A/N: I won't say anything except yes, this will be chaptered, and please read and review!


Have you ever just had one of those mornings? You know, the ones where your alarm clock doesn't go off and it just all goes downhill from there? Everybody has those mornings. I'm no exception. And on the particular morning that I'm about to tell you about, not only had my alarm clock not gone off, but my two best friends had decided it wasn't worth their time to wake me up.

Seriously.

When I opened my eyes the first thing I noticed was that the dormitory room was fully lit, which seemed odd. It was only on weekends (and weekends without Quidditch games for that matter) that I slept this late. For a second I basked in that wonderful weekend feeling, the sunlight filtering in through the open window and lazily illuminating the curtain around my four poster.

Of course, you can only bask in that wonderful weekend feeling if it's, you know, actually the weekend, which it turns out it wasn't.

"Katie we've got to wake her up!"

"But look at her, she looks so -- so peaceful!"

"Peaceful? She's not going to be very peaceful if she's late!"

Late.

I am never late.

I sat up so fast and so straight that I made my neck hurt. The four poster next to me was suspiciously empty of anyone, sleeping or otherwise. Standing in front of my four poster, surveying the scene, were Angelina Johnson and Katie Bell. Angelina had spotted the fact that I was awake but Katie was still talking.

"Well sometimes I think she needs a little extra sleep, she must have been up until all hours doing her Potions homework --"

"Which I won't be able to turn in if I'm late for class!" I interrupted, jumping out of bed. Satisfied that I had woken up Angelina took advantage of my distraction (the distraction being that I was quite annoyed and more than a little panicked) to reclaim the bathroom before I could get to it. Katie perched on the four poster next to mine, watching me as I dashed around the room.

Katie's actually not in our year, but since she's an (annoyingly in my opinion) early riser, she's taken to coming into our dorm in the mornings and then going down to breakfast with us.

"Where's my hairbr--" I began, scanning the room for my hairbrush in vain.

"Bedside table." Angelina called from the bathroom.

I spun around, stubbed my toe on the bedside table, yelped, and knocked the hairbrush onto the floor.

It wasn't just one of those mornings, it was one of those mornings.

You'd think if I was going to choose a morning to introduce you to me and my friends it wouldn't be a morning on which I got up late and our dorm was chaos. But it was on this morning that I first noticed George's thumbs, and I think that was honestly where the entire story started.

Only someone like me could start a story with thumbs. Because who else do you know who falls in love with thumbs?

Sometimes I swear there's something wrong with me.


I'll say this for Angelina and Katie -- they waited for me to get ready before they went down to the Great Hall, so that we could all go to breakfast together. But we had to stuff food into our mouths and run. We hardly had a chance to say good morning to Fred, George, and Lee.

Hmmm, the observant among you will be saying, she's mentioned George's name before. Let's see…Oh yes. She said she fell in love with his thumbs. Huh.

George is George Weasley, red-haired prankster. He and his twin (that would be Fred) and their best friend (Lee) are our resident havoc-wreakers. They prefer to be called 'Expert Mayhem Consultants' though. Yeah, I know. Whatever.

The twins, Lee, Angelina, and I all had our first class together that day -- Potions.

We made our way down stairs into the ever increasing gloom of the dungeons. I swear, every year Snape cultivates more mold on those damp stone walls.

The 7th year Gryffindors filed into the Potions classroom with something that was definitely less than enthusiasm. Snape hates Gryffindors more than he hates anyone, and he lets us know it every time we venture into his class.

We handed in our essays and spent the next half an hour listening to a lecture on the proper brewing of a Shrinking Solution, since Snape said we were in (and I quote) "desperate need of a review" lest we fail every exam he gave for the rest of the year. Apparently our last assignment had been less than satisfactory. Getting a lecture from Snape is akin to nothing more than it is akin to getting a lecture from a large, sarcastic bat.

Since I actually did know how to brew a Shrinking Solution, I was bored out of my mind. I may be a good student (and I like to think I am) but Snape makes my teeth grind. To put it simply, I tuned him out after the first five minutes.

The dungeon didn't provide much to catch my interest. It's a dark room with shelves lining the walls. There are jars on the walls, sure, but they're full of green liquid, and I don't like to speculate over the stuff floating in that liquid. Ugh.

So instead my eyes began picking my friends out of the crowd.

Can I help it if George was sitting right across from me, along with Fred and Lee?

Is it my fault if his hands were lying on the table in front of him?

It was a complete coincidence, and nothing anyone says will ever change my mind. I cannot be blamed for the sequence of events that led to that pivotal moment.

What moment was that you ask?

The moment when my eyes landed on his thumbs.

His skin was slightly tan, since he had been outside all summer, and it was only September. The nail of his right thumb was longer than that of his left. His left thumb nail was ragged, one end was higher than the other. There was a freckle on the knuckle of his right thumb. A small cut, half-healed, marred his left thumb.

I sat there, staring at George Weasley's thumbs, for something that must have bordered on five minutes. Because I had never noticed those thumbs before.

And that made me think.

There must be a million and one little things that I don't notice, every day.

I bet this has happened to you.

Think about it.

There's probably a street you go by every day. Maybe you drive down it, or maybe you walk down it. Maybe it's the street you work on, maybe it's the street where you live. But there has to be one street you see every day, that you've seen every day for a very long time.

Now, think about that street.

How many streetlights are on it?

You pass by those streetlights every day, but I bet if you wanted to know how many there were, you'd have to go count.

I had known George since my second month at Hogwarts. I'd fancied him since my second year. Now I was in my seventh year and I had just realized I had never noticed his thumbs. And (confidentially) I really liked his thumbs.

It was enough to weird me out. In fact, it was almost enough to worry me. I mean, who knew what kinds of things I just…didn't notice? It wasn't worry exactly -- that's the wrong word for it. But it distressed me, and it intrigued me.

So when I got back to my dorm that night, I wrote two things on a scrap of parchment.

1.) Pay more attention to the little things.

2.) Note to self: George's thumbs are cute.


A/N: Well, this is it. This is my stab at putting a personal spin on George x Alicia -- I'm going to attempt a chaptered fic. I guess its been in the works for a while. Thanks a lot everybody who reviewed "Love, Thy Name Is..." and "George Weasley and the Disappearing Four Poster." Oh, and thanks v. much Jagged Epiphany. She pointed out: "Ha. If flattery fails, turn to bribery." Obviously very true, since here I am, writing this. She promised to update Castles sooner! Ha:P

Please let me know what you thought of it, and thanks very much for reading!