Photographs and Memories five: dressed in our finest scarlet and gold

Characters: Angelina, (Angelina/Fred).

Word count: 432

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.

Angst. Set post Deathly Hallows. With thanks to rayslady for looking over this. This ficlet is part of the 'Photographs and Memories' collection of ficlets, set in the following fandoms: Swallows and Amazons, ER, Harry Potter and Sky High.


Angelina always remembered the twins' birthday at school because Oliver Wood got twitchy during the run-up that his Beaters would get detention for doing something extra mad around that date. He worried too much. They never got caught.

This year, she and everyone else must ask themselves what you get a wizard who can afford anything, but has lost the first person he'd think to share it with. She has a card - she picked it because it was Quidditch themed - but sits for a long time, quill in hand, not knowing what to write in it. Even 'Happy Birthday' seems loaded. She scrawls, 'Thinking of you, love, Angelina', and pushes it away, because the truth is, she's been thinking of Fred more than George. She's been thinking of him, lying still and awful. She's been thinking of his cheeky greeting in the room of Requirement that last night, of a dozen rainy practices, of how she told him that she wanted to send him a Howler for deserting the team, but of course she couldn't, and he laughed.

She's been thinking about a dozen and one visits to the shop, of George being obvious about giving them space. She's been thinking of raising her gaze from Fred's body to his family, of the way Fred held her arm when he told her the shop might not always be open, and how she didn't want to believe him because when she was in Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, she forgot that half of Diagon Alley was boarded up.

There is something she can give George, and she Summons it before she changes her mind. It's a team picture from the early days, before Harry joined the Gryffindor team. They're waving excitedly, togged up in their robes, but Oliver keeps looking away in the direction of the pitch, because he thinks time not spent practising is time wasted. Whenever he does, Fred rolls his eyes at him, and she can't help snorting through her tears.

She has other team pictures and some others that she won't share with anyone, because if, as casually as he'd asked her to go to the Yule Ball, Fred had asked her to marry him, she'd have said yes, all right, fine, soon as possible suit you? But he never got round to it. So she folds the photo in the card and puts it in its envelope, and taps it with her wand to seal it. She picks up the quill to address it to George, and steels herself against the strangeness of not putting Fred's name first.

Fin.

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