Pairing: George Weasley x hufflepuff!reader
Summary: You're just trying to help your best friend get the boy she likes, but George Weasley keeps looking at you instead. Turns out the only person who doesn't know she's the one worth looking at is, is looking at her.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 (finale)
It came up the way small things always did — sideways, in the middle of something else, when your guard was completely down.
Wednesday. The library. Your table. George across from you like always, both of you with work spread out between you, the kind of comfortable quiet that had slowly become its own thing.
Hannah had brought up the ball at breakfast and somehow the conversation had followed you here without you noticing, the way certain things did.
"I probably won't go," you said.
You weren't even looking at him. You were writing a sentence. Casual. Like you were talking about the weather.
George's quill stopped moving.
You shrugged one shoulder. "Nobody's asking me."
Not the comfortable kind. The kind with something in it. Heavy and specific and pressing against the inside of the quiet like it needed somewhere to go.
You kept writing. You didn't look up. You had said it like it was nothing because to you it was nothing — just a plain fact, the kind you had been collecting your whole life and filing away without much feeling.
You finished your sentence and looked up.
He was looking at you. His face had gone through something and come out the other side into an expression that was very careful and very still. The moment your eyes met he smoothed it out.
"Right," he said. And looked back at his work.
"Right," you agreed, and looked back at yours.
But the quiet was different after that. Fuller. Like something had been dropped into it and was still sinking.
What you didn't know was what happened after George left the library that evening.
He walked fast. Not to the common room. Up.
He had been planning this for twelve days. Twelve days since he had sat across from you in the library and listened to you say nobody's asking me like it was a perfectly acceptable thing for the universe to be doing and decided that he was done waiting for the right moment because the right moment was not going to appear on its own. He was going to have to make it.
He went to the Astronomy Tower.
He had found it three weeks ago — the tower, the windows, the high cold space of it — and thought, this. This was the right place. Not the Great Hall, not some corner of the grounds. Here. Where you could see everything. Where it was quiet in the way that only very high places were quiet.
He had started small. A few floating lights the first night, just to see how they looked. They were too white. Too harsh. He tried again. Warmer this time, gold and amber, softer. Better. He wrote it down in the small notebook he kept for Charms experiments and came back the next night and tried to make them drift properly, slow and easy, not just float in place like lights in a corridor but actually move, like they belonged there.
That took three more nights.
The candles were harder. He kept getting the stabilising charm slightly wrong and they'd gutter out after twenty minutes. He worked through his Charms notes and tried six different variations and the fifth one was almost right and the sixth one held.
The runes took longest. He had seen them in a library book — stabilising runes, for light spells, the kind that settled into stone and lasted and the book made them look simple. They were not simple. He etched the first attempt faintly into the ledge near the window and they shimmered for about four seconds and went dark. He tried again. Closer. He tried again. Better. He tried a fourth time, slower, more careful, going over each line twice, and they shimmered and held and when he moved slightly they caught the light differently and he stood there in the cold tower alone at half past midnight and felt something settle in his chest.
Fred always knew. George came in late every night for two weeks and Fred said nothing, which for Fred was the most significant thing he had ever done in his life.
"You know," Fred said, on night eleven, not looking up from his Charms essay, "most people just ask."
"You've been building a whole room."
"For a girl who doesn't think anyone's going to ask her."
George didn't say anything.
"Right," Fred said, and went back to his essay.
By day twelve George had the lights right and the candles holding and the runes settled in the stone and a Butterbeer kept warm by a preservation charm he had looked up specifically and a pile of cushions he had gathered from various places around the castle over the course of a week and a blanket from the Gryffindor common room that he was hoping nobody would notice was missing.
He was going to ask her today.
In the courtyard. After her afternoon class. Simple and direct and plain, because he had been not plain about this for long enough.
He saw you from across the courtyard. You were sitting on the edge of the fountain with your bag at your feet and a book open in your lap and your hair was doing the thing it did in the wind and you hadn't noticed him yet and you looked so completely like yourself that something in his chest went warm and decided and certain all at once.
He got halfway across the courtyard before someone else stepped into his line of sight.
A boy. Ravenclaw. George knew him vaguely — Potions, two rows over, decent enough bloke. He walked straight to you with his hands in his pockets and said something and you looked up from your book with that small surprised look you had when something caught you off guard, the one where your eyes went wide for just a second before you caught yourself.
The boy said something else and you closed your book and looked at your hands and then looked back up and your mouth moved and you nodded. Soft. Small.
The boy smiled. Said something. You smiled back, a little uncertain, the polite smile you used when you weren't sure what you were agreeing to but were trying to be gracious about it.
George stood in the middle of the courtyard with both hands in his pockets and his jaw tight and watched the whole thing happen from fifteen feet away.
Quietly. No drama. He just turned and walked back the way he came.
Fred was at the top of the courtyard steps when George came back through.
He had seen it from the window. He had seen George start across the courtyard and then stop and then stand very still for ten full seconds and then turn around and come back, and he had come downstairs without really deciding to, drawn by some twin instinct that told him this was not a moment to leave unattended.
George didn't stop walking.
"I guess I was too late."
"Wait, how do you know she agreed?"
"George." Fred grabbed his arm and George stopped. Didn't turn around. Just stopped. His shoulders were set in the particular way they got when he was holding something in very carefully. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about." His voice was even. Flat and practiced. "She said yes to someone else. That's — it's fine. It's her choice. I'm fine."
Fred looked at the back of his head. Then past him, through the window, at you still sitting by the fountain, book back open, completely unaware of any of this.
"George," Fred said quietly. "She doesn't know you were going to ask."
"Fred." He finally turned around. His face was doing the thing where it was very controlled and very tired and both of those things were visible if you knew where to look, which Fred did. "Leave it."
But he looked out the window at you one more time before he followed George up the stairs, and something on his face went quiet and sad in a way that was very unlike Fred and very unlike anything to do with jokes.
"Oh gosh," Fred said, to nobody, very softly.
You noticed George was quieter. Not unkind — never unkind, just a degree more careful. Like he was keeping something very deliberately contained and the effort of it made him slightly more still than usual.
You assumed Quidditch. End of season pressure. You didn't ask because you had no right to ask and that was something you had accepted a long time ago.
You were sad in your own quiet way.
Not the dramatic kind. Just the low steady kind that lived in the background of days, the kind that you had gotten so good at carrying that most people couldn't even see it. You had expected something. After the library, after nobody's asking me landing in the space between you and George going completely still — you had let yourself expect something.
You packed it away the way you always packed things away. Neatly. In the drawer. Lid closed.
When the Ravenclaw boy had asked you in the courtyard you had said you'd think about it because that was the truth. You went back to the dormitory and sat on your bed and thought about it.
You sent him a note saying that you were not attending the ball.
"You should be more excited," she told you.
"You look like you're doing homework in your head."
"Nothing." You looked at the dress hanging on the back of your wardrobe door. Purple, like Hannah had said, soft and simple and nothing like the things Cecily used to wear, which was fine. You were nothing like Cecily. That was just a fact. "Do I actually want to go to this thing."
"Yes," Hannah said. "You do."
"You do," she said again, firmer.
"I'm always right." She tilted her head. "Have you talked to George today?"
Something moved in your chest. "No."
"I'm just saying he seemed—"
"Can we not," you said, quietly. And she heard the quiet in it and stopped.
"Okay," she said, and squeezed your hand once. "Go get some air. You look like you need it."
The courtyard bench was cold and empty and perfect.
You sat down and pulled your cardigan tight and tipped your head back and looked at the sky which was dark and very clear and full of stars and you breathed and let your thoughts go wherever they wanted, which tonight was not a good idea but you were doing it anyway because sometimes you ran out of places to put things.
You thought about the library chair across from you and how it had felt empty before he started sitting in it and how you had gotten so used to him being there that the days he wasn't felt like something missing from a sentence.
You thought about rain on a Quidditch pitch and a shared cloak and breathing the same cold air.
You thought about a staircase and his hand on your waist and I'm going to do something stupid and then the nose boop and you standing alone trying to remember what legs were for.
You thought about how you had packed all of that away very neatly into the drawer and now the drawer wouldn't close properly anymore and things kept slipping out at the worst moments.
You didn't look up. "Hi George."
He sat down beside you. Not across. Right beside, close enough that his shoulder pressed against yours, and for a moment neither of you said anything and the sky was very big above you.
"You should have a coat."
"A cardigan is not a coat."
"It's—" he looked at your cardigan "—a very optimistic choice for November."
"A breath that looked exactly like a shiver." He was quiet for a second. Then without saying anything he shrugged off his outer jacket and held it out.
You looked at it. "George—"
"I run warm," he said, completely straight-faced.
You took the jacket. You put it on. It was warm and heavy and too big across the shoulders and smelled like him and you sat there in it and looked at the sky and tried to be normal.
"Excited for the ball in 3 days?" you said.
"Not really." He looked at the courtyard in front of you. "You?"
"Not really," you said honestly.
That sat between you for a moment. Two people who were not excited about the ball, the night before the ball, sitting on a cold bench in the dark.
"Big night though," he said.
"Dress robes and everything."
"You'll look—" he stopped himself. Cleared his throat. "It'll be good."
You glanced at him sideways. He was looking somewhere to the left of the fountain, jaw slightly set, doing the thing where he was holding something in very carefully.
And then it just came out of him.
Not planned. Not smooth. Just — out, the way things came out of George when he stopped managing them.
"He's a lucky guy," he said. Quietly. To the courtyard. "Whoever's going with you."
"What," you were confused.
You looked at him with hope in your eyes.
"Were you going to ask me," you said.
He turned to look at you.
You looked back. Steady. Plain. Asking the thing you had never asked before because you had spent so long not asking things.
George laughed. But it was the sad kind. The kind that came out when something was too close to funny and too close to painful at the same time and you couldn't quite separate them. He looked back at the courtyard.
"Doesn't matter now, does it," he said.
"You're going with someone else. It's fine." He said the word fine in the same way you had been saying it for years and something about hearing it in his voice made you want to reach over and shake him slightly. "I'm happy for you."
"You sound like someone describing a root canal."
"George." You turned to face him properly. He looked at you. "I'm not going with him."
"The boy in the courtyard. I said I'd think about it." You watched his face. "I didn't actually say yes."
"I sent him a note later saying I wasn't going." You tilted your head slightly. "You idiot."
George's face did something absolutely extraordinary.
It went through six different things in about four seconds — confusion, then understanding, then something that was very close to disbelief, and then relief. Not small relief. The full kind. The kind that came from two days of carrying something heavy and being told you could put it down.
He ran both hands through his hair. Completely messed it up. Let out a long slow breath to the sky like he had been saving it.
"Oh thank Merlin," he said. Out loud. To nobody. To the whole dark courtyard and the stars above it. "Oh thank actual Merlin."
"Were you genuinely worried about—"
"I watched him ask you," George said. "From across the courtyard. I was literally halfway to you when he got there first and I just—" he made a gesture that meant he had simply stopped existing for a moment "—stood there."
You stared at him. "You were coming to ask me."
"You watched him ask me and you just turned around."
"What was I supposed to do, interrupt—"
"Yes!" You made a small exasperated sound. "Yes, George, that is exactly what you were supposed to do."
"I said I'd think about it!"
"How was I supposed to know the difference between—"
"You could have asked!" You threw your hands up. "You could have walked over and said anything and I would have—" you stopped. You had almost said something. You pulled it back.
George was looking at you. Reading your face the way he always read your face, carefully, like there was something in it worth understanding.
"You would have what," he said, quiet.
You looked at the courtyard. "Nothing."
"Hey." He waited until you looked at him. "You would have what."
"I would have said yes," you said. Very small. "To you."
The courtyard was very quiet.
George looked at you for one long moment. And then he pointed at you — one finger, very direct, the gesture of a person who had just made a decision and was committing to it completely.
"Tonight," he said. "Astronomy Tower. Ten o'clock."
"Come at ten. Don't be late." He was already standing. Already moving. He picked up his jacket from where it had fallen off your shoulders when you'd thrown your hands up. "Wear something warm this time."
"George, what are you talking about—"
"Ten o'clock." He pointed again, backing away. "Don't be late."
"You can't just say that and walk away—"
"Ten o'clock!" he called, already rounding the corner.
You sat on the bench in the cold courtyard completely alone.
No jacket now. Genuinely cold. Completely bewildered.
"What," you said, to the fountain.
The fountain did not respond.
Of course you went. You told yourself on every step of the staircase that you were just curious. That you were going because he'd been weird about it and you wanted to know what this was. That you were absolutely not going because something in your chest had been doing a specific warm terrifying thing since he said ten o'clock on those stairs and pointed at you like you were the answer to a question he had been asking for months.
You told yourself a lot of things on that staircase.
None of them were very convincing.
You pushed the door open.
The first thing you noticed was the light.
Not the usual cold dark of the Astronomy Tower, not the harsh white of corridor torches. Something warm. Gold and amber, soft and slow, little clusters of light floating near the high arched windows like they had been placed there carefully, like someone had thought about exactly how bright to make them and decided just enough. They drifted. Slowly. Moving through the cold air of the tower like they had nowhere to be and all night to get there.
You stood in the doorway and looked at them for a moment.
Then you noticed the candles. Scattered across the stone ledges, across the floor, tucked into corners. Some of them flickered unevenly, their light a little uncertain, like they had been charmed and recharmed until they finally agreed to stay lit. You could see it if you looked closely — the faint shimmer in the air around them, the trace of spells layered on top of each other, the particular quality of light that came from a charm that had been attempted many times before it worked.
Near the biggest window there was a pile of cushions. Mismatched — a gold one, a blue one, something that was definitely from the Gryffindor common room — stacked next to a blanket that was slightly too small for a full-sized person but clearly meant for sharing. A Butterbeer sat on the stone ledge beside them, still warm. You could feel the heat of it from where you were standing.
And on the ledge itself, just beside the window, there were runes.
Tiny, faint, almost invisible if you weren't standing exactly where you were. They shimmered slightly when you moved, catching the floating light differently depending on your angle. Light stabilising runes. The kind that took time to get right. The kind that, once set properly, lasted.
The kind that took multiple attempts to settle into stone.
You looked at the whole room. At the uneven candles and the layered spells and the mismatched cushions gathered from different places and the Butterbeer kept warm by a charm that had been looked up specifically. At the runes that had been etched and re-etched until they held.
This had not been made tonight.
You understood that suddenly and completely. This had been made over many nights. After classes. After Quidditch. After everyone else was asleep. Someone had come here alone with a wand and a plan and kept coming back, kept trying, kept getting things wrong and correcting them and trying again until it was right.
Until it felt like somewhere worth bringing someone.
George was standing by the window.
He hadn't heard you come in yet. He was looking out at the sky, hands in the pockets of his dark green dress robes — deep forest green, well fitted, the kind that made him look less like someone who caused general chaos in the castle on a daily basis and more like someone who could stop a whole room by walking into it. His hair was messier than usual in the way that meant he had been running his hands through it for the last hour. His jaw was slightly set. He was doing the thing where he was very still on the outside because something on the inside was moving too fast.
He looked, honestly, incredibly handsome.
You had known that for a while. You had been refusing to look at it directly for a while. Standing in the warm gold light of this room he had built you were finding it very difficult to refuse.
And when he saw you his whole face changed. All the tension in it went out at once, just — released, like he'd been holding a breath for two days and had finally been told he could put it down. The set jaw softened. The careful stillness became something open and warm and so quietly relieved that it made your chest ache.
"You told me ten o'clock."
"I know I did." He took a few steps toward you. "I wasn't sure you'd—" he stopped. Looked at you properly. "You came."
"I know." He didn't look sorry about it. "I'm saying it again."
You looked around the room. At the lights that drifted. At the candles that flickered slightly unevenly. At the runes in the stone. "George," you said quietly. "How long have you been working on this."
He looked at the room like he was seeing it through your eyes for a moment. "A while," he said.
"The candles look like you redid them a few times."
"Six times," he said. "The stabilising charm kept going wrong."
"Four nights." He said it plainly. No performance. "I kept etching them wrong. Too deep or wrong spacing. Took me until the fourth try to get them to hold."
You looked at him. "Four nights. Of just — coming here. Alone."
"Well." He paused. "Fred knew. He didn't come, but he knew." A small smile. "He told me I was being excessive."
"You were being excessive."
"Maybe." He tilted his head. "Did it work?"
You looked at the floating lights and the warm glow and the runes shimmering faintly in the stone and the mismatched cushions and the Butterbeer kept warm just for you.
"Yeah," you said. Very quietly. "It worked."
He nodded, like he'd needed to hear that and now he had it. He walked to the cushions and sat down and looked at you expectantly, patting the space beside him.
Close, the way you always ended up close to him now, shoulders almost touching, the warm tower air settling around you both.
"You built a whole room."
"To ask you—" he paused. "Well. To say some things first. And then ask you to a ball."
You looked at him. "What things."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking at his hands for a moment. And then he looked up at you and the thing on his face was so honest it was almost uncomfortable to see. No joke. No deflection. Just George, looking at you like you were the most important thing in this room that he had spent two weeks building.
"The first time I actually saw you," he said, "properly — not just knew you existed, actually saw you — you were in the library with your book upside down. Just sitting there with this look on your face like your brain was somewhere else entirely and your body had just stayed behind in the chair." He almost smiled. "And I thought, who is that. Like genuinely. Who is that person and why have I never noticed them before."
"I was paying attention." He said it differently. "There's a difference." He was quiet for a second. "After that I couldn't stop noticing you. Everywhere. I'd walk into a room and find you before I found anyone else and I didn't even realise I was doing it until one day I walked into the Great Hall and my eyes went straight to you before I'd even properly looked around." He shook his head a little. "And I thought — oh. That's just what I do now. That's just the thing my eyes do."
Your hands were very still in your lap.
"And I know you spent all this time convinced you were the background," he said. "That Cecily was the one people looked at and you were just — there. Nearby. Useful." Something moved through his face. "I tried to tell you that wasn't it. For me. That it was never that. But you were so completely sure you didn't count that you literally grabbed my tie and pushed me toward her with your own hands." He looked at you. "Do you remember that."
"I remember that," you said quietly.
"You had your hand in my tie and you looked at me and said please." He held your gaze. "And I turned around and walked away from you. Because you asked me to. Because I thought—" he exhaled "—I thought if I was patient enough you'd figure it out eventually. That you'd see what I could already see. I was wrong about that. Some things you have to say out loud."
The candles flickered softly around you.
"The moment I saw you properly," he said, "I couldn't take it away again. I tried. For about a week I tried to just — not think about it. Not go to the library on Wednesdays. Not find you at meals. And I lasted about four days before I sat down across from you and thought, yeah, no, I can't do that." He laughed, quiet. "I don't want to do that."
"That sounds ridiculous," you said, and your voice came out strange. Thick in a way you were trying to manage.
"It sounds exactly right to me." He said it simply. "Every time I tried to talk myself out of it you'd say something — something sharp, or funny, or you'd look at something a certain way — and I'd think, yeah. Still you. Just keeps being you."
You looked at your hands.
"I know you think you're the background and was never seen," he said. "I know you've thought that for a long time. And I know nothing I say is going to completely fix that because you've believed it for years." He leaned forward slightly. "But I need you to know that from where I'm standing, you are the only person in any room I actually want to talk to. The only one I look for first. The only one I built a whole room in a tower at midnight for because I wanted one moment to feel like someone had thought about you first."
You were absolutely not going to cry.
"You redid the light charms four times," you said, because you needed to say something that wasn't the thing you actually wanted to say.
"Six," he corrected. "The lights were six. The runes were four."
"You're worth six attempts at a light charm," he said. Completely straight. No jokes. Just the plain truth of it sitting between you like something that had always existed and was only now being said out loud. "You're worth more than that. I just ran out of things to redo."
Something cracked open in your chest. Quietly. Like a window being unlocked.
You had spent so long believing a very specific story about yourself. The background girl. The useful one. The one who gave things and didn't get to want things back. The one who handed people to Cecily with both hands and then stood slightly to the left and smiled about it.
And here was George Weasley sitting in a tower he had spent two weeks building in the dark, looking at you like you were the reason he had bothered with any of it, telling you the story was wrong.
Not gently. Not with soft words designed to make you feel better. Just — plainly. The way he said everything. Like it was simply true and he didn't understand why it needed to be argued about.
"You could have just asked me normally," you said. Your voice came out wobbly and you hated it. "In the corridor. Like a normal person."
"I know," he said. "But you would have said it's fine and redirected me to Cecily and I would have lost the thread of it again." He joked as he looked at you steadily. "I needed somewhere that was only for this. So you couldn't redirect. So you'd actually have to sit in it."
"I hate that that makes sense," you said.
"I hate that you know me that well."
You looked at him. He looked back.
"No," you agreed, very quietly. "I don't."
The floating lights drifted slowly above you. The candles held. The runes in the stone shimmered faintly at the edge of your vision.
"Come to the ball with me," he said. "Tomorrow. Properly. As my—" he paused, and something on his face went slightly uncertain for the first time all evening, which was almost funny, that he had built a whole room and said all of that and the word was the thing that made him hesitate. "As my date."
You looked at him for a long moment.
At the green robes and the messy hair and the candles that had taken six attempts. At the runes he had re-etched four times alone at midnight because he wanted to get it right. At his face, which was trying very hard to be patient and not entirely succeeding, something hopeful and unguarded sitting just underneath the surface of it.
You thought about the library chair across from you. About a scarf landing on your head. About rain on empty Quidditch stands. About a staircase and a thumb moving slightly against your waist and two words said so quietly they were almost just for you.
You thought about all the times you had packed things away in the drawer and all the times the drawer had refused to stay closed.
George's face did the thing. The full thing. The smile that was not the controlled library one or the performative Great Hall one but the real one, the unmanaged one, the one that made him look completely undone in the best possible way, wide and warm and so happy it was almost embarrassing to look at directly.
"Good," he said. And then, because he could not help himself, because he was George and this was simply who he was even in important moments, he reached over and booped your nose.
You made a noise that was not dignified. "I cannot believe you just—"
"Butterbeer?" He was already picking it up and holding it out, completely unbothered, grinning to himself like he had won something.
"Here." He put the Butterbeer in your hands. Still warm. "I kept it warm specifically."
You looked at the Butterbeer. At him. At the whole warm gold room he had built in two weeks of late nights and wrong attempts and trying again.
"Thank you," you said. And you meant more than the Butterbeer and you think he knew it.
"Any time," he said. And he meant more than the Butterbeer too.
You sat beside him in the tower with the lights drifting slowly overhead and the candles holding and the stars enormous through the wide arched windows, and you drank the Butterbeer he had kept warm for you and said nothing for a long while and it was the best kind of nothing — the full kind, the kind that didn't need anything added to it.
At some point your shoulder settled against his.
You stayed there until the castle started going properly dark and quiet below you and even then neither of you were in any particular hurry to leave.
"George," you said eventually.
"The runes in the stone."
"They're going to be there forever now."
He looked at them. At the faint shimmer of light stabilising runes etched into the Astronomy Tower stone, done four times until they held, permanent now, part of the building.
"Yeah," he said. Like that was completely fine with him. Like he had planned it that way.
You were looking past him.
At the room behind him. At the lights that drifted unevenly in places, the charm not quite perfectly settled. At the candles that flickered with the quality of something that had been recast too many times, still learning how to stay. At the runes in the stone that were slightly uneven in their spacing because the first three attempts were still faintly visible underneath the fourth, like layers of trying pressed into the wall.
This had not come easily.
You were looking at every place it had gone wrong. Every night he must have stood in this cold tower alone and gotten something wrong and come back the next night anyway. Every failed attempt that was still visible if you looked closely enough. Every small evidence of someone who had decided you were worth the effort of getting it right even when it wasn't working.
Something in your throat closed up.
"I kept getting things wrong," he said, and he had noticed you looking. He glanced back at the room briefly. "The lights kept being too harsh. The candles kept going out. The runes—" he exhaled through his nose "—the runes I had to do four times. Three times I came up here and etched them into the stone and stood back and they just went dark." He paused. "And I'd have to start over."
"Why didn't you just stop," you said.
It came out quietly. Like a genuine question. Like you actually needed to understand.
"Because you spend every single day doing things for other people," he said, "and acting like you don't need anything back. Like you're fine. Like standing in the background is just how it is and there's nothing wrong with it." His voice stayed even but there was something underneath it. Something with feeling in it. "And I wanted one thing — just one thing — to feel like it was made for you. Like someone thought about you first before they thought about anything else."
You pressed your lips together. Looked at the runes in the stone. Looked at the candles. Looked anywhere that wasn't his face because his face was going to finish you completely.
"You came here alone," you said. "Every night."
"George." Your voice broke slightly on his name. Just slightly. You caught it. "It's December. It's freezing up here."
"You gave me your jacket on the bench earlier."
"I had a different jacket."
You laughed. It came out wet and shaky and surprised, the kind of laugh that happened when you were very close to crying and something caught you off guard and you didn't know what to do with your face anymore. You pressed the back of your hand to your mouth.
"Don't cry," he said softly.
"You're very close to crying."
"I'm not—" your voice did something embarrassing. You stopped. Took a breath. "You spent two weeks in a freezing cold tower alone because you wanted one thing to feel like it was made for me."
"That's—" you looked at him finally. You couldn't help it. You looked at him and his face was so open and so sincere and so completely without performance or strategy or any of the usual armour that people wore, and behind him the lights drifted softly and the candles held and the runes he had etched four times shimmered faintly in the stone and it was all just — there. All of it. Undeniable.
Something came loose in your chest.
Something that had been locked in place for a very long time.
"Nobody's ever—" you started. Stopped. Your throat was too tight.
"I know," he said, very quietly.
"I didn't think anyone would ever—"
"I know." He said it the same way. Like he had always known and had been waiting for you to catch up. "That's why I built the room."
You looked at him for a long moment with your eyes full of something you were desperately trying to hold back and your hands in your lap holding very still and the whole warm gold tower around you feeling like something out of a dream you had never quite let yourself have.
"That's the stupidest most wonderful thing anyone has ever done," you said.
The corner of his mouth moved. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Your voice was barely above a whisper. "It really is."
He looked at you with that look. The one you had no name for. The one that made you feel like the only thing in the world worth looking at.
"Don't cry," he said again, softer.
"I'm not crying," you said, and a tear fell down your face which completely undermined the point.
Very gently, with just his thumb, he wiped it away.
He didn't make anything of it. Didn't say anything. Just did it quietly and put his hand back in his lap and looked at you like you were something he had been waiting a long time to look at properly.
And the room held the both of you in its warm gold light and said nothing else and didn't need to.
You pushed open the dormitory door at nearly midnight.
The room was mostly dark. The other girls were asleep. Just one lamp still on, over by Hannah's bed, and Hannah herself sitting up against her headboard with a book in her lap looking at you the moment you walked in.
"Where have you been," she said. "I was about to go looking for—"
You took your shoes off. Put your bag down. Sat on your bed. All the normal things in the normal order. You were doing completely fine.
Not a small polite smile. Not the practiced one. The real kind, the unmanaged kind, the kind that kept coming back every time you tried to let your face do something else, rising up again like it had nowhere else to go and had decided your face was where it lived now.
You pressed your lips together.
Hannah put her book down very slowly. "Why are you smiling like that."
"Like what," you said, to your lap.
"Like you just did something illegal and you think it was worth it."
"I'm not—" the smile came back. You pressed your hand over your mouth. It made absolutely no difference.
"What happened," Hannah said. She was sitting up straighter now. Both feet on the floor. The specific posture of someone who understood that what they were about to hear required their full attention.
"That is not a nothing face."
"It's just—" you started. Stopped. You looked at the ceiling. You looked at your hands. You looked at the yellow and black of your dormitory curtains which were very normal and very grounding and did not help at all.
"He made something," you said.
"George." You said it to your hands. "He — he made this whole thing. Like not just asked. He actually made something."
"Made what," Hannah said slowly.
And then it just came out.
The Astronomy Tower and the door and the lights that were too warm and too soft and drifted like they had nowhere to be. The candles that flickered unevenly because he had recast them six times and some of them were still figuring out how to stay lit. The mismatched cushions he had gathered from different places over days. The Butterbeer that was still warm because he had looked up a preservation charm specifically. The runes in the stone — the tiny faint ones, barely visible, that shimmered when you moved — that he had etched four times alone at midnight until they finally held.
"He kept coming back," you said, and your voice had gone slightly wobbly somewhere in the middle of all of that and you hadn't fixed it yet. "Every night. After classes. After Quidditch. When everyone else was asleep. He just — kept coming back and fixing things and trying again and—"
You were shaking your head.
Not sadly. In the way you shook your head when something was so beyond what you had prepared yourself for that your whole system needed a moment to catch up.
"The runes are permanent," you said. "He etched them into the actual stone. They're going to be there forever. In the Astronomy Tower. Because he wanted the lights to be right."
Hannah was leaning forward.
Very slowly. Like she was approaching something that might startle.
"And then he said—" you pressed your hand to your mouth again. The smile was completely out of control now. Your eyes were also doing something which was a whole separate problem. "He said you're worth four nights like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like it wasn't even something worth making a big deal about. Just — of course. Four nights. Obviously. What else would you do."
"And then he asked me to the ball and I said yes and then he booped my nose."
"And handed me the Butterbeer and acted like absolutely none of it had just happened—"
"I need a moment," she said.
"Join the club," you said, still staring at the ceiling.
The lamp flickered softly between your beds. Somewhere outside the castle an owl called once and went quiet. You lay there with your heart doing something it had apparently decided to do all night and your face smiling in a way you had fully given up trying to stop.
"As his — like properly. As his—"
She stared at you for a very long moment.
"He built you a room." She said it slowly, like she was trying to fit the sentence into the shape of the world and it kept being slightly too big. "He came back every night and fixed things until they worked and then he sat you down in it and told you that you were the first choice." She pressed both hands to her face. "He said that. Out loud. To your actual face."
Hannah made a sound into her hands that was not words.
"Are you okay," you said.
"Am I—" she lowered her hands. Her eyes were wide. "Am I okay. You come in here at midnight with that face and tell me George Weasley spent two weeks building you a room and asked you properly and you want to know if I'M okay?"
"I'm not okay," Hannah said. "I am the least okay I have ever been. I have been watching this happen for months and I told you, I said something good is going to happen, and I did not know it was going to be THIS—"
"You're going to wake everyone up—"
"Good!" She grabbed her pillow and held it to her chest. "They should be awake for this. This is important. This is an event."
"Hannah," you said, laughing now, properly, the real kind that came from somewhere you had stopped guarding. "Please."
"Fine." She hugged the pillow. Took a breath. Let it out. "Fine. Okay. I'm calm." She was not calm. Her eyes were still doing something. "You're going with him."
"I'm going with him," you said.
"How do you feel," she said, quieter now.
You thought about the tower. About warm gold lights and runes in stone and a Butterbeer kept warm and a thumb wiping a tear away so gently you almost hadn't felt it. About George's face when you walked in, the relief of it, the way it had changed completely the moment he saw you had come.
You thought about you're the first choice said so plainly. Like it was simply true. Like it had always been true and he was only just now saying it out loud.
"Terrified," you said honestly.
"Obviously," Hannah said.
"And—" you looked at the ceiling. The smile came back. You let it. "Really, really good."
Hannah smiled. Not her usual bright one. Something softer. Something that was just for this moment, just for you, just for the fact that you were lying on your bed at midnight smiling in a way you couldn't stop at someone who had spent two weeks building you a room because he wanted one thing to feel like you were thought of first.
The room went dark and quiet and you lay there in the dark for a long time, not sleeping, just feeling the shape of something new sitting in your chest where the old familiar weight used to be.
It was lighter than you expected.
A/n: wrote a little longer tdy!
Comment to be tagged on the next part!
Taglist: : @gabriellewood, @svnn132, @lulzs-world06, @vainful-vanity, @maybeisthemoon, @lilyyyyy08, @394pitterpatterpotter394, @animereadersstuff, @haru-reto, @circekinnie, @annis0k, @sawturna, @mysticspruce, @magnoliaautumnn, @iris2244, @unhingedromances, @kelhart, @billiesdildo69, @alwayslatetothefandoms, @moonlovefairy, @solism72, @lightprincess-world, @marzintears, @lilians17, @fanficreader9999, @rrhiaaqvss, @mafercita101, @nanamisandkakashiswife, @kath-is-tired, @call-me-mr-delulu, @mafercita101,@sawturna, @aunicornmademedoit, @luv-lucy, @redspacewriter, @buibeeboo, @danoooos, @superlegend216, @s4rangh0e, @kttyruby, @imbiodegrdeable, @mclovling, @llkea, @tinymarikit, @imskibiditoilet, @ameliweaslee, @velvetreading, @madlyamoosed, @frogtits1, @sara11reads, @julkkkka
