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Purging unnecessary things was supposed to be a cleansing experience. Healing, even, or so he’d been told. But now as he surveyed his bedroom Fred regretted starting this mad project. Stacks of books were starting to avalanche in a corner, pieces of parchment and newspaper clippings all but covered the floor, and then there was the contents from his trunk. The battered old secondhand trunk he’d taken to Hogwarts was open like a great mouth that had just vomited its contents all over his floor. Sinking onto his bed, Fred’s memory flickered back ten years ago and the first time he and George and the trunk had gone to Hogwarts. It felt like a lifetime ago now. Hell, it had been.
Especially since Fred often felt like he was living on borrowed time. They all had scars, of one kind or another, from the Battle of Hogwarts. But Fred’s were usually dismissed because it was such a miracle he was even alive to begin with after that damn wall had fallen.
“It could be worse, mate, at least you’re alive!”
He could understand it from his mother, although it set his teeth on edge. The boggart at Grimmauld Place had revealed it had been the woman’s worst fear— seeing her children dead. The others, though, Fred was finding it harder and harder to accept. It was toxically positive and infuriatingly dismissive.
Only three people had never said something like that to him: George, Harry, and Hermione. The Boy Who Lived (Again) was perhaps the one who understood best what Fred had experienced. After all, Harry had quite literally died.
One night near Christmas Harry and Fred had stayed up deep into the night talking. “It looked a bit like King’s Cross station,” Harry had said with a ghost of a wry smile, “I know it sounds mental.”
“No, not mental,” Fred had murmured, maybe more to himself than to Harry. There had been an indeterminate amount of time in which Fred had seemed to be at King’s Cross. But it had felt what he imagined it would be like to be caught between platforms 9 and 10 forever, without ever emerging onto 9 ¾. Forever caught in the in-between, neither here nor there, neither coming nor going.
Later, when he reckoned he arrived on the proper side, Fred has been told it was a coma. The wall had caused significant brain trauma. Not to mention his body being smashed. For months after he’d finally awakened special healers had worked with him. Magic was powerful stuff but it wasn’t as if a simple Skelegro potion was going to do the trick this time. No bruise paste or candy antidote was getting him out of this scrape.
Trauma, evidently, can only be dealt with intentionally, systematically, and with a lot of bloody hard work. And Fred had been traumatized in body and mind. At least, he was no stranger to hard work. George had been with him every step of the way. When Fred had wanted to quit because it hurt too much, George reminded him of all their failures before their successes. And day by painstaking day, Fred progressed.
He had to learn to walk again, and even now sometimes needed a cane. His hands tremored, especially when stressed. Sometimes he struggled to remember simple words to convey his thoughts. This brilliant, larger than life wizard felt trapped inside his own body and mind.
“You’re alive, Freddie, that’s what counts!”
Hermione understood being trapped in one’s mind. Their chat had been on New Year's Eve. As the others cheered at the stroke of midnight, Hermione had suddenly slipped outside the Burrow away from everyone . Fred followed, haltingly and slower than he’d have liked, but still he followed and found her gripping the post of the porch so hard her knuckles were white and a deep splinter was sliding into her thumb. She hadn’t noticed; her eyes were wide and wild, her face drained of all color, and she was breathing very fast and very shallowly.
“Tell me one thing you can see,” Fred had said softly, gently, trying to not frighten her. He stood directly in front of her with a face carefully arranged into calmness.
“I see you,” she breathed, blinking once.
“What else?”
She blinked again and cast a glance around, “I see Harry’s Firebolt because he didn’t put it away today.”
“And what else?”
“I see Crookshanks.”
Sure enough, her damn cat had appeared and was twining itself in and out of Fred’s legs. With great effort, he scooped the cat up and thrust it into Hermione’s hands.
“What can you feel?”
“Crookshanks fur. And my thumb hurts.”
“That’s a splinter,” he said, fishing ointment from his pocket. He cursed under his breath as he opened it with shaky hands and applied it to her thumb, trying to avoid Crookshanks’ fur. “Tell me one thing you can smell?”
“You,” she said automatically, and her voice was trusting and grateful.
“And what do you hear?” Fred asked quietly.
“Bellatrix Lestrange screaming,” Hermione whispered. Tears pooled in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks and were absorbed into Crookshanks’ thick orange fur.
Taking her arm, Fred had pulled her onto the bench on the front porch and sat with her while she cried. Eventually, tears gave way to talking. Hermione had confessed she could hardly sleep anymore. Although Bellatrix Lestarnge was dead as a Dickensian doornail, she visited Hermione in her dreams, alternately screaming and laughing, carving into her arm then stroking her hair like a pet. The torture of the cruciatus curse had only magnified the psychotic pleasure Bellatrix exacted on Hermione. Shouts and cheers sometimes jolted her back to Malfoy Manor, in her mind. As well as certain smells and the way the shadows could stretch across the floor. She never knew when something would trigger her— like a countdown on New Year’s Eve at one place where she had always felt safe.
Briefly, George had poked his head out once then with one look from Fred went to keep the others away. George understood without being told. He heard Fred screaming in his sleep, and Fred heard George. Walls falling, curses flying— Fred’s nightmares were of George’s head blown off over Surrey, and George dreamed of Fred smashed to smithereens under a wall at Hogwarts. Their worst fear was in losing one another. They didn’t talk about it much, but there was a shared comfort in knowing they weren’t quite as alone as the trauma made them feel. It had broken Fred’s heart to learn Hermione had been screaming with no one to hear her. Everyone needs to be heard.
He had told her she could come stay with them whenever she wanted to not be alone. Which is why the witch now had a toothbrush in the cup in their loo, and they had her favorite muggle cereal on hand. It wasn’t often she turned up, but when she did, it was no questions asked.
Just a few days ago, she had turned up, insisted on sleeping on the couch as usual although they both offered to give up their beds. And that’s when this completely mental purging project was conceptualized. She wanted to pay back his kindness and was coming to help.
Fred regretted starting without her, especially now he was so sore from getting up and down and bending and moving his angry body too much. He let his upper body fall back onto his mercifully soft bed, his long legs still bent and draped over the end, and he dragged a hand over his face. What a mess. His life, his body, his mind, and now his room too.
“Oh, Merlin’s beard, Fred.”
Her voice startled him from his thoughts. Blue eyes flickered to the doorway to find her standing there, hands on her hips, eyebrows raised, and grinning.
“I told you not to start without me. I had a whole system worked out.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time,” he mumbled from his spot on the bed. “I don’t think things through like I used to.”
“Some would be surprised to hear you used to think things through,” smirked Hermione as she shrugged off her jacket and tossed it on the bed.
“There was always a plan,” Fred said, managing half a smile as he painfully stood up. “The plan didn’t always go off without a..a… what’s the sodding word? A hitch! But there was a plan.”
“I believe it,” Hermione nodded. Her eyes surveyed the room but Fred could tell her thoughts were elsewhere. This was confirmed when she added, “Harry, on the other hand, never had a plan in his life. Not a real one anyway.”
“I’m not sure it’s a one to one comparison, to be fair,” Fred shrugged. “Georgie and I were mostly blowing ourselves up trying to invent, and Harry was trying to stay alive in absurd situations he didn’t want to be in.”
“Fair point,” Hermione conceded, chewing on her bottom lip. “I have sometimes wondered… well, never mind.”
“Wondered what?”
“It’s not important.”
“You can’t leave me hanging. You know I won’t let it go. I’m still curious as a cat.”
She gave him a flat look; he gave her a cat in the cream smile and said, “Meow.”
Hermione rolled her eyes but failed at smothering her smile. “Alright, fine, but just between us, I’ve wondered how things might’ve been different if Harry’d had you and George around more?”
“Like instead of little Ronniekins?” Fred said dryly. Immediately, Hermione stiffened and Fred regretted saying his name.
Ron had changed in the last year. He wouldn’t talk about the past, had no plan for the future, and was living in the present by ignoring his family and snogging as many different witches as he could. The fame of being one of the golden trio, plus whatever guilt and trauma he had from their year on the run, had made Ron a complete and utter wanker. In Fred’s humble opinion.
Hermione sighed as she pulled a hair tie off her belt loop and began to pull up her unruly hair. She called it ‘bushy’, most people did, but not Fred. Hagrid’s hair was bushy; Hermione’s hair was unruly, wild. Not words one usually associated with Hermione Jean Granger but Fred knew better. This witch was brave, unstoppable, and breathtaking. He’d thought so ever since his sixth year (her fourth) when she started knitting hats for house-elves and trying to right wrongs overnight. This witch could see the world with new possibilities, and so could he.
He studied her now as she wrestled her curls into relative submission, a fierce look in her eyes.
“Let’s not talk about Ron,” she said firmly. “I spent far too much time with him, thinking about him, and wasting energy over him over the last… several…years. Oh, it sounds worse when I say it out loud like that.”
Fred chuckled warmly, “It does sound worse than it actually is. Or was. Or whatever. It isn't your fault that my git baby brother is the best friend of the Boy Who Lived and that the three of you had to spend an…um, uh…inordinate amount of time depending on one another. If I’d had to spend all that time trying to depend on Ron I’d probably have started day drinking.”
Hermione snorted a laugh, which pleased Fred, and her eyes returned to the clutter. “Alright, so let’s get started with some sorting, shall we?”
She used her wand to conjure a box for donating and a bag for trash. “We’ll put what you want to keep back in your trunk.”
“That old thing?” He said with a tone of distaste.
“I love your old trunk!” Hermione protested.
“Why would you love my old school trunk?”
“Your hopes and dreams came out of this thing,” she explained, kneeling beside it. “Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes was born out of this trunk.”
“Actually, it was that case,” Fred corrected. It took some work and accepting that there’d be pain, but Fred lowered himself to the floor and then picked up his old Weasley and Weasley case. Flicking it open, they saw it still contained a smattering of their first skiving snackbox candies and the order forms.
“I gave you the worst time that year, didn’t I?” Hermione said, remembering.
“I enjoyed it.”
“You did not. You were furious with me.”
“I had to work harder and smarter because of you. I enjoyed that.”
“Well, we’re keeping the case. And a few of the order forms. But the candies—.”
“Oh, should definitely go. Those are four years old now and I have no idea what they’d do to anyone,” Fred chuckled.
“I feel like the old Fred wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to find out,” Hermione remarked as she dumped the candies into the rubbish bag. She straightened a few order forms, placed them in the case, then put the closed case in Fred’s trunk.
“The old Fred,” he repeated softly.
“You know, the seventeen year old who apparated into every room in twelve Grimmauld Place just because he bloody well could,” she said with a teasing grin and bumping him gently with her shoulder.
“Maybe it’s good I did all my apparating when I could,” he pointed out. His license to apparate had been revoked out of concern he’d splinch himself, given all the trauma.
“You’ll get there someday, if you want to, that is,” she said reassuringly. “ I’ve never seen Fred Weasley want something and not get it.”
It was good her attention was now on his old robes and quidditch uniforms or she might’ve seen the strained look come into his eyes. There was one thing he had wanted for a long time. Something or other had always been in his way. He looked at his trembling hand and curled it into a fist.
“So your old school robes, donate? Someone might be able to use them. Well, this one has a hole in it. Good grief, Fred, that’s not a tear, it’s a burn hole.”
“You seem surprised.”
“I shouldn’t be,” she laughed. “Nothing should surprise me with you.”
He arched an eyebrow. Still laughing, she put her hand on his forearm, and said, “I always liked that.”
“Now it’s my turn to remind you how furious you used to get with me,” he said, shaking his head.
“I worried about you—and those impressionable first years— and George too, of course. But no one has ever impressed me like you and George. The amazing things your clever ginger brains dreamed up. Like your fireworks?”
A proud smile tugged at Fred’s lips. She gripped his arm a little tighter, “Oh! And your daydream charms? Absolutely brilliant. You know, I’ve actually been using those a bit over the last couple of months? It’s helped a little… with, you know.”
Fred’s eyes darted from her face to the scar just barely visible under the sleeve of her t-shirt where Bellatrix had literally left her mark. That sadistic psychotic bitch. Not a day went by that Fred wasn’t grateful for his mother being the one who finally killed her.
“I gave you your first daydream for free,” Fred said, as he summoned that memory to the surface instead. He’d been nineteen years old and Hermione just a few months shy of seventeen. On her first visit to their shop, she complimented the product, and when he gave it to her for free maybe he had hoped…
“I remember that first daydream,” she said vaguely.
Her attention was back on his old school clothes, lost in a thought she evidently didn’t want to share. From the hint of a smile on her lips, it was a good thought anyway. The tips of Fred’s ears reddened and he felt, briefly, like a schoolboy again.
She put any clothes—robes, shirts, pants, ties—with damage in the rubbish bag, and anything that could be worn by another student with limited funds into the donation box. Then, as if with a second thought, she removed one of the ties and draped it around his neck.
“Doesn’t really go…” he said, pinching his WWW shirt with two fingers and his thumb and lifting it off his chest just under her nose. A whiff of gunpowder and spun sugar wafted between them. She shushed him and tied a lovely Windsor knot then pulled it gently to his throat, her eyes trained on the material in her fingers. When she finished, she leaned back on her haunches to appraise him.
He flashed a cheeky grin, “so, how do I look?”
She didn’t answer, but that smile was no longer merely hinting. Fred reached for another tie.
“You need one too,” he said. He reached trembling hands around her to tie it around her ponytail, not trusting himself anywhere near her torso to tie it around her neck with these shaking hands. Their eyes met, almost locked into place as he tied it over the hair elastic.
“So, how do I look?” She said, repeating his question and batting her eyelashes exaggeratedly.
“Like a daydream,” he answered, his fingers tugging gently at a rogue curl by her face. Her cheeks flushed pink but she just shook her head, like she was sure he was only joking.
“Alright, anyway, let’s see…your quidditch gear,” she said, resolutely returning to the task, “This is all staying.”
This was something of a sore point for Fred. He snorted derisively, “why? I’ll never need any of it again.”
“Well, no, I suppose you don’t need your uniform for pickup games at the Burrow—.”
“Hermione, I can’t fly a sodding broomstick to save my life. I shake too damn much.”
He waited for Hermione to tell him he’d get there someday, like she had about apparating, but she didn’t. Instead, she was holding his beater robe, rubbing circles along his name on the back with her thumb.
“I’m sorry, Fred. I know you loved to fly. And you were so good at it too.”
He sighed heavily and reached for a random piece of parchment on the floor, just to preoccupy himself. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not though. We all walk around broken and say it’s fine because what choice do we have, but it isn’t fine. It sucks,” she looked up to meet his eyes. “And it’s okay for you to say that it sucks. It’s okay to not be okay.”
“I’m not sure it is, Hermione. Not when you’re ‘Fred and George’,” he sighed. Fred discarded the parchment into the rubbish bag, and lifted the pile of quidditch clothes onto his lap, except the robe Hermione was still holding. “Not that I think it’s much different for Harry, or even Ron. Or you. We’re all surrounded by people who need us to be okay, or to project the semblance of being okay, anyway.”
“People do expect you and George to be the life of the party,” Hermione sighed bitterly. “For crying out loud, Georgie cracked a joke the night his ear was sercumsempra-ed off.”
Fred gestured with his hands as he said resignedly, “It’s what we do.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Freddie, your jokes and tricks and levity were a bright spot in a really dark time, still are,” Hermione said firmly and her eyes flashed in that unstoppable way, “but you’re a deep well, Fred Weasley, and I don’t want any projections of being okay. Maybe that’s a kindness for your mother, but for me, I want the real you. Or else….”
She trailed off for the second time that day. Her gaze departed from his face.
Fred prompted gingerly, “Or else what?”
“Or else what was the point of waking up? Of doing all the work to get this far? Just to fake it? To put on a show? No. No, I’d rather have your trembling hands with life in them than to have lost you under that wall forever. It’s not just George and your mum who dream about that. And it’s the real you I want. Not fake Fred who’s fine.”
Her voice quavered and she took the pile of clothes back from him to keep herself busy. Without discussing it, she took the pieces of his beater uniform and put them back in his trunk.
Left in her lap was Fred’s Gryffindor quidditch team hoodie. A little gasp escaped her lips as she delicately fingered the letters across the front of it.
Folding it over in her hands, she studied his name on the back of it as though it was a valuable treasure map. Her eyes were glistening, and Fred realized his were wet too.
“You can’t get rid of this. Do whatever you want with the rest but not this,” she breathed.
“What? That old thing?” Fred asked, trying to keep his voice light but it cracked a little and betrayed him.
When she looked at him again, her eyes crackled with her characteristic fire. “I love this old sweatshirt. You remember.”
“I do,” he confessed. He had lent it to her the summer they lived in Grimmauld Place with the rest of the Order. That creepy, dusty old place had been strangely cold despite the heat and the drought. Fred couldn’t stand to watch her shiver so he’d given her his quidditch hoodie. When he found it back in his trunk at Hogwarts, he’d been surprised. And maybe even a little hurt.
“I wore it every day in Grimmauld Place,” she said softly. “I loved it because it felt like you.”
Still attempting levity, Fred scoffed, “What are you on about? I feel like a ratty old sweatshirt?”
“It is not ratty,” she protested. “You took care of this because you love quidditch and you loved being a beater for Gryffindor. I knew when you handed it to me it was your favorite.”
He shrugged his concession, hoping she’d make her way to explaining why he and the sweatshirt in question felt the same to her.
“But what I mean is , I felt…safe in this sweatshirt. Even with everything going on that summer— Dumbledore’s secrets and the Order’s meetings and Harry’s horrible temper and knowing Voldemort was back—.”
“I remember,” Fred interrupted gently.
“Even with all that, when I was with you I felt safe. I felt protected from the weight of it somehow. Like reality couldn’t crush me like it threatened to because this boy with the cocky smile and kind eyes and good heart was still dreaming up impossibilities and making them true.”
Fred swallowed hard. “Then why did you give it back?”
“Because if I’d kept it I would’ve wanted to wear it.”
“And that was a problem?”
“Oh right, imagine know-it- all prefect Hermione Granger sauntering around Hogwarts in Fred Weasley’s quidditch hoodie. I can only imagine what Lavender and Parvati would’ve said,” her voice dripped with uncharacteristic bitterness. “They already didn’t like me.”
“First of all, I’m not sure you’ve ever sauntered in your life. Second of all, who sodding cares what they would’ve said?”
“Fred, it would’ve looked like—.”
“Like what?”
“Like I thought I was good enough for the magnificent Fred Weasley. They would’ve been merciless.”
“Is that what you really thought?” Fred asked incredulously. “That I was somehow, I don’t know, out of your league? Like you weren’t what—popular enough?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Hermione shrugged. “It just felt like at Grimmauld Place it was just us, and I could be wrapped up in your. But Hogwarts wasn’t like that. People had their ideas about you and about me, and it was just different.”
“Merlin’s beard, Hermione, it didn’t have to be,” he said, shaking his head and feeling regret wash over him. When he’d found the damn sweatshirt he should’ve gone straight to her. He should’ve made her take it back, maybe even made a scene so they all would’ve known without a doubt how he felt about her.
But he hadn’t. Fred Weasley who had always lived life out loud had kept quiet. And he couldn’t exactly sit here now and tell her she was wrong for worrying about Lavender and Parvati and the whole of hogwarts; Fred had worried about Ron and his mother and the whole of the Weasley clan, except George, of course. He’d been afraid of backlash if he’d made his feelings for Hermione known— he was older and he was seemingly reckless and undisciplined and Ronniekins liked her, or at least didn’t want anyone else to have her for a girlfriend. So Fred had thrown himself into his inventions and business plans, filling his mind with that instead.
Except his daydreams always came back to her. And she was wearing his hoodie with her denim shorts and they were in Grimmauld Place which was a terrible setting for a daydream but it never mattered because Hermione was in it.
“It was more than just a sweatshirt,” she said, holding it to her chest and breathing in before pulling it on over her head. “Gunpowder and spun sugar and parchment. Although when you lived at the Burrow you smelled like freshly mown grass instead of gunpowder.”
“Dad got hold of a muggle lawnmower—.”
“I remember! The year we went to the Quidditch World Cup together,” she smiled. She hugged her arms around herself as she settled into the soft material.
“Does it feel the same?” Fred asked tentatively.
She nodded slowly, “More or less. I think we’re both more than what we were and less than we were too.”
And with great uncertainty, Fred asked, “Did we miss it, Hermione?”
He was afraid to ask it but staying quiet any longer scared him more. The Fred and Hermione of Grimmauld Place were different from the ones sitting here in his bedroom in the flat above his store. Those wide-eyed idealistic teenagers had gone to hell and back, had fought for what they believed in, had defended what was most precious to them, and had shared in the brokenness of the aftermath. They were scarred and broken, but maybe that would make their bond deeper. From where Fred was sitting, metaphorically speaking, it sure seemed that way. But he couldn’t speak for Hermione. The brightest witch of their age had kept him on his toes far too much for Fred to even presume to try.
“Did we miss our chance?” He asked again. “If that was the one risk I didn’t take, I—.”
But Hermione grabbed his tie and pulled his mouth to hers, breathing in the rest of his words as she kissed him. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he deepened the kiss as he drew her onto his lap. With a shiver, she buried her fingers in his copper hair, and a little moan escaped her lips as Fred slid his tongue into her mouth. He couldn’t help the chuckle that hummed in his throat. She seemed to like that too because her tongue was in his mouth now.
“So, I see purging is coming along well?” George smirked. Jerking apart, Fred leaned his forehead against Hermione’s and saw his twin standing in the doorway eating Chinese out of the takeaway box with chopsticks in his hand. This was Angelina’s influence, the food, not that knowing smirk. That was pure Weasley twin DNA.
“Pretty well yeah,” Fred replied before kissing Hermione again.
“Oh, you found the sweatshirt,” George continued conversationally as if Hermione wasn’t in his brother’s lap. “You know, I almost had Ginny sneak it into Hermione’s trunk that year the pink toad ruined our lives but then you were so angry about Hermione taking down our advertisement in the common room.”
“Damn my temper,” Fred murmurred.
“Damn Ronald,” Hermione added.
“How’s that?” Fred asked. “Not that I disagree, I’d just like to understand why we’re damning him this time.”
“If he’d had the bollocks to stand up to you, I wouldn’t have had to be the bad guy. You could’ve been angry with him instead and I could’ve had the sweatshirt back.”
“Well, it’s all worked out now,” pronounced George in a heavy imitation of his mother. “You’re alive and everything will be just fine.”
Hermione giggled. It was the first time she had giggled in ages. Fred’s mouth twitched between a grimace and a laugh. “Georgie?”
“Yeah, Freddie?”
“Shut the door on your way out. We have catching up to do and I didn’t stay alive to listen to you do imitations of Mum, mate.”
“Hermione?” George said, as he stabbed his chopsticks into the box of food and put one hand on the doorknob.
“Yes, George?” She asked, turning to look at him and her cheeks coloring quite a bit.
“Do you still want those daydream charms you ordered?”
“No, Georgie,” she grinned, “I found what I was looking for in daydreams.”
“In a Gryffindor quidditch hoodie,” George snickered as he pulled the door shut.
“In the boy who gave it to me,” Hermione said, kissing Fred again. “And the man who lived.”
Fred fused his mouth to hers with another hungry kiss. When she pulled away for a breath of oxygen several minutes later, he whispered, “To be clear, that’s me right? Not Harry?”