Mango cheese

You made your way to the Great Hall doors, noticing the whispers. Noticing the curious, almost accusing stares of everyone around you. You diverted your attention to a pair of Hufflepuff boys as you passed.

"Did her and the Weasley boys break up over the summer?"

"That's what I heard."

"Fuck," you thought. Everyone had heard, apparently. 

Your relationship with the twins had been announced since the middle of sixth year, going into seventh year summer. It came as a slight shock to your classmates at first, dating both of them, but most people made sense of it in the end. If they were almost exactly alike, why would one waste time figuring out what he liked if it was right there, right in his brother's arms?

The relationship ended abruptly in the middle of the summer, surprising even you. There hadn't been an argument, or a scandal, or some big, life-changing event. They just dropped you. Completely impromptu.

You spent most of the summer in your room, snacking and binging sad movies to cope. Stereotypical, but for a good reason— it worked. By the end of the break, you'd reflected and cried and deleted and written letters and cried some more, but you were over it.

Until you finally reached those tall, looming doors, knowing what was on the other side.

Sighing, you pushed the right door open, flicking your eyes to the Gryffindor table before setting your sights upon your own house, the Slytherins. You took a seat near the end next to Pansy Parkinson, plopping yourself down right before the rest of the table arrived— fashionably late, as always. The boys strutted to your end of the table before directing their attention to the front of the room for the Sorting Ceremony, not uttering a word.

Yet.

"Attention, students! The Sorting Ceremony is beginning. Please take your seats," said Professor McGonagall, directing her stare towards the boys now sitting in front of you.

You sighed, knowing the questions and jokes you were about to be subjected to.

Blaise Zabini was the first to pipe up. He turned from the front to face you, a teasing smirk on his face.

"Y'know, we told you it wouldn't work. How'd you even manage both in the first place?"

Mattheo Riddle was the next to speak, his smirk identical to Blaise's.

"Yeah, thought we were supposed to be cunning. Heard they just dropped you."

You let out your second exasperated sigh of the night, directing your attention to their chiding words. They did tell you that, but realistically, who's not going for two twins? The situation fell into your naïve, welcoming lap. 

You narrowed your eyes.

"I'm sorry, is this an investigation? Because I'm not telling you two shit."

Blaise's eyes widened, lifting his arms in mocking surrender.

"Shit, didn't mean to push a button, y/n. But really, what happened? Y'guys seemed fine to me before we left."

At this point, everyone around you was leaning in to hear, pretending to listen to the front of the room while their attention was really held at the end of the table.

Rolling your eyes, you explained.

"Mattheo heard right."

You pursed your lips, lowering your voice as to not be audible to the entire table.

"They dropped me midsummer. No idea what I did."

Mattheo raised his eyebrows, realization dawning on his face.

"You're not serious? I thought that was a joke."

"Teo, I don't think she's joking," Blaise said, elbowing him.

As the two of them discussed the reality of your breakup, your eyes wandered to the table at the other end of the room. The Gryffindor table.

You weren't surprised to see Fred and George in the same spot as last year, the spot you once squeezed into perfectly, despite the contrast of green and red. Their eyes met yours across the room, a troubled expression flickering over their faces.

Quickly, they looked back at the front of the room, the Sorting Ceremony coming to an end without you even realizing. After the last first-year walked over to his house, a Hufflepuff, food suddenly appeared in the middle of the table. It came as a relief to the feelings of both hunger and anxiety panging in your stomach.

You reached for the roasted lamb, slowly picking at it as the feast continued. Blaise and Mattheo directed their attention back to you.

Blaise glanced at your plate. "Not hungry, hm? Is it that bad?"

It was Mattheo's turn to elbow Blaise, shooting you a concerned look. 

"You want us to do something? Fish an answer, maybe?"

You rolled your eyes. "Teo, I do not want to think about the ways you'd fish answers out of Gryffindors. It's fine, I swear." 

You looked up at them, giving a fake, reassuring smile. The noise and the simple aspect of being around the whole school was beginning to wear out your short social battery.

Getting up to leave, you turned to say bye to your friends, careful to not look directly up before turning your gaze straight to the doors.

Walking briskly, you pushed through the Great Hall doors again— when you heard two familiar, hushed voices just around the wall of the grand door frame.

"Fred, you don't really think she believes we just wanted to break up with her. That we just had no interest anymore. She's not exactly the I'll-believe-in-anything type."

"Well, mate, it's going to have to do. She's snapped out of the breakup daze by now. It's for her own g—"

You turned the corner that the voices came from, not taking a glance back at them as you walked past down into the dungeons.

And then three became four. For a brief moment at one of your appointments there was the chance of five, but luckily for everyone involved the twin gene had not passed on this time and instead you were blessed with one perfect little baby. Paternity didn't matter, it couldn't be determined who was the father regardless due to their genetics and so both became equal fathers, not half of one but two whole daddy's to a very lucky little girl.

Loving your daughter was perhaps the easiest thing you'd done in life. It was primal, biological, set deep within your soul to love this little one. Motherhood was hard no doubt but it was worth it, loving her was the easy part. Your life was everything you'd ever wanted, every dream had come true that you'd had since the days of having a girlish crush on the two boys that made you laugh in class and the boys you could barely take your eyes off at meal times.

What you hadn't factored it however, in your grand plan of your life was that you were having a child with Fred and George Weasley. That your child would be an accumulation of both of them, regardless of the biological paternity. She'd had the same mischievous glint in her eyes practically from birth, her needs and her ways keeping you on your toes. As the months drew on and she began developing her personality, it was clear to everyone that she had almost certainly taken after her fathers in her love of chaos and mischief.

Daddy and Dada were unquestionably her favourite people on the planet. You weren't sure at first that she actually knew there were two of them and not just one that seemed to be everywhere she looked but it appeared not when she developed a preference for George. It then flipped to Fred after two weeks of her demanding George and then it had settled into being both of them respectively.

Unfortunately for you, the mixture of her personality and her preference for her dads meant that at all hours of the day you were acting as guardian of the door that lead between your apartment and the shop. Practically as soon as little miss could crawl, she was determined to make her way towards the door in a great escape style plan and it didn't take long to figure out why she was so desperate to escape the plush comfort of your apartment that held literally everything a baby could need.

Daddy and Dada were downstairs.

Living above the shop had been an easy decision, the 'commute' as Fred called it was blissfully short, they were on hand for an emergency, and of course they owned the entire building so it was a natural choice of living situation. And it was easy, until little miss started understanding that her daddies were just a staircase away. One or both would often pop in multiple times a day to check in and for cuddles that they said recharged them for the rest of the day. They'd come back to have lunch with you both and they'd often steal her away to proudly show off to the customers, which she always delighted in. She loved the shop, the sights and the sounds elicited delighted squeals and belly giggles that were your favourite sound in the world.

So on those slow days when it was just you and little miss, after the morning trips out or during rainy days when you didn't want to leave the comfort of your home, she often got a little impatient for her daddies to reappear. She's make for the door, announcing her demand that she wanted one or the other of them and try with all her might to get to them. She never cried, never showed displeasure in being with you but she was certainly frustrated that she couldn't open the door herself. When she started pulling herself up into furniture, the pre-walking stage before she took her first steps, you suspected it was all done so that she could eventually reach the door handle.

It had been a long day. George and Fred were busier than ever after launching a new range of products and the whirlwind that always followed their releases. George had made a quick stop to come visit you both late morning, stopping for only a few minutes to kiss you both and to check in. He said Fred would follow as soon as he could catch a break but it had never materialised, he just hadn't found the time. The weather was miserable and you weren't up to leaving the flat, so you'd done activities with little miss all day, the afternoon dragging on even after her very short and very reluctant nap.

Around 3pm you noticed her getting antsy. No longer placated by her toys and books, no longer distracted by the activities you were doing, you noticed her gaze drifting to the door in front increasing amounts. She'd cried when George had left to go back to work and you knew she would only get upset if you took her downstairs to see them and then take her away after a while, plus it really wasn't fair when they were so busy to distract them.

You offered her snacks, did some messy play and then an early bath to kill some time but you could tell she wasn't truly placated.

And then the sound of footsteps on the staircase alerted your attention, and you knew it had captured the attention of your daughter. You held her in your arms and walked towards the living room where she could see the door and watched as her hands began flapping in sheer delight as the footsteps got louder. You could barely hold her as she started wiggling in your arms, so desperate to see her daddies that she was practically jumping in your hold.

The first sight of bright red hair had her squealing in delight and you changed your hold on her to pass her along, grabbing her under the arms to hold her out.

You burst out laughing as you watched her gleefully squealing for her daddies and so desperate to get to them that she was running mid-air, her legs frantically cycling as if she's been running all her life as you hold her out for your husband. Fred scoops her up dramatically, laughing with her as she spins with him, her little hands grabbing at the collar of his jacket.

It's one of those moments that you stop for a moment to allow it to sink into your forever memories, the kind of moment you want to remember with exact detail on your death bed. Fred catches your eye and winks, smiling at you before focusing his attention on the little girl in his arms that demands his entire attention. You feel yourself flood with love as you look upon the scene, falling in love all over again with Fred by the way he's so effortlessly a wonderful dad.

A hand at your hip makes you jump, so transfixed by the scene before you that you'd entirely forgotten about your other husband.

He plants a kiss on your head from above, his hand resting on your hip as he smiles down at you, happy to hang back a second before inevitably reclaiming his place by his daughter.

"Long day?" He asks gently, rubbing your side as you both watch Fred spinning your daughter faster and faster in his arms.

"Better now," you say, leaning into him and allowing yourself to feel the fatigue you'd tried to ignore.

And then George is spotted by a pair of eyes much similar to your own. Her squeals begin again as she frantically reaches for her other dad with a much enthusiasm as she had Fred, her little fingers desperately reaching out for him. He chuckles, patting your bum as he steps away to reach for his daughter. Slightly exhausted from Fred's movements, she quickly settles into George, tired from her day of playing and the warm bubbly bath, he rests her head against his shoulder, sinking into him. Much like you, she sees the extra softness in George that Fred has a little less of and cuddles into him without any hesitation. He kisses her hair, nuzzling into the small tuft of suspiciously red hair that looks much like his own in tone, no doubt smelling beautifully fresh from her bath.

Fred moves toward you now, pulling you into his arms with a not so gentle tug, throwing his arms around you to squeeze playfully.

"Missed you," he mumbles against your hair, making you smile into the material of his suit jacket.

"Not as much as she's missed you," you joke, looking up at him with such warmth you can practically feel it exuding from you. He chuckles, resting his chin on the top of your head.

"It's not easy being away from you both all day," he admits quietly, stated with such honesty that it sounds like a confession. "It's not easy but it's all worth it when I walk through the door. I don't know what I'll do once she stops being so excited to see us like that."

"Hmm," you say, shifting to look up at him with a cheeky smile. "Maybe a dog?"

"Or we knock you up again," George suggests cheekily as he steps closer, inserting himself and the snuggly little girl into the conversation.

"Excellent idea," Fred says with a devilish smirk as he reaches out for you to pull you closer into his chest, "let's start now."

Task 1 — Dragons

The stadium roars around you, but you can’t hear any of it.

All you can hear is the pounding of your own blood in your ears as George walks into the arena — broom in hand, jaw tight, freckles stark against skin that’s tanned from summer, but still somehow retained its Weasley-pale.

He spots you in the stands instantly. Of course he does: it’s the only face he was looking for.

You’re on your feet, gripping the railing so tightly your knuckles ache, and when he catches your gaze he lifts his chin just slightly. A silent reassurance.

But when the Hungarian Horntail is released — wings whipping, fire cracking across the stone — your throat closes. George mounts the broom, but you can see it the moment he rises into the air: he’s terrified. Not panicked nor reckless — determined and terrified. The kind where he knows he has to do this and refuses to let fear stop him.

The dragon lunges, fire streaking so close his hair flicks back with the heat. You shout in horror before your mind catches up.

He dodges the flames narrowly, looping around its spiked tail, using the speed he honed from years of Beater drills with Fred. Students cheer, the crowd explodes, but all you can do is watch his silhouette arch low, then higher, then higher, until he looks at you again.

Mid-air; danger all around him, and the idiot still finds you. He winks, like, I told you I’d be fine, don’t worry.

A split second later, he dives — sweeping past the dragon’s talons, grabbing the golden egg with a daring twist that should’ve been impossible.

When he lands, shaking, sweaty, panting, the first thing he does is look for you. The moment you reach him, your hands cup his face without thinking.

“You absolute, reckless prat!”

“Good to see you too,” he laughs, breathless — and far too softly, until the Gryffindor crown engulf him in cheers and throw him into the air.

⸻

Task 2 — Underwater

Weeks later, he stands beside the Black Lake with golden hair littering about his forehead in the harsh Scottish winds.

He tries to grin at you, but you don’t reciprocate.

“Please don’t be stupid,” you promise, tugging on his wrist, “if the Gillyweed doesn’t work just come back up. Don’t let it run out. It’s not worth dying to win.”

“Bloody is worth it,” he mutters. You smack his arm and he concedes. “I’m coming back,” he says, voice low and earnest. “I have to. You’ll be waiting, after all.”

Your heart stutters. “Course I will,” you whisper.

He squeezes your hand and disappearing to the start line. The whistle blows. He rolls his shoulders back and dives in to the Black Lake. God knows what awaits him.

You spend every second pacing the boardwalk as Hermione tries to talk you down from jumping on after him. Every bubble that surfaces feels like it could be him. Every scream from the crowd makes your chest tighten.

When he finally bursts out of the water before anyone else nine minutes later, he’s gasping and dragging his retrieved hostage brother behind him. His eyes — even from within the Lake — immediately search for you.

Your breath breaks. You tear through the cheers and wrap your arms around him before he’s fully out of the lake. He’s dripping cold water onto your robes, shivering, exhausted — but he laughs against your shoulder. You can’t help but to thank his broad frame and ridiculous height for the advantage it gave him in the water.

“Knew you’d be here.” He leans into you like he doesn’t want to let go. You suspect he’s just using you for your warmth as you wrap your robe around his shoulders and search for a towel for he and Fred.

⸻

Task 3 — The Maze

The maze looms before the stands like a living creature — dark, quiet, suffocating. The hedges rustle although there’s no wind.

George stands at the entrance looking… wrong. Too still. Too quiet. Too serious for his own personality. He stands out like a sore thumb, his gold hair and usual comedy contrasting with the dark foliage.

“Hey,” you say softly, stepping in beside him and linking your arm through his. “You ok, Georgie?”

He turns and looks down at you. Suddenly he looks sixteen again — not a Triwizard candidate, not a final year — just a boy whose face has become awfully familiar to you.

“You don’t have to win,” you whisper.

He shakes his head. “You know I want to. I’ve got to bring the cup back to…” He stops.

“To who?” you tilt your head, concerned.

He swallows. Hard. “To you.” Your heart thuds painfully.

Before you can answer, tell him you’d rather have him whole than a stupid cup, Dumbledore hollers for the five contestants to line up. He grabs your hand quickly, squeezing once, sharply, like a final tether — and then he’s swallowed by the hedges.

It takes twenty minutes before the screaming starts. Not the crowd — the maze. Hedges shaking, ground rumbling, lights flickering. The champions’ paths twist and shift, rearranging endlessly. You clutch the railing, feeling sick.

Something’s wrong: you can just tell. So can Fred, who’s gone stiff next to you, like he’s got a built in George-detector; twin telepathy.

Through the roar of the shifting hedges and whatever lay between them— George’s voice, distant, raw, in a broken cry of pain. Your legs nearly give out as you bolt to your feet. Fred stares on in a dazed trance, unable to accept his brother might be hurt.

Hermione grabs your arm. “You can’t go in, are you crazy?—”

“No,” you breathe. “I need to go in, he’s hurt— I think he’s hurt!”

The next sound is the blast of a spell, rough and uncontrolled. Your lungs burn as you grip the railing, waiting for one more shout to confirm that he needs help.

Suddenly, a beam of light erupts from the maze. The hedges part violently, and George stumbles out — half-supported by his own legs, robes torn and blood smatterings on his forehead as he drags the cup in his shaking hands.

You don’t remember moving — only that suddenly you’re there, dropping to your knees beside him as he drops the cup and collapses on the floor before Madam Pomfrey even has the chance to rise from her feet.

“George— can you hear me, Georgie? It’s ok, you’re gonna be ok. Stay with me!” You lightly tap his cheeks with your palm to rouse him as you cradle his head.

His eyelids flutter open. “Y/N,” he whispers, voice wrecked. “You’re here.”

You almost sob as you crouch over him and stroke his hair “Of course I’m here, you daft sod.”

His breathing is uneven, pained. You press your sleeve hands to the gash at his forehead, ignoring the blood soaking and staining your skin.

“You idiot— you bloody idiot— you know what happened to Diggory in there—”

He winced at your contact with his wound. “Didn’t… mean to.”

You breathe hard as George half smiles up at you. You wipe dirt from his brow and whisper, “are you ok?”

His hand finds yours, shaky but deliberate, gripping like you’re the only thing tethering him to consciousness. “I think I won,” he murmurs. “Don’t care if I did.”

“George—” you want to tell him he’s won, but he cuts you off.

“Only cared about getting back to you.”

Your breath leaves you. Completely. He tries to smile, but it’s too soft, too vulnerable. His eyes flick to your lips before he can stop himself.

You feel it — the shift. All the fear. All the almost-losing him. All the love you’ve been too scared to name.

“George,” you whisper, leaning closer, “I thought I was going to lose you.”

His forehead touches yours, barely held up. “Not a chance.” And then he kisses you. It’s messy — he’s shaking, you’re crying, your hands are still braced against his injury — but it’s real. It’s everything you’ve been both running from and running toward.

His breath catches like he can’t believe it’s happening. “You’re my favourite person,” he whispers against your mouth. “Apart from Fred.”

You cradle his face gently, laughing through the tears.

He closes his eyes, relief washing over him even through the pain. “You stayed,” he whispers. “You always stay.”

“I always will.”

The first time George Weasley leaves you, he’s eleven and going to Hogwarts and you’re ten and don’t understand why you can’t go with him.

Well, that’s not exactly the truth. The very first time George Weasley left you was probably at four and five years old, having been called in for dinner at the end of the day, or maybe heading to the Quidditch pitch with his brothers, and it was so insignificant you barely registered it, but this time is real and permanent (at least, to your ten-year-old brain).

It’s a good thing your mum has better sense than to let you tag along with the Weasleys to say farewell. The screaming fit you throw in the kitchen when she tells you that they’ve already left would have deafened half the platform—she’s still wincing half an hour later when you’re finally allowed out of your room. You bound out with cheeks barely dried from tears and ‘GEORGE’ written in clumsy letters on your wrist.

Your mum just sighs.

“Kids make their own soulmate marks all the time,” your dad points out, tugging her close with the hand whose wrist bears the words, ‘That’s not where the ashwinder eggs go,’ in loopy writing. Her writing. On her dominant wrist are the scrawled words, ‘What time of day were you born, again?’

Words said with the familiarity of people that not only knew each other before their twenty-fifth birthdays but dared to love each other before knowing whether they were soulmates. Still, soulmate words were only printed on one wrist—the nondominant one—and not the first words ever said to one another, but rather the first words one said after the precise moment the other turned exactly twenty-five. Your parents married when they were twenty-two after a Hogwarts romance, utterly confident as soulmates, and the words that appeared within months of each other were mere happy reassurances of their love. Some people waited years after turning twenty-five to meet their soulmate and for their words to appear. Some people never crossed paths with them.

“I know,” your mum sighs, “it’s just… she’s very attached.”

“A year apart will do them good,” your dad reasons, even though there are only four months until the Yule holiday.

Four months that pass very slowly.

You played with other children, of course. Ginny and Ron, even though they were younger, because they lived next door; Eddie Carmichael, in the same Toddler Tricks and subsequent Juvenile Jinxes youth pre-Hogwarts education program; and the Vane sisters Emma and Romilda, whose father worked with yours, the former of whom cared for little other than catching Billywigs in her backyard and the latter of whom cried whenever you won a match of Exploding Snap. 

But if given the option, you would choose George over anyone else at any time.

It isn’t that the twins are your best friends, which everyone assumes because they all think Fred and George are a package deal. But while Fred still can’t tell the difference between tears of laughter and pain, George always knows when to stop. Or at least apologize later. Fred is your friend too, of course, but he burnt a hole in Ron’s tongue with an Acid-Pop and regretted only that Molly stopped him before he could do the same to Percy. You laugh with Fred, you go along with his schemes, but it’s George that you ask to show you how he and his brother shattered the windows of Arthur’s tinkering shed (at midnight during a new moon, holding their breaths and counting backwards from one hundred by sevens).

He doesn’t write, but you do receive an official Hogwarts letter informing you that the groundskeeper did regretfully have to confiscate a toilet seat that five owls were struggling to carry off of school grounds in your direction, courtesy of the twins.

George comes home and things are mostly the same. He’s still the same boy enamored with Quidditch and mischief and irreverence and you’re still the same girl enamored with him. He shows you the charms he learned and tells you about the moving staircases and by the end of the hols, you’re more upset that you’re not going with him than you are that he’s leaving again.

Something changes between Yule and summer.

‘Something.’

You know perfectly well what it is.

Second-years are allowed to play on the House teams, and Fred and George decide they want to. What was before an everyday preoccupation with the sport turns into an all-encompassing obsession, and you lose track of the number of times you trudge over to the Burrow just to see ginger hair gleaming in the sky and resign yourself to the knowledge that your only company will be Ginny and the cat.

Even though you’re a first-year and they’re second-years, Fred and George let you ride in the Hogwarts Express compartment with them, and you’re foolish enough to think that you’ll be able to catch up to them.

Then Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson squeeze into the compartment and fill it with stories and inside jokes from the last year, and you realize that, if you’re not careful, George might be as far from your reach now as he was last year.

“What is the truth?”

“Relative,” you say flatly to the knocker, ignoring its beleaguered sigh. It asks you the same question at least every week, you’re fairly sure, in its attempt to drive you so mental that you come up with fresh material, but you’re determined to out-stubborn the blasted thing. It pauses, taken aback at the vitriol in your tone, and for once doesn’t sigh or argue. Good thing, too. You haven’t been in a mood so foul in all your life.

You storm into the common room and dampen the atmosphere like an ominous, dark cloud. Conversations peter out; Cho and Marietta, who’ve been your friends since showing you how to use a tampon in first year, ignore your glower. You stomp up the spiral staircase to your dorm, slam the door on the sound of renewed chatter below, and draw the four-poster curtains around your bed. Then you cast a Sticking Charm so no one moves them away and a Muffling Charm so you don’t hear anyone that comes in and so anyone that dares to enter doesn’t hear your seething.

The reason for both your bad mood and everyone else’s good one?

George Weasley.

The redhead’s always had a knack for pressing your buttons with an incomparable finesse, but this time takes the cake.

Not for the first time, not for the fifth time, not even for the millionth time, George’s left you behind again. But this isn’t like teasing you for being Sorted into Ravenclaw and jokingly warding you away from his table in the Great Hall on the mornings before Quidditch games between your Houses. It’s not like the twins dashing off to nick something from Snape’s office or smuggling Bowtruckles out of the magical creatures sanctuary without you. Once you donned blue robes, they seemed to forget that you’d lied to their mother without batting an eye on several occasions to save their sorry arses and instead started to lump you in with all the other sorry swots and prats in the castle. They snapped out of it your fourth year and finally showed you their miraculous magical map… and then promptly handed it off to Harry Potter. But at least after that you were privy to their hiding spots and shortcuts. You have a better sense for sniffing them out than either McGonagall or Filch did, and they learned quickly that it was best to loop you into their schemes.

And then they had to go and do this.

Fred and George ransacked the castle, encased corridors in swamps, and instructed Peeves to do as much damage as he pleased.

That was all well and good. You hated Umbridge as much as the next student and rather liked having Filch punt you across the swamps, mostly because of how much he obviously hated doing it.

But then they left.

Besides the fact that dropping out of Hogwarts is almost unheard of, the twins took off on their confiscated brooms, iron shackles still swinging between them, and vanished into the sunset. No warning for you. And—this was a week ago, mind—no word after.

Your only consolation is that Lee seems just as out of sorts as you. He had just as little warning as you did. You’ve always liked him, but he’s been more of a peripheral friend than anything else. With Fred and George gone, though, and Angelina and Alicia preparing for their N.E.W.T.s, there’s little holding the two of you together.

Hogwarts gets worse before it gets better.

Umbridge and her Inquisitorial Squad turn the once-wondrous school into a nightmare, and half your House has nervous breakdowns before their various end-of-year exams, whether those be O.W.L.s, N.E.W.T.s, or those conducted by the professors. Half the school fails their practicals because of the toad.

Then Harry Potter and Hermione Granger lure her into the Forbidden Forest. Not long after, Dumbledore returns, and not long after that, the term is over and your dorm room is packed.

Your heart flutters. Months after George left, he still never wrote. To explain that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. To apologize for not telling you if it wasn’t.

You live a five-minute walk from the Burrow.

You spent your entire childhood playing with him. You could walk the path between your homes with your eyes closed. You’ve climbed through his window; he’s climbed through yours. You miss him. You don’t want to miss him. The last time you missed him was when he’d gone for his first year, and now here you are six years later, roles reversed, yourself at Hogwarts and him in Devon.

You miss George so terribly that your chest aches. You’re not certain if you’ll forgive him the moment you see him; you suspect that your weak heart doesn’t have the crust to carry resentment against the boy you grew up hoping was your soulmate.

Luckily, you don’t have to test your fragile, crustless heart. Fred and George aren’t living at home. They’re sharing a flat above their new shop in Diagon Alley, Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, which is apparently so popular they only pop by to see the rest of the family every week or so.

So, with George manning his shop and you drafting an essay to submit to The Daily Prophet’s ‘Ultimate Unforgettable Underage Witch and Wizard’s Practical Potioneering’ section, you spend the entire summer without seeing him. You’re not avoiding him, all right? Your essay is important, even if the page is really just a compilation of budget-friendly potioneering tips for witches and wizards looking for cheaper ingredient alternatives.

You intend to argue, though, that part of the issue when brewing in outdoor cauldrons is the effect of the moon cycles they’re exposed to. Under the watchful eyes of Professors Sinistra and Snape, the former of whom has a keen interest in how Astronomy interacts with the other magics and the latter of whom agreed to supervise because it would give him a better vantage point to watch you fail (you’re ninety percent certain he was joking when he said that) you’ve simulated enough moon cycles to hypothesize that most cauldrons begin to lose their peak potioneering efficacy after nineteen full moons. Why? You’re not sure. But it is fascinating.

Your article is rejected, unfortunately. Professor Sinistra takes the news in stride. Snape sniffs down his nose at you, demands a copy of it on his desk by the next morning, and informs you that you’ve just signed up for the elective that absolutely no one covets: private seminar with him.

The sound of someone shouting your name nearly makes your heart stop. Everyone that would have done so graduated (or left) last year, which leaves only professors, which means trouble.

Bemused, you turn on your heel. You haven’t done anything recently—have you?

In the brief period between classes, the corridor swarms with students. The crowd ripples, and you realize after a moment that a small child (surely he can’t be eleven yet, are the first-years getting smaller and smaller?) is elbowing his way through the crowd. He stops in front of you, panting, and stuffs a note into your hands. “From Professor Slughorn. To be responded to at your earliest convenience.”

Oh. You’ve been dreading this letter since the first Potions class when the new Potions professor took attendance, squinted at his sheet after calling your name, and said, “My dear, it says here that your attendance isn’t required so long as your weekly quiz marks don’t slip—is that quite right?”

Face burning, you explained that you conducted research, which turned into explaining your research to the class, and before you knew it the entire period had been focused on you and Slughorn had taken it upon himself to reach out, despite your visceral protests, to the Prophet’s editorial board.

In a moment of uncharacteristic charity, Snape did inform you two days later that he intercepted Slughorn’s letter. When you thanked him, he merely sniffed and said, “My students succeed based on their merit, not their trivial social ties,” which almost sounded like a compliment until he added, “I am therefore entirely unsurprised that you have not done so yet.”

He was a bastard. Brilliant, but a bastard.

You ruminate over the Slug Club invitation until the day before the party. They can’t possibly be as bad as everyone says, right? Eddie, the saint, agrees to go with you, and you send your RSVP with an apology for the late response.

Entering the party is like a slap to the face. You clutch Eddie’s arm until he winces and mutters, “Not one for subtlety, is he?”

You’re not exactly sure what theme Slughorn aimed for when decorating—perhaps he had multiple in mind—but no two tablecloths match, and the attire of the attendants varies from casual leisurewear, garden party, and floor-length ball gowns. One woman is dressed in Quidditch robes and holds her broom; an elderly man wearing a nightgown, backwards ball cap, and squeaky clown shoes holds court by the punch bowl; and a pale, twitchy wizard stands next to an even paler—

“Oh, shite, he brought a vampire,” you mutter into Eddie’s ear, tugging him quickly away from that corner. The vampire’s eyes snap to you. You gulp. Do vampires have excellent hearing? Has he heard you?

You’re so intent on your escape that you back right into Slughorn. He waves off your apologies magnanimously, both for your late response and for walking into him, and without missing a beat introduces you to the three witches he was in conversation with as, “One of my most promising students, performing original research still at Hogwarts, can you believe her determination? She’ll be published in the Prophet soon, either page three or Astro News, none of that nonsense about ‘Ultimate Unforgettable’—psh!—mark my words, and not long after that surely either Potioneers Weekly, or perhaps we might jump right to a full edition in The Practical Potioneer.”

“I’m really just piggybacking off of Hesper Starkey’s work on how moon phases affect potioneering,” you say, embarrassed. Eddie shifts under the three ladies’ curious eyes, considering he wasn’t introduced at all, and clears his throat.

“Do grab something to drink if your throat is dry, boy,” Slughorn says sharply. “No, my dear, don’t sell yourself short! Standing in front of you are three remarkable witches, witches I marked as remarkable during their years at Hogwarts, just as I have recognized you as remarkable—Miriam Strout, healer at St. Mungo’s; Dahlia Fleur-Peri, who you may recognize from this year’s opera circuit; and, of course, Sola Conix, the world’s leading expert in soulmate magic!”

Your breath freezes.

Slughorn smiles. “Yes, I thought that might catch your attention.” To the witches he says in a stage whisper, “The witch barely blinked when I presented Amortentia to her class.”

“Amortentia doesn’t create love, professor,” you say, playing into his little act. “Only obsession. Nor does it have any affect on soulmate marks.”

“That we know of,” Sola points out. She’s an old, wizened woman. You half expect her to creak whenever she moves.

“Yes,” you concede. “That we know of.”

Slughorn beams. “She outshines her peers with the light of a hundred stars.”

Eddie coughs.

Sola looks between the two of you with pursed lips.

“Why don’t you grab us something to drink?” you ask him, suddenly desperate for him not to hear whatever the witch is about to say. Eddie grasps onto the excuse to leave gratefully.

“May I see your palm, dear?”

“I… suppose?” You thought palm reading was used in Divination, not in whatever Sola does.

She sees your confusion and smiles. “All magic ties to itself, child.” Her gnarled fingers run over your hand, the skin cool and smooth, and she says, “You have already met your soulmate, I see.”

Red hair. Freckles. A long, loud laugh.

George.

The blood in your veins turns to ice.

No, you tell yourself. George isn’t your soulmate. You’re not the little girl writing his name on your wrist anymore. The world is a big place, and your soulmate wouldn’t leave you without warning and not even write letters.

Wow. You’d told yourself you were over it. Evidently you’re not.

“And—” her voice drops— “I think we both know he is not the young man you brought to this party.”

“Eddie agreed to come as my friend,” you say faintly.

“It is good to have friends,” she says pleasantly, patting your hand. “But do be careful not to shut doors on them to keep you from becoming more. I saw the back of a head—I saw fire—”

“I brought punch,” says Eddie, appearing at your elbow with two cups. Sola drops your hand and smiles mysteriously.

Fire.

Fire could mean anything.

It didn’t mean red hair.

It didn’t mean George.

You spend graduation on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s under the care of Miriam Strout, who’s delighted to have a fellow Slug Club member around but utterly bemused by your refusal to allow visitors. It’s hard to explain. You let your parents in the first couple of times they visited, of course, so they could see you alive, but a bedside vigil was both humiliating and unnecessary. Not to mention it could cost them their jobs. Eddie, Cho, and Marietta write get-well-soon cards, which is quite nice of them, and Molly Weasley sends over a massive care package, but you don’t see them, either.

You, Sinistra, and Snape all worked so hard to secure your early admission to the Zygmunt Budge Institute of Potioneering in the Hebrides, but that has to be postponed indefinitely while you recover. Miriam tells anyone that asks that you’re making remarkable progress, which may be true in her opinion, but it isn’t in yours, and frustration makes you a terror. There’s no point in bringing their spirits down.

No one knows what curses hit you during the Invasion of Hogwarts, but you remember three arcing in your direction at once. Then your vision went white and you woke up in the hospital to the news that Dumbledore was dead and your mentor had killed him.

You’d always known that Snape was a bastard. You just didn’t know he was that bad.

Miriam can’t make up or down of your symptoms—alternating tremors, flashes of pain in your fingers and toes, the occasional sneeze of a lightning bolt, and something dark seeping through your veins—but with a careful regimen of terrible-tasting Blood Cleansing and Replenishing potions, as well as a whole horde of others for general strength, you slowly regain motor functions and strength. There’s nothing to be done for the scar where the curses combined and struck you at once: a huge, warped burn, almost like the roots of a tree, or lightning, spreading over your shoulder, white and raised. Your skin puckers around it. Without a special cream Miriam applies five times a day, it starts to feel hot and tight.

“Here,” she says one morning. “I think this will help, too. Meant to cleanse the aura.”

That potion, at least, doesn’t taste terrible. It does make you tired, though. Your head hits the pillow in the middle of her next sentence.

When you wake up next, it’s with an aching throat and stiff limbs. You try to rub the sleep out of your eyes but—

Your hand only moves an inch before coming to an abrupt stop. And trying to make a sound of confusion sends wracking pain all down your throat, not to mention that you can’t make a sound.

Your wrists and ankles are shackled to the hospital bed’s rails. And whatever’s wrong with your vocal cords stops you from calling for help.

Is this the work of Death Eaters? Did they take over St. Mungo’s and leave you like this to… what, starve?

You tug harder, but the cuffs, while comfortable, are solid.

The door creaks open.

Miriam says, hushed, “Oh, goodness, you’re awake.”

You clatter the wrist cuff against the rail.

“Oh, dear. Please don’t panic.”

That just makes you want to panic more.

“It would seem that the curses combined into one with a nasty side effect should someone try to remove them.” Miriam grimaces. “When your hands are free, I’m afraid you tend to attempt to curse or otherwise attack the nearest person. Those are curse-muffling cuffs, custom-made—simply keeping you restrained… well, you’ve been screaming and levitating in a small lightning storm for five days straight. Do you remember anything?”

Slowly, you shake your head. Your eyes burn, tears slowly welling in their corners, but you can’t wipe them away.

“Here, see?”

Miriam taps the cuff around your left wrist with her wand. Immediately, the limb moves without your permission, fingers extended to swipe out her eyes. She steps back without even changing her expression, which pisses you off. How dare she look so calm while this is happening to you? She should look worried. She should look scared. Maybe you should make her—

The cuff zips up and closes over your wrist again. All the anger that surged through you ebbs away immediately and you slump back down, suddenly feeling exhausted.

“This is a potion for your throat,” she says. “Now, considering your state, I normally wouldn’t do this, but your boy seems to have suffered enough. May I let him just peek in to see you? The poor thing’s been worried sick ever since he brought you here.”

You’re so confused by her words that you forget to respond, which she evidently takes as permission. Miriam opens the door, says something quietly in the hall, and steps back inside, but she’s not alone.

A tall, broad figure follows her in.

It’s been a year since you last saw him, but that sharp nose, those stark freckles, and the shaggy red hair are unmistakable. For once, though, there’s no smile playing around his lips, which gives you an indication of how poorly you must look.

Seeing him doesn’t clear your confusion. If anything, it only makes it worse.

What is George doing here?

“Hey, trouble,” he whispers. Deep bruises color the skin beneath his eyes. He’s pale. Is he here because he’s sick, too?

“There, you’ve seen her,” says Miriam. “Now, I have to ask—for the fifteenth time—for you to please go home and give my poor trainees a break. You can come back next visiting hours and see her again, but there are many tests I have to run.”

George doesn’t look happy about it, but he allows Miriam to push him out of your hospital room. Your stomach clenches as he goes.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like the pair of you,” says Miriam. “Truly. It’s quite rare to see young men so deeply in love.”

You choke.

Miriam doesn’t notice. She continues, “He hardly slept while you were distressed, of course, and never left. And the only time you stopped screaming was when he talked to you. It was like you were listening. Do you remember any of it?”

You slowly shake your head. What she’s saying hardly sounds real. It makes no sense for George to have been here. You haven’t spoken in over a year.

There are a million questions you want to ask Miriam, but your vocal cords are too worn out to make a sound, so you can do little but sit still while she runs diagnostic spell after diagnostic spell in an effort to figure out what, exactly, is wrong with you.

She’s wrong, though. George isn’t deeply in love with you. You’ve always been mates. That’s all you’ll ever be.

George is back the next day to sit next to your bed. Your throat is recovering, so you manage hoarse, light conversation. He tells you about his shop and you tell him about your upcoming apprenticeship at the institute.

Then his face darkens. In a low voice, he says, “I should have been there.”

“What?”

“Hogwarts.” His hands resting on his knees clench into white-knuckled fists. “Bill almost died. You almost died. If I’d been there—”

“We don’t know what might have happened,” you interrupt. “Maybe they would have hit you instead.”

“Better me than you,” he mutters.

“Don’t say that.” You frown at him.

“It’s true,” he insists.

A stroke of courage emboldens you to blurt out, “Miriam said you’ve been here for days.”

A blush colors George’s cheeks. “Oh, did she?”

“Why?” For the first time, you bring up the elephant in the room. “I mean, it’s just been a while since we’ve talked, that’s all.”

“You’re my oldest mate,” George says, ignorant to the way your stomach clenches at the words. “Fred’s managing the shop and I thought you might like company.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Anytime,” he says warmly, smiling. It’s his genuine smile, not the troublemaker’s grin, the one you hardly ever see. “Just wait. You’ll get sick of me soon enough, because I’m not leaving.”

He keeps his word through your stay at St. Mungo’s. And after. George helps you draft the letter to the institute when you decide to defer your apprenticeship until after Voldemort is defeated—but you just tell them that residual side effects of the curses are keeping you home—and the twins take you on as an assistant in the shop while the Ministry grows more corrupt and people start disappearing. You help with developing new products, too. It’s just like childhood, complete with your pining and all, and it’s glorious.

There are a couple times, too, that you think maybe George might not just think of you as a mate. Too many times to be coincidence, he stays after close to help you with inventory even though you’re well acquainted with the process. His eyes linger sometimes. No matter how many witches flirt, he doesn’t pay them more than a passing glance.

And, yeah, maybe Fred drops a few hints.

You’re with them the day Harry Potter resurfaces at Hogwarts and kickstarts the final battle against the Death Eaters.

George doesn’t ask if you’re coming. He doesn’t try to dissuade you. All he asks is, “You’ve got me?”

“I’ve got you,” you confirm.

“What am I?” Fred complains. “Chopped liver?”

“I’ve got your back, too, Fred, don’t worry.”

“This favoritism’s getting old,” he grumbles, shaking his head. But he winks at you when George isn’t looking. “Come along, then.”

You take George’s arm for Side-Along Apparition, and the three of you disappear, unaware that it will be the last time you are all together, that the day will end with Fred ripped away forever, that one moment will change George into a furious, grieving animal that bellows at you until you walk out of the shop a month later and don’t come back.

Twelve minutes.

The Leaky Cauldron is packed to the brim, music almost drowned out by the crowd’s chatter, air hot and heavy with anticipation. Or maybe that’s just you.

Someone taps your shoulder. “Hullo!” Katie Bell throws her arms around your shoulders. “It’s been too long. Happy birthday!”

“Not yet,” you say, smiling nervously. You have twelve minutes left of being twenty-four years old.

Actually, eleven now.

“Good luck,” she says. “I hope your words are clear. I mean, look at mine.” She brandishes her wrist in your direction so you can read the words printed on the skin: Catch the damn Quaffle, Bell! “At least I knew it was someone on the team, but it took Oliver and I ages to figure it out. Can you believe the first thing I said to him after he turned twenty-five was to bugger off? Everyone on the team tells him to bugger off. But at least we got it better than poor Cho, have you heard?”

“No.”

“‘Excuse me.’ She must have just bumped into him one day!” Katie lowers her voice. “To tell the truth, I think she’s just relieved she has words.” A lot of people during school were worried that she never would if Cedric was her soulmate. They had certainly seemed like it.

Could people have multiple soulmates? Perhaps Sola would know. You haven’t kept up with her in recent years, unfortunately.

Eight minutes left.

You sip on your daisyroot draught, but your stomach is so tied up in knots you can barely swallow. Katie settles next to you where you lean against the bar, content for now just to watch the crowd.

“Have you seen Angelina and Lee yet? They said they would be here.” Katie squints around the dark room.

“No. Just Eddie. I did bring one of the apprentices in my cohort, though. Lennon Burns—he’s around here somewhere.”

“I thought I saw George, too,” says Katie, unaware that the words hit you like a bucket of ice water dumped over your head. You freeze, rooted to the ground. “There’s such a crowd tonight.”

You stay frozen. She doesn’t notice.

What do you care if George is here? He might not even be at the Leaky Cauldron to celebrate your birthday; you only told a couple people that you were back in London for the month, and he certainly wasn’t one of them. It’s a free country. He can visit whatever pub he likes whatever night he likes.

George Weasley isn’t your soulmate.

You spent your first seventeen years of life hoping that he was. If the sheer force of your want could change the universe, he would be. But that’s not how the world works. In fact, you haven’t spoken to him for over six years, and most days you forget to think about him.

“One minute!” Katie exclaims suddenly, shaking your arm. As if summoned, Lennon appears with a glass of champagne and a shot of gigglewater, both of which he shoves into your hands. Together, they count down the seconds until the clock officially hits midnight.

“Hey!” Lennon shouts, hands cupped around his mouth. “We have a twenty-fifth birthday!”

“Twenty-five!” Katie shrieks with excitement, gesturing for you to down the shot. You do, and the laugh that bubbles out is half-hysterical.

The entire pub erupts into a cheer. Liquor flows freely, and at least six wizards approach you to introduce themselves, but their words never show up on your wrist and your response doesn’t show up on theirs. They shrug, amenable enough, and eventually you’re no longer the center of attention.

What time were you born, again? You know it was during the wee hours between midnight and dawn, but you can’t quite remember the exact numbers. That was your third shot, after all, Lennon keeping you occupied with a constant supply, and the champagne is your third drink, too. Your brain is slightly hazy.

Angelina and Lee find you soon after, buy you another daisyroot draught, and pull Katie onto the dance floor when you opt to stay leaning against the bar, not entirely confident in your feet’s ability to keep you upright.

That’s when you spot him.

Ron shot up past the twins, who ended up only being taller than Charlie and Ginny, much to their chagrin, but that’s not to say that he’s short. He still has the stocky build of a good Beater. The hair is just as red and the freckles just as dark as you remember, but the features have changed slightly, eased into that of an adult. Mature. His dark eyes are just as intense, fixed on you and glinting with that familiar sparkle that used to make your stomach swoop.

Your stomach does not swoop.

Well…

You sternly order it not to swoop again.

Seventeen-year-old you would have swooned. Twenty-five-year-old you, though, has grown past that, and is only moderately tongue-tied.

It’s been six years, which evidently wasn’t long enough to prepare you for the emotions that seeing him would dredge up.

He reaches the bar and leans against it casually, but with his body turned toward you instead of the rest of the pub. He’s close enough that you can feel his body heat—he’s always run warm. You can smell the faint smoke-and-gunpowder scent that clings to him, too.

Damn. Your stomach swoops again.

George leans in, and even though the pub is loud, he doesn’t have to be so close. His lips brush the shell of your ear and a full-body shiver wracks you as he murmurs, “Happy birthday, trouble.”

You’re too tongue-tied to form a response.

George looks amused for some reason. He tries to catch the bartender’s eye, but he’s busy with a group of intoxicated wizards. After a moment, George runs his hand through his hair—which he’s let grow out again, and you certainly don’t want to run your fingers through the strands and tug—and he leans over the bar, snags a bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey and a glass, and turns around quickly.

Your tongue unsticks from the roof of your mouth. “You’re going to be in so much trouble if you get caught,” you point out.

George winks and pours for himself. “Good thing I’m rather good at not getting caught.”

You can’t help but stare as he lifts the glass to his mouth and takes a sip. His throat bobs.

Then he licks his lips.

It takes you a moment to realize that you’re staring at his mouth. Something twists in your chest at the sight of his lips. Familiar. You spent years fantasizing about them, but that’s not the only reason they’re familiar. You rip your eyes away, meeting his own, and find him smirking down at you.

He saw.

Heat rushes to your face. You gulp down the rest of your daisyroot draught and chew the inside of your cheek, unsure what to say. You seem happier than the last time I saw you, is objectively true but tactless, like saying, guess you’ve adjusted to your twin brother’s death, then. You settle for, “How’s the shop?”

He shrugs. “Steady. But it’s good work. Ron helps out now. So that’s good.”

“Verity still work for you?”

“Oh, no. No, she’s moved on to bigger and better things, if you’ll believe it.”

“Well, good for her.”

“And how’s the institute?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful.” You grimace. “Well, it’s also terrible. But I learn so much every day.”

“I didn’t realize there was anything about Potions you didn’t know already,” he says.

“I wish.”

The two of you lapse into a silence that lingers long enough to become awkward. George checks his watch absentmindedly and his eyes widen. Perhaps he’s surprised at the time.

It’s then that Lennon finds you again. Luckily, the drink in his hands is his own, judging by its half-drunken state. Good. You rather think you’re done for the night. A lit cigarette hangs from the fingers on his other hand. “Any words yet?” he shouts.

You peer down at your wrists. Both are ink-free. You ignore the pit in your stomach at the confirmation that George is 100% not your soulmate. You knew it already. This is just the confirmation you needed to finally turn the page on that chapter of your life. “No,” you say loudly. “I think I’m getting tired. Will you be ready to head back soon?”

“Sure, love,” he says. Lennon frowns at you. “Are you feeling okay?” He casts George a dark look, as if it’s his fault.

Which isn’t entirely false.

“Yeah, promise. I think I just drank one too many gigglewaters, you know?”

“For sure. Just give me a minute to do my rounds, yeah?”

Of course he has rounds to do and people to say goodbye to. If there was a picture in the dictionary under the definition of people-person, it would be his. He’s only in London for the month with you and you swear he already knows more people in the area than you do.

“Hi,” Lennon says after a beat. He puts the cig in his mouth and extends his hand to George. “Lennon Burns.”

George eyes his outstretched hand. He takes another sip of his firewhiskey. He doesn’t shake it. Instead, he says, “I don’t think smoking’s permitted inside here.”

“Lenny’s in my cohort at the institute,” you say, narrowing your eyes at George slightly. Be polite. Molly would be in fits if she saw his behavior. “Lenny, this is George Weasley. We grew up together.”

“Pleasure,” Lennon says, retracting his hand.

“Likewise,” George says coolly.

As soon as Lennon disappears back into the crowd, you whirl around and say, “You didn’t have to be so rude.”

“Who is he, anyway?”

“I told you—”

“Yeah.” A dark look passes over George’s face. “He’s in your cohort. You said. So he’s a friend, or…” He trails off, lifting his eyebrows.

You’re not following and the frustration makes you annoyed. “He’s traveling home with me for a month, what do you think?”

“So he isn’t a friend.”

Your jaw drops. “Where are you getting that from?”

“I don’t know,” he says shortly, “why don’t you tell me?”

“What is your problem?” you ask after a moment, shaking your head.

George checks his watch again. His expression grows stormier.

You’re not sure if the alcohol is stoking your anger or bravery when you point out, “You didn’t have to come.”

“And you didn’t have to kiss me!”

George blurts the words out and they hang in the air between the two of you. It feels oddly like he slipped a knife into the soft, fleshy space between two of your ribs. He can’t take them back. You stare at him for a moment.

You never mentioned it again, not to him, not to anyone else. But during the Battle of Hogwarts, before… before Fred… you tugged him down and pressed your mouth to his. You thought you were going to die. He kissed you back, you know he did, but the battle stopped you from talking about it and then he lost himself in his grief. The two of you never spoke about it again. There were only so many cutting words and shouted curses you could bear before you had to leave, and so your relationship was unresolved, stuck in limbo, when you did.

It stayed that way for years.

“You kissed me and you left,” he accuses.

Your cheeks heat. You slam your empty daisyroot draught glass on the bar—when did you finish it?—and laugh without amusement. “Oh, don’t get me started on leaving.”

A splotchy red color rises up George’s neck, all through his face, and to the tips o f his ears. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You left me first!” Your voice is rising. “You’re always leaving—gods forbid I’m the one that leaves for once!” The bartender casts a worried glance in your direction and a group of witches inch away from the pair of you. “You left and you didn’t tell me anything!”

George sets down the bottle of firewhiskey, too. “What are you talking about?”

“Sixth year,” you hiss. “You left me in that castle run by that toad and you didn’t ever write—you never tried to explain yourself, ask how I was doing, you never cared that she wanted to make my life a living hell! Do you even know what happened after you left?”

“You’re joking, right?” George’s hands clamp around your arms. He shakes you slightly, just once. Your teeth rattle. You shiver again, what feels like bolts of pure electricity running over your skin from where he touches you. “I wrote you every day for two months straight. You never responded to any of my letters.”

“What letters?”

George’s mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again. Slowly, he repeats, “I wrote you. Every day. You never wrote back.”

“That’s not true,” you say. Your voice is high-pitched and thin. You hear him as if from far away. What he’s saying makes no sense. “You never sent me letters. I wrote you letters. You never responded to me.”

George swears.

Vehemently.

He says, “If that toad wasn’t already in Azkaban, I’d send her there myself.”

It takes you a second to understand what he’s saying. Slowly, it dawns on you. “Umbridge… she intercepted our letters?”

“I should have expected her to do something like that,” George says. His hands squeeze you harder. He ducks his head, shoulders sagging. “I just thought you were so angry that you wanted to ignore me. So I figured I’d give you space, but then you never came over or wrote, and I thought, okay, I’ve gone and buggered it—”

The floor tilts. All of a sudden, your mouth floods with saliva.

“Oh, no,” you say.

George reads it on your face. He slaps a handful of Galleons on the bar to make up for the whiskey he half-drank and ushers you out of the pub just in time for your stomach to revolt.

You empty your stomach into one of the potted plants outside the pub. George keeps your hair out of your face and pats your back as you heave.

That’s how Lennon finds you both.

“What happened?” he demands.

“Well, I didn’t do anything,” George says, somewhat indignantly. “Maybe you shouldn’t have kept shoving drinks into her hand. Were you trying to get her drunk?”

Your stomach cramps for another round of vomiting. You miss the next part of their conversation but tune in to hear Lennon say, “Come on, love, let’s get you home, all right?”

He drapes a jacket over your shoulders. You burrow into it gratefully, just now realizing how much you were shivering. If you were more sober, you might realize that it smells like smoke and gunpowder instead of Potions ingredients, but all you can focus on at the moment is your roiling stomach and how the world keeps tilting.

You don’t remember Lennon taking you home, but you wake up with a pounding headache, a sour taste in your mouth, and an upset stomach. You’re in the same clothes from last night, passed out on top of your blankets, and you want nothing more than to go back to sleep.

So you decide to do just that. But first you need to rub some of the crust out of your eyes.

It’s just a flash glimpsed through your barely-open eyes.

Black.

Ink.

Words.

Handwriting.

You suck in a sharp glance and bolt upright.

There are words. On your wrist.

Words. On your wrist.

Soulmate words.

You spoke to your soulmate last night.

Oh, if only your memory wasn’t so fuzzy! You can’t recall everyone you spoke to last night. Quite a few strangers approached you, but you checked your wrist after each one and no writing showed up. So who could it be?

I wrote you every day for two months straight.

Understanding dawns on you slowly but surely, like a sunrise.

Hope blinks over the horizon. Hope you’ve been squashing down for years because daring to let it continue was just too painful.

You know who said those words to you. You don’t remember everything you said to him—you distinctly remember some kind of argument—but thinking about him when you look at the words feels right.

And he kept looking at his watch.

No.

Not his watch.

His wrist.

Oh, if only you could remember what you’d first said to him! The first words said after he turned twenty-five should have been special. Were your first words a mere ‘Hello?’ You hoped not.

Then the giddy feeling in your stomach curdles. Because if he checked his wrist and saw the words, then he knew. And he said nothing.

Does he not want you as a soulmate?

Why wouldn’t he say anything?

Lennon isn’t awake yet, so nothing slows you down in your rush out the door. You’re so harried you don’t change from your old clothes. Halfway to your destination, you regret not combing your hair and brushing your teeth—hasty charms get the job done, but they’re not quite the same thing. But the thought of turning around is anathema.

Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes isn’t open yet, but the wards welcome you anyway. He never removed you from them, apparently. What does that imply? That he simply forgot? Perhaps he didn’t think about you after you left. Perhaps he hoped you might return.

George is in the middle of unboxing stock when you slam the door open so forcefully you’re surprised the glass doesn’t shatter. His head snaps up, eyes wide and mouth parted slightly.

For a moment you don’t know what to say.

So you don’t say anything. You just stride forward, and he doesn’t say anything either, and you grab his arm. George lets you manhandle him, push his sleeve up, unclasp his watch, and reveal his wrist. Beneath the watch are inked words twining around the skin.

The words written are in familiar font. It’s your handwriting. They’re your words: You’re going to be in so much trouble if you get caught.

Proof.

Relief washes over you with such force that you stagger.

“Wha—hey!”

George rushes to stabilize you. “You’re up early,” he says cautiously. “How are you feeling? Um… should you be out of bed right now?”

Anger stabilizes you. You shove him back with both hands. “You prick,” you seethe.

“Excuse me?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” And you hold up your own wrist, where the words are written in his own handwriting: I wrote you every day for two months straight.

You’d turned exactly twenty-five down to the second in the middle of the conversation and you hadn’t even realized.

George’s face gets stormy. “I couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t?”

“Right in front of your boyfriend?”

You choke.

“And…” He lets out a breath. “And I couldn’t take it if you told me you chose him anyway. Okay? So if that’s what you came here to tell me, then please spare me, because I’ve spent my entire life hoping for your words to show up on my wrist.”

You hold your own face. Your cheeks feel numb. This can’t be real. Can it?

“I’ve spent my whole life hoping for your words to show up on my wrist.”

That stuns him. George stares at you for a moment. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and your eyes zero in on the motion. “So…”

“Hang on,” you say. “Lennon isn’t my boyfriend. He’s just a good friend. I swear.”

George’s genuine smile lights up his face. It’s not his troublemaker’s grin or the smirk from last night, which you realize now was his nervous smile for when he’s trying to guard himself. It’s the stunning smile you live to see.

“It’s always been you,” you confess.

“Me, too,” he says, then laughs. “Damn. I really buggered it up, didn’t I?”

“I did my fair share,” you admit.

George reaches out and snags a hand around your waist. He tugs you flush to him and dips his head, but you still have to crane your neck to look at him. The heat in his gaze steals your breath away. It’s like he doesn’t care that you’re in last night’s clothes with unkempt hair and stale breath. “We could have been doing this years earlier,” he murmurs.

“Doing—?”

Then he leans down and kisses you.

Fireworks burst in your stomach. He tastes of mint and sweets. You kiss until you grow lightheaded, then kiss him some more. It’s George that pulls away for breath. Your mouth chases his, and he surges down to press his lips against yours again firmly, just a peck. “So,” he says softly, breath washing over your lips. “Soulmates.”

“Soulmates,” you repeat, smile so broad that it crinkles your eyes.

Seventeen-year-old-you would scream. Ten-year-old-you would simply roll her eyes and remark that she already knew.

George Weasley is your soulmate.

“You have to promise me something,” he says, so seriously that your stomach drops.

Oh no. “What?”

“This time, when you go back to the institute, please tell me you’ll respond to my letters.”

It startles a laugh out of you. Your hand tangles in the hair at the base of his neck. You tug him down. Just before your lips touch again, you murmur, “I think I can manage that.”

Then you kiss him again.

You don’t even stop when the first customer wanders in.

• Your three kids, a pair of twin boys and a younger girl, have two “Dad’s” and one “Mum”: confusing to some, perfect for you six. When your kids are younger, Fred is “Dada” (the louder, more permitting one) and George is “Daddy” (the slightly calmer one with a better knack for calming them). As the kids get older, they just start calling them both “dad” and it confuses everyone else endlessly. Somehow, each of the Twins always knows who is being addressed.

• Your house — mere minutes from the Burrow, which serves as a safe haven when you need some space— is basically a smaller, domestic version of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. There are prototype toys everywhere, trialled on the kids: stuffed animals that burp bubbles, toy broomsticks that hover three feet off the ground, and a self-rocking cradles that sing off-key lullabies. Half the furniture has been charmed, too, making it babyproof.

• Bedtime stories are wonderful, collaborative efforts. Fred does all the voices and sound effects (complete with improvised explosions), George adds plot twists on the fly, and you’re the only one who remembers how the original story was supposed to end, leaving you cry laughing silently while you stroke their hair to sleep. The kids demand encores until they’re finally asleep; the twins never tire of bedtimes.

• Discipline is… creative. Time-outs involve sitting in a chair that gently bounces them until they stop crying and start giggling long enough to say sorry. Grounding means “no visiting the shop for a week,” which hurts the boys more than the kids. Having three of you, rather than just two, means your patience rarely runs thin: the Twins are saints and know exactly when you need time to yourself, promising to “teach them a lesson” playfully when one of the kids throws a tantrum in Honeydukes.

• Family outings are whole events. Trips to Diagon Alley take twice as long because the kids insist on trying every new product in the shop. You often take the three of them to play Quidditch, bouncing your babygirl on your knee while the twin boys learn alongside their dads.

• They’re ridiculously competitive about who the kids love more, but in the sweetest way. Fred will brag for DAYS, gently prodding his brother, if one of them chooses his lap during storytime. George keeps a secret tally of hugs. You and the kids exploit this shamelessly for extra attention.

• When they enroll into Hogwarts, the letters home about their jokester behaviour come often, just as they were with the Twins; still, they manage to keep up their good grades (you think they got your brains and the Twins’ humour) between their own pranks. Most Howler’s the Twins send to the kids are usually congratulatory: “WE HEARD YOU TURNED YOUR PROFESSOR’S ROBES PINK— TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR, AND DETENTION TO THEM FOR BAD TASTE! LOVE, MUM & DADS.”

• The kids learn to fly on tiny training brooms before they can properly walk. Family Quidditch matches in the backyard are mandatory every Sunday— you’re Seeker, the kids rotate positions, and Fred and George argue over who gets to be Beater (they usually both do and gang up on everyone else).

• Quiet moments are rare— not that you mind too much- but precious: all of you piled on the massive couch under one enormous quilt Molly knitted, kids asleep between you three, Fred and George planting soft kisses on their three heads while whispering about how this wild, loud life is better than the best prank they ever pulled.

The December sun hangs low over the Black Lake, painting everything in soft amber. You’re walking the familiar path around the water, Fred on your left with his arm slung casually around your shoulders, George on your right, occasionally bending to pick up the perfect skipping stone. It’s one of those rare, perfect Sundays: no classes, no detentions, no looming threat of war. Just the three of you for once.

George flicks a stone across the surface; it bounces a handful of times before disappearing. “Seven,” he announces proudly, spinning around with a grin. “Our kid’s going to have a wicked arm for Quidditch,” he says to you, jogging back from the bank of the river toward you two.

Fred snorts, tightening his hold on you. “Our kid? Bold of you to assume you’re getting dibs on the first one, Georgie.”

George grins, unbothered. “We’ll take turns. Fair’s fair.”

You laugh, shaking your head. “Hey! What about me! You two have clearly put more thought into this than I have.”

Fred peers down, voice warm against your ear. “We’ve had years to talk about it. Ever since fifth year when you hexed Crabbe for calling us blood traitors. Knew right then you’d be the perfect heiress to our army of Weasley troublemakers.”

George nods, stepping closer so you’re tucked securely between them. “Picture it: four little red-headed disasters running riot— two with Fred’s annoying smirk; two with my superior brains.”

You arch a brow. “Four, exactly? You’ve already decided on the number?” You humour them as you stroll along, admiring the murmurations of starlings ahead.

Fred shrugs, completely serious. “Seems fair, no? Two mine, two George’s. That way no one gets a leg up in the inevitable civil Weasley war.”

George chimes in. “We’ll flip a Galleon for who gets the first and third. Or maybe we just… schedule it. Very organised, very you,” he smiles down at you

You laugh and shake your head. “Oh my god! You two are talking like I’m some kind of baby factory— with a production line!”

Fred’s eyes sparkle with mischief. “A very beautiful, very exclusive baby factory,” he corrects, stepping in to kiss your forehead. “Limited edition. Only accepts… deposits from identical twins with excellent genetic credentials.”

“Eeeew, Fred!” You belly-laugh until it hurts, “‘deposits’? Christ!”

George grins and presses in from the other side, lips brushing your temple. “And we promise top-quality results. Ginger hair guaranteed, freckles for sure, evil-genius included.”

“Four kids,” you repeat, softer now as you walk. “Better hope we inherit the Burrow. Or that we’re very rich.”

He grins. “Don’t worry. When the joke shop takes off, we’ll be set— why stop at four?” You smack his chest playfully. His hand slides down to rest over your lower back, gentle and reverent. “They’d have your laugh,” he says quietly. “All of them. That’s non-negotiable.”

George’s hand rests just above Fred’s on your back, the three of you linked in the fading sunlight. “And your feistiness,” he adds. “They’d grow up knowing exactly what it means to be loved someone who’d move mountains for them.”

You lean your hair against George’s upper arm, letting Fred pull you closer until you’re wrapped in both of them. “Four sounds about right,” you admit, voice barely above a whisper. “But I’m not a factory, alright? More like… a very selective artisan workshop. Small batches. High quality. Long waitlist. Remember that!”

Fred chuckles, the sound rumbling through you. “Well, at least put our names at the top of the list.”

George kisses the top of your head. “I can’t wait. Wish we could just graduate already and get on with it…”