A/N: Surprise! I was going to make you wait until Friday, but couldn't wait myself. Since we are wrapping up, I decided to combine day 13 and 14 into one chapter. So there will only be one chapter after this one, and it's already done! Just waiting to be edited, but it will be up at some point this weekend. Don't forget to review.

Chapter Eleven

Or

They Say the Devil's Water, it Ain't So Sweet

Day Thirteen:

Harriet wasn't sure when exactly, but at some point she had eventually cried herself to sleep.

Which was a good thing on one hand, because she was exhausted - mentally and physically - and honestly needed the rest. On the other hand, though, she had woken up and for a few brief, blissful moments, and had completely forgotten the events of yesterday. And then, like a lightening bolt, it struck her, the fact that George had lied to her about his reason for staying with the Dursleys and, effectively, that they had broken up because of it.

It was as painful as having to living the argument all over again. It felt as if part of her was missing with him gone. As if a bit of her had died, withering away with their breakup.

If one could even call it that to begin with.

Among everything else Harriet had stayed up late to overthink, their relationship and whether or not it had even been real had been one of them.

She knew deep down that what she felt for him was real, for she had never felt it for another person. She hadn't even known she was capable of feeling such things. Her feelings for George were almost tangible enough to grasp if she were to try. The fact remained, however, that he had lied to her over his stay having nothing to do with the Order, and relationships starting out on lies were not built with a solid foundation.

There's had crumbled spectacularly as soon as they had put any weight onto it.

Harriet knew though, no matter however adamantly she tried to deny it, that some of the blame also fell on her shoulders.

George had only stayed with her for nearly a week and a half, and even though summer days felt like longer, in reality, that was not enough time to build a relationship. A relationship that had started off as fake in the first place.

Not only that, though. She had kicked him out of her house without hearing his side of things. In her anger, she had simply hurled accusations at him as soon as he returned to her. It was likely that she overreacted.

But she couldn't stand to see him in that moment.

She couldn't bear to see him now, she knew, and yet she wished more than anything that he was here with her. Wiping her tears away and telling her that he loved her again, and that they could fix this. They could make this work, and he was sorry.

Her eyes stung from a night of botched sleep and tears ready to be shed once again. She felt frustration with herself beginning to boil in her stomach. She was sick of crying. There shouldn't be any tears left to cry, but there were and they were spilling out at an alarming rate.

The best thing she could do, she told herself, was to simply go about her day as if none of this had ever happened. George had never shown up at the Dursleys, Harriet had never fallen in love with him, and he had never broken her heart.

There was no problem to exist, because nothing had ever happened between them.

Denial.

That was the best course of action.

She sat up from her bed, feeling a bit light headed from so much crying. If she got a glass of water first, she could likely busy herself with some chores to keep her mind off of things. She was feeling more mobile today. Whether it was because her ankle was actually healing, or just Harriet's stubborn manner, she wasn't sure, but she needed to be able to move around more.

If she kept moving, she wouldn't be able to think of boys with red hair and heart stopping grins.

Boys who made her heart flutter and then shatter.

Boys who were...in her kitchen, apparently.

A mixture of fear and rage overtook Harry as she spotted the tall figure leaning against the kitchen counter, seemingly sparring with her aunt over something likely as simple as him wearing his shoes inside the house. Harry had told George to leave. She had seen him leave. So what was he doing back here?

But when she got a closer look at the features she had grown so accustomed to, she realized that they were all wrong. This boy's grin was too wicked, too harsh in a way George's wasn't, his freckles not following the same pattern across his nose.

This wasn't her boy. This boy was entirely all wrong.

"Fred…" she breathed so quietly that no one else in the kitchen had heard her.

Harriet wasn't sure how long she stood there analyzing him, but when Fred turned and found her standing there, his eyes immediately lit up, though not in the same way as George's whenever he spotted her.

Wrong. It was all wrong.

He pushed himself off the kitchen counter, completely ignoring the glare of her aunt. "Darling, finally you're up. I was beginning to worry," he said, reaching down to cup her face. It was only due to the shock of him being there that she didn't shy away from his touch. His breath tickled her ear as he spoke, and to Petunia, it likely looked like a simple kiss on the cheek between a boyfriend and girlfriend. "Play along, yeah? She hasn't a clue I'm me."

"Okay," Harriet agreed, for she could say nothing else. Her fingers tightened into fists against the fabric of Fred's shirt on their own accord, anchoring her there when she felt likely surely she would slip.

It embarrassed her, but Fred didn't seem to mind, keeping a hand on her cheek as he looked back over at her aunt. Everything probably looked normal to Petunia, if she ignored Harriet's floored expression.

"I'm taking Harriet out for breakfast," he told her aunt. "Likely we'll be gone all morning."

Petunia's eyes narrowed. "Do you want to go with him, Harriet?"

Harry peered up at Fred, who her aunt assumed was George, and found him smiling softly down at her. Still the wrong way.

"Yes," she said, tightening her grip against his shirt. The room felt off kilter. "I do."

"Good girl," Fred said, rapping his knuckles against the crown of her head fondly.

Fred had taken her to a small diner close to her aunt and uncle's house. Harriet was beginning to wonder how both he and George seemed to know the area so well. Neither one of them had ever asked for directions the entire time they'd been here. It was as if, well, as if they were Muggles, they fit in so well.

The thought was only fleetingly in her head though, unable to hold onto it for very long.

"What are you doing here?" Harriet asked, unable to help herself anymore. It had been bothering her since she first saw him standing in her kitchen that morning.

They had placed their breakfast order, and she had been sipping on her orange juice in silence, all the while going crazy. Fred didn't look in the least bit put out by her bluntness. He never really was, though. He always took everything in stride.

"George asked me to be here," he said, simply. "He was afraid that if you were left here alone, something would happen to you. And, well, you kicked him out, so he thought I was the next best choice. Your relatives can't tell us apart, so less explaining that way. Your aunt honestly didn't have a clue I wasn't George this morning."

"Something already has happened to me," Harriet muttered, tightly clutching her glass of orange juice.

Fred paused for a second, taking her in, and Harriet found him hard to look at. He looked so much like her George, but the way he looked at her was all wrong. His eyes didn't shine around her, which was because he was Fred, she knew, but it made her miss the George that much more.

"Want to tell me what happened to your ankle?" he asked finally. "And afterwards, what happened with George?"

Harry snorted. "Didn't George already tell you?"

"He won't tell me anything. Just that you two were together, you had a row, and now you're not. He doesn't want to betray your trust again by telling me, his own twin brother, mind you, what went down between the two of you without your permission."

Harriet fought the bitter feeling bubbling up in her throat. Good, she wanted to say. Maybe he's learned something then. But she knew she was just being immature. She was still smarting from their breakup, and she wanted him to hurt just as much as she did.

She sighed, feeling wretched.

"My uncle was furious over George and me embarrassing him at his company picnic, and he struck a wall while he was yelling at me. A picture of my cousin fell, causing me to stumble down the stairs and hurt my ankle," she said, answering his first question because it seemed so much easier than the last. "It's just badly twisted. Not broken. It was partly my fault too. I antagonized him. Spurred him on."

Fred took a long drink of his water instead of answering right away, but Harriet didn't miss the way his jaw was tight. When he set the glass down, his knuckles were white.

"And you don't want us to kill them?" he asked finally. "Because antagonizing or not, that's not enough of a reason for you to get hurt."

"No," Harriet said quickly, her head shooting up. "Don't do anything to them, please. It'll just end up making things harder on me."

"Then you better start talking about what happened between you and George before I lose it."

Harriet had forgotten about this difference between Fred and George. How much darker Fred had the possibility of being compared to George, who seemed so much softer around the edges to her. Fred was always going too far with pranks, and George was always bringing him back down to reality. Grounding him. Fred came up with the ideas, and George made sure they were safe and fun. Without George around, Harriet wasn't sure what sort of trouble her relatives would find themselves in.

"He wasn't honest with me," Harry said, her voice sounding small. "He didn't tell me that the whole reason he was even here was because it was a mission from the Order. He didn't tell me that he was keeping tabs on me for them."

Fred raised an eyebrow at her, and Harry could tell he was trying not to laugh. "Is that it?"

"No, it's more than that. I thought - I thought he was there to see me. That he wanted to see me. Not that he was there because it was a mission. When I found out that he wasn't there just for that...I sort of lost it. I just...I trusted him. I believed him when he told me it wasn't a mission. I didn't want to be spied on. I wanted someone there for me. Just me."

Harry didn't mention the rest of the events of that day. She didn't bring up the books or of her aunt taking them and disposing of them somehwere. She didn't feel close enough to Fred to tell him about her mother's books, or how she felt like part of her had overreacted to finding out that George had been working with the Order because of it. How it seemed to amplify his betrayal, making it bigger than it actually was.

She wasn't ready to admit her own immaturity. Especially not to Fred.

"He did want to see you, though," Fred protested. "You're all he could bloody talk about during Order meetings. He was so concerned for you. He didn't think you should be left alone after everything."

Everything being losing Sirius, she knew, and at the time, losing him had felt like everything. Sirius had been her whole world, but now, it felt as though her world had shifted. It made her feel guilty to admit it. She loved George in a way she never could love Sirius. Deeper, more profound. This heartbreak was different, and she felt as though she didn't have the right to be heartbroken over a man who wasn't her godfather just yet.

Something Fred said seemed to click with her a few seconds later.

"Was it - did he suggest someone staying at my house?" she asked quietly. "Was it his idea in the first place?"

"Yes, he was the one who brought it in front of the Order. He asked if he could be the one to go," Fred said, frowning. "Didn't he tell you that?"

"No - he didn't...I didn't…" Harry trailed off, sitting back in her seat, and tugging at her hair helplessly. "I never gave him time to explain everything. I just - I kicked him out because I was so mad at him."

"Sounds like you overreacted a bit."

Harriet's eyes snapped up to Fred, narrowing. "Never tell a woman she's overreacted, Fred. It's probably one of the most dangerous things you could ever do."

Fred simply grinned, holding his hands up in surrender, but in no way looking perturbed by her threat. Harriet knew she had overreacted, but she didn't need Fred to point it out. It was like rubbing salt in a wound. Unnecessary and just plain mean.

"He's a mess without you, you know. I've never seen him like this. He's pathetic, all moping about and drowning himself in Firewhiskey."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No, it's supposed to make you feel worse."

Harry snorted. "Well, mission accomplished. I feel like shit."

"Just talk to him, yeah? That's all you have to do to sort everything out. Give him a chance to explain everything and let him talk. And please, please take him back. He's useless to me like this. I can't do a thing with him."

Harry smiled. "I'll consider it."

The rest of the day passed without much incident. Harriet's relatives left them alone, and Fred left Harriet alone, content to explore the house's muggle appliances instead. He reminded Harry of his father, the way he got excited over something like toast being made. She had bought him a loaf of bread at the market to entertain him while she sat around, trying to process her thoughts.

She loved George. That wasn't up for debate. It didn't matter how short it had taken for their romance to develop. The fact remained that she did love him.

But what to do with it? Did she deserve to love him so close to losing Sirius? It wasn't a fact she had considered before, having been so enthralled with him being here. She still felt guilty for allowing herself to become distracted from Sirius' passing by a boy.

Another thing she was concerned about was how quickly their relationship had taken course. Looking back now, on the outside, she wasn't surprised by how quickly it had derailed after everything. They were acting like children. Careless, incredibly stupid children caught up in a bout of puppy love.

She couldn't take back the velocity in which their relationship had taken off though, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.

Life was short, and likely, her life would be even shorter. He had given her a normal teenage experience, and made her feel as though it were possible for her to fall in love in the middle of a brewing war.

But her mind was still muddled.

She wished desperately that she had someone to talk to about all of this. Someone to talk to about boys. She'd never had boy trouble before and felt completely hopeless. She drummed her fingers on her knees, having them pulled up tight from her position in her kitchen chair. Maybe she didn't have anyone like that to talk to, because she had never really tried.

And it never hurt to try, right?

She stood quickly, startling Fred as she did so.

"Where are you going?" he asked, remaining by the toaster as Harry moved towards the stairs.

"I'm going to send a letter."

Day Fourteen:

Harriet sat in the chair by her bedroom window, snoring softly as she slept. She had been sitting in the same chair for several hours now, staring out into the darkening street, and eventually had fallen asleep with her face pressed against the chill of the windowpane, mouth slightly open.

In her hand, she tightly clutched two letters that she had read over and over since they had appeared earlier this morning.

The first one was from Dumbledore, asking to escort her to the Burrow and needing her assistance for some matter in which she wasn't entirely sure, but she was willing to help. Fred had read the letter, and, after some pestering on Harry's part, decided that she was likely safe enough for him to return back home. Wherever home may be for him currently.

The second letter, the one she had kept hidden from Fred and read so much she nearly had every line memorized, was from Remus.

Harriet,

Please do not concern yourself over me. I assure you, I am doing as well as I can at this particular moment. My main concern, as always, rests with you.

I must admit, after your latest letter, my concern has risen, but not for the reasons you may think. It is the fact that you think you do not deserve to be happy that has me worried.

You deserve all the happiness the world could possibly give, my dear. Do not think otherwise. Circumstances beyond your control do not take away from that, and if you feel as though George Weasley contributes to that happiness, then by all means, go and be happy.

Personally, I do not think you could do any better.

Though Sirius would certainly have a hippogriff if he knew. He was never fond of sharing you. The thought is quite amusing, isn't it? They were so much alike, after all.

Hopefully I'll see you for Christmas. Please don't hesitate in writing to me again. I enjoy hearing from you.

All my love,

Remus

On the next chapter: Harry visits WWW.