Pairing: George Weasley x hufflepuff!reader
Summary: You're just trying to help your best friend get the boy she likes, but George Weasley keeps looking at you instead. Turns out the only person who doesn't know she's the one worth looking at is, is looking at her.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (coming soon)
It started feeling strange around the third time.
The first time George sat across from you in the library you thought coincidence. The second time, maybe he just liked that corner. By the third time you were sitting there genuinely wondering if you had somehow done something to deserve this, because you were a person people walked past. You were furniture. You were background.
And yet there he was. Again. Pulling out the chair like he'd booked it.
"Why are you here. Again. There are forty other seats."
You stared at him. He stared back, completely unbothered. You looked back at your essay because you had no idea what to do with a person who said things like that with a straight face.
For ten minutes you said nothing. You were going to be normal about this. You were going to write your essay and he was going to sit there and it was going to be completely fine.
"Do you actually like Potions," he said, "or just good at it."
You didn't look up. "Like it."
You put your quill down. "Meaning if you follow the steps and pay attention it works. It doesn't randomly decide to do something unexpected. It's reliable."
"Unlike people," he said.
You pointed at him. "I did not say that."
"I did." He tilted his head. "Am I wrong?"
"I'm not having this conversation."
"That's basically a yes."
"From you that's the same thing." He was smiling. You could see it without looking directly at him and it was extremely irritating. "What else do you like."
You frowned at your parchment. Nobody asked you that. Not really. "Reading."
"What does that mean, obviously."
"I could be here for other reasons."
"No," you said. "But theoretically."
He laughed. Quiet and warm. You cleared your throat.
"Cecily likes reading too actually," you said. "She reads a lot. You two would probably have loads to talk about."
"Yes. She's very — well-read. Interesting. Lots of opinions."
"Right." He flipped a page. "You bring her up a lot."
"Every time I ask about you, you give me Cecily."
Your face went warm. "I'm just saying she's great."
"I'm sure she is." He said it like that was a perfectly fine thing to hear and also completely beside the point. "What do you like to read."
You paused. He hadn't moved on to Cecily. He'd just — stepped around her and come straight back to you. You weren't sure what to do with that.
"History," you said finally. "Real history. Not the textbook kind."
"Textbook history is just dates. Real history is about why people did things. What they were thinking. What they got wrong." You stopped. That was more words than you usually said in a sitting. "Anyway."
George was looking at you with an expression you didn't know what to do with. Not pity. Not surprise. Something more like — interest. Actual interest. The kind that made you want to slide under the table a little.
"Anyway," he agreed, and went back to his book.
But he was still smiling.
Wednesday. Fred came too, which made things louder but slightly easier to manage because Fred talked enough that you didn't have to.
"She speaks," Fred announced, pointing at you. "George told me. I didn't believe it."
"When something is worth saying."
"George said you told him his questions were bad."
You looked at George. "I said I wasn't having the conversation."
"Same thing," George said.
"What's the difference," Fred said.
"One is rude and one is a boundary."
Fred stared at you. Then he looked at George. "She said it with a completely straight face."
"She always does," George said.
"I'm right here," you said.
"We know," they both said at the same time.
Fred pointed at George. "You were right. She's—"
"I was just going to say—"
Fred closed his mouth. You looked between them. "What."
"Nothing," George said, and looked at his textbook.
You narrowed your eyes. Neither of them elaborated. You decided this was a thread you were not going to pull on.
Then the library doors opened and Cecily walked in.
She spotted your table, clocked George, and did the hair thing. The casual-but-not-casual hair thing you had seen approximately fifty times in your life. She arranged her face into a pleasant surprise expression and walked over.
"Oh," she said. "Hi. Didn't know you'd all be here."
You had written her a note with the exact table number.
"Hey," George said easily. "Cecily, right?"
Her smile went up immediately. "You remembered."
"Course." He gestured to the seat beside him. "Sit down."
And she did, smoothly, like she'd been planning exactly that. Which she had. You looked at your essay.
"Fred," Fred said, to no one in particular.
"Hi Fred," Cecily said, already not looking at him, already turned toward George. "I love that jumper. Is it handmade?"
"Mum makes them. Every year, no exceptions."
"That's so lovely." She touched the sleeve briefly. Then she looked across the table at you with a smile that was perfectly warm. "You didn't tell me they'd be here."
"Didn't know," you said, which was technically true in the sense that you hadn't known Fred would be there.
"She never tells me anything," Cecily said to George, light and easy, like it was a charming little fact about you. "She's so quiet. You probably can't even get a word out of her, right?"
You kept your eyes on your essay.
"Actually she talks plenty," George said.
Cecily blinked. Just slightly. "Really."
"When she has something to say." A pause. "Which is more than you'd think."
Fred was looking very carefully at a point on the ceiling.
Cecily laughed — bright, easy, the kind that filled a room — and tucked her hair behind her ear. "I know, she's so smart. She's always been the smart one." She reached over and squeezed your arm. "I always tell her that. I'd be failing half my classes without her."
There it was. The compliment that was also a category. Smart. Helpful. Useful. Yours.
You smiled. "That's not true."
"It completely is." She looked back at George. "I basically can't function without her, she's so good at everything. I'm just the pretty one, she's the capable one." A little laugh. Self-deprecating in the way that wasn't really self-deprecating at all.
Under the table your knee bounced once and stopped.
George looked at you. Not at Cecily. At you, and it was brief but it was direct and there was something in it you couldn't name and didn't want to.
You looked at your essay. You wrote a sentence that made no grammatical sense and left it there.
They all left eventually. Fred first, then George, and Cecily walked out with him, laughing at something he said, her hand brushing his arm on the way through the door.
You stayed at the table for a few extra minutes.
Good, you told yourself. That's good. That's exactly what was supposed to happen.
You scratched out the sentence that made no sense.
The debrief happened that evening in the dormitory. Cecily came in glowing, dropped onto her bed, and stared at the ceiling like she was in a film.
"He's so funny," she said. "Like in person, up close, it's almost aggressive how funny he is."
"Good," you said from behind your textbook.
"And he's tall. I forgot how tall he was."
"Did you see how he just — he's so comfortable, like he's never awkward about anything." She rolled onto her side. "I think it went well. Don't you think it went well?"
You turned a page. "You should talk to him more. One-on-one. Without me and Fred there."
"Obviously." She stretched out luxuriously. "I'm going to ask him about Hogsmeade. Casually." She paused. "What should I wear when I ask him."
"Cecily it's a hallway conversation."
"Presentation matters." She looked over at you. "You wouldn't understand, you don't really think about that stuff."
You looked at her over the top of your textbook.
She said it so easily. Not mean. Just — true, in her world. You didn't think about that stuff. That was simply a given, the same way it was a given that she was the pretty one and you were the capable one and everyone had their lane.
"Wear the green," you said, and went back to reading.
"The green," she repeated, considering it. "You think?"
"Okay." She nodded, satisfied. "See, this is why I keep you around."
You smiled at your textbook. Small and practiced and exactly the right size.
The Herbology class was not your fault.
Mixed houses, third year onwards, which meant Gryffindors in your greenhouse on Thursdays, which meant George two rows behind you and you very carefully not turning around. You had your notes. You had your plant. You had a whole system for getting through this lesson without incident.
Then Professor Sprout put the partner list on the board and your name was next to his and the system collapsed entirely.
He moved to your bench without making it a thing, which you appreciated and also resented. He just sat down and got to work beside you like it was natural. Like you did this all the time. You handed each other things without talking much and it was fine. Easy in a way that felt dangerous.
"You're good at this," he said at some point, watching you pack the soil in correctly.
"It's just paying attention."
"Most people don't bother."
You didn't say anything to that. You kept your eyes on the plant.
The trouble started when he reached across you for the soil bag on your left. He wasn't thinking about it, you could tell — it was just the nearest thing and he needed it but he was close, suddenly, and he smelled like something warm and outside and your brain made the executive decision to stop functioning for approximately four seconds.
You came back to yourself.
Your quill had rolled to the edge of the bench. You leaned down to get it.
The corner of the table introduced itself to your forehead with tremendous efficiency.
The sound it made was not small. The two students at the next bench turned around. You sat back up with your hand pressed above your eyebrow, eyes watering slightly, and the words coming out of your mouth were extremely quiet and extremely unladylike.
"Hey—" George was already turned toward you, hand half-raised. "Are you okay?"
"I know what I just did."
He reached over and very gently moved your hand away from your forehead to look, and you let him because your brain had not yet resumed normal operations. His fingers were careful. Just the tips of them, tilting your head slightly toward the light coming through the greenhouse glass.
"You're going to bruise," he said.
"Properly. It's already going a bit—"
"Right. Sorry." He let go. His hand dropped but he didn't look away for a second. "Were you distracted?"
The heat that climbed your face had nothing to do with the injury.
"By the plant," you said. "I was looking at the plant."
He was quiet. You could feel him deciding not to say something. "Okay," he said finally, and went back to the Puffapod, and you could see the corner of his mouth from where you were sitting and you hated it.
From two benches back, Fred's voice,"Did she just—"
"Leave it," George said, not even turning around.
You were going to have to live with this for the rest of your life.
That was the moment you decided, walking out of the greenhouse with a bruise forming above your eyebrow and your dignity somewhere on the greenhouse floor, that you needed to be more careful.
Not avoid him exactly. That would be noticeable, and noticeably strange, and Cecily would ask questions you didn't want to answer.
Just careful. More deliberate about redirecting. More consistent about remembering what you were actually doing here and why.
He had noticed Cecily first. You had facilitated that. That was the whole point.
You were the background. That was your role and you were good at it and it was fine.
He caught up with you before you'd made it to the castle steps.
"Hospital wing," he said.
"I've had worse." You walked a little faster. He kept pace without any effort and you resented his legs deeply. "I'll get ice from the kitchens. They're right next to the Hufflepuff common room."
"The barrel one?" he said. "By the kitchens?"
You glanced at him, surprised. "You know about it?"
"Fred tried to find it once on a dare. Got doused." He paused. "Twice."
Despite everything, something almost like a smile crossed your face. "First year. Me too."
"I was nervous. I miscounted."
He looked at you with something soft in his expression and you looked away quickly because you couldn't afford that right now.
"Cecily could probably show you where it is," you said. "The common room. She'd — she'd like that actually, showing you around."
George slowed slightly. Not stopping.
"You're doing it again," he said, quiet.
"I know what you're saying." He wasn't teasing now. His voice had gone a little more careful. "You do it every time."
You didn't say anything. There was nothing to say that wasn't too honest.
You were at the steps. You stopped and turned to face him properly, which was a mistake because he was looking at you with that direct, unhurried attention that made you feel seen in a way you genuinely did not know what to do with.
"Stop," he said. Not harsh. Just tired of the sentence.
He looked at your forehead for a moment. The bruise. Then back at your eyes.
"Go get your ice," he said.
You nodded. You went up the steps. You didn't look back because you already knew he was watching and knowing that was already more than you could handle.
In the dormitory that night you lay on your bed with a cold cloth pressed to your forehead and thought about the way he'd said stop like he was tired, like he'd been listening to something for a while that he didn't quite believe and you pressed the cloth harder against the bruise and let the cold of it bring you back to something sensible.
He was just curious about you. That was all it was. You were quiet and strange and he was the kind of person who noticed things other people didn't, so he'd noticed you, and it would pass. It would pass once Cecily turned the full warmth of her attention on him properly. It always worked that way. Everyone always chose Cecily in the end.
You pressed the cloth a little harder.
A/n: wrote these instantly after seeing how much everyone like the first part! not proofread!
Comment to be tagged on the next part!
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