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when tumblr dies i'll live under your bed and you can say out loud what you would post and i will say LIKE or REBLOG it'll be just like we're still here
looking up george weasley x reader but all im getting hit with is fred weasley x reader THEY ARENT THE SAME
why is there an upgrade button on gmail. why does twitter want me to scan my palm to get into my account. why is google a chatbot. why does the transit app make a transit app wrapped for me. why does youtube keep shoving its infinitely scrollable shortform content down my throat. why do my doctor and psychiatrist and therapist want to use an ai notetaker during our appointments. why do free trials want my credit card number. why are most scholarship websites just data brokers. how do i make capitalone stop sending me mail. why is my school making its own special chat gpt powered chatbot. why is every third video on instagram an undisclosed ad. why is nothing online real anymore. why is everything so FUCKING STUPID
The Statistical Improbability of Dating Spencer Reid
Spencer Reid x fem!BAU!Reader | WC: 9640
Summary: Or: Five times you and Spencer dance around your feelings, and the one time Spencer finally puts the pieces together.
Tags/Warnings: Mutual pining, idiots in love, confessions, fluff, Spencer being an oblivious cutie patootie, no use of Y/N, no beta we die like men
A/N: New fandom, who dis? I’m officially branching out into the Criminal Minds fandom because tumblr has my number and fed me Spencer Reid on a silver platter. Special shoutout to @h0lym01y and their lovely headlock series for inspiring me to write for him! I’m still pretty early into the series, so apologies if my characterization isn’t quite there yet! (Also, fun fact: this was supposed to be a nice quick little piece to dip my toes into a new fandom, and it turned into its own beast so... sorry, not sorry) Thanks @mythandmemories for giving it a twice-over to make sure it all makes sense!
this is Spencer's sexiest scene actually
you have to consciously unlearn racism and continue to watch for it because it will come out without realizing. because so much of society is structured around it. shrugging and going "i dont care" or "i dont know how else to say it" means you are okay with being racist and hurting other people with how much you dont give a shit about them.
ppl who celebrate fictional character birthdays are annoying pass it on
FUCK this post and happy birthday sonic
Ten Years Of Ppl Who Celebrate Fictional Character Birthdays Are Annoying Pass It On
all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again
Like to charge, reblog to cast.
HEADLOCK : ch. 4
chapter four : and you look half dead half the time
masterlist my ao3!
pairing : spencer reid x fem!reader
summary : You're on the hunt for an unsub who's forcing his victims to perform carnal acts or die. What you don't know is that he's set his sights on you and your colleague, Dr. Spencer Reid.
wc : 15k
tags/warnings : no use of y/n, dead dove do not eat, fuck or die, noncon/dubcon, nonconsensual filming, kidnapping, voyeurism, electric shock, switch!spencer, switch!reader, blood, gore, lots and lots of spit, unprotected p in v, oral f!receiving, squirting, multiple orgasms, choking, forced orgasms, face-sitting, angst, talks of pregnancy, broken bones, unhealthy conversations about SA, two extremely traumatized people trying to survive, bittersweet ending.
authors note : here she is!!!! at long last, the final chapter of headlock <3 the amount of support for this fic has me so incredibly grateful, i hope the ending lives up to expectations <3 please let me know if there's any spelling or grammar problems, this chapter kind of got away from me and my brain has been fried by the editing process lol
Always Second Choice
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.
Warnings: no use of y/n
Cw: angst, slowburn
Wc: 7k+
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 (finale)
Hannah had been planning this for longer than she admitted.
You could tell by how calm she was. While the rest of the dormitory was loud and chaotic — someone's dress had the wrong buttons, someone else had lost an earring between the floorboards, a third person was making a sound you could not legally describe as anything other than a wail. Hannah moved around you with the focused quiet of a person who had already thought about everything and was now simply executing the plan.
"Sit still," she said.
"I am sitting still."
"You keep pressing your hands together."
"That's just what my hands do."
"That's the nervous thing. Stop it."
"I'm not nervous." A pause. "I'm a little nervous."
"You're going to be fine." She separated another section of your hair, her fingers quick and certain. "More than fine. Trust me."
The dress was already on.
Dark purple underneath, so deep it was almost the colour of a night sky just before full dark. Over the top of it, black lace, delicate and intricate, the kind that looked like it had grown there rather than been added, like something that had always been part of the fabric and was only now becoming visible. The neckline connected behind your neck in a halter — two pieces of lace-covered fabric coming from the front and tying at the back of your neck — leaving your back completely bare from the nape of your neck to the base of your spine. The first time you had seen your own back in the mirror you had stood there for a full minute. It was graceful in a way you hadn't known you were capable of being. The dark purple gloves ran up past your wrists, smooth and fitted, and the whole thing together was more than you were used to being. More than you usually let yourself wear.
---
Hannah had been doing your hair for forty minutes.
Braids, pulled up and twisted, gathered into a loose bun at the back of your head that looked effortless in the way that only things with real effort behind them looked effortless. Curls came free at the sides, soft and deliberate, falling just past your jaw and framing your face in a way that made everything look softer. More open. Like you.
"Okay," Hannah said. She stepped back. Looked at you for a long moment with an expression that was trying to stay objective and not managing it. "Look."
You looked in the mirror.
And something happened in your chest that was very quiet and very significant.
The girl in the mirror had your face. Your eyes, your nose, the mouth you had never known what to do with. But she was wearing all of it differently. Like someone had taken every piece of you and arranged it with intention, with care, with the specific attention of someone who had been looking at you for a long time and knew what you looked like when you were all the way yourself.
The dark colours made your skin glow. The bare back was elegant. The curls were soft and real. The gloves were quietly dramatic in the way that made everything else make sense. You looked like you — not the version that stood slightly to the left, not the version that made herself small and useful and easy to look past.
The real version.
The one that was hidden underneath.
Your eyes went a little bright. Just slightly. You blinked it back.
"Hannah," you said, quietly.
"I know," she said. Her voice had gone soft too. She squeezed your shoulders from behind, meeting your eyes in the mirror. "That's you. That's just you. I didn't add anything that wasn't already there." She smiled — warm and genuine and something close to proud. "He's going to take one look at you and completely fall apart."
"Don't—"
"He is," she said. "And it's going to be the best thing you've ever seen. Come on."
---
George was mid-sentence when it happened.
He was standing at the top of the staircase with Fred and Lee Jordan, one hand in his pocket, saying something about Fred's terrible plan for the evening, completely relaxed, completely himself — easy the way he was always easy, like the world was a place that generally went along with whatever he wanted from it.
He had dressed carefully, though he would never have admitted that.
The black dress robes had been pressed. His hair had been attempted, which for George meant it looked slightly better than usual before gradually returning to its natural state over the course of an evening. And the tie — dark purple, exactly dark purple, the specific shade Hannah had described to him in a note that he had read three times to make sure he had it right. He had stood in front of the mirror in the Gryffindor dormitory for longer than he was ever going to tell anyone and checked the tie three times and then checked his reflection once more in a way that was not something George Weasley generally did and meant something specific.
Fred had watched the whole thing without saying a word.
Now they were at the top of the staircase and George was talking about something and the entrance hall was full of people, and the evening was about to start.
"Hey," Fred said.
"What," George said.
"Turn around."
"In a second, I'm in the middle of telling—"
"George." Something in Fred's voice. Not the joking tone. Not the theatrical one. Something quieter and more urgent. "Turn around right now."
George turned around.
---
And the world stopped.
Not slowed. Not paused. Stopped. Like someone had reached into the machinery of everything and pulled out the piece that made time work.
You were at the top of the staircase.
Coming down slowly. One hand trailing the railing. The dark purple dress moving with you, the black lace catching the candlelight from below and finding the deep colour underneath it, so that with every step you looked like something that existed slightly outside of ordinary things. Your hair was up — soft and slightly undone, curls falling free at the sides of your face, the bun at the back of your head loose and perfect and entirely, devastatingly you. The gloves. The bare back. The halter neckline connecting behind your neck in a way that made the whole line of you — shoulders, spine, the way you held yourself — into something that made it genuinely difficult to think in complete sentences.
George's heart did something it had never done before.
Not the fast nervous kind. Not the anxious kind. Something enormous and quiet and completely certain, like a clock finding its correct time after being wrong for years. Like something saying yes, that one, it has always been that one, how did you ever look anywhere else.
Every other person in the entrance hall blurred.
Not figuratively. Genuinely. The people in his peripheral vision became shapes, became noise, became background, became nothing. There was only the staircase and you coming down it and the candlelight finding you like it knew where to look.
He forgot what he had been saying.
He forgot Fred was standing beside him.
He forgot, for approximately three full seconds, how to form words in any language.
His throat moved as he swallowed.
You reached the bottom step.
You looked up.
Your eyes found his immediately, the way they always found each other, that specific pull that had existed between you for months and that neither of you had had a name for until recently. You looked at him and something in your expression shifted — a small careful thing, a trying not to show too much.
"Hi."
Just that. One word. Your voice.
And George opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Tried again.
"Hi," he managed, and it came out lower than he intended, rougher around the edges, like his voice had been sitting somewhere far away and had needed a moment to come back to where the rest of him was.
From beside him, Fred's voice, "Man." Loud. Clear. Addressed to the general universe. "You are so down bad."
George didn't look at Fred.
He didn't look at anything except you.
"Damn right I am," he mumbled to himself.
"Wait, what did you just say"
The small group around them went very still for a second.
Lee Jordan made a sound. Someone laughed. Fred covered his face with one hand and made a noise that suggested this was simultaneously the worst and best thing he had ever witnessed.
---
You went pink from your collarbone to your hairline.
The kind of pink that was visible even in candlelight. The kind that came from something landing somewhere you hadn't entirely fortified yet. You looked at the floor and then at the ceiling and then at his tie — the exactly-matching purple tie, which you were noticing properly for the first time.
"We matched."
"Hannah told me the colour," he said. Still looking at you. Still not looking anywhere else.
"She mentioned," you said. You looked at Hannah, who was standing slightly behind you with the expression of a woman who had pulled off the plan of her life and was very aware of it. "Of course she did."
"Are you annoyed?" George said.
You looked back at him. At the green robes and the matching tie and the face that was completely open and unashamed and looking at you like you were the reason he had bothered with any of it. "No," you admitted.
"Good." He held out his arm.
You looked at it. At him. At everything that had led to this exact moment. And then you put your hand in the crook of his elbow and he smiled — the real one, wide and warm and slightly overwhelmed — and you walked in together.
And the Great Hall opened up like something from inside a dream you had never let yourself finish.
---
The Great Hall was extraordinary.
The enchanted ceiling had shifted into deep winter — dark blue, stars close and bright, the kind that looked like you could reach up and move them. Floating candles drifted in warm gold clusters, their light landing differently on everything, making the stone walls look like something that had been built for exactly this evening. The enchanted snow fell between the candles — fine and slow and shimmering, catching the light as it drifted, filling the air with something that made the whole room feel like it existed just slightly outside of ordinary time. The music came from a stage at the far end, live and warm, filling the hall without crowding it.
You stood in the entrance and looked at all of it and felt the evening settle around you like something you had been waiting for without knowing you were waiting.
"Wow," you said softly.
"Yeah," George said beside you. He was looking at the hall too, but you caught him glancing at you while you took it in, watching your face rather than the room. "It's really something."
"It's really something," you agreed. You turned to look at him and caught him already looking. "Stop doing that."
"Doing what," he said, not even pretending.
"Looking at me."
"The hall is nice," he said. "You're better."
You made a sound. Not words. Just a sound. A slightly overwhelmed sound that you immediately tried to convert into a normal breath and did not fully succeed at.
His hand found yours. Easy and warm and completely natural, fingers wrapping around yours like they had been doing it for years, and you looked down at your joined hands and then up at the beautiful hall and thought — quietly, privately, in the part of yourself you were only recently learning to listen to — that this was what it felt like to be chosen. Not felt sorry for. Not used. Not stood slightly to the left of. Actually chosen. Actually here.
You held his hand back.
And walked in.
For a while it was everything you had quietly hoped it might be and more.
---
You found Hannah near the drinks table and stayed together for a while, laughing about nothing in particular, the kind of laughing that happened when you were happy enough that ordinary things became funny. The hall moved around you, beautiful and warm, and you let yourself be in it.
"You're actually enjoying yourself," Hannah said, like she was witnessing a rare natural phenomenon.
"Don't make it weird," you said.
"I'm just noting it for the record." She beamed at you. "You look happy. You look genuinely, properly happy and I want it documented."
"Hannah—"
"I'm going to remember this night forever," she announced.
"You're so dramatic."
George appeared at your shoulder with butterbeers, handing you one first before Hannah, and settled in beside you with the ease of someone who had decided this was where he lived now and the world could adjust.
"Fred is attempting to dance," he said.
"Surely he can—"
"He cannot," George said. "He really genuinely cannot. It's one of the most interesting things I've ever watched. I recommend it as a spectacle."
You laughed. He turned his head to look at you when you did. He always did that — turned toward you when you laughed like the sound was something worth orienting himself toward.
"What," you said, catching him.
"Nothing," he said.
"You're staring again."
"I'm looking," he said. "There's a difference." He tilted his head slightly. "You have this thing when you laugh. Your whole face does it. Not just your mouth." He said it simply. Like an observation. Like it was just a fact he had collected and was reporting accurately.
Your face went warm. You looked at your butterbeer. "That's a very strange thing to say."
"Is it weird?"
"It's a little weird."
He smiled. Slow and warm. And then he held out his hand. "Dance with me."
"I don't really—"
"It's just moving," he said. "That's all. I promise."
"You always say that like it's simple."
"Because it is simple." He kept his hand out. Patient. Waiting. "Come on."
You took his hand.
---
He led you to the floor and turned and one hand settled at your waist — steady and warm and sure, his palm against the fabric of the dress just at the curve of your side — and you put your hand on his shoulder and he started moving and you moved with him and it was easy. Genuinely easy. The kind of easy that came from him being confident enough to make it feel that way.
"See," he said.
"Hmm," you said.
"Just moving."
"I can hear the smugness."
"I'm not smug."
"You absolutely are."
"I'm a little smug," he agreed. "Just a reasonable amount." His hand shifted slightly at your waist, not moving, just — settling. More present. "Is it annoying?"
"Good annoying," you admitted.
Something in his eyes went warm. "Good annoying," he repeated, quiet, like he was keeping it somewhere.
You looked at his shoulder because looking at his face directly right now felt like looking at something too bright. You were aware of his hand at your waist and the warmth of it through the fabric and the way he moved, easy and unhurried, and the music wrapping around you both and the enchanted snow falling through the candlelight above.
---
"You look—" you stopped.
"Finish that sentence," he said immediately, grinning from ear to ear.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You absolutely were. You started a sentence."
"I stopped the sentence."
"The sentence was started," he said. "I heard the beginning of it. You look—" he prompted, tilting his head, the corner of his mouth going up.
You looked at him. At the green robes and the matching tie and the jaw and the eyes that were on you with that look, the full warm certain look that had been doing things to your internal organs for months. You thought about the astronomy tower. The runes. The four nights. The six attempts. You thought about him saying you're worth four nights like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Disgustingly handsome," you said. Flat. Like you were reporting a mildly irritating fact. "Objectively. It's a problem."
George blinked.
For approximately one second he looked genuinely surprised. Like he had been expecting a deflection and you had not deflected and his system needed a moment to catch up.
Then his whole face went. The controlled expression, the waiting-to-see-what-you'd-do expression, all of it — gone. Replaced by something that was warm and pleased and slightly undone in a way that looked good on him, looked very good on him, which was the problem you had just identified out loud.
"Yeah?" he said. Low.
"Don't make it a whole thing," you said, looking away.
"I'm not making it anything," he said. But his hand tightened slightly at your waist. Just slightly. A small involuntary thing. You felt it and kept your eyes firmly on his shoulder.
"You're making it a thing," you said.
"I'm just dancing," he said. "Very normally. Very calm." His thumb moved once against your side. "Disgustingly handsome, she says."
"I will take it back."
"You can't take it back."
"Watch me—"
"It's already mine," he said. "I'm keeping it." He sounded insufferably pleased about it.
"You're pretty when you're annoyed," he said.
"Stop—"
"I said it once before and I meant it then and I mean it now," he said, completely unbothered. "It's just true. You get this look—"
"George."
"—where your chin goes up slightly and your eyes do the thing—"
"What thing—"
"The sharp thing," he said. "Like you're about to say something that will be ten words or less and will end the conversation." His eyes were bright. "I think about it more than is probably reasonable."
You stared at him.
Your face was so warm. The enchanted snow was drifting above you and the music was slow and the candles drifted and George Weasley was looking at you like you were the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him and saying things about the way your eyes looked when you were annoyed like it was just a normal sentence to say to a person.
"You're unbelievable," you said.
"You're beautiful," he said back. Simple. Immediate. Like it had been waiting just behind his teeth and your sentence had opened the door for it. "The whole night. Since the stairs. I've been looking at you and thinking about how—" he paused. Something worked through his expression. More honest than even he usually allowed. "How did anyone ever look anywhere else. That's what I keep thinking. How did anyone ever look anywhere else when you were in the room."
The music kept playing.
But you just stood looking at him.
---
George went to find Fred when the song changed, pressing a kiss to your temple so casually, so easily, like it was just the thing he did when he stepped away from you — warm and brief and leaving a specific point of heat on your skin that stayed after he was gone.
You stood at the edge of the dance floor for a moment with your fingers pressed lightly to your temple and your face doing something you were very glad no one was looking at.
Hannah appeared at your elbow. "Your face," she said.
"The kiss on the temple," she said, in the voice of someone who had witnessed a sacred event. "He did it so casually. He's so sweet with you"
"Okay," you said firmly. "We're going to get drinks and you're going to stop talking about me and George."
"I just want to—"
"Drinks," you said. "Now."
You went to the drinks table.
You picked up a goblet of something cold.
And turned around.
And Cecily was there.
She was beautiful the way she was always beautiful. Red dress, perfect hair, the specific precision of someone who had prepared for this. She was looking at you with an expression you recognised — not the public warm one, not the performed one. The one underneath it. The one she only showed when she had decided something needed to be handled.
"You look different," she said.
"Thank you," you said.
"I didn't mean it as a compliment." Her eyes moved over you slowly, taking inventory. "You're trying very hard tonight."
"I'm wearing a dress," you said.
"You're wearing his colours." She nodded at the purple of your dress, at George's matching tie visible across the hall. "Very deliberate."
"It was Hannah's idea."
"Mm." The smile was light. "You know this won't last, right? George gets interested in things and then he moves on. That's just who he is." She said it so gently. So kindly. The particular cruelty of a sharp thing wrapped in concern. "I'm not trying to be horrible. I just don't want you to embarrass yourself."
The old tightening arrived. Right on schedule.
"He spent all that time being interested in me first," she continued, "and then the setups happened and suddenly he was talking to you instead and honestly—" a perfectly placed pause "—I think he felt sorry for you. You know. The quiet friend thing. He's kind. He was being kind."
You said nothing. You were watching her face. The way she said it. The absolute certainty in it, like she had decided this was true and the deciding had made it so.
"The tower thing was sweet," she said. "Really. But that's George. Grand gestures. It doesn't mean what you think it means." She tilted her head. "You've always been a bit—" a pause, aimed precisely "—you know how you get when you start believing things."
You looked at her for a long moment.
---
At the red dress and the perfect hair and the girl you had stood behind for six years. At the face that was arranging itself into something caring while saying something that wasn't.
"What is wrong with you," you said.
Quiet. Clear. Just the question. Right at her.
Cecily blinked. "I'm just—"
"No." You took one step toward her. People nearby had noticed. You didn't care. "I want to actually know. What is wrong with you." Your voice stayed even. Completely level. "You know exactly what you're doing. You've always known. Every time." The words came without effort, without dramatics. Just true. "Six years of small things. Six years of being the pretty one while I was the useful one. Six years of knowing exactly where to aim." You looked at her. "And you stand here tonight, in this hall, when things are actually good, when something is actually mine, and you do this."
Her jaw was set.
"I helped you," you said. "For months. I wanted good things for you even when it cost me something I actually wanted. And you told me you didn't need me. That you would have figured it out anyway." The memory of it was still sharp. "You said that."
"I was upset—"
"You were honest." You breathed. "I don't know what I ever did to make you treat me like I don't matter. I genuinely don't know. But you have the most unkind heart I've ever known and I'm done trying to understand it."
She said something.
You were already turning. Moving through the people who had gone quiet around you, through the warm golden impossible hall, toward the door.
The doors closed behind you softly.
Like the castle hadn't noticed anything had broken.
---
The cold outside was immediate and complete.
And then the rain.
It was falling hard across the courtyard, heavy and committed, coming off the stone in sheets, silver under the amber glow of the castle windows, turning the whole outside world into something blurred and soft and loud. Thunder rolled somewhere low and distant, the sound of it moving through the ground.
You found the stone archway and stopped there.
Half in. Half out. The rain fell past your hand when you held it toward it. You were mostly dry. Mostly cold. You stood and watched the rain hit the courtyard stones and let your chest do what it needed to do in the private dark.
She always wins.
The thought settled in the way it always settled. Finding its shape. Sitting down. Making itself at home in the space between your ribs.
You pressed it back.
You knew it wasn't true. You knew that in the part of you that had been growing louder lately, the part that had looked in the mirror tonight and recognised itself. But knowing something and feeling something were two different rooms and right now you were standing in the second one and the walls were close.
---
The music from inside was a faint pulse through stone. The dance was starting. The one you had been—
Footsteps.
Fast. Uneven. Not careful. The kind of footsteps that came from someone who had stopped caring about how they looked and started caring only about where they were going.
They stopped.
Right behind you.
A breath. Caught. Someone who had been moving fast and had just stopped.
"Hey."
His voice was different. Quiet. Low. Feeling for something carefully, like he wasn't sure what the ground was like here and was stepping onto it slowly.
"What happened."
You kept your eyes on the rain.
"Nothing," you said.
Automatic. Worn smooth. The words that had kept you functional for years.
A silence. Then George exhaled — a sound that was almost a laugh and wasn't quite, something fond and frustrated and relieved all pressed together in one breath.
"You're under a storm arch," he said quietly. "In the middle of a Yule Ball you walked out of." A beat. "That's not nothing."
The rain kept falling.
"I was finding for you"
"Maybe I didn't want to be found," you said.
It came out tired. Not at him. Just — tired. The specific tiredness of someone who has been holding something in place for a long time.
George went still behind you.
Then he stepped closer. The warmth of him changed the air. Still not touching. Just — there. Present. Choosing to be in this with you.
"I figured," he said.
The rain.
"But I didn't really like that idea."
So simple. So plain. Said the way he said everything that mattered — without decoration, without performance. Just the truth of it, offered straight.
"I looked everywhere," he said. "Hannah didn't know where you'd gone. Fred went the wrong direction entirely. I went through four corridors." His voice dropped slightly. "I'll always find you. No matter what."
Something in your chest shifted. Moved. The warm ache of it moving through you like the feeling after crying, except you hadn't cried yet.
You didn't answer.
"Look at me," he said. Soft. Just a request. Waiting.
"No, my makeup is ruined"
“Then let it be ruined,” he whispered. “I’d rather see you crying than pretending you’re okay for everyone else.”
His hand stayed gentle against your face.
“You don’t have to hide from me.”
You hesitated.
Turned.
He was right there. Closer than you expected. His hair was damp, falling forward, darker with the rain he had been running through to get here. His dress robes had rain spots across the shoulders. His face — god, his face — was doing the thing. The completely open thing. Every layer of George Weasley pulled back and just him underneath it, looking at you with his eyes full of something he had stopped trying to hide.
He was slightly out of breath.
He had actually run.
"She said something," he said.
"She always says something," you said.
"What did she say."
You looked at the rain behind him. "She said you felt sorry for me. That it was kindness. That I shouldn't get too attached." You swallowed. "That you always move on."
George looked at you for a long moment. Something moved through his jaw.
"You know that's not true," he said.
"I know." Your voice came out quieter than you meant. "I know it isn't. And she said it anyway and it landed anyway and I hate—" it caught slightly "—I hate that she can still just get in. After everything."
"Come here," he said.
You looked at him.
"Come here," he said again. Softer.
You went.
---
His arms came around you and he pulled you in properly, one hand at your back and one at the back of your head, and you pressed your face against his shoulder and felt him exhale slowly above you like he'd been holding that breath since he'd started looking for you.
"She was wrong," he said. Low. Into your hair. "She has been wrong about you for years. And she knows it. That's why she keeps saying it." His arms tightened slightly. "People who are sure of something don't need to keep saying it out loud."
You breathed. In. Out. His shoulder was warm and solid and smelled like the green robes and something underneath that was just him.
"The dance already started," you said, after a while.
He was quiet for a second.
"I don't care about the dance," he said. "I just want to be here. With you."
You pulled back to look at him. He looked back. Rain behind him. Castle light blurring in the wet. His face right here, present and certain and looking at you like you were the whole point of the evening he had just left without hesitating.
---
Something shifted in his expression. The careful tender look changing into the other one. The lit up one. The one that came right before something unexpected.
He stood back. Held out his hand.
"Come on," he said.
You looked at his hand. At the rain. At his face. "Come on where. George it's pouring—"
"I know."
"My outfit—"
"Still beautiful."
"My hair—"
"Still perfect." He wiggled his fingers. The grin was starting. "Come on."
You got reminded of your parents.
---
You took his hand.
He pulled you out into the rain.
Cold hit everywhere at once — your shoulders, your hair, your bare back through the fabric — and you gasped, half-laughing, already protesting, and George turned back to you with rain running down his face and his hair completely flat and wrecked and a grin so wide and so real and so entirely, completely him that your heart just — gave up trying to defend itself. Completely. All at once.
He reached out.
Tapped your shoulder.
"Tag," he said. "You're it."
You stared at him.
The rain poured down between you.
"You're not serious," you said.
He raised his eyebrows. Took one deliberate step back.
And ran.
Something cracked open in your chest. Clean and complete and sudden. Not the sad kind. Not the tightening kind. The other kind — the kind where something heavy falls away all at once and your lungs fill all the way and your feet move before your brain catches up.
"Oh it's on," you said, and ran after him.
The courtyard opened up around you both. Wide and dark and slick with rain, the castle windows blurring on all sides into warm amber smears, the stone gleaming dark under your feet. You ran in your ball gown and your soaking gloves with your braids coming completely undone and your lace dress getting darker and heavier with the wet and you were laughing — genuinely, helplessly, the kind of laughing that came from somewhere below language, somewhere that didn't care about dresses or balls or things people had said inside.
George was fast. But he kept slowing. Glancing back with that grin every few seconds. Letting you almost have him. Close enough to hear him laughing too, the real laugh, the full one, the one that had been in your chest like a warm memory since the first time you had heard it in a library months ago.
You pushed harder. Reached—
Almost—
Your foot hit a slick patch of stone and went out completely.
You dropped fast, no time, eyes squeezing shut, bracing—
It never came.
Hands. Both of them. One solid at your waist and one catching your arm, pulling you upright before the ground got anywhere close. You opened your eyes.
George had you.
He had moved so fast and was right there — your waist in his hands, you standing and intact and close. So close. Closer than the catching required now that you were stable. Close enough to see the rain on his lashes. Close enough to see every detail of his face in the dark. The slight part of his lips. The way his chest was moving a little fast.
His hands didn't let go.
"Don't worry," he said.
Low. Just for you. The words landing somewhere specific in your chest.
"I'm here."
Everything else went quiet.
The rain was loud. But everything else — the castle, the ball, the music, all of it — went very far away. There was just the courtyard and the rain and his hands at your waist and his face right here and the way you were both very still and very close and neither of you moving.
Your hands had found his jacket.
Both of them. Fists in the wet green fabric, holding on, knuckles just touching his chest.
He looked at you.
The full look. The one with nothing behind it and everything in front. The one that had been building since a library and a book held upside down and eleven words counted carefully. His eyes moved over your face slowly like he was memorising it. Like he wanted to know exactly what this looked like so he could keep it.
And then his eyes dropped.
To your mouth.
Just for a second. Just long enough to be undeniable. And came back up. Met yours.
You had seen him do it. He knew you had seen him. And neither of you looked away.
The air between you was very small. Very charged. Like standing too close to something that was about to happen and choosing to stay anyway.
His thumb moved.
Against your waist. Slightly. That same small movement from every almost-moment before this one — the staircase, the Quidditch stands, the tower — except now there was no Cecily between you and no redirect and no practiced smile to arrange and no drawer to put things in.
---
You were so close.
His jaw was right there. The scar near his eyebrow. The rain on his face. The way he was looking at you like he had run four corridors and crossed a rainy courtyard and would do it again tomorrow without question.
You smirked.
You couldn't help it. Something about the perfection of it — the rain, the ball gown, the two of you soaked and breathless and right here — was so completely, specifically yours that the smirk came up before you could manage it.
You leaned in just slightly.
"Tag," you whispered. "You're it."
George stared at you.
For one second he looked completely betrayed. Like he could not believe you were doing this to him right now, in this moment, when he was standing here with his hands on your waist and his heart doing something significant.
Then the breath left him in a sound that was half laugh half something else entirely. He shook his head slowly. The expression on his face was so full it was almost unbearable to look at directly — fond and exasperated and helplessly, completely gone.
“You’re unbelievable,” he murmured.
But he was smiling. The full one. The real one. The best one.
---
He let go of your waist and gave you a headstart before he came running after you.
You shrieked — a real shriek, the kind that bounced off wet courtyard stone and rang up into the dark — and ran after him and the whole courtyard opened back up and it was just this. Just running and rain and the both of you laughing too hard to be fast about it. At some point you both slowed because the rain surged heavier and you couldn't see and couldn't breathe through the laughing anyway.
George stopped running.
Turned back.
And caught your hand from where it was swinging as you slowed — just caught it, easy and natural — and pulled you in.
And spun you.
One full turn. Your wet dress flying out in a dark arc. Your hair completely free now, loose and wild around your face. The rain hitting you full on when he spun you and you tipped your head back and let it, the way your mother must have, in a street somewhere years ago, with a boy who had stopped walking and held out his hand.
He spun you again.
And you smiled.
Not the practiced one. Not the small careful useful one you had been giving the world for years. The real one. Wide and open and coming from somewhere so deep it had no edges. The kind of smile that didn't know how to be anything other than completely itself.
He pulled you back from the spin and you came in close, the momentum of it bringing you together, and his hand was still holding yours and the rain was falling and you were face to face and close and neither of you were laughing anymore.
He was looking at you.
All the way. Every part of it.
"Doesn't this remind you of something," he said. Very quiet. Just noticing. Just following what he could see moving across your face.
You looked at him. At the rain on his face and his wrecked hair and his eyes that were simply, completely on you.
"Yes," you said. "Yes, it does."
He looked at you for a moment. The soft certain look. "I'm glad," he said quietly. "I hoped it would."
Something moved through your chest. Warm and permanent.
"I guess mission success then," he said.
You laughed. Small and real. "Mission success," you said. And without deciding to, without thinking about it, you stepped in and put your arm around his neck.
Slowly. Like you were checking whether this was real. Like you were making sure it would hold.
It held.
His hand settled at your waist and pulled you gently closer and the rain fell around you both and the courtyard was empty and dark and the castle glowed in every direction and none of it mattered except this. The specific this of his hand at your waist and your arm around his neck and the rain and the stars somewhere above the clouds and the whole long arc of everything that had started with a book held upside down in a library.
His thumb moved against your waist.
Slow. Careful. Like he was paying attention to it.
---
He looked at you.
You looked at him.
He swallowed.
"Can I kiss you," he said.
So quiet. So careful. Even now. After everything — the astronomy tower, the runes, four corridors, the rain — still asking. Still making sure. Like you were something worth being careful with and he intended to keep being careful with you.
You looked at him for one long moment.
At everything he was.
And you nodded.
He didn't rush.
He never rushed anything.
He closed the small space between you slowly, one hand moving up to rest against your jaw, warm and gentle and certain, and he kissed you.
Soft.
Warm.
Like coming in from somewhere cold. Like the lights in the tower that had taken six attempts and finally held. Like the runes in the stone that were permanent now and would be there long after both of you were gone.
Like something that had always been true and was only now being said.
You kissed him back and felt the rain on your shoulders and his hand warm against your face and the solid present certain realness of him and thought — in the small quiet part of yourself that was still capable of thoughts — that this was it. The feeling your mother had been describing all those years at the kitchen table with rain on the window.
Just this.
A rainy courtyard. A ruined dress. A boy who had counted your words and come back four nights and run through four corridors and pulled you into the rain because your mother's story deserved to happen again.
When you pulled back you were both breathless and his forehead came down to yours immediately, like gravity, like of course, and the rain was still falling and the world was very quiet and he was right here.
"Hi," he said. So soft.
"Hi," you said back.
His arms came around you properly. Both of them. Warm and solid. You pressed your face against the side of his neck and he rested his chin on top of your head and the rain fell and the castle glowed and the ball went on behind thick stone walls without either of you.
You had never been less bothered about anything.
---
"We should go back in," you said, after a while. Not moving.
"Probably," he said. Not moving.
"Hannah is going to completely lose it."
"Fred is going to be insufferable about this forever."
"You say that like it's a problem."
"It's not a problem," he agreed. "It's worth it." He pulled back just enough to look at you. At your soaked hair and ruined gloves and your face which was doing the smile, the real full one, in the rain at midnight. "You're worth it," he said. Simple. Plainly. "Just so you know."
Your throat did the tight warm thing.
You shook your head. He took your hand. And you walked back toward the castle through the rain together, not rushing, not minding the wet or the cold or the state of either of you, the music getting louder as you got closer, the castle lights getting warmer.
And then—quick, light—he pressed a kiss to your lips.
You froze.
"Hey!" you snapped immediately, eyes wide.
"What was that for?"
He pulled back slowly, completely unbothered, like he hadn’t just done something criminal. A small smile tugged at his mouth.
"You look so cute when you're blushing"
"What, no I'm not—stop looking at me," you said,
"You can't just—do that whenever you want!"
He raised a brow. "Can't I?"
You opened your mouth, then closed it again because you had no actual argument that didn’t sound like you were lying.
He leaned back slightly, clearly enjoying this way too much, then said, "You say that like you don’t secretly want me to keep doing it."
Your breath caught. And for once, you didn't have a quick answer.
Maybe that was actually how you wanted it to be.
A/n: I guess that's the end...It was so fun writing this story, if you want to be tagged on my next George Weasley rivals to lovers series, comment!!
Check out the spoiler for my next george weasley series!
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Always Second Choice
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.
Warnings: no use of y/n
Cw: angst, slowburn
Wc: 8k+
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.
"Why not," he said.
You shrugged one shoulder. "Nobody's asking me."
You were joking.
Silence.
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.
George said nothing.
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.
He wrote that down too.
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 knew.
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.
Except once.
"You know," Fred said, on night eleven, not looking up from his Charms essay, "most people just ask."
"I know," George said.
"You've been building a whole room."
"I know."
"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 started walking.
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.
George stopped walking.
He watched.
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.
Yes.
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.
Then he turned around.
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—"
George didn't stop walking.
"I guess I was too late."
"Wait, how do you know she agreed?"
"Doesn't matter."
"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."
"Doesn't matter."
"It does—"
"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."
---
Fred left 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.
---
Two days passed.
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.
Nothing came.
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.
"I'm excited."
"You look like you're doing homework in your head."
"I'm thinking."
"About what."
"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."
"I don't feel like—"
"You do," she said again, firmer.
"You always say that."
"I'm always right." She tilted her head. "Have you talked to George today?"
Something moved in your chest. "No."
"He seemed—"
"Hannah."
"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."
You went.
---
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.
Footsteps.
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.
"Cold out," he said.
"Yeah."
"You should have a coat."
"I have a cardigan."
"A cardigan is not a coat."
"It's coat-adjacent."
"It's—" he looked at your cardigan "—a very optimistic choice for November."
"I run warm."
"You're shivering."
"I'm not shivering."
"You just shivered."
"That was a breath."
"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—"
"Take it."
"You'll be cold."
"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.
"Yeah."
"Dress robes and everything."
"Apparently."
"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."
You went very still.
"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.
"George."
"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 don't sound happy."
"I'm very happy."
"You sound like someone describing a root canal."
"I sound completely—"
"George." You turned to face him properly. He looked at you. "I'm not going with him."
He blinked. "What."
"The boy in the courtyard. I said I'd think about it." You watched his face. "I didn't actually say yes."
He stared at you.
"You—" he started.
"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."
"Yes."
"That day."
"Yes."
"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."
"You had already said—"
"I said I'd think about it!"
"It looked like yes!"
"It was polite nodding!"
"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."
A beat.
"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."
"What—"
"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.
And he was gone.
---
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.
You went at ten o'clock.
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.
And stopped.
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.
Your throat went tight.
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.
He turned.
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 came," he said.
"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."
"You already said that."
"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."
"And the runes—"
"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.
You sat.
Close, the way you always ended up close to him now, shoulders almost touching, the warm tower air settling around you both.
"So," you said.
"So," he said.
"You built a whole room."
"I built a whole room."
"To ask me to a ball."
"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.
"George," you said.
"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."
Your eyes were burning.
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."
"George—"
"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 know."
"I hate that you know me that well."
"No you don't."
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.
You stopped packing.
"Yes," you said.
Just that. Just yes.
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.
"You are so—"
"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.
He didn't move away.
Neither did you.
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.
"Hm."
"The runes in the stone."
"What about them."
"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 looked at them too.
---
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.
He looked at you.
"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."
Your eyes were burning.
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."
"Yeah."
"In the cold."
"It's not that cold."
"George." Your voice broke slightly on his name. Just slightly. You caught it. "It's December. It's freezing up here."
"I had my jacket."
"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.
"I'm not crying."
"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."
"Yes," he said simply.
"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.
He reached over.
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.
You breathed.
In and out.
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—"
She stopped.
She looked at your face.
And went very still.
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.
Except you were smiling.
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.
It didn't help.
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.
"Nothing," you said.
"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.
Hannah blinked. "Sorry?"
"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.
All of it.
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 stopped.
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."
"Stop," Hannah said.
"And then he asked me to the ball and I said yes and then he booped my nose."
"He WHAT—"
"And handed me the Butterbeer and acted like absolutely none of it had just happened—"
Hannah stared at you.
"I need a moment," she said.
"Join the club," you said, still staring at the ceiling.
Silence.
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.
"Wait," Hannah said.
"What."
"You're going with him."
"Yes."
"To the Yule Ball."
"Yes."
"As his — like properly. As his—"
"Yes, Hannah."
She stared at you for a very long moment.
"Oh my god," she said.
"I know."
"Oh my god."
"Hannah—"
"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?"
"Valid question—"
"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.
She looked at you.
You looked at her.
"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.
"Good," she said.
She turned off the lamp.
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.
It was so much lighter.
A/n: wrote a little longer tdy!
Comment to be tagged on the next part!
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04 - Star Bruised
series | chapter 3
pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
tags & warnings: mentions of alcohol, addiction, and death. s2!spencer, angst, no smut
w/c: 5.2k
summary: The anniversary of her father's death became an opportunity for her classic self-sabotage tactics to finally go too far with Spencer.
a/n: Spencer had to stand his ground for once. SO PROUD OF HIM.
once again thanks to the one and only @hotchnerss for being the judge of this!
She sat at the edge of the sidewalk staring down at her shoes. Her vision was blurry and she didn’t know if it was the alcohol, her god awful headache, or the tears that were threatening to come in.
How cliché, getting wasted on her dad’s death anniversary to half-forget about it. So stupid.
HEADLOCK : ch. 3
chapter three : too late to stop
masterlist my ao3!
pairing : spencer reid x fem!reader
summary : You're on the hunt for an unsub who's forcing his victims to perform carnal acts or die. What you don't know is that he's set his sights on you and your colleague, Dr. Spencer Reid.
wc : 11k
tags/warnings : no use of y/n, dead dove do not eat, fuck or die, noncon/dubcon, nonconsensual filming, kidnapping, voyeurism, interrogation, mentions of vomit (nothing too graphic), blood, burns, torture, dental based horror, spanking (hand+belt), self mutilation, spencer and our heroine are lowkey starting to lose it.
authors note : CHECK THE TAGS ON THIS CHAPTER FOR WARNINGS
this is how it feels to follow multiple x reader tags and having to keep up with the amount of fics being written
irritating as fuck when people get mad at Black people existing in premodern historical fiction/fantasy media. like first of all, you're racist. and second of all, you are acting as though Black people didn't exist in premodern Europe which is simply false. especially when we're talking about the Mediterranean, like what the fuck do you people think is along the southern half of the Mediterranean Ocean?? everyone's on boats, there are GOING to be interactions with Black people in Northern Africa, and there are GOING to be Black people in Mediterranean Europe. stop being stupid. your imagined homogeneous white European past is not historical reality, get over it you massive losers
remember when linguini brought a rat he found back to his apartment and got all embarrassed and was like it’s not much. to the rat
