"Roxanne?" Fred called. "Roxanne?" He paced from room to room until he finally found her sprawled on a couch with Dominique, paging through the daily prophet. "Can I talk to you, just really quick?"
Roxanne looked confused, but nodded and followed him out of the room. Fred walked a short way down the hall and ducked into a room that no one went into, one with all the furniture covered in dusty sheets.
"I wanted to talk to you about my brother."
"Which one?" She asked, the corner of her mouth tilting into a smirk.
"You know which one. George. Your father."
Roxanne nodded. They had both seen George laugh too loudly at jokes that weren't funny, hang a little too closely on his twin's heels, throw himself a little too whole-heartedly into this prank war. But no one had dared broach the subject with him. It was easier to just pretend it didn't happen, especially to those who lived in 1998.
"I'm worried about what will happen to him after I'm gone. I don't want him to burn out, and I don't want him to just drop the joke shop just because I'm not in it anymore. I don't want everything we worked for gone."
"You don't have to worry about the shop." Said Roxanne. "It's alive and well today and we expanded into Hogsmeade. But yeah . . . he didn't do very well after the war. I think he drank a lot. He actually went and got drunk on firewhiskey every year on the anniversary of the battle, until he realized we were old enough to be aware of it. He stopped after that. I think I was five." She paused and wiped an unshed tear from the corner of her eye. "He told me a little bit about it, but I think he glossed over a lot. I found Uncle Bill's old journal from that year in his attic when I was snooping in there for . . . reasons, and anyway, there's a lot in there that Dad certainly didn't tell me."
"God. I don't want him going through that. But it sounds he was trying to protect you." Said Fred.
"Yeah, well, I was only twelve when I started asking him about the war. I don't think I needed to hear about his nervous breakdown at that age." She looked away, her warm brown eyes suddenly cold and dark.
" Please tell me he gets his mischievous spark back." Said Fred. "I don't think I'd be able to watch him from the afterlife if he was just moping and drinking firewhiskey."
"Oh don't you worry." Said Roxanne. "You should see April Fool's Day. We turned into a huge shebang to honor your memory and we try to out-do each other with the pranks every year. He also encourages all our wrongdoing and has added to his joke repertoire with some truly awful dad jokes."
Fred sighed heavily, taking it all in. "Well, I can't say I'm happy to be missing out on the future. But I think you'll be all right."
"Thank you." Roxanne whispered, and suddenly she darted forward and hugged him.
"For what?"
"I've never had a real conversation with you. Just your portrait in the shop that tells jokes and with resurrection stone first year, but those don't count—"
"Hold up." Said Fred, pulling away slightly. "The resurrection stone? But that's just a story."
"No it's not, it's real. We found it in the forest—please don't ask how it got there, it's a long story—and we talked to you. But you were just a ghost; it wasn't real. And I was fighting James, Fred, and Teddy for your attention."
"Wow. I'm not even going to ask." Said Fred. "Sounds like you've had some wild adventures. Anyway, I have an idea for how to help George. I'll get back to you later." He left the room.
Roxanne waited on tenterhooks for the rest of the day, wondering how her uncle was planning to span the gap of twenty-one years and bridge between life and death in a way that could possibly help George. She spent the rest of the day mindlessly stashing dung bombs behind doors and pounding out her stress on the grand piano in the parlor, until Auntie Muriel came in and screamed at her not to touch the heirloom piano. But it wasn't until after a very chaotic dinner during which Mrs. Weasley found a pinecone in her seat and threatened to beat them all with a wooden spoon that Fred got back to her.
He cornered her in the hallway outside the room she was sharing with Rose and Ginny and handed her a thick envelope.
"It's letter for George. I wrote down everything I wanted to tell him. I know it'll get to him about twenty years late, but still . . ." He impatiently wiped his eyes. "It can't fix your past, but it can fix your future."
Roxanne took the envelope and tucked it into her pocket. "I promise I'll give it to him as soon as I get back."
"Thank you. I really hope . . . I don't know. It's not really all that orderly. I just kind of spewed my thoughts onto the page.
"That explains the thickness of this envelope. How'd you hide this from the rest of the family?"
"I asked James to distract George for me. If I'm not mistaken, they spent the afternoon filling Victoire's bed with mud."
"Ooh. That's not gonna be pretty when she finds out."
"I know. It's gonna be hilarious."
There was a loud scream from down the hall. "What the hell? Why the hell is there mud in my bed?"
"OMG she found it." Fred whispered. "I gotta go see this. Keep that letter safe." He flashed Roxanne a set of finger guns and ran out of the room.
Roxanne carefully folded the envelope in half and shoved it firmly into her front pocket, where she felt the corner of it dig into her thigh and knew it would be safe. If this letter could truly fix things for her father . . . if she didn't have to see him sitting alone in the back room of the shop, his eyes focused on nothing, if she didn't have to see him standing in the back at the anniversary celebration for the battle every year, speaking to no one . . . Roxanne sighed. She'd been enjoying the time travel and the prank war, but it would be nice to go home.