Chapter Text
November
Hermione Granger stood out in front of Ollivanders Makers of Fine Wands. Her eyes went from the sign hanging proudly above the door to the etched engraving on the door. Her hand found the door knob and she took a deep breath to steel herself.
This was her last walk through the shop before the family arrived and demo day started. She knew she needed time to herself to say goodbye to the shop that had become her home and honor the memories of her mentor.
Hermione opened the door and walked in.
The distinct tinkle of the bell brought her back to being a little eager muggle born student getting her first wand and to the first day she sold a wand she had crafted with her own hands to a first year. This place held so many memories.
Now Ollivander would say she took him under her wing but she knew the truth, he took her under his wings to teach her wand lore and wand making. She was perfect for the job, her attention to detail and patience not to mention her ability to think outside the box helped her to push boundaries and norms that he, and others, thought were set in stone.
She ran her hand over the worn wood of the counter, where so many little firsties had walked up to to be matched with their wand. Ollivanders Makers of Fine Wands had been Ollivander’s shop and now a year and half after his passing she was finally ready to move forward and enact the plans she and he had prepared for the future of the shop.
Hermione walked behind the counter and looked around at the empty black shelves and time-worn yellow walls, her heart hurt for the persnickety man. That man who had become her Uncle Ollie, a title he initially scoffed but had embraced in the end.
When they were talking about the shop's future, she wanted to keep the shop Ollivanders. She insisted that the name was known throughout the world but Ollie had insisted that he was the last Ollivander and he did not want her to live in his shadow. He was a stodgy old man and so had all the Ollivanders before him and she was the opposite of that. He wanted her future to be filled with as much light as she had brought to his once miserable life, while carrying on his family's wand lore.
She walked into the back storeroom of the shop and the shelves she had emptied the day before. She still had a stock of one-hundred Ollie wands and those wands were precious to her. She didn’t know what she was going to do with the wands, it felt weird to sell them. She had to remind herself that every wand she created had a piece of Ollie in them, he had been her teacher after all. But it was still sad to see all the shelves empty. She was glad that Ollie had helped her to create the plan for the future of the shop.
Looking back, Hermione knew that this was his way of preparing her for his passing, and further proof of the kindness she and all his customers had come to love about Ollie.
Ollie had written her notes that he left around the shop and after he passed she found one that said, “To the girl who changed my life. I know you are feeling sad right now but know I am in a better place. We made plans for Wands of the West but please take the time to grieve and feel your feelings. The plans will always be there for you when you are ready. With so much Love, Uncle Ollie”
So when Ollie passed away in May of last year she had taken her mentor's advice and did a very un-Hermione thing and just didn't think about it. She knew that the plan was there for her, when she was ready. To this day she was very glad she didn't jump right into it because just two months later her parents passed away in a plane crash coming back from their dream trip to see the Northern Lights. She knew, in the back of her mind, that Ollie was sick and would die sooner than he should and she had time to prepare for that. But her parents… they were taken from her in a freak accident that was so sudden and incomprehensible.
Had it not been for the support of the entire Weasley family, Hermione would not have made it through the year from hell that she had just lived through.
She had been fighting the tears through her walk through the shop. But whenever she thought about her parents and how unfair it all was, she just couldn't stop the torrent of tears.
Then like a guardian angel Molly Weasley came flying down the stairs.
“Oh Lovely.” She said as she pulled Hermione into her arms as the floodgates opened and Hermione let someone else hold her up for a moment.
Molly insisted to her that the tears were better out than in and she was there for her. It was like she had a sixth sense about it and always seemed to turn up when Hermione needed her. When Hermione would comment about that, Molly said that it was something you learned when you become a mum; you know when your children need you and she would reinforce that Hermione was no less her daughter than Ginny was.
Molly whispered those sweet nothings that mum's did to comfort and reassure their children that they are loved and safe. Hermione's heart and soul felt so much comfort from her magic mum. Molly's hugs had always reassured her and made her feel better and after her parents passed away they took on a different meaning. She reminded Hermione that she wasn't alone and she had a family to hold her up when she needed them.
“You have every right and reason to be crying right now, Hermione Jean Granger.” Molly reassured her. “It's been your year from hell and you know what,” She wiped the tears from her cheeks, getting Hermione’s attention.
“What?” She hiccuped.
“I am so proud of you, my sweet girl.” Molly squeezed her even tighter. “You could have fallen apart and said screw the world but you didn’t. It was August and you stood strong and tall and said that you had a responsibility as a wand maker to be there for the firsties. Your world was falling apart but you knew that you had to finish the school season. You are so strong and you continue to show that strength everyday.”
Looking back she did not know how she made it through the rest of that month and finished the school season. She was so grateful that the family did not leave her side and came with her to the shop everyday to make sure she was okay. Fred, George, and Molly took shop duty with her for most of the month because Molly had all the time in the world to help her and Fred and George could bounce back and forth with their shop next door. Others in the family took time off from their jobs, training, and work, to be there with Hermione.
“And now I think about them and I fall apart,” Hermione sighed.
“I think about my mum and dad and their passing and some days I want to cry and fall apart too.” Molly said with so much emotion in her voice, it made Hermione’s heart hurt for her magical mum, she remembered that she was not alone in this loss. “Remember what I told you, the pain never goes away fully. You learn how to live with it but it never leaves. Things will happen or you make big changes in your life and then think of them and your world will fall out from under you.”
“This is part of grieving.” Hermione said more for herself than anyone.
It had been over a year since their passing and some days it felt like it was just yesterday that they or Ollie or the emotion from all three of them passing hit her. People would say that grief was something you worked your way through and Hermione said that grief was a damn roller coaster one minute you're gliding over a bunny hop and the next it throws you through a loop. The only thing you can do is hold on tight and ride it out.
Molly squeezed her tighter and that was something that always brought her comfort. Molly's hugs felt like her mum's and Hermione was so grateful to still be able to feel that feeling of a mother's love and comfort. Molly pulled away and wiped her face with a towel that she must have transfigured. She then banished the cloth away when her face was clean.
“Love you, Hermione.” Molly kissed her forehead, something she knew could always make Hermione giggle and grin.
“It's hard looking at the empty store.” Hermione said. “But I know it's for the best and a new start.”
Molly didn't say anything. She didn't have to. They leaned against each other, taking in the quiet before Molly signaled to the family to come to the shop.
“Are you ready for this?” Molly asked.
Hermione nodded and Molly sent her large brown bear patronus with the ready signal to the family. Before the patronus ran off with the message it licked Hermione’s cheek and she laughed. She always found it so fitting that Molly Weasley’s patronus was a momma bear for the best momma bear in all their lives.
“Do you mind if I go into the lab and keep working on the custom wand order I got?” Hermione asked, her voice cracked with emotion. “Let everyone enjoy demolishing everything, I… I just can't do it.”
Molly quickly reassured her, “Lovely, we told you last night, we have demo day covered. Arthur and Fleur are going to lead the charge. You go bury yourself in your wand making and I will get you when the shop has been taken down to the studs and whitewashed.. We’ve got you, dearie.”
Hermione's shoulders relaxed visibly, “Well I’ve got you all covered for breakfast, you have taught me well and I will make sure everyone is well-fed for demo day.”
Molly's eyes lit up at that, Hermione was very much her mother’s, both of them, daughter and loved to make sure that everyone was fed. Feeding someone was a way to show your love, even if you couldn't voice it to them.
She and Hermione had spent a lot of time over the last year cooking together. Hermione needed something to distract herself when the pain would be too much. After her parents' funeral, Hermione had asked Molly if she could help her make some cookies her Mum and Abuela would make for her when she was sad. They made the cookies and it warmed her heart to eat them. Molly had taken her under her wing sharing her cooking knowledge with her and together they connected with Hermione’s hispanic heritage by perfecting recipes her mum made when she was a little girl. Molly had been so excited to expand her cooking knowledge from the traditional English dishes she was raised on. The duo had learned so much together and Hermione could see that Molly took pride in how good she had become at cooking. She and Fred were the most trusted kids in the kitchen.
Molly grinned, “Oh do tell, daughter, what is on the menu this morning?”
“Chorizo, hatch chile, egg, cheese, and veggie burritos.” Hermione smiled at how Molly's eyes lit up. I found some new hot sauces to try with it too.” Hermione grinned
“Sounds amazing.” Molly said, “I will get the tables out while you grab breakfast.”
And with a lighter heart Hermione made her way up the stairs.
When her parents moved back to England, her mum had introduced everyone to her favorite night of the week, taco Tuesday. It had become a family institution that Molly hosted at the Burrow where the mum’s would cook with others helping to pick chillies from the garden or shred cheese. To this day, the Weasley family helped to keep her parents' tradition alive.
As fate would have it, not only was the first day of Yule without her parents on a Tuesday, but it was also Mother's Night, in Weasley pagan Yuletide tradition where they would honor those who had fallen. Last year they had changed the name to Parents Night where not only did they remember Hermione's parents but Hermione honoured Molly and Arthur for helping her through the dark times. The tradition was they would put a symbol, picture, or some other way of identifying their lost loved one in their Dishir Altar where they would give offerings to their ancestors throughout Yule. Hermione told them how she loved the Dishir Altar because it was a lot like the ofrendas that people set up to honor their ancestors during Dia De Muertos And then they had a meal together remembering those they had lost. That first year for dinner they had tacos on Parents Night and everyone in the family agreed that that tradition would continue.
Arthur’s family had a tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and they would spend the night reading that book. Molly had surprised Hermione with a book on making salsas. Hermione and Molly started to make a different salsa from the book each week in advance of Taco Tuesday. That had been the first step to her stepping into her mum’s place and co-hosting Taco Tuesday with Molly.
Hermione slowly made her way up the stairs as the anxiousness she had been feeling slowly started to leave her. At the beginning of October, she told the family she was ready to start the remodel of the shop. They spent the last month finalizing the design and today was the start of two to three months of remodeling. Facing the reality of what was really happening made her feel anxious and nervous and dare she say excited.
She made her way to the landing of the second floor. The wand shop was four stories, with the basement being used for storage, the first floor was the shop, the second was the wand creation lab, and the third, in Ollie's time, had been more storage but now was Hermione's flat.
When it came to the wand creation lab, Ollie had been a recluse and did things how he did them for his and his father's entire lives. But when he took her under his wing to learn the magic of wand lore and making, he changed his recluse ways from the get-go. He told her that his old ways were not the future and she was. So he listened to her ideas and questioning why he did things the way he did and together they remodeled the lab over the first two years of her apprenticeship. And as they worked together in the lab for the last three of his life, they continued to make it even better. After Ollie passed, she was glad that the lab was a space where she could feel his presence in a light and happy way, unlike the sadness she felt in the shop. The shop felt like Ollie before she met him and it was sad to see that. She was eternally grateful for that fateful day that changed her and his life forever.
After the war, rebuilding Diagon Alley had been the last thing on people's minds. The Ministry focused on rebuilding itself and Hogwarts. The Weasley family could not do that, too much had happened at Hogwarts for them to go back. Molly made the executive decision for the family that they would help to rebuild Diagon Alley. The twins would need help and so would the rest of the shop owners. Hermione had been eternally grateful that Molly had taken over and offered them answers to the what do we do now question after the shock, grief, and elation they had won passed.
Once it was known that the Golden Trio would be helping the businesses of Diagon Alley, support started pouring in, as people realized that they needed their businesses back as much as the school.
While they had been focused on helping to rebuild the Alley, she had no time to focus on the thoughts of her future. But as the weeks wore on and the Twins opened the Weasley Wheezes Workshop, her thoughts had gone to what she was going to do next. Percy was back at the Ministry. Arthur retired so he could spend time with Molly and help the kids with their endeavors. Charlie was back in Romania, Bill and Fleur were back at Gringotts, and Ron joined the Aurors. Harry and Ginny decided to revive the English Quidditch league. But Hermione had no idea what the hell she wanted to do with her life and had avoided figuring it out.
She had been seriously thinking about taking the twins up on their offer to do whatever the hell she wanted under the WWW umbrella of products and services, but Hermione feared working together might kill their newly forming friendship. She was very glad she didn't because she and the twins had become so very close over the last six years. She cherished their friendship and some days felt like there may be something more there with them.
It turned out fate had other plans for Hermione when one day when she was walking through the Alley early in the morning she ran into Ollivander standing in front of his destroyed shop. She had been wondering what would happen with the shop, as she hadn't seen him return to the alley. She knew those unshed tears that he was keeping just barely contained, they were the same that Fred and George had had when they saw the joke shop. But unlike Fred and George, Ollivander was alone.
Hermione didn't say anything, she just walked up beside him and stood there staring at the shop. Eventually, he turned to her and said I remember you and she said Vine, 10 and ¾ inches with a dragon heartstring. That was the start of one of the most impactful relationships of her life.
Hermione continued up the third flight of stairs to her apartment. The third floor had been a storage, junk, and family catchall that had taken her weeks to clear through. She had found so many precious memories of her mentor that she was going to add to an ofrenda in the new shop. She didn't have much from Ollie’s personal life, he had lived in shared accommodations above Leaky Cauldron, being a lifelong bachelor he liked having meals in the pub and not having to clean up after himself. Going through the third floor had given her a new look at her mentor and so many more precious memories.
Hermione knew that she wanted to live above the shop. She loved being a part of the Alley and to her, that meant living there. She had seen how involved Fred and George were with the alley and wanted to be the same way. Plus she knew that she would never be alone while living close to the twins. After losing Ollie and her parents, she couldn’t stomach starting the remodel of the shop. So she turned her focus to turning the third floor into her home.
She took off her shoes and put them in the cubby that was built into the landing of the staircase. She mirrored the same organizational system that the rest of the family used to keep the outside stuff, where it belonged, outside the apartment. She hung her apron on the peg to the right of the door, that was her uniform for the shop and she always kept it within easy reach. She opened her bright teal door and walked into the apartment.
The wandshop's L shaped layout worked perfectly for her purposes with her setting the fancy spa bathroom and her bedroom in the shorter part of the L. Then open concept living, dining, kitchen in the larger part of the L. She knew from the beginning that she needed a massive chef's kitchen and had spared no expense in turning it into a muggle and magical chef's dream. She had window seats installed along the bank of windows that faced the Alley. She built bookshelves around the window and under the window seats, where she put her most precious books. The rest of her library of books was in the lab, they had installed bookshelves around the entire space and so far she had only filled it a fourth of the way with books.
She made her way to the fridge, pulled out the six pack of Heartbeat hot sauces, and set it on the serving tray with the burritos and bowl of chopped fruit. She did a quick levitating and follow-me spell on the dishes and then made her way out of the apartment with the dishes floating behind her.
She could hear the family's voices floating up the stairs as she stood on the landing. She heard Fred make some joke and George laughed out loud and with that she got the courage to go downstairs. She knew she could do this and she had all of her people down there to help.
“Auntie Née Nee.” Viki and Teddy exclaimed and ran over to her.
She motioned for the dishes to go to the table Molly had set up in the middle of the room. She crouched down and was engulfed in their hugs and giggles.
“Good morning, Teddy.” She kissed his cheek and then kissed Viki's, “Morning Viki. Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Yes.” They exclaimed and joined Ron to be one of the first to get breakfast.
“Hermione breakfast is just as good as Mum's,” Ron said with a huge grin on his face.
“Here here.” Molly grinned in agreement.
“But nothing beats Mum's waffles.” Hermione finished the comparison. “I have to make sure my demo crew is well-fed. I’ll order pizza for lunch and there are drinks and snacky snacks in the kitchenette.”
While everyone grabbed their breakfast, Hermione walked over to the old counter to stand behind it one last time.
Fred walked up to the counter and set a plate in front of her with two burritos and the bottle of pineapple habanero hot sauce. She smiled in thanks to him, he always made sure she got whatever food she wanted when the family got together. She was never first in line and always waited to the end and that usually meant Fred or George grabbed her a full plate before she could.
“Where did all the wands go?” Fred asked as George walked up to join them.
George set his plate on the counter and spun it around so Fred and Hermione could grab fruit from it, obviously having gotten extra for them. She grabbed a blueberry and popped it in her mouth with a smile.
“Thanks Georgie. So I only have one-hundred left from last year and this year. We have had students coming from around Europe so most of my extra stock went to them. For now, they are being stored in the basement until I figure out what to do with them. It feels wrong to just sell them like normal. They are Ollivander’s final wands.”
Fred’s hand found hers and she took a deep breath, “They are special and you take all the time you need figuring out what to do.”
George nodded at what Fred said and she squeezed his hand back.
“I decided that I am going to put his personal wand in the ofrenda in the shop.” She said with a shy smile on her face.
Hermione and the family had honored her parents and Ollie’s memory on Día de Muertos just a month ago. She had been able to tell them all about her heritage and it felt like a step in the right direction. She didn't have an ofrenda so they used the family’s Dishir Altar at the Burrow that they used during Yule. Hermione had been honored that Molly had suggested they use the altar for it because using it felt like it connected her to the Weasley family heritage along with her own.
“I love that we are going to make one for the shop, it feels like its the right thing to do.” George said.
“Putting his wand on the second tier as his object to welcome his spirit back to the shop is perfect,” Fred said.
“Well we are ready to help whenever you want to build it. Fred here will make us food, while you and I work on carving and building the structure.” George said with a knowing smile, they had done so many projects together in the past.
Hermione nodded, happy to have her best friends to help her build such a significant piece for the shop.
“I would love the help. I have my family heritage book that my Mum gave my dad when they started dating so he could understand her history. It became mine when I was younger and started asking about where we came from. One of the pictures in the book is of an ofrenda my many times bisabuelo had carved and I would like to carve those same designs into mine.”
“Georgie, you could use this as the excuse to buy that other carving machine you both have wanted,” Fred laughed as Hermione and George's eyes lit up.
Hermione winked at George in jest, “Oh we are totally buying that. You know me, any excuse to buy more power tools.
“We will take it.” Hermione high fived him.
George wanted to have a woodshop, like their dad had at the Burrow. During the rebuilding of the store, Hermione suggested that they set aside space in the basement of one of the buildings expanded into. Over the years, Hermione and George spent many hours working on projects together with her using his woodshop. When she was getting new equipment for the wand lab, she had to ask George if she could put them in the WWW Workshop since the equipment was too big for the lab space. The twins had surprised her the next day with a magical passage built into the workshop that they connected to the wand lab, so she could get easy access to the machines when she needed it. They would use any project as an excuse to buy more equipment.
“Pass me the hot sauce,” George said as they finished the fruit and started to eat their burritos.
Fred handed over the pineapple hot sauce and they took turns putting some on the burrito, taking a bite, and then passing it along.
As they ate their burritos, Fred asked, “Are you ready for all this?”
She shook her head, “I am going to go hide while you all demo, I can’t-”
“Mina,” George put his hand on her back and the twins seemed to move in unison together closer to her, Fred's hand joining his brothers. “You are not hiding, you are leaning on us and letting us take the burden for you.”
Hermione unconsciously leaned into their support and nodded, not trusting her voice to not crack. She didn't want to cry anymore.
“We’ve got you,” Fred said. “Do you have a new project to work on?”
Hermione was grateful for the distraction, they always seemed to know when she needed to change subjects, “I totally do, I have a custom order and experimentation to do with non-magical cores and on the first encapsulation of the core. The customer's ancient macaw that has lived at Beauxbatons his entire life has molted so I have many feathers now to experiment with. Will see if I can manage to make a suitable core out of it. The customer understands it could lead to nothing but he said if anyone can make a wand out of it, it would be me.”
The continued votes of confidence from customers had made her feel so good. The request had come in a month after she changed the official name of the shop to Granger’s Wands of the World. When she was planning the shop with Ollie, she had planned on calling it Wands of the West, taking inspiration from Lord of the Rings. But since her parents' passing, she had been giving a lot of thought to what she wanted to do and had decided to call the shop Granger’s Wands of the World, bringing her parents into it and Wands of the World because that was what she was doing. She was studying and bringing wand making practices from other countries to England with the goal to become the foremost expert in all things wand making. Putting her name on the business brought her notoriety, not just as a war heroine but also as a skilled wand maker to the shop.
Over the last year, she had started experimenting with non-magical cores. They were unpredictable when she tried to infuse them with magic and she had been experimenting with different materials to use. When she was learning from Ollie she asked why he used only the supreme cores. He would explain his reasoning over and over but something nagged at Hermione. She asked if she could try something new, which he had encouraged her to do. So she created a new spell to encapsulate the less-than-ideal cores, which she later refined into multi-step processes to make sure the core could support the magic and the magic could support the core in the wand. Ollie had been so impressed by her thinking outside of the box and helped her to hone the spell and it was added to the knowledge that one day she would pass down to future wand makers. Now she wanted to try her idea with cores that had no innate magic in them to see what she could do.
“That sounds like a lot of fun for you, Mina.” Fred said after he finished his burrito and stacked their plates up.
George grabbed the plates and took them to the trash can by the table. She missed him standing beside her but was distracted when Fleur clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention.
“Now that we are all full, we are ready to get this demo started. Hermione, did you want to say anything?” Fleur motioned for her to come over to her.
“I am so glad you are all here. The last year has been overwhelming. You all have been so-” Her voice cracked and Fred squeezed her hand in support, “I wouldn't be here without you all.” Her eyes met every person in the room, “I love you guys.”
“We love you Née Nee.” Teddy and Viki yelled and everyone followed suit.
Then they all wrapped her in a huge, crazy, loud, and wild Weasley family embrace. She tried to reassure herself that it was going to be okay and that maybe just maybe she could look forward to the remodel and even Yule this year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Greddy.” Fred sighed as he flopped down on the couch.
George flopped down on the opposite couch. “Fleur is scary when she wants to get something done. I’m glad we were able to get the demolition completed because I didn't want to leave it half-done for Mina. It's a blank canvas which is better than half in half out. Now we can help her put her spin on it.”
Fred turned to face his brother. “I hate seeing her sad like she was this morning. Today I just wanted to scoop her in my arms and make all the hurt go away.”
George sighed, “As Dad said, we can't fix that pain, Fred. We can just be there for her…”
“Screw just being there, I am tired of being passive.” Fred balled his fists and punched at the imaginary air above his couch. “George, I can't keep just staying quiet. You feel it, I feel it, and dude corde permute, we know she feels it too. I am alive because of you and me and her and our unrequited feelings for each other. Forgie, it feels like a piece of me is missing when she isn't here. When she is, the world feels brighter and happier.”
George was trying to keep his twin from spiraling. They had this conversation many times and it always ended the same. The Weasley twins were hopelessly in love with one Hermione Jean Granger. They had always been attracted to the firey, spunky, and beautiful witch since their time at Hogwarts. They had liked her from afar and had never told their twin about their feelings, thinking they would never get a chance with her.
Hermione had seen the wall fall on Fred and had performed some spell to cushion his body from the impact. George had stood there in shock as he saw his twin go down. She grabbed him and shook him out of his stupor. Later, in the hospital, he told Fred that he would never forget what she said. She’d yelled “George we are not fucking give up on Fred. He is alive, or I will find death and bring him back. We will not lose him.
He never forgot the desperation that was in her voice and the look of fury and determination that was set on her face. She sent a patronus to Molly and then to Bill, knowing that the two of them would collect the family. She told them to meet at St. Mungos, Fred was hurt.
She and George removed the rubble from his body as fast as they could. George later told Fred he had frozen in shock at his unconscious, bloodied, and battered body. But Hermione was having none of that, she would touch his hand or help him move a rock or smile at him, reassuring him that she was there. Once the rubble was moved, she put a full body bind on Fred. She told George that if he believed in magic to pray for Fred to live and that she would do the same thing. Then she apparted them to St. Mungos and that was when the magic happened.
“George, I am sorry.” Fred sat up with an apologetic look, he knew where George's thoughts had gone.
“Fred, we can't just jump right now. She is-”
“Not some fragile flower, George. She is the one who picked the bloody flipping rubble from my body and is the one who saved our lives.” Fred said with so much desperation in his voice.
“Fred, the pain she is feeling isn't about you or me,” George let out a huge sigh in exasperation at his twin, “I know Fred, I did the research, I just figured out corde permute when Ollie died and then her parents. We can't just drop that bomb on her--”
“But George, you don't get to make that decision for all of us. She gets to say when she is ready. And I am past waiting to tell her.”
“But we cannot just say, ‘Hermione, Fred and I are in love with you and have been for many years. And oh yeah, we want to have a triad relationship with you because we both love you with all our hearts and it's like you are the missing piece of us. And we think you feel the same because of a rare and wonderful magical phenomenon that occurs when people who already have feelings for each other connect in a way that alters their destiny.”
“Then what the hell do we do? I am not letting her spend another Yule sad. It is her favorite time of the year and it kills me to see her that way.” Fred challenged him.
George's brain just clicked and his eyes lit up, “Gred, you are a genius. You’re a freaken genius!” He got up from the sofa and walked over to the bookshelf.
Fred was right behind him, curious as to what solution he had come up with. George grabbed the red book that they all knew so well, the Weasley Family Yule Book.
This book harked from Arthur’s Icelandic side of the family’s tradition of giving a book and sweets to each other on Christmas Eve. Molly wanted to use that tradition as the start of their family history book, where they could write about their family from the story of the founding of the Burrow many years ago to the marriage of Bill and Fleur, to honoring Tonks and Remus passing, and the adoption of Teddy by Harry and Ginny and many other stories. Molly also documented their Yuletide traditions and included core tales about why they did the things they did, like the battle between the Holly King and Oak King on Winter Solstice and others.
Molly told the family that their Yule books would never be complete as they would add more stories from their lives. When a new story was added the author would write it in their Yule book and on Christmas eve Molly would copy it to everyone's book. Then on Christmas Eve the family took turns reading the newest story out loud. Hermione loved the tradition of the Yule books and had wanted to write a story of her own for it.
“We can show her how we feel through Yule. She loves all the traditions that we follow as a family.” George said, spinning around with the Yule book in his hand to face his twin.
Fred's brain was working even faster than his. “Dude, I have an even better idea. Ed and I had a conversation a few years ago where he told me about the advent calendar he made for Jean and Hermione when she was younger. He was sad that it had been destroyed by the dumb asses who destroyed their house. He started building a new advent calendar before they passed. We could finish building it and then fill it with things to do over Advent with her,” Fred said, his excitement building.
George's eyes lit up, “I love it! And I know Hermione will, too. I am sure Mum knows where the calendar is that he started. We can get her in the holiday spirit and show her how we feel and see how she responds.”
“This is perfect George. We can show her how much we love her and bring a smile to her face--”
Fred started towards the door “Let's get planning then Brother. We don't have a lot of time to get things together for this. Do you think we can rope the family into helping us?”
“Yeah, Georgie,I think we should. She loves family time and we need Mum's help anyway to find the calendar.”
“I agree, we need to include the family in this.” George wrapped his arms around Fred and hugged him so tight. “I love you so much, Freddy.”
“Love you Georgie. Now, let's go to the office and start planning the best advent ever.”