Pairing: George Weasley x hufflepuff!reader
Summary: You're just trying to help your best friend get the boy she likes, but George Weasley keeps looking at you instead. Turns out the only person who doesn't know she's the one worth looking at is, is looking at her.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 (finale)
Hannah had been planning this for longer than she admitted.
You could tell by how calm she was. While the rest of the dormitory was loud and chaotic — someone's dress had the wrong buttons, someone else had lost an earring between the floorboards, a third person was making a sound you could not legally describe as anything other than a wail. Hannah moved around you with the focused quiet of a person who had already thought about everything and was now simply executing the plan.
"You keep pressing your hands together."
"That's just what my hands do."
"That's the nervous thing. Stop it."
"I'm not nervous." A pause. "I'm a little nervous."
"You're going to be fine." She separated another section of your hair, her fingers quick and certain. "More than fine. Trust me."
The dress was already on.
Dark purple underneath, so deep it was almost the colour of a night sky just before full dark. Over the top of it, black lace, delicate and intricate, the kind that looked like it had grown there rather than been added, like something that had always been part of the fabric and was only now becoming visible. The neckline connected behind your neck in a halter — two pieces of lace-covered fabric coming from the front and tying at the back of your neck — leaving your back completely bare from the nape of your neck to the base of your spine. The first time you had seen your own back in the mirror you had stood there for a full minute. It was graceful in a way you hadn't known you were capable of being. The dark purple gloves ran up past your wrists, smooth and fitted, and the whole thing together was more than you were used to being. More than you usually let yourself wear.
Hannah had been doing your hair for forty minutes.
Braids, pulled up and twisted, gathered into a loose bun at the back of your head that looked effortless in the way that only things with real effort behind them looked effortless. Curls came free at the sides, soft and deliberate, falling just past your jaw and framing your face in a way that made everything look softer. More open. Like you.
"Okay," Hannah said. She stepped back. Looked at you for a long moment with an expression that was trying to stay objective and not managing it. "Look."
You looked in the mirror.
And something happened in your chest that was very quiet and very significant.
The girl in the mirror had your face. Your eyes, your nose, the mouth you had never known what to do with. But she was wearing all of it differently. Like someone had taken every piece of you and arranged it with intention, with care, with the specific attention of someone who had been looking at you for a long time and knew what you looked like when you were all the way yourself.
The dark colours made your skin glow. The bare back was elegant. The curls were soft and real. The gloves were quietly dramatic in the way that made everything else make sense. You looked like you — not the version that stood slightly to the left, not the version that made herself small and useful and easy to look past.
The one that was hidden underneath.
Your eyes went a little bright. Just slightly. You blinked it back.
"Hannah," you said, quietly.
"I know," she said. Her voice had gone soft too. She squeezed your shoulders from behind, meeting your eyes in the mirror. "That's you. That's just you. I didn't add anything that wasn't already there." She smiled — warm and genuine and something close to proud. "He's going to take one look at you and completely fall apart."
"He is," she said. "And it's going to be the best thing you've ever seen. Come on."
George was mid-sentence when it happened.
He was standing at the top of the staircase with Fred and Lee Jordan, one hand in his pocket, saying something about Fred's terrible plan for the evening, completely relaxed, completely himself — easy the way he was always easy, like the world was a place that generally went along with whatever he wanted from it.
He had dressed carefully, though he would never have admitted that.
The black dress robes had been pressed. His hair had been attempted, which for George meant it looked slightly better than usual before gradually returning to its natural state over the course of an evening. And the tie — dark purple, exactly dark purple, the specific shade Hannah had described to him in a note that he had read three times to make sure he had it right. He had stood in front of the mirror in the Gryffindor dormitory for longer than he was ever going to tell anyone and checked the tie three times and then checked his reflection once more in a way that was not something George Weasley generally did and meant something specific.
Fred had watched the whole thing without saying a word.
Now they were at the top of the staircase and George was talking about something and the entrance hall was full of people, and the evening was about to start.
"In a second, I'm in the middle of telling—"
"George." Something in Fred's voice. Not the joking tone. Not the theatrical one. Something quieter and more urgent. "Turn around right now."
Not slowed. Not paused. Stopped. Like someone had reached into the machinery of everything and pulled out the piece that made time work.
You were at the top of the staircase.
Coming down slowly. One hand trailing the railing. The dark purple dress moving with you, the black lace catching the candlelight from below and finding the deep colour underneath it, so that with every step you looked like something that existed slightly outside of ordinary things. Your hair was up — soft and slightly undone, curls falling free at the sides of your face, the bun at the back of your head loose and perfect and entirely, devastatingly you. The gloves. The bare back. The halter neckline connecting behind your neck in a way that made the whole line of you — shoulders, spine, the way you held yourself — into something that made it genuinely difficult to think in complete sentences.
George's heart did something it had never done before.
Not the fast nervous kind. Not the anxious kind. Something enormous and quiet and completely certain, like a clock finding its correct time after being wrong for years. Like something saying yes, that one, it has always been that one, how did you ever look anywhere else.
Every other person in the entrance hall blurred.
Not figuratively. Genuinely. The people in his peripheral vision became shapes, became noise, became background, became nothing. There was only the staircase and you coming down it and the candlelight finding you like it knew where to look.
He forgot what he had been saying.
He forgot Fred was standing beside him.
He forgot, for approximately three full seconds, how to form words in any language.
His throat moved as he swallowed.
You reached the bottom step.
Your eyes found his immediately, the way they always found each other, that specific pull that had existed between you for months and that neither of you had had a name for until recently. You looked at him and something in your expression shifted — a small careful thing, a trying not to show too much.
Just that. One word. Your voice.
And George opened his mouth.
"Hi," he managed, and it came out lower than he intended, rougher around the edges, like his voice had been sitting somewhere far away and had needed a moment to come back to where the rest of him was.
From beside him, Fred's voice, "Man." Loud. Clear. Addressed to the general universe. "You are so down bad."
George didn't look at Fred.
He didn't look at anything except you.
"Damn right I am," he mumbled to himself.
"Wait, what did you just say"
The small group around them went very still for a second.
Lee Jordan made a sound. Someone laughed. Fred covered his face with one hand and made a noise that suggested this was simultaneously the worst and best thing he had ever witnessed.
You went pink from your collarbone to your hairline.
The kind of pink that was visible even in candlelight. The kind that came from something landing somewhere you hadn't entirely fortified yet. You looked at the floor and then at the ceiling and then at his tie — the exactly-matching purple tie, which you were noticing properly for the first time.
"Hannah told me the colour," he said. Still looking at you. Still not looking anywhere else.
"She mentioned," you said. You looked at Hannah, who was standing slightly behind you with the expression of a woman who had pulled off the plan of her life and was very aware of it. "Of course she did."
"Are you annoyed?" George said.
You looked back at him. At the green robes and the matching tie and the face that was completely open and unashamed and looking at you like you were the reason he had bothered with any of it. "No," you admitted.
"Good." He held out his arm.
You looked at it. At him. At everything that had led to this exact moment. And then you put your hand in the crook of his elbow and he smiled — the real one, wide and warm and slightly overwhelmed — and you walked in together.
And the Great Hall opened up like something from inside a dream you had never let yourself finish.
The Great Hall was extraordinary.
The enchanted ceiling had shifted into deep winter — dark blue, stars close and bright, the kind that looked like you could reach up and move them. Floating candles drifted in warm gold clusters, their light landing differently on everything, making the stone walls look like something that had been built for exactly this evening. The enchanted snow fell between the candles — fine and slow and shimmering, catching the light as it drifted, filling the air with something that made the whole room feel like it existed just slightly outside of ordinary time. The music came from a stage at the far end, live and warm, filling the hall without crowding it.
You stood in the entrance and looked at all of it and felt the evening settle around you like something you had been waiting for without knowing you were waiting.
"Yeah," George said beside you. He was looking at the hall too, but you caught him glancing at you while you took it in, watching your face rather than the room. "It's really something."
"It's really something," you agreed. You turned to look at him and caught him already looking. "Stop doing that."
"Doing what," he said, not even pretending.
"The hall is nice," he said. "You're better."
You made a sound. Not words. Just a sound. A slightly overwhelmed sound that you immediately tried to convert into a normal breath and did not fully succeed at.
His hand found yours. Easy and warm and completely natural, fingers wrapping around yours like they had been doing it for years, and you looked down at your joined hands and then up at the beautiful hall and thought — quietly, privately, in the part of yourself you were only recently learning to listen to — that this was what it felt like to be chosen. Not felt sorry for. Not used. Not stood slightly to the left of. Actually chosen. Actually here.
For a while it was everything you had quietly hoped it might be and more.
You found Hannah near the drinks table and stayed together for a while, laughing about nothing in particular, the kind of laughing that happened when you were happy enough that ordinary things became funny. The hall moved around you, beautiful and warm, and you let yourself be in it.
"You're actually enjoying yourself," Hannah said, like she was witnessing a rare natural phenomenon.
"Don't make it weird," you said.
"I'm just noting it for the record." She beamed at you. "You look happy. You look genuinely, properly happy and I want it documented."
"I'm going to remember this night forever," she announced.
George appeared at your shoulder with butterbeers, handing you one first before Hannah, and settled in beside you with the ease of someone who had decided this was where he lived now and the world could adjust.
"Fred is attempting to dance," he said.
"He cannot," George said. "He really genuinely cannot. It's one of the most interesting things I've ever watched. I recommend it as a spectacle."
You laughed. He turned his head to look at you when you did. He always did that — turned toward you when you laughed like the sound was something worth orienting himself toward.
"What," you said, catching him.
"I'm looking," he said. "There's a difference." He tilted his head slightly. "You have this thing when you laugh. Your whole face does it. Not just your mouth." He said it simply. Like an observation. Like it was just a fact he had collected and was reporting accurately.
Your face went warm. You looked at your butterbeer. "That's a very strange thing to say."
He smiled. Slow and warm. And then he held out his hand. "Dance with me."
"It's just moving," he said. "That's all. I promise."
"You always say that like it's simple."
"Because it is simple." He kept his hand out. Patient. Waiting. "Come on."
He led you to the floor and turned and one hand settled at your waist — steady and warm and sure, his palm against the fabric of the dress just at the curve of your side — and you put your hand on his shoulder and he started moving and you moved with him and it was easy. Genuinely easy. The kind of easy that came from him being confident enough to make it feel that way.
"I can hear the smugness."
"I'm a little smug," he agreed. "Just a reasonable amount." His hand shifted slightly at your waist, not moving, just — settling. More present. "Is it annoying?"
"Good annoying," you admitted.
Something in his eyes went warm. "Good annoying," he repeated, quiet, like he was keeping it somewhere.
You looked at his shoulder because looking at his face directly right now felt like looking at something too bright. You were aware of his hand at your waist and the warmth of it through the fabric and the way he moved, easy and unhurried, and the music wrapping around you both and the enchanted snow falling through the candlelight above.
"Finish that sentence," he said immediately, grinning from ear to ear.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You absolutely were. You started a sentence."
"I stopped the sentence."
"The sentence was started," he said. "I heard the beginning of it. You look—" he prompted, tilting his head, the corner of his mouth going up.
You looked at him. At the green robes and the matching tie and the jaw and the eyes that were on you with that look, the full warm certain look that had been doing things to your internal organs for months. You thought about the astronomy tower. The runes. The four nights. The six attempts. You thought about him saying you're worth four nights like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Disgustingly handsome," you said. Flat. Like you were reporting a mildly irritating fact. "Objectively. It's a problem."
For approximately one second he looked genuinely surprised. Like he had been expecting a deflection and you had not deflected and his system needed a moment to catch up.
Then his whole face went. The controlled expression, the waiting-to-see-what-you'd-do expression, all of it — gone. Replaced by something that was warm and pleased and slightly undone in a way that looked good on him, looked very good on him, which was the problem you had just identified out loud.
"Don't make it a whole thing," you said, looking away.
"I'm not making it anything," he said. But his hand tightened slightly at your waist. Just slightly. A small involuntary thing. You felt it and kept your eyes firmly on his shoulder.
"You're making it a thing," you said.
"I'm just dancing," he said. "Very normally. Very calm." His thumb moved once against your side. "Disgustingly handsome, she says."
"You can't take it back."
"It's already mine," he said. "I'm keeping it." He sounded insufferably pleased about it.
"You're pretty when you're annoyed," he said.
"I said it once before and I meant it then and I mean it now," he said, completely unbothered. "It's just true. You get this look—"
"—where your chin goes up slightly and your eyes do the thing—"
"The sharp thing," he said. "Like you're about to say something that will be ten words or less and will end the conversation." His eyes were bright. "I think about it more than is probably reasonable."
Your face was so warm. The enchanted snow was drifting above you and the music was slow and the candles drifted and George Weasley was looking at you like you were the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him and saying things about the way your eyes looked when you were annoyed like it was just a normal sentence to say to a person.
"You're unbelievable," you said.
"You're beautiful," he said back. Simple. Immediate. Like it had been waiting just behind his teeth and your sentence had opened the door for it. "The whole night. Since the stairs. I've been looking at you and thinking about how—" he paused. Something worked through his expression. More honest than even he usually allowed. "How did anyone ever look anywhere else. That's what I keep thinking. How did anyone ever look anywhere else when you were in the room."
But you just stood looking at him.
George went to find Fred when the song changed, pressing a kiss to your temple so casually, so easily, like it was just the thing he did when he stepped away from you — warm and brief and leaving a specific point of heat on your skin that stayed after he was gone.
You stood at the edge of the dance floor for a moment with your fingers pressed lightly to your temple and your face doing something you were very glad no one was looking at.
Hannah appeared at your elbow. "Your face," she said.
"The kiss on the temple," she said, in the voice of someone who had witnessed a sacred event. "He did it so casually. He's so sweet with you"
"Okay," you said firmly. "We're going to get drinks and you're going to stop talking about me and George."
"Drinks," you said. "Now."
You went to the drinks table.
You picked up a goblet of something cold.
She was beautiful the way she was always beautiful. Red dress, perfect hair, the specific precision of someone who had prepared for this. She was looking at you with an expression you recognised — not the public warm one, not the performed one. The one underneath it. The one she only showed when she had decided something needed to be handled.
"You look different," she said.
"I didn't mean it as a compliment." Her eyes moved over you slowly, taking inventory. "You're trying very hard tonight."
"I'm wearing a dress," you said.
"You're wearing his colours." She nodded at the purple of your dress, at George's matching tie visible across the hall. "Very deliberate."
"Mm." The smile was light. "You know this won't last, right? George gets interested in things and then he moves on. That's just who he is." She said it so gently. So kindly. The particular cruelty of a sharp thing wrapped in concern. "I'm not trying to be horrible. I just don't want you to embarrass yourself."
The old tightening arrived. Right on schedule.
"He spent all that time being interested in me first," she continued, "and then the setups happened and suddenly he was talking to you instead and honestly—" a perfectly placed pause "—I think he felt sorry for you. You know. The quiet friend thing. He's kind. He was being kind."
You said nothing. You were watching her face. The way she said it. The absolute certainty in it, like she had decided this was true and the deciding had made it so.
"The tower thing was sweet," she said. "Really. But that's George. Grand gestures. It doesn't mean what you think it means." She tilted her head. "You've always been a bit—" a pause, aimed precisely "—you know how you get when you start believing things."
You looked at her for a long moment.
At the red dress and the perfect hair and the girl you had stood behind for six years. At the face that was arranging itself into something caring while saying something that wasn't.
"What is wrong with you," you said.
Quiet. Clear. Just the question. Right at her.
Cecily blinked. "I'm just—"
"No." You took one step toward her. People nearby had noticed. You didn't care. "I want to actually know. What is wrong with you." Your voice stayed even. Completely level. "You know exactly what you're doing. You've always known. Every time." The words came without effort, without dramatics. Just true. "Six years of small things. Six years of being the pretty one while I was the useful one. Six years of knowing exactly where to aim." You looked at her. "And you stand here tonight, in this hall, when things are actually good, when something is actually mine, and you do this."
"I helped you," you said. "For months. I wanted good things for you even when it cost me something I actually wanted. And you told me you didn't need me. That you would have figured it out anyway." The memory of it was still sharp. "You said that."
"You were honest." You breathed. "I don't know what I ever did to make you treat me like I don't matter. I genuinely don't know. But you have the most unkind heart I've ever known and I'm done trying to understand it."
You were already turning. Moving through the people who had gone quiet around you, through the warm golden impossible hall, toward the door.
The doors closed behind you softly.
Like the castle hadn't noticed anything had broken.
The cold outside was immediate and complete.
It was falling hard across the courtyard, heavy and committed, coming off the stone in sheets, silver under the amber glow of the castle windows, turning the whole outside world into something blurred and soft and loud. Thunder rolled somewhere low and distant, the sound of it moving through the ground.
You found the stone archway and stopped there.
Half in. Half out. The rain fell past your hand when you held it toward it. You were mostly dry. Mostly cold. You stood and watched the rain hit the courtyard stones and let your chest do what it needed to do in the private dark.
The thought settled in the way it always settled. Finding its shape. Sitting down. Making itself at home in the space between your ribs.
You knew it wasn't true. You knew that in the part of you that had been growing louder lately, the part that had looked in the mirror tonight and recognised itself. But knowing something and feeling something were two different rooms and right now you were standing in the second one and the walls were close.
The music from inside was a faint pulse through stone. The dance was starting. The one you had been—
Fast. Uneven. Not careful. The kind of footsteps that came from someone who had stopped caring about how they looked and started caring only about where they were going.
A breath. Caught. Someone who had been moving fast and had just stopped.
His voice was different. Quiet. Low. Feeling for something carefully, like he wasn't sure what the ground was like here and was stepping onto it slowly.
You kept your eyes on the rain.
Automatic. Worn smooth. The words that had kept you functional for years.
A silence. Then George exhaled — a sound that was almost a laugh and wasn't quite, something fond and frustrated and relieved all pressed together in one breath.
"You're under a storm arch," he said quietly. "In the middle of a Yule Ball you walked out of." A beat. "That's not nothing."
"Maybe I didn't want to be found," you said.
It came out tired. Not at him. Just — tired. The specific tiredness of someone who has been holding something in place for a long time.
George went still behind you.
Then he stepped closer. The warmth of him changed the air. Still not touching. Just — there. Present. Choosing to be in this with you.
"But I didn't really like that idea."
So simple. So plain. Said the way he said everything that mattered — without decoration, without performance. Just the truth of it, offered straight.
"I looked everywhere," he said. "Hannah didn't know where you'd gone. Fred went the wrong direction entirely. I went through four corridors." His voice dropped slightly. "I'll always find you. No matter what."
Something in your chest shifted. Moved. The warm ache of it moving through you like the feeling after crying, except you hadn't cried yet.
"Look at me," he said. Soft. Just a request. Waiting.
"No, my makeup is ruined"
“Then let it be ruined,” he whispered. “I’d rather see you crying than pretending you’re okay for everyone else.”
His hand stayed gentle against your face.
“You don’t have to hide from me.”
He was right there. Closer than you expected. His hair was damp, falling forward, darker with the rain he had been running through to get here. His dress robes had rain spots across the shoulders. His face — god, his face — was doing the thing. The completely open thing. Every layer of George Weasley pulled back and just him underneath it, looking at you with his eyes full of something he had stopped trying to hide.
He was slightly out of breath.
"She said something," he said.
"She always says something," you said.
You looked at the rain behind him. "She said you felt sorry for me. That it was kindness. That I shouldn't get too attached." You swallowed. "That you always move on."
George looked at you for a long moment. Something moved through his jaw.
"You know that's not true," he said.
"I know." Your voice came out quieter than you meant. "I know it isn't. And she said it anyway and it landed anyway and I hate—" it caught slightly "—I hate that she can still just get in. After everything."
"Come here," he said again. Softer.
His arms came around you and he pulled you in properly, one hand at your back and one at the back of your head, and you pressed your face against his shoulder and felt him exhale slowly above you like he'd been holding that breath since he'd started looking for you.
"She was wrong," he said. Low. Into your hair. "She has been wrong about you for years. And she knows it. That's why she keeps saying it." His arms tightened slightly. "People who are sure of something don't need to keep saying it out loud."
You breathed. In. Out. His shoulder was warm and solid and smelled like the green robes and something underneath that was just him.
"The dance already started," you said, after a while.
He was quiet for a second.
"I don't care about the dance," he said. "I just want to be here. With you."
You pulled back to look at him. He looked back. Rain behind him. Castle light blurring in the wet. His face right here, present and certain and looking at you like you were the whole point of the evening he had just left without hesitating.
Something shifted in his expression. The careful tender look changing into the other one. The lit up one. The one that came right before something unexpected.
He stood back. Held out his hand.
You looked at his hand. At the rain. At his face. "Come on where. George it's pouring—"
"Still perfect." He wiggled his fingers. The grin was starting. "Come on."
You got reminded of your parents.
He pulled you out into the rain.
Cold hit everywhere at once — your shoulders, your hair, your bare back through the fabric — and you gasped, half-laughing, already protesting, and George turned back to you with rain running down his face and his hair completely flat and wrecked and a grin so wide and so real and so entirely, completely him that your heart just — gave up trying to defend itself. Completely. All at once.
"Tag," he said. "You're it."
The rain poured down between you.
"You're not serious," you said.
He raised his eyebrows. Took one deliberate step back.
Something cracked open in your chest. Clean and complete and sudden. Not the sad kind. Not the tightening kind. The other kind — the kind where something heavy falls away all at once and your lungs fill all the way and your feet move before your brain catches up.
"Oh it's on," you said, and ran after him.
The courtyard opened up around you both. Wide and dark and slick with rain, the castle windows blurring on all sides into warm amber smears, the stone gleaming dark under your feet. You ran in your ball gown and your soaking gloves with your braids coming completely undone and your lace dress getting darker and heavier with the wet and you were laughing — genuinely, helplessly, the kind of laughing that came from somewhere below language, somewhere that didn't care about dresses or balls or things people had said inside.
George was fast. But he kept slowing. Glancing back with that grin every few seconds. Letting you almost have him. Close enough to hear him laughing too, the real laugh, the full one, the one that had been in your chest like a warm memory since the first time you had heard it in a library months ago.
You pushed harder. Reached—
Your foot hit a slick patch of stone and went out completely.
You dropped fast, no time, eyes squeezing shut, bracing—
Hands. Both of them. One solid at your waist and one catching your arm, pulling you upright before the ground got anywhere close. You opened your eyes.
He had moved so fast and was right there — your waist in his hands, you standing and intact and close. So close. Closer than the catching required now that you were stable. Close enough to see the rain on his lashes. Close enough to see every detail of his face in the dark. The slight part of his lips. The way his chest was moving a little fast.
Low. Just for you. The words landing somewhere specific in your chest.
Everything else went quiet.
The rain was loud. But everything else — the castle, the ball, the music, all of it — went very far away. There was just the courtyard and the rain and his hands at your waist and his face right here and the way you were both very still and very close and neither of you moving.
Your hands had found his jacket.
Both of them. Fists in the wet green fabric, holding on, knuckles just touching his chest.
The full look. The one with nothing behind it and everything in front. The one that had been building since a library and a book held upside down and eleven words counted carefully. His eyes moved over your face slowly like he was memorising it. Like he wanted to know exactly what this looked like so he could keep it.
And then his eyes dropped.
Just for a second. Just long enough to be undeniable. And came back up. Met yours.
You had seen him do it. He knew you had seen him. And neither of you looked away.
The air between you was very small. Very charged. Like standing too close to something that was about to happen and choosing to stay anyway.
Against your waist. Slightly. That same small movement from every almost-moment before this one — the staircase, the Quidditch stands, the tower — except now there was no Cecily between you and no redirect and no practiced smile to arrange and no drawer to put things in.
His jaw was right there. The scar near his eyebrow. The rain on his face. The way he was looking at you like he had run four corridors and crossed a rainy courtyard and would do it again tomorrow without question.
You couldn't help it. Something about the perfection of it — the rain, the ball gown, the two of you soaked and breathless and right here — was so completely, specifically yours that the smirk came up before you could manage it.
You leaned in just slightly.
"Tag," you whispered. "You're it."
For one second he looked completely betrayed. Like he could not believe you were doing this to him right now, in this moment, when he was standing here with his hands on your waist and his heart doing something significant.
Then the breath left him in a sound that was half laugh half something else entirely. He shook his head slowly. The expression on his face was so full it was almost unbearable to look at directly — fond and exasperated and helplessly, completely gone.
“You’re unbelievable,” he murmured.
But he was smiling. The full one. The real one. The best one.
He let go of your waist and gave you a headstart before he came running after you.
You shrieked — a real shriek, the kind that bounced off wet courtyard stone and rang up into the dark — and ran after him and the whole courtyard opened back up and it was just this. Just running and rain and the both of you laughing too hard to be fast about it. At some point you both slowed because the rain surged heavier and you couldn't see and couldn't breathe through the laughing anyway.
And caught your hand from where it was swinging as you slowed — just caught it, easy and natural — and pulled you in.
One full turn. Your wet dress flying out in a dark arc. Your hair completely free now, loose and wild around your face. The rain hitting you full on when he spun you and you tipped your head back and let it, the way your mother must have, in a street somewhere years ago, with a boy who had stopped walking and held out his hand.
Not the practiced one. Not the small careful useful one you had been giving the world for years. The real one. Wide and open and coming from somewhere so deep it had no edges. The kind of smile that didn't know how to be anything other than completely itself.
He pulled you back from the spin and you came in close, the momentum of it bringing you together, and his hand was still holding yours and the rain was falling and you were face to face and close and neither of you were laughing anymore.
All the way. Every part of it.
"Doesn't this remind you of something," he said. Very quiet. Just noticing. Just following what he could see moving across your face.
You looked at him. At the rain on his face and his wrecked hair and his eyes that were simply, completely on you.
"Yes," you said. "Yes, it does."
He looked at you for a moment. The soft certain look. "I'm glad," he said quietly. "I hoped it would."
Something moved through your chest. Warm and permanent.
"I guess mission success then," he said.
You laughed. Small and real. "Mission success," you said. And without deciding to, without thinking about it, you stepped in and put your arm around his neck.
Slowly. Like you were checking whether this was real. Like you were making sure it would hold.
His hand settled at your waist and pulled you gently closer and the rain fell around you both and the courtyard was empty and dark and the castle glowed in every direction and none of it mattered except this. The specific this of his hand at your waist and your arm around his neck and the rain and the stars somewhere above the clouds and the whole long arc of everything that had started with a book held upside down in a library.
His thumb moved against your waist.
Slow. Careful. Like he was paying attention to it.
"Can I kiss you," he said.
So quiet. So careful. Even now. After everything — the astronomy tower, the runes, four corridors, the rain — still asking. Still making sure. Like you were something worth being careful with and he intended to keep being careful with you.
You looked at him for one long moment.
He never rushed anything.
He closed the small space between you slowly, one hand moving up to rest against your jaw, warm and gentle and certain, and he kissed you.
Like coming in from somewhere cold. Like the lights in the tower that had taken six attempts and finally held. Like the runes in the stone that were permanent now and would be there long after both of you were gone.
Like something that had always been true and was only now being said.
You kissed him back and felt the rain on your shoulders and his hand warm against your face and the solid present certain realness of him and thought — in the small quiet part of yourself that was still capable of thoughts — that this was it. The feeling your mother had been describing all those years at the kitchen table with rain on the window.
A rainy courtyard. A ruined dress. A boy who had counted your words and come back four nights and run through four corridors and pulled you into the rain because your mother's story deserved to happen again.
When you pulled back you were both breathless and his forehead came down to yours immediately, like gravity, like of course, and the rain was still falling and the world was very quiet and he was right here.
His arms came around you properly. Both of them. Warm and solid. You pressed your face against the side of his neck and he rested his chin on top of your head and the rain fell and the castle glowed and the ball went on behind thick stone walls without either of you.
You had never been less bothered about anything.
"We should go back in," you said, after a while. Not moving.
"Probably," he said. Not moving.
"Hannah is going to completely lose it."
"Fred is going to be insufferable about this forever."
"You say that like it's a problem."
"It's not a problem," he agreed. "It's worth it." He pulled back just enough to look at you. At your soaked hair and ruined gloves and your face which was doing the smile, the real full one, in the rain at midnight. "You're worth it," he said. Simple. Plainly. "Just so you know."
Your throat did the tight warm thing.
You shook your head. He took your hand. And you walked back toward the castle through the rain together, not rushing, not minding the wet or the cold or the state of either of you, the music getting louder as you got closer, the castle lights getting warmer.
And then—quick, light—he pressed a kiss to your lips.
"Hey!" you snapped immediately, eyes wide.
He pulled back slowly, completely unbothered, like he hadn’t just done something criminal. A small smile tugged at his mouth.
"You look so cute when you're blushing"
"What, no I'm not—stop looking at me," you said,
"You can't just—do that whenever you want!"
He raised a brow. "Can't I?"
You opened your mouth, then closed it again because you had no actual argument that didn’t sound like you were lying.
He leaned back slightly, clearly enjoying this way too much, then said, "You say that like you don’t secretly want me to keep doing it."
Your breath caught. And for once, you didn't have a quick answer.
Maybe that was actually how you wanted it to be.
A/n: I guess that's the end...It was so fun writing this story, if you want to be tagged on my next George Weasley rivals to lovers series, comment!!
Check out the spoiler for my next george weasley series!
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