Roxanne is old enough to sleep through the night, thankfully, so Angelina and George don't have to talk until the next morning. Monday. "They should make this the holiday," he says, "as we'll all have been sleeping in."
"It's too bad for people who work with Muggles and can't really explain why they're taking the day off," Angelina says. "Poor Katie."
It was a feeler, and it felt its way to the mark. "No. Not poor Katie. Merlin's briefs, Ang, she doesn't understand."
Angelina keeps quiet for a second because he's right, Katie doesn't understand. Neither does she, and neither does anybody they know. Maybe one of the Patil girls for eight desperate minutes twelve years ago, but Angelina isn't sure whether whichever it was ever realized.
"I...there are days when I don't think about him, sometimes," says George. "Days I'm just swamped in the shop, or...I guess not. I guess seeing Freddie is enough. Why did we ever name him that?"
Angelina isn't quite sure how to respond. They'd never considered anything else.
He is five years old, and at the top of the stairs. "Mommy? Daddy? I want breakfast."
"I'll do it," says George, and when Angelina opens her mouth, "I'll do it." Resolutely, he begins attacking a grapefruit for himself, back stubbornly to everyone.
Angelina sighs, climbing the stairs and glancing at her son. His skin is a bit paler than Roxanne's, and he is tall for his age. The baby fat distorts her, of course, but Roxanne seems on pace to inherit a build a bit more like her father's and a skin tone more like her mother's, with Freddie the other way around. He's always been nice to his sister, if a little distant. She wonders, for the first time, if he'd be any different with any other name. Knowing there can be no answer, she continues upstairs.
