#hurtcomfo

Shut Up, Weasley

Pairing: George Weasley x hufflepuff!reader

Summary: You and George Weasley start off as rivals who constantly clash at Hogwarts. Over time, the rivalry slowly turns into something more.

Warnings: no use of y/n

Cw: a little angst, slowburn

Wc: 4k+

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4(coming soon)

Professor Whitmore looked up from the board halfway through attendance.

"Mr Weasley," she said flatly, eyeing the way George lowered himself into his chair like a man who had survived something genuinely harrowing. "Why are you moving like that?"

George let out a long, suffering sigh that carried to every corner of the room.

"Tragic accident, Professor."

You did not look up from your notes.

"How tragic?"

George glanced sideways at you. You kept your eyes down. Your quill kept moving. Totally fine. Completely unbothered.

"Turns out," he said, "Hufflepuffs fight dirty."

Several people snorted. Someone behind you whispered something you didn't catch.

Your quill paused.

Professor Whitmore blinked once. "I'm not asking."

"It was violent," George continued anyway, because apparently he had decided that this was how seventh year was beginning. Hand over his heart now. The full performance. "Unexpected. Unprovoked, really. Life-changing, if I'm being honest."

Fred had his head on the desk. His shoulders were shaking.

---

"Unprovoked," you muttered, before you could stop yourself.

"Did you say something?" George asked pleasantly.

You said nothing.

Whitmore pinched the bridge of her nose. "Did you receive medical attention?"

George looked directly at you.

"She refused to apologise properly."

The room went delighted.

Your face went hot in approximately half a second.

"It was an accident," you snapped before your brain could intervene.

The room exploded.

George's grin was immediate. Victorious. The most annoying thing you had ever seen in your seventeen years of living.

"There she is," he said softly, like he'd been waiting for it.

Whitmore looked between the two of you for a moment with the expression of someone revising their expectations for the year downward in real time.

---

The first ten minutes passed in tense, pointed silence — at least on your end.

George appeared to be perfectly relaxed, because George was always perfectly relaxed, because George Weasley had apparently been born without the ability to feel awkward about anything and it was deeply unfair.

You kept your eyes on the board.

You took notes.

Then Professor Whitmore set a wooden box onto the front desk with a calm that immediately made the back of your neck prickle.

"Since some of you," she said, "seem incapable of sitting near each other without interrupting the first ten minutes of class, your seating will be assigned randomly for the remainder of this week."

A wave of complaints rolled through the room.

You immediately got an uneasy feeling.

---

"The girl will draw first."

Hannah leaned toward you, eyes wide. "If you get George Weasley I am going to actually scream."

"I'll scream first," you said, "In terror".

---

One by one, girls went up. Laughter. Groaning. The scraping of chairs. You watched with a growing sense of dread that you told yourself was completely irrational.

There were other people left in this room. The odds were fine. The odds were perfectly reasonable.

Then your name.

You walked to the front. Reached into the box. Pulled out a folded slip.

Unfolded it.

Froze.

G. WEASLEY.

Your soul left your body so quickly you almost heard it go.

"Oh," you said, very quietly. "You've got to be kidding me."

Hannah appeared at your shoulder, looked down, and immediately bent over laughing. Silent, shaking, completely useless laughter.

"No," you hissed, turning to face her. "No. This is rigged. This is genuinely, cosmically rigged—"

Across the room, George looked up from whatever he'd been doing, caught the expression on your face, and his grin started slow and spread wide and you wanted to fold yourself into the slip of paper and disappear.

Absolutely not.

---

Two seats away, a Gryffindor girl named Clara, who had been visibly, painfully devoted to George Weasley since approximately fourth year, perked up the moment she heard his name float across the room.

You turned to her immediately.

"Clara," you said, urgent, already holding out the paper. "Do you want this? Right now. Free of charge."

Her eyes went wide. "...Seriously?"

"Yes. Genuinely. Please."

"You'd just — give up sitting next to George Weasley?"

"Gladly," you said, with enormous feeling.

Clara opened her mouth—

Professor Whitmore called your name just before you could hand it over.

You froze.

Professor Whitmore was looking directly at you over the top of her glasses. The entire room had gone quiet with the specific quality of people sensing entertainment.

"...Yes?"

"Are you attempting to exchange your assigned seating?"

"No—"

"You literally are," Hannah whispered, unhelpfully, at your shoulder.

Whitmore held out one hand. "The paper, please."

You walked it to the front like someone approaching something very final.

Whitmore unfolded it. Read it. Her mouth did something that was almost, almost, a twitch.

"Mr. Weasley," she said.

---

From the third row Fred made a noise like he had just witnessed something sacred. George himself had the expression of a man whose birthday had arrived early and brought everything he'd asked for.

"I don't mind swapping," Clara offered quickly, half rising from her chair.

"Of course you don't," Anna muttered.

"The purpose of randomly assigned seating," Whitmore said, with the patience of someone who had been teaching for twenty years and had seen everything, "is to prevent exactly this kind of selective behaviour."

You stared at the floor. "I wasn't selectively behaving."

Whitmore raised one eyebrow.

"You attempted the exchange," she said, "in less than four seconds of reading the name."

The class erupted.

"Oh my God," Hannah wheezed.

Your ears were on fire.

"Miss," Whitmore said, and she definitely sounded entertained now, which was somehow worse than if she'd been stern about it. "Sit down, please."

There was no dignity left to preserve. You had checked. There was nothing.

You walked toward George's desk while approximately twenty people watched like this was the most compelling thing that had happened to them all year.

George leaned back slightly in his chair as you approached — easy, unhurried, eyes bright with laughter he was only barely containing — and you dropped into the seat beside him hard enough to rattle the table.

"You wound me," he said softly.

"Move your bag."

"That's not very welcoming."

"Move. Your. Bag."

He moved his bag. Slowly. Still smiling.

"This is your fault somehow," you said, pulling your books out aggressively.

"I'm flattered you think I have that level of influence over destiny."

---

You stared straight ahead and refused to look sideways and arranged your things with the focused energy of someone performing I am completely fine to an audience of twenty.

Then, quiet, near your shoulder:

"You really tried to trade me away?"

You looked at him despite yourself.

His grin had shifted into something worse — still amused, still insufferable, but with an edge of something that looked almost like genuine offence. Theatrical, maybe. But almost genuine.

"You were offering me to Clara," he said, like he was still processing it. "Like a livestock."

"She likes you."

"And you don't." He tilted his head. "So, you thought you'd just — choose for me."

"I was being thoughtful—"

"I'm a person," he said, hand to his chest.

"Debatable," you said, and turned back to your notes.

A pause.

Then, lower, just for you, and with something in his voice that was softer than the usual wind-up:

"For what it's worth," he said, "Clara wouldn't have kneed me."

Your quill stopped.

"That," you said carefully, "is not the compliment you think it is."

George smiled at his parchment.

"Wasn't meant to be a compliment," he said.

You looked at him.

He looked back.

And there it was — that expression again, the one from the handshake line, the one that wasn't the grin and wasn't the tease, something quieter that sat behind his eyes and made your chest do something you needed it to stop doing—

"Begin your work," Professor Whitmore said sharply.

You looked back at your parchment so fast you nearly knocked over your ink.

---

The problem with being seated next to George Weasley, you discovered over the following thirty minutes, was not the talking.

The talking you could handle. You had years of practice ignoring the talking.

The problem was the not talking.

Because when George Weasley wasn't talking he was just — there. Right there. Less than a foot away. And he had the specific quality of presence that made the air feel slightly different in his immediate vicinity, which was not something you'd ever wanted to know about him and yet here you were, knowing it, sitting very straight and staring very hard at your textbook and absolutely not thinking about it.

You were not looking at him.

Your eyes were on your notes.

Your eyes were on your notes.

They slid sideways.

He was writing, left hand moving across the parchment, jaw slightly set in concentration, and there was something deeply unfair about the fact that he looked like that when he was just sitting there doing normal things like existing—

You snapped your eyes back to your own parchment.

Stop it, you told yourself firmly. Stop it immediately.

You wrote three words. Looked at your textbook.

Your eyes slid sideways again.

He'd pushed his sleeves up at some point, which was — that was — irrelevant. That was completely irrelevant.

You looked back at your notes.

You had written the same sentence twice.

You crossed one out with perhaps more force than necessary.

---

"You owe me," George said, twenty minutes into the silence, still looking at his parchment.

Your head snapped up. "I don't."

"For the injury."

"It was an accident."

"Mhm."

"It was."

George glanced at you sideways, eyes already doing that thing where they were sparkling slightly more than was strictly necessary for a Potions class.

"Right," he said. "Accident. Sure."

You narrowed your eyes. "It was."

He leaned back slightly, tapping his quill against the desk with a rhythm that was going to drive you completely insane.

"I'm just saying," he said, tone entirely too conversational, "of all the places you could've gone — arm, shoulder, maybe just my dignity, which you've been attacking for years — you went straight there." He paused. "Interesting choice."

Fred, somewhere behind you, made a choking sound and then pretended to cough.

George's mouth twitched.

Your ears went red. "I did not choose anything—"

"That's the fascinating part," he said, tilting his head toward you now, like this was a genuine academic discussion he was very invested in. "I think you did. Subconsciously."

"I didn't—"

"Instinct," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "Pure instinct. Which raises a very interesting question about what's going on subconsciously—"

"Nothing is going on subconsciously—"

"I have to ask," he continued, as though you hadn't spoken, settling his chin in his hand and looking at you with the full force of his attention, which was a lot of attention and you wished he'd aim it somewhere else, "why there, specifically? You've got options. Plenty of them. Arm. Shin. Face, even — I feel like you've thought about the face before—"

"Multiple times—" you started, and then heard yourself, and stopped.

George looked delighted.

"See!" he said. "Instinct!"

"That is not what I meant—"

"And yet."

"Weasley—"

"I'm just saying," he said, turning back to his notes with the air of someone wrapping up a very satisfying argument, "either you've got terrifying reflexes, which, credit where it's due — or you hate me significantly more than you've been letting on." A pause. "Which means all this time you've been letting on a lot, so."

"I do hate you," you said, with great conviction.

"Mm. Noted." He wrote something down. "Still didn't answer the question."

"I'm not answering the question—"

"Shame." He sighed, and the sigh was theatrical and awful. "I was enjoying the angry face. It's very consistent. Almost charming, honestly."

You turned to look at him fully. "Stop talking."

George didn't look up.

"Make me," he said pleasantly, already smiling to himself, and turned a page.

You stared at the side of his face.

You looked back at your notes.

---

You wrote absolutely nothing for the next four minutes because your brain had temporarily gone offline and was refusing to reboot.

The class settled into something that was almost — almost — peaceful.

Whitmore was explaining something at the board. Everyone was writing. The scratching of quills, the occasional turn of a page, the distant sound of someone's cauldron doing something it probably shouldn't.

Normal. Fine.

You had successfully not looked sideways for six whole minutes.

You were, arguably, winning.

Then Whitmore pointed to a diagram on the board and said to cross-reference page 214, and you reached for your textbook at exactly the same moment George reached for his, it was stack on top of the other and your hands—

Hit.

Stopped.

The world also appeared to stop, briefly, though that might have been your imagination.

You both looked down at the same time.

Your hand was on top of his on the spine of the textbook. His hand was warm. His fingers were right there and you were suddenly extremely aware of every single point of contact and your brain was doing something very unhelpful—

George looked down at your hand.

Then up at your face.

Then back down at your hand, still not moving, a slow smile starting at the corner of his mouth.

"You gonna move," he said, very quietly, "or should I just start telling people we held hands?"

You yanked your hand back so fast you knocked your inkwell sideways, grabbed it with your other hand before it could spill, and sat there gripping an inkwell with slightly too much force while your face achieved a temperature you hadn't previously thought possible.

George pulled the textbook toward him with great calm.

Found page 214.

Slid it between the two of you without a word.

"Page 214," he said helpfully.

"I know what page—"

"You seem a little distracted."

"I'm not—"

"Your ears are pink."

"What no—"

"Yeah, right." He tilted his head. "They go pink when you're—"

"They do not go pink—"

"They really do," he said. "They're doing it right now. It's very—" he seemed to consider the word, and you watched him consider it, and you should have been looking at page 214 but you were watching him consider a word like an absolute fool— "obvious," he finished.

You stared at him.

From beside you, George was quiet for a moment.

Then, softer — and this was the worst part, the part that was going to live in your head at three in the morning — softer and lower and without the teasing edge,

"Page 214 has the diagram for the base compound. You'll want to copy the left column."

You looked up.

He was already writing, not looking at you, jaw set in that same slight concentration from earlier, and there was nothing on his face now, no grin, no raised eyebrow, just — him, just George, sitting there being completely normal—

Your chest did something you had no category for.

You looked at page 214.

You copied the left column.

You did not look sideways for the rest of class.

You looked sideways approximately eleven more times.

---

You were absolutely winning.

At least, that's what you told yourself.

It was past curfew, the castle had gone dark and quiet, and somewhere on the third floor Hannah was counting to sixty with the energy of someone who took hide and seek very seriously even at seventeen years old, which was how you'd ended up here — sprinting up to the fourth floor, robes flying, deeply committed to winning a game that had started as a way to avoid going to bed and had somehow escalated into playing a game.

The low stone ledge near the suit of armour was, frankly, genius.

You pressed yourself between the wall and the armour's shoulder, feet balanced on the ledge, and waited.

The castle was quiet. Torches burning low. Somewhere far below, Hannah's footsteps echoed faintly.

You shifted your weight slightly.

Your foot slipped.

You froze, arms out, pressed awkwardly at a forty-five degree angle between cold stone wall and colder suit of armour, in what could only be described as a position of profound dignity.

Footsteps echoed from the other end of the corridor.

Several sets. Moving quickly. Hushed voices and poorly suppressed laughter.

You held your breath.

Please be anyone. Please be literally anyone who is not a prefect or a teacher or—

The footsteps stopped.

Hushed urgent whispering. Then one voice, slightly louder than the others;

"Go ahead, I'll catch up."

More footsteps, retreating around the corner.

Silence.

Then,

"What are you doing?"

George Weasley.

Could this get any worse.

Of course it was George Weasley. Past curfew, fourth floor, in the dark, and the universe had still managed to deliver him specifically.

You went completely still.

Maybe he hadn't seen you.

Maybe if you didn't move for long enough he would simply leave.

"...Hello?" he added.

You did not move.

A pause. Then, slightly amused, in the tone of someone who had already seen everything:

"Anyone there?"

Your brain made a decision so fast you didn't have time to stop it.

You dropped down from the ledge, landing with a soft thud, straightened up immediately, cleared your throat, and said — in a completely different voice, lower, somewhat unspecified in terms of accent,

"It is I. A completely different person. Definitely not anyone you know."

Silence.

Then George.

A slow, very knowing pause that lasted just long enough to be excruciating.

"...Right," he said.

You nodded firmly, even though the corridor was mostly dark. "Yes. I am — unrelated. To anyone. In this castle."

---

"You sound very familiar," he said.

You waved a hand dismissively. "Many people say that."

"Do they."

"Yes. I have a very common voice."

A long pause.

Then, gently, in the tone of someone choosing his words carefully to avoid laughing,

"Okay, unrelated. What are you doing wedged behind a suit of armour in the middle of the night?"

You froze slightly. "...Mind your business."

"That sounds exactly like someone I know."

"I assure you," you said, with great conviction, "I am not that person."

George hummed. One step closer. You could hear the smile in it.

You covered your face with both hands.

Because of course he knew. He'd known from the first word. He'd probably known before you'd opened your mouth.

"...It's you," he said. Very calmly. Very simply.

You shook your head behind your hands.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

A pause. Then, softer, like he was genuinely trying not to laugh and losing,

"You're very bad at being mysterious."

"I was convincing—"

"You changed your voice."

"I thought it worked."

"It didn't."

"It might have worked on someone else—"

"It wouldn't have."

You peeked through your fingers.

He was standing a few feet away, lit faintly by the low torchlight, hands in his pockets, smiling properly — not the teasing grin, not the competitive gleam, just genuinely, warmly amused in a way that didn't feel mean at all, which was somehow so much worse than if it had.

You dropped your hands.

"I hate you," you said.

"No you don't," he said automatically, easy, like it was just what he said back when you said that now.

You scowled.

Then something occurred to you.

You looked at him. The slightly rumpled robes. The way he'd sent his friends ahead. The specific kind of casual that meant he was performing casual.

"...What are you doing here?" you said.

George opened his mouth.

Closed it.

"Walking," he said.

"Past curfew."

"I like the castle at night."

"You sent your friends ahead," you said. "Where were you lot sneaking off to?"

George's expression did something brief and very telling.

"Nowhere," he said.

"Nowhere," you mimicked.

"Scenic midnight stroll."

"On the fourth floor."

"We like the architecture."

You stared at him.

He stared back, perfectly pleasant, in the torchlight, looking completely unbothered about being caught past curfew by someone who had just been hiding behind a suit of armour doing a voice.

"You were sneaking out," you said.

"That is a very serious accusation."

"You were—"

"And you," he said pleasantly, tilting his head, "were hiding behind a suit of armour past curfew doing a different voice. So." He raised both eyebrows. "Shall we both mind our business?"

A pause.

You closed your mouth.

He smiled.

It was deeply annoying that he had a point.

"Fine," you said.

"Okay, then," he agreed.

---

A beat of quiet settled between you — the castle dark and still around you, the distant sound of Hannah's footsteps somewhere two floors below, the torches burning low and warm. It was the first time in seven years that silence between you hadn't felt like a standoff.

It just felt like — quiet.

"So," he said.

"So," you said.

"We're both," he said, "technically, in a corridor we're not supposed to be in. Past curfew."

"I'm playing hide and seek," you said proudly.

He blinked. Then his face did something extraordinary.

"You're — hiding," he said slowly. "In a game. Past curfew. On the fourth floor."

"It's a serious game."

"Of hide and seek."

"And?" you said.

"At seventeen—"

"Shut up," you said.

He pressed his lips together very firmly.

"Right," he said, in a voice that meant he was storing this away permanently.

"If you tell anyone—"

"I'm not going to tell anyone," he said, and he sounded genuine, which somehow made it worse because now you couldn't even be properly defensive about it. "Who's seeking?"

"Hannah."

---

He glanced down the dark stairwell. Somewhere below, very faint, footsteps and a whispered where are you—

"She's getting closer," he observed.

"I know—"

"Your hiding spot wasn't great," he said. "The armour rattled."

"It did not—"

"It did," he said. "I heard it from the end of the corridor." He glanced sideways at the suit of armour, then back at you, then at the dark alcove set into the wall two feet further down. "That one's better."

You looked at it.

It was, objectively, better. Deeper set, darker, the shadow of a tapestry covering most of the opening.

You looked back at him.

He looked back at you with an expression of complete innocence.

"Why are you helping me," you said slowly.

He shrugged. "Seemed rude not to."

Hannah's footsteps, closer now, the sound of her voice carrying up the stairwell — fourth floor, she'd go fourth floor—

You looked at the alcove.

You looked at him.

"If you tell her where I am—" you started.

"I'm not going to tell her where you are," he said, like this was obvious.

You hesitated for one more second — seven years, four to three, the rain match, the eggs, the Incident, the classroom, the hand on the textbook—

---

Then Hannah's footsteps hit the fourth floor landing and you made a decision, ducked into the alcove, and pressed yourself back into the shadow of the tapestry.

You realised this approximately one second after George stepped in beside you.

You turned to stare at him. He looked back, completely unruffled, in an alcove that was large enough for one person comfortably and two people not comfortably, with approximately four inches between you, and he had the audacity to look like this was perfectly normal.

"What are you doing—" you breathed.

"Hannah will see me standing in the corridor," he whispered back, very reasonably, very quietly, very close.

"So go somewhere else—"

"There isn't time—"

Hannah's footsteps were right there, right outside, and you both went completely silent.

You were extremely aware of the fact that you could see, in the low light from the corridor, the specific expression on his face, which was focused and trying-not-to-smile and right there, and your heart was doing something completely unreasonable that you were attributing firmly to the adrenaline of nearly getting caught past curfew.

Hannah's footsteps slowed.

Stopped.

A long pause.

Then, muttering to herself: "...fourth floor, where would she even—" and then footsteps again, moving away, up toward the fifth floor.

Silence.

Neither of you moved for a moment.

Then,

"She's gone," George said quietly.

"I know," you said.

Neither of you moved.

Then you stepped out of the alcove, smoothed down your robes, and cleared your throat.

"That didn't happen," you said.

"Agreed," he said, stepping out beside you, hands back in his pockets, like four inches in a dark alcove past curfew was just something that happened and neither of you needed to think about it.

A pause.

Then, quietly, with the corner of his mouth doing something small.

"Do it again."

You blinked. "What?"

"The voice." He tilted his head. "It was entertaining."

Your face went red. In the dark. Which was wasted, frankly. "No—"

"Come on."

"Absolutely not—"

"Just once—"

"I am not performing for you—"

"You literally just did," he said, entirely reasonably.

"That was a survival situation—"

"From hide and seek," he said, and he was properly smiling now, warm and quiet and right there—

From somewhere up the stairs — Fred's voice, hushed and impatient,

"George are you COMING—"

George glanced up the stairwell. Back at you.

---

Something in his expression shifted — just briefly, just a flicker, something that looked almost like he didn't particularly want to go.

Then he stepped back.

"I knew it was you the whole time," he said. "Just so you know."

You frowned. "Then why did you ask?"

He looked at you for a moment. Quiet, unhurried, in the low torchlight.

"Because I wanted to hear what you'd say," he said simply.

And then he turned and headed up the stairs toward Fred's voice, unhurried, hands in his pockets, and you stood there in the dark fourth floor corridor alone and said absolutely nothing for a full ten seconds.

Because I wanted to hear what you'd say.

Just like that. Like it was nothing.

Like it wasn't currently sitting in the middle of your chest doing something warm and inconvenient.

From three floors up, faintly;

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"I'm not smiling."

"You're absolutely smiling—"

"Walk, Fred."

Their voices faded.

The corridor went quiet.

You stood there for another moment.

Then, from two floors below, Hannah's voice drifting up the stairwell;

"...I KNOW YOU'RE UP THERE—"

You pressed yourself back behind the suit of armour.

You were smiling.

You stopped immediately.

---

Later, back in the Hufflepuff common room, Hannah dropped onto the sofa beside you.

"I found Anna," she announced. "Behind the tapestry on the fifth floor. Very undignified." A pause. "I never found you."

"Yep," you agreed.

"Where were you?"

"Fourth floor," you said. "Alcove behind the tapestry near the suit of armour."

Hannah looked at you.

"That's a good spot," she said.

"Yes," you said.

A pause.

"You seem weird," Hannah said.

"No, what do you mean," you said.

Hannah looked at you for a long moment with the expression she'd been wearing since third year every time the subject came up.

"Okay," she said, in the tone that meant she knew everything and was choosing, for now, to say nothing.

You stared at the fire.

He's so annoying, you thought.

A/n: and thats for tdy... how was it?

Comment to be tagged on the next part!!

Shut Up, Weasley

Pairing: George Weasley x hufflepuff!reader

Summary: You and George Weasley start off as rivals who constantly clash at Hogwarts. Over time, the rivalry slowly turns into something more.

Warnings: no use of y/n

Cw: a little angst, slowburn

Wc: 2k+

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (coming soon)

The match was in 2 weeks.

You knew this the way you knew your own heartbeat beat constantly, involuntarily, with a low-grade awareness that lived just underneath everything else you were doing. Six days. The countdown had been running since the schedule went up and it got louder every morning you woke up, louder every time you picked up your bat, louder every time you looked at the scoreboard in your head.

Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor. Four to three. His lead.

You needed this one.

It wasn't just the scoreboard though it was partly the scoreboard, you weren't going to pretend otherwise even to yourself. It was seven years of everything. Seven years of rain matches and breakfast conversations and a handshake line where he'd said something soft and then walked away before you could respond, and all of it had been building toward this match like a wave that had been travelling a very long time and was finally close enough to shore to feel the ground.

You needed to win. You needed it the way you sometimes needed things you couldn't fully explain in your chest, in your hands, deep and wordless and absolutely non-negotiable.

Which meant you were operating that week at a very particular frequency. Focused. Sharp. Slightly short-tempered in the way that happened when something mattered too much and you couldn't find the dial to turn it down. Hannah called it your match face. Anna called it genuinely terrifying and took a slightly wider berth around you in the corridors. You called it prepared, and you stood by that, and you were not interested in alternative interpretations.

The problem was that prepared and grumpy looked identical from the outside.

And the outside, that week, included George Weasley sitting less than a foot away from you every single morning, noticing absolutely everything with the focused attention of someone who had been cataloguing you for years and considered it a hobby.

He noticed immediately.

---

That was the thing about George — he always noticed things about you first, faster than anyone else, with the accuracy of someone who had spent considerable time paying attention whether you'd asked him to or not.

He found all of it genuinely, visibly entertaining.

"You're in a mood," he said, the first morning, not even looking up from his textbook. Completely calm about it. Like he was reporting weather.

"I'm not in anything," you said.

"Your face says otherwise."

"I don't have a face—"

"Very tightly wound," he said, turning a page with great composure. "Like a spring someone's been winding since Monday. Very consistent." He paused. "Impressive, really."

You pulled the shared ingredient tray back to the centre of the desk — he'd moved it three inches toward his side without looking up, a habit that had apparently just materialised in the last week and you were choosing not to examine and you told yourself that responding would only make it worse.

It made it worse anyway.

Because the thing about George Weasley, the foundational thing you'd established across seven years, was that silence didn't deter him. It just gave him more space to work with. The commentary kept coming —small, relentless, dropped into the quiet of class like stones into still water. The running observations of someone who had decided that your grumpiness was both interesting and deeply amusing, and who saw absolutely no reason to stop mentioning it.

"Has anyone ever told you," he said the following morning, settling his chin in his hand and looking at you with that expression — the warm, entertained one that you had started to notice was aimed exclusively at you, calibrated specifically for you, which was information you were managing very carefully — "that you are extremely easy to read when you're stressed?"

You looked at him. "Has anyone ever told you," you said, with great precision, "that you are the single most irritating person in this entire castle?"

"Multiple times," he said pleasantly. "I take it as a compliment."

"It is not a compliment—"

"And yet." He turned back to his parchment, utterly unbothered, and then added, quietly, almost to himself, "You're here with me."

You looked up to him. You were so done.

---

You got a letter from your mother.

It had arrived earlier that week, tucked between the ordinary post, and you'd recognised the handwriting before you'd even touched the envelope. Neat. Precise. Slightly slanted to the right, the way it had always been, the way you'd known since you were eleven years old standing at the post table in the Great Hall feeling something go tight in your chest before you'd even broken the seal.

You hadn't opened it.

You knew what it said without reading it. You always knew — the school newsletter had gone home to parents the week before, and your mother read the school newsletter the way some people read intelligence briefings. Thoroughly. Critically. Looking for evidence that confirmed what she already believed. The match would have been listed. Your name beside it. And your mother had opinions about Quidditch the way she had opinions about everything you did — delivered precisely, without heat, in the measured tone of someone who wasn't angry, just perpetually, quietly disappointed.

Which was always worse than angry. Anger was loud and quick and it ended. Disappointment just sat there.

I don't understand why you continue to pursue something you're evidently not excelling at.

Third year. You still had it somewhere at the bottom of a trunk. You weren't sure why you'd kept it. You weren't sure why you kept any of them.

You'd tucked this one to the bottom of your bag, underneath your textbooks, and carried it around all week like a stone you couldn't put down. It sat there through every class, every meal, every practice session, every time you reached for something and felt its weight and thought about opening it and decided, again, not to. The match was in six days. Five days. Four. There was no version of reading that letter right now that ended with you being okay, and you needed to be okay.

---

Hannah and Anna knew about your mother the way people knew about the weather — in pieces, from things you'd let slip over the years, from the specific quality of quiet you went when letters arrived. They didn't push. They had both learned, separately and then together, that pushing was the wrong approach with you. They just waited. Stayed near. Moved over on sofas.

You loved them for it more than you'd ever said out loud.

You didn't talk about your mother. Not because you couldn't, but because talking about it gave it weight it didn't deserve, let it take up room in your life that it had no right to occupy. Your mother's voice was loud enough in your head without giving it more space in the world.

So you carried it instead.

You were very good at carrying things.

You had been carrying things for a long time.

George picked up on it — not the letter, not specifically, because he didn't know about the letter and nobody at Hogwarts really knew about any of it but the general shape of something else is wrong, the specific texture of this week's quiet that was different from the usual pre-match tension. He identified it somewhere around the second day, with the accuracy that came from years of paying close attention, and his response was to poke at it with the cheerful relentlessness of someone who believed that getting a reaction was always better than the alternative.

---

"You've barely eaten since Monday," he told you, falling into step beside you in the corridor with the ease of someone who had decided he was allowed to do that now.

"I eat fine," you said.

"Half a piece of toast this morning," he said. "I watched."

"Hannah," you said immediately.

"She mentioned it," he said, unrepentant. "She's concerned."

"She should mind her business."

"She cares about you," he said, and he said it simply, without any performance in it, and something about the simplicity of it made you look at him briefly and then back at the corridor ahead. "I'm also concerned, for what it's worth."

"You're not concerned, you're entertained—"

"If I said it was both," he said.

You looked at him.

He looked back, and there was something underneath the easy expression — something that was genuinely, simply there — and for a second you almost said something real. Some version of it. The letter. The weight of the thing at the bottom of your bag. The particular exhaustion of carrying something that had no resolution, that just kept arriving in the same neat handwriting week after week, year after year.

But you didn't say any of that.

"Drop it," you said.

He immediately dropped it.

You kept walking.

---

You told yourself that was the right call, because it was, because you didn't say those things and certainly not to George Weasley, and the match was in four days and you had more important things to be doing than explaining your mother to someone who had grown up in a house loud enough with love that he probably didn't have a frame of reference for the alternative.

The Quidditch practice that day felt wrong from the very beginning.

Normally the pitch was where the rivalry lived most honestly. It was the place where everything between you was clean and direct — the sharp banter, the competitive edge, the constant low-level argument that had been running since third year and which you had both, in your own ways, come to rely on. The pitch was where you were most yourself and he was most himself, and somehow the honesty of that made it easier, not harder, to be in each other's company.

But you were tired. The letter was in your bag. The match was close enough now that the pressure of it had moved from your chest into your hands, into the way you held your bat, into the set of your jaw when you watched the Bludgers arc across the grey sky.

---

When George pulled up beside you halfway through drills — easy, familiar, the way he always did — and said, in that light tone that was usually the opening move of something longer:

"Your aim's off."

You just said, "Okay."

And flew on.

He didn't say anything for a moment. You could feel him watching you — the surprised pause of someone whose serve had come back wrong.

"I said your aim is off," he said again. Slightly differently. The tone of someone checking whether the first version had arrived correctly.

"I heard you," you said, adjusting your grip. "Okay."

That was it. No snap. No mind your own business, Weasley. No thirty-second argument about whether your aim was actually off or whether he was just saying it to get a reaction. Just — okay. Flat. Quiet. And then you were flying toward the other end of the pitch and he was still hovering where you'd left him.

He didn't follow you.

Later — near the end of practice, a Bludger coming in fast from the left — he missed it. Cleanly, simply missed it, which George Weasley virtually never did, and the Bludger sailed wide and Fred turned to look at him and then followed the line of his gaze to the far end of the pitch where you were drilling alone.

"Oi," Fred said.

George looked at the Bludger.

He said nothing.

But he looked at you for the rest of practice. You could feel it, the same way you'd always been able to feel his attention — specific and directional, like a compass that pointed your way. Usually it made you want to snap at him.

This time it just made you feel tired.

---

After the practice, he immediately was finding for you.

And then, one evening, walking back from the library with your bag heavy on your shoulder and the letter still unread at the bottom of it, he fell into step beside you like he always did now, and for a while it was almost — fine. Easy. The quiet between you had been different lately, since the hide and seek night, since the alcove, and sometimes it felt less like a battlefield and more like just — two people walking.

And then he started talking.

"Imagine being this stressed about a Quidditch match."

You ignored him.

The way he always talked — following a thought out loud, connecting dots, filling space with that easy conversational energy that had been getting under your skin for years.

"You've been wound up all week," he said. "Even more than usual before a match. And I thought about it and I reckon—" a small pause, casual, just thinking out loud, "—it's something at home, yeah? Because it's not just the match. You get letters sometimes and you go quiet after, and I just—" another pause, and then a small laugh, light and easy, the kind used to soften something, the kind that meant he was about to make a joke— "I mean, at least your mother writes to you. Imagine having one who didn't — who just didn't bother at all"

"What’s wrong? Afraid your mum's finally going to admit she prefers the winning teams?"

He stopped.

Not because you said anything.

Because you hadn't said anything.

Because you'd gone completely, absolutely still in the middle of the corridor, and the silence had a quality to it that stopped the words in his throat before he'd even finished them.

You were looking at the middle distance.

Your jaw was set. Your fist had closed around the strap of your bag — knuckles pale, fingers tight, the only thing you were controlling right now because everything else was very suddenly requiring a great deal of effort to keep in place.

The corridor was very quiet.

You could feel him looking at you. Feel the exact moment it landed on him, the half second where he heard what he'd said against whatever he was seeing on your face, the specific silence of someone realising they'd stepped on something they couldn't see.

You turned your head.

Looked at him once.

Just once.

He was already looking back — expression open, unguarded, something moving behind it that wasn't any of the usual things. Not the grin or the tease or the warmth. Something that looked like the moment a person realises they've broken something without meaning to and can't immediately see how bad it is.

You looked at him for one second.

Then you turned and walked away.

Not fast. Not storming. Just walking, steady and even, your fist still closed around your bag strap, the corridor quiet behind you. You didn't look back. You didn't say a word. You kept your breathing deliberate and your pace even and you turned the corner and kept going.

---

George stood in the corridor.

He stood there for a moment that went on longer than it should have.

He replayed what he'd said.

He'd meant it as nothing. He'd meant it as the kind of throwaway thing you said — the kind of joke you made about your own family to fill space, to soften something, to keep the conversation from getting too heavy. He had six brothers and a mother who sent him sandwiches and he'd never once in his life thought about what it meant to say something like that to someone who—

He thought about the letters.

The way you went quiet after.

The specific quality of this week's quiet, underneath everything else.

He thought about one second.

Your face.

The fist around your bag strap.

Something settled in his chest like a stone.

"George."

Fred was at the other end of the corridor.

George looked at the corner you'd turned.

He didn't move.

"What happened?" Fred asked, quieter now, reading something in George's expression.

George said nothing for a moment.

"I said something," he said finally.

"What did you say?"

George looked at the corner.

"I don't know exactly," he said. "I don't think I knew what I was saying."

Which was true.

And was also, in every way that mattered, not an excuse.

---

That evening, in the Hufflepuff common room, Hannah and Anna sat on either side of you by the fire, and you knew from the way they'd arranged themselves — the careful positioning, the prepared quality of the silence — that they'd talked to each other before you'd come in and agreed on an approach.

You stared at the fire and waited.

"You know he didn't mean it like that," Hannah said, finally. Carefully.

"I know," you said.

"He just talks," Anna said, from your other side, leaning her shoulder gently against yours. "You know how he is. He says things and he doesn't always—"

"I know," you said again.

A pause.

"Then why are you still upset?" Hannah asked. Not pushing — just asking, the way Hannah asked things, with the specific warmth of someone who already knew the answer was complicated and wasn't going to rush you toward it.

"I'm not upset," you said.

They both looked at you.

You looked at the fire.

The flames moved. Someone across the common room laughed at something. The portrait on the wall snored faintly.

The thing was — they were right. You knew George hadn't meant it. You'd known it in the moment, could hear the shape of it — a throwaway joke, a light touch, someone reaching for easy without knowing the ground wasn't solid there. He hadn't known. He couldn't have known, because nobody at Hogwarts knew, because you'd carried it quietly and carefully for seven years and gotten very good at making sure it didn't show.

That wasn't the problem.

The casual, unthinking like a mother who wrote was automatically something to be grateful for, something that meant care, something that was fundamentally better than nothing. The assumption built into two words that your mother's attention — her newsletters and her letters and her precise, slightly slanted handwriting — was a gift.

And the problem was that it had landed in the part of you that you kept quiet and carried around and never showed anyone, and for one second in that corridor the wall had cracked. Just slightly. Just a hairline fracture that wouldn't have been visible to anyone who didn't know where to look.

But George had been looking.

George was always looking.

"It just hit close," you said, finally. Quietly. Still looking at the fire. "That's all."

Hannah put her hand over yours.

You didn't pull away.

"I know," she said. Soft.

You sat there for a while, the three of you, the fire warm on your face, and you thought about the match in four days and the letter at the bottom of your bag and the way George had looked at you in the corridor — that open, unguarded, oh expression, the one that meant he'd realised something and wasn't sure what to do with it — and you told yourself, firmly, that none of that mattered.

The match mattered.

Winning mattered.

You wanted to prove your mother wrong.

---

That was all.

In the Gryffindor common room, Fred sat across from George and watched him stare at the fire for a very long time.

George had been doing this for twenty-three minutes. Fred had counted.

"What happened?" Fred said, eventually.

George turned the problem over in silence for a moment before answering. He had the focused, slightly troubled expression of someone doing calculations that kept coming out wrong.

"I said something," he said. "I was just — talking. I do that. I say things without thinking and usually it's fine, it's just — words, it doesn't mean anything, and then she—" He stopped. Looked at the fire. "She didn't snap at me. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me once and walked away."

"What did you say?" Fred asked.

George told him.

Fred was quiet for a moment.

"Ah," he said.

"What does ah mean—"

"It means I understand why she walked away," Fred said, not unkindly. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "What do you actually know about her? Not the Quidditch. Not the rivalry. Her."

George opened his mouth.

And then closed it.

And sat with the question.

He knew her aim and her backswing and her three-tap quill habit and the way her ears went pink when she was flustered. He knew her match face and her rain match face and the face she made when she was trying not to smile. He knew she'd eaten half a piece of toast on Monday morning, and that she organised her notes in columns when she was stressed, and that she said I hate you the way other people said stop it — reflexive, not serious, aimed at him specifically like he'd earned a designated version of it.

He knew all of that.

He didn't know what the letters said. He didn't know what at least your mother meant to someone who received them and didn't open them and carried them around for days at the bottom of a bag.

He didn't know almost anything, he realised. Not really. Not the things that mattered.

"Not much," he said.

Fred nodded. "Yeah."

George looked at the fire.

"That's a problem," he said, quietly. Not a question.

"I think it's been a problem for a while," Fred said. "You've just been too busy annoying her to notice."

George said nothing for a long time.

The fire crackled.

"She didn't fight back at practice," he said, finally. "I said her aim was off and she just said okay. And I didn't know what to do with that."

Fred looked at him carefully.

"I know," he said.

"It was worse," George said. "It was worse than when she argues."

"I know," Fred said again, softer.

George stared at the fire.

Something had shifted in his chest, somewhere over the last few days, and he hadn't been looking at it directly because he was George Weasley and he didn't do that, he made jokes and he wound people up and he kept things light. But it was there, sitting quietly in the cavity of his ribcage, warm and specific and pointed directly at you.

He didn't know what to call it yet.

He knew it was a problem.

He tried to fix it the next day.

---

He found you in the corridor before class, which he'd clearly planned — he was leaning against the wall at a point he could only have reached by leaving the common room early, which was not something George Weasley did for non-emergency reasons, and when you came around the corner and saw him you slowed down and your expression went through three things very quickly: recognition, something softer and unguarded that lasted less than a second, and then the careful composed neutral that you put on when you were deciding how much to show.

He opened with a joke.

He didn't mean to. It was just what came out — the habit of seven years, the only register he'd ever had with you, the way he'd always started conversations and never once had to think about whether it was the right approach because it had always, eventually, worked.

"I've been thinking," he said, in the familiar easy tone, "that you walk extremely fast for someone with—"

You went cold.

It was subtle. It wouldn't have been visible to someone who didn't know you. But he knew you — he knew you in the specific detailed way of someone who had been paying attention for a very long time — and he watched it happen. The fraction of warmth that had been in your expression, the small openness, quietly closed over. Not angry. Not upset. Just — shut. The door, the one he'd accidentally found the week before, closing with a soft and final click.

He stopped mid-sentence.

Looked at you.

You were looking back at him with an expression that was perfectly, carefully neutral.

"Right," he said.

"I'm going to class," you said.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

You walked past him.

He stood in the corridor and stared at the wall for a moment.

That doesn't work anymore.

And then, underneath that, quieter: I did that. I made that happen.

---

And underneath that, quieter still, the thing he'd been avoiding looking at directly,

I don't want her to look at me like that.

In class that morning you were quiet in a way that was different from all the other kinds of quiet you had. Not the match-week tension or the grumpy focus or the composed neutral of the corridor. Just — tired. The kind of tired that sat behind the eyes and in the shoulders and had nothing to do with sleep, the kind that came from carrying something for a long time without putting it down.

George noticed it before anyone else. Before Fred, before Professor Whitmore, before Hannah who sat three seats away and knew you better than almost anyone. He noticed it because he was always the first to notice things about you, and that fact lived somewhere in his chest now with a warmth he wasn't ready to name.

He'd been winding up to say something — the usual kind of thing, low and easy, the sort of comment that would make your jaw set and your eyes sharpen and your whole face go into that focused irritated mode that he had privately, honestly, come to find more interesting than almost anything else. He'd had it lined up. He'd been about to say it.

He looked at your face.

And he stopped.

Said nothing.

Turned back to his own parchment.

Something about the tiredness — the specific, unguarded quality of it told him not to. And the fact that he understood that, that he could read the difference between the kind of quiet that wanted poking and the kind that was just carrying too much — settled in his chest with a weight he hadn't expected and didn't put down for the rest of the day.

---

The following practice, Coyle — a sixth year Gryffindor, broad and loud and constitutionally incapable of reading a room or a situation or basic social signals pulled up beside you during a drill and said, grinning at something he clearly thought was funny:

"No wonder you lot keep losing. Maybe if you smiled more, Hufflepuff—"

George was there before you could respond.

Not loudly. Not a scene. Just — suddenly present, between you and Coyle, with the specific quality of stillness that was considerably more effective than noise. His voice dropped to something flat and even, quieter than his usual register, which somehow made it land harder.

"Run your drills, Coyle."

Coyle blinked.

"I was just—"

"I know what you were doing," George said. Same tone. Completely level. Not angry — something quieter and more deliberate than angry. "Run. Your drills."

Coyle looked at him for a moment.

Then he flew away.

George didn't look at you. He just turned back toward his side of the pitch like it had been nothing, like it was just the obvious thing to do, like he'd simply corrected something that needed correcting and that was the end of it.

You watched him go.

And something happened, quietly and without your permission, in the part of your chest that you'd been keeping very still.

Because there was a difference — you felt it clearly, the way you felt the difference between a Bludger aimed at you and one aimed at someone else between George Weasley spending seven years getting under your skin and George Weasley standing between you and someone else doing it without a second thought. One was the rivalry. One was something else. One was something that had no established category in the system you'd built, and the fact that it had no category meant you couldn't file it and you couldn't ignore it and you were going to have to just leave it there, sitting in your chest, unclassified.

You looked back at the pitch.

You kept flying.

But you didn't forget it.

---

It rained after practice.

Not the dramatic kind — just the grey, persistent Scottish drizzle that appeared without warning and settled in for the evening. You'd stayed on the pitch too long, drilling alone after everyone else had gone in, because the pitch was the one place where the weight of the week felt manageable — where the letter and the countdown and the tiredness could be converted into something physical, something you could hit. By the time you started back toward the castle the path was wet and the sky had gone the particular dark grey that meant it wasn't stopping anytime soon, and you were soaked through before you reached the covered walkway at the edge of the grounds.

You ducked under the stone arch and stopped, pushing your wet hair back from your face, and just stood there for a moment, breathing.

George was already there.

Of course he was.

He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, equally soaked, watching the rain come down with the expression of someone who had made peace with the situation and wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. He looked at you when you came in. You looked at him. You were both wet and tired and the rain was coming down on the other side of the arch and there was nowhere else to go.

You leaned against the opposite wall.

It was a very small covered walkway.

Neither of you said anything for a while. The rain came down steadily. Somewhere across the grounds an owl called once and then went quiet. The smell of wet grass came in on the air, and the cold, and the specific kind of silence that happened when two people had run out of things to perform for each other.

"I didn't mean it," he said.

His voice was quiet. Not the performance voice, not the easy teasing tone. Just — quiet. Said simply, looking at the rain, like something he'd been holding for a few days and had finally decided to put down.

You looked at the rain too.

"I know," you said.

A pause. Long enough that the rain filled it.

"I was just talking," he said. "I do that — I say things without thinking, I always have, and Fred tells me to stop and I don't, and usually it's fine but—" He stopped. Tried again. "I didn't know."

"I know you didn't," you said.

"Then—" he started, and then stopped again, and you could hear him trying to find the shape of what he wanted to say, the same way he'd been trying since the corridor, the same way he'd opened with a joke yesterday because he didn't have another way in. "Why does it still—"

"Because it doesn't matter if you meant it," you said, quietly. Carefully. Looking at the rain. "It still landed."

He said nothing.

"It landed because it's true," you said, and the last word came out slightly different — slightly more careful, slightly more exposed — and you kept your eyes on the rain and your voice level and your hands still at your sides.

George turned his head and looked at you.

You didn't look back.

The walkway was very quiet.

George was very still beside you.

You could feel, in the quality of his silence, the exact moment it landed properly — the specific stillness of someone rearranging what they thought they understood, taking apart an assumption they'd never examined because they'd never had to. He'd made a calculation, the way people with warm and overcrowded families always did without knowing they were doing it — that a mother who wrote was better than a mother who didn't. That at least meant something good.

He hadn't known.

You knew he hadn't known.

"She writes," you said. Just to fill the silence. Just so he understood, because now that you'd started you found you were too tired to do anything except say the true version. "Every week, almost. Very neat. Very precise. And every letter is — correct. Grammatically, factually, everything. Correct." You paused. "She's never once written anything that felt like she wanted to hear back."

George said nothing.

"I don't open them straight away," you said. "I carry them around for a bit first. I don't know why. I think because once you open it, it's — it's real. And before you open it there's still a chance that this time it's different." You stopped. "It's not different. It never is."

The rain came down.

George was so still beside you that you could almost forget he was there, except that you couldn't, because you were always aware of him, you had been for years, some specific compass in you that pointed his way without asking your permission.

"I'm sorry," he said.

It was very quiet.

Not performed. Not the jokey version of sorry that wasn't really sorry. Just — that. Two words with no armour on them.

You looked at the rain for a long moment.

"I know," you said. "George. I know."

And you meant it.

And somehow, in the way of things that were real and didn't fit neatly into the categories you'd built — rivalry and banter and four to three and seven years — the I know was both everything and not enough at the same time. Because him being sorry was fine. Him not meaning it was fine. What wasn't fine, what had never been fine, what would still not be fine tomorrow morning when you woke up and the letter was still under your pillow, was the thing itself. The neat handwriting. The correct sentences.

You were used to it.

That was the thing. You were so used to it that it barely hurt in the sharp way anymore — it just sat there, low and permanent, like a bruise that had been there so long you only noticed it when someone pressed directly on it.

George was quiet for a long time.

When he finally spoke, his voice was different — lower, and careful, and stripped of every bit of the easy confidence that usually lived in it:

"I keep thinking," he said, slowly, "that I've known you for seven years." A pause. "And I don't actually know anything."

You looked at him then.

He was already looking at you. Not the way he usually looked at you — not the assessing look or the amused look or the specific look that meant he was about to say something he'd timed perfectly. Just — looking. Open and quiet and a little lost, which was not a thing you'd seen on George Weasley's face before, and it sat in your chest in a way you were completely unprepared for.

"You know plenty," you said.

"I know the Quidditch version," he said. "I know the version that argues with me." A pause. "I don't know—" he gestured slightly, vaguely, at the general direction of you — "this version."

You looked at him for a moment.

"This version is tired," you said, honestly.

"I know," he said, just as honestly. And then, quieter still, looking at you with that open expression that you didn't have a category for: "I'm sorry I made it worse."

Your chest did something quiet and inconvenient.

You looked back at the rain.

"You didn't make it worse," you said.

"I didn't make it better," he said.

"George." You said his name without thinking, just to make him stop, and then heard yourself say it and felt the specific warmth of it — the way it felt different said plainly, without the snap or the Weasley that usually preceded something pointed. Just — his name. "It's not yours to make better."

He was quiet.

"Okay," he said, finally.

---

The rain kept falling.

You stood on opposite walls of a very small walkway and watched it together, and said nothing else, and it was the most honest you'd been in seven years without meaning to be. Without armour. Without a scoreboard. Without any of the seven years of built-up rivalry between you to hide behind.

Just two people and the rain.

And four inches, you thought, involuntarily, helplessly. The same four inches from the alcove. The same warmth coming off him in the cold air.

You looked at the rain.

You were fine.

You were absolutely not fine, but the match was in four days, and fine was what you were going to be.

---

Later, in the dormitory, you sat on your bed with the letter in your hands.

You'd retrieved it from the bottom of your bag when you came in, still in its envelope, still sealed, and now you were just holding it. Turning it over. The familiar weight of it in your palms.

Hannah appeared in the doorway.

She took one look — the wet hair, the letter, the expression on your face that you probably weren't doing a very good job of managing — and she came and sat beside you on the bed without saying anything.

You let her.

You sat there for a while, both of you looking at the envelope.

Then, quietly, you broke the seal.

You read it.

It said what you'd known it would say. The words were correct and precise and chosen carefully, and not one of them felt like it had been written by someone who needed to hear back.

You folded it along its creases.

Tucked it under your pillow.

Lay back and stared at the ceiling.

"Okay?" Hannah asked, soft.

"Yeah," you said.

A pause, long enough that the common room sounds filtered through the door — distant laughter, someone's music, the ordinary noise of a Wednesday evening.

"The match is in a week," you said.

"I know," Hannah said.

"I'm going to win," you said.

Not to her, really. Just — out loud. Into the room. Into the ceiling. Like a thing that needed to exist somewhere outside your head.

Hannah was quiet for a moment.

"Yeah," she said, simply. "I know you are."

In the Gryffindor dormitory, George lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

He thought about the way you'd said it — not with heat, not with tears, just with the flat, tired matter-of-factness of someone describing weather. Like it was just a fact about your life that you'd accepted so completely it had stopped being surprising.

That was the thing that stayed.

Not the words themselves. Not even the crack in the wall. But the way you'd said it — like you were used to it. Like it had been true for so long it had become just — part of the landscape.

George had grown up in a house that was loud and too small and perpetually out of money and absolutely, catastrophically full of love, and he had never once in his life had to check whether a letter was safe to open.

He lay there and thought about that.

He thought about you carrying that stone around all week.

He thought about seven years.

All the things he'd poked at and wound up and thought were just the game. All the times he'd aimed something at that composed, correct wall of yours and felt satisfied when he found a crack. He hadn't known what was behind it. He'd never thought to wonder.

He thought about the rain, and the walkway, and four inches, and the way you'd said his name — just once, just plainly, without the snap or the edge — and how it had felt like something he wanted to hear again.

A/n:heyy guys im backk..sry for not updating cause i got exams :/ this is a filler part so it won't be that good..

Comment to be tagged on the next part!