House: Hufflepuff
Class: Herbology
Type: Standard
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Main Prompt: [Quote] Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. - Steve Job
Additional prompt: [Dialogue (multiline)] "Trust in your gut." / "What's your gut telling you?"
WC: 1096
TW: Brief injury mention
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"George?"
The maroon curtain was drawn tightly closed, a Silencing spell shimmering around the edges of the fabric, but Lee knew that something wasn't right.
Sorrow lay heavy in the air like a threatening storm, and Lee's steps slowed as he moved further into the room. It was hazardous to move through on the best of days as when it was bright, Lee could see the scattered piles of clothes from all three of them — his own colourful clothes from home, once carefully folded but that had disintegrated over time, and the twins' haphazard packing that had exploded the moment they put their suitcases down. In the gloom, they transformed to monsters, swarming over the floor, deceptive in their sagging shadowy shapes until something bit into the sole of Lee's foot.
He was a lot more cautious now, but his foot still knocked into something heavy, pain flaring up his leg as it rolled away with a discordant wavering rumble. Biting his tongue was a different sort of pain — low and dull, his throat spasming as he swallowed down his curses — but it was nothing compared to the panic that laced its way through his heart at the silence that pervaded from the curtains.
Lee missed George's laugh like a wound in his soul. Umbridge was slowly sucking the life out of the school, and she had turned her heartless gaze onto Fred and George, leaving Lee to stand helpless on the sidelines. He cared for both of them deeply, but it was different with George.
It had always been different with George.
He knew Fred wouldn't be back for a few hours. The castle seemed to shake beneath his rage and pain, and his feet barely touched the floor of the dormitory before he was away again, charging down the stairs and out of the common room. Lee had been unable to move from his seat in the common room, taking in the fragmented vision of identical faces that had turned pale with pain, stumbling as they moved, half-leaning on each other before they were gone.
Lee had barely managed to rise from the chair, his homework — forgotten for hours as he ripped the edge of his essay to shreds, unable to drag his eyes away from the portrait hole as he waited — before Fred had stormed past, leaving George alone.
Lee frowned, chewing on his lower lip as he prodded at the spell with his wand before lowering it. It was carefully built, modified by the twins the summer before to keep their mum unaware of their experiments, allowing sound in, but giving nothing out.
"George?" Lee called again. He rapped his knuckles against the bedpost, a rhythmic little melody that he couldn't remember the origin of, and could do nothing except wait. The urge to draw back the curtain was there, burning just beneath his skin, but he refused to act on it.
Where Fred was explosive with his rage, George was quieter, sinking in on himself until he couldn't find the way back out of the black mire he was trapped in. Lee had only seen the edges of it before, but it had broken his heart to see the boy he loved so quiet.
The fabric moved soundlessly, barely more than a slow shift of motion that Lee likely wouldn't have caught if he hadn't been watching so intently, but a crack of George's face showed, his cheeks turned silver with tears, his skin blotchy with the patches almost obscuring the freckles along his cheeks.
"Oh, love," Lee sighed, reaching out for him. Passing through the modified Silencing spell felt similar to moving through water, his ears popping with the change in sound but the momentary discomfort fell away as George dragged him onto the bed.
The springs protested as they moved in a tangle of limbs, George's arms like a vice around Lee's neck, but Lee didn't care, focusing on the shaking boy in his arms.
"Still hurts," George mumbled into his neck and Lee forced himself to breathe, trying to will his heart into slowing down. He had to focus on George, rather than give into the temptation of his rage.
Lee kissed his forehead, tasting the sweat there, and carefully drew George's hand from around his neck. He couldn't make out the words, but he could feel the heat from the wound and see the dark blood that had beaded at the edges and ran over George's hand before settling in the creases of his palm.
"I should have been in there with you," Lee murmured. With every movement, the springs protested, but he rocked them both carefully, tucking George's head beneath his chin.
He felt the huff of laughter rather than hear it. "Then we'd all be hurt. '' George sighed, a sound that seemed to well up from the pit of his stomach, melting further into Lee's embrace. "I just don't know what to do."
"I thought you both had a plan with the shop?"
"Yeah, but—" George shrugged. "I don't know what to do now."
He wasn't tall, not when compared to Lee he realised as he shifted his legs, the other boy going with the movement before they settled once more, but George and Fred had both always seemed larger than life. Now, that image had been permanently broken by Umbridge.
"What's your gut telling you?"
"My gut?" There. A thread of laughter working its way through George's voice, a slight hiccup in the middle through his confusion, and Lee hid his grin in the other's hair, breathing in the strawberry scent of his shampoo.
"I would have thought your mum would be full of those sort of sayings," Lee teased as George let out a derisive snort. "Trust in your gut."
"Weirdo," George laughed. It was a small chuckle, but Lee felt his heart flip in his chest at the noise, feeling like the sun had peeked through the clouds after the rain.
"So? What's your gut telling you?"
"That the shop will be a success." George raised himself to press a kiss to the curve of Lee's jaw before tipping his face with his injured hand, letting him kiss him properly. "And that I'd like you to stay for a bit. I don't want to go out of the room yet."
"Anything you want," Lee agreed in an instant.
It wasn't a solution, merely a temporary measure against the pain and grief, but Lee would be by both of the twin's sides every step of the way.