I'm going to sneak this chapter up while everyone's watching Doctor Who... Heh.

~BH

Peppermint, Dittany and Pear Drops

Hermione was led by George into his and Fred's apartment, but not for the first time.

She remembered the first time vividly, she had finished her fifth year, and Harry hadn't yet arrived at the Burrow. Feeling extremely worried and panicked about her upcoming OWL results, she met up with Fred when he was working at the shop...

"Hermione? Is that you?" Fred had asked, almost giddy with excitement. She saw George chuckling in the corner at how Fred's eyes lit up.

"No, it's Ron." She had replied, weaving her way through the crowd towards him.

"Well Ron, being a girl definitely suits you. This is going to sound weird but you look exactly like my beautiful girlfriend!"

"What?" Hermione looked herself up and down in mock shock. "I must have made Polyjuice Potion instead of a gender changing solution!"

"Come on, let's change you back, I'm not one for threesomes, so I can't have two Hermiones."

He took her hand and she couldn't suppress the smile on her face, and watched George roll his eyes at her as they walked past him.

Little did she know she was being led upstairs.

It was a small but cosy set of rooms above the shop, the walls all gloriously clashed with the furniture in various shades of orange, green, blue and of course, Fred's favourite colour, magenta.

"I don't think your red sofa goes with your bright pink wall behind it." Commented Hermione, giggling. She gazed around, absorbing the picture as if she was a sponge.

"It's magenta, how many times do I have to tell you?" Fred replied.

"Whatever you say." Said Hermione, grinning.

A comfortable silence fell upon them, and that was all she needed to remember why she had come to Fred in the first place. All her worries about her exam results had come flooding back and the silence had allowed her fears to fill her brain.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly, knowing the signs of her panic attacks from previous years.

"I'm so scared Fred, these mean everything." Hermione immediately confided, her voice muffled by his quick but warm embrace.

"I know they do." He replied, knowing if he told her to calm down it would just make things worse.

"I really want to do well, because I'm not entirely sure what I want to do when I'm older, so I want to have good grades so I have more options, you know?"

"I understand." Replied Fred. "Until we had the idea about the joke shop, George and I didn't have a clue either. All we knew is that we would do something together. Then we got our exam results and we knew that it wasn't because we couldn't do anything academic, it was merely because we DIDN'T want to do anything academic."

He held her close, and their foreheads touched. Fred was bent over her and she loved the feeling of his soft hair tickling her forehead.

"You have the power to do whatever you want to do with your life." He said quietly, wondering when he had gained so much wisdom about exams, since he never cared too much about them himself. "You just can't let a couple of letters on a sheet of parchment constantly dictate how you feel and how you live your life. I know they're important but I know you're a hard worker. You just need faith in yourself."

He closed the already minuscule gap between their lips and kissed her silently. Even though they had been dating for a while now, she still felt weak at the knees from his lips alone, so he picked her up and held her around the waist as she swung her legs around his hips.

They had spent the afternoon watching the TV Harry and Hermione had bought and set up for them last Christmas, all exam results forgotten.

"Do you want a jumper or something?" Asked George, snapping her back into reality.

A reality without Fred.

"I'll be fine." Hermione replied, despite her shaking and chattering of teeth.

"I don't believe you, so I'm getting one anyway." Said George, throwing her a green hoodie of his.

"It must be weird not having a certain colour jumper anymore." Mused Hermione, thanking him before pulling it over her head. George had a different smell to Fred: Fred tended to smell of toffee and musky smoke whereas George smelled of peppermints. Mint toothpaste was one of her favourite scents, so she inhaled the smell deeply, sighing with slight happiness.

"It's great, yellow and blue were never our favourite colours anyway, but it was fine... What are you doing?" George trailed off, chuckling to himself as he watched her breathe in, and then smile to herself. That's kind of adorable, he thought.

Hermione, startled, pulled the hoodie down nervously and fished around in her beaded bag for the potions book.

"I just really like the smell of peppermint." She replied nervously, almost as if she was expecting him to shout at her.

"Well, that's good, because since Fred let some peppermint flavoured concoction in my room explode, I haven't been able to get it out of my clothes. I still don't know what he was trying to make in there."

Hermione remembered the peppermint daydream charms Fred had given her, exclusively for her, before the standard flavoured daydream charms. He had insisted that she never told George.

She just chuckled and shrugged her shoulders.

"So what do we need for this potion?" George asked, looking over Hermione's shoulder as she found the marked page. Like his clothes, he smelled of peppermint, but also of Dittany and Pear Drops.

"Uh…" Hermione started, trying to force herself to stop thinking about his wonderful aroma and the fact that he was still shirtless and standing very close to her.

"We need a crushed Beazor, plenty of Dittany, tears of a loved one…" Hermione read, ignoring her thoughts about George's chest.

"Tears of a loved one? That's pretty morbid if you ask me." muttered George in close proximity to her ear. She shivered, noting that his voice was very slightly deeper than Fred's.

Stop comparing George to Fred! She yelled to herself, hoping that her thoughts didn't show on her face.

George didn't notice.

"I guess the recipe is hinting that you really have to want them to come back to life if you make it, so people don't revive others willy nilly." reasoned Hermione, not looking up.

"Why are people still dying then?" questioned George, brushing a bare, toned arm against Hermione's shoulder as he ran a finger down the instructions, scanning them.

"Sometimes people die of natural causes, like old age. Sometimes it's wrong to force them back to life when it's their time to die, if you get me?" Hermione tried not to register the contact between them.

"I don't think it's a very well known potion either." Commented George.

Hermione smiled to herself, hugging to her the secret library. Had anyone ever used this potion before?

"Probably because it's so advanced." Dismissed Hermione. "I was thinking of buying the ingredients tomorrow and we can start after work?"

"Hermione!" Yelled George, astonished. "We can start now, we have no time to lose!" Hermione watched in horror at his crumpled face. A year of loss, pain and suffering were finally showing in his voice and appearance.

"I'm sorry George!" Hermione almost squeaked, quickly hugging him, before realising that was a bad move.

George felt comforted by his soft hoodie against his chest, and Hermione's face flushed as she rested her head against his very toned body. Her heart raced, which only reminded her of how Fred's heart raced at her touch.

Was this really so wrong? She thought.

"I didn't know you had the ingredients here." explained Hermione, pulling away.

"We have everything you could ever dream of." Replied George solemnly, his emotions fading away and the canvas of his face blank with feelings.

One day, someone will need to listen to him, and tell him he's not alone. She thought, watching and feeling slightly disappointed when George picked up a checked shirt lying on the arm of a chair and pulled it on, not bothering to button it up.

"Are you ready, partner?" He asked, feeling almost on air knowing that he was actually doing something about the problem that was constantly bringing him down these days.

"Of course I am." Replied Hermione.

It'll be another little while, but we will get you back, Fred. She thought as George led her again through the house to his lab.