new customer! meet cute? :)
I like to call this au Eden's Garden! Simon takes a job as a florist after his life of prison and is slowly healing, hope you enjoy something cozy!
The first time I learned that humiliation can stick to you like treacle, I was eleven and wearing brand-new black shoes that still pinched at the heel.
It had been my first week at Hogwarts—my first week of pretending I belonged in corridors that moved and staircases that changed their minds halfway up, my first week of learning to sleep with other girls breathing around me and to fold my homesickness into neat little squares and tuck it under the mattress where no one could see.
I had been so careful, then. I’d brushed my hair until it shone, checked my robes twice, practised my name in my head as if saying it correctly might keep the castle from swallowing me whole.
And then I walked into the Gryffindor common room with my chin up and my stomach full of nerves—and Fred and George Weasley turned me into the punchline of a joke I didn’t even understand until everyone was already laughing.
It was a simple thing, in the way that all the worst things are simple. A charm, whispered and flicked like it was nothing. Warmth at my collar. A strange tug behind my ears. A sudden lightness at my scalp, as if my hair had decided it could no longer tolerate gravity.
There was a beat of silence—one sharp, sparkling second where the room registered I was wrong somehow—then the laughter broke out in a wave that felt physical, like being shoved.
I remember reaching up, fingers catching in something that wasn’t hair anymore, something feather-soft and ridiculous. I remember the heat crawling up my neck, my face turning traitor-red before I’d even spoken. I remember trying to laugh too, because at eleven you think laughing along might save you, might make you look clever and unbothered, might keep the world from deciding you’re weak.
But my voice came out thin and odd, and I heard it wobble, and I knew I sounded like a child trying to pretend she wasn’t one.
Fred Weasley had looked delighted, eyes bright, a grin so wide it seemed to split his face. George stood beside him. He laughed too—but when my gaze snapped to his, something in his expression tightened, quick as a blink, as if he’d only just realised I wasn’t in on it. As if he’d only just noticed the way my hands had gone clumsy at my hair, the way my shoulders had pulled in.
That was the thing about the Weasley twins. They didn’t just cause trouble. They made it look like sunlight.
It was hard to hate someone who could make a room feel warmer just by walking into it. Hard, but not impossible. I learned.
I didn’t cry until later, when the common room had thinned out and the fire had burned lower and my dormitory was full of whispering girls who had already found their places in the world. I lay in bed with my face turned into the pillow, gripping the sheets so tightly my fingers ached, and made myself a promise with the kind of grim certainty children are capable of: I would not let them do that to me again. I would not be someone’s joke.
Of course, that promise became a sort of curse.
Because somehow—somehow—their jokes kept finding me.
A levitation charm meant for someone else that sent my stack of books drifting into the air like startled birds. A handful of enchanted dungbombs that rolled under my chair in History of Magic just as Professor Binns glided past, and suddenly it was my desk that smelled like a sewer while Fred and George sat two rows back with faces of perfect innocence. A set of bewitched quills that scribbled I’m a flobberworm in looping, enthusiastic handwriting across a parchment that was most certainly mine.
And always, always, it was me standing in front of a professor with my hands empty and my cheeks burning and the Weasley twins behind me wearing expressions that said wasn’t that brilliant? wasn’t that funny?
I learned the shape of their laughter the way you learn the feel of a bruise you keep bumping. I learned their loudness—how it filled space, how it demanded attention like a firework. I learned how George’s eyes flicked to me when no one else was looking, as if he were measuring the damage.
Detention came to me the way rain comes to a stormcloud: not as a surprise, but as an inevitability.
By third year, Filch knew my name. By fourth, I knew every corridor from the trophy room to the dungeon classrooms by the scent of the stone and the way the torches hissed. By fifth, I could scrape dried potion residue from a cauldron with one hand and write Charms homework in my head with the other.
And somewhere in all that time—somewhere between the late evenings and the dust, between the way we’d sit on opposite ends of a corridor waiting for a professor to stop lecturing us about our moral failings—something inside me shifted.
Not loudly. Not all at once.
Just… quietly, like a page turning in a book when no one’s watching.
Because Fred was always Fred—bright, careless, brilliant, the sort of boy who could smile after being told off and make you feel as though you’d been the one scolded for not laughing harder.
But George—George had edges that didn’t catch the light unless you looked for them. He’d pass me a rag without a word when my hands were full. He’d make a joke and then, if I didn’t laugh, his eyes would dart to my face, quick and wary, as if checking whether he’d gone too far.
Sometimes, when Fred’s energy ricocheted off walls, George seemed to step aside from it for half a second, and in that half second you could see something like thoughtfulness, like softness, like a person underneath the performance.
It infuriated me, because it made no sense.
It was much easier when they were both simply unbearable. It was much easier when George was just Fred’s twin—an extension of the same trouble, the same grin, the same hands flicking wands in corridors when they were supposed to be hurrying to class.
It was much easier before my eyes started snagging on him like thread catching on a nail.
I told myself it was because of proximity. Because you can’t spend years being dragged into the same detentions as someone without recognising the slope of their handwriting, the way they bite the inside of their cheek when they’re concentrating, the slight tilt of their head when they’re listening. I told myself it was normal, the way you start to notice the creak of a stair you step on every day.
But there are certain thoughts that don’t feel like stair creaks. They feel like lightning—silent until it isn’t.
And the worst part was: the more I tried to stop noticing him, the more my body betrayed me anyway. My mouth would sharpen its words without my permission. My shoulders would square as if bracing for impact when he came too close. My laugh—my real one, the one I didn’t share with just anyone—would get stuck behind my teeth when he said something that, under different circumstances, might have made it out.
It was easier to be difficult. Easier to be prickly. Easier to keep him at a distance where he couldn’t see the thing I didn’t want him to see—couldn’t see that a part of me leaned toward him like a plant turning to the sun, even while the rest of me insisted the light was unbearable.
George, for his part, did something I only realised in hindsight.
He stopped.
Not completely—not in a way Fred would ever have noticed, but in the small, particular ways that mattered. When pranks sparked in the air like static, George began to redirect them around me. When Fred’s eyes lit with a new idea, George would catch his sleeve and murmur something under his breath, and the idea would shift course. When I walked into a room, George’s gaze would flick to me and then away again quickly, as though looking too long might burn.
It should have made things easier.
Instead, it made them worse, because it meant he was paying attention. And if he was paying attention, then he might have seen too much.
The day we ended up in the dungeon again—again—it started in the most ordinary way possible, which is how trouble likes to begin at Hogwarts. Ordinary, and then suddenly you’re in too deep.
I was on my way back from the library, arms wrapped around a stack of books that smelled like dust and old glue, thinking about a Transfiguration essay that refused to arrange itself into proper paragraphs. The corridors were dimmer down there, the stone colder, the air damp and faintly metallic, like the castle was bleeding.
I turned a corner—
—and stepped straight into the middle of something that should not have existed in a school.
A snort of laughter—too quick to be real, too sharply swallowed—leaked from behind a suit of armour, and then the corridor itself seemed to misbehave.
Something bright and peppermint-sweet hit the air first, that unmistakable whiff of Weasley mischief, like a joke you can smell before you hear it. A second later, the flagstones just ahead of me turned slick and glassy, a thin sheet of shimmering green creeping outward as if the castle had decided to grow a pond in the middle of its own hallway. It wasn’t water, not quite—more like enchanted soap, too glossy and alive, catching torchlight in little cruel sparks.
Right in the centre of it, a Prefect’s badge—Percy’s, I’d recognise that pompous shine anywhere—hung in midair, bobbing gently as though it were bait on a fishing line. Each time it dipped, it let out a prim, amplified little cough.
“Ahem.”
The sound echoed off stone, officious and insufferable, and it was so perfectly Percy that for half a heartbeat I forgot to breathe. Then the badge cleared its throat again, louder, the way he did when he wanted an entire room to remember he existed.
“AHEM.”
The badge flashed, and a neat little ribbon of parchment unfurled beneath it like a proclamation, ink appearing on its own in tight, fussy handwriting:
PREFECT PATROL. PRESENT YOURSELF FOR INSPECTION.
My foot slid the instant I tried to stop. My books lurched against my chest, corners biting my arms, and the world tilted in that quick, stupid way it always does right before you lose dignity in public. I windmilled—there’s no elegant way to windmill—caught myself by grabbing the armour’s elbow, and felt cold metal under my palm where I’d expected stone.
The suit of armour shifted, offended, and something inside it clanked.
I hadn’t even finished pulling my hand back when the “puddle” decided it wasn’t finished being clever. The glossy green spread another inch, as if reaching for me, and a line of bubbles rose from it—fat, wobbling things—each one popping with a tiny, rude little sound that almost sounded like laughter.
My books shifted again, and my stomach dropped with the sudden, familiar certainty of what this was.
From behind the suit of armour, Fred and George Weasley appeared—Fred first, of course, as if he’d been fired from a cannon, laughing already; George right after him, a fraction slower, eyes widening the moment he saw me, like the scene had rearranged itself into something he hadn’t planned for.
Fred’s wand was still half-raised, as if he’d been mid-flourish. George’s hand hovered near his brother’s sleeve, that small, instinctive gesture of stop, stop, stop that no one ever seemed to notice unless you were watching for it.
And then—like the punchline delivered by the universe itself—Professor Snape emerged from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, robes billowing like a stormcloud given human form.
“What is this idiocy,” Snape snarled, his voice slicing through the corridor as his black eyes locked onto the three of us.
Everything in the dungeon seemed to tighten around him. The torchlight looked dimmer in his wake. The air went colder, as if it had been waiting for him to arrive.
Snape’s gaze moved over the scene—the hovering Prefect badge barking out its self-important ahems, the ridiculous inspection notice, the spreading slick of enchanted green—and then landed on me, pinned there with all the warmth of a blade.
“I leave the castle unattended for five minutes,” Snape snapped, “and I return to this.”
The hovering Prefect badge gave one last officious ahem and then went suspiciously quiet, as though even it had learned fear.
“Explain!”
I drew a breath and felt it scrape on the way in. Snape had that effect—made the air feel smaller, like the dungeon itself leaned in to listen. Words crowded the back of my throat, tripping over each other, all of them suddenly aware of how useless they were going to be.
“I was in the library,” I said, because it was true and because truth was all I had. “I just turned the corner and it all just appeared. I swear Professor, I didn’t do any of this.”
My voice didn’t shake, but my fingers tightened around my books until the edges pressed into my arms. I refused to look at the Weasleys. Refused to give Snape the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.
Fred let out a sound—something between a cough and a snort—far too close to laughter to be wise.
George didn’t make a sound at all.
Snape’s eyes flicked to Fred, slow and deliberate, the way one might examine an insect before deciding how best to squash it. His lip curled, just slightly, as if the expression had been practised.
“How diligently rehearsed,” he murmured. “One might almost believe you had prepared that defence in advance.”
“I didn’t—” I started, and immediately hated myself for how small it sounded.
“Silence.”
The word cracked through the corridor, sharp enough to make the torches gutter. Snape took a step closer, robes whispering over stone.
“I have grown exceptionally weary of this… little constellation of chaos,” he said, gaze sweeping over the three of us as if we were stains on the floor. “Every corridor I patrol, every corner I turn, I find Gryffindor fingerprints smudged across my evening.”
His eyes settled on me again, and I felt that familiar, infuriating sense of being weighed and found wanting.
“And you,” he continued, tone thick with false curiosity, “always seem to be standing conveniently nearby when such… innovations occur.”
“That’s because they drag me into it,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Fred’s eyebrows shot up, impressed. George’s head snapped toward me, a warning flicker in his eyes that said don’t, said please don’t.
Snape’s mouth thinned.
“How refreshing,” he drawled. “An accusation. How very Gryffindor of you. Bold. Loud. Utterly unconvincing.”
“I wasn’t part of it,” I insisted, heat crawling up my neck despite myself. “You can check—my wand—”
“Do not presume to instruct me on my own methods,” Snape cut in smoothly, and there it was—the satisfaction, dark and unmistakable. “Your talent for finding trouble is quite adequate without assistance.”
“Sir, I really wasn’t—” I stopped short at piercing look Snape gave me before he turned his attention to the twins at last, and the temperature in the corridor seemed to drop another degree.
“Weasley,” he said, singular, as if they were one creature with two heads. “Your tireless dedication to idiocy continues to astound me.”
Fred opened his mouth—clearly possessed by a death wish.
George’s hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve, fingers tightening just enough to warn him. Fred shut his mouth with an audible click, though the grin lingered, defiant and bright.
“One week of detention,” Snape said silkily. “Every evening. You will scrub my classroom from floor to ceiling until every surface reflects your regret back at you.”
His eyes slid to me again, pinning me in place.
“You will join them,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. “Consider it a lesson in choosing your associates more wisely.”
“That’s not a lesson,” I said, and this time I couldn’t stop the edge from creeping into my voice. “That’s just convenient.”
For a heartbeat, the corridor went utterly still.
Then Snape smiled.
It was thin. Cold. Triumphant.
“Detention,” he repeated. “Unless you would prefer I deduct points as well. I am certain Gryffindor can spare them.”
I bit down on whatever I’d been about to say so hard I tasted metal.
Snape turned on his heel, robes snapping like a struck nerve, and swept away down the corridor, leaving behind the slowly dissolving puddle, the deflated Prefect badge, and the three of us standing in the aftermath like survivors of a small, personal disaster.
The silence he left behind rang louder than shouting.
I looked at them—at Fred’s grin, already fighting its way back onto his face, at George’s expression tight and pale around the eyes—and something in me snapped cleanly, like a thread pulled too hard.
“You two are unbelievable,” I said, and my voice sounded strangely steady, as if all the shaking had gone inside instead. “Do you guys wake up and decide, today I’ll make someone else’s life difficult, or does it happen naturally?”
Fred’s grin widened, because of course it did. “We don’t have to decide,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a gift.”
I shifted my books higher in my arms to keep my hands from doing something stupid like throwing them at his head. “Well,” I said, “congratulations. Your gift has earned me a week of scrubbing Snape’s cauldrons.”
“It wasn’t meant for you,” George said quickly.
The sound of his voice—lower, more careful—hit me in a place behind my ribs I didn’t want to acknowledge.
I scoffed, because scoffing was safer than listening. “Funny how that keeps happening.”
George’s mouth opened as if he might argue, then closed again. He looked at the floor for half a second, like he could find a solution in the cracks between stones.
“It was for Percy,” Fred said brightly, entirely unhelpful. “Or maybe for someone even more deserving. Percy’s got that face that begs for it, though.”
My lips pressed together so tightly they almost hurt. The name Percy felt like salt in the wound—Percy, it was always his pranks I seemed to take but I’d barely seen him on the receiving end of this stupidity.
I turned before my temper could make me say something that would echo in the walls later. “I’ll see you in detention,” I said, and walked away with my shoulders stiff and my footsteps too fast.
Behind me, Fred’s laughter followed like a thrown pebble.
George’s silence followed like a hand held out and then withdrawn.
~~~
The next evening, the dungeon classroom waited for us with all the warmth of a tomb.
The door creaked when we went in, and the smell hit at once—sharp, sour, medicinal. Potions ingredients clung to everything: to the air, to the stone, to the wooden shelves lined with jars of things that should not be jarred. The torches burned low, their flames struggling against the damp, and shadows gathered in corners like they were listening.
Snape didn’t bother with a speech. He didn’t need one. He simply stood at the front of the room, dark eyes sweeping over us, and dropped a pile of rags and scrub brushes onto the nearest table as if tossing scraps to animals.
“You will begin,” he said, and the words were slick with satisfaction. “And you will not stop until I say so.”
Then he swept into his office and shut the door, leaving us with the silence and the smell and the faint drip of something from somewhere.
Fred, naturally, broke the quiet first.
“Well,” he said, clapping his hands together as if this were a party. “Quality time.”
I chose the far end of the classroom with the deliberation of someone choosing a battlefield. As much distance as the room allowed. I set my books down carefully—too carefully—and picked up a rag, because if I didn’t start cleaning immediately, I might start doing something else.
The stone under my fingers was cold and slightly tacky with residue. My rag came away stained a sickly green after the first swipe.
Behind me, they talked. They always did. Their voice bounced off the walls and made the dungeon feel smaller.
“Do you think Snape polishes his hair with bat’s blood?” George mused, scrubbing at a table. “Because honestly, it’s got that sheen.”
“Maybe it’s just slime,” I said, without turning around. The words slipped out before I’d decided to give him anything at all.
Fred made an appreciative noise, as if I’d just tossed them a sweet. “See, George?” he said. “Y/N does have humour. Deep down. Buried under a mountain of bitterness.”
Something inside my chest tightened at hearing my own name in their mouths like that. My scrubbing grew faster. The rag squeaked against the tabletop.
“I’ve got plenty of humour,” I said, and my voice sounded too light for the way my throat felt. “Just not for you.”
Fred laughed outright.
George didn’t laugh.
I could hear him moving around the room—quiet footsteps, the scrape of a brush against wood, the soft clink of a jar being lifted and moved. He wasn’t on my side of the room, but sometimes the air shifted as if he’d glanced up, and my skin prickled along my arms in response, unreasonable and sharp.
“You really think we’d set you up?” George asked after a moment, and his tone was careful, almost… gentle, which made it worse, because it made the anger in me feel suddenly too big for the room.
I didn’t look at him. Looking at him was dangerous. Looking at him meant noticing the way his sleeves were rolled up, forearms dusted with grime, the way his hair fell over his eyes when he bent to scrub. Looking at him meant remembering a hundred detentions, a hundred late evenings, the way he’d once passed me a chocolate frog in the corridor without meeting my gaze.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that you always have a reason. And somehow I always end up standing in the middle of it.”
Fred’s brush paused. “It’s not personal,” he said, sounding faintly offended, as if I’d accused them of something crude. “We don’t even think about you that much.”
The words should have been relief.
Instead they landed like a slap.
I let out a short laugh that didn’t belong to me. “How comforting.”
George’s brush stopped. I felt it more than heard it, the sudden stillness.
“That’s not—” he began, and then he inhaled, as if rearranging his thoughts. “We didn’t mean— I didn’t mean—”
I scrubbed harder, as if friction could erase the past. The rag dragged over a spot of something that looked like old potion spill, and the smell rose sharp and unpleasant. My eyes stung—not from tears, I told myself immediately, furiously, but from fumes. From the damp. From everything.
I kept my gaze on the tabletop.
“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “Honestly. I’ve had five years of explanations. They all sound the same.”
There was a beat of silence. Fred, apparently, couldn’t stand it.
“Well,” he said briskly, “if we’re taking a stroll down memory lane, I’d like to remind everyone that you did hex my eyebrows off in second year.”
“That was self-defence,” I said.
Fred laughed again, delighted. “See? Fire. Passion. You’d be terrifying if you weren’t so—”
“Fred,” George said quietly.
It wasn’t a reprimand exactly, but it was enough. Fred’s grin faltered just a fraction, which on Fred Weasley was practically a moment of solemnity.
I kept scrubbing. The rhythm of it became a sort of anchor. Back and forth. Back and forth. The sound of cloth against wood, the faint rasp of brush, the drip-drip-drip somewhere in the shadows.
After a while, George moved. His footsteps came closer—not all the way, not brazen like Fred would have been, but enough that I felt him without turning. The air seemed to shift around him, warmer where he stood, as if he carried some of the common room fire down here with him.
“I can do that bit,” he said, voice low.
I didn’t look up. “I can do it.”
“I know.” He hesitated, and I could picture him running a hand through his hair, the way he did when he didn’t know what to do with himself. “I just— you’ve been scrubbing the same spot for ages.”
I realised then that my hand had cramped. That my knuckles were pale. That the tabletop under my rag was already clean enough to reflect torchlight.
I forced my fingers to relax, one by one, like prising them off a wand after too long.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It does,” George replied, and there was something in his voice that made my stomach do a strange, stupid dip, as if I’d missed a step on a staircase.
I hated my own body in moments like that. Hated that a soft tone could undo me, hated that I could stand in a dungeon classroom telling myself I had every right to keep him at arm’s length, and still the sound of him trying—trying—could make something ache in me that I couldn’t name without wanting to throw myself into the Black Lake.
I turned my head slightly, just enough to see him out of the corner of my eye.
He was holding a rag in his hand like he didn’t quite know what to do with it, shoulders angled toward me, expression carefully blank in the way boys get when they’re pretending nothing matters. But his eyes weren’t blank. His eyes were too bright in the dim torchlight, fixed on me as if waiting for something—approval, permission, forgiveness, any scrap of peace.
For a second, I saw it: the softness. The gentleness he tried to hide beneath jokes and trouble. The way he could look like someone who didn’t want to hurt anyone, even if he kept doing it by accident.
Then I remembered the common room, eleven years old, laughter crashing over me.
And I swallowed the softness back down like a bitter potion.
“Please,” I said, and made my voice as even as I could manage. “Just—leave it. I don’t need you hovering.”
Something shifted in his face so quickly I almost missed it—like a shutter closing.
He nodded once. “Right,” he said lightly, and the lightness was too practised. “Hovering. Terrible habit.”
Fred, on the other side of the room, snorted. “I knew you were a hovering sort, Georgie.”
George’s mouth twisted into a grin that looked like it belonged on someone else. “Shut up.”
I turned back to my work because it was easier to scrub a table than to sit with the weight of what I’d just seen in his eyes.
The rest of detention blurred into a steady, stubborn motion—wipe, scrub, rinse, repeat—broken only by Fred’s running commentary and Snape’s occasional appearance from his office, gliding around the room like a bat checking its prey.
When Snape finally dismissed us, it was with the kind of reluctant displeasure that suggested he’d been hoping we’d never leave.
I gathered my books, fingers still smelling faintly of potion ingredients no matter how much I’d wiped them. My arms felt heavy, as if the dungeon had poured lead into my bones. I didn’t look at the twins as I walked out, because looking meant noticing, and noticing meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling.
But I could feel George’s gaze anyway, a quiet pressure between my shoulder blades, as familiar now as the castle’s draft.
The corridors outside were warmer, the air less sharp, but the dungeon cold clung to me like a memory.
By the time I climbed back into the Gryffindor common room, the fire’s crackle sounded too cheerful, the laughter too easy. Everyone was doing homework or playing Exploding Snap or arguing over Quidditch.
I dropped into an armchair near the edge of the room and opened my book, staring at the words without reading them.
Because somewhere behind my eyes, George’s expression kept replaying—the way his mouth had tried to make a joke out of something that wasn’t funny, the way his eyes had looked as if he’d been bracing for a blow.
And my own thoughts, traitorous and soft in the wrong places, whispered the same unbearable question they always did when it came to him:
What if I’ve been wrong?
I tightened my grip on my quill until my fingers ached, as if pain could pin my mind back down.
Across the room, someone laughed—bright, loud, unmistakably Weasley.
And my heart did that stupid thing it always did, like it didn’t know the difference between trouble and warmth.
~~~
It was a Tuesday, I think. Or maybe it only felt like a Tuesday because everything about it had that grey, inevitable flavour: stone cold under your shoes, torches sputtering like they couldn’t be bothered, the air tasting faintly of damp and old secrets. I was coming from the library again—because of course I was—and I caught a glimpse of them through a crack in a tapestry I shouldn’t have been looking behind.
Fred Weasley’s red hair flashed like a warning flare in the dim corridor. Lee Jordan’s shoulders were hunched the way they got when he was trying not to laugh too loud. And George—George was there too, turned slightly away, as if he were listening harder than the others, as if the sound of their own joke had to pass some private test before he could let it live.
I didn’t mean to stop. My feet just… did. That treacherous pause, the way your body betrays you into curiosity even when your mind is shouting do not, do not, do not. I told myself it was tactical. If you know where the trap is, you can avoid stepping in it. If you know what they’re planning, you can keep your name out of it.
You’d think I’d have learned by now that their plans didn’t require my participation to include me.
“—that’s the best part,” Fred was saying, voice low with glee, the words fizzing like fireworks right before they go off. “He’ll have to. He can’t not. He’s Percy.”
Lee snorted, muffling it with his sleeve. “What if he doesn’t drink it?”
George’s shoulders rose and fell—one slow breath, the kind you take when you’re trying not to laugh at your own idea too early. “He will,” he said. “You leave something labelled Prefect’s Private Reserve on his desk and he’ll drink it out of spite.”
Fred leaned in, conspiratorial. “And he’ll march into breakfast and start telling McGonagall what he really thinks about her tartan.”
They were bent over something small, glassy. A bottle, I realised, the sort Madam Rosmerta served butterbeer in, but this one was cloudy and pale, like watered milk, with a sheen on the surface that made my teeth itch just looking at it. Potion, then. Not the usual bubblegum-smelling nonsense they used for their joke sweets—this looked older, sharper. Real.
I should have walked away.
Instead, I listened long enough to catch the word Lee said next, quieter, like it mattered.
“Where’d you even get this?”
Fred’s grin widened in the dark. “Borrowed it.”
“Stole it,” Lee corrected helpfully.
George’s mouth twisted. “Liberated.”
“From who?” Lee pressed.
“From a very badly supervised cupboard,” Fred said. “And before you ask, yes, George tested it.”
Lee’s gaze snapped to George. “You what?”
George lifted his hands, palms out, as if surrendering to a crime he didn’t particularly regret. “Not on me,” he said. “On a gnome.”
Lee stared. “You brought a gnome into the castle.”
Fred shrugged, utterly shameless. “It didn’t complain.”
“That’s because it can’t speak,” Lee said but leaned closer, suddenly wary. “How long does it last?”
George looked down again. “Depends how much,” he said. “And how concentrated it is. This one’s strong.”
Fred made a pleased sound. “As it should be.”
I should have left then. I told myself I would. I even shifted my weight, the tapestry’s edge rough against my shoulder as I began to step back.
And then Fred held the bottle up to the torchlight like a jewel.
Footstep sounded down the corridor. Not one of theirs. They all froze.
The tapestry shifted as Fred shoved it—too quickly, too carelessly—trying to make it lie flat again. My shoulder caught on it; the fabric tugged; I swore under my breath, already too late.
The bottle, in Fred’s hand, jerked.
It slipped.
My head snapped to the side as I heard someone laughing down the corridor—high, cracked, echoing off the stone like it had teeth. Peeves. I closed my eyes for half a second, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, as if that might keep him from noticing me. It never worked. It never had. The castle liked its little cruelties too much to spare anyone.
I straightened anyway, smoothed my robes with hands that didn’t need smoothing, and muttered something under my breath that sounded like encouragement if you didn’t listen too closely. Just keep walking. Don’t react. Pretend you don’t exist.
Naturally, that was when he swooped into view.
He burst out from behind a suit of armour with all the subtlety of a firework, cap bells jingling, eyes bright with the kind of joy that only comes from ruining someone else’s day. He hovered upside down in front of me, his face inches from mine, breath cold and sour like old dust.
“Well, well, well,” Peeves crooned, spinning lazily in the air. “If it isn’t the detention darling herself. Skulking and skulking and skulking—what’s the matter, hm? Lost your little Weasley shadows?”
I kept my face carefully blank, eyes fixed on the stone just past his shoulder. Engaging Peeves was like feeding a stray dragon: once you started, it never stopped.
“Tut, tut,” he went on, clicking his tongue. “No hello? No smile? That won’t do at all. Peeves doesn’t like being ignored.” He swooped closer, bells chiming right by my ear. “Maybe I should sing! Or shout! Or tell Professor Snivelly that someone’s loitering where they shouldn’t—”
“I’m going to lunch,” I said, evenly, though my fingers had curled into my sleeves, nails digging into fabric. “Same as everyone else.”
Peeves cackled. “Lunch! Boring, boring, boring! You humans are always scurrying somewhere important.” He leaned back in the air, peering at me with exaggerated scrutiny. “You look wound tight as a clockwork toy. Someone steal your laugh?”
I didn’t answer. I took one careful step forward, as if he might be solid enough to bump into, as if I could push through him by sheer will.
For a moment, it looked like he might block me just out of spite.
Then, mercurial as ever, his attention flicked elsewhere—down the corridor, toward the faint murmur of voices and a flash of blonde hair half-hidden by a tapestry. His grin widened, delighted.
“Oho,” Peeves sing-songed. “Secrets and scheming and sneaky little plots. Smells like trouble. Smells like fun.” He winked at me, exaggerated and gleeful. “Don’t worry, darling. I won’t tell. Not yet.”
Before I could stop him—or thank whatever small mercy had intervened—he shot off down the corridor in a whirl of laughter and bells, his voice fading as he turned a corner and vanished into the castle’s endless mischief.
The silence he left behind felt almost startling.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding and leaned back against the cold stone for just a second, letting the chill steady me. Then I pushed off the wall and moved again, softer now, footsteps careful, attention pulled back to the reason I’d stopped in the first place.
Fred’s face was blank.
Lee’s eyes round.
George was froze with his fingers against his lips, and for a second he looked exactly like he did in those rare, unguarded moments—like the joke had stopped being funny and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do without it.
Confused I tried to see what the hell the boys had in their hands but stopped short as the approaching footsteps grew louder.
Fred hissed, suddenly alive again. “George—don’t—”
George swallowed.
His throat bobbed once.
Then he slowly lowered his hand and stared at the bottle like it had bitten him.
“Right,” he said, voice too calm. “That’s… that’s not ideal.”
Lee’s mouth opened and closed. “How much did you—?”
George’s eyes darted, quick, panicked, as if searching the corridor for an answer that wasn’t there. “Not much,” he said immediately. The words came out before his mind could stop them. “Enough.”
Fred grabbed the bottle, jammed the cork back in with more force than necessary. “We can fix it,” he said rapidly, the way he talked when something had gone wrong and he wanted to outrun it. “We can— we can water it down— get you something—”
Lee leaned in, voice dropping. “Is there an antidote?”
George blinked. “No,” he said at once, and the bleak certainty in the word made Fred’s hand tighten around the bottle. George looked like he hadn’t meant to say it so quickly, like his own mouth had betrayed him. He swallowed again. “Not… not a proper one.”
The footsteps turned the corner.
Percy appeared, of course he did—Prefect badge gleaming, hair perfectly combed, a stack of papers under his arm like they were an extension of his personality.
He saw them.
He saw the bottle.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
Fred opened his mouth, ready to lie with the ease of breathing.
George beat him to it.
“We were going to spike your tea,” George said, clear as daylight.
The corridor went silent so abruptly it felt like someone had jammed cotton in my ears.
Percy stared. Lee made a choking sound. Fred’s head snapped toward George so fast it was almost violent, as if he were trying to physically drag the words back into his brother’s mouth.
George’s eyes widened in horror at what he’d just said, like he was watching himself from outside his body. He clapped a hand over his mouth, too late.
Percy’s face drained of colour.
“You were going to—” Percy sputtered, voice rising. “You were going to poison me?”
“It’s not poison,” George said immediately, hand still half-covering his mouth, the words slipping out around his fingers like water through a crack. “It’s a potion. And you’re insufferable.”
Fred made a strangled noise that might have been laughter if it weren’t so close to panic. “George,” he warned, sharp.
Lee leaned close to George’s ear. “Stop talking,” he whispered desperately. “Stop—”
George stared straight ahead, as if focusing hard might keep his mouth shut. It didn’t help.
“And you’re always telling Mum on us,” George added, helplessly honest. “And you’d deserve it.”
Percy’s face went purple. “I will be reporting this to Professor McGonagall!”
“You do that,” George said, and then, with a sudden flinch, as if realising what he was about to do, he clamped his lips together so hard his jaw trembled.
Fred grabbed George by the elbow and steered him away, fast, hauling Lee with them.
I stepped back from the tapestry, heart hammering, the corridor suddenly too full of air. What the hell was that all about? Must’ve been some stupid prank I didn’t get, but still I watched as they vanished around the corner in a rush of robes and panic, Percy’s outraged voice echoing after them like a siren.
I stood there for a beat longer than I should have, staring at the place George had been, the way his eyes had looked. Surely a prank. I shook myself, forced my feet to move, and told myself—very firmly—that whatever trouble the Weasley twins had brewed this time, it was not my business.
It didn’t matter what I told myself.
It never did.
By the next day, George was still acting strangely. It started small, the way all catastrophes do. Little slips that made people blink.
George answering Professor Flitwick’s question without the usual joking deflection, bluntly, correctly, then looking faintly horrified at how pleased Flitwick looked. George telling Seamus Finnigan that his hair looked like a startled puffskein and then clapping a hand over his own mouth like he’d been slapped.
At lunch, Angelina Johnson leaned over from the opposite side of the table—Quidditch captain’s posture, eyes sharp and amused. “George,” she said, as if tasting the strangeness, “are you feeling all right?”
George stared at his plate like it might answer for him. He opened his mouth.
Fred kicked him under the table.
George flinched. “Ow,” he said. Then, before he could stop himself, he added, voice tight, “I’m fine. I’m just… cursed.”
Angelina’s eyebrows lifted. “Cursed?”
Fred laughed too loud, too fast. “He means tired, Angie,” he said breezily. “Exhausted. Poor lad. Quidditch training’s ruined him.”
George’s gaze flicked up—quick, sharp—and his eyes met mine across the table for half a second.
It was like being noticed by sunlight you didn’t ask for.
I looked away immediately, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong.
Because for three days—three long, strange days—George Weasley stopped being background noise.
He stopped being that constant, maddening presence in the corridors who always had a quip on his tongue and a prank in his pocket. He became instead a boy moving very carefully through the castle, shoulders drawn in, eyes scanning like he was looking for landmines.
And whenever I appeared—whenever I turned a corner or walked into the Great Hall or stepped into the dungeon for detention—he went very still, as if my existence tightened something around his ribs.
Fred and Lee stayed close to him like bodyguards.
Fred Weasley, who normally couldn’t go ten seconds without making some dramatic commentary about the universe, developed a kind of forced sobriety that made him look like a poorly disguised imposter. He kept his mouth shut so hard you could see the strain in his cheeks, and every so often he’d glance at George with a look that was half amusement, half this is going to ruin us.
Lee Jordan—who usually fed their chaos like oxygen—hovered with the air of someone trying to hold a lid on a boiling cauldron.
And me?
I did what I always did when something didn’t make sense: I pretended it wasn’t happening.
I told myself I enjoyed the quiet. I told myself it was a relief not to have my name dragged into their jokes, not to have Fred’s laugh bouncing off stone like a thrown spell, not to have George’s eyes flicking to me like he couldn’t help it.
But the castle doesn’t like quiet. It fills it with echo. It makes your own thoughts louder.
So every evening, when I walked down to Snape’s classroom for detention, my steps seemed to sound sharper than they should have. The torches hissed. The stone sweated cold. And on the far side of the room, George Weasley scrubbed in silence with his jaw clenched, and I found myself watching him anyway—watching the way he held himself like someone bracing against a storm that lived inside his own mouth.
On the second last day, it finally snapped.
Snape set us to work with his usual black-eyed glare, then disappeared into his office as though he couldn’t bear to share air with us longer than necessary. The classroom settled into that strained hush—brushes scraping, rags squeaking, cauldrons clinking faintly when moved.
Fred, after ten minutes of wrestling with a mop that looked like it had been cursed in the Middle Ages, muttered something under his breath and left to fetch another.
The door shut behind him.
And suddenly it was just me and George, with the dungeon’s damp pressing in and the silence so thick it felt like my lungs had to push through it.
George stayed at the far table, scrubbing methodically, eyes fixed on the wood as if looking up might be fatal.
I scrubbed too, but my mind kept snagging—on the strangeness, on the unnatural quiet, on the way he was behaving like a boy trying not to make a sound in a room full of sleeping dragons.
Without Fred’s noise, it was unbearable.
I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to give him anything.
But the words rose anyway, dry as dust.
“So,” I said, not looking up, keeping my tone casual in the way you keep a wound covered with a neat bandage. “Did you lose the ability to talk, or are you saving it for someone important?”
George’s brush paused. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t answer. For a beat, only the drip-drip somewhere in the dungeon spoke.
I scrubbed harder, because my hands needed something to do.
“Right,” I muttered, more to myself than him. “Fine. Ignore me.”
George’s shoulders shifted. A breath. His fingers tightened on the brush handle, whitening at the knuckles.
Then the door opened again and Fred strode in, triumphantly holding a mop like a trophy.
Lee Jordan followed him, slipping through the doorway with the careful look of someone arriving at a crime scene.
George’s head snapped up at once.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, and his voice sounded almost too loud in the silence, like it had been stored up. “Lee—Snape’ll—”
Lee held up his hands. “Relax,” he whispered. “I’m just… checking.”
“Checking what?” George shot back.
“Whether you’ve exploded yet,” Lee murmured.
Fred’s grin twitched. “He hasn’t,” he said. “Not properly.” I turned slowly, rag hanging from my fingers, eyes narrowing.
“Oh,” I said softly. “So you can talk.”
George’s gaze flicked to me, panicked, and then away again as if my face was a lit match. He opened his mouth—and whatever was inside him slipped out before he could catch it.
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” George said quickly. “I was trying not to say anything stupid to you.”
The words hit the dungeon air like a dropped glass. For a heartbeat, my mind simply… stopped.
Fred made a strangled noise. Lee muttered something that sounded very much like, “Oh, for—”
My chest tightened, sharp, and my first instinct—always, always—was to defend myself. Was he really mocking me after days of pretending I don’t exist? The nerve.
“Stupid?” I repeated, voice very steady. Too steady. “Is that what you call it? Because it sounds like you’re trying to be clever.”
George’s head jerked toward me, eyes widening again, the panic returning full force. “No—” he said, and then his mouth betrayed him again. “I mean—sometimes you look at me like you want to hex me, and I can’t decide if that’s fair or—”
Lee stepped forward fast, like he was throwing himself between a curse and its target. “Right!” he said loudly, clapping his hands once. “Mop delivery. Brilliant. Fred, mate, you’ve saved the day. Come on, Weasley, we’ve got to— er— check the corridor, make sure Snape isn’t—”
“I am capable of checking a corridor,” George snapped, and then immediately went rigid because he’d said it like he meant it.
Fred’s eyes danced with the urge to laugh and the knowledge that he shouldn’t. He swallowed it with visible effort, cheeks twitching.
My fingers tightened on the rag. The sting in my chest sharpened into something that wanted somewhere to go.
“What was that supposed to mean?” I demanded. “What the bloody hell has gotten into you recently? First you ignore me than you mock me?”
George stared at the floor like it might open and take him.
Lee, apparently deciding survival required distraction, turned to me with a grin too wide to be innocent. “Fancy a bet?” he asked rapidly. “On whether Snape’s shampoo is actually bat blood?”
I blinked at him.
“What?”
Lee beamed. “Bat blood. Or maybe… eel slime. Fred thinks eel slime.”
Fred’s mouth twitched. “It’s a strong contender.”
“Why are you talking about Snape’s hair?” I said, because it was absurd and because my mind was still snagged on George’s words like a sleeve caught on a nail.
Lee leaned closer, voice dropping dramatically. “Because,” he whispered, “if you don’t stop looking like you’re about to bite George’s head off, he’s going to say something catastrophic, and then we’ll all be scrubbing these shelves until we die.”
That earned a laugh from somewhere in the room—small, involuntary, sharp enough to surprise me. It startled out of me before I could stop it, like a sneeze.
George flinched as if he’d heard it.
I hated that.
I focused on the practical instead: Lee’s presence.
“Get out,” I hissed, turning my attention on him because it was safer than turning it on George. “Lee, you’re going to get us into even more trouble. Snape will have you mounted on the wall like a trophy.”
Lee lifted his hands again, mock-innocent. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving.” He backed toward the door, still grinning. “Try not to be too terrifying while I’m gone, yeah?”
I glared at him until he slipped out and shut the door. The room settled again into that thick, dungeon quiet.
Fred went back to scrubbing, eyes bright with suppressed laughter, as if he were biting the inside of his cheek to keep it contained.
George moved to the far corner of the classroom as if distance could save him. He scrubbed with vicious concentration, shoulders tight, gaze fixed anywhere but me.
I scrubbed too, but the tabletop under my rag blurred. George’s words kept replaying, not in the way a joke replays, but in the way an insult does—sharp, lodged.
Why had he avoided me for days? Why had he looked like he was bracing for impact every time I entered the room? Why was Fred Weasley—who never shut up for anyone—suddenly behaving like he’d taken a vow of silence?
The thought tugged at me, infuriatingly persistent, the way a loose thread keeps catching on your fingers.
Detention ended. Snape dismissed us with the same sour satisfaction. I left the dungeon with my books pressed to my chest like a shield.
At dinner, I sat with Angelina, Katie, and Alice. Angelina’s laughter cut bright through the Great Hall noise. Katie was talking with her hands, animated, cheeks flushed from the warmth and the chatter. Alice—steady, observant—kept glancing at me like she could tell I was somewhere else.
Fred and George and Lee sat nearby, close enough that I could hear Fred’s laugh when he let it loose, close enough that I could see George’s profile if I lifted my eyes.
I didn’t lift my eyes.
I told myself that was pride.
Across the table, Angelina leaned slightly toward Lee, calling, “Oi, Jordan—tell Fred he still owes me for that Bludger incident last term.”
Lee’s grin flashed. “He says it built character.”
“It built bruises,” Angelina shot back, laughing.
“I don’t know,” I said, voice carrying just enough. “Fred’s idea of character-building usually involves property damage.”
Fred’s laugh burst out, bright and immediate—relief in it, like he’d been starving for permission to be himself again.
And George—
George, who had been keeping his eyes firmly on his plate as if it were the only safe thing in the world—reacted without thinking.
“You always do that when you’re nervous,” George said too quickly. “Get sharp. It’s… predictable.”
The words hung in the air for a fraction of a second too long.
My fork paused halfway to my mouth.
Angelina blinked, eyebrows lifting, amusement sharpening. Katie’s eyes flicked between me and George with quick curiosity.
Fred made a noise that sounded like he’d swallowed a laugh and a groan at the same time.
Lee coughed loudly—far too loudly—and said, “George isn’t feeling well,” with the exaggerated sincerity of someone delivering a lie to a teacher. “Probably ate something dodgy.”
George’s chair scraped back sharply. He stood so fast it looked like the bench tried to keep him.
“I’m going,” he said, voice tight. “Before I ruin everything.”
Fred sprang up after him, half-laughing, half-alarmed. “That’s my brother,” he called, as if it were meant to sound normal. “Dramatic as ever!”
Lee hurried after them, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed.
The girls at my table stared after the three of them.
Angelina’s mouth curved, interested. “Well,” she said lightly. “That was… new.”
Katie leaned forward, eyes bright. “What was that about?”
Alice looked at me, quiet and unblinking, as if she could see the exact place in my chest where the words had landed.
I set my fork down carefully, because my fingers had gone strange—too tight, too cold.
Get sharp. It’s… predictable.
It sounded like a joke someone else might make. Except George hadn’t laughed. And he’d run like he’d been burned.
I pushed back from the table and stood, so abruptly my bench squealed.
Angelina’s eyes followed me. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” I said, because I didn’t want to give the truth a name. I didn’t want to say after him. I didn’t want to say why does he keep doing this.
I gathered my things and walked out of the Great Hall with my spine straight and my steps controlled.
Because whatever game George Weasley had decided to play—whatever strange, quiet, cutting thing he’d turned into this week—I wasn’t going to sit there and let him throw words at me like stones and then run before I could throw them back.
And if he thought I wouldn’t follow the thread until I found what it was attached to—
He didn’t know me at all.
~~~
The common room was the same as it always was—firelight licking at the edges of everything, red-and-gold warmth pooling on threadbare armchairs, voices rising and falling like waves—yet something in it felt… misaligned. Like a portrait hung slightly crooked.
I was tucked into the corner with my back against the arm of a chair that had seen better decades, my book opened on my lap purely for the comfort of having something to stare at. The words didn’t go in. They sat on the page in tidy little lines, politely waiting while my mind kept wandering to places it had no business going.
Across the room, Fred and George and Lee drifted in like they owned the air. Fred’s laugh usually arrived before he did; Lee’s voice followed, loud and warm and relentless; and George—George was the quieter current underneath it.
Tonight, the current didn’t touch me.
They passed near my chair as if I were a piece of furniture. Fred’s eyes skimmed right over my head. Lee didn’t even flicker in my direction. George kept his gaze fixed somewhere above the mantle, like he’d decided that if he didn’t look at me, I didn’t exist.
It is so unnatural I felt it in my teeth.
They didn’t so much as breathe in my direction. They didn’t toss a single irritating comment over their shoulders. No little quip meant to hook into my sleeve and drag me into their orbit. Nothing.
Just… absence, placed carefully around me.
A laugh bubbled up behind my ribs, sharp and incredulous. It didn’t make it out. My throat was suddenly too tight for any sound that wasn’t meant for war.
George’s words from dinner keep replaying, vivid as if he was still standing there with candlelight on his face and disaster in his mouth.
You always do that when you’re nervous. Get sharp. It’s… predictable.
As if I were a trick he learned. As if he had been watching me long enough to map out my reactions and file them away like notes for later.
And then he’d sat there with that expression—tight, wrong—like he’d bitten down on something hot. Like he’d hated himself for saying it. And then he ran.
Now he wouldn’t even look at me.
The audacity of it settled in my chest like a stone. Heavy. Round. Unignorable.
They moved toward the stairs to the boys’ dormitories, still talking among themselves in low voices that didn’t carry the way they usually did. Fred’s shoulders were tense in a way I’d never seen on him—he kept glancing sideways at George as if waiting for a fuse to spark. Lee walked close, murmuring something, the way you might murmur to a skittish horse.
George kept his head down.
Like if he didn’t just get upstairs fast enough, he could outrun whatever it was that kept making him act like this.
My book slipped a fraction on my lap. I didn’t notice until it thudded softly against my knee.
They were already up the stairs when something in me finally moved —like a latch giving way.
I closed my book with a slow, deliberate snap.
My feet carried me up before I’d fully decided to move.
I walked through the common room with the kind of calm that only arrived when you were past the point of reason. The fire crackled. Someone laughed. A first-year darted past me. I hardly registered any of it. My hand slid to my wand.
The staircase to the boys’ dorms was technically off-limits. There was no spell to stop me—nothing like the one that turned the girls’ stairs into a slide—but rules had never been my strongest restraint when my blood started to sing.
I took the steps two at a time.
The boys’ corridor smelt like soap and old wood and Quidditch gear left to dry badly. The door to their dorm room was ajar, light spilling out in a warm stripe onto the floorboards.
I didn’t knock. I pushed it open so hard it banged against the wall.
Three heads whipped toward me.
Fred looked like he’d been caught mid-conspiracy, hair sticking up. Lee’s eyes widened, then narrowed, as his brain caught up to the problem in front of him. George was sitting on his bed, shoulders hunched, hands clenched so tightly together his knuckles look pale.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. It was, bizarrely, the quietest I’d ever heard three Gryffindor boys.
Then Fred recovered.
“Blimey,” he said, voice bright with forced normality. “If it isn’t—”
“Don’t,” I’d cut in, and the word landed like a door slamming. My wand was already in my hand, not raised—yet—but present enough to make the air feel pointed.
Lee straightened, taking a step forward, his palms were out in the universal sign for let’s not make this worse. “All right, all right,” he said, attempting charm. “You can’t just—”
“I can,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. That’s how I knew i was in too deep. “I just did.”
Fred’s grin faltered into something more careful. “This is the boys’ dorm,” he pointed out, as if the concept of boys’ dorm was a warding charm.
“Yes,” I said, gaze flicking to George for a split second—and catching nothing because his eyes were fixed firmly on the floor. Didn’t even a glance. Didn’t even a flinch. “I noticed.”
George’s jaw flexed.
Lee cleared his throat. “Look,” he began, lowering his voice, “whatever’s going on, you don’t want to be up here when someone sees you—”
“Oh, spare me,” I said, and the sarcasm came out sharp. “I’ve been blamed for half the crimes committed in this castle and I’m still walking around. I think I’ll survive being seen standing in a room.”
Fred’s eyes flickered to George again, quick and warning.
George stayed silent, staring at his hands like he could physically hold his mouth shut.
My gaze returned to Fred and Lee, and something cold and clear settled into place.
“I saw you,” I said, softly enough that they had to listen. “Earlier this week. With a bottle. A potion.”
The air changed. It was immediate—like someone pulled a thread and the whole room tightened.
Fred’s expression got just a shade too blank. Lee’s mouth opened, then closed, like he was recalculating the situation.
George’s head snapped up for the first time, eyes wide—right at Fred, right at Lee—with a kind of naked fear that made my stomach dip unpleasantly.
And then he looked at me.
Just once.
It wasn’t a warm look. It wasn’t even an angry one. It was a look like a person watching a trapp door open beneath them.
“What was it?” I asked.
No one answered .
“Was it something you brewed?” I pressed, stepping farther into the room. The wooden floor creaked under my shoes. “Something you stole? Something you were stupid enough to put in Percy’s drink and then—what—missed?”
Still nothing.
George’s lips pressed together so tightly they got white.
My grip tightened on my wand. I was aware, distantly, of how ridiculous it was—me standing in a boys’ dormitory at night with my wand out like i was about to duel someone. But my pride had teeth, and right now it was the only thing keeping my chest from splitting open with the sheer wrongness of being ignored by someone who never shut up.
“Right,” I said, and my voice got flatter, dangerous in its calm. “You’re all going to sit there and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Fred tried for light again, because it was his instinct. “Well, when you say it like that, it makes us sound terribly suspicious—”
“Get out,” I said.
Fred blinked. Lee stopped breathing.
“What?” Lee said.
“You,” I repeated, pointing my wand at the door, then at them—enough to make it very clear I was not playing. “Out. Both of you.”
Fred’s brows lifted. “Now hold on—”
I took one step closer. The tip of my wand steady without effort.
“I’ve spent five years taking the fall for your rubbish,” I said, and I didn’t raise my voice, which somehow made it worse. “If you think I won’t hex you out of this room, you’ve severely misjudged how attached I am to your continued wellbeing.”
Lee’s eyes flicked to Fred. Fred’s eyes flicked to George.
George’s face had gone tight, his hands gripped the edge of his mattress like he was anchoring himself to the earth.
“Don’t,” George said, and the word scraped out of him like it hurt. He looked at them—pleading, raw. “Don’t leave.”
Fred’s expression shifted—something real underneath the mischief. “Mate…”
George shook his head once, sharp, like he was trying to dislodge the whole moment. “Please,” he said, and his voice cracked on it, almost imperceptibly.
Lee swore under his breath, a quick, helpless sound. “This is bad,” he muttered.
Fred looked at me, then at George, and there was a beat where he’d weighed it—the way Fred weighed things: not with caution, exactly, but with a sense of timing, of damage control, of what made the best story and what might make the worst one.
Then he sighed, long and dramatic, like a man being marched to execution.
“All right,” Fred said lightly, because he couldn’t not. “If you die, I’ll tell Mum you died handsome.”
“Out,” I said again, unwavering.
Lee stepped toward the door first, shoulders tight. Fred followed, pausing just long enough to clap George once on the shoulder—harder than necessary, the way boys do when they don’t know how to be gentle without making it obvious.
“Better now than later,” Fred murmured, voice low. “Yeah?”
George’s eyes flashed. He shook his head again, fierce. “No.”
Fred didn’t argue. He just let out a small breath through his nose, as if laughter was trapped there and he was forcing it back, and then he was gone.
Lee slipped out behind him. At the threshold, he glanced back at me with a look that said good luck and you’ve doomed us all in the same expression. Then the door clicked shut.
The room felt too quiet without them. Like you could hear the castle breathing.
I turned back to George.
He was still on his bed, shoulders rigid, hands folded together so tightly it looked painful. His jaw was clenched. His eyes were down again.
As if looking at me was the most dangerous thing in the world.
I folded my arms across my chest, wand still in my hand, and leant back against the door.
“Well?” I said.
George didn’t move.
The silence stretched. It wasn’t the comfortable kind. It was the kind that filled your ears until you couldn’t tell if you were hearing your own heartbeat or the room’s.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked, and the words came out sharper now, because the quiet was scraping the inside of me raw. “You spend all week acting like you’ve been possessed. You say—” my throat tightened around the memory and I pushed through it anyway, “you say things at dinner like you’ve been watching me through a telescope, and then you can’t even be bothered to look at me afterwards.”
George’s fingers twitched. His eyes flicked up for a split second—toward my wand, not my face—and then away again.
That did something to me that I hated. I pushed off the door and took a step closer.
“Talk,” I said. “Or I swear—”
George’s head snapped up at last. His eyes locked onto mine, wide and bright and wrong, like there was too much inside him and nowhere for it to go.
“Put your wand down,” he said quickly.
“Give me a reason.”
His mouth opened.
And then whatever it was that seemed to be torturing him this whole week jerked him by the throat and dragged itself out.
“I always thought it was—” he started, and then his eyes squeezed shut like he was trying to stop the sentence with sheer will. He failed. “I always thought it was—” he swallowed hard, “hot when you get like this.”
I didn’t move.
I didn’t breathe.
It hit me the way a Bludger hit—sudden, solid, stupidly physical. My body reacted before my brain could arrange meaning. I flinched back half a step as if the air between us has snapped.
“What?” I said, and it came out small, because I didn’t have anything else ready.
George made a sound that was half groan, half curse. He slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wild. My heart was doing something frantic and humiliating in my chest, like it was trying to climb out.
“What did you just say?” I demanded, and the words shook at the edges no matter how hard I tried to iron them flat. “Are you—are you mocking me?”
George shook his head violently, hand still over his mouth. It was almost comical, how desperate he looked, like a boy trying to wrestle his own face into silence.
I stared at him, heat rising in my cheeks for reasons I refused to examine.
“This is—” I said, and my voice wanted to splinter. I forced it steadier. “This is a new one, I’ll give you that. Insult me and then pretend you can’t speak. Very creative.”
George dragged his hand down his face, as if wiping away the disaster. His eyes were bright with something that looked suspiciously like panic.
“I’m not—” he started.
He clamped his mouth shut again, but it was useless. The words kept pressing at his teeth like they were alive.
I lifted my wand a fraction. Not to hex him—no matter what my pride was pretending, I wasn’t actually going to hex him—but to kept myself feeling like I had control of the room.
George’s gaze dropped to the wand and he lifted both hands, palms out, surrendering.
“Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay—don’t—just—put it down, yeah? Please.”
There it was again.
Please.
It landed strangely. Not like Fred’s theatrical pleas, all grin and performance. George’s plea had weight to it, like it cost him something to say.
I lowered my wand—only a little—because I wasn’t a fool.
George exhaled, and then the truth, relentless as gravity, finally won.
“I can’t—” he said, and the admission came out in a rush, raw with humiliation. “I can’t stop it. I’ve been trying all week and I can’t. I didn’t want—” his voice caught, and he swallowed it down harshly, “I didn’t want you to hear me say stupid things.”
My throat went tight again. “Stupid things,” I echoed confused.
George’s laugh came out sharp and miserable. “Yes,” he said. “Because every time I open my mouth around you it’s like—” he jerked his head, frustrated, “it’s like the truth has been sitting there waiting and now it thinks it’s got permission.”
I stared at him.
He looked back at me for the first time without dodging—really looked—eyes bright with something like dread.
I couldn’t tell if he looked terrified of me or of himself.
“You’re on something,” I said, and it wasn’t a question anymore. Pieces clicked in my head, one by one: the strange bluntness in the corridor, the slips at dinner, the way Fred had been strangling his own laughter, the way George had been moving through the castle like he was afraid of speaking within earshot of anyone.
George’s shoulders sagged as if the fight had finally left him. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“What?”
He flinched, as though the word itself hurt. Then, because he had to: “Truth potion.”
I blinked. The room swam faintly at the edges, not because of magic but because my brain was trying to hold too many things at once.
“You—” I started, and stopped. I tried again. “You drank a truth potion.”
George closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“And you’ve been avoiding me because—”
His eyes opened.
And then it all split out in one catastrophic, unstoppable flood, like he tried to dam a river with his hands and now the water had found every crack.
“Because I like you,” George said, words tumbling too fast, too honest, too vivid. “Because I’ve liked you for ages, and it’s pathetic, and I don’t know how to stop it, and I keep telling myself you hate me and you probably do because I’ve given you every reason to, and every time you glare at me it feels like—like you’re about to hex me and I deserve it, but—” he dragged in a breath, eyes fixed on my face like he couldn’t help it now, “but it’s also—Merlin, it’s also the only time you look at me properly.”
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
My hands had gone cold around my wand. George’s voice kept coming, helpless against the potion’s pull.
“I notice everything,” he said, and the words should sounded arrogant, but they didn’t—they sounded like confession, like a boy caught with something stolen in his pocket. “The way you set your jaw when you’re pretending you’re fine. The way you get sharper when you’re… when you’re not sure what to do. The way you act like you don’t care and then you care so much it leaks out anyway, and you hate that about yourself—” he broke off with a strangled laugh, like he knew he was stepping into dangerous territory, “and I shouldn’t know any of it, because you don’t give it to anyone on purpose, but I’ve been… watching. I can’t not. It’s like my eyes do it without asking me.”
My pulse was loud in my ears. My face felt too hot. My feet were rooted in place as if the floorboards had taken sides.
He swallowed, voice going lower, rougher.
“And you’re—” he shook his head, like the word was too big, “you’re… beautiful when you’re furious.”
I inhaled sharply, and it was the first real breath I’d managed since he started.
“No,” I said, because my brain was scrabbling for a rung to hold onto and that was the only one it found. “No. This—this is—”
He flinched immediately, like the refusal was a physical strike.
“I’m not joking,” George said, voice suddenly fierce, and it was so unlike the George I knew—so stripped bare—that it jolted something in me. “I would never— I would never joke about you. Not like that. Not—” his voice cracked, and the crack was worse than any loudness, “not about this.”
I stared at him, searching his face for the familiar shape of a prank—waiting for the grin, the wink, the bright cruelty of got you.
There was none.
Just George, sitting on the edge of his bed like he was waiting to be punished, hands clenched, eyes too bright.
And the worst part was: the more he spoke, the more my stomach twisted—not with humiliation, not with rage, but with something treacherously soft that made my chest hurt.
My wand dipped, forgotten.
“You’re expecting me to believe,” I said, and my voice was thin now despite myself, “that this is real.”
George let out a breath that sounded like laughter turned into pain. “I don’t have a choice,” he said. “I can’t lie.”
I shook my head. “Prove it.”
His eyes flickered up, startled. “What?”
“If you can’t lie,” I said, and the words scraped out of me like a dare I didn’t mean to make, “prove it. George’s mouth opened, and then he shut it, as if he could feel himself being dragged forward again.
“I—” he started, then winced. “I don’t know how to—”
I stepped closer, and the space between us felt suddenly too small, too charged. His gaze flickered to my face, then to my wand, then back again, like he couldn’t decide what scared him more.
“You’ve avoided me,” I said, quieter now, and the quiet was more dangerous. “All week. You looked right through me in the common room. You wouldn’t even look at me.”
George’s throat bobbed. “Because if I looked at you,” he said, and the truth came out as if it had been trapped behind his teeth for years, “I’d say things I can’t afford to say.”
My breath caught. I hated that it did. I hated the way my body betrayed me with small, involuntary tells.
George’s eyes flickered as if he noticed.
I lifted my chin—stubborn, defensive, Gryffindor to the bone.
“Fine,” I said, voice tight. “Prove. It,”
George stared at me for a long, unbearable moment. The room was so still I could hear the distant crackle of the common room fire below, muffled through floors and years.
Then he spoke again, because he couldn’t help it.
He said my name—just my name—like it tasted different in his mouth than it did in anyone else’s.
And that, somehow, was the most terrifying thing yet.
He pushed himself up from the bed slowly, like his body was arguing with his mind and winning. The mattress creaked behind him, a soft sound, and suddenly he was standing—really standing—close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at him.
My gaze caught on his chest first, the way his jumper hung slightly loose on him, sleeves pushed up just enough to show forearms dusted faintly with freckles and scars that looked earned. I registered the height of him without meaning to—the way he blocked the lamplight, the way his shadow folded over me like it belonged there. I was aware, absurdly, of how warm he smelt—soap and smoke and something sharp underneath, like adrenaline.
George noticed.
Of course he did.
His breath stuttered—just enough to tell me he lost whatever fragile control he thought he had left.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
I looked up. His eyes were dark, fixed on my face like he was memorising it against his will.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he added, and the words came out strained, like they’d been dragged through his teeth. “If you don’t stop, I’ll—”
He cut himself off, jaw tightening.
I lifted my chin a fraction. It wasn’t defiance exactly. It was instinct. It was the same thing that always made me step closer instead of back.
“You’ll what George?”
The silence that followed wasnt empty. It was crowded—packed tight with things neither of us had said out loud before now.
George’s laugh was breathless and disbelieving, like the sound had surprised him on the way out.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said.
“Show me how,”
That’s all it took.
He leaned down and kissed me like he’d been waiting years and suddenly there was no one left to stop him.
It wasn’t careful.
It wasn’t polite.
It was the kind of kiss that stole the air from your lungs and left you dizzy in its place—his mouth warm and sure against mine, like he already knew exactly how this was meant to feel. My hands moved without consulting me, fingers fisting in the fabric at his shoulders, pulling him closer because distance had become unbearable.
His hands found my waist as if they’d always known where it was, steady and grounding and impossibly gentle for how much force there was behind the way he pressed me back against the door. I made a sound—small, involuntary—and he stilled for half a heartbeat, like he was listening for it again.
Then he kissed me deeper, slower now, as if he learned something and intended to keep it.
My head tilted without thinking, chasing the angle, and the world narrowed to heat and pressure and the way his thumb pressed into my side like he was anchoring himself. I was lightheaded—too aware of my own pulse, of the way my body seemed to lean into him like it’d been waiting for permission.
He made a sound—low, startled, almost a laugh—and then his hands shifted with sudden certainty. One moment I was standing there with the door cold at my back, and the next the floor dropped away.
I gasped as he lifted me, the movement smooth and instinctive, as if he’d done this in some other life and his body remembered even if his head didn’t. My fingers clutched at his shoulders, fabric wrinkling under my grip, and he carried me the short distance to his bed like he was afraid of setting me down too gently.
The mattress dipped beneath me. The lamplight swung. He followed, bracing himself over me, close enough that the air felt crowded, his weight a steady presence I didn’t want to escape.
My hips shifted up without thinking—seeking, answering—and the sound he made in response was rough and unguarded, torn from him like a confession. His hand tightened at my waist, fingers biting in just enough that it made my breath stutter, the other slid up to cradle my neck with a care that didnt match the hunger in his mouth.
“Merlin,” he muttered, and it wasn’t a joke.
His lips left mine and trailed along my jaw, unhurried now, as if he was mapping something he intended to keep. The sensation pulled a sound from me before I could stop it—soft, traitorous—and he caught it instantly, kissing me again to quiet it, a smile pressed into the corner of my mouth like he was pleased he found it.
He swore under his breath, the word lost to fabric and skin, and dipped to my neck. The warmth there was unbearable, dizzying; I tipped my head back without meaning to, fingers tightening in his hair as the world blurred at the edges. For a heartbeat, everything else—rules, pride, years of irritation held like armour—fell away, leaving only this: the way he held me like I were something precious and dangerous at the same time.
The door banged open.
“Right,” Fred’s voice announced, breathless and dramatic. “I had a bad feeling and—”
George froze.
I froze.
Fred took in the scene in one sweeping glance—and then he bursted out laughing, loud and delighted, like he’d just won a bet no one else knew he placed.
“Oh, this is brilliant,” he wheezed. “Absolutely brilliant. I go to rescue my brother and instead I—”
“Wow, mate,” George said dryly, not lifting his head, voice rough with laughter he was trying not to let loose. “Impeccable timing.”
Fred wiped at his eyes, still grinning. “Never would’ve guessed,” he added, ignoring what George just said as he glanced between us. “Honestly thought she’d hex you before she ever kissed you.”
George finally looked up, one hand still steady at my waist, eyes bright and unapologetic. “Out,” he says.
Fred snorted. “Touchy.”
“Fred.”
“All right, all right.” He backed toward the door, laughter trailing behind him like sparks. “Carry on, then. I’ll just—” he paused, smirked, “—pretend I saw none of that.”
The door shut.
The quiet that followed was different—softer, warmer, humming with something that hadn’t settled yet.
George looked back at me, thumb brushing my jaw like he was checking if I were real.
Still close. Still here.
And for once, neither of us was in a hurry to move.
AMC lets Eric and Assad do a buzzfeed reads thirst tweets video and half of the video is just Eric going "I sent this one to Assad already" and Assad going (big sigh) "Yes I've seen this one"
one laundry night they definitely start discussing how many Earth-named constellations are based on Greek myths, and then that definitely brings up the Odyssey (and how it relates to their current journey to Erid), and they spend the next week or so spinning tales and having Mary read the poem aloud and Rocky makes miniatures so Grace can act it out
dailybridgerton
vaporwave
2087
theartofmadeline
gamechangershow
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
