George's black eye was fading. Finally. He'd only had the inspired idea to put some paste on it that morning, after dealing with looking like he'd been beaten up by the entirety of the Bulgarian Quidditch team twice over for a whole day and a half. Sighing, he turned the shaving mirror over to the magnified side. Ooh, he didn't need that much detail of his face. The bathroom lighting really didn't make him look good. At all.

He hadn't been subject to Krum's fists, to clarify. It was all the doing of Teddy, who appeared to be dreaming that he was fervently fighting off mermaid-alien-dragon mutants that spat snakes because they wanted to take Clarice.

George was the real-life equivalent of the mermaid-alien-dragon mutant snake-spitter. And he'd suffered for it.

p class="p1"Everyone thought it was hilarious at breakfast, which he was grateful for, as it alleviated any potential awkwardness between him and Hermione. (He'd woken up spooning her-Teddy had missed her left ear by a hair width. Lucky witch.)span class="Apple-converted-space" /spanSo in place of uncomfortable pauses in conversation, he was graced instead with an undignified-and quickly muffled-snort every time she made eye contact with him. He'd take that.

He was enjoying having her in the workshop. She was, as they expected, everything she was known to be. Namely: excellent. And the store was suddenly just so bloody efficient. They had a cupboard now with extras of things. Before, they just filled up the shelves as they went. But now, they had extras. George had obviously never before heard of a stockroom.

They were hitting a bit of a slow patch during this week, however. The Indian summer had properly hit, and George couldn't blame people for not wanting to be in a shop where things exploded at regular intervals. He made a mental note to start making weather-appropriate products. He'd seen something in a muggle comic as a kid which he thought would be interesting to try…

He shelved that thought as Lee and Draco walked into the bathroom. Why did they do that. Now George was sandwiched between the sink and the bath. And couldn't turn around. Or move his right arm.

"What?" he asked them in the class="Apple-converted-space" /span/p

"You ready to go mate?" Lee was wearing purple trousers. "The party starts in five minutes."

George raised an eyebrow.

"Lee, it's my sister. If her own party starts at the time she told people it would, I'll eat my hat. She's like Queen of bad timekeeping. Or if not the queen, at least a high-ranking duchess."

"George, you look awful in this lighting. Don't let people see you in it." Said Draco. Cheers Draco.

"Nobody was going to see me in it, you two waltzed into my personal space."

"The door was unlocked."

George shot Draco a flat look. It lost some of its vitriol as a reflection.

"It wasn't. Lovely Lee over there used an alohomora," he shifted his attention to Lee: "rude."

"Lee looked unrepentant, "You've been known to take five hour dumps before. I wasn't risking leaving you or potentially that unsupervised."

Draco had blanched, "five…"

George sighed. And tried to run a hand over his face. His arm was wedged from shoulder to elbow against the shower mount, however, so only succeeded in waggling his forearm about in midair.

He sighed again.

"Look, I'll meet you there alright? A sickle says Harry will be smashed by the time I arrive."

Lee took in a breath.

"It's true. The boy's a lightweight."

Surprise.