddy recompense.

Parvati shook her head, studying him. “No, thanks.” She leaned back against her desk. “But he’s Harry Potter’s bloody best mate, nephew of half the staff’s favorite late heroes, and grandson of the team that destabilized Grindelwald and ushered in the first muggleborne minister.” She groaned aloud, then vanished the crumbs on her lap. “If it wasn’t against protocol, I think they’d take to rolling a red carpet beneath his boots every time he reports back.”

“That’s got to be truly infuriating” was all George could think to say.

She shrugged, but it was more of an affirmation than anything. “I don’t blame Ron as much for being a git when we were kids—” Parvati’s mouth opened, and she squinted upwards, considering. “On second thought, I blame him a healthy, regular amount.”

There, George laughed in earnest.

Parvati grinned back. “Those days, he was like a Confringo in a potions lab, only the potions lab was my dormitory room, and the exploding glass was my roommates, and he made quite a mess.” She lifted a hand, resigned. “But, he’s hardly singular there; there’s a certain amount of youthful stupidity that can be learned from. These days…” she trailed off a moment. “I think he’s a bit infuriating. If he was worse at his job, I’d likely have murdered him by now out of frustration.” She huffed. “But I thought I’d left behind the era where everyone around me went mad over him for no real reason.” Parvati’s head tipped back and she laughed at the ceiling. “And meanwhile, I’m just the girl Harry passed over after Yule Ball.”

“That’s not how people know you,” he said. “Not the people worth counting, at least.”

Parvati snorted and accepted his empty bowl.

“Really,” George said. “You were one of the first in D.A., you’re a fantastic caster, and I know you helped Ginny out when Snape was headmaster.”

“Shame you’re not the one writing my performance reports,” Parvati said, flippant. She raked a loose strand of hair back. “Look, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Harry or anyone. Complaining on a lunch break isn’t strictly professional, but—”

“But you know I don’t care about that,” George said, with a slight smile.

She let out a gust of breath and nodded, seeming a bit sheepish. “So clearly, dumping all of that on you after not speaking much for a year or so was the well-adjusted action to take.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “The lot of us used to joke around in the common room and at D.A., didn’t we?” There was a certain commonality that sets of twins shared. (Mostly, it was based on the awkward experience of people gawking and asking you weird questions about what it was like “to be a twin,” to which Fred liked to lie profusely, and George liked to ask what it was like to be whatever they were.)

Parvati nodded, then took the dishes from him. “We did. Been a while since those days, though.” She tilted her head. “Say—how is Hermione, anyway?”

He gauged her expression. “Sorry?”

Parvati gave nothing away; her expression was blank and business-like. Pleasant, as she cast a cleaning charm and tucked the bowls away. “You two are friends, right?” Another question, as she angled the pastry container towards him.

George shook his head and thumbed his ring on his right hand. “Um, yeah, you could—you could say that.”

As she turned back to him, he thought he caught the slightest motion of her eyes, flicking back down from a rolled position.

“She’s managing,” he offered.

Parvati lifted her brows. She took another pastry and bit into it before snapping the container closed. “Good thing she was there, yesterday.”

George fidgeted.

Parvati nodded after waiting in the quiet a bit. “Okay, then.” Her tone had gone a bit brusque. Almost disappointed, like she’d hoped he might share something in return?

She dragged her seat back and stood. “When it comes to your werewolf, I’ll advise we give him a warning. Put him in contact with the right people.”

George stood, fumbling.

Parvati glanced around, checking the contents of her cubicle. “We’ll see if he has a pack. Look into finding him Wolfsbane, if that’s what he was after.”

The patch was nearing maturation on Luna’s property, and Fred’s cottage would shortly follow. With that crop would come new seeds, and more supply to spread over Wizarding Europe. Soon, the shortage would cease in this area, at least, and the boot squeezing down on the local werewolf population would ebb.

“When you say the right people—” George started.

Parvati swallowed the rest of her khaja and dusted the crumbs off her robes. “I mean Hermione’s people.” She quirked her brows. “She was always on about this sort of thing, and from what I’ve seen on the fourth floor, that’s not changed since the war.”

A wave of relief swept through him. “Brilliant.”

She angled her head to the lifts, and they headed there together.

“About the, um, work trouble,” George said, after the door shut them into an empty box. “I really am sorry.” He winced. “I can’t be too sore that Ron got a good opportunity, but I am sorry you didn’t.”

“It’s not all bad,” Parvati said, pressing the button. “Padma would be inconsolable if I went abroad without her.”

“I can understand that,” George said. He leaned on the wall and focused on keeping his breath even in the small space. It was harder, without Hermione there. “Fred would land himself in Azkaban or worse if I left him be too long.”

Parvati snorted. “He’d manage. He has Angie, now.” She cocked her head. “I always thought you’d be the one to struggle, if you two were separated.”

George pasted on a smile, even though the very notion made the floor feel like it was dropping out beneath his feet, leaving him to tumble into a cold, barren shaft. “That sod couldn’t tie his own wingtips without me.”

The lift dinged, and Parvati escorted him past the foot traffic and the press to the public-use floos. It was a bit of obvious managing on the DMLE’s part, likely making sure he didn’t bump into someone he shouldn’t.

It stung, though.

If they didn’t trust him to walk through the building unattended, that potion wouldn’t be any sweeter once they knew Hermione had picked him for a husband.

George hissed the directions under his breath, tossed the powder in, and made his way to Marcus’s office to see if he had time for a drop-in.

He did.

The session passed like a kidney stone, though. Only kidney stones could be vanished, and the tight knot of anxiety in his ribs kept coming back. Now, it wouldn’t loosen no matter how bleeding hard he poked at it.

#

October 16, 1999

Whistling along to the shop music, George closed the record book and replaced his quill to its stand. They’d had a good quarter, thus far, recent incident notwithstanding. Not so incredible as it might’ve been before the rent debacle or the freshly sorted, magic-proofed window, but they weren’t in the red, either, and that was an accomplishment before winter hols.

He managed a massive stretch, wincing as his waistcoat buttons strained in their stitching and his back popped. Then, he ducked forward, nicked the octagonal, shiny purple Chocolate Frog card from its spot against his wall shelving and pressed a little kiss to Hermione’s bemused portrait.

He laid it down again, right by the wee Dittany plant and the tatty notebook of half-formed ideas.

Alright. What next?

He blinked down and Scourgified his apron and grabbed a package of Puffskein food so he could top off the creatures’ bowls. Time to face the crowd.

George ambled to take his shift at the tills.

On his way through the back hall, he bumped into the very witch he’d just bid adieu. For the third time that day.

Hermione had her chin tucked, a set of work robes shoved up to her elbows, and a bookbag clutched against her chest.

George blinked and stepped back. “Through already?” he asked, wonderment and hope filling his question. Despite it being a Saturday, Hermione was meant to work on some project planning with the new Ministry office.

It was meant to take all day, though?

Hermione cringed. “No, sorry. Just forgot something. Again.” She peered around the corridor, like it might be hidden in the corner.

George glanced at his pocket watch.

“Josie’s with me, but I’ve told her Ginny left me a message back here, so—back in a moment.” With a brilliant flush, Hermione scuttled up the stairs.

George watched her scurry, brow wrinkled as he leaned back against the shop door and opened it with his hips. Normally, Hermione couldn’t be torn away from her work once she got into the flow. This was her third time home today, which seemed a bit odd.

In the main room, he parted the crowd around the Puffskein enclosure and rattled off some facts about Puffskein history and social bonds while he refilled their food dish. The questions pivoted to a more personal nature, as they often did. Mostly, the kids wanted to know about Ginny’s.

“Does it—it help her practice Quidditch?” the button-nosed boy asked. Today, Toby was wearing wellies that nearly swallowed his legs whole.

“Mm. Arnold doesn’t particularly fancy broom flight,” George said. “You’d want to move a Puffskein around like a cat, rather than an owl.”

“Do you have a Pygmy Puff?” Another girl said, leaping right in front of his path, caught in an invisible sort of hopscotch game.

“No, I’ve a—” he stopped. Technically, Crooks was Hermione’s. “I’ve got loads that I look after, just here,” he said instead.

Hermione bustled out of the back hall, shifting her bag strap into place on her shoulder.

“Miss Hermione!” the kids yelled. They loved it when Harry or Hermione came by.

Hermione smiled, making her way to a coworker waiting near the entry. “Ready?”

George couldn’t hear the coworker’s reply, not through the cacophony, but the two left in a burst of autumnal wind.

Hermione hadn’t seemed to be carrying anything new, but perhaps she’d put it in her bag.

#

October 17, 1999, 12:04 p.m.

George passed the worktables on his way to the storage shelving, stopping short at a bushy head of curls hunched over his desk.

“You’re working here?”

Hermione shifted in his chair, not looking up in her correspondence. “A bit.”

George wheeled towards the bustling shop, where automatons, whistles, and sparkler fizz seeped chaos through the thick doors. “Here?”

Hermione tapped her quill twice on her papers. “Yes, is that alright?”

Seemed a bit odd, was all. Stopping in loads of times yesterday, then this, when she had a bundle of work to make up.

She had that searching, careful look about her again.

George loped a few steps out of the way and poked a kiss atop her curls, which had soaked up the scent of some of Fred’s experimental Ancient Potion brew. Like muggle mothballs and dust, that. “Course,” he said.

Quick as he could, he swept the tray of lingering Electric Shock Shake and Star Kit prototype parts from near her elbow, then double checked that the workshop window was cracked to allow for proper ventilation.

She usually preferred the table upstairs when she worked in the building. He wouldn’t begrudge her a change of scenery, though.

Not at all.

If this helped a bit, having him close, he didn’t mind.

Every time he passed her working, he pushed another kiss to her brow along with a bit of magic.

He got weary smiles in return.

#

October 18, 1999, 2:00 p.m.

“Granger’s in the workroom,” Fred said.

George shuffled the case against his side as he headed for his brewing station.

“Again,” Fred added rather unnecessarily. “On a weekday, this time.”

George nodded and tried to keep an unbothered expression, even though he was properly bothered to the extreme.

“She’s been in there constantly, Mate,” Fred said, sounding a bit guarded. “She’s doing her bloody meetings by owl relay as we speak.”

George huffed. “I never complained when Angie was—”

“That’s not what I’m on about,” Fred cut in. “It’s just, rather…you think she’s alright?”

No.

But what else was he to do, before she was ready to chat about it?

George scowled. “What, she’s got to be broken to want to spend time around here?”

Fred stared at him flatly until George scratched the back of his neck.

“Anyways,” Fred said, bugging his eyes at his hands. He didn’t even have to state that wasn’t what he’d meant before; they both knew that already. “I know it was a bit of a scary scrape.”

“I’m checking in,” George said, finally. “She’s nervous, is all. But she’d feel unwelcome, y’know, if she heard you say anything.”

“Then don’t mention I asked,” Fred said, quite sobered. “I don’t mind her hanging about.” He paused. “So long as she keeps her rubbish off my desk.”

George scoffed and turned for the workroom. “Then you keep your rubbish off mine.”

“I mean it, Georgie,” Fred called as he took the spot behind the till. “Not one ‘Plight of the Mooncalf’ pamphlet!”

George eased into the workroom. Hermione started, then settled, gaze flashing over him like she was cataloguing his parts. All week since the incident, that’d been the look about her.

He knew that bloody look. She wasn’t bothering to hide it now, which either meant she understood he’d noticed and was being open about it, or she was so far gone that she didn’t realize how obvious she was.

“Still here,” he said gently.

Hermione swallowed, then managed a faint smile. “Thanks.”

George took a slow breath, a bit of the tension slipping away. It was different than with the time from the woods, a bit. They were sort of acknowledging it. But it’d take time, like most things.

Hermione stretched her neck and returned to her file folder, quill scratching away. That hunching couldn’t be comfortable.

When happily working, Hermione appeared like a satisfied cat. Stretched out, lost in her own work. But just now, she had the posture of a crunched-up ghoul, perched at his desk. Every so often, she snuck a look at him.

The door nudged open, and Crookshanks padded in with slow, cautious steps. George lifted his brows. The cat preferred to be carried down the spiral staircase, most days.

He looked at George, then Granger, before settling in a ring around her chair leg.

Normally, having the kneazle in the workroom wouldn’t be advisable. But Hermione needed the support, just now.

Perhaps George could keep an eye on her while he sorted an Itch Spritz prototype.

He did that, noting every owl and frustrated sigh all afternoon.

#

October 19, 1999, 10:09 a.m.

A crash echoed along the hearth, and Hermione started out of her chair, wand out.

George looked up from his workbench, lifting two gloved hands from the Itch Spritz concoction.

Angelina huffed by the floo, one of Fred’s old flannels crooked and soot-marked around her frame.

George stripped one glove off and raised his goggles with a wrist damp from condensation. “Ange?” He peeked through the workshop window. Fred’s booming voice lilted sale prices in the main shop.

“Problem,” she gasped.

What had Angelina winded?

“No one’s hurt,” Angie rushed to say. “But, Bill’s—they need you at Mungo’s with Fleur.”

George leapt from the brewing station and yanked his other glove free, tossing it to the table. Hermione had already cast a stasis charm on the cauldron itself. Granger’s face had gone pale at Angelina’s arrival, and he reached for her hand, squeezing it as he charged for the floo.

“I’ll send Fred after you, and I’ll watch the till,” Angie called.

George hurled himself into the grate.

Angelina had said otherwise, but what other bloody reason could Bill have need of them at Mungo’s?

It must be some complication, some—

The floo exits pinwheeled before his eyes, and George stumbled from the smoke at the proper one. A thud sounded as Hermione collided with his back.

“Careful,” George fixed an arm to loop her shoulders, even as he searched the ground floor.

A few sods faffed about the waiting room with old magazines and paper cups, clearly waiting. One was obviously in line to be seen, with a large, bubbling boil on his cheek that shrieked with giggles like it had a mind of its own.

None of them were redheaded, or tall, or related to him.

George winced and steered Hermione to the other side of the room.

“Oh, come on!” A rough yell echoed down the far hall, and George took off after it. He pushed into the Admissions department, the clamour of some shouting match building from around another corner.

The front desk had been abandoned, and a few poor souls waiting there cringed at their hands as they waited for the mediwitch to return.

“Why don’t we go somewhere quiet to work this out?” a squeaky, pleading voice echoed.

Another booming tone. A familiar one. “What? No! I’m not going anywhere!” Bill’s tone was shocked and seething.

“William—”

George turned once more and hurried beneath an arrow-handed sign marked “Scott’s Antenatal Care Ward.” A thick set of double doors appeared, along with the rest of the mess.

Bill had multiple attending healers hovering about him like leeches swarming to a feast, while their father attempted to place himself between the stammering employee and the snarl on Bill’s face.

Bright, scarlet runes blinked before the threshold of the Antenatal wing, and one of the tallest security wizards reached forward to yank Bill back another step from the passage.

Bill’s hand snapped to the grip holding his black jacket’s elbow, and his fingers flexed around the sod’s wrist until the security wizard yelped and released him.

“I’m not a werewolf,” Bill jerked his hand towards the doors. “It’s bloody broken.”

George swore under his breath and started forward.

“Perhaps not, but you have elevated traces of the lycanthropic virus,” the healer said. “There’s nothing I can—”

Bill reached for his wand, apparently held in their dad’s grip. “Give me a minute, I can fix the rubbishing runes if you lot are—”

“Sir!” the wizard shouted. “I’m sorry, but I cannot let you through!”

Bill’s face went even more red. “My wife’s back there, waiting on me,” he barked.

The healer took a massive breath, then fixed his face into a thin smile. “Unwell persons are not allowed beyond the doors for the safety of the mothers and newborns.”

“I’m not sick!” Bill threw himself forward.

George planted himself in front of him.

The weight slammed into his side, nearly knocking him from his feet, but George shifted and caught Bill by the arms to compensate. “Oi,” he hissed.

Bill’s eyes fixed on him, and George’s stomach pitched and went cold. The pupils had grown, swallowing his irises and a bit of the white. The strength in Bill’s grip would be enough to pierce skin, if George hadn’t been wearing as many layers.

The doors made a heavy swish as they opened and thudded shut behind them. Bill’s nostrils flared.

“Easy,” George whispered. “What does Fleur need?”

Bill took a short breath. “Get. Off.”

“We’ll get it to her,” George continued, ducking his head good naturedly. His chest and hands felt cold. Strange. Distant from himself. “What’s going on, Mate?”

Bill never growled—not outright and not at family. But he did, then. Like a warning, and George felt it down to his bones.

A prickle of fear shivered up his spine.

“Move,” Bill seethed.

“William.”

At the new voice, Bill stepped back, ducking his chin.

George wheeled.

Bloody Hell.

Grandad?

Septimus lounged below an oil painting, frowning intensely at his grandchildren. He held a take away sack from the Leaky in hand, though he didn’t seem to know how to hold it. Beside him, Uncle Martin whispered in a tone too low to make out.

“She’s in for her checkup, and William hasn’t been allowed to join her.” Mr. Weasley fumbled with Bill’s wand as he shifted closer to the pair.

“I can speak for myself, thanks.” Bill bristled, hiding the response with a firm tug on his sleeve cuffs.

“The bloody Hell—” Fred’s voice boomed in the hall.

Bill whirled to Arthur. “You call in the whole calvary?” He scoffed. “Merlin, Dad. This is bad enough.” He reached over and snatched his wand from Mr. Weasley. “Give me that.”

Bill was still panting like he’d run the length of a Quidditch pitch thrice. He scooped his hand through his long hair, eyes searching the ground for something invisible. “It’s just a problem with—with the runes, they don’t have them set up properly, and they’re making it out like I’m going to barge in and infect all the babies.” He said it like it was a rubbish theory, but his voice cracked at the end, and his wand hand bounced against his thigh with an anxious rhythm.

“We were out to lunch, before the others took their portkey back,” Mr. Weasley whispered. “Ran a bit late. She’d already gone in when we arrived to drop him off, but William, um—”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to not cast at our wards,” the attending squeaked.

“Bill,” Fred said.

“Dad,” Mr. Weasley said louder.

Grandad and William were of the same mind, apparently. Arthur went to help Martin, and George twisted towards Hermione, completely overwhelmed.

The runes weren’t accurate, but something wasn’t right.

William lifted his wand higher, out of the attending’s reach. “Fred, George, you handle those sods,” he said. “I only need a minute to fix this.”

George faltered. “Bill.” His pulse pounded loud enough to drown out everything else. “Wait—wait—just, hold on a minute.”

William paused.

Surprise widened his eyes, made the iris break through the creeping black. A nonverbal Expelliarmus from the staff zinged past his fist, and Bill swiped his wand out of its reach, then lifted to—

The double doors swept open, and Fleur emerged with a green robed witch.

Unfortunately, the security wizards used Bill’s momentary surprise to find an opening, tackling him to the ground.

Then, George saw white; heard a deep, buzzing hum in his blood, felt his pulse rocket past reason.

He’d said to wait. And they’d—

He fell upon them like a wild animal.

Elbows, hands gripping shoulders to pull, and George’s voice going hoarse as the sound of it bellowed, “Don’t touch my brother—don’t touch him!”

Somewhere between the hand squeezing at his neck and the Petrificus pinging off his shield, someone issued an ear-rending whistle that would’ve sent Peeves running.

The fracas stilled. A stern Mediwitch lowered her hand from her mouth, then looked at Fleur with concern.

Meanwhile, Fleur’s fraught, worried gaze trailed over Bill’s frame. His bank robes were torn around the collar, new scuffs marked his trousers’ knees, and his face looked like it’d lost a fight with a bit sanding parchment along the chin.

“Fleur,” he breathed.

Fleur glanced at the security wizards. “Has there been a misunderstanding?” she said, accent sharp.

The tallest bloke coughed, flushing. “He’s not allowed into the ward, M’am.”

Fleur’s brow wrinkled, though her eyes didn’t stray from Bill.

“Caused quite a scene,” the other fellow added, rather unhelpfully.

Bill’s expression went pained, and he glanced away, seeking without finding something to say.

Fleur looked up from Bill’s knelt form to the security team. All tenderness and concern vanished, replaced with icy judgement. “Then you will have to blame me,” she said. “I asked him to meet me there.”

“We thought he was going to rush you,” the first man said, more adamant. “You didn’t see how he—”

The desk attendant stepped forward, speaking in tandem. “Your husband is suffering from a potential lycanthropic exposure.”

“This exposure happened over two years ago,” Hermione cut in. “He’s not a werewolf, and any traces left in his system are hardly high enough to infect another being.” Now everyone was talking over each other, fighting again.

“Quiet!” Fleur’s healer shouted.

They all obeyed, save for the tallest bloke, whose incredulous “—then why’s he acting like a monster” echoed like thunderclap in the corridor.

The Healer—Shoupley, by her name plate—smoothed her green robe. “Most people become irritated when kept away from family in delicate conditions.” She turned to Fleur. “We can go back to my office and speak about what you would prefer?”

Fleur glided to Bill; one look from her frigid gaze had the attendants backing away. George’s left arm was freed, along with his shoulder.

Bill clamored to his feet, tugging at his robes in a fruitless attempt to look presentable.

Fleur pressed a bit of his hair back and laid a hand over his scars.

Bill swallowed.

Fleur spoke a soft, rapid stream of French. Nothing George could understand, but it made Bill’s shoulders ease and relief fill his face.

“My husband is a hero,” Fleur said. “And I will not require further care if this establishment does not agree.”

The family trooped from the corridor to the floos, and Fleur’s wry, accented voice lilted over the Admissions Department’s floor: “Foolish of them. Between the two of us, I am the monster.”

When they finally crept back to the flat, Hermione kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, with nary a word about the fighting.

Nary a drop of magic, either.

#

That night, George held his breath like that would keep the worries from overcoming him.

He found himself in a dark chamber, like the great hall, with the windows bashed in and the floor covered in glass.

Shouting echoed around him. Fighting.

Hermione’s pale, drawn face reflected in the pieces littering around his shoes, but when he turned and turned, there was no sign of her.

There was only a lump in the middle of the chamber. A person.

A hoard of robes fell upon a writhing form on the ground with fire-red hair and panicked blue eyes.

George leapt to help.

But then the eyes locked with his, and it wasn’t Bill.

It was Ron.

Something froze George in place, holding him with his arms at his sides. He couldn’t speak, or breath, or grapple.

Ron’s expression morphed from fear to shock to angry betrayal, his anguished cries burning louder and louder as the hoard ripped him apart.

And George did nothing.

He woke drenched in sweat, Hermione shaking his shoulders.

When she bent to kiss him, George dashed from the bed. He heaved up nothing but air and tears in the loo. Then, he put his head on his forearm, stretched across the toilet seat, and he seethed at himself in the quiet.

Senseless. Utter rubbish. Illogical, and—

There was nothing for him to feel guilty about. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t.

Crooks found him there, freed the lock on the door in a twist of Kneazle magic, then curled up on the tile beside his ankle. “You can come in,” George croaked.

Hermione, who had waited outside the door upon finding it locked, seated herself on the tub’s lip and rubbed a firm circle over his shoulder blades. Slowly, he caught his breath. Slowly, the realness of the bad dream feathered into nonsense.

“I’m sorry,” George said.

Hermione hadn’t stopped with her circles, and he loved her deeply for it. “Don’t be daft,” she said. Then, a moment later: “Merlin. You’re really quite sweaty, George.”

That made him laugh, a bit, however hoarse it was. She knew just what to do and say, even when he was brittle.

Then: “I’m here,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to will things back together with the words as glue. “I’m here.”

George brought his miserable eyes to hers.

He loved her, he did. But the person he needed to see just then wouldn’t answer his bloody letters.

#

October 20, 1999, 8:19 p.m.

Sitting room floors were overrated. Besides, one only needed a narrow canal through the parchment to paddle from corridor to kitchen.

He’d thought they’d planned on meeting at Hog’s Head, but when George would’ve had to miss the first part for an earlier supplier meeting, Hermione suggested they switch locations.

Hence the mess.

Luna and Hermione were neck deep in it, Luna of a shorter temper than usual.

George, meanwhile, between scanning old pieces of Wizengamot law, was having a bit of trouble getting charm residue off the working blanket-fort-in-a-box prototype. It’d stick the fabric to the ceiling just as easily to your face if you leaned over too far while opening it. The box supplier didn’t see why this was an issue.

Crooks napped on the bookshelf, cozy in his makeshift nest of a rumpled old nightshirt of Hermione’s.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Luna said.

“No, it does—it’s just that we haven’t identified all relevant cases,” Hermione replied. “The labelling system isn’t quite consistent.”

Winky glowered on the couch, staring at the stick of Silver Fir lofted on the middle of the coffee table. The phoenix hatchling next to her squawked, then snapped at a bit of caramel toffee in the candy dish.

Crooks opened his eyes at the sound. Luckily, he seemed to think better of misguided instincts and closed them again. Nienna beaked happily on the sweet, none the wiser.

Could phoenixes have caramel toffee?

“It’s a shame Percy couldn’t be spared,” Hermione muttered. “He knows all the—”

Crooks’ tale gave a lazy, agitated flick. Two thin books toppled off of the shelf at his right.

George cringed, snapping. They zipped to his hands, and the wandless magic tugged under his sternum as he expended it for the fifth time in as many hours.

Luna’s head whipped up, dark circles and white-blonde frizz marking her not-quite-serene expression. “I’m not asking him,” she said.

Hermione paused.

Luna blinked a few times, took a breath, then restarted in a more tranquil tone. The shortness betrayed her true feelings, though. “If he said no to you, then why would he tell me any differently.” She stared at the texts.

Hermione nodded slowly. “I suppose. But Percy and I aren’t on the best terms, though. We’re not fighting, but it’s not exactly comfortable, so... so, I thought—”

Winky snorted. “If Percival Weasley wanted to, he would be here, even if there was disagreement.”

George didn’t know what held Percy back, truly. And a small, cowardly part of himself was glad to have one less Weasley snooping about before Ron could be informed properly. But the majority of him pinched over the growing circles beneath Hermione’s eyes. Balancing Ministry work and advocacy tasks seemed to burn through her hours. She didn’t have leisure time to breathe. She always had to be reading something or owling someone, or taking a last minute floo to keep the sky from tumbling down.

In between the anxious hovering at his side, of course.

“He may be a bit nervous to see Bill,” George said. Especially since Bill was presenting more wolf-like than usual.

Luna shook her head. “It’s not that.” She glanced at Granger. “And Percy understands why you told him to stop sending uninformed opinions on your life.”

Winky broke off a hunk of chocolate and chewed.

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. “Would you have recommended I do otherwise, Luna?”

Luna glowered at the notes. “No.” There was a small, terse sigh. “That’s not my point. My point—” She sounded bladed, now. “—is that my asking in addition to yourself won’t help at all.”

“You two talk far more often!” Hermione cried.

Luna smacked her papers down. “It might benefit you to recognize how formidable you are, Hermione!” Her nostrils flared. “Not everyone works like you. When you tell someone to butt out, you could be more understanding when they follow orders.”

Hermione bristled. “That’s not what I—this is different!”

“Think my brother’s plenty capable of stubbornness,” George said dryly. “And selective listening, when it suits him.”

Luna lifted her book. “Of course it is, but there’s not much reason to owl often if you remove all the personal bits.” She rolled her shoulders. “Percival likes instructions. He likes being told what to do by someone who’s done it first. It feels more stable and clearer to him and less prone to avoidable mistakes.” She lifted her brows at Granger from behind the book. “Advice and direction are how he shows care.”

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it. Her cheeks went ruddy, and she looked to George for—for—what, exactly?

George winced. “Sounds—um—” Bugger. “It’s alright to tell someone you can do without their input, especially if they’re speaking from a place—”

Luna turned the page a bit sharply, interrupting. “I know. And he understands. But his original intent was to help.”

“Okay,” Hermione said. “Noted, Luna.”

Luna worked her jaw and glared up at Granger. “I’m not the Percival whisperer,” she said.

Winky shot George a tired look.

“No one’s meant to imply that,” George said carefully, grappling to patch it over. “Sorry.”

What had gotten into them? Normally, these two were a force. Today, it’d been bickering. Nothing awful—like how Fred and Ginny squabbled, rather than Percy and Charlie’s more volatile rows. Picking at each other, and with a lack of patience.

It was mostly unnerving because Hermione was usually quite careful with Lovegood. And Luna was so seldom short with anyone, really. But she’d been shorter with nearly everyone since arriving.

They both looked like they’d not slept in days. For Hermione at least, he knew that was nearly true. Tempers were evidently quite short—fuses trimmed to the quick.

“I mean, it’s needed werewolf reform,” George said. “I’d have thought he’d be eager to contribute here, at least.” Percy loved a good bit of research.

Hermione met his eyes, and hers were so thoroughly wrung with desperation and exhaustion that George lowered his prototype to the kitchen counter. “Perhaps we could all use a break,” he said. “Or maybe—”

Winky let fly a shrill squeak of pain. The wand quirked on the table, then went still. Almost immediately after, she stuffed the handkerchief to her nose.

The room cooled, the mood plummeting from snappish to bleak.

George shifted closer, watching Winky from the corner of his eye. “Is there anything I can—”

Winky waved him off despite the darkening stain on folded square at her nostrils. He’d never seen that reaction happen without her saying something—and never so violently, too. The handkerchief would be soaked in moments. He spun and darted for a hand towel to offer.

When he returned, holding out the clean fabric, Winky accepted it.

Frustrated, he summoned the smaller waste bin and tucked it beside her, then gripped at his hair.

She hadn’t even said anything.

Once it slowed a bit, he spoke. “May I just say—no pressure, Winky, but clearly, this isn’t just a lack of experience or—or familiarity with wanded casting.” He glanced around the room. “Do we have any theories?”

Winky made a harsh, choked sound like a bitter laugh.

Hermione sighed. “Yes. Too many.” She stretched, then reached to reform her plait. “According to Aberforth, there are an infinite number of ways to tamper with another being’s magic.” She let the half-formed plait drop to the shoulder of her jumper with a huff. “Just look at the bloody keystones,” she muttered.

Luna flinched, then reached for Winky’s faulty wand.

It gave a slight jump into her hand, and the tip let off a few skittering sparks. “It works like the others,” she said tightly.

“Could Ollivander have done something to it?” George asked quietly. “When he helped you with the tricky bits?”

“He doesn’t know who it was for, and even if he had…” Luna’s mouth opened and closed, irritation giving way to confusion. “I—I don’t think—he’s not the sort to—”  

“Not to be entirely cynical,” Hermione cut in. “But if we put this through Wizengamot and all elves became wanded, Ollivander would have more customers, not less.”

George whisked a bit of semi-permanent sticking charm residue from his thumb, then folded his arms. “But his personal sentiments?”

“He’s not leading the charge, by any means,” Hermione said. “But his general sentiments are friendly to the cause.”

George twisted his mouth. “Friendly to the cause” didn’t get them much if Ollivander didn’t actually go out of his way to help.

“Winky knows what it is,” Winky croaked, stuffing the towel closer to her face. “And it isn’t an Ollivander.” It sounded like she was crying.

Hermione and Luna both went very still.

“Winky?” Luna whispered.

“Leave Winky alone,” the elf said. The tips of her ears folded against the waist bin. Was she hiding to keep from making a mess over her robes, or because she didn’t want them gawking while she cried.

She sounded right miserable, then.

George leaned down. “Is there anything—”

“Stop.” Winky snapped, flinching back from him. When she lifted her head, her eyes were red, the towel a dark, ominous colour clutched in her shaking knuckles. Her ears shrank back.

George had frozen where he knelt.

“Winky—” she gulped. “Chocolate would be nice.”

George swallowed. “Right. Okay.”

Heeding the unspoken request to drop the subject, Hermione bent back over her case studies, and Luna over her “A History of Werewolves and the Wizengamot.”

They worked in silence for several minutes.

Then: “I’ll write Percival about the Moon Brand project,” Luna said quietly. “He might have ideas, at least. If we’re going to move the Wizengamot, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

#

Luna had only just sent off a bit of post with Calliope when a heavy stomp landed at the flat door. The knob clicked, and Aberforth let himself in. He stopped at the mess of papers and scowled. “This is how things end up torn or missing,” he muttered.

Hermione sighed and uttered a quick Cognitas charm.

The materials rose, swirling like currents through the air, and the sight warmed the weary, torn center in his chest. His breath held, suspended, as he watched the charm.

Hermione didn’t seem to notice the wonder of it, paging through the volume she’d kept pinned with her elbows. “There,” she muttered. “Now your big, ugly boots can’t step on anything.”

Aberforth smiled.

A grand, shocking, properly warm smile, aimed right at Granger.

The second he saw George gawking, his face snapped flat. “Any progress?”

Bugger. “Well…”

Aberforth grunted, like George was the sole person at fault. By then, though, he’d caught a proper glimpse of Winky, and already moved on to a silent, tense conversation in that direction.

Winky ignored the look and lofted her hand.

Right. The signal for more food. Spells and potions had minimal effect on the bloody noses, but chocolate seemed to help.

George loped for the kitchen and snagged the sweets basket. Woefully picked-through. He’d have to fetch more from the shop soon.

A set of twin pops rang in the corridor.

Salazar. Had he left something brewing?

George dropped the basket and jumped around the corner.

Two elves peered up and down the hallway. Both hunched. The shorter tugged at her cloak.

“Biddy,” George gasped.

Biddy glanced his way once, gave a hesitant smile, then leaned in to whisper to the other.

On first sight, George didn’t clock the figure.

The stooped shoulders. The droopy wrinkles. The furtive, suspicious glances. Then, the elf opened his mouth and began to grumble, and the sound was like gears grinding deep in his throat.

Bloody Hell.

Kreacher?

The elf was more filled out than he’d last seen him, and better dressed.

“These wizards, not knowing how to bloody pick up after—” He shuffled around George and Aberforth without greeting. “—they say Kreacher is addled, and Kreacher says they are large, awful children, never learning how to scrub a table clean.” He glared at the shape of the automaton through the windows. “Thieving scoundrels, taking droppings and Puffskeins on the sly, barely a brain between them, those two.”

Glad to see where he stood, then.

Kreacher paused before the sofa. “Winky,” he said, raising a gnarled finger toward George. “This one is no good.”

Winky lowered the handkerchief and snorted, though that seemed to restart the drip she’d taken forever to staunch. She winced and put the article back into place, then said in a wry but nasally and plugged voice, “He’s some good.”

Kreacher’s mouth wrinkled up, his eyes squinted further, and he looked at Winky without moving for a moment or two. Then he smacked his dusty lips and shuffled away, still muttering. “Bah. Scavenger rodents, the mess in here—pitiful.”

Hermione cleared her throat. “Kreacher, I do believe the mess in here is on my account.”

Kreacher paused a second, then continued to mutter in the same line as before. “—unnatural doppelgangers with their freckles and their awful explosions—burning houses right aground, Kreacher just knows it.” He squinted at the dropped sweets basket and the small packages spilling out of it. “Leaving things about like it don’t matter.”

Yet another selective listener, this one.

At some point, the elf had swapped a ratty tea towel for a three-piece suit, though the waistcoat and jacket clashed terribly.

Perhaps they didn’t clash. Perhaps George was only used to human fashions.

Kreacher paced a circle through the swirling papers, tugging and twisting at his ears. He didn’t properly look at anyone, save Winky, then Biddy.

“Biddy’s said one could find the likes of Winky here,” he turned to scowl at the molding. “In this den of foulness and—” He smacked his lips again, as if tasting the air. “—smoke.”

“Nothing foul resides here, Kreacher,” Winky said, firm but patient as she held up her handkerchief for another Scourgify from Granger.

Kreacher cast a baleful look at George. “If Winky says so.”

“Have you enjoyed your travels, Kreacher?” Hermione asked, lowering her wand.

Kreacher’s weathered nose twitched with a sniff. “Expects Kreacher to answer, but what is Kreacher to say to that?”

Winky tipped her chin up. “Whatever Kreacher likes.”

“Pah.” Kreacher seemed to chew on his own tongue for a moment. He didn’t find any further answer necessary.

Hermione’s mouth opened, then with a subtle shake from Winky’s head, she closed it.

When they’d first started with the keystone runs, Hermione and Winky had looked into Kreacher’s situation, thinking they might help. When Winky had returned, she merely said it was already sorted.

A bit more digging revealed Harry had clumsily and quite unknowingly managed to work around the intricacies and more significant risks.

Shortly after the final battle, Harry managed to free Kreacher from any obligation to follow human orders by telling him to do only what he truly liked or wanted. With the risks, Winky seemed to think it likely remained the safest option.

After all, it wasn’t as brutal as what had happened to Winky—getting half-thrown out as a punishment, while the dark enchantment still had its claws in deep, nor was it as dangerous to Kreacher as having the available runes hacked like other cases had demanded. But it wasn’t full proof, either.

They needed to sort out the root of the dark enchantment, and they’d need more help to do it.

George had imagined Kreacher might like a little cottage in the Forbidden Forest, or a town house of his own to enjoy. One without mess or others to manage.

Not so. Kreacher had taken up travel. Kreacher had become “an elf of leisure,” as Winky liked to put it, with a cackling grin.

Though time outside the miserable townhouse had done Kreacher well, he clearly wasn’t any more enamored with George than he’d been when they were younger.

Then, Kreacher had seemed like a mere extension of the “noble house of Black.” A mouthpiece for cruelty that shambled through the hallways.

It made George a bit queasy to remember how much he’d not seen, those days. No one ended up like Kreacher unless subjected to something ghastly and rotten. According to Hermione, Kreacher’d seemed to have two modes of operation, back then. He completely despised you, or he loved you to bits and thought you could do no wrong. An eerie echo of the toxic setting in which he’d been trapped. Whether that was burned into him by nurture or a front placed up for survival, George didn’t know.

Now, though, Kreacher seemed right apathetic about half the people in the room, displeased with George, and properly acknowledging only the elves. He didn’t even spare a smile at Luna, and Luna charmed most beings.

“Kreacher has stayed with the elves in the north and the east and the west and the south,” Biddy said. Her cheeks flushed. “Some have never worn a house’s crest. Some have returned with him to—” she cut herself off, biting back the end of the sentence.

“Gablehaven?” Winky said.

Biddy faltered, then nodded.

“Kreacher should not stay long,” Kreacher said, low and raspy. “This is for Harry Potter.” He plucked what looked like a petrified piece of—

George squinted.

Was that corned beef? Certainly looked like it, what with the texture and colouring.

Kreacher laid it carefully on the sofa arm. “It would not have kept, so Kreacher fixed it.” Next, he patted over his pockets and withdrew something lumpy and fuzzy. “For Winky,” he grumbled before tossing the bundle at Winky. “Here.”

It landed on her knobby knees. “What is it?”

Kreacher turned in a half-circle, glaring at the furnishings. “Hm.” He swatted through the air dismissively. “A hat.”

Winky blinked and unfolded it. A worn, fur-lined winter cap, with two holes cut raggedly for the ears. “A hat?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Kreacher muttered. He took one, final stock of the sitting room. “Stupid wizard, smells like muggy fireplace—” Then, he snapped and disapparated without further word.

Biddy swallowed, gave the hatchling a sober bow, then popped away after him.

Slowly, Winky pulled the hat close to her ribs and squeezed it. Shortly after, her nose stopped bleeding.

#

October 21, 1999, 1:15 p.m.

Oiled dragon leather and sharp cologne turned the Ministry meeting room into a cacophony of loud, expensive scents. All at once, a few bigwigs had turned the Wizengamot’s tide on international trade agreements. While men like Vane stood to gain much with fewer restrictions across the board, it was more important that they free up pathways to place Wolfsbane in the hands of those who needed it.

France, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, MACUSA, Finland—the lot of them had accepted promises of increased potions exports to cover Aconite shortages and reduced import fees for their trade in exchange for lowering taxes on other exported British Wizarding products.

Now, the businessmen were littering the audience as an opportunity to make themselves look philanthropic, even though they’d been reticent at first. Shocking.

Personally, George and Fred stood to lose a bit of revenue from the Valdez magicking toy line, if the family decided to sell exclusively through Gambol & Japes rather than Wheezes. But there was more to life than Galleons.

“Werewolves are far more likely to be—um—” Granger blinked at her notes. “—without a home, or a means to grow Aconite and brew Wolfsbane Potion safely and dependably, but um...” Her exhale and mumbling to herself snagged in the amplifying charm.

Something was wrong. Hermione had prepared for this speech; he’d heard her that morning, pacing the living room as he sorted a few breakfast plates. And again, in the loo, when she’d stopped in for lunch.

Yet now she stammered, mumbled, trailed off as if deep in thought and forgot to finish her sentences. And she kept—kept looking at him. Like she was forgetting where he was seated, then panicking, until she found him again.

George flexed his hands, tense like a stack of bricks.

Wanting to capitalize on the forward momentum, Kingsley had owled just before bed and asked Granger to “throw together a small press conference” to announce steps forward in the Ministry’s trade agreements with international Wizarding allies.

Prior-Hermione thought it’d be a good opportunity to raise the plight of werewolves once again in the public eye, making room for support behind potential legislative changes.

All well and good. A low-pressure event, even, if Hermione hadn’t been Hermione.

But because she was, the room was packed. Open to the public as it was, every curious nitwit between here and the Atlantic had crammed themselves into the chamber.

Press gathered in the back, and along the rows of chairs, prominent figures from Diagon, Hogsmeade, and Godric’s Hollow peppered the seating. Wizengamot officials clustered near the side chortled amongst themselves, as if Hermione wasn’t standing behind the podium, trying her hardest to answer a question.

Trying and…well…failing.

Spectacularly, horribly, tremendously burning out in front of the entire wizarding world.

Present-Hermione should’ve been granted more time to prepare. The shadows below her eyes were nearly ghoulish, her hair was mussed to a point of endearment that clashed with her rumpled robes, and her notes were everywhere.

She’d asked him along after lunch, seeming worried, but he’d never have guessed it’d be this bad.

“Thankfully, most of the bureaucratic red tape has been dealt with,” she mumbled, eyes searching a page of notes. “Maybe even community gardens could help as well—”

A notion floated during talks with Winky and Luna, not related to this particular Ministry initiative.

“Community gardens?” the reporter asked, skeptical.

George prickled.

Vane glanced up from his Wizengamot fan club, lifted his brows, then ducked in.

Why he felt the need to attend, George couldn’t fathom. It was his bloody fault they were in this mess to begin with.

Laughter hissed from that corner in regular intervals.

Meanwhile, Hermione flipped the page, flipped it back, and tugged a frizzy curl behind her ear in frustration.

Blimey.

He knew that notebook she held. That wasn’t for this. The Ministry notepads were open-faced, held in black folios. That was a scratch paper notebook.

She seemed to realize as much at the same time. “So we can—” she trailed off, frowning down. “Um—” Hermione blinked heavily. “Rats.” The short puff of exhale huffed at ten times the volume. George’s heart twisted.

The reporter—some upstart from the states—waited, tapping a quill on his notepad. “We can…?” he prompted, incredulous.

Watching the panic unfold over her face drove something sharp right through his chest.

Then, Hermione tilted a bit, taking hold of the podium in her left hand.

A pernicious feeling overcame him.

Like watching a bludger whistle towards a target.

Move. Move, Granger.

She swayed. The tiniest bit.

George was already out of his seat, attempting to cut through the thick crowd. Why, he couldn’t exactly say.

Call it instinct. Call it the throttle of magic screaming in his veins. Call it the pulse drumming from his ring, against his right hand—fast and shallow, like a hummingbird.

Then, she looked at him.

Him.

Utterly exhausted and lost and—and scared.

“Hermione!” George’s lips formed her name, calling over the din.

Her pupils had gone large and round.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Hermione breathed. “I’m not feeling very well.”

She stumbled from the podium.

George rushed after, shoving behind Margaret Croyne and Phillip Japes. Hermione burst into the hall, and through the chatter swarming thick in the room, there came the sound of a witch hitting the ground.

“Hermione!” George bellowed. He took the door with his shoulder and then—

A dark lump of robes and bushy curls lay on the ground. All alone, in the Ministry hall, the shape of her reflecting off every polished black tile.

No. No, no, no—

When he reached her, her skin was pasty, clammy, and her eyes were rolled back where her cheek pressed to the floor. Harry was there too, lights strobing and bounding off of them as George drew Granger from the floor and into his arms.

When her lashes fluttered open, he choked back a sob, hunching over her.

“My head hurts,” she whispered.

He hugged tighter around her shoulders. “Alright,” George said thickly. “Okay. Just now, or earlier, too?”

She closed her eyes. “All day.”

Behind them, Kingsley shouted commands in a firm, loud tone. A glimpse over George’s shoulder revealed Minister Shacklebot’s arms spread, purple robes flowing down to the floor to block the public’s view.

Harry helped George hoist Hermione and pull her into a lift near the end of the corridor. His boots tapped against the tile at a ragged, quick rate. Hermione mumbled about finishing the press conference.

“Got to go back—” Was she truly protesting?

Yes. Of course she was. If she had the strength, she’d probably fight him.

“I know, Darling,” George said, staring right at Harry as the bloke hit the button for the Auror office floor.

No way in Helga’s Garden were they taking Hermione back in that bloody room. If she was well, she’d agree with him. The only questions she’d get now would be off-topic and invasive.

Floors dinged past, and George cupped his thumb and index finger along Hermione’s cheek, angling his right elbow to draw her closer to his body. Her Mary Janes and thickly knit, navy stockings draped from under her robes, knees folded over his other forearm.

“Mungo’s?” Harry breathed.

The lift walls shoved in on George. “They’ll be gathering in the lobby there.” He felt like a rat in a trap.

“I’ve got you,” he said to her. “It’s alright.”

“There might be some mediwitches around the office,” Harry said. The opening dinged, and Harry hustled them into his office, then disappeared in search of help.

George felt Hermione’s forehead, loosened her collar, poured her a glass of water she wasn’t sentient enough to accept.

Moments later, Harry burst back through with green-clad witch in tow.

George surrendered his spot beside her, stepping back as the witch did some diagnostics that went beyond his capabilities.

He waited.

Waited.

Hermione murmured something half-insensate when the witch asked a question under her breath.

George tucked his arms to his chest, then chewed on his thumbnail. “Well?”

The DMLE Mediwitch continued to work. Harry sat in a chair that he’d dragged to the wall, hands folded as he hunched and watched.

Hermione took a potion the witch produced.

George rubbed the back of his neck. Then his jaw. Then he pulled on his necktie.

Every inch of his skin itched.

Then, with the witch’s help, Hermione sat up.

George covered his face with his hands. This’d be the death of him. Merlin.

“She’ll be alright,” the mediwitch said, still studying Hermione’s runes. “It was exhaustion, not illness or anything more serious.”

George dragged his hands down his face and gave his wife a piercing look.

Hermione fidgeted her sleeve.

George took a calming breath. It didn’t much work.

“Her body’s a bit overtaxed, and it appears she didn’t eat enough before—”

“Yes, thank you,” Hermione said in a cutting whisper. “That will be all.” She glanced at him, cheeks flushing.

“Hermione,” George said, his voice nearing a growl.

Harry sprang from his seat. “I’ll just tell them it was a bit of overworking, and that you’ve gone home for the—”

“Absolutely not,” Hermione said, dusting her skirt. “I can finish the conference.”

The mediwitch winced. “You really should consider going home to rest.”

Hermione used Harry’s desk to lever herself to her feet.

George’s breath turned to steam, but he didn’t move. He only glared her down, arms folded over his chest. “Think about this, Granger.”

She lifted her brows, as if he was being needlessly fussy.

“You go back in there, the press will only be asking deeply personal questions about your health,” he said lowly. “It won’t help you, and it won’t help the Ministry, either.”

Harry nodded. “I can handle it, really,” he said. “I’ll dig up the memo from yesterday.” Then, decent fellow that he was, he darted from the room before Hermione could protest.

The mediwitch handed Granger a card. “Owl me if you feel poorly or if it gets worse,” she said.

“Thanks.” Hermione’s jaw flexed as she folded the card and stuck it in her cloak pocket. He’d bet the vault she’d bin it at first opportunity.

George waited for the witch to leave before he locked Harry’s office door. Then, he stood, holding the handle and staring down at it. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

Hermione sighed.

George turned from the lock. “Granger—”

“Can we not, just now?” Hermione whispered. “I’m—I’m tired, George.” Her shoulders sagged, and she wrung her hands before her waist.

George’s heart twisted. If only he’d stepped in sooner. Said something with a bit more conviction. She’d thought he felt a need to prove his value; what if this was entirely the same?

“You don’t have to prove your value, Love. You don’t have to—”

“That’s not it. We—we can talk about it later,” she pleaded. “But I don’t have—I don’t have anything left, right now.” Hermione folded forwards, a little sob breaking from her chest.

“Alright,” he whispered.

He crossed the floor, then pulled her in tight. “How about—how about we head back to the flat. I make you some bloody good food, and you have a kip?”

She nodded against his chest.

George closed his eyes to stop up the prickling feeling before it spilled over. It felt infinitely better with her in his arms. And yet—

Yet again, Granger was overextending herself, and it was starting to show.

#

October 21, 1999, 9:12 p.m.

Funny thing, love. Often, it felt like warmth. Stability. Care.

Never before had the sight of Hermione made him want to pick up a sofa cushion and shout himself hoarse into the fabric.

“More werewolf legislature?” George rasped. She was supposed to be bloody resting! She had been, only minutes ago!

Normally, he’d take a spot at her side and chip away, but at the moment, he was more tempted to vanish the records until she got a proper night’s sleep.

He set the bag of potions supplies on the counter.

Ten minutes. He’d nipped out for ten minutes to the Apothecary to replenish their personal stock. He’d left her right cozy on the sofa, chest rising and falling steadily under her old duvet.

“Yes, I woke up, and I couldn’t sleep,” Hermione said, apparently oblivious to George’s impending coronary. “Just a bit of—you know—I’ll be in after a minute.”

Were her eyes properly open?

The Cognitas charm was bumping things—the wall, the potted Dittany on the kitchen table, the window curtains. It flowed in a sluggish river, rather than a well-orchestrated dance. The sight made his insides clench like a happy song rewritten in minor key.

“Hermione.” George’s voice went strained. His rain slicker hung heavy on his shoulders.

She peeked up at him, expression taunt. “I’ll be able to sleep better when I’m through,” she said, pleading.

Why?

“Can I help it along, then?” George ventured. He approached the mess and pulled a file from the current. “Here, I’ll review the—” He tipped his head to check the scrawled label. “1970’s DMLE Policy Adjustments.”

She pulled the file from him, shaking her head. “I’ve got to be the one to look through it, or I’ll end up, um, you know.” She waved her pencil in place of a word. “Confused,” she finished finally.

George’s hands flexed. “Something else, then?”

She hummed, the sound not a yes or a no.

George unbuttoned his slicker and sent it to the hooks with a Depulso.

Still no answer.

He held his breath in his cheeks a moment, then released it with a sigh. “Hermione, what’s this really about?” he said.

She scribbled something out. “Werewolf protections,” she murmured. “Bill. Percy. Lupin. Everyone. The soul of the Wizarding World.”

“No, I meant—” he trailed off. She didn’t seem to notice as her brow bunched while she wrote.

“I meant the working yourself into the ground,” he said. “Moreso than usual.” He didn’t mention her hovering about him. Not yet. One thing at a time.

Granger didn’t stop writing.

Rather than prod at her, he gave her space and quiet to form an answer.

“You can’t force someone to communicate,” Marcus would say.

The quill scribbled. George shifted.

A minute ticked by. Another.

“Hermione?” he whispered. “I understand this is hard. But I’ll be here, when you’re ready.”

She nodded a bit.

George watched her. Hoping.

Talk.

Come on.

He waited.

Waited.

Waited.

But she didn’t.

#

October 22, 1999, 8:30 p.m.

“You’re slipping!” The Hog’s Head walls barely dulled Aberforth’s roar within. “Don’t try to deny it. Whole magical world is seeing these headlines, and they’re not wrong. You were muddled—lost the plot and stammering before—”

George clenched his teeth and leaned closer to the outer wall. He knew better than to go in. The two of them had ordered him out to the street while Hermione settled a “professional disagreement” with her mentor.

A professional disagreement in which George staunchly took Aberforth’s side. (Though the codger might put it more delicately, in his opinion.)

“It was hardly—” Hermione didn’t get a chance to finish her acidic interjection, for Aberforth kept going.

“You brought dangerous notes into a public press conference! One wrong twitch, and the papers today would’ve been a disaster!” There was a thud, followed by the sound of rifling parchment, like small stacks of it smacking to a bartop. “Look here! And here! A bit more to the side, and bloody Witch Weekly might’ve gotten a clear shot of your notebook.”

George swallowed, a bit of frost coating the inside of his nostrils and throat from the brisk wind. He knew which headlines Aberforth was pointing at. The Resonant had pranced the pictures of her gawking and confused across their front pages like a bitter court eager to see a ruler unseated. The Prophet had taken a tack that made Hermione seem unfit for work, which wasn’t much better. The whole thing stank of vile, disgusting, opportunistic rot.

Shockingly, Witch Weekly had one of the more enlightened takes: “Women at the Ministry overtaxed, under supported” but only because Fleur had owled with anonymous tips with that Ministry coworker, Josie, offering supporting quotes. The Quibbler reported on the Ministry’s policy changes and how they might affect werewolves, the only one to carry the originally intended story.

Hermione’s boots clacked across the flooring, the noise trailing in a way that signaled she’d walked to the other side of the pub.

“What did I tell you?” Aberforth said.

More silence. Then, all in a surge: “I didn’t lie to you about anything, and that was an isolated incident, besides.”

“Oh, sod off,” Aberforth barked. “Was not.”

“It was!” Hermione cried.

George set his wand to the silencing charm he’d laid over the cobblestones around the entry and pressed them a bit thicker. Just in case.

A round dwarf emerged from the woods and ambled closer, eyeing the pub.

“Closed today,” George called.

The dwarf grumbled and turned towards Rosmerta’s.

“We’ve chatted on this time after time,” Aberforth said in a growl. “And I keep thinking you’ve learnt, only for you to make like my directions are ideas for you to toss aside at your fancy. Never mind that this might’ve been worse, or that you know I’m right and you’re digging yourself into an early—”

“It’s none of your business!” Hermione shouted. Loud. Cracking. Furious.

Blimey.

The second bit was quieter, though no less venomous: “You advise my Mastery. Your opinions on the rest of my professional life are irrelevant.”

He could picture her expression, the way it’d be flushed, with her hair frizzing beneath her hat in near-electrical rebellion.

The following silence was so loud that George’s face heated.

Then, smaller: “Aberforth?”

Nothing.

Bloody Hell. George twisted one of his mittens and swallowed.

She didn’t mean it. She wasn’t quite right at the moment, and Aberforth knew that. He knew.

“It’s—it’s just that it’s all important,” Hermione said, even quieter and appeasing. “I can’t just abandon—”

“We’re done,” Aberforth’s tone was flat. Dead. Polished like smooth stone.

George stilled against the window.

“Until you set better boundaries with your time, I won’t have you mucking up work that affects countless beings.” A pause. “I won’t have you mucking up your own life, either. You’ve got too many demands on you, chit. It’s time to prioritize so that the lot of them don’t suffer.”

Hermione said nothing, now.

“Winky and Luna agree with me,” Aberforth said. “You won’t get a bleeding owl from us about things here until you sort yourself out.” There was a shuffle, like he was walking away. “And if you were smart, you’d see the wisdom in that, whether it’s my business or not.”

Granger gasped. “That’s—”

“Go home.”

George peeked through the glass. Snow feathered over his hair, but inside, Hermione’s mouth gaped open. A startled, painful flush covered her face.

The twisting in George’s chest wrenched tighter.

They walked back to the floo link in quiet. George paused for a quick word with Verity on the inventory work for the week, and beneath her low hat brim and bulky cloak, Hermione pretended to study the Skiving Snackbox display that she’d walked past hundreds of times.

#

At home, the moonlight painted squares on the Diagon flat’s floor.

Hermione settled at the coffee table, chin lifted, eyes red, then began to sort and resort her things.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

“Hermione,” George said.

She cleared her throat. “I understand you might be concerned, but I really, truly would like to work in quiet right now.”

Two opposing forces warred in his veins. One that propelled him towards her side, to gather her up in his arms. The other to respect what she’d said, to honour the request she’d made when she was so clearly struggling with things beyond her control.

“Are you sure?” George croaked.

Hermione didn’t look at him. “It’ll calm me,” she whispered. “I just need this.”

A thousand impulses flickered in his mind. Desire to fix it. To help. To make it all better.

But what had she said? What had she asked for?

Space and time to work. To be calm.

So that’s what he gave.

His hands felt painfully empty.

She worked alone for less than a minute; George watched as she dragged a table through the bedroom door, settling her things on it with a small lamp.

The table made a creaking, groaning sound as it settled into place.

Hermione sat at the chair, too tired to manage a bluebell charm, too walled off to speak.

So he padded out of bed, fixed her a cuppa, and conjured a seat across from hers. When she opened her mouth to protest, George lifted a paperback from one of piles on the vanity, leaned back, and pretended not to notice her skepticism. He didn’t reward her slow, relieved exhale, or the hint of the watery smile either. He’d not condone this directly. But he wouldn’t abandon her, either.

So he stayed. When he got through with the fiction, he moved on to the D.A.D.A. book, making some random notes on partnered fighting.

That chapter was irritating, given that she seemed to want to wage this war on her own.

He was right bloody here, and Granger—

“I’m so happy with you,” Hermione rasped.

George whipped his head up.

She was still writing, still staring down at her papers. But she wasn’t clipped, or oddly formal, or pinched in tone. Just—like she meant it. Honest.

Made no sense. Clearly, she was the last thing from happy.

Her foot hooked around his, sock to ankle. The little touch was enough to break his heart.

George swallowed the ache in his throat.

He found tear splotches on her notes the next morning, while she was in the loo.

#

October 24, 1999, 8:31 p.m.

“You do the sweets first, and we’ll manage the Wonderwitch products and the fireworks,” George said. The thick inventory books floated by the endcaps, and the gas lamp Fred had plunked on the counter burned a tallow-looking light that refracted against the dark windowpanes.

“And me?” Hermione called.

“You finish up that report for Kings,” George answered. “Or better yet, quit your second, unpaid job.” She’d relented to a nap earlier, though if George’s suspicions were correct, she’d lied about its length.

Hermione growled out some muttered reply, flipping another page from her place on the staircase. Steps three through nine were cluttered with her files.

No matter. He could just apparate to sort the inventory for the muggle magic line.

He wandered a bit closer as Fred and Verity shifted to get to work. “You sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable with a desk?” he asked.

Hermione frowned at her papers, which laid balanced on her lap, over a set of worn denims.

She’d not put on the Ministry robes yet again, opting to handle the department’s planning and correspondence over project development “remotely.” He’d support the choice as a move in the right direction, if he didn’t know that she was only trying to trick Aberforth.

If she realized how knackered she looked, she’d understand how daft that plan was.

Even before the ultimatum, he’d learned that Granger was equally capable of working herself mad from the shop or flat. She’d been there at every opportunity, really, since the incident.

There had to be meetings she’d missed, but maybe she’d wizened up and delegated. For once. More likely, she was writing her statements to be read at each meeting and reviewing the minutes owled to her twice a day, creating a massive additional workload by her absence.

He hadn’t snitched behind her back. But looking at her like this—if Aberforth relented, George might be tempted.

A problem for another day. She was yet barred from Mastery work with Aberforth, Winky, and Luna, and now she was sifting through applications for the new office and some nominated project reports.

She’d been working at the current report all evening. George pressed his lips together at the name scrawled near the top of one of the included memos—Tinton. One of Vane’s friends, and a right pain.

“A desk?” she mused, half-gone to the reading. “But you all are working out here.”

George fought to keep his features even. “Yes, but you look like we’re giving you a headache.” He angled his hand at the materials. “And your things are more packed in than Mum’s henhouse in a blizzard.”

Hermione snorted.

But she didn’t move.

Bugger.

“I could clear some space up there, even?” George nodded at the landing beside the muggle magic line. “Set you up a desk for the evening?”

Hermione hummed noncommittally and shrugged the suggestion off. The dismissal stung.

Come on, now.

Say something. Anything.

“It’d be more manageable for you,” he ventured.

She gave him an incredulous smile. “I’m quite alright here, Georgie.”

But she wasn’t.

George scratched his scarred ear. She wouldn’t use the Cognitas charm, with them floating so many variables through the shop as it was. Also because she was too tired to do it properly, and likely trying to hide that.

As a result, Hermione was sacrificing her work on behalf of proximity. Not like her at all.

Only it was.

It was exactly like her.

He had a distinct feeling that had they not been sleeping in the same bed every night (when she bothered laying down), he’d have been taking some late night floo calls.

Salazar. She was properly tangled up, wasn’t she? She kept putting off any longer talks about the issues, kept making excuses, and he was—well—he wasn’t certain as to how to help without walking all over her.

She avoided his searching look.

Truly? She still didn’t want to talk about it?

Hermione peered at her papers. “Hmmm.” She smiled through her faint, silly look of concentration. A rubbish performance.

Merlin.

“Well, if you need anything,” George said. Defeat stuck to his insides like chewing gum lodged beneath a muggle park bench. “And I mean, really, Love—” He slowed, ducking down to meet her eyes. “Anything.”

She smiled like she hadn’t a care in the world. But she did, and the mask pinched at him. “I know, Darling. I’m alright, though.”

That, there. That hurt more than the rest combined.

The last two weeks, and he’d let her know he was there, but also provided her with room to process, When it came to Hermione’s means of coping, he had quite a bit of patience.

But not an infinite amount.

Not if she was going to bloody lie to his face, or come close enough to it.

George folded his arms.

Now he was getting a bit peevish.

They’d have this out.

Late at night, with the others around, though…this wasn’t the time.

George swallowed back his demand for a proper chat, one without shifty glances and fake smiles.

He’d hoped she might open up on her own. But that would require her admitting she wasn’t invulnerable, perish the thought.

Hadn’t they been through this?

When his shrewd glower netted him no new results, he sighed, patted her on her head, and trudged down to the Blaze Boxes.

The crew worked in relative silence for a while. Each tackled their own section, and the amiable quietude intermixed with the scuffle of shoes and the gentle scrape of writing and product shifting around.

While he went, George nearly drilled a hole through the boxes with his stare.

He’d have to be careful. She was fragile about it all, obviously. More than he’d suspected. But rather than opening up about it more over time as he’d hoped, she’d done the opposite. She’d gone quieter and quieter, then just closed off entirely.

For what reason?

And how was he supposed to pry through those defenses without doing damage?

He gave the question some thought as he sorted his set of shelves.

He’d not corner her. She might handle prodding questions better than a blunt accusation. If she was firmly in denial, though, a less direct approach wouldn’t work.

But she had to be aware, on some level. Hadn’t she? Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been shying away from the magic sharing since it happened.

What if she didn’t want to share because she didn’t want him to feel her anxiety? Or what if she simply didn’t have enough to give, even in equal trade?

Those were some grim thoughts. Ones that made him pause, bottle rockets forgotten in his hands.

There were no other apparent reasons for her reticence about it.

Meanwhile, George felt like a ruddy powder keg, like he’d woken up with one of his senses shut off and he had no idea how to make it all right without—without pressuring her to volunteer emotions and innermost feelings she wasn’t quite ready to share.

You couldn’t force someone to communicate.

No. You could just ask and wait and ask and wait and—

The box he’d just stocked dropped from the shelf edge, and George swooped to catch it with his forearm.

He shoved the worries aside, replacing the box after he checked for three more behind it. A scribble in the inventory book. A step to the side, for the next batch.

If she was holding back to spare him grief, well…a fat lot of good that’d done.

George was fussing himself into a snit over her as it was.

He’d start there, maybe?

He flicked a bit of dust from the shelf. These fireworks weren’t moving as fast as he’d projected. Maybe they could swap the—

Bang.

George caught a split-second glimpse of Verity, crate spilt, having tripped and sprawled over the floor near the entry.

Then shattering white-yellow light slammed through the room, and George did not remember falling, but he had.  

#

He was looking at the shopfront sideways. Ringing in his eardrums, vision swaying.

Sick clamped and twisted his stomach.

The windows were gone? All of them?

Where were they? His doubled vision rocked as he hacked, peering for hoods, for ivory masks, for—for—a sign in the sky.

But there wasn’t anyone there?

“Hermione—” he rasped. His wife. Where was his wife?

A sob cracked near his shoulder, coming closer. “Oh—oh—”

He was on his back, head craning his chin to his breast as he tried to make sense of it—to find her in the swimming colours.

He tried to get up. Fell a bit, in the glass.

It was all around him. Crunching, but sharper than sand.

Red.

Then came panic.

“Hermione!” George shouted, though a fat lot of good it did. His voice was all brittle, breaking over the absence in his lungs, where it felt like the air had been sucked right out.

“—oh, George—”

It was Hermione. Hermione was behind him. Alive, too.

A bit of air came back.

He blinked once, twice, his reach groping for the sound of her crying.

Who else? Fred? Verity? A coughing fit overtook him before he could get the names out.

But reassurance came shortly after. “Everyone alright?” Fred croaked from across the shop.

George made a faint sound that he intended to be reassuring, yet somehow made Fred scramble through the glass for him.

Hermione’s face appeared as Fred helped him twist onto his back. No blood or signs of hurt.

“Alright?” George gasped.

She cried harder, wringing her hands close to her chest.

Aw, bugger.

“Stay still,” Fred muttered. He had a bit of a gash on one cheek, and another on that same side’s arm. George couldn’t feel them on his own skin, but they made his pulse hammer anyway.

“Freddie, you’re bleeding.”

Fred paid him no mind and shoved to his feet, limping towards the opposite side of the room. “I’ve got to check Verity.”

Good Godric, Verity—

George fumbled, but Fred snapped back at him. “Stay put.” He crouched over a stirring form. Outside, a pedestrian gawked on the cobbles past the windows.

Bloody Hell. How far had Verity been thrown? Was she dead?

The sick feeling intensified.

George rasped, clutching his head.

What had they done wrong? A bad seal on a firework charm? Reactive potions kept close together? Failed to catch a nasty security hex? Stored something badly?

Hermione’s sobs clipped shorter and shorter.

George fumbled for her hand and gripped it. Slick coated their palms.

His hand was all red.

Merlin. Merlin. Merlin.

Fred muttered something.

George shuddered, for what reason, he couldn’t tell. “V-Verity?” he called.

“She’s breathing,” Fred shouted. “Coming around, now—”

They hadn’t killed her.

George’s breath slipped out in a whoosh, and a bit of his vision cleared. After a few moments, he gathered enough clarity to speak again. “I don’t—I don’t understand what happened?”

What had he done wrong? What had he missed?

He was racking his mind, and nothing out of the ordinary jumped at him.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, throat gritting like bits of broken rock.

“It was me,” Hermione sobbed. Her hand clutched his tighter. His grasp left red smudgy prints over her creamy skin that turned his stomach. “I was—I couldn’t think, and then—the noise, and, and, and—”

She wasn’t making any sense.

Granger’s voice was all panicked and half gasps. He couldn’t make it out, now, save for one word.

Bombarda.

Then it all made sense.

Utterly crystalline, clear-as-a-cloudless-day, heart wrenching sense.

George summoned his courage and pulled Hermione down to his chest.

#

October 25, 1999

A bit of Dittany, a bit of bedrest, and most of them were no worse for wear. There had also been a large portion of extra (and insisted-upon) paid recovery time for one very deserving clerk named Verity, along with additional compensation.

A few inches to the side and down a hair, and the Bombarda might’ve hit the clerk full-on. Thankfully, it had missed, taking out the brand-new windows for the second time in as many weeks.

But most importantly, according to the Mungo’s team, Verity would be fine.

Verity seemed to take a bit of pride in being scrappy, though George suspected it was for show. She was shaken when they’d left her with her mum, like the other woman’s aghast shock had finally driven home the severity of the situation.

And the rest of them—well…they were a bit shaken, too.

Had the brunt of the blast not hit the windows, had those windows not been spell-proofed, the damage might’ve been far more severe. It could’ve extended further, or hit any one of them full on.

 It was near miraculous that none of the larger explosives had gone off.

But they’d been spared that, and that was something. At least.

Small comforts, as Mum would say.

They’d all been knocked about in the aftershock of the magic, yes. But most of the scratches, bruises, and scrapes were superficial, and had been easily fixed, and Verity had invited them to look in on her the following day.

Besides her, the only one still suffering was Granger.

Suffering was too passive a word, on second thought.

Punishing herself—that was more accurate.

If before she’d been stuck to his side like a barnacle, now she was the opposite. She didn’t trust herself to come near him.

If it wasn’t so bloody predictable, he’d have a bit more patience with it.

But he had a rather clear notion of exactly what was going through that head of hers, and so he gave it no more than a day, this round, before he positioned himself in front of the floo, stuck his hand on the mantle to brace, and wedged his other on his hip.

Waiting and tense. Scared out of his bloody mind.

How?

Bottling it up only made it worse—wasn’t she worried it would happen again? How was it possible she didn’t feel safe enough to confide in him?

A younger George might’ve blamed himself for not anticipating this or for failing to help as needed. This one, after a bit of reflection, realized that things were a bit more complicated. Sometimes these things happened. A parting gift from the war, and if they wanted to make it through them, they’d better adopt a healthier approach.

One that involved proper communication, to start with.

He’d worked himself into a right snit before she emerged from the loo. Work robes on, all set and settled on dodging his attempts to intervene for yet another day.

At the sight of him waiting, she visibly shrank back.

Really?

George’s chest twisted into a small hurricane.

Hermione muttered something about a forgotten file and slipped towards the hallway.

George drummed his fingers on the mantle. “Take your time, Love,” he called, a bit waspish. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And neither was she.

Oh, alright. He wouldn’t bloody blockade her into the flat or hide the floo bowl. He was about ten years too old for that sort of rubbish. But he’d make her choose openly to go on ignoring it, if that’s what she meant to do, and acknowledge what she was skirting around in the process.

He wouldn’t make it easy for her to lie to the both of them.

She stomped back into the living room, gaze skittish as it landed on him. Her heels were held in one hand, and her papers were nowhere to be seen. “Is this an intervention, then,” she snapped.

Thank God.

George bobbed his head to the side and squinted. “See, that’s why I’ve always fancied you,” he drawled and tapped the side of his nose. “Wicked smart.” Then he flicked his gaze to the couch. “Have a seat, Kid.”

Hermione’s jaw tightened, but she sat, prim, on the edge of the cushion. No hint of a smile at his dry quip, or the endearment that usually made her snort.

George stared at her. Suddenly, he was exhausted.

Hermione glowered back. That chin of hers flexed forward, sharp and jutting.

A weaker man might’ve flaked away to ashes under such a gaze.

But George Weasley-Granger wasn’t a weaker man. He didn’t want to fight her on this; he’d rather they work together. But he also wasn’t about to let it carry on as if it was fine. It wasn’t fine.

He stared back, unleveled.

Her throat went slowly pink, the base of it bobbing.

He could wait.

Hermione swallowed yet again.

Her eyes narrowed.

Alright, then.

“Well, I’ve about had enough of whatever role you’ve been playacting these past few weeks,” George said. “Unconvincing as you are in the part of—” he checked his bare palm. “—totally, emotionally fine individual—” He lifted his gaze again. “—somehow, I don’t think more rehearsal will help.”

Hermione’s flush spread over her jaw and across her cheeks. Her hands clenched against the couch cushion.

Like stirring cold caramel, this. He was one, poor turn away from ending up a cracked spoon. (He was the spoon.)

“Hermione,” George whispered, incredulous. “Are you really not going to talk to me?”

She burst into tears.

Alarm and relief flushed through him at once. George eased from the hearth towards the sofa.

Hermione’s tears gripped at his insides and wrung them weak. They always had.

Yet, that was infinitely easier to deal with than silence and pretending.

He squeezed in beside her, gathered her up as best he could, and pulled her close. “This—this makes a bit more sense, considering,” he said, attempting at mild through the ache in his throat.

She gripped his shirt front, saturating it.

“You can cry,” George rasped. “Let’s have a good cry, yeah?”

Merlin.

He needed one too, after that last few days. He rubbed his head against hers like Crooks did sometimes.

“I—I like being happy and married to you,” Hermione choked. “I didn’t want to weigh it all down. And it felt like if I could just—just manage it all, then you would be safe, and the werewolves better protected, and all those children, finally cared for, and the elves—”

“That’s a long tick list, Love,” George whispered.

“I feel so bad, and—and like—I just want to fix it, but I can’t, so I keep trying and trying, and there’s no—” she gasped. “What if there’s no point to it? What if I only make it worse?”

“There’s a point,” he said. “But at the same time—” George sighed. “Darling, you can’t fight every evil and danger in the entire world all the time.”

Hermione shuddered. “And it feels like something bad is going to happen, now that I’m happy,” she said. “It feels like it’s all going to go wrong.” She wheezed. “I kept looking at you, and going, ‘Please, not him. Let it be something else—’ and—and then feeling awful—”

And George swallowed a painful lump, because deep inside, he understood that. The saddest thing about happiness was its fragility. Like finding a four-leaf clover in the field and hoping it wouldn’t get crushed.

She cried quietly, and he held her.

After a while, her sobs ebbed a bit, though he ignored the crick in his spine until she stirred.

“Could you lay back,” Hermione croaked into his neck. “I want to—” She gestured to finish the sentence.

George shifted to recline over the sofa, and to his gratification, Hermione climbed atop him so he could cradle her to his chest. Her weight was like a heavy blanket.

Her breath eased, and her fingers trailed over his forearm. Then, truly, he felt her relax for the first time in days.

The superficial sparks sank deep, and George sucked in a breath.

Twisted relief and fear rushed through him, colouring the world gold.

“You can’t protect everyone all the time,” George whispered. “Hanging around the shop, saying yes to every need the Ministry tosses your way—”

Hermione twisted her face. “I can try.”

He paused. Tipped his head. “Not well,” he said. He meant it to be jovial, but his tone was a touch throaty.

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” he said. It felt like exposing the skin beneath a scab. “You had to know I want to be there for this sort of thing.”

“I know.” Hermione clutched his shirt tighter. “It’s only—I didn’t want to say anything because—” She paused. “This is the part where we’re meant to be happy, George.” She sounded right pitiful. “The happily ever after.”

Something most of those books of hers shared in common—a gleaming sunset and a lack of challenges after the satisfied couple went skipping through the pearly gates of matrimony.

Life went a bit differently, didn’t it?

George scooped her damp curls from her neck and tucked his chin down to look at her. “No, Love,” he whispered. “This is the part where we’re meant to be together.”

Hermione’s eyes slipped closed. “I love hearing your heart beat. It makes me feel calmer.”

“Funny,” George murmured. “The way Mum tells it, the mediwitch nearly gave them all a coronary, the first time they heard the sound of me. They forgot to tell Mungo’s there were two of us, and the healer in training announced Fred might have an irregular heartbeat. Turns out he was just irregularly sharing a womb.”

“Tell me more stories.” He could hear the faint smile in her voice.

George crossed his ankles and took a deep breath, examining the ceiling as he trailed his fingers up and down her back. “Well.” He grinned. “When Fred and I were ickle gremlins, we ripped every page out of Percy’s favorite storybook.”

Hermione gasped. “No.”

George laughed. “Apparently. Bill found it; he said Uncles charmed and fixed it back together before Mum and Dad discovered what’d happened.”

“Did Percy know?”

George sighed. “It was Percy. Of course he knew.” He shifted to get more comfortable, carrying on. “Bill said Uncles were always doing things like that—”

It wasn’t exactly what he’d planned, this chat. But it was a start, and a good one at that.

#

October 26, 1999, 10:10 a.m.

In Verity’s absence, rather than overextend themselves, they’d decided to simply close the Hogsmeade branch for a time.

That is, until Lee got wind of it and snagged one of his portkeys. Lee Jordan was loud, boisterous, and perhaps one of the only people alive stubborn enough to go toe-to-toe with Fred directly, when the situation demanded it, rather than working around him.

He was also mad as a Wimbourne Wasp by the time he landed.

“You say I’m a partner in this, and you know I don’t ask for much,” Lee shouted and stomped around the workshop. “But I’d assumed we all held the safety of our staff in equal value.”

Lee didn’t know what had caused the explosion. He must’ve read the brief article in The Prophet, because he seemed to think it was a prototype gone wrong. Lucky, the paper had said, that no customers were in the store.

“You’re not fourteen anymore! You can’t take shortcuts with blast powder!”

Fred had his head in his hand, and George stood between the workshop door and the back hall, lest Hermione come in at precisely the wrong moment.

“It wasn’t blast powder,” George said lowly. “But you’re right. I should’ve—”

Should’ve what? Anticipated Hermione’s reaction? Held the conversation sooner?

Brokenly, he explained bits and pieces. In a different moment, Lee might’ve been elated by certain revelations. As it was, he paced back and forth, pulling his dragon leather gloves on and off.

He didn’t say a word of blame, but he gave George a long, sharp look. “Verity’s a squib,” he said. “Healing magic takes more out of her.”

And then he left.

#

October 26, 1999, 1:10 p.m.

The Hogsmeade flat had been painted over, new furnishings placed inside. Quite different than it had been when George had lived there, though some traces remained.

There was more “Verity” than “George” or “Hermione” littered around the place, though. She’d moved things in slowly, until occasional nights working late had unfolded into weeks spent at the Hogsmeade branch at a time.

Verity liked it, she’d said. It made her feel closer to her late father. According to Angelina, eventually, she fancied having a larger place located just outside of the little, snowy town. She’d really made the location her own, sorting the stock a bit differently that Lee claimed created a “Hogsmeade exclusive” effect.

When Fred, Angie, Hermione, and George came through the floo, Lee had his feet tucked up on a hassock as he lounged in a diamond print, bright orange chair that appeared like something out of the seventies.

Spanish poured from a wireless unit on the table.

Helen, Verity’s mother, stirred her spoon through her tea across the mirror-top table in a matching armchair. Verity snored on the fuzzy, orange couch, hand flopped off the cushion.

“Can you believe it,” Lee muttered, reaching over to tuck Verity’s arm under the blanket without looking. “Just when you think they’ve killed him off for the last time.”

Verity’s mum made a serious, “Mm.” sound.

“Aren’t you supposed to be minding the till?” Fred whispered, teasing.

“I’m minding what needs minded,” Lee said, rolling his eyes at Verity and Helen. “These two.” He was putting up a good-natured front, but there was still tension around his eyes and mouth.

Hermione shuffled, paling as she glimpsed Verity’s unconscious body. It looked rather small, beneath the crocheted blankets.

“She’d doing wonderfully,” Helen said. “But I’d rather let her rest.”

Angie nodded, grasped the flowers from Fred, and went to tuck them into a little bowl. “Do you need anything from the potions over here?”

Helen shook her head.

Lee held a finger to his lips. “Shh. You’re interrupting.”

It was some sort of wireless drama, a whisper of English translation echoing after each phrase.

The lot of them tiptoed around, meaning to leave shortly, but then Verity stirred and brightened. “You’ve brought flowers?” she rasped, the sound of her voice awkward and loud amidst the people sneaking about for her benefit. At that moment, Verity’s gaze landed on Hermione, who was wedged near the wall in timid silence, and she said, without a hint of irony, “Oh, I do hope you’re feeling alright?”

“Me?” Hermione made a choking sound. “Verity, I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Verity beckoned her over, dropping her voice, then it accidentally got a bit chaotic because George and Fred kept breaking in with their own apologies—seeing as it’d happened on their watch, after all—until Lee finally, pointedly suggested that Fred and George go open the shop for a bit, along with anyone who might like to go with them.

Verity had looked so relieved at this suggestion that they didn’t fight it.

So Fred, Angie, and George ducked out to do just that, leaving Hermione and Lee along with Verity and her mum.

There wasn’t much foot traffic on an afternoon like this one, but they lifted the security charms, flipped the sign, and took the covers off of the sweets barrels.

Along some of the products, Verity had stuck little, gloss-covered parchment slips that proclaimed, “Verity Recommended!” and “Safe for Squibs!”

They’d only had the doors open a few moments before an old woman wearing a scarf she was actively yet crocheting swept through the door. “Ver, my lovely,” she said. “I’d heard you’d—”

Then she stopped. “Oh.”

George and Fred attempted to make light talk, but the customer seemed less interested in chatting with them. She left a note for Verity, then went on her way. Gradually, another customer, and then a third and fourth, stopped in—all looking for the sweet, beloved clerk behind the counter.

Not shocking. There’d been a short piece in The Prophet. It’d lacked detail, but it listed the Diagon lot and there were a few photographs of the damage. Anyone familiar with Verity would know that she might’ve been there, and word in Hogsmeade village travelled fast.

There were a few visitors George had seen stop in from time to time during his tenure, but the local community seemed to have taken much more of a shine to Verity. She was a bit older than he was, and had actually joined the community groups in the village, and it appeared that many of them knew or had known Verity’s parents.

Some even talked about the old squib marches, from ages before George was ever born.

“Well, we think of her like our own, really,” a short fellow with a bushy, black beard threaded with grey declared. “Charles, bless him, wouldn’t stand to see a creature left out in the cold. He was a kinder soul than most. Course we look after her. We worry, we try to keep her from spending too much time alone, here. It’s not like they say. Squibs—we’re not helpless. It’s hard, though. When you’ve always got to be the one to adapt, it takes a lot out of a person.” He went up on his tip-toes to peek at the flat door. “Been wondering if she was managing alright.”

Being a squib, Verity’s system didn’t process the potions as easily as George’s might, and it left her feeling a bit weak and tired.

That man left a package of tea.

Through the afternoon, little gifts were amassed. Eventually, Lee meandered into the shop seeming a bit more relaxed. Hermione and Angelina had apparently been conscripted to listening to Helen spin stories about the old days (though Hermione wasn’t quite “full of chat,” according to Lee; thankfully, Lee said Verity understood why someone might “feel a bit rubbish” about accidentally nearly blowing her up).

Concerned as he was, every time he checked in, Verity shoo-ed him away and told him to stop fussing. “Stay by that till,” she said, snorting. “Someone’s got to.”

In the meantime, a few old friends came around—Dean Thomas, who was stopping by mid-way into the start of some art tour through Europe. Flitwick as well, who had been a bit worried about the lot of them.

Additionally, some current students managed to sneak out of Hogwarts, likely having read the short piece in the papers and angling for real news. Dennis, obviously, and Emmeline (who had followed him), then a Ravenclaw from fourth year, then, just before they’d planned to close early, a weedy lad with mussed black hair and a shorter boy beside him.

It took George a moment to recognize them. Children, after all, grew.

Albert and Milo were quiet, Albert shying up to the desk after a full two laps around the shop in which they touched almost nothing. He’d grown a bit, since last time.

Albert nodded at Milo. Milo stuck a package of Giggle Grams on the counter, and George rung them up. He tried to seem natural, but the inclination to search for signs of trouble left him a bit more stilted than usual.

Through a bit of snooping (alright, through overhearing Luna and Hermione chatting about it a while back), he knew McGonagall now had a contact, some distant family member or neighbor, in works her to extricate the boys from their dangerous father through back channels, but the details had been murky for those not personally involved. It did not appear to be strictly legal, whatever it was. For now, they’d been offered an invitation to stay on the Castle grounds over holidays, to participate in “additional studies.”

“You do secret shipping, right?” Albert asked, rather fast and tense, all at once.

George paused.

Albert withdrew a short, stumpy, and oblong package from his bookbag. “This—it’s got to get to our younger brother before November.” He spoke rapidly, just under his breath. “I was hoping you could send it, like you do the parcels to Hogwarts.”

Fred met George’s eyes across the shop floor.

Salazar.

They didn’t do private shipping. Not when they couldn’t know what exactly was being sent.

“It’s for someone named Michael,” said Albert. “But you’ll have to address it to the kitchen maid—Stori Cygnus.”

George faltered.

“She’s nice, don’t worry,” Milo said hurriedly. “She’ll know how to get it to him.”

George winced. “It’s a bit of security issue, Mate,” he said. “If it’s not our product, there’s loads of room for something to go wrong.” Even as it stood, there were fewer things they’d send undetectably, these days. Nothing that required a fuse, for one.

Albert fell silent, but Milo leapt forward, interrupting. “It’s not anything bad,” he said, pulling the wrappings apart at one end.

A 260 Meteor—a small toy broom, capable of no greater than five miles an hour and two feet of elevation—and a used one, at that. It was remarkably similar to the model he and Fred had used, though theirs were a bit faster than regulation standard.

Milo prattled quickly, showing each part. “—saved up, and it’s his birthday, and if we don’t send it in time, he’ll think we forgot—”

“They’re not going to do it.” Albert’s reply cut Milo off. It was cold. Tired. Sharp and chiding.

George faltered.

Milo balked. “But they might, if they can see that it’s—”

“They won’t.” Albert yanked the broom off the counter, then the Giggle Grams.

George winced. “I didn’t say that exactly.” It felt paltry, but if something were to go wrong, the oversight would be squarely the fault of the adults, not the children.

“No.” Albert stuffed the broom away. “It’s fine. We’ll find someone else to help. One of Milo’s friends, maybe.”

“Hold on,” George said. He lifted the hinge and headed around the front of the counter. “Alright. Maybe we pass it to McGonagall, and she gives us a hand with it?”

More familiar with the exact situation, Minerva would ensure the gift posed little risk in both delivery and content.

But Albert’s jaw tightened.

“Come on, Al,” Milo whispered.

“Free of charge,” George offered.

“We’re going to do it ourselves,” Albert said tightly. He yanked his cloak tighter.

Milo made a frustrated, impatient noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t be like that.”

Albert turned slowly and glowered, making the pale skin beneath Milo’s Hufflepuff cap go pink.

“You think that old bat will help? Fine,” he snapped. He shoved the broom at Milo. “Do what you like.”

Albert stomped off, out of the shop. Milo scampered to place the broom in George’s hands before he followed, still arguing.

Fred picked himself off of the wall. “I’ll be back in a mo’. Getting a bit dark to have the younger ones on their own.” A sentiment Fred himself would have scoffed at, at that age.

But growing up forced sense into you, didn’t it.

There were reasons for certain safeguards. With a bit of time, they might’ve been able to assure the broom was up to standard. But there was no telling what might happen, should the boys’ father find out about it. McGonagall’s extra help was necessary.

Though it shouldn’t have been.

Why were they still under that monster’s thumb?

Some policies were held out of necessity. Others served no purpose at all.

George clenched his fists against the till.

Minerva would allow them to stay on Castle grounds over breaks, yes, but that did nothing for the one left behind.

Raise a storm, and they risked fallout landing on the children. Use the current system, and they’d likely be grown by the time the Wizengamot saw fit to intervene. How long would McGonagall’s plan take?

George stared hard out the windows, contemplating the merits of well-intentioned kidnapping, until Fred and the boys were long gone. There was a slight chance they’d get away with it and it wouldn’t make things worse in every sense of the word. If caught, though, the boys would end up exactly where they started, and with an enraged grown man to deal with.

See—the problem was that Albert and Milo weren’t the only ones. There were more than a few young people in the local community stuck in similar positions, and below the age of seventeen, they had little recourse.

And George liked to think they’d have a place to turn, in Wheezes. He stared at the broom. Old and dented, but polished lovingly, judging by the even gleam on the wood.

He should’ve thought faster, said something more engaging. They’d seemed rather chuffed to have worked the whole plan out. He’d crushed that enthusiasm a bit, hadn’t he?

But he was tired, and his mind was working so bloody slow.

They’d try as best they could, obviously. They’d keep trying, for all of them. But the sooner they sorted the new Ministry office—the sooner real change could be put in action, the better.

Quite heavy with frustration and overwhelmed, George locked up. When he pushed back into Verity’s flat, his limbs and middle felt made of tin, like a broken-down automaton.

#

He drank a cuppa with Helen, nodded along to some stories he couldn’t quite process, and managed to wake up enough to offer yet another apology to Verity (along with some compliments on the shop’s running, and the amassed messages and gifts from her friends).

All the while, Hermione was quiet and absent, jumping at laughter like she hadn’t expected the sound.

They didn’t stay for supper, but promised to try again another day, after Verity felt more prepared for company.

Once home, the lot of them worked to clear the remaining debris, and George delivered a printed statement Fleur had written up to explain the incident without revealing private information.

With luck, the papers wouldn’t twist it too far out of order.

Meanwhile, Hermione wandered around the Diagon workshop and the flat, a lost and disoriented expression pasted over her frozen features. She kept picking things up and putting them down, exactly as they had been.

A new quirk, that.

Seeing Verity had shaken her in a new way.

She wasn’t quite walled off as before—more frozen. Frightened by the sight of damage done, even unwittingly.

Every fiber of George’s body wanted to pull her close and promise her that it was all alright. That Verity would be alright. That it was an accident that didn’t mean anything.

Only, it wasn’t exactly alright. Verity could’ve been seriously hurt or killed. Even if it had been an accident. A pinch in his gut told him that this wasn’t something to brush aside, and Granger deserved better than that. Because she wasn’t fine either, and this was the sort of thing that needed more than one type of support.

After they’d sorted the shop, Angelina took Hermione for a late dinner, and George tucked his hat on his head, then floo-ed back to Hogsmeade to pay a few calls.

First, he went to Minerva, who he cajoled into helping with the toy broom. They chatted a bit, and she was cagey about the details as ever. (Though she accidentally gave a bit more away when George brought up the maid, and she seemed to know exactly who Albert and Milo had mentioned.) A while of that, and she handed him three-page list of “suggested changes” for their most popular products. (All of which rendered them rather pointless.) But he took it and humoured her.

It was a productive visit, save for the very end:

“I had meant to ask, Mr. Weasley—is Hermione well?” She said it on his way out. Pinned him to that tartan-covered yorkstone with it, and he was left fumbling.

Because George couldn’t answer truthfully.

Second, he stopped by Hagrid’s and asked the dear fellow to keep an eye on several young people at the Castle—Dennis, Emmeline, Albert, Milo, and more.

Once again, there was a bit of tension at the close:

“Say—how’s our Hermione?” the gamekeeper called, beaming, as George tugged on his hat.

And yet again, George had to mumble a nonsense reply.

Thirdly and most resignedly, he went all the way down High Street, to the ramshackle pub on the corner. He shoved the door open, and dismantled the Caterwauling charm.

“Before you say anything—” he started doggedly. The worry, the complications, the thousand things he couldn’t fix and the burning desire to help just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle go right, the need for someone to help them sort, just a bit, what to do—it torrented right out of him.

And then he snitched.

#

October 26, 1999, 11:37 p.m.

Late, late that night, a knock cut through their evening tea, and Hermione started and glanced at George with a hesitant look.

She wore a set of his old pyjamas, and was bundled on the sofa and looking so incredibly dear that his heart hurt. “Who’s that?” she whispered, sending a skittish glance to the entry.

It was far too late for company, and family would’ve floo-ed, mostly.

George bit down on his lips and rose to crack the door open.

The visitors brought a hint of cool air, pine, and a faint, cooking fire.

Aberforth peered around George, removing his coat and stacking Winky’s atop of it as he handed them off. George stuck them on the hooks.

Then, Aberforth trudged over the flat’s hardwood until he stood in front of the fireplace, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed in his ratty cloak pockets, and eyes crystalline daggers as he studied Granger.

Hermione seemed to get smaller, shying away with Aberforth’s every step, with every moment under the other wizard’s assessment.

Like she was expecting to be kicked while down.

Or to be chastised, at least, for making a mistake.

To be honest, she had. George could admit as much while still loving her so much he ached.

Wearing herself thin, packing it all in and tamping it down as she had—it’d led to this. And the way Granger was shifting around like a ghost since their visit to Hogsmeade, he knew she was flaying herself over it.

But at the same time—he could admit that much because hadn’t he done the same, in different times and places? Merlin, even now…

George could understand. Understand, how the weight of everything terribly wrong in the world made a body feel guilty or anxious at rest. He could understand, because he’d been there. He’d tried to be everything for everyone, he’d felt the agony of “if only I’d—”

Oftentimes, he still found himself in the thick of it.

Not resting at all, though, could lead to—well—this. And that had been Aberforth’s point.

She’d finally had to stand still long enough for the lesson to sink in, though it’d happened the hard way, and at someone else’s expense.

That wasn’t why he’d gotten Aberforth, though. In part, it was because sometimes, a thing was so complicated that it required knowingness. And George—he was every bit as turned around as she was. George was not gifted at this. George didn’t know, exactly, how best to sort this kind of hurt—when you’d made a mistake and now felt lost and rubbish. Learn and carry on, yes, but that second bit was complicated.

His wife looked like she’d been dragged before a court to plead guilty. Like she’d fractured something that could never be put back together. Like she still didn’t understand quite how it had happened.

Hermione’s eyes filled yet again. “I couldn’t—” She didn’t look at Winky or Aberforth. “I didn’t—the spell—it just exploded out of me.”

That was why he’d fetched Aberforth.

Winky sighed and jabbed her elbow into Aberforth’s side—hard.

Aberforth grunted.

Then, he clunked over to the sofa and sat down, right beside Granger.

Finally, Hermione looked up at him, fat tears rolling over her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to,” she rasped. “I know it doesn’t matter, but I feel so stupid, so horribly stupid, I—She could’ve died.”

“I know.” Moving in an unpracticed, jerky motion, Aberforth dropped his arm around her shoulders.

Hermione cried harder.

“If you hate this, I can sit somewhere else,” Aberforth muttered.

“No,” Hermione gasped. “It’s fine, it’s—you might as well.” She scrubbed at her eyes fruitlessly, tone going thick with misery and self-loathing. “I can’t hurt you, at least. If someone drops a cauldron or something—” She hiccuped. “—and I explode the flat, you’d manage.”

“Oh,” Aberforth trailed, the rough of his voice tempered by something quiet and thoughtful. He stared at the fire, face a half-grimace as he bobbed his head to the side. “That’s not true.”

Something in his tone made George realize he’d made exactly the right choice, with this.

Hermione tipped her head back against his arm, tucked her knees against her chest, and draped her elbow over her face. “You’d fend it off,” she muttered.

Aberforth patted his hand against her opposite arm by way of reply.

Hermione didn’t even lecture him on dripping sludge water through the flat.

Perks of being a Dumbledore, apparently.

“I apologized to Verity, but it hardly seems—” Hermione croaked. “I don’t—how do I make it right?”

“You ready to hand off what you’ve been working on with the Ministry?” Aberforth said tonelessly.

Hermione blinked hard, squeezing tears from her eyes. “It’s like a seed I’ve planted and watered,” she whispered. “Hard to let go.”

Aberforth gave her another pat, then leaned his own head back to face the ceiling. “Sometimes you’ve got to let someone else play gardener, or the whole thing gets taken by weeds.” He issued a weary sigh that echoed more like a rush of air leaving a set of fireplace bellows.

“Okay.” Hermione’s voice was small with exhaustion.

Aberforth paused, then glanced down. “I’ll help you,” he said. “If you like.”

Hermione didn’t lift her hiding-arm. “You don’t have to. I—I know that’s not part of the Mastery.”

When Aberforth said nothing, she added, more throaty: “I’m sorry.”

They looked nearly kin, side by side and posed alike, though that was where most of the similarities ended. George tilted his head in fascination.

Aberforth’s stare had a pained quality that spoke of years gone by, and heartbreaks and losses too numerous to quantify.

“Hush,” he said.

“Before he passed, my dad’s dad used to give us boiled sweets.” He reached into his left pocket and drew out a crinkle. “On the hard days, I’d eat one, then sort what came next.”

He offered the cellophane wrapping to Hermione. No maker’s mark showed on the packaging; it was nothing they carried in shop.

Hermione lifted her arm to reveal weepy, red eyes then pulled the candy from Aberforth. It unwrapped slowly, and she popped it into her mouth.

“Tastes like Butterbeer, a bit,” she said.

Winky climbed onto the armchair and picked up a copy of The Quibbler from the table.

Hermione ate the candy.

“One of my granddads never cared to be involved, and I don’t remember much of the other,” Hermione murmured and tucked her chin into her knees. “But I hope he was something like you.”

Aberforth watched the fire like someone trying very hard not to cry.

George settled onto the floor beside Winky’s seat and picked up the blanket in progress from his knitting basket.

Hermione was wrong. She could hurt Aberforth plenty. It was written all over the old man’s face—from brow to jaw in a thick, scarred line. In the way his edges sanded down when confronted with Granger’s tears. In the prickly sort of nagging he foisted over Hermione at every opportunity. In the croak in his voice as he said, just then: “Never had any grandchildren.”

Aberforth cared in a manner both jarring and rough, like water from the mouth of a river. Not quite tame, but alive and messy. An unstoppable current.

“Want one?” Hermione said, sounding a bit small.

Aberforth grunted. “Fine.” A moment later, he stuck his face into his tatty cloak’s shoulder to swipe something glinting away, though George wouldn’t admit it.

A sharp jab hit his shoulder. Winky smirked down at him. “Fragile humans,” she whispered, then stared at the pair with a faint, amused smile.

George bit back a snort.

Not wrong, though.

Everything about Aberforth read like a man who’d lived too long, lost too much, and yet kept stumbling upon the misfortune of love despite his best intentions to avoid it.

Good.

Immortal as he seemed, Dumbledores were a bit of an endangered creature, were they not?

A fragile, old heart needed reasons to beat.

###

Part V: Applewood

“It is said that the possessor of an apple wand will be well-loved and long-lived.”

#

October 28, 1999

Arthur Weasley shuffled a set of plates on the small, circular tea table tucked behind the Ministry Munchies stand. “Since the war, I’ve technically been heading the DCCDPO as more of a part time gig, but it’s not so busy these days.” The man spoke of his job’s irrelevance with a cheerful nod, chewing away on a raspberry scone.

Hermione added a dash of honey to George’s cup, smiling at Mr. Weasley.

Just a little gesture. But Blimey. It went down ever so nice, and he knew she’d done it because he’d made that comment earlier about having a scratchy throat from Itch Spritz development mishaps.

“I try to get in earlier than most, and Kingsley sends me to lend a hand with other departmental projects more mornings than not,” Arthur continued, tucking into another large bite. The Minister floated his dad into departments and projects where a bit of pro-muggle sympathy might be welcome. It made him perfectly situated to lend some insight to their purpose. “And that leaves me free to nip home a bit early and help Molls, providing I’m not needed.” Here, his dad smiled with a touch of guilt. “Office nearly runs itself, though I don’t know how long that will last.”

Early arriving office workers filtered through the Atrium. Most trudged past the tea stand without a second glance, though a few lifted a hat to Arthur or Hermione.

“Hopefully a long while,” Hermione said warmly. She lifted her own cup of espresso—cajoled out of the Ministry Munchies employee with a both hands clasped under her chin.

Arthur lifted his scone in a feigned toast. “I figure, my dad overstayed his Ministry welcome, and I’ll see it coming when they cut me loose.” Not a flicker of irritation at the idea, though Dad had toiled in a broom cupboard-sized room for most of his career.

“They won’t cut you loose,” Hermione said. She shifted, picking at her empty plate. George slid his extra serving of cinnamon toast a bit closer, and she latched onto it with zeal.

Predictable.

Mr. Weasley’s expression warmed, a scrunching about his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Had they not been in front of the Atrium and everyone, George had a feeling they’d have been coo-ed at.

A good reminder to act less besotted, lest some wayward git from The Resonant latch onto a stray caress and owl it right to Ron.

Though, Ron would have to be in the habit of reading his mail for such a plot to unfold. As far as George could discern, Ron had shunned parchment and ink. He gritted his teeth and went for another piping hot sip to wash away the bitterness.

“I think this is the perfect project to get your office off to a flying start,” Arthur said. “But I have to ask—why not lead it yourself?”

Hermione held up a hand to signal she was still chewing. George let his palm ghost over her back in a small brush on his way to fake a stretch.

“Because I’ll burn myself to the ground and take innocents with me if I keep melting candles at both ends,” Hermione said, then wiped her mouth on a serviette. “And it’s not my office.” This, she added with a doleful glance.

Arthur nodded, chin bobbing against his neck. “Right—right,” he said. “Only have you thought much about going part time with the Mastery or—”

“Dad.”

One word. Cool. Firm. Not at all revelatory of anxiety’s sudden thrust against his ribs.

Mr. Weasley ducked his head and sighed. “Right, sorry.” His tone went apologetic, shoulders slumping. “We all want so terribly for you to make a good run of things, but you’ll have your reasons for not doing so with the Ministry.”

Hermione’s smile was pained. “I understand.” And she did, both sides of it, especially now that Aberforth had helped her set some better guidelines for her paid and unpaid labor.

Arthur reached for Hermione’s clipboard. “Now, I can offer a few names, but I suspect you’ve already got them down.” His demeanor brightened, and the small raincloud drifted away. “I’d recommend you speak to others, as well. Best get a scope of insight, so you don’t overlook a good candidate.”

Upon a cramped, conjured teatable in the back corner of the Atrium, a little group considered the alloys of change—what mix might withstand the tempering fire and test of time.

#

October 28, 1999, 6:00 p.m.

Fleur Weasley was not stupid. She had, perhaps, a supernatural ability to sense when there was a gathering to which she had not been invited. They might’ve guessed she would take issue upon repeated offense.

When Ange, thinking it was Luna come back with the take away, mistakenly let her into the Diagon flat, Fleur had the grace to look not at all surprised by the additional un-George-y things crowding the shelves.

Hermione stood quietly behind the dining table, as if waiting for reaction.

She received not a one.

Fleur only icily took in all the details, like each book, stray jumper, or set of smaller trainers in the pile near the tray was a run in a stocking. “So this is why you have been distant,” she said, listless. “I thought it was the baby.”

Hermione flushed.

George stammered. “I know it looks, um—”

Fleur swept her cloak from her frame, hung it on their hook, and said, “Bill will be finished with Molly’s birthday outing in two hours; we have not much time.”

“It’s complicated,” Hermione started. “We’d meant to talk to Ron, first.”

Fleur swatted the comment away. “Of course.” Her accent was soft and unbothered. As if walking into her brother-in-law’s flat and discovering a scandal in wait was an every day occurrence. “And that is a delicate conversation, no? It is not easy, joining a new family.”

And then, miracle of miracles, Fleur breezed through the flat and wrapped Hermione in a drapey hug before taking a seat beside Aberforth. “Bill is too nervous to concentrate, but I am here for help.”

Hermione looked so overwhelmed and grateful, George thought she might cry.

Fleur snapped her fingers. “Maintenant s'il vous plaît.” She smoothed her hair. “Luna says you are quitting the Ministry. This will not be easy.”

Hermione passed over the project list. “There are half a dozen things I’ve been helping along, and I don’t want them to collapse in my absence.”

Extrication would be the tricky bit.

Fleur, however, didn’t seem intimidated. “You have to make room, if someone else is to sing.”

Then, peering at Hermione’s dense notes: “You cannot say that. That is excuses.” She picked up a muggle pen from Hermione’s mason jar stash and hurriedly scratched something down. “If you are to exit this stage, they must be left waiting more.”

#

October 29, 1999

Fighting demagogues required a certain patience in circular thinking. Too bad he had yet to acquire it. At the head of the Level Three meeting room, saintly Granger fielded yet another pointed jab from Tinton.

October twenty-eighth, or “bring your secret husband to work day,” as George had taken to calling it when alone, had allowed them a bit of a window with relevant staff from the DMLE and the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Back home, the flat smelled like warm ink, parchment, and glue along with Aberforth’s piney scent, Fleur’s floral fragrance, Angelina and Fred’s favorite muggle takeaway, and the bottle of pumpkin juice Luna had spilt on the carpet unnoticed. Bloody disaster zone, the flat, but the efforts and detritus covering the kitchen table and counters provided the neat, glossy binder books each attendee had been given.

And Hermione, his lovely, incredible wife, had not a single hint of shadow beneath her eyes.

He was so happy, he could cry.

In anticipation of the Office of Social and Family Services opening, Hermione had arranged a meeting to plan some much-needed cooperation between the Muggle Liaison Office and the still formative SFSO.

Unofficially, it was a test flight for a few prospective department staffing candidates, complete with regular levels of bureaucratic pushback.

It was a short list. Hermione claimed not to have a favorite, but there weren’t many candidates with the gumption, willingness, and required experience.

The scope of the proposed project demanded more eyes and oversight; onboarding employees, departmental associate heads, and blinkered Wizengamot cloaks all wanted their fair say. Therefore, getting it off the ground would be a right miracle. A perfect test for the new set of gardeners.

Officially, George was there as a community member and business owner of an establishment in Diagon, giving input on construction, flow of foot traffic, and ways to magically mitigate the risks of hazard to new mugglebornes and their families.

Unofficially, he was there to shoot bloody daggers at Vane’s lackies with his eyes.

Tinton was the most vocal of that lot; most of them had been sitting in grouchy, affronted silence. He kept repeating every suggestion given in a wheedling, skeptical voice. A sort of “now isn’t this a whole lot of trouble to go to for the sake of some muggles?” rode beneath every interjection.

Sod was working up the courage to voice it, too. With every quirk of those sallow, pinched lips, every tap of his flat hand on the table, the prejudice building up behind his mouth became more apparent. Ninety minutes into the gathering, and the man was going green, like he’d sucked down a rubbish puking pastille and needed a place to chunder his mingy opinions.

A right pain, that one. George hadn’t let his guard down since the meeting commenced.

“Wizarding families know to duck when an owl swoops low, which shops’ floos are for public use, or which toilets on the block lead into the Ministry,” George said, because Hermione and Josie had already repeated more complex points three times to no avail. Where numbers failed to register, relatable examples might take root.

“Exactly,” she said. “As Mr. Weasley mentioned, incoming students without magical family are at a risk of—”

Tinton issued a pinched smile to Hermione’s explanation of Hogwarts’s historic efforts to guide incoming mugglebornes into Diagon. Then he checked his pocket watch.

Hot, simmering irritation began to roil. George ground his teeth.

Hermione ignored Tinton’s poor form as she continued. “However well-meant, they’ve been too spotty. And the faculty is busy enough with the school’s responsibilities.”

“There already exists a Muggle Liaison Office,” Tinton said. “As you can well see.” He tipped his head towards the doorway, beyond which was the yet-cramped corner of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes relegated to handling muggle involvement in Wizarding mishaps.

The place was a right shame even over a year after the war, and Hermione had clearly explained that. Most clearly. So clearly, Teddy could’ve followed it, and that boy couldn’t yet do his own buttons.

Bloke was empty-hearted, trying to make like it was mere empty-headedness.

Confusion in the face of a request for humanity was one of George’s least favorite ploys.

“In a building that’s impossible for them to find without assistance,” Hermione fired back. “Without proper space to accommodate the influx of civilians, the department won’t ever be more than a dingy mop and bucket to clean up our worst magical spills.”

Tinton took a very slow breath, as if Hermione was taxing him. He glanced at Horace Clarke Sr., who doubtless had heard of his nasty offspring’s run-in with George near the Travers’ property. He was proper cozy with Vane in the papers. They all were, at that end of the table. Probably thanks to the lot of them that Magnus wasn’t rotting in prison.

George smiled until his mouth felt ready to snap like a spent elastic band.

Clarke scowled.

Minger.

“We’ve been through this, Tinton,” George put in. “If you need a review, you’ve got the materials to go over it on your own time.” He emphasized the last four words.

Tinton frowned at the plum-colored binder and paged through. “There are still questions, though. Is that not the purpose of this meeting?”

“To slow efforts with criminally negligent listening and stupid questions?”  He almost said it. Almost.

George flexed his fists and thought of dancing in the kitchen instead. Hermione’s curls smelling like chamomile and lavender, tied in an unravelling, loose bun that flopped to one side after the long day—like an orange stuffed in a tube sock, and it was lovely.

The thought filled him with a calming, warm fondness. He treasured that sight—them dancing, her utterly free. The top of her head when she rested it against his chest, the indents of her fingers pushing into his shirt sleeves along his biceps.

When he slipped his fingers under that hair tie, in one deft move, the whole thing could come apart. And Hermione with it.

Heat flushed him. Before his mind could start racing through fascinating details like the weight of her in his arms, the fortuitous height of the kitchen counter, and how mind-bendingly dear she looked sitting on it, begging to be kissed with that calculating twinkle in her eyes and quirk on the corner of her mouth because she knew how it drove him mad, knew how it made him feel breathless and burning and so fantastically wanted that he nearly clunked his forehead into hers in his eagerness—before he could get further lost in any of that, George wrenched his attention forward and resolved to revisit it later, at a time with fewer rotters present.

That Hermione was the Hermione for just them and the flat and occasional, abandoned side streets, broom cupboards, and lifts. This Hermione didn’t need him getting lost in an in-house Daydream Charm.

Today, Hermione’s hair was thoroughly slicked with Sleekeazy’s—or something Angie had recommended—and tidied into a severe bun, with a black band pressed behind her ears to add extra support.

“It was my understanding that this new office was intended to help Wizarding victims after damages suffered during the last war,” Tinton was saying. “I voted for it in good conscience.”

Matthias Goldstein sighed, only to be shushed by Josie.

“And I appreciated your vote,” Hermione said. She’d also debated, begged, and cajoled for it. No sign of that struggle now, though. Her graceful smile didn’t waver an inch. If he hadn’t known better, he might believe that Hermione considered Tinton and her on the same team. Granger carried on, smoothing needlessly ruffled feathers with the same driven glint behind her eyes that’d toppled an empire of blood supremacist violence. “That certainly is one of the larger projects on the office’s schedule, and work there will be ongoing. However, this is also of relevance to the social—”

“But these aren’t even wizards,” Tinton said.

And there was the chunder, finally spewing past those teeth.

“Pardon.” George leaned forward. “It sounded like you were saying something stupid and inappropriate about mugglebornes, but maybe my hearing’s wrong.” He rubbed the mangled side of his head with an apologetic smile.

Josie Calderon-Boot, a recent transplant from MACUSA’s offices and one of Hermione’s favorite co-workers on this project, choked on a giggle.

Horace looked like he fancied giving George a second scar to match.

“Sorry, I meant—that is—many of the families aren’t,” Tinton hastened to add; his pupils darted towards the edge of his bifocal frames in George’s direction.

Good. Let him be nervous.

It wasn’t that the old Wizarding crowd didn’t understand; Hermione had talked herself blue trying to explain the divide mugglebornes suffered from their non-magical family. These “concerns” were hampering tactics.

Criminal, how often Granger slumped through the floo like a bit of ivy given too much sun and not enough shelter and support. The team could try to patch as many holes as they liked, and they’d never get through the loads of silly, infantile busy work conjured by Tinton and Co. Even at her best, when she’d fallen asleep in her books night after night, Tinton and his ilk were often the lot responsible.

She’d rather not pass the burden along to her successor.

Her successor, who hadn’t spoken much so far.

“Settle down,” Horace said. “It’s hardly an isolated problem; there are funds earmarked in your appendix for surviving family members of the Gringotts fiasco.” He thumbed the cardstock tabs in his own book.

The lot of them had been at the work of constructing, charming, assembling, and tidying copies of those booklets for hours.

Horace Clarke Sr. pressed the pad of his thumb against the tab and bent it upwards until it creased and tangled with the others. George’s eye twitched.

Horace sighed. “All of this to-do is a waste of resources that ought to be invested into our own community first.”

Briefly, George entertained a fantasy about throwing Horace through the fake window on the wall. “And you’ve been doing stellar work, there,” he said.

The enchanted vista would mash in and splinter around Horace like a bludger tearing through cheap wood, the constant stream of rubbish, the facade come to an end.

Bit vulgar for the office, though.

Clarke Sr. did George the courtesy of glaring directly at him.

“Tell me, Mate,” George continued. “There a hinkypunk directing your post, or do you lot close your eyes in the morning and pick your cases at random?”

Vane’s petty property cases funneled through the courts without delay; evictions in Diagon and the surrounding magical community had seen a twelve percent increase. Meanwhile, most emergency measures to provide global Aconite relief had stalled before even reaching the courtroom, as had formalized protections for werewolves.

Weaponized bureaucratics. 

“I don’t like your tone,” Horace said.

George flexed his arm out until his dinner jacket sleeve scooched up. He checked his watch on the inside of his wrist. Half-noon.

Salazar. Only?

How had Hermione managed every day?

“You hear me?” Horace repeated.

Intolerable, this.

“Grand,” George said, wooden. “You weren’t meant to.”

“Your behavior is inexcusable, Sir. This is a government building, not a children’s joke shop.” Clarke doubled down, rapping a smooth fingertip to the table. “In my day, we’d have you thrown out for insubordination.”

“In your day,” George fired back. “This office defined muggle-baiting as ‘a mostly harmless, silly pastime.’ If you’d like to turn our new efforts into some ugly pastiche to that era, there are some people in DMLE who might like a word.”

Parvati—present as a junior DMLE representative—busied herself with picking an invisible bit of dust from her standard-issued Auror trainee robes. The corner of her mouth didn’t so much as twist in smile, but she didn’t contradict him, either.

Horace scoffed. Leaned back in his chair with a metallic squeak. “Are you threatening me?”

“No,” Hermione said, right quick, before George could rally another response. She sent him a veiled look, then tugged her cloak. The signal for him to ceasefire.

He’d gotten too up in arms, then. That morning, he’d nodded along to her instructions—“We need this to run efficiently, which means a certain amount of choosing our battles.”  

Easier said than done. He’d always been rubbish at choosing battles. They all seemed to demand equal fighting. But Hermione was right about one thing—spread too thin, they’d get nothing accomplished.

George folded his arms and performed the requested retreat.

She was still talking. “—attempting to remind us why certain changes have been made to operating policy,” she said. “And as for the goblin funding, the attack was carried out by a dark wizard on property cooperation only after extended harassment and coercion of the Gringotts clan. The victims and their families are sentient, magical individuals who work closely with humans and the Ministry, and thus the provision firmly falls under the office’s purview.”

She stopped to draw a breath. A scant one, trained by countless interruptions from the crowd around her.

Then, she relaunched. “If you have further concerns, I’d recommend you take them up at the appropriate meeting, as this session is assigned to the purpose of Muggle Liaison Office expansion and planned inter-office collaboration between MLO and the future SFSO.” She rattled off the header on the binder front without a hitch. “—as you can see by your prepared materials.”

“Very well,” Tinton said. “But I’m still not certain that this proposal falls within the scope of our Ministry’s responsibility.”

“We’re not overextending,” Matthias interjected. “This proposal covers provisions for their interactions with our world.”

“Which are limited,” Tinton said, lifting both hands in a display of confusion.

Oh, sod off. George groaned aloud.

Josie laughed, then muttered something in Spanish before twisting in her seat. “This is a joke, right?” she said. “Everyone knows Wizards spend countless Dragots—sorry—Galleons—on muggle management. This is a drop in the bucket, and it’s preventative. Preventative!” She gawked. “A total shoe-in.” She scratched a long, pink manicured nail at the hairline of her afro, then dropped the hand to place one of her matching, pink and gold pens in a stack atop two others.

Low murmurs drifted from Tinton’s end of the table. As a direct descendant of one of Ilvermorny’s founders, Josie carried a measure of prestige most in the room wouldn’t directly contradict.

Josie, who George had mostly seen from a distance up to now, had cross-tabbed her copy of Hermione’s booklet of materials with her own, pink parchment dividers, brought a matching muggle water bottle with a screw top lid because “the water in London is sort of gross,” and tapped her sunset-coloured stiletto on the flooring in relentless pace each and every time Tinton interrupted Hermione.

Coincidentally, George adored her.

It had to be Josie, the new office head. But there was some worry there might be pushback at a recent American transfer taking such a position.

Finally, Tinton offered an apologetic smile. “Things are a bit different here, Ms. Calderon-Boot,” he said. “The environment you’re accustomed to is a direct result of pieces of American Wizarding legislature. Rappaport’s law alone introduced a—”

George glanced at Hermione. She had her hand on the back of her neck, subtly probing the muscles along her shoulders which were destined to be tense by now. Something tired and despairing glimmered in her gaze as they made eye contact.

He could see it. The need to jump in, biting at her heels.

But Granger had done nearly all of the talking for their side of things. If she wanted to give the new team a chance to rise to the occasion, they’d need a bit of room.

George shook his head slightly.

Hermione sighed and pretended to sort through her shoulder bag for a pen.

Josie glanced towards Granger, then waited for a break in Tinton’s long tangent about Wizarding history before leaping in. “As Ms. Granger has explained multiple times—”

Hearing Hermione called that felt strange, but the sensation hardly compared to his irritation at nearly everything else about this meeting.

“—muggle relatives of mugglebornes don’t have enough help getting situated to properly support their magical family members,” Josie said.

A blank look from Tinton’s end of the table. “That rather sounds like a task they’ll have to manage for themselves, like the rest of us do while learning the ins and outs of magic.”

George hid his scoff through a fake sneeze. Poorly, though.

A few nods.

Josie tilted her head. “Did you manage your Hogwarts school shopping for yourself, then? Did you teach yourself how to clean your own cauldron, how to spot a bad deal at the apothecary’s ‘introductory brewing kits?’ Did you put yourself in a car and wander King’s Cross until you figured out how to get through the barricade?” She winced through her teeth. “Doubtful.”

Tinton opened his mouth, doubtless to deviate into his perishing family history and every single blister and blemish they’d been unfortunate enough to find upon their self-sufficient fingers.

Rather than suffer that again, George cut right to the heart of it.

“What are you so horribly put upon by?” George lifted his hand, rested it lightly atop his binder on the table before him, and twisted it in a small circle. “S’not like we’re volunteering to apparate into their townhouses to do their dishes and laundry.”

Falling into character as George of “Fred-and-George Weasley” came too easy. A bit erratic, a bit mysterious, a bit sod-the-consequences-who-cares-let’s-do-something-new variety of heedless with a smarmy-yet-warm smile.

Here, it garnered a few snorts. Tinton sighed, clearly frustrated.

“Right?” he finished, then, glanced at Josie and Matthias. Like lobbing a Quaffle back into play, that.

“Exactly,” Matthias said.

“Yes.” Josie jumped in once again. “It’s a repurposing of an existing building and shifting some DMLE Ministry workforce. It’s doing the labor up front, to reduce the cost of the accident and catastrophe cleanups and to better muggleborne standards of living in our community.” Then, with a short look at Hermione, she added in a wry voice, “I assure you, Tinton, no one’s asking you to personally buy Ms. Granger’s parents a pint.”

That earned a round of laughter with most of those gathered. Several of the drowsy, silent people started to life at the joke.

Tinton smacked his hand on the table. “We are discussing Wizarding resources being spent on people who aren’t magic.”

Hermione stood and smoothed her grey skirt over her stomach. “As family of a wizard or witch, they are part of our community regardless of their magical status.”

Tinton sputtered. “That’s simply—simply false, Miss Granger.” If he blinked any faster, he’d pull a muscle. “There are distinct differences—”

“Which is why they require certain accommodation.” Hermione’s smile grew tighter.

“Why?” Tinton snapped.

George’s blood pressure rocketed.

Parvati tilted her head and squinted at Tinton.

Josie lifted one dark brow, the ends of the little hairs flickering red like sparks in a heap of fresh coals. But quiet the Metamorphmagus remained.

There was science to when Josie interjected, that much was becoming apparent.

The echo of Tinton’s raised voice was a far harsher reprimand than any taunt they might’ve lobbed back.

In a nervous sort of tick, Tinton laughed a bit after the awkward pause, as though that would soften how sharp his tone had been. “It’s expensive, I mean to say. If—if they’re uncomfortable with it, why can’t they simply…stay home?”

What a miserable little worm.

Oh. Blimey. Had he murmured that aloud?

“We go to extra efforts to welcome them, Mr. Tinton, because without that, many end up feeling out of place or imperiled when they attempt to walk these streets,” Josie explained, though as much had already been said.

Tinton huffed. “Only because they’re not magic.” He waved his hand in the air behind himself, gesturing. A few of his mates nodded along. “They feel strange because the rest of the world is theirs, and this one corner is for us.” He jabbed his finger on the desk. “This one corner, and you mean to let Miss Granger toss it away.”

“Hear, hear,” Horace said.

Hermione’s gaze flickered between them

Josie sat back, face stony. “I—”

Emboldened, Tinton pressed further, interrupting. “We can pour Galleons into a furnace, and the separations you’re so eager to ignore won’t change. It won’t make them any more a part of our society, and meanwhile, we’ll become overrun and—”

“Excuse me,” Hermione cut in. Her voice clipped high, and her smile barely held while she checked the wall clock. “I think we had better take a break.”

Tinton did a double take, mouth open. “But—”

“We’ll discuss this more after lunch,” Hermione said. “Let’s reconvene in an hour.” Without further preamble, she stood to join Josie, then the pair marched from the meeting room.

George aimed a scathing look at the problem-causers, then shoved back in his seat to follow.

He caught up with her talking with Josie.

Josie said something in reply, her voice tight and agitated, but too quiet to discern from the distance. He paced a bit closer, concerned.

“You had it managed, I just—” Hermione was saying. “I thought a break might be helpful.”

Josie squinted. “If I’ve got it managed, then let me manage it.”

Hermione winced. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Is there anything else I can do to help support you moving forward?”

Josie sighed. “Replace half your Wizengamot, maybe.”

Hermione winced. “I know.”

Josie tapped her nails along her binder. “Big ask, huh?” she smirked.

Hermione held up two fingers pinched together.

Then, Josie looped her hand through Hermione’s elbow. “You could also treat me to lunch,” she said, with a wry smile. “And pass along any tips you have.”

Hermione blinked. “You’re taking the job?” she whispered.

Josie quirked her brows. “Unfortunately, I care more about the children than I do about Tinton’s bad manners.”

Hermione let out a rush of breath. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “Alright, I have tips! I have so many tips—but what subjects?”

As the two walked out together, George gave Hermione a small smile and a nod.

#

The queue for the tea cart in the Atrium wound around the massive chamber. George glanced down at his pocket watch, because it ran a bit more precisely than the one on his wrist.

No way he’d get through it before they were due back at the meeting room.

A pair of voices caught his attention, Tinton and Clarke Sr., and—George stiffened.

Rita Skeeter.

What were that lot doing together?

Mudslinging? Blood-sucking?

The weather, as it turned out. They were chatting about the weather.

Not for long, though.

They were heading for the lifts. Salazar.

Before he knew what he was about, George filtered into the flush of bodies packing the cube.

Tinton’s murmurs weren’t quite audible. Rita’s quill raced along her notepad. Nausea crept up George’s stomach and into his throat.

The lift dinged for the Department of Mysteries. He waited until it was clear to tail the group, which had stopped near the corner of a cluster of Wizengamot offices.

George ducked around an empty corridor and unwound an extendible ear, turning up the gain as he let it dangle near the floor, nudged around the corner. He hid the other end with a hand to his ear as he pretended to examine a sheet of his notes from the meeting.

The noise came in squeaks, too muffled, then too loud as George adjusted the charms on the fly.

Finally: “—disgraceful,” Clarke Sr. was muttering. “A joke of the Ministry’s time, and she doesn’t seem to realize the magical world doesn’t revolve around her whims. This institution has responsibilities to attend to.”

Skeeter hummed in sympathy. “Is she always so difficult, would you say?”

“Off the record,” Tinton’s whisper cracked in the earpiece. “It’s a bit as my mum says, you understand.” He paused, soft voice dropping yet lower. “‘Blood will out.’”

George clenched his fist. How dare—

“On the record, though,” Rita said. “How do you feel about the Ministry’s direction? Is this sort of time-wasting indicative of a larger trend?”

“I certainly hope not.” A fourth voice joined the group.

George froze.

Bloody Hell. What was Vane doing here?

George swallowed down a gulp of air.

Think. Alright. Don’t—don’t—

“There are safeguards, of course, against such inefficiency,” Vane continued. George hissed through his teeth.

When he ducked to peek around the corner, Vane was examining the head of his cane as he spoke. “You understand, Rita, that if the council does vote to re-instate my seat in the Wizengamot, then I’d do my very best to ensure—”

The sound was still coming through the extendible ear’s speaker, but it filtered into George’s head warped and slow.

“—that Wizarding Britain’s governance is fair in its use of time and resources.”

Rita said something George didn’t catch.

His head felt light.

Vane laughed. “Come now,” he said. “It’s only natural I care. I’m a father and a community member first. But I suppose I realized that there was a need for greater intervention.” His tone was a veneer of apology, a polished chuckle. “If you want anything done right, it’s best to handle it yourself.”

That monster—there was—no way—no—

George’s mouth wrenched open, though his lungs wouldn’t expand. All he could picture was Granger, presenting the werewolf case, or the elven rights laws, under Vane’s smug stare.

It was a bloody nightmare. It wasn’t happening.

How had he not known? How had he not seen it coming?

“I think we’ve all had enough of children in the seat of power,” Vane said. “Of course we appreciate their efforts, but the country needs someone steadfast. Miss Granger and her friends might be better off sorting their personal dramas outside the Ministry walls.”

George looked round the corner again, hand gripping the wall.

Vane’s eyes locked on his over Skeeter’s shoulder. His voice dropped. “Because, between you and me, she’s flighty and prone to hysterics, utterly uneducated about Wizarding culture and tradition, and doesn’t seem to want to rectify that oversight. It’s time we stop pacifying her, or very real harm might be done.”

George’s ear piece cracked, the magic in it frying with a spark that leapt off his skin.

His thoughts clipped to silence. Impulse fisted his hands, drove him forward.

Impulse to—to—

What? George’s loafers squeaked to a stop, his back pressed tight to the wall.

What was he going to do? Confront Vane? Knock his lights out? Here?

The walls swayed, taunting.

A chattering crowd drifted from one of the court rooms, parting the distance between George and Vane’s group as the latter drifted into the adjacent corridors.

George sucked in a shallow breath. Another.

His pulse careened in his eardrums. Pounding, pounding. He jolted back against the cold wall with a thud, ramming himself into it, but he didn’t shake free.

Not here.

Not—

George pressed the heel of his hand to his breast bone, gasping. The air went stuffy and too close.

He couldn’t think.

She’d be walking under a death eater like a target every time she went before the Wizengamot. Every time, because Vane wouldn’t let an opportunity like that go to waste.

His mind flashed and shorted, and it was Hermione wearing the burlap bag on her head. Hermione, in the path of the carving curse light. Hermione, screaming as a Stringos Verbero ripped through her body.

George grit his teeth and pushed his hands against his knees to straighten. Walk. He had to walk. He couldn’t—couldn’t capsize on the bloody Ministry floor.

Once he’d sorted himself, he’d figure out the next step. But it wouldn’t be chasing Vane down and clobbering him in front of The Prophet’s biggest gossip.

He pulled in fast breath, rubbing his face. Settle. Settle.

Try as he might, his heartbeat wouldn’t obey. Something about the black tile, the elevator dings, the sound of his stumbling shoes on the floor, meandering in directions he couldn’t track—it screamed danger.

The hallway was getting smaller, somehow.

“The war is over,” he whispered to the empty corridor. “The war’s over, and we won it.”

Saying it aloud didn’t make it feel true.

He ducked into an empty room’s entry and doubled over, hand on his knees.

Focus.

Two things he could hear—

From down the central hallway, faintly: Ding.

“Department of Mysteries—”

No—no.

He choked.

The pressing closeness of the walls, the stifling bite of the air in his nostrils.

No matter what he did, it wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe.

It would never, never be enough.

He swore. “Focus, Georgie,” George rasped, because there was rather no one else to, and Marcus’s tricks weren’t working. They weren’t—weren’t—

But why would they? He couldn’t fix this, couldn’t—it would always, always be broken. He could bleed and die for it, and nothing would change in this miserable—

A few notes lilted off the tile.

A familiar song, hummed in a high, soft pitch.

George straightened up, mopping a sleeve over his wet face.

Meandering footsteps followed. A pause, a small sigh, then the humming continued.

Familiar, that.

Closer.

Closer. Tap, tap, tap went the footsteps down the parallel hall.

George’s brows knit.

“—in your eyes—” a childish voice murmured the tune. That’s when he recognized it—the song Granger’s mum played. A popular one, with the muggles. A popular one in the flat above 93 Diagon, as well. But he hadn’t heard it much elsewhere in the Wizarding world.

A bit of muggle magic in the Ministry, butting heads with the leftover prejudices and corruption. Bold and defiant and different.

They had won the war. George’s lungs loosed a bit, and he took a solid gulp of air. He glanced into the corridor.

A girl of maybe eight, no older than eleven, stared down at a compass clutched in her fist. For a fleeting, hazy moment, she seemed shrouded in a white-gold glow. But when he blinked, it was gone.

If a kid was this far down, they had likely wandered off.

George knelt, braced his arm on his knee, and spoke gently, though his voice still had a breathless shake from his panic episode. “Pardon—you alright?”

Piercing, brown eyes snapped to his from under a frayed, grey flat cap.

“Da—” She let out a stunned squeak, then cut silent.

The sand in George’s hourglass seemed to freeze, suspended in the air, where it did a right backflip.

Hermione. From a different time, maybe. A different place. Watching him. Witnessing him, moments after a tangle with his worst self, barely restrained from hauling off and decking Vane all over again despite the risks.

And George couldn’t breathe.

He felt almost lost, then. Like he should’ve been far, far better than he was. Should’ve fought harder, somehow, to keep the filth from crawling back into the ministry and making life harder. Like he might’ve made the world better than it was, and had failed.

He felt, strangely, a compulsion to apologize.

But it wasn’t Hermione. Not even some infantile version. The cheeks were too freckled. The complexion too pale. The hair, too red.

Similar, though.

Stuffed beneath the hat’s brim, rebellious curls halo-ed her face and strained to pull from their tie near the nape of her neck. From there, they rebounded out in a bushy bunch behind her.

The similarities were there, but the differences betrayed his sentimentality. A fit of ridiculous nerves, vestiges of his own breakdown at the sight of blood supremacy alive and well in the Ministry.

Jumping at ghosts, he was. Even still, she seemed familiar.

Merlin, that hair was red. Very, very red.

“Alright?” he repeated.

Silence. Her eyes darted to his scar, then searched over his face. Slowly, the brown irises crowded with tears.

Likely frightened.

Regret twisted his stomach.

Not surprising, though. She wasn’t old enough to be wandering about the Ministry alone. A scrap of a child, really, sporting brightly-coloured, neon green plaid shorts and a lavender jumper with a glitter-crusted, rearing unicorn applique that shimmered in the cold Ministry lights. Enamel pins decorated her rucksack strap—one designed like a peanut bumped against another done like a bumblebee, which beat its charmed wings every other second.

Right clever, that. They’d fly off the shop shelves.

The girl clutched a book of parchment to her side under her left arm, stickers of what had to be muggle cartoon characters peeled along the surface. A big, clumsy apple tree was doodled on the back cover.

It might not’ve been Granger, but she was another Granger of a sort—a muggleborne or half-blood, maybe, wandering a Ministry that would rather she didn’t exist.

She shifted, and it became clear that the rucksack was actually a black case. One shoelace was loose. Judging by the red mark and her puffy eyes, she’d freshly skinned her left knee.

Why was he gawking at her? George blinked.

He cleared his throat. “You scraped your knee, then?” George took a soft, rueful tone, affecting a “Rubbish, that. We’ve all been there” sort of expression. “Y’know, there’s a nice lady up in level—”

“Mr. George,” she said, voice catching.

Like Godric’s blade cracking clean through his sternum, that sound. His magic went buzzy, almost frantic in his bloodstream, and a burst of odd adrenaline shortly followed.

Impulse, to shield or—or—

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Um—”

Just a bit of extra anxiety. An aftershock. That’s all it was. He was still a right mess, wasn’t he? He hadn’t quite settled, and now he had to pretend like he was fine while he sorted this.

George scraped his fortitude together. He couldn’t go losing his head in front of a child. He could lose it after, in private, where it wouldn’t scar some poor kid.

Mr. George, she’d said. She recognized him from the shop, then.

What next, then? He glanced at the polished tile, and the reflection revealed the shaken look of him, his red-rimmed eyes and wheezy breath leftover from his breakdown.

George’s insides clamped tight. What did he do? Where were her bloody parents? He swept a hand over his face in a desperate attempt to clear it.

“Sorry, it’s been a long day. You alright?” he tried again. “You need some help finding your parents—or, or whoever’s looking after you?”

When he dropped his hand, she was watching him with her head cocked in a manner that nearly pressed her ear to her shoulder. “It’s different,” she said.

He lifted his brows and blinked. “Hm?”

She dropped the compass to let it hang about her neck, then stretched a set of small but calloused fingers into the air, in the direction of the left side of his face and swiped them in a crescent shape. “From—um—” She flushed suddenly, stuttering a bit. “From the pictures.”

Ah. The scar. It’d healed quite a bit since the battle, even. Wasn’t quite so fresh as it had been, and it wasn’t covered in grime now, either.

George peeked over his shoulder, around the main hall. There were some office clerks grouped just down the way. “Lost it in a broom accident,” he said blithely, sighing. “Fred’s right jealous, since he missed out on such a wicked scar.”

She exhaled a bit, shoulders untensing. A small smile rewarded his silliness. Good.

“Anyways, you seem a bit lost, maybe.” he said. “Need a hand sorting things? Where are your parents, you reckon?” he asked, mild, curious. Not accusatory. There was a possibility she was up to some mischief, but at her age, most liked to sneak around the Knockturn entrance or beg coin off of passersby to get something from Florean’s or Wheezes.

“A bit, maybe,” she said haltingly. “I’d wager I got off a stop too soon.”

Ah. Floo mishap. He should’ve realized—she was right around the age when most families started having them floo more independently, rather than being carried. A simple mispronunciation might’ve sent her to an office grate left accidentally open.

“And your parents?” he prompted. The inflection in her voice had flexed from posh Londoner to a bit West Country on “I’d wager.” Like she was parroting a phrase she’d heard in the shops. Perhaps Mum or Dad knew her family.

Her eyes scrunched at the corners, and she ducked her head. “Oh, they’re around here somewhere,” she murmured, sounding a bit wry beyond her years. “But I’ve got to meet with Great Au—I mean, McGonagall.”

“Weasley?” An incredulous voice cut through the girl’s remark. Tinton paced down the corridor, cloak laid over his shoulder.

George stiffened and shifted, standing to block the girl’s obvious muggle attire from the other man.

“Who’s this? A muggle-born, I take it?”

George flexed his jaw. Even if he knew the her name, he wasn’t about to hand it out to the likes of this sod. “A friend.”

“No matter.” Tinton huffed. “May I remind you that Ministry protocols dictate that this isn’t an acceptable location for childcare.” He smoothed his finger and thumb down his mustache.

A small hand slipped into his. Like touching a worn muggle plug—his magic started. Not like nudging Granger. Different. This felt more like—off. Like confused, muted lightning waking in his palm, and it had a different sort of note to it.

The nearly irrepressible urge to fight—to protect—pulled on him.

It was the stress, messing with some of the residual bits from the last time they’d shared.

He had to focus.

“Children aren’t to be down on this level unattended,” Tinton continued.

George swallowed back words about the countless muggle trials, the children he and Fred had smuggled out of the country before they could be packed off to Azkaban. “That so?” he ought to say. “Years past, your friends never seemed to mind hauling underage witches and wizards in for questioning.”

“She’s not,” George said flatly. “I’m here.”

Tinton’s face flattened. “And where’s she to be once our meeting resumes?” His face contorted, disbelief etching into place. “You don’t mean to bring this child in to make some sort of point, do you?”

“Oh, now you care about muggleborne wellness?” George deadpanned.

There was a twist.

Tinton sputtered.

George shifted and let a frustrated gust of air from his lungs. “No. I’d not force my worst enemy to sit through your sort’s rubbish. That’s not on the agenda.” He lowered his voice, leaned closer, and spoke in a slow mutter through his teeth. “Now, mind your own, you blinkered corncob.”

“Poor form, as always,” Tinton snapped. “Not surprising, given your reputation.” He rolled his eyes and marched away.

A small laugh echoed behind George. The set of fingers wrapped more firmly around his. “Blinkered corncob,” she repeated. Then: “He didn’t like me.”

George twisted his head. She watched the other man go with a gleeful smile.

“Well, he is,” George said. “Because you seem right likeable.” The smile went luminous.

That there—a reminder why he did what he did. Helping Granger with her Ministry projects, and working how he did in the shop.

“Now, about your—”

“Do you think he might be a Death Eater?” she interrupted, forehead pinching. Then, without giving him time to answer, she carried on. “Honestly, I’d bet he is, or as good as. Mum says it’s the ones that quietly sympathize without saying outright who can cause the most problems.” Then, with a quick, upward glance: “He left terribly fast, don’t you think?” A squint as the prattle continued. “Probably scared you’re going to beat him up.” She hadn’t let go of his hand yet.

“They do change their minds, though. I’ve a friend whose whole family is like that, generations and generations if you check History of Magic, but he’s the opposite.” She drew a quick breath and relaunched. “Obviously. I mean, I couldn’t be friends with him if he wasn’t.”

She’d begun walking in the opposite direction towards the lifts, and stumped, George followed. Likely on her way to the floos, then. He’d see her to her parents, let her chatter off the nerves. The group of clerks turned, watching in bemusement.

Up they headed, and the girl didn’t seem intent on loosing his hand, so George crowded against the wall to give her room in the small space, between the memos and Ministry employees, to push the button she needed.

She didn’t drop his hand until the lift brought them up to the atrium, and she headed towards the fray. “Thanks, then,” she said, shouldering her violin case strap. “I’ll just be going.”

George lifted a brow. So she could head back into the network and get turned around someplace more dangerous? No.

“Why don’t we send word to your family, and have one of them meet you here?” he asked.

A shifty look came over her, and she hedged, grimacing. “um—”

A few reporters seemed to clock them, perking up and shifting closer. Panic flared. If she was photographed with him, she might be subject to all sorts of nastiness.

“I’m actually supposed to meet someone,” she said. “And, well—”

“How about we borrow my mate’s floo, and you can give them a quick call?” George offered, angling between the photographers and the girl.

She faltered, then nodded. “Alright.”

At a loss, he headed for Harry’s office. When they reached the front of the lift queue, the doors opened to reveal a gangly boy in a sky-blue jumper with tiny, crimson steam engines stitched into the pattern. Again, the flicker of haze from before seemed to crowd George’s vision, glinting off the boy. But then it was gone.

“Minnie,” he gasped. “I’ve been looking all over—” His flat brown hair seemed to flare under the Atrium lights, to an almost-reddish hue. He hurtled forward and grabbed her in a hug. “You seen this?” he hissed. A crumpled top sheet from today’s Prophet fluttered in his hand. His wand stuck at a jaunty angle from the back pocket of his trousers, which were cuffed evenly just over his trainers.

A headline about the Harpies’ most recent victory played over the page. Angie and Ginny lifted their joined hands on broomback, yelling.

“It’s a ruddy disaster,” the boy hissed, eyes skirting back and forth.

“Come on now,” George said, stepping closer to hold the lift open. “That’s my sister.”

The lad’s eyes widened a fraction, and something like dread flushed his expression. “Min—” he hissed.

“It’s fine,” she hissed back, easing towards George’s left side.

George cocked his head, indicating the two blokes in business robes should take the lift. The two children grouped a foot away, and George pretended to be distracted with his shoelace as he knelt to put himself in better hearing range.

“—and put that down,” she was continuing to scold under her breath. “Everything’s fine. We’ve only got to head back the same way, and we’ll be on time again.”

Late for something, then. The meeting she’d mentioned?

“They’re going to kill us,” the boy hissed. “Right dead. The both of us. And they’ll start with me.”

And up to some mischief, as well, then. George knotted his laces.

She lifted her chin. “That’s highly doubtful.”

The boy cast George a queasy look, which he pretended to not notice in favor of digging a nonexistent pebble from his tread.

The girl—Minnie, apparently—dropped her voice to an almost inaudible volume. “All we’ve got to do is take the same way back, and count, mind, a little more carefully.”

A less practiced bloke might’ve missed the words, but George hadn’t spent a life sneaking around for nothing. Right dodgy, this. He’d not be one to lecture if they were up to some trouble, but the Ministry was hardly the safest place for it.

 “Would you stop looking like that?” Minnie swatted at the boy’s hand. “Follow my lead. We’ll get him turned around in a crowded corridor, and just—”

“Minnie, was it?” George called pleasantly.

Minnie’s shoulders stiffened. “It’s short for, um, Mildred.”

Head to foot, guilt was written all over her.

George pivoted in his crouch and squinted at them. “You’ll not be turning me around in any corridors,” he said mildly. “This place isn’t exactly friendly for younger sorts, so I’ll be about as hard to shake as a barnacle on a kelpie.”

She blanched. “You could hear that?”

George cocked a brow. “I’m George of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” he whispered. “I might not’ve invented the fast one, but I own the patent.”

The chap’s eyes went gumball wide, a furious stare pinned on Minnie’s head as George ushered them toward the lifts. Thankfully, the next one was empty. “Now, we still need to contact someone, or is there someone here who can look after you?”

A long, sullen silence from the boy, who had his chin tucked to his chest.

Minnie tugged her cap lower. “We’ll fire call,” she murmured.

“Who?” the boy snipped.

“You know who,” Minnie said, then sighed.

“Brilliant.” George tapped the button for the second level.

The lift dinged after a short wait period. “Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

The boy groaned. “Dead, I tell you.”

“Oi,” George said. “What’s your name?”

“John,” he answered, after a half-moment’s too long pause.

They exited the lift to a bustle in the cubicles. Harry paced through the grey surroundings, laughing aloud with a file folder tucked under his arm.

John—or whatever his actual name was—sucked a breath in and ducked behind a passing, unmanned teacart. The trolley swerved to avoid the collision, and Harry tripped into the side of it.

Parchment went everywhere.

George kept his gaze on the two truants as he gathered up a few sheets. Kids normally flocked to Harry, but some found him intimidating. If they were up to something, that might play into the poor reaction as well. “Here you are, Mate. Say, can I borrow your floo for a firecall?”

Harry nodded. “I’ve got to file somethings downstairs, but—”

“John” and Minnie were slinking off towards a side hall, so George cut the conversation short with a bit of thanks, and went to head them off.

When he caught up, Parvati was already there and lecturing.

“Alright,” he said, once he had them before the office as Parvati opened disabled the departmental security wards. “Who d’you need to floo? McGonagall?” Minnie looked a bit young, but the other didn’t.

Minnie ducked her head lower. “Yes, thanks.”

Figures.

Merlin. He and Fred had kept their sneaking about mostly limited to the area around the Castle.

He gave them a bit of privacy, waiting outside the cracked door to the whoosh of green to and the hushed voices.

Much to his surprise, there was a tell-tale floo flash strobe from under the door, and then faint buzzing filled the room, drowning out the other sounds.

Headmistress stepped through minutes later.

The trio emerged, McGonagall’s eyes fixed on the two children on either side of her in alarm.

“Thank you, Mr. Weasley, that will be all we need,” she said, helping the children forward. “You were correct in your suspicion that they were not in the right place, at the right time.”

George lifted his brows. “Truants, eh?”

McGonagall paused, glancing back at him. “Yes,” she said shrewdly. “Now if there was nothing else, I’ll escort them—”

The girl tugged forward without warning, out of McGonagall’s hand. “I just wanted to say,” she said haltingly, as the boy hissed. “You’re—you’re doing a very good job.”

George tilted his head.

Mildred swallowed. “So, um—keep at it. And, and—” She drew a deep breath in, then plastered a false-looking smile on her face. “Be—be careful.”

What?

“With the shop, you mean?” he asked, incredulous.

“With all of it,” she said. “Just—” she waved her hand in the air. “All of it.” She smiled like she’d seen something quite sad. Then she tripped after the boy and McGonagall’s waiting hand.

“Bloody Hell?” George muttered.

Parvati snorted. “That’s nothing.” She folded her arms. “Padma used to go about telling strangers she was so terribly sorry for their impending loss.”

“She a seer?” George asked.

Parvati laughed. “No. She was bored.”

George threw his head back and laughed. The meeting still loomed, and the rubbish with Vane was still awful—so awful he didn’t know how to fathom it, how to wrap his mind around the reality without storming Podmore’s office and knocking his fist through those apparently useless filing cabinets.

But—but there was a bright spot.

A reminder, of childhood hijinks and mischief that must be protected. So George took shelter in that and locked out the cold.

Still, the wind whistled, like a force that couldn’t be outrun.

#

October 30, 1999

Diagon Alley held a faint drizzle over the gathered crowd, and George lifted his water-repellant umbrella higher. Verity, bundled under a plastic poncho with the Weird Sisters logo and Lee’s management floo address on the back, grinned and lifted her cheeks to the mist.

“You’ll not deprive me, George,” she said. “I’ve been stuck in that bloody back room for days and days.”

Lee handed Verity’s mum a set of roasted pumpkin chunks on a stick, topped with honey and what looked like cinnamon. She cooed over it and took it up. “Lee, you absolute darling.”

Lee beamed, right pleased with himself.

Helen took a large bite. “Verity, you have to try this.”

Verity lifted a brow at Lee.

“Really, Ver,” Lee said. He pressed another pumpkin stick through the drizzle towards Verity, steam wafting the sweet, spicy smell through the damp air. “You heard the woman.”

George’s stomach growled. “I’ll take it?”

“Get your own, prat.” Lee glowered, pulled his poncho tidier, then dove into the third and final stick, which he held between fingers in his fist like a “V” beside the second.

Verity sighed and relented, ducking in to take a nibble.

Lee went quite still as their faces neared. Then he crossed his eyes until Verity broke, swerving away to choke on pumpkin and laughter.

“Careful, she’ll asphyxiate,” George quipped, sticking his hands in his pressed, blue trouser pockets.

“Shame that’d be,” Lee said. “Losing my second-best mate.”

“Am I the first then?” George fired back.

Lee scrunched his face in puzzlement. “No,” he said, baffled. “Helen is.”

Helen found that bloody hilarious.

Quite disruptive for the press conference.

Hermione watched the lot of them with a look mixed between long suffering and affectionate.

George wasn’t quite sure what had her so jittery. The new office was an important announcement, yes, but they’d prepared, and Josie was ready, and Hermione had even gone to Shell at nearly dawn to have her robes sorted and hair “dealt with.”

Minister Shacklebolt droned atop the platform, behind the “M” sigil-ed podium. “—certainly appreciate the public’s support as we work to find sustainable solutions for this time.”

Bloody Cormac McLaggen was near the front, beside an older witch in a pink cloak and a sizeable broach. He had his hat pulled low. Some sort of targeted disillusionment charms blurred his face and made it uncomfortable to stare directly at.

Skeeter wasn’t around, at least.

Harry had enough Sleekeazy’s in his hair to make it look rain soaked, though that only meant it sprang up in clumps rather than more normal looking strands. He smiled at Hermione from his spot beside Kingsley, medals polished to a shine on his chest. Mum’s fingerprints were all over the poor sod.

Hermione ducked to Fleur behind the platform to whisper something, then beckoned Josie from the Ministry support staff beside the platform.

George would go looking for that pumpkin sweet cart, but he’d wait until they were through with the office’s formal announcement.

“It will not come as a surprise for many of you to know that Miss Hermione Granger has been instrumental in organizing this office, from concept to coordinating the first initial projects. Her hard work and dedication are beyond the pale,” Kingsley said, looking towards Hermione as he gestured with an open hand. “While she is young, she is committed to restoring the Wizarding World and making it a better place for all citizens.”

And then, Minister Shacklebolt said something quite odd: “The Ministry is excited to offer our support to her projects moving forward as head of the Office of Social and Family services.”

What?

Hermione blinked.

Oh, bugger.

George’s hands fisted.

Harry and Kingsley were clapping, and Minister Shacklebolt signaled Hermione to step forward, and Josie looked as if someone had ripped her special, coordinated notebook right out of her hands.

Saying no privately was hard enough.

After that speech—

Had Kingsley had no ruddy idea? Truly? Hermione had clearly been coaching Josie and the others to step in. They hadn’t been quiet about it.

To ask her in front of everyone, to phrase it like that, like it had already been agreed upon—it seemed a tactic to rope her into it. But that wasn’t like Kingsley or Harry.

Harry actually looked quite oblivious.

Merlin. Had they mentioned to Harry?

Well. Harry hadn’t mentioned a number of things to them, either. Things that started with “V” and ended with “absolute-bloody-disaster.”

Maybe the family ought to use a newsletter of some sort. They were large strewn about enough to need one, these days.

Fleur’s face was tense and pale in the background, her fingers pressed to her lips as she whispered.

Hermione walked to the center of the stage, mouth bit into a thin line at the flashing cameras and raised hands.

Press shouted questions, and George felt the coming days—the planned holiday, and her hopes for refocusing on projects outside the Ministry, her excitement about the flexibility and potential—evaporate.

Instead, there was Hermione, trying and failing to juggle it all, yet again. Shoving on robes she’d been pushed into, heading for hours and hours of meetings as the head of an office that would doubtless garner endless amounts of pushback.

Felt like the drizzle seeped through his skin and weighed down his lungs, so much did he struggle to get a clear breath.

Hermione stepped into the range of the podium’s Sonorous charm.

Kingsley gave her a bracing smile. Her expression settled into something weary, almost apologetic. Harry tilted his head.

Hermione’s eyes searched the crowd, then met George’s.

He held his breath.

Slowly, her hands shifted under her blazer and into the pockets of her deep, blue slacks. Confident. At her ease. Unbothered. Electric, that stance. “No,” she said, a trace of bemusement in her tone. “But thanks.”

Sweet.

Merlin.

The crowd exploded into chatter.

She didn’t flinch.

George was so proud, his heart felt fit to burst and ricochet out of his chest.

Harry gaped, Kingsley leaned in, asking something the charm didn’t pick up, face contorted like he’d misunderstood.

Granger shook her head, smiling. She pointed at Josie, who wore fuchsia from cloak to shoes, this day. Josie—who, in league with Fleur, had helped inspire Hermione’s own matched wardrobe today. Josie, who beamed and wiggled her fingers at Shacklebot.

Shacklebot gestured at Hermione, turning from the crowd with a stunned look.

And then Hermione grabbed Shacklebolt’s podium and used the opportunity to appoint her own candidate. “I’d love to introduce who will be doing that important work, though. They’ve put in countless hours and have many exciting ideas and plans to share with you all.” She waved them over and passed the Amplification charm to Josie and Matthias. Harry gawked.

Josie and Matthias began to chatter as camera bulbs flashed in rapid patterns. “As a new branch between the office of the Minister and the DMLE, we plan to—” Matthias had been talked into a fuchsia bow tie.

Kingsley ducked towards Hermione as she returned to her prior spot, whispering, and Harry joined them.

At the front of the stage, Josie was wrapping up, answering questions from The Quibbler and issuing a stream of instructions on where those gathered could anticipate further updates about the new office and its projects.

Meanwhile, Hermione backed up a step. Her head shook.

Josie dismissed the conference, but the reporters lingered, caught on the scent of conflict like blood in the water.

Kingsley was talking fast, low, away from the crowd, but George could imagine the contents of the conversation well enough.

Hermione’s lips formed an unmistakable word: “No.” Her spine straightened, her chin dipped down, and George wanted to kiss her so bloody bad he thought he’d burst.

“Miss Granger!” Skeeter screeched. “Is there a reason you’re resigning?”

Resigning? She never got on the payroll!

Hermione glanced at Matthias and Josie. Josie shooed her off with a sparkly grin.

And so, Hermione graciously stepped back, then departed down the empty street behind the platform, where the barricades had held off the rush of regular passersby. Her robes were deep blue, and the shade mirrored Luna and Fleur’s as they fell in beside her. Winky stepped from behind one of Gringotts’ columns to join them.

The Witch Weekly reporter and The Daily Prophet photographer shoved people out of the way and jumped the barricade itself to line up the shot: Three witches and an elf strolling down Diagon’s cobbles, leaves sweeping around their shoes like red, orange, and brown bits of flame.

This, here, was what Hermione had intended to announce during her piece of the conference, before Kingsley’s surprise. She hadn’t gotten a chance to properly share that news—what she planned to do next—but she’d left them all wondering. Waiting for more.

Soon enough, they’d find out.

George leaned against the barricade.

Before the lot of them turned the corner, Winky cast a glance behind them. Her robes fit to her in immaculate swaths of deep blue fabric. Her smile was nothing short of victorious.

#

After the chaos, he tracked them down at Shell Cottage. Bill rubbed Fleur’s feet, and Luna reclined in her formal robes like a starfish over the opposite armchair. Most cheeringly of all, Hermione sat before the little table, and Winky stood atop it, both hands reached out and smooshed against Granger’s cheeks to squish them together.

“They’ll understand, I know…” Hermione was saying.

Aberforth lumbered around the kitchen, though he looked a bit afraid to touch anything.

“Winky could not believe it,” Winky said. “Turning down the Minister and Harry Potter.” She cackled.

Hermione fought back a smile. “They should’ve asked me properly, or the whole thing would’ve been avoided!”

George lofted himself over the back of the sofa. “They’re in a snit, the lot of them,” he said. “I wager they never expected the golden girl to turn the Minister down.”

“They sprang it on me, and with no warning!” Hermione cried, laughing.

“Mmm.” George hummed a short, growly sound, smiling at her. The memory of it alone—

Bill shot him an incredulous glance, and George straightened, clearing his throat. “Press will be a right mess.”

Fleur flipped a hand. “Leave the press to me,” she said, all glazed over and happy sounding.

“Winky is so, so proud,” Winky rasped, squishing Hermione’s face yet again.

Hermione flushed a bit. “I didn’t do it for the approval,” she said. “But it is nice.”

Winky hopped a bit, binding both arms around Hermione’s neck.

They chit chatted a bit, about the plans for the werewolf cases, the consideration of setting up some sort of office for coordinating projects between both the Wizarding and wider magical worlds.

When he got her alone at the flat, though, George shed his cloak and his deep, blue necktie, tossing both onto the bed. “Hermione Jean,” he said.

He’d never been so proud to wear the same colour as someone else, and he’d had rather strong loyalties about his old Quidditch team.

“Hermione Jean—” He said slower, making her name into a novelty.

Something in his stare must’ve provoked her to silliness, for she burst into giggles and sprinted away.

He found her in the sitting room, cardboard sleeve in her hands. He cocked a brow and put the vinyl on. The song was upbeat and ridiculous, one from the cassette tape.

A bit cheeky, too, considering.

Hermione perched on the sofa and tapped her chin. “For my prize,” she said slowly, grin forming over her face despite her best efforts. “I’d like a proper performance.”

Prize, eh?

She gestured at the empty spot before the fireplace.

George slitted his eyes, stepping around the coffee table. “Oh, I’ll bet you do,” he said, low and playfully resentful. “Look at you there; sitting in your fancy dress robes.”

Hermione folded her hands on her lap. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Swot.” George mouthed the word slowly, then broke into a spin. “Uptown girl!” He landed on the chorus line, and rather than ruin it, he went for a good bit of lip syncing.

He went at it with zeal; there might as well have been a bloody band behind him, and his collapsed umbrella served quite nicely for a muggle microphone.

Dancing for Granger was simple. Lots of pointing, spinning, and winking in between the bits when inspiration struck with something ingenious.

The more she beamed and laughed, the more those odd fancies struck. Circling, jigging, landing on his knees before her to beg for a kiss.

Rascal that he was, George was bloody well crawling all over her by the close of the song.

She didn’t seem to mind.

#

November 4, 1999

They spent a handful of days faffing about, drinking in each other’s company and catching up on some family correspondence. (Percy was mortified at Hermione’s behavior; nothing from Ron still wouldn’t give any sort of solid commitment to Mum and Dad for a return visit, let alone be bothered to respond to George’s owl.)

And of course, the matter of Vane’s re-appointment, pending a Wizengamot vote, rankled. But for the first time in a while, they put the many, many things demanding worry on hold. Instead of focusing on what they couldn’t do (such as buy out half the council), they considered what they could.

The agency and the two of them, together.

Hermione met with Carter. George, with Marcus.

George finally got the bloody Star Kit prototype to work all the way through, which he tucked away in search of the perfect moment to reveal it.

Much like when they’d first gotten together, they took a bit of time to form some guidelines. As Hermione put it, “a lifetime habit is hard to break.”

But most of all, they enjoyed each other. This was a beautiful world, one in which a momentary suggestion like “You. Me. A pint of chocolate iced cream, and a gallon of pumpkin juice” could find him cuddled up on the couch with a shared spoon between them.

Things would pick up, yes. Soon, Hermione would return to more regular work with Aberforth and the “agency” as they’d taken to calling it. But, well—

He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed a bit of time to soak in everything with her.

Hermione wasn’t the only one worn ragged, and with a bit of reflection, he found himself brave enough to admit it. He wouldn’t consent to holding her back, but the pace they’d been moving at hadn’t been sustainable for either of them. Endless late nights, meals crammed in short snatches of stolen minutes, Hermione acting guilty any time she took a moment for herself, and his own endless fretting and worrying constantly battling for his attention. That was a way to survive, but not a way to live.

Hermione with a bit of time was a wholly different creature. This Hermione actually used the clawfoot tub, drew baths for them that left George with jelly limbs and the scent of lavender cozied into his skin. Cups of tea at the table, rather than downed near the stove or forgotten amidst the parchments. And Merlin—

The cuddling.

Sublime, that.

They formed a pattern of days. Kisses in the morning, a bit of journaling as George headed down to open the shop, then a bit of canoodling and tinkering in the workshop when Fred worked the afternoon slot at the tills.

They quit at proper times that allowed for supper. They read more books, spent an entire day fighting about the point of the ending of Northhanger Abbey (which was somewhat rubbish, in George’s opinion—you couldn’t just patch up all the problems in a scant couple of paragraphs). They burnt their fingers on berry tarts and attempted to bottle their own pumpkin juice, which failed miserably.

George fell asleep to fingers combing through his hair, and woke up to a perplexing set of grotesque monsters drawn on a pad of spare parchments. On a related note, he spent a half day apologizing for calling Hermione’s attempt at sketching him grotesque and monstrous.

He took to wearing Crookshanks in one of Teddy’s old carriers, because the old fellow didn’t tolerate it from anyone else and it made Hermione light up.

He filled half a notebook with product ideas. He arranged her new desk for her with everything placed just where she’d like it, then laughed and helped when she went to redo the whole organizational system.

After an afternoon spent approaching the subject like an Arithmancy problem, he became very, very good at snogging Granger till her mind puttied, no magic required. (Of this, he was quite pleased.)

He asked her silly and serious questions, and noted her replies.

And he witnessed as she seemed to unfold into more of the woman she’d grown to be. A bit more comfortable with herself, less nervous, less shaken by the expectations of those she might admire. It was like she’d cut free of a weight. She seemed like a woman willing to manage the steps to make the journey well, rather than rushing towards a destination that seemed always out of reach.

A woman who’d found where she wanted to go and how she wanted to go there, even if it differed from the expected. And George thanked his lucky stars that he got to come along for it.

###

Part VI: Willow

*“I have noted that the ideal owner for a willow wand often has some (usually unwarranted) insecurity, however well they may try and hide it.”

#

November 5, 1999, 4:15 p.m.

“Is this a good idea?” Hermione squeaked. “Honestly?” Her face was flushed pink from—well—

George dipped lower and tucked her against the table, grinning. “Sorry, did you or did you not hurry me along just to have me here alone?” Chickens clucked and scraped outside the garden door, and the Burrow was quiet save for the Ghoul’s usual thumping around in the attic.

Hermione’s face went deep red.

Satisfied, George laughed. “No one’s here,” he murmured. “Percy’s out with Gin and them—” he hadn’t even stopped to unpack his trunk at the foot of the stairs, apparently, before Ginny must’ve dragged him off to the match. “—and Mum and Dad aren’t due back till tomorrow.” A special trip to Paris, for Mum’s birthday. They’d host a small gathering upon her return, where Percy would pop out and surprise her.

Officially, George and Hermione had stopped in to put up the decorations for that event, but the streamers had only taken a few minutes, and the odd buildup of dust on the hearth had required even less.

Fred always liked to ring and give an update about the final scores when George didn’t go along (mostly Angie’s points—one had to probe for the others). They’d have plenty warning to tidy up if anyone came looking.

George tucked his arm closer and thumbed her chin, then cocked his brow in question.

Hermione bit back a smile and lifted her chin for another helping.

Merlin. She looked glorious with her hair all caught in sunset glints. George pressed closer overtop her and lowered his mouth to that spot she quite fancied, just under her jaw.

“You think you’re so clever—”

He grinned. Now her voice was all properly wobbly. Some of his better work elicited that tone, and he’d learnt to listen for it.

“Shush, you,” George teased.

Hermione snorted under her breath, but the sound hitched. Her hand in his hair started to tremble like corn set over a hot pan.

Winding her up was an unending source of joy.

He filled his grasp with her to anchor her close—one on her knee at his hip, the other drifting against her ribs how she liked.

Melty butter, she was.

Deep satisfaction crashed over him as she tugged him to get closer. He resisted, of course. She fancied a bit of a challenge from time to time.

Hermione made a pinched, impatient sound at the back of her throat that might as well have been her swotty voice saying, “Get on with it, Weasley,” and so George relented. He hummed with happiness before closing the remaining sliver of distance.

Another long, deep kiss.

This one came with the slightest hints of her—flecks of Chamomile and parchment and giddy, dancing light that soaked past his skin and warmed him to the middle.

His feet twisted in the dining room’s rug. Hermione’s hands fisted in his hair, along his shoulders, and George’s smooth façade slipped through his grip, leaving him winded and muddled like a mimblewimble victim.

When she broke the kiss, he was fully prepared to beg. “Sweet Merlin, Hermione.” Face flushed, head pounding in rhythm with his heart, and all sense of time and place stripped from him.

A typical afternoon just the two of them, honestly.

A hint of gold flickered in and out of his vision—barely noticeable, save for the—well—everything else. Hermione had a self-satisfied smile.

George shook his head a bit, breathless. “You—” Magic pooled in his hands, his mouth, his heart like honey, and George leaned closer to share it back.

A choking sound echoed behind them.

Hermione froze.

George shoved onto his elbow, hand closing on his wand.

Hermione whispered a visceral curse word—the sound of it jarring, coming from her.

George’s gaze found the spot where hers stuck. Then, the horror, the shock in her tone made proper sense.

Ron stood behind them on the stairwell. Like an apparition. For a fleeting, illogical moment, George hoped it was Harry, or someone from the DMLE, polyjuiced as Ron to continue the misdirection in the papers.

But Ron’s mouth was open and arm barred across his middle like he’d been kicked under the ribs. Like only Ron proper would.

Bloody Hell.

Ron’s gaze sprinted over them, again and again. No other part of him moved.

Hermione scrambled out from under George. “Ronald—”

The spell seemed to break. Ron dashed into the sitting room, tripping into the mantle in a loud clap of thunder. The floo bowl shattered on the floor, a crash of items both heavy and wooden tumbling in its wake. And then the sound of Ron’s voice rasping, cracking: “Shell Cott—” preceded a surge of green light.

And on the floor, the clock cranked and rattled, like a spoon was moving against heavy weight.

George shoved off the table, pulse drumming in an entirely different way.

Ron? What was Ron doing here? And now, after ignoring the requests to come home for ages! It made no bloody sense—

Just—just—

George’s hands fisted.

He couldn’t flip back the last several minutes, though it felt like that should’ve been within the realm of possibility.

Hermione was gasping, holding her cheeks as she stared at the mantle. “I—I don’t know what—” She swiveled to him. Panicked. In pain.

Crying.

George swallowed back his own cacophony and took her shoulder in hand. “Right,” he said roughly. “Go and get Fred. Now.”

Anything to get her out of the area while Ron imploded.

If they made it through the initial reaction, they might be able to talk some reason into him. But Hermione wouldn’t be anywhere near the first outburst.

He’d seen that look on Ron’s face once.

In the Great Hall, staring down at Fred’s body, like a fundamental law of the universe had been broken, or like—like it was a boggart, become real.

He had to do something. Now.

George charged into the floo, pinched a bit of dust from the broken pottery. George stepped in, shouted for Shell as he tossed it.

The last things he saw before the green light were the small vinewood jewelry box toppled on its side, and behind it, the Weasley clock—cracked on the ground.

#

Bill and Fleur were still absent at the Harpies match, though George followed his instincts through the blown open door and out onto the dunes. Ron would still be here. This was where Ron ran to, when he was being a git.

“Ron!” he shouted, marching as fast as he could in boots. “Ron!”

Adrenaline painted his mouth in a bitter taste and set his heart racing faster than required. For reasons he couldn’t acknowledge, George fumbled into his coat’s chest pocket and pulled free his wand, then his pocket watch. How long would Fred take?

He couldn’t remember the plan, the words he’d practiced, the discussions he’d had with Hermione and Marcus, with Fred and Dad. Not any of it.

Only that the entire endeavor might well be scuppered, now.

This was absolutely, positively, the worst bloody way for Ron to discover their relationship.

Mere rumors had sent him into a fury. This? This?

It’d—

George stopped in the dune and circled around, searching the sprigs of muted greenery that poked from the sand.

Where was he?

A blast of orange singed his cheek. He sucked in a breath. Jolted back. “Ron!” he roared. “Come on, don’t be—”

“You bastard.”

George whirled, boot heel catching on sloppy ground. He caught himself before tripping.

Ron stood over the dune; eyes raining bitter ice at George’s stammer.

For that’s all George could do, for a moment. Choke on his own tongue.

Exhaustion, irritation, and fear clouded his mind. “It’s not what you think, it’s—it’s more complicated,” he said quickly.

“Were you snogging Hermione,” Ron said it like a statement, similar to how the Wizengamot read off a list of charges to the accused. His teeth flashed, jaw clenched. “Did you not just have your hands on her?”

Ron’s ire and drunken ranting spiraled back to George like a record played at the wrong speed. “If you so much as lay a finger on her—”

He’d done that, hadn’t he. Laid a finger on Hermione.

The reflection hit coldly.

Then—a snap of irritation, because Ron wasn’t getting it. He never grasped how utterly self-centered he was being—then or now.

“I’m warning you now—if I find out you’re messing around with her—if there’s truth to—”

Well, Ron wouldn’t know. He hadn’t been around to properly understand, now had he? And even when he was, Ron hadn’t listened.

Ron never listened. To Hermione, or to him.

“You won’t live to see the next day, Mate.”

In the present moment, Ron stood seething with his eyes and nostrils flared wide in accusation and something like sick triumph. He looked ready to carry the old threat out, only waiting for the satisfaction of—of some admission of wrongdoing before he dropped the hammer. Some confirmation that he hadn’t imagined the scene at the Burrow.

“You won’t live to see the next day, Mate.” Every bit of Ron’s posture echoed those words, though he had yet to repeat them.

The thought should’ve provoked panic, now. But facing Ron before him, remembering those threats—it didn’t summon a wave of fear or anxiety as it normally did.

Instead, it sent a torrent of anger through George. A dangerous, snapping heat too close to his brittle patience. Because what right had Ron had to make such a demand, truly? To ask him to give an unbreakable vow like that? Merlin, if George had agreed—

A splash of breeze started him from the inner sinkhole of rage.

He swallowed. There might be time to salvage things. If not for George, then for the family. For everyone else.

Normally, Ron would be throwing fists by now. There was hope yet.

“Yes,” George said slowly, coaxing with the same voice he used when reaching for a Pygmy Puff at the back of the enclosure. “But not like you think. I’m not messing around with her; this isn’t—it’s not a joke to me.” He kept his hands loose at his sides, though he didn’t dare to put his wand away.

That bit came easy. That was the first thing that needed clarifying. And he would know. George had been having this row with Ron for nearly a year in the back of his head. “What Hermione and I have is special. I would never do anything to hurt her.” A bloke could only run through a list of “what-I-should-have-said’s” so many times before it was memorized, and now it was coming back to him.

Ron opened his mouth then closed it.

Acidic laughter spewed past his lips. “You are jokes, George. Tricks.” Ron stepped forward as if explaining something simple to a very daft pupil, lifting his hand. His non-casting hand. The other was clenched tight around the willow. “Stupid games and quips dressed up in a bit of money. But Hermione’s not like that. She doesn’t care that you’re rich—” His words were wet and thick, rough, forced through his teeth, like he was scared something else might come out of his mouth if he opened it all the way. “Once you muck it up, she’ll have no reason to stay—”

It was such a pathetic display, but an exhausting one. George ran his thumb over his wand. “Ron.”

“I can admit, I may struggle,” Ron gestured around himself at nothing, tone defensive and barbed. “I’ve bungled things, yeah. But—but I come back. I’m there.” He bobbed his head, voice cutting over the word. “Meanwhile, you—” He sucked in a breath, features contorting. “Blimey, you don’t care. You don’t care that there’s history with Mione and I. That we’ve got something of substance.” Furious tears clogged his eyes, and he blinked down hurriedly. “You can’t begin to understand it. And now you’ve—you’ve—” Ron’s arms began to shake, as if he was holding back some blow that wanted to rocket out of him.

George resisted the urge to step back. Warped as Ron’s perspective was, seeing him hurt like this hit like a knife through the heart.

After a moment, Ron’s face lifted. “I can’t believe you’d be so selfish,” he rasped.

Right.

George exhaled a bit, scratching at his brow. “Have you thought about what Hermione wants? I mean, at all?” The second bit came out sharper than he meant it to. Or maybe he had meant it to be that sharp, and only felt a bit bad, hearing it aloud. But if Ron wouldn’t think about the bigger picture, this entire conversation would be useless. “What’s genuinely best for everyone involved here?”

Ron stilled.

Wind pressed George’s coat sleeve, slapping against the heat in his cheeks and throat.

Ron folded his arms. “You think you’re so much better for her, don’t you.” He breathed a laugh, a short, dark burst peppered with anger and disbelief. “Think about it. When it comes to Hermione, what do you offer her? You’re a trick wand. A passing diversion. You’re a bad move she’ll regret making, and nothing more.”

Ron was trying to pick a fight. Trying to instigate.

Anything, then, to avoid answering that question.

Enough. Ron needed to know.

George stared him down. “I’m her husband.”

In George’s darker, convoluted nightmares, that was something he shouted like a stunning spell. A burst of magic to ward off the accusations Ron launched his way.

But he didn’t have to prove Ron wrong. And in life, it came out of him differently. He said it the way he’d tell Fred his caldron had a crack in it—a necessary warning.

He was quiet, though not gentle or apologetic. Every word cut from his mouth with a blade he refused to cushion.

He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t fight with Ron about the sodding horcrux hunt, or—or the stupid, blinkered way he’d tried to pressure Granger out of her Runes work. Those conversations wouldn’t net Hermione anything, and Ron wasn’t in a right state to listen. But he would tell the truth. The whole, real truth, because Ron needed to know it.

“I’m her husband,” he’d said, and the entire world of what it meant to be her George had wrapped his voice and made him sound like the man he’d grown to become. The man he was meant to be, whether by nature or nurture or stubborn love that hadn’t known how to quit—George Weasley-Granger.

Ron’s throat bobbed under his scrappy beard.

One second, they were standing on the dunes, a bit of breeze tossing Ron’s shaggy hair around his grey cloak collar and George’s pocket watch ticking like a rabbit’s heartbeat in the palm of his hand.

The next, they met like a raging crash of fire.

Shoving—colliding—the both of them throwing weight at the other like burning walls that’d come falling down. Ron’s hands slammed to George’s jacket, knocking the air out of his lungs. And George’s—George’s had thrown into Ron’s shoulders, fingers gripping like he might wrench Ron off his feet.

He wanted to—he wanted to knock Ron flat. Wanted, to knock the monstrous, selfish rage right out of him, but it didn’t—didn’t—wouldn’t—work.

Why wouldn’t it work?

The moment stretched, and time’s pulse slowed.

Tick,

Tick,

Tick.

Ron’s sneer stretched his lips back from gritted teeth. “Liar!” George saw more than heard the word. He felt the force throttling against his hold, clocked the cold rage and the accusation in Ron’s eyes.

George’s mind shorted. He had expected the worst, and yet.

This could not be his brother. This was someone else.

This was a mistake.

The thought dunked him in ice, but it was too late.

Wands and watch lost in the dunes and fists, elbows, and feet shuffling in the sand and sparse grass. Ron tried to get a shoulder into George’s ribs, and George didn’t let him.

Each blow burned like a hot poker, each breath throttled from lungs that couldn’t quite manage the occasion.

The danger pressed close, suffocating. He was reminded, sharply—keeping his footing in a row with a proper auror was nearly impossible. The sand shifted like loose ash under his shoes, and a flat, large stone peeked at the base of the dune. A duck, a feckless swing—He was going to—to fall, and, Ron—

Ron—

George’s ankle twisted. He threw himself to the side, rather than risk the plummet. Ron stalked closer as he scrambled to regain his stance.

“You’re lying!” Ron roared.

George blinked in shock. Then he took a cuff to the jaw.

He reeled back. “Why would I lie about this?” George spat.

Ron stilled, heaving his breaths, arm still extended past his leg from the swing.

George brought his fingertips to touch the smarting spot on his chin. Blimey.

He tripped away and lifted his left hand in a motion to pause. It was a daft gesture—instinct built into him from a childhood of mucking about with his brothers.

One that did not apply to this circumstance.

For a moment, his brother hesitated. Something like concern flickered over his features.

But then it cleared.

And Ron clobbered him. George’s feet went out, and his side smacked the dune. Sand ground against his cheek and robes. Ron’s weight pinned him like a hippogriff sitting on his ribs.

George swore, twisting. “Gerroff!” He clenched through the weeds, bits of shell, anything—looking for anything—as Ron shoved his head harder against the ground.

George flung a handful up, and Ron ducked to avoid it. There was a scuffle, a few harrowing moments of orange and grey sunset blurring with the ocean’s horizon. The flash of Ron’s ruddy face as George tore his way free.

In the effort, something small and round came loose from his right hand, where he’d taken to wearing it while out and about during the daylight hours. Yet another exhausting bit of secrecy kept up for Ron’s benefit.

Ron’s stare narrowed on it.

It thudded into the wet ground, atop the claw marks.

Ron paused.

George’s pulse hammered. “No, that’s not—” He leapt forward, throwing himself after the item, lest Ron snatch it first.

And Ron did nothing.

George didn’t lift his head or look at Ron while he put it back on. This time, where it properly went.

Salazar.

Disgust welled up the inside of George’s chest—bitter and visceral as he righted himself and shook the sand out of his hair. He couldn’t catch his breath.

How—how had he let it get this so out of hand?

He gasped. “Look—”

Cold saturated Ron’s voice. “Call your second.”

George’s fingers froze partway through his fringe. “You serious?”

Ron yanked his wand from the dune. The willow sliced through the breeze, and a terrier jumped from it, gleaming and blue. He muttered in a low voice, and it loped off into the dark.

Ron pulled George’s pocket watch up next, clicked it open, then chucked it to George’s feet. “You have a quarter hour.”

Tick, tick, tick.

The needled second hand snatched the lull from the breeze and replaced it with dread.

Tick—

Not fast. Not slow. Precise. Measured. The march of time towards an inevitable destination. George had hopped and skirted time, snuck about the back alleys and hidden in its alcoves, but he couldn’t dodge this. He never could’ve.

Ron was never going to listen.

And George—oh. George had been a fool.

Tick—

Ron strode down the shoreline, marking his steps. Calm. Focused. Pacing out an arena like it was a training exercise.

Tick—

George’s pocket watch was busted—the face shattered as the Weasley clock had been. The break in fighting hadn’t been for them to shout at each other. He didn’t—Ron didn’t even want to shout at him?

In that moment, George felt eleven years old.

Pretending to be brave for Ron’s benefit, the train pulled them and their trunks away.

But with his forehead pressed to the window glass, and the sight of little Ginny and Ronnie’s eyes filling with tears—George had been so frightened. When a wizard left home for Hogwarts, they came back a bit differently. Older. Wiser. Not the same. Everyone knew that. But he had not understood, then, what he was leaving behind. Not until the moment was upon him.

Much like now.

Ron stooped every several yards to lace the air and ground with Repello Muggletum charms. With bits and pieces of spells that would keep out intervention and allow them to—to war at each other.

Muggle dueling was bad enough. Magical fighting—that—that was harder to fix when it went wrong.

Ron meant for them to—

To—

“If you don’t call a second, you’ll do this without one,” Ron called evenly. “And I know you’ve got your pick, so you might as well.”

George spun, blinking.

Hermione was already going to get Fred, but this was the last place he wanted her. If they showed up together—

He’d have to send word, fast, in a way that would reach her before they arrived.

Because he’d not—not do this to her. The tension in Ron’s frame, the empty blank behind his eyes, and the way he toiled over his uniform, like he was strapping armor on—Ron was bracing. Expected him to call Hermione, maybe. To play her against him like a cheap, loaded hand in Exploding Snap. But George wouldn’t put her between them.

They’d—they’d talk. Ron would have to understand. Or they’d...well. Either way, Hermione’s presence would likely make it worse. It wasn’t her job to diffuse this, anyways.

It was George’s.

They were brothers, and in Ron’s eyes, that’s what made this a betrayal. Of the mistakes made through this mess, he and Ron split the lion’s share. Hermione wasn’t a human shield, and she’d agonized enough about furthering the rift between them. He wouldn’t give Ron opening to throw salted insults at Granger’s feet about poor loyalty and her going along with whatever he imagined George to have manipulated.

He told himself these things, because he wanted her arms around him more than anything, just then.

No.

Ron had already broken her heart enough times.

“Now,” Ron shouted.

George grit his teeth, summoning his wand from the distant ground with a snap. What did Ron think? Truly? What could merit this sort of reaction?

Was George so bad a husband for Granger? Or was it something else?

A locked gate stretched across from him, waiting. Only when he looked closely did the mask of leaden focus reveal fury.

“I’ll pick one for you if you don’t.” Ron folded his arms, still watching the distant waves as the last streaks of sunset painted them red. He wouldn’t look George square in the face.

Fred, then. Fred would know to ask Hermione to wait. His best hope was that Hermione hadn’t managed to find him yet in the crowds. George shifted.

Unless—unless he could make Ron understand.

It took him two tries, distracted as he was, the thought of sharing this felt like peeling back wallpaper that’d covered an ugly gash in the plaster for years. Finally, George’s wand poured the gleaming, blue form into the air.

A small, staggered breath echoed from a few yards away. Ron’s fists tightened, knuckles popping, eyes flared with his nostrils while he took in the otter.

George clenched his jaw.

When Ron spoke, his voice had gone low. Deathly quiet. “How long.”

The otter swam back and forth in darting, anxious movements.

His eyes burned.

“Years,” George said, because anything more specific was impossible to pin down.

The answer came slowly: “You bloody bastard.” Hatred and realization hardened the flat, cool bluntness behind his eyes. Made it sharp. He looked like a grown man surveying a battle map, finding the opposing forces and armies in dire positioning. Grim. Fixed. Resolute.

It hadn’t helped. It’d made it worse.

“Ron,” George started. “It wasn’t like I—”

“Call your second,” Ron whispered. His eyes didn’t lift from the Patronus.

They wouldn’t be talking.

The charm snapped. Choked and vanished like it’d been hit by an Evanesco or a Finite.

It wasn’t going to work. Something—something else—

With a shaking hand, George reached into his trouser pocket and fished out the adapted muggle phone. Punched in the number, and prayed that it’d connect, despite the new crack in the casing.

Fred answered on the second tone.

“Forge?” Jolly and booming through clamor of a thrumming crowd. Hermione must not have found the group yet.

George’s voice shook. “M’ at, um, the dunes just east of Shell Cottage,” he mumbled. “I’m told I need a second.”

Static.

George stuck his hand against his scarred ear to block out the external noise and turned from Ron’s pummeling glare. “Fred?”

A bitter, scoffed “tuh” came from behind George’s back.

“Sorry—” Fred’s voice popped in and out on the line. “You’re not coming through all the way. Thought you said you needed a second?” His voice rose on the last two words, enunciating with incredulity.

It felt like a parallel, nightmare universe to him as well.

“Yeah,” George said. He swallowed and turned further, hunching his shoulders. “It’s Ron.”

Not a beat of pause. “Stay where you are.”

A shout, some thudding. Fred’s breath picking up.

“Fred—”

“Stay right there, don’t do a thing,” Fred barked.

George nodded. “Alright.”

“I’m on my way,” Fred said. A clatter, voices lifting in the background. Just before it cut, Fred’s muted grumble rolled over the line. “I’m going to kill him.”

#

November 5, 1999, 5:00 p.m.

By the time Fred arrived, dusk had fizzled out into dark. He landed in a crack of apparition that blended with the spritzing of far-off muggle fireworks.

Two strides brought him to George, then he reached out. A firm grasp on each arm anchored George to the moment, dragging him back from the sea of brewing frustration and anger.

As the shock had given way to pondering and the shadows occluded the details on Ron’s face, George’s many attempts to negotiate had gone southward.

Ron wouldn’t hear a word of it. Literally. He’d cast a silencing ward between them and stood, watching the coast as he waited for his own second.

Fred didn’t spare Ron a glance. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, fast and seething. “I’ll knock him flat, then you beat some sense into his wormy little brain.”

“That’s not going to cut it, Mate,” George’s tone sounded muted and foreign to himself.

Fred gawked, doing a double-take. “Sorry?”

George pulled back and continued to pace the length of the beach, double-checking temporary wards large enough to box them in and repel others out. Muggle safeties. Proximity alarms. Disillusionment. Invisibility. Silencing. A bit of shield laced in to connect the seams with strong, binding magical epoxy.

The only common ground they’d found was ensuring no one accidentally stumbled into the middle of their mess.

He’d done the west end, keyed to allow Fred, Ron the east, keyed for whatever sod he’d managed to convince to this backstabbing. The cubic, stories’ high shimmers clapped with a spritz of red sparks when they met in the middle.

If it were D.A.D.A. class, they’d get high marks for a proper dueling arena constructed in uneven terrain.

But this was Bill’s outer property, and in the best-case scenario, the only things they’d likely get when they were through were a few new bruises, a potion regime to sort the spell damage, and a reaming from whoever arrived first—Fleur or Bill.

George tossed his jacket on the dune behind him. “You sort Hermione?”

“Hermione?” Fred blinked.

“She was on her way to get you,” George said, pausing. “She didn’t find you?”

Fred winced. “Surprised she didn’t show first, then, though the stadium’s packed. I’ll ring Ange.” He slitted his eyes at Ron’s silhouette in the dark. “I take it the chat went well?”

George let out a rough, clipped laugh—more hysterical than amused.

If Ron had paid any mind at all, he’d have seen that Hermione was happy. He’d have been hurt likely, still, but the rage would’ve gone out of him.

But Ron didn’t notice that, had never noticed when Hermione was right miserable, because all Ron cared about was himself and his bloody ego.

The reality of this galled George. Worked a rage so deep into his bloodstream that he felt it rattle with every breath.

The kicker—the shame—was that Ron knew, now. He had to know that Hermione wasn’t just a passing fancy to George, a bit of mischief or a joke, like he’d accused all that time ago. He’d seen the patronus, the ring, heard the pleading over the last quarter hour.

Ron knew, and he was even more angry from it. He still couldn’t bloody see past his own sense of entitlement. He took Hermione so for granted that it didn’t occur to him that she’d never been a good match with him. Not like that.

She was there for Ron to use and leave, and now that he’d returned to find her unavailable, he was throwing a strop that would only hurt her worse.

Every fact squeezed George’s heart tighter. Snapped his steps shorter. Tightened his fists another notch into his palms. Fred had gone quiet as George paced the entire field. Triple-checking after he’d double checked.

Salazar. Years, he’d stood by, stood out of the way, and Ron had done little but bumble about with Granger’s heart. Yet Ron assumed the worst of George. Never thought George would’ve tortured himself over his feelings, swallowed them down, stepped aside. Again. And again. And again.

George had been anything but flippant. He’d been so, so careful. So anxious. So torn up. He’d split himself in half, trying to avoid stirring up unnecessary hurt.

And this was what he got in return.

Shouting. Fists. A barking mad demand for challenge. His brother looking at him like he was a bloody Death Eater.

“You going to do it, then?” Fred murmured.

George cast Fred a single look, and Fred’s eyes flared.

He didn’t have to say it aloud.

If Ron wanted a fight, George would gift him with one. He pocketed his wand and turned back to the center.

There, a vortex of wind and a flash-bang of light deposited a lanky form onto the top of the hill.

George’s stomach sank. Fred swore, then charged up towards the newcomer. The latter’s rusty red hair gleamed by wandlight.

Right. Everything that might go poorly would, today. He couldn’t summon the energy to be shocked.

George walked over, mid-way through Fred’s lambasting. “—joking, you can’t sponsor this sort of behavior—”

Percy’s mouth furrowed into a smaller, tighter line. “I’m not condoning,” he snipped. “I’m mostly here to ensure no one’s permanently maimed or killed.”

“George wanted nothing to do with this,” Fred yelled, jabbing a hand behind him, towards where George no longer stood. “Ron’s the one—”

“While there are certainly better ways of responding to this conflict, I must say that George,” Percy cut in sharply, brows arched. “—has knowingly made some staggeringly inappropriate choices to the great harm of his brother and Hermione, and the onus falls upon him to apologize.”

George took it like a hit he could pretend not to feel. But he did. Feel it.

Fred’s face screwed up, and he launched forward.

George’s wand stroked down. A flash of blue knocked the both of them back a step.

Fred relented. His hand-made harpies kit, complete with Angie’s number, had been knocked crooked on his frame. The fanfare and joviality in it seemed mawkish and frightening, here.

“Fascinating,” George said thickly. He tipped his head and frowned to hide the crumbling feeling inside of himself. “That what you really think, Perce?”

Percy’s gaze skittered from Ron’s seething silence to George’s folded arms.

“Because I reckon you realize it’s more complicated than that.”

Bugger. His voice was cracking.

He swallowed. “I reckon you know enough to understand you haven’t got the full picture,” George said. “And I would think, by now, you might know that I care more than you’re crediting me with.”

Percy opened and closed his mouth. He had his work robes on, as always. “In this matter, you’ve not shown the discretion that—”  

And that’s when George shut it out.

Alright. You know? Typical Percy. Couldn’t pack away the formalities to understand the truth right in front of him.

George nodded through the vise around his lungs. “Right. Maybe it’s easier to lean on old assumptions.” He clicked his tongue and glanced at Ron. “Suppose neither of you have much else to go on, skulking off like you have been.”

Percy choked. “You—that’s—”

Iced over between his ribs, George turned to Fred. “Odd, innit, that Percy’s at peace with dueling now, when he was all bent out of shape to get it banned sixth year.”

George felt like he was looking down at himself, shouting, to stop enflaming the situation, to stop making it all worse—

But he felt so raw, so shaken, that reaching for Fred was instinct.

“Quite.” Fred crossed his arms and sneered at Percy and Ron, and for a moment, George felt slightly less shaken and thrown from his own body. Fred was there. Freddie was with him. Freddie wouldn’t let him sink or splinter.

“For the love of—” Percy muttered something under his breath.

Let him mutter. George’d had enough.

“Y’know, if Ron wants the biggest hypocrite in the family as his backup,” George said. “Who am I to deny him? The two of you make a nicely matched set.”

It wasn’t a kind thing to say, and he hated the sound of it as it came out of his mouth. But if Percy thought he could bully and press George into playing the scheming villain, he was dead wrong.

George wasn’t the villain, here. Not even close. Not even if his own brothers assumed the absolute worst of him at every opportunity, even after everything they’d been through—

“Ron’s the one forcing this. Ron’s the one refusing to listen to reason or explanation,” George continued.

Fred nodded fiercely. “Not to mention, the last time he visited, he went off like a dung bomb.”

Percy turned to Ron.

“Shut it.” Ron’s voice cracked. “He knows what he did.” Then, he shook his head at Percy: “I’m done with mucking around. He’ll only lie.” He pointed at the perimeter. “Seconds, away.” His voice went muted and blunt with the command.

Percy stammered, then, paling more with each step, he followed Ron back to the other side of the wards, whispering.

Fred laid a firm squeeze on George’s shoulder before walking with him in the opposite direction. They reached the proper place.

George waited a moment, facing the sea.

But Hermione didn’t shake him awake. He was not tangled in sweaty pyjamas, panicking and lunging for breaths that wouldn’t come.

Nightmares come alive were colder, and there was less certainty in their shadows. There wasn’t the sense that things would unfold in the same, gutting fashion they had a hundred times before. You couldn’t know what fate awaited you.

Only that it would hurt.

George turned.

Ron’s silhouette seemed to bleed into the dark.

A high, tight whistle pierced the air. George’s chin tipped up. An explosion of muggle fireworks shattered the night overhead. Ba-boom. Another rocket launched from the opposite side of the more distant, green hill, then split the map of stars. Ba-boom.

When George looked back down, the strobe illuminated Ron’s eyes. Fire glinted off grey-blue sea. A line of willow carved his brother’s face in half.

The only thing George could think was this: Years, he had tried so hard to avoid this. What good had that done?

George lifted his own wand and let the old, cedar scent fill his breath. It parted his frame of vision in half like a needle pointed north.

Sometimes, there was only one way through a storm.

“Bow,” George said, like iron and lightning.

Ba-boom.

He had never been afraid of Ron. He had been afraid of what he might do himself.

Light splashed and died over Ron’s freckles, over the icy pale in his expression—almost startled. For a moment, he refused.

Ba-boom.

Then Ron’s expression slammed shut.

Smoke twisted through the breeze. Thicker. Suffocating. Somewhere, a far length down the coast, the muggles were burning an effigy. George felt as if something in him burned away with it.

Rage coiled tight in George’s chest.

He bowed. Straightened, the same moment Ron did. Like a warped mirror in the drifting clouds of grey.

They both paused. Wands up, out. Legs shifted and braced into defensive stances. George stretched his left hand before his person, drawing his right back and up, over his head. The better to fire down a shield—a strong one.

Ron hadn’t moved.

Ba-boom.

“Go on then,” George spat. “Isn’t this what you wanted, you stupid git.”

Nothing.

He narrowed his eyes.

“I had wondered what took you so long to ask.” Hermione’s voice lilted through George’s mind. “Honestly, Ronald.” A hum of voices, the drone of slow music hummed behind it.

Then, Ron’s reply in a soft tone, tinged with a bit of defensive reflex: “Maybe I was waiting for the right time. You can’t rush things like this, y’know.”

The foreign memory pierced through George’s head—Hermione in a red dress that scratched beneath the hands. A lingering pinch of anxiety in the base of the stomach. The sight of George, slipping away from Fred’s side—a shadow at the back of the tent. Purple tweed, fingers wrapping his tie, bandages snug around his head.

And where was Hermione? Rapt, smiling, twirling with Ron. Looking, only at Ron.

George blinked as the thoughts webbed across his concentration.

Across the field, Ron’s hand flinched sideways.

The stunner sliced through the smoke.

Fury pounded through George like a drum.

How dare—

George’s muscles flexed, his arm cutting downwards. Blue light cracked, rebounding Ron’s attack.

Ron had slipped right around his mental defenses, walls that weren’t accustomed to keeping family out. Then, he’d thrown up a distraction. A petty, spiteful attempt at undermining. Something that he figured would hurt George to witness.

But it didn’t. It only showed how little Ron understood. How low Ron would stoop.

Rage burned in George’s throat, like fire travelling a line down to his chest, turning the rest of him cold as it went.

Occlumency wove to his demand.

Without need of a word aloud, he snagged Ron’s legilimency spell in an iron grip. Hurled it from his mind hard enough that Ron hissed and stumbled back a few steps.

“I suggest you keep this out in the open,” George shouted. “I’d rather not hurt you.”

Ron made a sharp, short sound of disgust.

George stopped short and cocked his head. “If it was just me, I’d knock your block off,” he said. “But, see, Hermione wouldn’t want me to stoop to that level.”

Ron’s next stunner went wide a few inches, kicking up a clod of dirt by George’s heel.

A bit more distraction he might be able to bring this whole thing to a close.

George rolled his eyes. “Can’t see in the dark, can we?” He snapped, and the torchpoints he’d built into the ward line lit, setting the field in a dim, wavering glow.

Ron thrust a hand into his pocket, then brought out a glint of silver. A click.

The lights zipped into it, swallowed inside.

“I can’t stand to see your face,” Ron shouted. “Now shut up.”

The next spell smacked George’s shield, sinking deep into it like an arrowhead or a lance. It crackled, fracturing the blue.

George swore, balance going sideways.

“Everte Statum!” Ron’s follow-up hit as George was pivoting to re-cast.

It clipped around, right into his jagged scar. Searing pain, then the sand hit like a brick and knocked the wind out of him.

When he rolled to counterattack, head ringing, Ron’s silhouette had vanished in the smoke.

Ba-boom—another stroke of light overhead, followed by a flickering glow cast by fizzly explosion.

Percy’s shouting was only faintly audible above the din.

George wheezed in. Out.

He flattened to the ground, crawling for a bit of cover against the dunes. The salty tang of sea and muck flicked in his face. Soppy grit soaked his sleeves. He inched his wand closer to his mouth.

A jet of red clapped the brush beside him.

Merlin’s beard.

It felt like being a creature in a cage—Ron had to be using some sort of supersensory charm to parse  his location.

That thought, that Ron was listening to his every breath, that he might be tracking George’s struggling crawl on the ground like a bloody flobberworm, sent fire crawling a bit further towards George’s chest.

Any good duelist knew when to copy form.

George laid the same charm on himself.

“Stop hiding, git,” George whispered.

There was a sharp hiss, not ten yards off. The sound of Ron’s temper sparking against a petty insult.

George pulsed off an elbow and fired a Stupefy at the sound.

Thud.

Then the noise mixed with the racket of the waves, eddying surges of sound from Fred and Percy, and the rushing wind. Shadows blended and divided, his peripheral vision scooping up and crowding in on the scene before him. Every grain of sand lodged beneath his fingernails screamed at him for notice.

Too—too—too much.

Too much, and he hadn’t the practice to sustain it. It wasn’t much like charming the Extendible Ears in a controlled environment. Not one thing at a time, not—

Where was Ron? Had he stunned him unconscious?

George stumbled a step sideways. Felt like he was off his trolley, this.

“George, are you hurt?” Percy’s amplified voice boomed across the sand, and it backfired against his eardrums. George yelped and covered the openings, then cut the charm with a nonverbal Finite.

“Shut it!” he shouted.

Ron’s silhouette appeared around the side of a further dune. Wand still in hand, he sprinted for higher positioning as George found his footing again. At least this ground was more level.

George laid down a shield to buy a moment to think.

Tide crept at his heels, eating his footprints away.

How’d he ended up here? Clear in the open, with the sea at his back?

No use in hiding if the sod could find him anyway.

He needed a way out. An exit.

Alright. The fastest and safest way out of this would be to fully stun or disarm Ron. Once that’d been accomplished, the duel could end.

Guilt prickled through the back of his mind like spiderlegs, and along with it, an inkling of an idea.

He swiped his jacket sleeve under his nose, and let the shield flicker and collapse, as if by accident. When Ron took the opening, George dodged left and fired a Locomotor Wibbly. Ron jumped from the jet of light, and it collapsed the dune’s side into a river of sand.

He couldn’t read Ron in the dark. He couldn’t tell how far the berk was willing to take this, but every muscle in George’s body crackled with tension.

Time to end it. Now.

“Araneafors!” George threw the magic on the fly. A torrent of spiders the size of Hagrid’s pumpkins burst from his wand. “Opugno!”

Then they surged at Ron.

Ron froze, his posture locking as the monsters stormed at him.

In the fray, for a moment, Ron looked helpless. Young. Like a niffler in front of a stampede of centaurs.

George’s hand moved itself as his heart froze. The wand lifted. The spiders stopped, mere feet from Ron’s face. “Yield!” he shouted.

Ron gasped. “Never!” Then, he issued a smashing spell mixed with what could only be their mum’s cascading jinx. Each spider crushed into fog, and George swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth at the way Ron was shaking.

Too far.

Too far—there was a line, and he’d—

“Mobilihominus!” Ron cried.

Bright light seized George’s body, yanking him off his feet. Static hiss filled his hearing and white coated his vision, but he could just make out the image of Ron, wand shifting to direct him back, then down.

Water, up to his throat.

Cold water—

He shouted aloud, head wrenching.

“Admit it!” Ron stomped closer. He pulled his wand in, and George’s feet snagged along the bottom as the charm dragged him a bit closer to shore. “Say what you did!”

George thrashed. “Or what?” he yelled. “Y-You plan to drown me?” The disgust was plain in his tone despite the way the frigid blast clamped down on his voice box and made it quake.

His wand hand bit through the crackling hold. Incensed, George spun it. Ron’s spell popped like a week-old balloon—whizzing from his body and sputtering into darkness.

A wave crashed over his crown, dunking him under a surge of cold pressure.

But George’s insides, that snapping line of fire—it went hot and furious, and any shreds of guilt were burned away.

Who did this?

Only Ron. Only Ron would ever—George clambered to his feet, coughing stinging salt and water. As the tide pulled back from his ribs, he smashed a Protego Horribilis over his head. Next, he issued a Drought charm. It splashed like magma on ice in a circle around him—eating through the water to reveal the soaked, sandy floor.

If Ron thought water was a bane, he had another thing coming.

Ron yelled something indistinguishable through the rush of wave clashing against the round dome. A jet of light tunneled for the blue charm, and when the Transadigo hit, it wedged deep like a pickaxe.

But it didn’t quite manage. Between Ron’s distance and George’s shield abilities, the piercing spell faltered and broke. Wand first, Ron snaked to the right, then curved towards the side of George’s defenses.

Rather than droughting the water, Ron issued a Partis Temporus—a more efficient use of magical expenditure—to carve a path. Not at George. Down.

“Defodio!” Ron cried. The blast carved a gouge from the sand lining beneath the shield.

The next jinx slipped through the gap, and George scarcely had time to rupture his Protego before the knockback sent him hurling for the dunes.

Something cracked in his wrist.

Blasts of red and white peppered the night sky. Whistles, booms, and distant applause. George wheezed and tried to clear his vision.

Relentless, Ron marched for him.

George gulped in a breath and thunked his head back to the sand.

Utterly spent, sagged against the mucky shore, that line of fire reached the quick, and he hadn’t the strength to hold it back.

George hadn’t been afraid of Ron pummeling him. He hadn’t even been afraid of the fight.

He’d been anxious of this—what he might do when he snapped.

His wrist hurt, his head ached, he was soaking and cold, and he wanted to ream Ron’s neck. Not only for this. For everything.

When George crawled to his feet, Ron was waiting. Perfectly composed, eyes narrowed, and wand drawn like he couldn’t wait to unleash the next torrent of rubbish.

But George was done.

George had reached the end of his very, very long fuse. The little flame had burned down the string for years, and now the only thing left in his mind was a single thought: So be it.

“You like this, don’t you?” George exploded, voice hoarse and ragged. “Been aching for a go at me for how long now?”

Ron’s arm flashed forward, but George parried the stunner. Magic boiled from his chest, up into his throat. The Immobulus thundered from George’s wand and Ron went still.

“Here’s a secret, brother,” George said, striding for Ron. “You’re so used to being placated that you go spare when the world doesn’t bend itself in half for you.”

Ron’s eyes flashed, but George kept on, low, barbed, bitter. “You expect it from Mum. You expect it from Hermione, and you expect it from me.” He bobbed his tilted head. “You’re angry because you ruined things all on your own, and no one else fixed them for you.”

Now that he’d gotten started, it all came unglued. The memories. The pain. All the awful feelings he’d tamped down welled up and shot through him, like water out of a geyser. “Hermione isn’t a medal for you to win and wear on your bloody robes—” Worn through, it came out in a jagged cracking shout. “You were rubbish to her! Rubbish!” He lifted his hands. “Then and now!”

Ron’s complexion went deeper red, soaking his ears with colour.

“You talk about history, well, what’s there, Ron?” George was nearly screaming, now. But he didn’t care. He didn’t—didn’t care at all. “You didn’t respect her wishes, you took her for granted, and you—you got angry when she wouldn’t fall into step with your plans!”

Ron didn’t move, and George couldn’t shut his mouth. “You want to fight me, you want to blame me, because you’re too blinkered to face the truth!” The anger quaked through him like lightning, shaking his focus, and the spell fractured.

“You know what she means to me!” Ron bellowed, tripping free. The fastener on his auror cloak had popped free in the magical fray, revealing something dark and knitted beneath. “What she’s always meant, and you—”

“What’s that?” George snapped. He lifted his hand to point it at Ron’s chest. “You abandoned her! You left her! You left them both!” He shoved, and Ron stumbled back. “And she begged you—she begged, Ron! Where were you?”

There was a flash—a bang, but George had tripped back before Ron’s bedazzling hex blinded him.

Deep down, he’d thought if he ever did snap with Ron, it’d—it’d feel good, maybe. That it would feel good not to care, to just unleash all the pent-up anger and hurt, but—

George choked.

It didn’t feel good. It felt like his very heart was getting ripped out of his chest, and like the person responsible was standing across from him, wand drawn. It felt like there was nowhere for all of it to go. Messy, seething, lost—George exploded outwards. Rage and bitterness punched through his ribs in a crack of dark, purple electricity.

If there was a needle in his center, it was spinning like mad. “The only person you care about it yourself!” George hurled the blast of magic. Unthrottled, unhinged, right at Ron’s chest.

An act of instinct.

It ripped Ron’s jumper, right down the middle.

Voices echoed from the dunes, panicked shouting—the sound Percy and Bill yelling for the lot of them to—

“Flagrante!” Ron screamed.

The hex gripped George’s left hand, barreling into the circlet around his finger.

A frightened cry echoed from the sidelines.

Hermione—

George turned. Then he registered the metal searing his skin.

“Agh—” He choked. His mind went white, and George dropped to his knees, crying aloud. It wouldn’t come off, he couldn’t—Hermione—

“—kill you!” Fred roared.

“No, Fred!” Bill’s shout boomed then was swallowed by yet another eruption of fireworks over the ridge.

The ring went cold, suddenly, like ice, and George’s panic shot free of its gates.

Where was she? Where was Hermione? Where was— “HERMIONE?” he cried.

And that boiling, building magic leapt free.

In a twisting stream of gold and purple, it arrowed from his wand in a line like lightning, before erupting into blue.

Boom.

The Protego exploded like a firework at the heart of the chaos. The blaze lit Fred, mid-dash around the edges, Ron, tossed from his feet, and Bill—drawing his hand from the line of the spellfire’s path with a wretched, harrowing cry.

That was how the duel ended.

George blinked in the aftermath at the distorted shapes of his family. At Ron, sobbing on his back, wand knocked from his grip. At Hermione, crying broken words to Fred that the wind ripped away. At Bill, curled in on his arm, on the ground.

He’d done that.

He’d fired the shield right through Bill’s hand.

But he could not have done that.

George wasn’t the sort of bloke to turn against kin.

It was in his nature—written, maybe—to love them.

From the crowns of their heads, to their—

“—ickle, tippy toes, yeah?”

The whisper, warm and real memory from far, far away, circled through his mind, and the little needle housed in his ribs burned its agreement. It came, for the first time in ages, to a steady, slow stop.

Meanwhile, the rest of George drowned in helplessness and regret.

Fleur was screaming and crying. The others were rushing the dunes.

What was he to do? What was he to do?

George blinked and swayed.

Dark stained the ground under Bill. Dark—

“What’s the Prewett way?”

George stumbled. Fell.

His frame bent in half as he heaved into the sand.

#

November 5, 1999, 10:00 p.m.

The hospital at Godric’s Hollow hadn’t a waiting room large enough for the lot of them.

There was Harry, pacing the corridor. Percy, glaring daggers at his own hands. Fred and Angelina, quiet and still in the corner chairs, Ginny, cradling Teddy in her lap, and Hermione, stooped over George against the wall as she painted his brow with quiet whispers and kisses he couldn’t bring himself to accept.

Setting his wrist had taken a few moments, and he and Hermione’s mild burns were whisked away with a potion, though Ron had been knocked on his head rather hard. The healers had yet to release him or Bill, whose fingers were apparently being reattached, one by one, in the magical surgical wing.

George had been ill twice since leaving shell. The second time, nothing had come up but dry air.

“Suppose it’s rather lucky Mum and Dad are on their holiday,” Percy snipped.

The floo whooshed, and a solid, bulky man stepped out of it.

George released a sob. “Charlie—”

Charlie’s mouth thinned into an apologetic smile, then he marched right for the surgical wing doors.

And George felt stupid, for assuming Charlie was there to comfort him. He blinked, shaking his head when Hermione asked something he couldn’t make out. “It’s—it’s—I dunno.”

“Or,” Percy added, crisp and sharp. “That Ginny, at least, had the sense to gather everyone else so quickly. I will admit I failed to consider that.”

Ginny frowned at Teddy. “I stopped the match shortly after you’d have left,” she said, distracted. “I’d felt poorly since sunset, but then it got worse and worse. It didn’t feel right—like—like—” She pressed her hand to her sternum. “—I just felt wound tight, here. The strangest feeling, mind, and it got stronger the more I worried about the lot of you.” Her face cleared, then settled into an ireful expression. “They didn’t want to, until Angie backed me up on it.” Ginny pinned George with a searching look. “Imagine my surprise when there was something to it.”

“This mean you’re a seer, now?” Fred said, listless.

“No,” Percy snapped.

He didn’t say any more, and George hadn’t the energy to pry.

“I’m sorry,” Percy said, after several minutes of quiet. “Married?”

George buried his face in his hands. “Yeah.”

“I asked him,” Hermione fired back. “And if you think for a moment Ron’s actions were justified, then—”

The things he’d said. The things each of them had said.

George’s middle hurt so badly that fresh tears sprang to his waterline. The gasp wrenched through his teeth, and Hermione stopped speaking, crouching close to hug his face to her neck.

He’d ruined everything.

The family was fighting two sides of a gutting war. Ron loathed him. And he’d brought Hermione into the row, shouting as he had about their extended, painful history, even though he’d intended to do otherwise.

It was supposed to have gone so differently.

“I’m so sorry, Darling,” Hermione whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Bugger. It wasn’t her fault. And George started crying all the harder.

Hermione seemed to study him for a while, and a strained silence hung over the room. Finally, she pushed a kiss on his head, then stepped for the floo.

And George folded over himself and fell into the deep, black pit in his chest, which the fire had left behind.

#

He stayed that way, vaguely aware, hunched over. It might’ve been ten minutes or an hour, when Hermione returned. She took a place beside him again.

The visitor floos continued to flash in and out, and George tried to swallow down any noise as he turned more tightly towards Hermione. Using her as a hiding spot was cowardly, but he couldn’t face random strangers, just now. Not when half of them saw him like an illustration in a Beedle the Bard book.

There was a huff, a thump, then someone sat against the wall beside him.

“Really mucked it up, have we?” Aberforth’s tone was quiet and wry.

George let himself release his breath. When he dragged the air in again, it was oaky and laced with forest and a twinge of bar polish.

“Could’ve told you this was the wrong way to do it,” Aberforth continued in a quiet mutter.

“Aberforth,” Hermione’s voice was quiet with censure. “I had thought you might—”

“Help?” Aberforth cut in. “That’s what I’m doing. If he wants it coated in sugar, fetch Honeydukes.” He shoved a faded handkerchief at George’s face. Maybe the same, dingy one he used to wipe the glasses.

George took it, unworried to dirty it with his soggy, leaky nose.

Aberforth’s next remark was quieter. “It’s alright, lass. He knows I know.”

George looked up at him. “How am I supposed to—” His voice fractured.

Aberforth’s eyes went murky—red around the edges. He swallowed. “Never did figure that one out.”

When George couldn’t breathe, Aberforth shifted. Reached over. Tucked a round, crinkly bit of cellophane into his palm.

#

November 6, 1999, 12:02 a.m.

He should’ve known Mum and Dad would turn up. In about the same time it’d take to wrangle a portkey from the French Ministry, Arthur Weasley hustled from the entry, Molly just behind him.

Aberforth had left by then, and Harry had disappeared into the little room they were keeping Ron for observation, Teddy in toe. As more of the story had been relayed, Hermione’s sense of calm had splintered into incredulous fury, and Angelina had managed to coax her to go for food rather than stomp back to the exam rooms and have a go at Ron, so they were absent as well.

And George just felt rubbish, watching his mum and dad panic in the waiting room of yet another hospital.

The healers had yet to finish with Bill.

“What happened?” his mum gasped, twisting between the spell damage wing signs.

“Some Quidditch,” Fred said quickly. “Got out of hand.”

“We’d have been here sooner, but we went to the Diagon branch,” Mrs. Weasley cried, wringing her hands. “Oh—oh—”

Worked up as she was over a bit of Quidditch rough housing, there was no way George was about to make it all worse. “I tell you lot to wear helmets and proper padding until I’m blue in the face, don’t I—”

The sound began to crystallize, going fuzzy and distant like everything else. Whoever’d owled them—Percy, likely, must’ve forgotten Mum handled stress poorly.

Arthur stared hard at George.

George said nothing.

“Georgie?”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t tell his father this. Couldn’t admit what he’d done—what he’d said without words. He had issues with Ron, but to rage, to rip Ron’s jumper like that—

“We found the clock on the floor,” Arthur said. “Wards were going mad.”

George ducked his head.

Arthur knelt.

There was no getting away from him, was there?

“Quidditch?” his dad asked the question quietly and firmly, bracing a hand on George’s arm.

George met his eyes and didn’t say a word, but he didn’t attempt to hide his misery, either.

Arthur swallowed. “Ah.”

“They’re almost through with Bill.” His voice felt like sandpaper.

Mr. Weasley waited a moment, then seemed to realize that George wasn’t going to venture anything further. He frowned and struggled to his feet, and George felt like a git for making him crouch to begin with.

“I’ll start with Ronnie, then,” Mr. Weasley said, quite soft and pensive. He pocketed his left hand and tipped his chin up. “Dearest?”

Molly whirled, mid-lecture, face worked into a ruddy steam.

Arthur clicked his tongue and angled his head at George.

Mrs. Weasley’s ire melted. “Oh, Georgie,” she said, then she rushed for him as Mr. Weasley disappeared into the hall Harry had gone through.

He tolerated Mum’s fussing well enough, though it felt like a brand searing into his throat. If she knew—

Disgusted with himself, George shot to his feet. “I’ll be back in a mo’, Mum.” Pinpricks erupted over his left leg where the circulation had been cut off from his slouching, but he shuffled for the hallway anyways.

It wasn’t hard to dodge the Healers and attendants. Godric’s Hollow was far smaller than Diagon’s branch. Only a few exam rooms lined this passage before it broke into a wider chamber split by curtained nooks.

Harry reclined on a bench near the chamber’s entry, Teddy drooling a puddle on his shoulder.

As George passed, Harry reached for his sleeve. “George.”

His whisper was quiet. Tense.

George stilled.

“He’s—he’s not ready yet,” Harry said. “I tried to explain a bit, but he’s got it in his head that you were lying to him for years, setting him up to fail with Hermione, all so you could—y’know.”

George blinked slowly at the floor. “Yeah,” he said.

Harry fiddled with the pocket button on his dinner jacket. “You ripped his jumper,” he said.

George’s shoulders folded forward. He’d like to say that it was an accident, but he might’ve stopped it, once it started.

He might’ve stopped any of it, really.

But—yes. He’d admit it. He’d wanted a chance at a row just as much as Ron had, in the moment. And he’d given in to that impulse.

Aberforth hadn’t much advice, other than a single word: “Try.”

“I’ll knit him another,” George rasped.

Something like relief flickered between Harry’s eyes, and he propped his spectacles up by tucking his face to his shoulder. Some part of him had maybe needed to hear that Weasleys jumpers were not so quickly and permanently rent, once given.

George slipped further into the chamber, listening for familiar tones.

He found them near the end, behind a few dividers.

Mr. Weasley’s voice was firm. “We might speak more as a group,” he said.

There was a shuffling noise. Boots shifting over tile. Then Ron’s tight reply: “No. It won’t happen again.” The footfalls crossed towards the far corner. “Hand me a comb, will you?”

Ron must’ve lit the lamp, because the corner illuminated, casting silhouettes on the curtained dividers. Arthur’s leant over a flimsy exam bed, extending a comb as it formed in his grasp.

“You can’t stuff it under the floorboards, Ronnie,” Dad said. “He’s your brother. Talking properly might help the two of you to work it out.”

There was no reply. Ron’s shadow combed through hair, then started to pull a cloak on.

“When I asked you to come and help with Bill—”

“Dad.” Ron sighed.

Arthur shook his head. “I was hoping, besides that, you and George would have more opportunity to address the conflict between you. This has been going on for far too long.”

Ron’s head tipped up. “Has it.”

Mr. Weasley faltered. “Ronnie—”

Ron shook his head and began to button his cloak more hurriedly.

“We’re worried about you,” Arthur said, rushed like as his voice began to scratch a bit.

Ronnie stuck a shape like a cap on his head, stuffed it low over his ears.

“All on your own—it’s not safe. Your mother—”

Ron’s head twisted towards Arthur’s. “I’m only good at the one thing, Dad,” he said flatly. “Don’t try to take it from me.”

Arthur stumbled from his seat, hands outstretched, the outline warping a bit. “No, what I mean is that it’s alright if you’re struggling. We can—”

“Dad?” Ron’s question cracked. “I love you, but—you know less about my daily life than you did while I was at Hogwarts,” Ron said. “If you cared, that’d be different.” If he’d sounded angry, it would’ve been less awful.

But he sounded exhausted.

And that cut George out at the knees.

“Ronnie,” Arthur sounded like he’d been bludgeoned in the chest. “We—we’ve been waiting, hoping you’d come home.”

“You’d write more letters, better letters, like Mum or Percy or Bill,” Ron said. “You’d bother to learn what I’m allowed to write about work and what I’m dying to talk about. You’d share something, other than bits of Chudley Cannons scores or rubbish about the ghoul.”

“I’m sorry, Ron. I thought—” Arthur reached for Ron’s shoulder, chin tipping down, then up as he seemed to grapple for words. “What do you want me to write?” he asked. “What would you like me to include?”

Ron tugged away. “That’s not the point,” he said. “The point—” Ron took a clipped breath. “You don’t know how I’m doing, really, because you’ve got more bloody kids than you have time to deal with them, and—”

Arthur flinched, and George didn’t trust himself to intervene.

“—you don’t notice me unless I’m a problem, and if growing up in a packed house taught me anything, it’s how to blend in and get lost in it—”

Ron’s voice was building.

“—and that’s what I do, now, that’s what I’m good at, and I’d rather you not tell me to pack my work in and give it up because you’re worried about a row you don’t understand.” He tugged his cloak straight.

Arthur’s reply came quietly. “I see you.”

Ron stepped back and folded his arms. “Not like Fred and George and Ginny. Not like you do Harry, even.” His shadow tilted its head. “If you saw me, you’d notice when I’m gone. If you saw me, you’d have said something about Mione ages ago. You’d have intervened, because you’d have understood.”

“Ron,” Arthur cut in. “If—if—if you think I’m not keenly aware every moment you’re away, I—” His voice hardened. “You are my son, and I love you.”

“Yes, obviously.” Ron sighed. “But you picked a side, Dad,” he said, lifting both hands. “You tossed me out to sea. Deal with it. Godric knows I will.”

George stood, frozen in horror as Ron shoved from the corner, moving so fast that he didn’t notice George hunched on the other side of the curtain.

Arthur made a harsh, wheezed exhale and sank into the outline of the chair.

Ron was—it was—

George burst around the corner.

Two things staggered his breath. The first was the sight of his father, bent in his seat like he’d been gutted with a knife. The second was what lay atop the exam table before him. A rust coloured jumper, stitches rent right down the “R.”

Bloody Hell.

Mr. Weasley had his brow braced on the base of his palms, eyes and face scrunched tight around the emotion shoving through the cracks.

“Dad,” George croaked.

Arthur straightened, his features disappearing behind a hurried swipe of his arm. “It’s—” he gasped a bit. “Don’t know how much of that you—”

George crouched. “Ron picks fights when he’s hurt,” he said. Hermione had said it once, and now, of all times, when called upon to offer something to his father, he remembered it.

“Decide how you want to communicate,” Marcus had said.

Two paths opened.

In one, George closed the gate on Ron until his brother sorted some critical things out. In the other, George helped find the path that would bring them back together.

He might not know the details, but Percy did, and Percy had said that Ron was struggling. If Ron thought no one noticed him gone—if Ron thought no one saw him—

Merlin, George saw him everywhere. Every nook and cranny of the burrow had a memory; every fond recollection with Hermione on the sofa held a thumbprint from Ronnie’s stubborn sarcasm.

That didn’t mean the conflict wasn’t there, that Ron hadn’t hurt Granger and George both—and yes.

Yes. Ron had broken George’s insides into pieces.

But even surrounded by family, he and Hermione had struggled. And—and Ron had been alone.

Everyone needed to be assured of their place, at times.

How long had it taken him to convince Granger that she was missed and wanted in the Weasley household?

He’d not considered Ron might need the same. It had seemed rather obvious that Ron belonged with them, from his flaming crown to his rash penchant for impulsivity.

Ronnie picked fights when what he really needed was reassurance. His little brother was drowning, and it was his choice, whether to toss out a life raft.

Something feverish—desperate, almost—took hold of George then. It couldn’t—couldn’t end like this.

Arthur made to stand, but George held up his hand. “It should be me.”

Mr. Weasley’s lips parted in confusion. “What?”

George snatched the broken jumper from the table. “It’s older brother business.”

Then, he took off running.

George sprinted, legs pumping down the Mungo’s hall, through the waiting room. Mrs. Weasley, Hermione, and the others seemed to have gone to check on Bill. But Ginny remained, looking stricken and furious. She pointed at the front entry, rather than the floo, and George burst out onto the dark, foggy street, a jumper in one hand and a wand in the other.

“Lumos!” his voice cracked the dark.

And George ran like mad through the street. Each jut of his legs, each burning inhalation of fog brought more clarity.

Ron was a git.

But Ron was their git, and George wanted to try to fix it. To use words instead of wands and fists. To make Ron feel understood, to build towards a future when they both did, properly. They hadn’t even given it a proper chance—it’d gone sour so swiftly.

A great many someones had come together to keep George’s head aloft after the final battle.

And now his little brother was struggling to keep his chin above the waves. George wouldn’t leave him in the water.

Desperate and near witless, he caught a glimpse of him as Ron neared the wardline by the fountain.

“Ronnie!” George yelled.

Ron stilled, then began carrying forward, faster.

George put on a final burst of speed, dashing to him. “Wait!” His fingers stretched, clasped Ron’s sleeve. “Ronnie—”

Ron didn’t turn. “Get back,” he hissed.

George paused, lowering his hands. “Please, can we just—”

“You’re dead to me.”

Ron didn’t look at him when he said it. He let the fog and the slip of wind carry the words to George, where they soaked deep and cold.

George froze from the outside in.

And Ron—Ronnie stepped through the perimeter charm, into the muggle side of Godric’s Hollow, where he disappeared.

The thrown fists, the spellfire—none of that had properly de-wanded him.

But this—

Cedar, y’know? It made a hollow, heavy clack when dropped to cobblestone. And torn, tatty jumpers—those fell fast and landed quiet, like snow.

But George Weasley-Granger heard neither. Awash in the aftershock of what he’d lost, stooped beneath the shadow of his brother’s monument—the shape of Ron, turned to stone.

He’d been foolish, George had. Fecklessly chasing something long gone.

The Lumos charm sputtered, and went out.

[2/2]