I Will Follow You Into The Dark

by GleeGeneration23

The Muggle Girl in the village has a name. She isn't a witch but maybe, maybe she can be the one who gives Fred Weasley his Happy Ever After. AU, Kind of Slow Burn. Fred Weasley/OFC.

Hi, so here is perhaps the longest one shot/piece of work, I have ever written on it's own and it has been an absolute labour of love. I wanted to give Fred Weasley the Happy Ending he didn't get (though with age I have understood why) and this came out. Lara I think represents me and every person who wanted to get to Hogwarts but couldn't and therefore I hope this gives some closure to the wonderful character that was Fred.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just the character of Lara and later Archie, Mia and Isla.

The bit about Fred losing his leg in the war is my head cannon to account for his survival after the explosion and the bit about wizarding prosthetics is my own creation as well.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think (I am not above going back to this pairing if i get inspiration)

Spelling and Grammar are not my best speciality but here we are.

Also this story takes place between Christmas of Half Blood Prince and the end of Deathly Hallows and while it goes go into some details of events it does skip a few, also I have taken some liberty with the professions of a few characters.

---

I Will Follow You Into The Dark

The Muggle Girl in the village has a name. She isn't a witch but maybe, maybe she can be the one who gives Fred Weasley his Happy Ever After. AU, Kind of Slow Burn. Fred Weasley/OFC.

---

Lara McIlroy isn't a witch.

She lives in a small one bedroom flat above a shop in Ottery St Catchpole. Her living room and her kitchen are essentially the same thing and in winter the place has almost an invasion of spiders that scare her to death and don't get her started on the heating and the hot water…but it's hers. This little flat is hers.

It's her rug on the floor and her crappy sofa and her battered Star Wars DVDs being used to block out a small gap in the wall of whistling air. Her bed is a double and though it dominates the whole room she's got comfy blue sheets and brown covers and a wardrobe that's stable. Her fridge is well stocked and there's always some cheap but good cider for when the nights get too long. She has money in her little savings tin and though it's not where she'd thought she'd be at nineteen, she has steady employment. Two years of this and she can start university and sure she might be a late student but her grades are good and she can study and work part time if needs be.

Lara tells herself this when she wakes up and gets dressed. She ties her brown hair in a messy bun and she slips into her jeans and a warm red jumper and pulls on her boots and tells herself in the mirror as she applies the basics of make up (to make her look…well…human) that she will be at school as soon as she can afford the basics, like books, supplies and a place to live. She knows this as she chugs down a cup of Earl Grey—her one guilty pleasure—and some eggs that are so scrambled they'd make a chef on the TV faint in distress.

And then when she arrives at the paper shop to begin the morning rush she's calm and collected and nobody needs to know that she's the daughter of…well…who abandoned her husband and daughter. That her father is dead and her future is bleak and that sometimes the loss of the man who raised her and who said it didn't matter that she wasn't…that she was his perfect little girl cripples her to the point where she wants to put her head down on the floorboards of her flat and scream until there's nothing left.

(She sold the house but that's another story)

It's shaping up to be a normal day in December. She's not a fan of Christmas and she feels cheated. She used to love it, would spend ages planning on how to make it special, the food, the presents, the tree. But then last year the big monster that's Cancer took away her Christmas cheer and her joy and now she's got nothing.

The door to the shop opens and Lara knows that she's going to have to deal with this customer because her boss has kids and wants to spend time with them over the holidays and she…she has nobody.

"—I think he'll get a kick out of it George. Come on a Mu—I mean a normal card for Christmas? Nothing to fancy, Dad will love it"

"If you say so" comes the second voice and Lara turns and blinks.

There twins, identical twins down to the last freckle and both stunningly good looking once you get past the violently ginger hair. It's the kind of red hair that girls in her High School would have sold their soul to get. It's so natural and vibrant and she has to look away and yet…she can't.

There both tall, long, lanky with the kind of bodies that don't promote muscles but Lara would bet they've got them. There in jeans that look as though they're hardly worn and there feet are stuffed into boots made of the same material as their jackets which looks…unreal. There wearing handmade sweaters and scarves and she's never seen them before because…well…even in her haze of nothingness she'd remember them.

One of them has got cards in his hand and he's doing something almost without thinking and Lara watches him. She thinks she might know what he's doing…but then again…her memories are so old and not really that nice.

"That's clever" she says and she takes a great deal of joy in scaring both of them. She grins and though the feeling feels foreign the smile is genuine and that's been the first in a long time.

"Thanks" the one holding the card says after a beat of silence. Lara grins.

"Almost like real magic" she says as sweetly as she can without batting an eyelid.

The other brother snorts.

"Can I help you with something lads?"

"Err yes" the second brother says grinning because the first is still clutching his cards the way society ladies clutch their pearls. "Were looking for a Christmas card, a mug—I mean a normal one, for our father you see. Something…something horrendously Christmassy"

Lara blinked.

"Well…we have one that lights up"

"Brilliant" he said and when she showed them that it did actually light up and that it sang a song as well.

"How much?"

She priced it and they paid though they muttered for several minutes about what was the correct amount of change when they finally got it.

"So" 'Brother with the Cards' said with a grin. "What's a pretty little thing like you doing all alone at Christmas?"

Lara raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously?"

Other brother laughed.

"Stupid" he said with a wink at his twin. "Don't mind him honestly. He's pining after a girl who doesn't—oi!"

Other brother had just elbowed him in the ribs.

"I'm Fred by the way. Fred Weasley" the brother with the charming smile and no cards in his hand says and Lara despite it all takes it and shakes it. He was she thought with a smile, easy to like.

"Lara McIlroy"

"This is George. The twin. Hopelessly in love with another woman by the way Me…I don't have that problem you know?"

Lara laughed and because it was such a strange notion for her she thought that she would do anything to have herself laugh again. And Fred Weasley might be the kind of man to get her there.

"So I'll see you around Fred Weasley?"

"Sure"

She laughed it off.

---

In all honesty Lara didn't expect to gain anything from it.

But then something happened.

He came back.

---

Christmas Day was to most people a cause of celebration, family, love. For her in her tiny flat with the Star Wars theme blaring it was a time to moan about the death of Obi Wan, the fact that Leia and Han were meant for each other and the blaring of her microwave when the five minute meal she had was hot.

She had offered to work the three hours they were open that day and she had kept her bottle of vodka (laced with an decent amount of tonic) under the counter. Most of it was people buying late Christmas cards and asking her for a pen to fill them out than it was anything else.

And then the door opened.

And he appeared.

It was Fred Weasley, his hair dotted with smoke looking furious.

"Hello"

"Hello Lara"

Lara blinked. In all honesty she had not expected him to remember her name.

"Hello Fred"

He grinned at her and she grinned back.

"Shitty Christmas?" he asked casually.

"Something like that" she said grinning.

Fred Weasley looked around and then leaned over the counter.

"And if I said would you like to close up and go for a drink in the pub?"

Lara checked her watch and then mentally calculated where she was up to on her Star Wars trilogy.

Eh. She wasn't missing much.

"I close in ten minutes."

"I'll take a look at the cards then"

And take a look at the cards he did. She went through giggles at the sound of him shouting out slogans to her, to full bells of laughter at the sight of him acting them out.

Then when she pulled on her coat he offered her his arm and they went to the local pub where she ordered a vodka tonic and he did too though she knew (deep down) he didn't know what one was.

They ended up in the small corner of the bar sharing a packet of crisps and Lara upon getting the second round.

"You wanna tell me why your not with your family?" she asked casually. Fred Weasley snorted into his drink.

"I have this brother." He said finally. "He…well…my Dad and he…they had a fight and he left and he went and…and he came back today with his new boss who was after something and he just stood there looking like he wished that he could be anywhere else as my Mum started crying and I…and I threw mashed parsnips in his face"

Lara spat a mouthful of her vodka and tonic all over the table and suddenly the laughter bubbled up inside her and spilled out. Fred Weasley watched her for a second and then laughed with her.

"Sorry" she said when she had gotten herself under control. "But you threw…parsnips into his face?"

"Well…my sister threw the sprouts" Fred Weasley said grinning.

She laughs for a long time in what feels like a long time and she lets him by her another.

"So you don't have anywhere to go on Christmas?"

Despite it all she ends up telling him, that her mother walked out on her at the age two, that her Dad raised her until he died and that her life since he died had been all survival and no living and Fred Weasley to his credit had not looked at her with pity but rather understanding though she did not know what on Earth he could understand about this situation.

Instead he walked her home and then as she leaned against the wall of her building her keys in her hand and he leans against the wall opposite and then grins at her.

"Suppose I want to see you again?" he asks finally and she grins back a bit tipsy but full of the flirtatious glee that comes when you know you have a man on the run.

"Suppose I say yes?"

"Suppose I want to kiss you?"

"Suppose I say yes?"

He kisses her then, his tongue mingling with hers and she kisses back her hands cupping his head and around his waist his own pulling her closer at the small of her back and she wants to keep it like this forever but at some point they pull away and he walks into the night and she walks upstairs into the silence of her apartment and giggles her way all through making herself a hot chocolate feeling lighter than she has done in years.

That night in her sleep she calls him Fred. She wakes up seeing his smile and grinning despite herself.

She doesn't expect to see him again.

Then again he turns up a week later on a Saturday asking her if she wants to meet his friends.

His friends turn out to be his brother George who is a laugh and cannot drink vodka for toffee and his other friends from school an Angelina Johnson (who must by common sense –and the way George looks at her—be the woman Fred was talking about) who grins at her and offers her a warm hug despite the fact that they've never met, Alicia Spinnet who smiled at her from the booth, Lee Jordan who she strongly liked on sight for the casual way he was wearing clothes that didn't match at all and Katie Bell, a blonde girl who was clearly nervous about something but who shook Lara's hand without question.

Looking back it was obvious when she was out with them that something was different. Even in a pub they seemed slightly off. Katie was the only one who seemed to know what to order off the bar and even then she seemed to stare as if it was all a distant memory, there were jokes and stories and comments that were half finished but she found that they were funny.

And they were. Fred and George together were funny. Lee only added to the drama and he told stories of how he commentated at their old school's sporting events with such a dry sarcastic tone that she was laughing so hard her ribs ached by the end of them. They had Houses at the school and two Gryffindor and Slytherin hated each other and took it out on the sporting field. They never named what the actual sport was but she assumed it was football and she liked the idea of a school that would combine both sexes of students to that sport.

"So what do you guys all do?" she asks one the conversation lulls.

Again there it is, that silent look between the six of them.

"Well Fred and I run our own joke shop" George said finally. "And Lee here he's going to come help. Ange has got this job reporting on…sport and well we all volunteer for this organisation so to speak. It helps fight crime"

"Your in the wrong place then" she says running her hand against the crisp packet for the little crumbs. "Nothing ever happens around here. You need to go down to Manchester. You heard about that street that was nearly wiped out in the fire down there? And that brutal triple murder with no leads?"

Again there is another stilled pause and then Lee chimes in.

"Yeah" he says with a fake ease. "But let's not fuck up the evening. So Lara…how'd you meet our Weasley twins over here"

And that puts the conversation out of her mind.

In hindsight it was really all in front of her.

But she was enjoying herself to much to care.

Fred walks her home again like he did last time and he kisses her like he did last time only this time it's deeper and more passionate. It's the kind of kiss you dream about in High School and she wants it to continue but she's not sure if she's bold enough to take that step. Instead she says…

"I liked your friends"

"And they liked you" he says as if that somewhat surprises him. "I knew they would but I didn't realise how much" he frowns.

"Is that a problem?"

"No it's just…I might be bad for you, you know? I might bring some trouble to your door and I wouldn't want you to get hurt. Actually I'd hate it"

Lara finds that so considerate that she doesn't know if it's the amount of vodka or the situation that makes her kiss him again this time her hands sliding low to his hips. He lets out a groan against her hair and she grins feeling desire flood her and a confidence fill her she's not had in a long time.

"Tease"

She laughs.

"Here" she takes the pen out of her back pocket and writes down her number on his arm. "Ring me when the amount of crime in Ottery St Catchpole has gone down and we can meet up. This time for dinner."

He stares at the number for a long time and then nods before looking up at the sky which seems to her to be a mess of clouds. It's either going to snow or rain.

"You should get inside" he says finally. "Looks horrible"

"Are you sure you don't want to come in and call a taxi?"

Fred pauses for a second as if he's trying to work out what she's saying and then he shakes his head.

"Oh one of those—no I'm fine. Better get George home. I've left him in the pub with Ange so he's probably making a right tit out of himself. Night Lara"

He pecks her on the cheek and then he's gone and Lara in the silly romantic way that girls think sometimes, thinks that she will watch him go all the way to the end of the road but she blinks and he's gone into the darkness.

She watches for another half a second but it really is cold so she goes inside and makes herself a ice cold glass of water for the morning and curls up under her bedcovers grinning despite the temperature.

---

He rings her at the end of the week sounding thrilled that he's done it and invites her out to dinner at the one decent restaurant this place has and she smiles all the way through work and it doesn't feel strange.

She dresses in the one good skirt she has an a top with a little white collar and she curls her hair and does her make up and feels normal for the first time in a long time. She pulls on her high heeled boots and sees him leaning against the wall of her building his coat collar high around his neck in jeans and a jumper and he looks both sexy and yet vulnerable all at the same time.

She doesn't know what this is but she knows that she doesn't want it to end.

"Hey" he says catching sight of her and she grins taking his offered arm as they go back through the village. It's January and the town is enjoying the last weekend before they go back to their lives of work and school.

"Hey back" she says as a man, drunk spills out from the pub onto the road next to them. She notices Fred grip something in his pocket tightly as if he's deciding weather or not this normal man is a threat and then he relaxes as he stumbles upwards and boisterous laughs fill the air.

"Something wrong Fred?"

"Huh? Oh nothing it's just…well…been a long few months you know?"

Lara does know but she doesn't want to say. She instead leans her head on his arm and they carry on in silence for a little time until she stops seeing him in the moonlight.

"Where'd you get the bruise?" For Fred's face had a bruise under the chin and his knuckles were scraped.

"Fight" he said with a grin that Lara thought didn't match his eyes whatsoever.

"Your bother come back?"

"What—oh no, trust me he's not going to do that in a hurry" he said darkly and then he ran a hand over his face stopping them in the street.

"Look, can we…I don't want to talk about me right now. It's been a shitty kind of week and my sister went back to school today which means my Mum's worrying and…I just want to eat dinner with the prettiest girl in the village and forget about everything else."

It's one of the most perfect things she's had said to her and she kisses him curling her hand around his face and pulling her close so that she can feel him against every inch of her body against his, the long, clean line of him and she breathes in the smell of his aftershave and the warmth of him and feels like the lovesick girl of nineteen that she is that this is the heaven.

"Is it stupid to say after knowing each other for just this short time that I really might be falling for you?" she says when they break apart and Fred's arms are tucked around her waist and his nose is bumping against her and her lipstick is half on his mouth not that he cares.

"It's it crazy to say I might be falling in love with you?" he asks and Lara presses their foreheads together and grins against his neck. She's not sure if she's ready to say the words yet but she knows he understands what she's feeling.

They laugh over dinner, she eats mushroom ravioli and he has a burger and he talks about the food at his school and how he misses it now he's left and how his mother cooks for three thousand and she thinks how wonderful that would be. He tells her about his siblings from the eldest two who travel away from home and his youngest two (he always leaves out one) and he tells her how there was never a second's peace in his house that was always crammed even this Christmas where it was in some places three to a bedroom.

She in turns tell him that she wanted to go to University and study History and English. She tells him she wanted to teach and that she tries to cook for herself but the closest she gets to homemade is taking it out of the packet and into water. They share a bottle of wine and it's so utterly glorious that she doesn't care that there's nobody waiting for her in her cold flat and that there's a big part of this picture that she's missing and that she's falling in love with something and someone who must be too good to be true. All she cares about are these series of moments right here and now between them and that it never ends.

Of course this is exact moment it all goes to shit.

They are walking home when suddenly there is a great roar and the pub behind them goes up in flames. The explosion hits her and she falls backwards into Fred who picks her up bodily and swings her around so the heat of the flames don't so much as touch her and then he's throwing her to the ground as something…no someone comes out of the sky and flashes of green and red light speed around them.

Fred swears as a cackle comes close and she realises that he Is doing something with a stick of wood and the human (for she doesn't know if it's man or woman) behind the ornate silver mask is doing the same thing and it looks like a dance only far, far more deadly. She flips over onto her back and pushes herself up on her elbows feeling the gravel and the dirt cut into her bare palms as people scream both inside the fiery furnace that was her local and out.

The person in the mask waves the stick again and there's another explosion and suddenly it looks at her. Lara stares back a scream building in her throat as Fred makes a desperate dive for her but the stick comes down and suddenly—

Suddenly she is screaming.

It's pain beyond pain, beyond pain.

It's the stuff of legend, an agony so deep it's takes everything she has not to die right there and then. She rolls around on the floor screaming and clawing her hands in the dirt and if dying makes this pain stop then that's what she'll do but please, Fred wherever he is, whatever he is, can he please just make this pain stop?

And then without warning it does and the world comes back to her in slow pieces. The stary sky littered with black smoke and the sounds of screams and that rent the air and the dead man whose hood had slipped off and beyond that she thinks she sees another red-head trying to tackle the flames but she thinks she's going to be sick.

A voice comes to her but it's like she's been swimming underwater and everything is muffled until it's not and her eyes finally focus on what's in front of her.

Or rather who is in front of her.

"ara—Lara—Lara!"

It's a scream torn from a throat and she looks to see Fred covered in soot, his hands shaking as they frame her face and his eyes so wide blown and panicked, full of some unnamed emotion, overbright in the dark that she feels like if she could she'd have to look away.

She knows there and then looking at him that this is it for her. This Is beyond some silly school girl crush. This is it.

I love you. She thinks. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Instead she says.

"Fred"

Her voice sounds weak and if she's being honest with herself she doesn't think she can move right now.

Fred seems to get that because he scoops her up in his arms bridal style as her head lolls uselessly on his shoulder, shouts something to someone about cleaning up and then he's gone twisting and turning and she feels like she's going to be sick all over again when it stops and she realises she's in her flat and Fred is lying her on the bed.

He's gone for ten seconds or so but he's back muttering waving the stick around and it's too much. It's too much for Lara to come with and she faints.

When she wakes he's still there and she's still in her flat which is a relief because to be honest she'd be hysterical…well…more hysterical than she is now…if she woke up in someone else's home instead of her own. Right now this is all she's got to cling to.

She sits up feeling her body throb and she takes a sip of the water next to her which then becomes a gulp. Fred is watching her like she's about to collapse into histrionics but she knows…she knows.

"So you're a wizard then?"

If the situation was any less serious she would have laughed at his reaction, because Fred his face full of concern and something close to utter despair promptly fell of the bed.

She watched as he climbed back up.

"You—you know?"

"Yes"

"Are you—I mean—"

"No" she said running a hand through her hair. "No I'm not. Plain old…what do you call people like me?"

"Muggles"

"Ah. Yep that's me. My Mum though…she was a witch. She had me right out of High School…that school you go to and then when I was normal…as normal as my 'Muggle' father she left. Did a runner in the night and that was that."

"Merlin"

Lara opened her mouth to ask him if that was really a thing but then closed it. It was just too much.

"Sodding Hippogriff's…I've been terrified this entire time you'd hate me if the truth came out and all along you knew"

"Well…those card tricks were awfully good"

He laughs then, laughing like he's been bottling it up for months. Like she's told the funniest joke ever and she finds she doesn't mind. In fact she wants to laugh with him.

But then she remembers the pain and the small smile fades.

"Fred…what on Earth was that last night?"

He sighs the joy that made him so much younger is wiped off his face and she wants for all the world to kiss it back but she can't. Not until she knows.

And he tells her. He tells her about Hogwarts and some wizard called Albus Dumbledore and how he's in his Order to protect other wizards from a group that calls themselves the Death Eaters. He tells her about the war the unknown world that's just on her doorstep is facing and the daily accidents she's hearing about aren't really accidents but murders and magic and giants (she has to go and take a steading gulp of water at that one) and then he tells her about the man behind it all.

He chokes through the name Voldemort and then shudders so violently that Lara thinks he's going to fall off the bed. Instead he tells her that he never wants to say the name again and can they call him You-Know-Who. Lara nods there's something about Fred when he's like this that makes her pause. He tells her about the boy who defeated him a Harry Potter whose spent summers with his family and how he keeps surviving even when the wizard came back from wherever he was all those years ago. He tells her about these wizards that see her as a kind of food to be played with and she shivers under the warm covers.

"So they were Death Eaters tonight?"

"Yeah. They know my family follow Dumbledore and we've got Harry under our protection. The Ministry of Magic—like our government—is holding strong at the moment against the Death Eaters but He's strong this time. There's only so much time we've got before they go. But as long as we've got Dumbledore were in with a fighting chance. And…and now they know about you so I've put charms on your building. I've made it difficult for them to see or find you and this place. It's the best protection I can offer though if I loved you more I wouldn't have gotten involved."

"Bullshit" she says her voice strong. "I love you. And you love me. And you're a wizard with a stick of wood that's a wand. And it doesn't matter. I can take care of myself."

He looks at her for a long second and then nods, his eyes are troubled but the smile he gives her is genuine.

She cooks sausage sandwiches that night and she puts on a DVD and Fred gets distracted enough by it for some light to regain his eyes. She goes to bed and he comes with her and this time there's no discussion or hesitation, they both know what they want. There nervous, both of them but he kisses her and though the stretch and the pain consumes for a time it melts into something that makes her gasp and cling to him and he leans his head against her shoulder and they cling to each other getting warm all night.

It was always inevitable.

---

Fred leaves for long periods of time. He has a job, two really and he turns up sometimes in the middle of the night bruised and bleeding. When he does stay he stays for days at a time and she gets to see him use magic around her flat which has become an odd domesticated little haven the two of them. He picks her up and dances with her to the morning radio and they get into her tiny bath together and he shampoos her hair with such softness she's almost falling asleep against the warm contours of his chest. She in turns cooks for him and shows him her copy of Titanic which after several mutterings about 'a good repair charm' sends him weepy and indignant at the end claiming they 'both could have gotten on that damn door'. He makes her laugh and they forget about everything and anything.

One day Fred turns up with a broomstick and she stares.

"Oh no"

"Oh yes"

And that's how Lara finds herself flying. She grips him so tightly she thinks he's going to have bruises but she opens her eyes after a bit to see the sky above her and nothing but grey blobs below her and then he soars and dives and she screams with laughter because this is wonderful…this is…magic.

She forces herself not to puke when she gets to the ground but instead she drinks some water and some wine and they make love in her bed until the afternoon grows dark and then grows light again.

It's perfect.

And then it's not.

---

It's June when he comes to see her. He looks so white and ashen that she thinks someone must have died and he collapses into a chair genuinely looking like he doesn't have the words. Lara fixes him a vodka and he downs it in one not even flinching and then he looks her in the eye and says in a dead monotone voice.

"Dumbledore's dead"

Lara's not met the man, but the reverence in which Fred speaks of him, the way he seemed to keep this other world grounded hits her and she gasps. She's not a witch but she knows this is bad for Fred's side, for her side, for everyone.

"Bill, my brother, he's pretty torn up as well, he got…mauled by a werewolf…I know I should have mentioned them but…my Mum's a wreck and I just don't know how were going to win anymore…"

He shudders a breath and then he drops his head onto her stomach and she clings to him feeling him shudder his emotions out and her shirt grow damp.

He clings to her that night and when he kisses her it's with a desperate sort of urgency as if he thinks there on borrowed time and he's never going to see her again.

What that means for them Lara simply doesn't want to think about.

---

It gets worse.

---

She knows it the night Fred turns up to tell her that George has lost an ear in battle. She knows it when a whole street in London is burning and the fire spreads to engulf more and three days later firefighters are nowhere near close to getting it out. She knows when a bridge gets destroyed without warning in Liverpool and seven people are murdered in Leeds. She knows.

She starts being sick.

First it starts with the smell of cooking oil and then with chicken. She laughs it off but she feels on edge when Fred isn't with her and close to tears when he is. Her hair starts coming out a little when she styles it and her body feels like it's running on a different current.

Lara tells herself that it's stress, she's in the middle of war she cannot fight in and she's thrown off stuff like this before.

It's nothing.

"You want me to go where with you?"

"My brother's wedding" Fred says grinning like this is the best idea he's had in months.

"I want to introduce you to my family. I want them to get to know you Lara."

Lara's not entirely sure that a muggle at a wizard's wedding is entirely smart but Fred sees this on her face and laughs.

"Don't worry. They wont care that your not a witch. Believe me my Dad will be in raptures when he knows I'm dating a muggle. Just be prepared to answer any questions about how Debbie Cards work"

"Debit cards"

"Whatever" he says with a grin. "Come on" he pulls her close to him and she tries her best to resist but he's still got that irresistible pull that draws her closer, that incredibly sexy smell and that smile that makes her want to do unspeakably wicked things to him.

"It will be fun" he promises her. "Besides if I let Mum know it's your birthday in two weeks she'll make you a cake…and a pie probably. She'll look at you and say your underfed."

She laughs again and nods because why not?

The dress she picks is simple, it's a turquoise one with short sleeves and comes to mid length and she keeps her hair loose and curled. She wears new high shoes and Fred does that apparition thing that she hates and she arrives at the gate to a house that looks so incredibly dangerous and yet so stable that she knows magic is keeping it up.

Fred disappears for a second and then comes back pocketing his wand.

"Dawlish" he says with contempt. "Honestly it's getting embarrassing confuding him this easily. Come on and stay close to me"

She enters what could only be magical.

It's littered with golden chairs and floating champagne glasses and a lot of red and blonde people chattering in English and French. She sees George in the corner with a red headed boy and someone else and a girl in a lilac dress. She sees a woman change her hair twice with no thought at all and Fred grins at people finding her a chair and holding her hand through the ceremony.

She sees his parents and can feel the enthusiasm coming off them from her seat at the corner. Then comes the groom (she doesn't gasp at his face though it's a close call) and then the bridesmaids and then the bride whose so beautiful she could be on the cover of every magazine for weeks on end.

Lara leans her head on Fred's shoulder uncaring of how it looks and she grips his hands.

"You know" he mutters into her hair. "If I ever do this I'm locking my mother in a room with a full blown body bind curse on her. And everyone can dress in whatever they like and have their hair the way they want. And there rooms can be as messy as can be. She's been a bloody nightmare for weeks planning this."

Lara grins though her heart skips a beat. She doesn't say anything but looking at the plump, kind faced woman sobbing into a bit of lace she thinks that perhaps Mrs Weasley is just a proud mother.

---

It's not the conventional ceremony that Lara knows as a marriage but she claps when the live birds appear at the end of the wand and takes a glass of champagne from mid air and then lets go amazed when it floats next to her after a sip. It follows her around like a puppy and she laughs as Bill and Fleur take to the dancefloor and everyone joins in.

She helps herself to a prawn tart thing and then another. Fred stares at her as she moans around it in a way that she admits is slightly pornographic not to mention the fact that suddenly she's got a craving for prawns despite not liking them that much before. She's distracted however when he brushes his thumb against her mouth in a way that makes her eyelashes flutter and his face go scarlet as if he too can remember with painful clarity this morning where he had woken to see her with her head between his legs.

"You two are disgusting" comes a voice behind them and she turns to see George sans one ear. Something in her expression must show what she thinks of the clean dark hole at the side of his head because he laughs at her expression.

"Don't worry" he says winking. "It's a great toothbrush holder"

"George" comes another voice and they turn to see a woman with blonde curly hair coming towards them a man following her. "Don't make jokes like that. Wotcher" she says to Lara with a grin. "You Fred's girlfriend we've heard him gushing in private about?"

"Er yes" she says holding out her hand. The woman takes it laughing and her hair changes colour to a turquoise blue before she shakes it back to blonde.

"Wicked" Lara says before she can stop herself and she's rewarded with a laugh and an explanation into just what Nymphadora Tonks can do.

"But please call me Tonks" she says once she's grabbed some more prawn tartlets.

Lara likes her immediately.

She likes her husband even more.

Remus Lupin reminds her of the teacher that every student loves to go to class to. There's something pulling his face into lines of misery that makes him look older than he actually is but he clearly loves his younger wife and he knows something about history…well…history as she knows it and when they converse quite politely about how wizards coped with the first two muggle wars for some time. By the time Fred steers her onto the dancefloor she's pleased to see that there seems to be a genuine smile back on his face and she wants to ask Fred what's wrong but he's pulling her into his arms and swaying her around and she never wants this night to end.

"Is there anything against mug—people like me and wizards marrying?" she asks quietly into his shoulder.

"No. Not unless you count the baddies in this war." He says just as quietly. "Why? You asking?"

She swats at him but honestly she thinks this is it for her. This man and this world that she's not apart of but that she can only see good in.

They twirl around for a few moments and then George is back with a grimace.

"Mum wants to see you. And you Lara. Says she wants to meet you"

Fred sighs as if he is going to the gallows and Lara feels her stomach swoop in foreboding.

"They know about me?"

There is a very delicate pause where George becomes very interested in the colour of his shoes and Fred in a bit of lint attached to his shoulder seem.

Suddenly Lara understands.

"Do they even know that I exist?"

There's another pregnant pause.

"Well…no…" Fred says with a smile. "I meant to…well…they've seen us dancing and Mum's…Mum"

"Do you think…" she doesn't want to admit this out loud but she knows she's got to even if it kills her and she drops her voice so everyone doesn't overhear her.

"Do you think they'll mind? That I'm a…that I don't have magic? Do you think they'll like me?"

"Mind?" George says before Fred can say anything. "Shit Lara, the second Dad gets wind you're a muggle he'll have kittens all over the floor. You'll be trapped all night explaining how the cinema works, and Mum…well…she's got one of us tied down my bet is she's looking to see whose next"

Lara made a gulping noise. Both brothers looked at her and then she grinned.

"Well if we have children I'll call our girl Georgina-Leonie. Georgie-Lee for short"

George laughs so loudly several people look around at her in alarm and she realises it's the first time she's discussed having children with Fred.

It's the first time she's thought about having children ever.

Fred on the other hand doesn't look bothered.

"Tease" Fred said with a grin his hand coming around her waist and pulling her closer. She leans her head against his shoulder and nods to George.

"Go on then. Let's go meet the parents"

She lets her half full glass drop slightly and it floats away. She watches it as a bottle re-tops it immediately and she can't stop herself she's giggling at the most of mundane things that to her are wonderous.

"Hey" he mutters in her ear as he takes her hand linking their fingers together sounding horribly indignant. "We are not calling any child 'Georgie-Lee'"

She laughs again.

Fred pulls her across the dancefloor and she's there…she's there, just two steps away from his mother and his father and the life that perhaps she can live when without warning something white comes into the tent from far away with the speed of a rocket and nearly knocks into the dancers.

For one moment she thinks it's some sort of wedding celebration about to start but then she get's a look at Fred's face and she turns back to the thing that has taken the shape of some sort of cat that prowls through people before delivering it's message in a slow deep voice.

"The Ministry of Magic has fallen, Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming. They are coming…"

It evaporates no less than a second later but that's enough for people to start moving and muttering and Lara McIlroy might not be a witch but she thinks she knows what's just happened.

Fred grips her hand with the force of iron and she's dragged back across the dancefloor as something comes in from where she was just standing…no someone and starts firing. People are screaming and she thinks she sees a red headed man grab another and a girl and then go, Fred's turning on the spot and then she's gone from the carnage and she's back in her flat which is warm and cold at the same time. The bed messed from where they left it.

Fred's the only one she knows who can appear in her bedroom. Nobody else can see her flat or enter it or something else she doesn't remember and she lands and staggers in her high heels kicking off her shoes into the corner.

"Stay here" he orders and he looks more serious than she has ever seen him.

"Don't leave unless you have to. I'll come and see you when this is over"

She doesn't question the unspoken end to that question. Instead he kisses her hard and fast and she lets him and then he's gone.

Slowly, methodically she changes. She changes her clothes and then the sheets, she puts a load of laundry on and then takes a bath—anything to delay the inevitable that's going to come when she has to think about this. She rubs her cold arms in the bath trying to get warm and her hands rest on her stomach. The intense dizziness comes back but that's that whole appearing and disappearing at the drop of a hat for you and she thinks absent minded as she finds some clean warm and definitely not sexy pyjama's and slips into bed that her stomach has gotten a little bit rounder. She's only had half a glass of champagne and a few tartlets though she cannot stomach the thought of anymore food tonight but she supposes intruding Fred to the take out service was a bad idea.

He had never heard of pizza she thought quietly as rain hit the windows in great big lashes. Or Chinese. He didn't know how to eat out of a carboard box and he had been thrilled about it. Had dropped pepperoni down his front and laughed and she had stolen his mushrooms.

Lara turned over to stare at the faint outline of her front door. He wasn't dead. But tonight, perhaps more than any other night she was aware that she was shockingly vulnerable in this world. And shockingly alone.

With that troubling thought she fell asleep.

Perhaps she underestimated herself. Nothing woke her up that night. Not even the sickness that she had been battling with.

When she woke up Fred was still gone.

---

It took three weeks.

Three.

By this point Lara has gone past worried to pissed off.

---

She knows that the world, the magical one and she suspects the muggle one has just gone tits up. Certainly it seems like more and more gas explosions are happening in London and Manchester and Liverpool and she has to wonder if they are genuine or as Fred said just killing for the sake of killing. She finds herself falling asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow and a dizzying vertigo that comes when she stands up to fast or too long on a chair. The sickness comes back and her hands shake as she makes tea and she misses him…she doesn't even know if he's dead or alive. More than once she thinks about trying to find him but she's not sure how to…he'd told her he lived 'Over the Hill and Far, Far Away' which is bullshit but probably true as well and she doesn't know what danger she's walking into if she just knocks on a house and asks if the person is a wizard.

Then finally as September hits it's fourth week he arrives. She finds him sat in her flat as she comes in from a shift at work and she knows by the way his head is bowed that this is not good.

"Hi" she says dropping her keys onto the table. He looks up and he looks shattered both mentally and physically.

"Hi" he says flatly. "Sorry about the delay."

"He err…he took over then this Vol—"

Fred shouts and crosses the room cupping his hand over her mouth and looking around terrified. She pushes away from him sits down and pulls off her boots.

"Jesus what?"

"He's tabooed his name. If muggle or wizard says it, it breaks enchantments and stuff. Only the most hardcore say his name and…"

"Alright no more saying the name"

She thinks it's stupid because seriously it's just a name but then again…this is not her world.

"So He's in charge now?"

Fred nods.

"They came looking for Harry but he and Ron and Hermione got away. They stayed at the house for a day trying to find him and what we knew but we didn't give them up. They left but we've been being followed and it's only a matter of time before they figure out how much we know and then it gets real complicated, real quick and...shook my tail about ten minutes ago but I've not got long. I've just got to…do…"

"Do what?"

He looks at her then and she knows.

She knows.

"Break up with you"

Lara stares.

"Someone making you do this?"

"No" he says shaking his head. "But I've got to do this. I realised…I don't…your not…"

"Is this because I'm a muggle?"

"Yes"

It knocks the wind out of her though she knows that this was what he was going to say. She's a Muggle, she doesn't belong in this world that's hidden beneath hers. There's nothing she can offer him other than slowing him down and she's abruptly furious. Not for herself but for her father who must have felt like that when her Mum walked out on them for the same reason. Because they were Muggles. She hates the name, she hates the fact that she's in the same spot and she hates the fact that when Fred leaves like everyone else in her life does there is no Archie McIlroy for her to call and cry into his arms.

"I can protect myself you know. You don't have to worry about me" she says her hands resting on the back of the chair. Fred scoffs and she has to look away at the expression on his face. He looks caught on the raw, defensive as if he knew that she was going to fight for this…fight for them…and that he hates for it…for trying to tie him to her.

Stupid Little Muggle her.

"You're a muggle Lara. There's nothing you can do but be cannon fodder in this and…and you slow me down. It's always one part on the job and one with you and I've neglected the Order"

"Oh so It's my fault He's took over the world now is it? Well call the BBC and they can add it to their news broadcast!"

Fred frowns and she suspects he has no idea what she's just said but it gives her an edge.

"Lara…I don't want to do this anymore. It's too hard for me and it's getting risky for me as well. It's just…I mean you can see it can't you…why your Mum walked out? Muggles and Wizards it's…I mean…it's never going to be enough"

For a second her mask drops and the crack about her parents is enough to knock her backwards again. Perhaps the look on her face is enough because his chin wobbles and his expression bleeds some kind of emotion but Lara is done with it. She's two seconds away from breaking down in tears and pride is sure as hell gonna dictate she not do it in front of him.

"Get out" she points her hand towards the door her fingers shaking. "Get the fuck out of my flat Fred Weasley and don't you dare darken my doorstep again. And if your really lucky one of your mask less friends will take me out as I get the milk tomorrow and you can go and shack up with some bimbo with a wand. Now do one"

He stares at her for one long second and then he's gone and Lara is proud of the fact she gets into her pyjama's, calls her boss and reports in sick and get's into bed before she surrenders to the storm of weeping that follows.

She takes three days off to mope but then her sickness comes back in force and more to the point her rent is due. She makes a Doctor's appointment that morning and eats scrambled eggs on toast and goes through all of her things sorting out the old from the new. She's good…well…she's not crying until she finds one of Fred's shirts balled up under the corner of the floor. She stares at it for a long time and then she starts wailing. Wailing.

Sometime at night when she crawls out of her bed and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror (at her lank hair and her red eyes and her sallow skin) she realises that she's become one of those women that she swore when she was a teenager she would never become. The kind that cried themselves to sleep at night because she had been dumped. And she was not going to do that. Fred Weasley had broken her heart into pieces but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of crying anymore.

If she smeared mushroom pate on white bread that night and ate popcorn and chocolate marshmallows and gained another seventy pounds or so to her already rounding stomach and used his shirt to mop up the bathroom then that quite frankly was nobody's business but her own.

At some point she'd find the energy to go on a run.

When it was warmer.

And you know…she got better at running.

Her Doctor's appointment was at ten thirty on a Monday morning. By eleven it had gone to shit.

All of it.

Everything.

Pregnant.

She was pregnant.

She Lara McIlroy was pregnant.

With Fred Weasley's child.

She goes back to the flat in a daze and she lies on her bed staring at the ceiling thinking hard though her mind is racing at a hundred miles an hour. She doesn't know what to think or what to say or what to do. All she knows is that the bump she had thought was overeating turned out to be pregnancy. She's nearly three months gone and if she wants to do something she's rapidly running out of time.

She holds her phone in her hand for a long time that weekend. It's a bank holiday and Lara thinks the fates have thrown her a bone because she knows that she needs this time to think.

A baby.

A little red headed baby.

(because it's going to be a red head she just knows)

She watches as lightening strikes a house in Ireland and kills five people, as three cars carrying families are pitched off a bridge in Glasgow and a load of students are lost for three days before waking up in a forest in Durham with no idea how they got there and she wonders what on earth she's doing bringing a baby into this kind of world. A world where it might be magical and it has a mother that's not and a father that doesn't want it.

Or does he?

And that's the agonising decision. Does Fred want this baby but not her?

But as much as she hates this idea she thinks that there's no way of letting him know. He's severed all contact with her. The phone she used to ring runs dead and even if she was brave enough to try and find that house again there's no guarantee that it wouldn't get her killed. Her and this baby she's carrying inside of her.

So she has two options.

Adoption is clearly not one considering there is a very good possibility that this child will possess magic. She doesn't know what that means…surely other magical children are put into the muggle system but Lara knows that that's not an option for her.

The easiest thing, the most practical thing is to book an appointment at the clinic. She's nineteen, she's turning twenty in two weeks, she's got a steady job that covers rent and other basics but sure as hell doesn't cover much more. She's been saving to go to university and a baby is going to derail that plan. There is a war taking place in front of her very eyes and she's been seen with a wizard from the other side and perhaps most importantly. She's doing this alone. There's no baby daddy to help her, no doting in-laws looking for grandparent duties.

But…but the more she thinks about it the more she likes the idea of it. Of having the baby, of having someone to love. Of having that easy love that comes without breathing. There are grants for young mothers to go to school and she was never going to be the party girl so what if she uses some of her loan on childcare?

It's insane, it's reckless but it's a decision that leaves her smiling through the night despite the fact that pregnancy makes her miserable.

The only downside is Fred.

She contemplates trying to find him again but in all honesty she doesn't know where to start. Besides he doesn't want anything to do with her and her Muggle ways, just like her own mother did. Lara was raised by a single parent, by a young single parent and money was tight and she likes to think she's turned out ok.

She turns twenty in October and her decision is made. Fred doesn't bother to even send a gift and for some reason that sends her crying all over again despite the fact that she said she would never cry over him again.

The next day she goes to the hairdressers and spends twenty pounds on a new hair cut. She shouldn't but the hairdresser lops of the dark hair to a collarbone length bob and the girl she had once been who'd never cut her hair whatsoever suddenly looks older and more mature and so very less scared than she feels.

And nothing like the girl who was so very much in love with Fred Weasley.

Her boss is overjoyed. Having three children herself she covers for Lara at the paper shop more so she can go to appointments. The whole morning sickness (which should be renamed as all day sickness) knocks her back but she finds as winter grows nearer she's wearing it off. She buys clothes and toys and declines an invitation to spend Christmas with her boss and her family. Instead she spends it eating pizza with the Imperial Death March playing from her DVD player and she does up a small part of her room with a cheep crib she's found. She thinks once it's got blankets and toys in it and a little mobile that it's actually quite good and while it wont last forever she researches grants and assistance for university. She'll need another year working here but then she should have enough and then she and her baby can leave Ottery St Catchpole and the ghost of Fred Weasley behind.

Her Doctor is a nice woman who makes no comment on Lara's age nor the fact that there is never anyone who turns up to the appointments with her. In the New Year when the snow is thick and heavy on the ground and the world seems to be getting worse she goes to an appointment and finds out that the baby is a boy.

She's shown the scan and she stares at it all night and for the first time she thinks she understands that there is a human growing inside of her. That there is a boy growing inside of her and she's his mummy.

That night she puts her hand on her stomach and listens to the rain pitter pattering against her window washing away all the snow and she falls asleep warm and doesn't dream of Fred Weasley once.

Time moves on even when a person is broken hearted.

The baby kicks one morning as she is watching the news and she's so startled she completely misses what the newscaster is saying. The baby kicks again and she rubs her stomach.

"Good boy" she says to her now considerable bump and the baby kicks back again and Lara thinks that he's almost smug about it.

She buys a baby book of names but the reality is she doesn't need one. This baby is going to be named after his grandfather, the one he'll never meet, the decidedly, wonderful muggle one.

Archie.

She flips through looking at middle names and pauses for a long time on Frederick. She's not sure. She's hopelessly unsure of everything, she's hurt and tired and angry and hopelessly in love with him still and hates herself for it but she's never going to hate this baby that she knows is kicking like he's at a Bon Jovi concert and is going to be a red-headed charmer like his Dad.

She folds down the corner of the page and then puts the book to one side and gets dressed for work. She's eight months now and though it's warm out it's still cold and she's waddling. She's finishing her last shift today, in two weeks time she's going to be a Mummy. She eats a carrot dipped in barbeque sauce for breakfast and contemplates just what that means.

She still doesn't know.

---

She's getting off the bus her limbs aching as they often are and her stomach doing flip flops and she's so tired she can barely stand. Her baby needs to come sooner rather than later, she's getting tired of this and these achy little pains that the midwife tells her are Braxton Hicks don't help either.

She's two yards away from her flat when she sees the red headed man standing outside her building.

For a second her heart stops.

And then he turns and she can see the dark clean hole in his ear and it restarts again.

It's George.

"Lara" he says his eyes wide when he sees her. "I thought his morning that it was you but…merlin…your huge"

"Pregnancy does that to a woman George." Lara says evenly. George does a choking kind of noise his eyes popping as they catch up with his brain and even though she shouldn't Lara knows she's going to invite him in at some point.

"And yes" she adds because as much as she likes George he's about as tackless as a car crash and she knows what's going to come next. "It can only be Fred's"

"Your…Merlin…does Fred…wait he doesn't…I'd know he'd never be able to keep that secret"

"No of course he doesn't know" she snaps. "And as far as I'm concerned he doesn't need to ever know."

George tears his eyes away from her belly his brow furrowing.

"Huh? Look if this is about the way he acted believe me nobody knows more than me that he's a colossal idiot. I told him you were tougher than he thought but it's been so bad…Lara…"

He shakes his head looking away and blinking rapidly and Lara despite it all feels something in her melt. He's the same age as she is and he looks like an old man. They should be out there, all of them, her, Fred, George, all of them living their lives and here they are fighting against all odds for a bit of stability abet in very different ways.

"Are you losing?" she asks quietly. George shrugs.

"We take an inch and they take a mile" he says sadly. "And they don't care about casualties. But Harry's not been captured which is something. And we think Hogwarts is as safe as it can be at the moment. We just have to keep our heads down and survive. It's only gonna be a matter of time before they find out that Ron's not really dying at home and with Harry and then it becomes a very different game that's why I wanted to see you. I…I know he's an idiot Lara and he won't admit it but he's wasting away without you"

Lara blinks. George takes the advantage.

"He doesn't know about the baby. If he did there's no way he wouldn't be here look…the night he came to see you that day we'd just been threated with watching our parents get tortured if we didn't give up Harry's location. And the guy that threatened us was the same Death Eater as the one that killed our mother's brothers in the first war. And he made a comment about sending Grey—well the least you know about him the better—but he made a comment about sending a really horrendous piece of work to get 'that sweet muggle girl with the brown eyes' up to see if she knew where Harry was and Fred went berserk. Took my Dad, me and Charlie to hold him back. Look I know his timing was shitty but he was doing what he thought was best at the time"

She likes her lips as another twinge hits her.

"Doesn't matter" she says finally. "He used…he said some really awful things George. And he was right in the end. I'm no use to him in this world of yours, and he's a marked man if your telling the truth. He doesn't want me and he doesn't want this baby not really. If he was wasting away without me then he'd be here and not you"

"If he knew I was here he'd curse me" George says seriously. "Lara he thinks this is the only way you get out of this mess alive and…and he keeps his distance but not really. We've sort of been checking up on you"

"Whose we?" she all but screams because really this is just too much today.

"Well Lee and I…we…were doing this thing, this radio broadcast and we move around a lot but he's…he can't sleep without knowing that your safe. There's been nobody watching you for months and even so he's terrified that one day were going to come back and…he doesn't ask if we do it but he knows we do and I see him prepare himself for the news that your dead and then when he finds out your safe and alive he deflates and sleeps for days and doesn't smile and…and he's breaking Lara."

Lara swallows.

"Well it wasn't easy for me either" she says finally.

"Look I know you and he have some issues to work out but…"

And she cuts him off because she knows where this is going.

"No" she snaps. "George he doesn't get to show up and be a father to a baby we both know he doesn't want or need right now. And don't say he wants a baby at twenty please, right now if all your saying is true then all he's going to bring is danger to my front door and I don't need that right now. In a couple of months I'll be gone and he can come home and sleep in his own bed without fear of seeing me. I don't want anything from him, I don't need him."

She looks George in the eye and knows that for the safety of the baby inside of her doing flip flops (probably picking up on how agitated she is) she is going to tell the biggest lie she has ever told.

"I don't even love him anymore. So go and tell him that I don't want him checking up on me or my son anymore"

And with that she slips past him into the building and into her flat just as a wave of pain hits her.

Her door shuts behind her and her knees hit her carpet and something wet soaks her leggings.

Her water's just broke.

"Are you kidding me?" she says to the son she's going to meet (hopefully) soon and with as little pain as possible.

She forces herself upright and grabs the bag handing on the chair but another contraction hits and she swears a streak of words that would send a soldier blushing just as there is a furious knock at the door.

She knows who it is.

George likes her she knows that, perhaps even sees her as something more than what she is but he's Fred's brother, his twin and his other half and Lena knows and understands that the second she walked into her flat George was going to tell his brother everything.

Fucking magic.

She opens the door because she really cannot afford a new lock and right now an disappearing act to the nearest hospital seems like the nearest and the best thing possible.

And he's there.

Fred.

George wasn't kidding he does looked wrecked. His red hair is cropped close to his skull and he's recovering from a black eye but he still has that intense look about him that made her want to kiss him and smack him all at the same time.

Fred looks at her in a way that highly disconcerting. He looks at her as if he is a starving man drinking in the desert and his gaze goes from her short hair to her soles all the way from her belly to her feet and she has to look away. He looks, thinner, gaunter, older, all of the things that he shouldn't look like and she feels her traitorous heart throb a beat.

Her hands grip the back of her chair and she swallows as another contraction hits her.

"Fred" she says as evenly as she could.

"Lara" he breathes deeply as if it was the easiest thing in the world to say and she swallows and looks away wincing as her baby boy gives another desperate kick as he tries to get out of her.

"I didn't know…I…"

"Well why would you?" she snaps. "It's not like you left me a way to get in touch with you. I'd have told you everything if I'd had a chance"

It's more than what she ever envisioned saying to him and yet it's the truth.

"I…Lara…I lied you know…I…you know?"

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know. She's hopelessly unsure of everything and anything and she doesn't know what to say about it.

Fred crumples again like it's ripping him in two that she doesn't understand.

"I…I would have been here. I would…I want to be here for it. For the baby. I…I made a mistake Lara I…

Whatever Lara or even Fred is going to say to that is ruined because an almighty contraction rips through her and she screams bending over and falling almost into his arms. He catches her. She thinks he'll always catch her when she falls and then she hates herself for thinking that because she should no better.

"Lara?!"

"Labour" she says as another wave makes her knees buckle and he lowers her to the floor. "Labour, Fred. I'm going into labour"

Fred blinks and then he snaps into actions. Within half a second George is there and God Bless him Lara loves him because George takes one look at the situation and immediately directs his eyes towards the stars or in this case her ceiling.

"We need a midwife" Fred snaps. "Mum?"

"No" she snarls pushing upwards. The thought of the woman she once might have thought of as her mother in law seeing her like this is nothing short of torture.

"Get me to a hospital" she hisses pushing at his shoulders but Fred the bastard doesn't so much as shift under her faint pushes.

"Mum won't leave the house" George says over her protests. "You know she won't Fred and…" he trails of and Lara screams as the pain hits her and Fred sobs with her though she hates him for that.

"Get Tonks" he shouts

"What good is Tonks—?"

"Her mum is a Healer George"

"Oh right—give me sec, I'll give Remus a call"

And then George is gone and Lara moans.

"Lara I need to see…can I check…please my darling can I—"

"Yes" she snaps because right now he's all she's got and Fred pulls her old sweats and her underwear off and swears.

"Well" he says looking back up at her and grinning—the bastard! "I don't think we'll have to wait much longer. I might be wrong but I can see something that might be a head coming through." He grins at her and she wants to smack him but instead she clings to his shoulder and then his hand as if he's the only man that will save her from this utter hell.

"Bed" she hisses at him. "I will not do this in a hallway"

"Understood" he says and then that wand is out and she's in her bed and the door opens and a woman with greying brown hair comes in George hot on her heels.

"Right" she says in a way that reminds Lara of her headteacher. "Out both of you, this is woman's work and I don't need either one of you here. Fred go wait in the…well…go wait outside. You" she says as Lara attempts to sit up. "Lie down."

Lara lies down.

"Who are you?"

"Names Andromeda Tonks dear and I'm a qualified healer. You've met Dora my daughter I suppose? Well let's see what we've got here" and without further ado she peers down and Lara howls because another stabbing pain hits her.

"Why are you here?" she asks once Mrs Tonks has stopped looking. "Is there something wrong…because…I don't know if he's going to have magic"

"Oh no dear" she says at once her face kind. "No, no, it's nothing like that. I think Fred just panicked. Normal thing for men to do in this situation is feel like they are doing something. Now then…looks like your little lad is coming along nicely. I'd say sooner rather than later…looks like he doesn't want to waste any time. I can already see his head and his shoulders are coming out rather rapidly too. Look like your going to give the Weasley's another little redheaded boy"

Lara groaned though weather it was in pain or not she honestly couldn't say.

Of course.

A red head.

Typical.

It takes another two hours and then suddenly there's a great rush of feeling and then the intense pressure is gone and her legs collapse on her bed and Mrs Tonks is taking something small but screaming away and wrapping it up in a clean towel. She does something and then turns around grinning.

"Looks like a perfectly healthy little lad. Well done my girl"

She waves her wand and the sheets are suddenly changed and a blanket pulled over Lara so she's got some privacy but her attention is completely fixated on the little boy that she's holding.

Her little boy.

Her son.

Archie.

Born at home on February 26th 1998 at 4.59 PM.

He was a tiny little thing which she was surprised at considering how she'd pushed him out of her body. He was screaming, bawling really his tiny fists in the air and Lara had an amusing thought that perhaps his arrival had been as much as a surprise for him as it had been for her. He had the Weasley red hair in thick tuffs and she was sure that was Fred's nose peaking out at her. His eyes were a shade of brown and hazel mixed together and she knew it was her eyes staring back at her. He quietened down and snuffled and she kissed his forehead taking in the tiny eyebrows and the small fingernails. And he was perfect, and she loved him with everything she had in him and he was hers…

All of a sudden it didn't matter that she was alone in this, that she had very little to offer in terms of stability or that there was a war going on. All that mattered was that this perfect little human was worth everything.

She remembered as if hearing it from a long time ago, Fred telling her about Harry Potter and his mother who had leapt in front of him knowing she would die and not caring for a second. Lara thought she knew just how Mrs Potter had felt.

"You should forgive him you know" Mrs Tonks said finally. Lara looked at her and the other woman shrugged.

"I'm not blind my girl…besides it's a tale as old as time isn't it? They always think that we're defenceless and helpless or that were better off without them and we're left picking up the pieces. My own husband he left, twice now. Tried once to do it when we got together all those years ago and now just recently…both times he said it was a way to protect me from my family…stupid—" she cut herself off abruptly.

"I wish that I had known then what I know now…because nothing, nothing he did would ever convince me that the time I spent with him was wasted. He was—well—all that matters now is you and your boy but…hating someone is such a waste of your time. And now you have a child believe me…you don't want to miss a single second of it"

Lara swallowed back everything. Her tears and her emotions and her everything…she nodded but she knew it did not covey anything that had happened in the last few hours. She wanted to hold onto her baby boy forever and never let any harm come to him and harm would come to him if she opened that door. But she had grown up without a parent and had experienced the terrible self doubt that came with it.

Throat to tight to speak she nodded.

Mrs Tonks smiled though it didn't met her eyes. She seemed to be dealing with a sadness that was beyond words and Lara thought that she might already know the answer without asking the question as to what had happened to her husband.

"Thank you" she said as she moved towards the door. "For everything I mean—this was probably not what you wanted to do on a Friday night"

Mrs Tonks laughed. "It keeps a woman feeling young dear. I'll come back in a couple of days and I'll leave my details, call me if there's anything your worried about—I had a muggle-born husband, a telephone is easy for me now. I'll leave some basic instructions on what to do with George, try not to move too much either. And ask for help. Help in the next few hours is so important."

Lara wouldn't tell her what an extraordinary relief that was.

As soon as she had gone the door opened and Fred stuck his head round the door. He looked like he'd been in as much pain as she had and Lara looking at him hated the fact that she still loved him, was still in love with him and would always still love him.

"Come in" she said shifting and wincing as everything seemed to just collapse beneath her. She was well aware she was still in her old sports bra and not much else but Fred didn't seem to care. His eyes were fixated on Archie who had now settled down somewhat.

"Do you want to hold your son?" she asked. She found she wanted to give him this moment—that it didn't matter about all that had gone between them as long as he got this moment and she got to see it. The two men who owned every part of her even if she couldn't be with one of them because she was a stupid…stupid Muggle.

Fred looked from her to the baby and then nodded. He sat on the bed and she shifted biting her lip to keep back the flash of pain and gently shifted Archie from her arms to his. Fred made a small noise.

"Hello mate…it's me…Daddy" he looked up at her his chin wobbling and his eyes very, very wet.

"Lara he's—"

"I know" Lara said safe in the knowledge that nothing was more perfect than her baby boy and this moment right here when it was just the three of them.

"He's a red head as well"

"Yeah well he's a Weasley isn't he?" Fred cooed softly. "And I bet he's going to be a Beater"

Lara knew that was something to do with broomsticks but she didn't care.

"Archie" she said into the silence. Fred looked at her.

"His name is Archie. After my dad…and…I thought perhaps Frederick could be his middle name…unless you have another one in mind? I mean George or Lee or—"

"Lee and George as middle names?" Fred said with an eyeroll. "Nah they'd never let me hear the end of it. Is he…I mean…I understand if you don't want my name…"

Lara hesitated. She had always intended her son to be a McIlroy but now…now he was here in his father's arms and it was hard to hold onto what she must do next.

Why not give him this small measure of comfort.

"Weasley. Archie Frederick Weasley"

Fred lets out another one of those small soft noises and then he kisses Archie's little hand as it comes out to wave hello.

"Hello Archie" he says and Lara has to look away.

"Fred" she said girding herself. "The war is bad again isn't it? George said you'd been on the run a lot."

Fred looks at her and she knows he knows what she's going to ask him to do by the way his jaw clenches.

"Yes" he says finally. "He's winning and I've been broadcasting…so to speak…see Lee had this idea of getting real news to the people because what they get now is utter bullshit propaganda and we keep getting raided. But it's good work, hard work but it feels like were making a difference you know?"

And she does know. Lara thinks that she might have gone along with him. Because she knows that what he's doing is good work, great work even and she would have wanted to help him.

"Are they still watching me?"

"Not in a while. George…It was the only thing that kept me from coming back…he told me that you were safe and I believed him. Besides You-Know-Who hasn't even been in the country. We don't know where he is but the Order knows that much"

"So what happens now?" he asks jaw clenched. Lara shrugs.

"What do you think happens now?"

"I know what I want to happen" he says earnestly. "I know I want to stay here with you and our son and never leave. I know I made a mistake…a stupid mistake in an effort to keep you safe and I know you might never want me like that again but…but I'm a Dad, Lara. I'm Archie's Dad and I want to be his Dad. I want to be the one to teach him how to walk and how to fly and all about girls…I want to be in his life even if his Mummy doesn't want me in hers. I don't know how to stay away from you"

"But you have to" she says her voice wobbling. One look from him, one honest look at him and she fears she'd crumble and any day other than today she would as raw and emotional as she is. But today she knows she has to do this. She has to put her baby first and right now with half of the bad side after him Fred is part of that danger.

"You said it yourself. Somewhere in that Ministry there's a piece of paper with my name and address written on it and at some point you or your brother will be caught and that will be the end of that. Right now I can protect him if they don't know about him. If they don't track you here"

Fred looks away and stares at her wardrobe and Lara takes the opportunity to slip Archie from his arms and back into hers.

"Your right" he says in a cold detached voice. "But it doesn't change anything for me. I'll go, I'll leave you a number this one reachable and you call me if you need anything but…but there won't be so much as a second that I'm not thinking about your or our baby boy. And when this is over and the bastard is finally dead I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna be his Dad and your best friend and hopefully if you'll let me the man you trusted and loved once before."

Lara shook her head.

"Fred—"

"Just can I get you to promise me one thing?"

She nods numbly.

"At some point this is all going to go tits up. Trust me. I want to charm a bag of yours with what's call and Undetectable Extension Charm which means that the bag will fit everything in your flat into it. Can you put some stuff in there, for you, for Archie and carry it around with you…and then if the worst comes to worse I can get you and him to safety?"

He looks at her then so desperate that she cannot do anything but nod. It's practical she knows and it makes sense. Archie is the priority for both of them and he has to be protect. Fred drops his head and stares at Archie who stares back. Soon he's going to want feeding and then she predicts he will scream the house down but for now father and son stare at each other and then Fred kisses her and she lets him.

It's like nothing between them has gone and it was the morning of the wedding and everything was golden and the war wasn't something she worried about. Being a Muggle was the most natural thing in the world instead of the curse that she now sees it as. Instead he kisses her like he wants to devour her and she lets him. She lets him kiss her and she clings back as their tongues mesh together and they breath each other in coming apart.

"I don't hate you" she says under her breath. Fred gives her a sad sort of smile and then drops a kiss onto the top of Archie's head. He pulls back runs a hand over his shorter red hair and then manages something that is not a smile but not a farewell either.

"Love you Lara"

And then he's gone and she knows without seeing that George has gone with him and then as Archie cries for his feed she is crying for his father and the life that she thinks they could have had together.

---

She gets a month and a half of maternity leave and it's a mess. She's a mess. Archie feeds well but her breasts are sore and tender and she's tired all the time. She's doing it all herself and though Mrs Tonks comes by a couple of times Lara still doesn't sleep easy anymore. She wonders if she ever will again.

She goes back to work and manages to find babysitting in the teenager down the hall from her who needs cash to fund what must be an endless supply of false eyelashes and when she comes back she locks the door and spends time with her sweet, silly little baby boy who kicks up his toes in the air and throws up on her jumper and falls asleep in her arms like it is the most natural thing in the world.

She loves him as easily as if it's air.

She doesn't regret anything.

Only once she wonders how Fred is doing keeping away from their boy and when she thinks like this or when Archie does something new like manage a small smile she goes and puts some spare nappies and shirts in her black strappy bag that she can loop over her shoulder. As time goes by she adds more and more for herself as well until half of her flat is empty. All of the sentimental things she puts in there. She wants to protect him and she knows this is the way and though she doesn't want to admit it exhaustion wipes Archie's red-headed father from her mind.

She doesn't turn on the news either way.

She takes Archie to the park one day and she's aware that she's watching as if she expects one of those Death Eaters to come out of hiding. It's stupid but she hurries home and locks the door and doesn't sleep that night. She wonders if this is what it's like for Mrs Tonks, for Molly Weasley and all the other mothers out there who don't know if someone is watching their home and waiting for the order to take them out.

She wants Fred.

She needs Fred.

Her fingers dither over the phone, his number on the post it next to it and she thinks long and hard about weather or not she can do it but she hold's off. Archie chooses that moment to let out a wail and she runs to him and by the time he's fed and changed they are both so tired that they just fall asleep.

She gets to April and the weather is warmer and she's settled into a routine. Archie has changed every day and now she's sure he recognises her. He smiles when he sees her and he kicks his legs out more and she really needs to get him a haircut because the red curls are getting wild and she wants to scoop him up on her hip because he is the most perfect baby in the history of perfect babies.

It's then that it happens.

Archie's favourite toy now has become a stuffed elephant and she goes looking for it as he starts to fuss but he just waves his hand out like he's grabbing her and suddenly Phant as the well worn toy is know has landed on Archie's stomach and her baby is unconcerned instead kicking his feet up and Lara feels her mouth drop open because she knows what he's just done even as she holds him.

Her son has magic.

Suddenly with such an intense longing she wants Fred there. She wants him here with her and her boy. No…their boy. Their magical boy.

"Well done!" she says and she does to some extent mean it. "Well done Archie! I'll tell you what shall we get Daddy here and show him?"

Archie is to interested in his Phant to care.

She goes to the phone and dials the number feeling exceptional stupid.

It rings once.

"Lo?"

Shit he was asleep.

"Sorry did I wake you?"

"Lara? No I'm fine did something happen?"

She can see him in her minds eye forcing himself off whatever he was sleeping on and standing up his red hair skewed and she loves him, dear God she loves him.

"Archie just used magic"

There's a split second of pause and then a laugh of joy, of relief and she can see him in her mind. And she wants him to be here for this.

"He just made his elephant appear without warning and he's so very, very smug about it…" she says rocking him back and forth on her hip.

"Do…er…do you want to come over and see if he'll do it for you?"

There's a long pause and Lara's suddenly filled with a sense of utter foreboding but then she hears a sigh down the phone and then a very quiet, "Sure."

She hangs up the phone turns around and Fred is just coming into her flat.

Jesus she's forgotten that he was good at doing that.

"Hello" he says smiling at her. Archie gurgles at him and Fred's eyes slide from hers to his.

"Hi Archie" he says and there's a raw kind of hunger in his eyes and she thinks that he must have been desperate to see them all these months. He looks thinner and exhausted and there's a look to him in his old jogging pants and a black t-shirt that's seen better days that makes her wonder if she pulled him from sleep despite it being the middle of the day.

"Would you like to hold him?" she says and he takes Archie before she can even blink and he's hooking him on his hip and Archie is beaming.

"My clever lad" Fred says beaming. "My clever, clever little lad. Eh? Using magic for the first time"

Lara watches them for a second and then—

"Do you want to stay the night?"

Fred starts. "I don't mean like that" she hurries to say. "I mean…I need to get some sleep and you and he can have some time together and…well…it would be nice."

Fred beams at her and it's as if the months of the war have been stripped away.

"I'd love that" he says.

Lara smiles. To be honest she's too exhausted to say anything else and she has a long bath, feeds her son and then when she's got clean hair falls into bed and is asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

She wakes at what feels like midnight and she shifts. She's pressed near the wall and Fred has climbed in on the end of the bed, Archie between them fast asleep safe and protected. She can feel the weight of the heavy bag on the end of the bed and she wants to do something or say something but she can't because she doesn't want to spoil this warm, deliciously sleepy moment.

Fred curls an arm around both of them and Archie snuffles in a clean onesie and Fred kisses her and mutters. "Stop thinking and sleep"

She smiles to herself and falls asleep again almost instantly and Lara's last thought is perhaps Mrs Tonks was right and perhaps now is the time to forgive.

She's awoken by banging on the door. Fred's awake next to her his wand out and she realises that nobody other than she and his brother can knock on her front door and she slips her feet into warm socks and shushes a fussy Archie back to sleep wrapping him in his blanket and grabbing Phant. She's in her looser pyjama's and Fred comes back into the room George following him and his face tells her all she needs to know.

It's over.

They've found his brother.

"We need to go" Fred says taking Archie out of her hands, his head rests against his father's shoulder but he still sleeps on. She puts the bag around herself numbly and grabs her boots and keys though she doesn't know why she grabs them. How was it that just a moment ago she was in bed? She looks back at the still warm sheets and all she wants to do is to crawl back into them and pretend like none of this ever happened.

"What happened?" she asks as he grabs her by the hand.

"Ron got caught, he's alright but they know he's with Harry now so It's any second now, George thinks they've already hit the Burrow"

Lara swallows her fear and grips his hand.

She doesn't even get a chance to look back at her warm little home that she and her son and Fred have lived in before they're gone.

She thinks she sees as she turns someone coming into her flat but she's gone before she gets the chance and then suddenly her feet hit solid earth and she's breathing in the cold air that comes from the smell of the coast not to far away.

Archie screams but Fred's already pushing them towards a small gate his wand out and she doesn't get time to ask a question before she feels like she's stepped into a bubble. Only then does Fred stop running and he passes Archie to her as the door to what looks like a large manner house opens and in the light standing in the way is a man that she thinks she recognises as Fred's father.

There's another popping noise and then George is there.

"Done" he says wincing. "You missed them by ten seconds almost. Most of the Muggles are out I pulled the Fire Alarm thingy should scare them away and I made it look like you'd been gone a while, cleaned out the fridge and whatnot."

Fred nods but his eyes are on his parents both of whom are watching them. George laughs shortly.

"Time to face the music brother" he says clapping Fred on the shoulder but Lara doesn't care, the arm holding Archie is aching and she's hot and cold at the same time and events are moving too fast for her muggle brain right now. She opens her mouth to speak and Fred turns to her his face a mask of concern but then she's pitching backwards as again for the second time since she's met him, she's faints.

---

Lara wakes to sunlight streaming through the sky of an open window and she wants to bat it away but she can't because her whole body feels like it did the one time she thought it was a good idea to go dancing while drinking. Whatever she's been doing she's been doing it well thought, she hasn't slept this well since…

Archie.

And then it all comes flooding back to her.

Archie.

Fred.

What she knew was a Death Eater in her apartment. Lara pushed herself up and then swore as her head gave such a pounding peel that she thought she was going to vomit.

The door opened and a woman came in. It was Fred's mother and Lara dragged up her memory of what she had looked like at the wedding, a bit tired and a bit run ragged and a bit thin but nothing to how she looked now.

Molly Weasley looked exhausted.

The war and being a mother of sons in this war had clearly taken her toll and looking at her Lara suddenly felt a thud of fear that this was her future in front of her. First an intense worry for Fred and then thudding fear that came if this bastard was not defeated and her son, her Archie, the sweet little baby would pick up a wand and go and fight.

The thought of any harm coming to her little boy made her feel physically sick.

Molly Weasley looked at her as if she understood that and so, so much more.

"It's alright dear" she said softly though it wasn't. "Your safe now"

She didn't know how much of that was true and there was something in her face that made her pause.

"But…"

"The Death Eaters couldn't find you, so they torched the building. The Order sent a couple of people round and as far as we can tell most people got out but your home is pretty much destroyed…" She trailed off and passed Lara a glass of water. She drank greedily her brain hurting from all of the information—she could—and she would handle that information another time and she filed it away in the dark corners of her mind to come back too later. She wanted to focus on what was important and that right now was her boy and Fred.

"You've been out—oh a good couple of hours" Molly Weasley continued. "I told Fred not to worry but he never listens to me…he's been pacing a hole in Muriel's carpet with your boy for the better part of an hour…I'll have to get him at some point and—"

"My son—"

"Oh he's perfect. Oh…he is so perfect. Fast asleep with Fred. Didn't so much as bat an eyelid and George told me I was shouting pretty loud but seriously! I could shake the boy with all that you have had to go through. And alone!"

"You…don't mind?"

"Well I have to admit that I would have preferred a ring on your finger before I became a grandmother…or at the very least to have met you beforehand but I know times have changed since I've became a wife…but your Archie's mother, clearly you're the woman that Fred loves and that's enough for us. That makes you family."

"You don't mind then?" Lara asked suddenly. It felt like a million years since she had been in a turquoise dress and had been walking over to meet this woman and she felt years older.

Mrs Weasley sat down what looked like a tray with enough food on to feed an army and then without warning as if it was second nature, pulled her into a hug and Lara despite her self proclaimed independence and strength and ability to get on with things regardless of her emotions suddenly found herself returning that hug and glad of it. She had never really been hugged like this, as if by a mother and she found it both strange and addictive. She found that she couldn't understand the enigma that had been her own mother since she'd become one herself because how could you leave someone that was so perfect and so innocent and so dependant on you? How could you do that?

Molly Weasley pulled back and patted her on the cheek.

"Honestly dear" she said smiling. "You're a muggle. My husband is thrilled. He's been compelling a list of questions for you when your ready for them. I told him tomorrow. Fred and you could do with some time alone though I must warn you—" she said suddenly stern.

"I adore my grandson—" she flushed pink when she said the name. "But I don't want another until you and Fred sort some things out. I appreciate a marriage is not everyone's cup of tea—" she acted as though she did not. "But I expect best behaviour"

Lara nodded.

"Good. And it's Molly dear. And It's so good to finally meet you"

"Lara…my name's Lara"

Molly beamed and then she was gone and as soon as the door opened Fred was there, Archie in his arms and he passed her, her boy and she leaned back against the pillows her eyes overbright again.

Fred still in his pyjama's as was she, she realised her bag slung over the chair in the corner crawled into bed with her and pulled them down so that the three of them were together again under the covers. He spoke about how they were at his Aunt Muriel's, that she was offering them protection and that they were trapped here. Ron, his brother had managed to escape and that had bought them a warning, Ron to Bill, Bill to their father and George to him. Now they were here. They couldn't leave, his sister couldn't do magic and it was only going to be a matter of time before he left to fig—

She cut him off at that point.

She didn't want to hear about fighting.

"Just hold me" she said quietly leaning her head against his chest Archie on her stomach playing with her top. Fred nodded pulling her closer as she tried to get warm.

"I love you" he said into her hair. "I love you, I love you, I love you. And I know you cannot say it back or you don't want to say it back but I do and there it is. I love you and him and I will never stop loving you"

Lara watches her son with her eyes and Fred's red hair and thinks she loves him to but doesn't say it.

---

Living with the Weasley's is both jarring and yet easy. George is very easy and Ginny the younger sister seems to be more worried about her boyfriend than she is about Lara. Lara sees her sometimes with Archie on her hip staring into space and wonders if perhaps the girl that is only four years younger than she is likes the idea of pretending that Archie is her red-headed son and that the love of her life is going to come through the door any minute rather than be hunted down like a rabid dog.

Bill she meets once. He's a bit more closed off but he's polite and if he is distracted she doesn't blame him. She can see them all tense whenever the door is knocked even though they can count on one hand who can come near the house.

Arthur Weasley she likes at once and he likes her. He's an enthusiast for all things Muggle from the Post Office to the toaster and when she tells him about the microwave she thinks he might faint from excitement. Molly too she likes, the woman declares Lara 'underfed and cooks to feed an army and takes Archie off her when he's fussy and she so desperately needs a shower, sleep or both, and when George mentions they never got to celebrate Lara's birthday she comes down next day to see her icing a cake.

Even Muriel—or as Fred calls her 'The Old Bat'—is liveable. She mutters something about babies born on the wrong side of the sheets and then looks Lara up and down snorts and then says in a carrying tone—"At least you have decent bone structure. Better than the one with skinny ankles and the one who was too French" and then stalks off.

"She must like you" Fred mutters and Lara laughs but she finds she likes Muriel. She's got no filter whatsoever which makes her hilarious and when Lara mentions one night that she had wanted to study Muggle History she had found out Muriel had lived through both wars on the magical side. The woman had given her a book about the magical world in World War One and Lara had been unable to put it down for most of the following week.

It's easy to live with them, easy to imagine that this is normal and that they can leave the house and her home isn't a smoking relic.

She and Fred make an oddly domestic little haven.

The room she's in is neat and clean and there's a bed and a crib and a bathroom. There's a table and two chairs and a dresser with a mirror and a window that overlooks the grass in the garden and gives off wafts of a clean fresh kind of scent.

It's perfect.

(It's not, not really but it is all at the same time)

There's never been any formal discussion about it though she thinks Molly wants to say something and Arthur is stopping her, instead she and Fred just make their situation work. They sleep together with no discussion needed and he curls his arms around her like he used to do. He presses kisses onto Archie's little feet and laughs with him and lets her sleep in. Sometimes he sneaks in food and they laugh until one in the morning. It's like reliving the days of their relationship all over again and she loves it and hates it because this time she's older and she's wiser and she knows that this is going to end.

It does.

The first of May dawns brightly and then suddenly it's night and Bill Weasley is there and she knows the fight is about to begin because the giveaway is in Muriel's face. Fred grins at her.

"I'd said I'd get the bastard" he says finally and Lara thinks that's she's an idiot because she's wasted so much time trying to forgive him when in reality it takes this moment for her to realise she forgave him a long time ago.

"I love you" she says Archie on her hip. "I love you and please…please come back to us"

Fred runs a hand down her hair now down to her shoulders and tugs her closer kissing her so softly it's like a feather's touch. He kisses Archie's cheek who beams at his Daddy. "I love you" he says simply as if it's the easiest and the best thing in the world and he looks at her the same way he did when they were standing outside that Muggle restaurant and the world was golden and bright and there was still hope and then he's gone.

It's so quick and so pointless and Lara thinks she knows about long nights but this is going to be the longest she's ever lived through.

Muriel makes tea and she puts Archie down and she tries to sleep but she thinks she's going to puke. She paces until her knees ache and she tries to read but the words swim. In a way she's relieved when she has to feed her son and the familiar routine takes over, Archie babbles at her and she thinks that that brief hug cannot be the last time he sees his father.

She hates this. She hates being useless. She hates him for going to fight the bloody thing and then she hates herself because one way or another tonight this is over and Lara prays for the first time since she lost her father that fate throws her and Fred and bone and allows them time to grow from hardened young adults into mature parents.

Muriel says nothing to her but she thinks the woman prefers her own company and Lara sits with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap so they don't shake.

She loves him, she loves him, she loves him…

George appears at dawn. He's caked in mud and blood and his eyes are wild and harrowed and he looks like he's seen and done things that Lara will never understand. It makes her grip Archie (now asleep) tighter and she finds Muriel's hand and feels the older woman's bone like fingers grip back tightly. They don't remark on it even years later, this one show of emotion from both of them after the longest night of their lives.

"It's over" George says as dawn appears on the horizon and the sky is lit up again.

"He's dead. Vo—he—You-Know-Who, he's dead. Harry killed him, it's over"

Muriel lets out a long breath and nods. Lara grips Archie who is beginning to squirm. It's over.

It's over.

Can it really be? Can such a thing be?

"Give us the number boy" Muriel snaps. She's gripping her mug rather tightly and Lara and George both glance at each other as if to confirm that they both know that's she's stopped drinking tea about three hours ago and is working her way steadily through the gin.

"Fifty dead on our side, none of the Weasley's. Tonks, Lupin they both fell…most of it's students, a lot who were underage snuck back and they just got…" he trailed off closing his eyes and Lara understood that he was saying that the students who were mostly killed were teenagers who either got caught in the crossfire or where dumb enough to come back to the fight and she thinks that while she hid here with her baby on her hip there were children younger than her fighting and dying and parents older than she is going to receive the worst news possible. She thinks of Mrs Tonks and her kindness and the ravaged beauty that was her face when she talked about her husband and now she's lost her daughter and her son in law both of whom were perfectly lovely to Lara and she can feel her heart heave in sympathy.

She clutches Archie tighter. There's something in the way George now won't look at her that she doesn't like.

"Where's Fred?" she asks and George stops his hand on the counter and she realises he's steadying himself to tell her something and she grips Archie tighter. He's awake she realises and watching his uncle as if he too understands that something has happened here.

"He's alive" George says finally. "He was…he was up on the fifth floor when half of it caved in. Percy managed to pull him out of the rubble but…but the only way he and Ron could do it…the only way they could save his life was to…they had to cut off his leg Lara"

Lara stares at him.

His leg.

They had to cut off Fred's leg.

George keeps talking and she hears that it's only below the knee and that it's his left leg and wizards do wonders with prosthetics and that the main thing is that he's alive but then her legs give out and Muriel is pushing her into a chair and she swallows as George takes her boy out of her arms and she realises it's because he thinks that she must be about to faint.

That makes her grit her teeth. Lara has fainted twice in front of the Weasley twins and she is not going to make it a third time. Instead she pulls herself together and tells herself sternly that George is right, it doesn't matter, not to Archie and most certainly not to her. All that matters is that the father of her child and the man she loves has come through the bloodiest wizarding conflict to date alive.

Lara can and will deal with the rest later.

"I'm ok" she says looking George in the eye and seeing relief sweep his features.

"Good cause well…how opposed are you to breaking International Wizarding Law?"

And that is how Lara finds herself standing outside of the gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Or what's left of them anyway.

George covers Archie with a blanket and Archie thinking he's playing hide and seek for Daddy (or that's what she tells him anyway) mercifully doesn't fuss. Lara manages to keep a hold of him and George's hand as she moves through what would have once been a wonderful castle to live and learn in (it's beauty is unparalleled even as it shatters beneath her feet), as he tells her that muggle parents can walk the halls of Hogwarts to see their students but they must be accompanied by a wizard and that is why it looked like they were walking into a shack and came out into a horror show.

For it is a horror show.

The bodies have been moved but there is blood on the walls and smoke coming off banisters and there's a smell of scorched wood and earth and plaster and something else that she doesn't want to think off. Students are milled around in an Great Hall that easily would have fit a football stadium in a couple of times over. Students mill around ashen faced, some bleeding, some crying with friends and family, some sitting, all with stunned looks on their faces as if they don't still believe they've made it through the night.

She sees parents arrive and hug their children and with a horrible realisation some look around only to be approached by a teacher and she knows what that means but George pushes her through the room and down towards another corridor where George explains the most serious of cases that don't need immediate medical assistance are in the Hospital Wing.

The Weasleys are there all of them black and blue and the blonde woman who she knows is Bill's wife. With them are four people she's not met before. One covered in burns who introduces himself as Charlie, one who simply gawks at her until the girl holding his hand with the bushy hair introduces herself as Hermione and that his name is Ron and a third in horn rimmed glasses looking as if he's unsure if he should be here and she knows this is Percy the one who got parsnip thrown at him at a Christmas dinner so long ago.

Fred's on the bed and she can see under the covers where his left leg stops and she swallows. Archie turns his head now free to look at his father with his wide brown eyes as if to realise that something has happened here and that his Daddy will never be the same but Fred turns his head and sees her standing there, their son in his arms and he manages a small smile before he turns his head and his shoulders start shaking.

"Can you give us a second?" she asks Arthur under her breathe. She says it to Arthur because she thinks out of all of them he might understand why she needs to be alone with his son and her own right now and he nods smiling at her—though it doesn't meet his eyes and the exhaustion and the grief that is bleeding into them—and he ushers his family out some looking at her with curiosity and some with flashes of sympathy.

She hates all of it.

"So it's over" she says sitting on the bed.

Fred sniffs but nods. He still doesn't look at her and she's pissed off by the entire thing.

"Look at me Frederick" she snaps and weather it's her tone or the use of his full name he does.

"Lara" he half sobs and she grips his hand her own eyes overbright and she grabs his chin Archie half perched between them and stares down at him so that he can see her eyes and see the love and the devotion that is there. That has never gone away if she is being honest with herself. And right now she is honest with herself. If she ever going to be honest with herself it is going to be now.

"It doesn't matter" she says to him forcing his eyes to met hers. "It doesn't matter to me Fred, it doesn't matter to Archie. What matters is that you are alive. What matters is that we are alive. And the war is over. And…and I love you"

It's never been easy for her to say she thinks. She wonders if now she's said it and meant it with every bone and breath in her body if it will get easier.

Fred makes another hiccupping noise but doesn't sob anymore. Instead his arms twist to Archie and Lara places their son in his lap and Archie looks up through his red hair that really needs cutting and his small hand come out to grip onto Fred's singed fingers.

"My little lad" he says softly as if Archie being here is a miracle in itself and Lara hates to even wonder just what has happened to make him look like that.

"It wont matter to him" Lara says finally. She thinks of her own mother and thinks that this might be the last time she ever draws comparison to herself and her ever again. She's her own woman now, she's a wife and a lover and a survivor and she has future with the man she loves and her little boy.

"I know" Fred says finally. He looks at her again and she's aware of how utterly vulnerable he is in this moment and she wants to hug him but Archie is falling asleep and she's not going to jeopardise that for anything.

"I don't care Fred" she says again and she holds his face in her hands and stares at him. "I don't care, I really don't. It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters to me anymore other than the fact that we can be together—that we can be a family"

Fred surges up then and kisses her, Archie squarks with protest and then starts screaming in annoyance and the fussy woman called Madam Pomfrey comes charging back down the row of beds like a cavalry charge to tell Fred to lie back down and can his friend please go so he can get some rest.

But Fred is smiling like he did so long ago when she was just the girl in the Paper shop and he was the boy looking for a card and she doesn't care about anything other than that.

---

Lara Weasley is not a witch.

She's thirty one and she's old.

"Hardly old sweetheart" Fred says when she looks in the mirror on September 1st and swears she can see wrinkles. "And your legs look as good now as they did eleven years ago"

"You know I don't need magic to hurt you?" she says grinning. She tugs the long dark hair into a high pony and pulls on her jeans and an somewhat decent jumper and winces again.

"I know" Fred says from where he's still lounging in bed. "But today you look especially ravishing so why don't you come back to bed?"

She laughs at that—he can still always make her laugh until her sides ache and she wants to throttle him but she'll only end up kissing him and that will make her late and lateness on a day like today is not permitted.

She's taken the morning off from teaching at the local primary school and Fred acknowledging her silent point groans and sits up reaching for his protistic with his wand. George was right wizards could do wonders with those just as much as muggles could and when Fred has it on it doesn't look like anything changes. He has to take it off to sleep for comfort but she doesn't care. She never has.

He likes privacy when he does it however she's learnt that so she turns away and pulls on socks and then boots and then her husband is dressed just as a crash comes from the kitchen.

"Told you" she says grinning as she rapidly puts on her make up and Fred pokes his tongue out at her.

"Sorry Mum. It was all Isla's fault" comes the voice of her seven year old daughter Mia and then without warning four year old Isla bellows with enough force to wake the dead, "No it was not my fault Mummy! Mia wanted to make waffles! And Archie's doing sod all!"

Lara sighs utterly exasperated.

"This is your fault you know?" she says over her shoulder. "You're the one that let's that Marcus Flint around them, he corrupts them for fun you know?"

"I don't let Flint around them! I let Uncle Oliver around them! So what is Flint and Oliver are together? Besides you'd think Oliver would try and control his boyfriend"

Lara snorted. She had met Oliver Wood and Marcus Flint on several occasions. She liked Marcus as well and she loved Oliver but Marcus said what he thought and didn't care of the consequences—naturally her kids loved him. And deep down despite his utter horror at thought of his kids liking him…Fred thought he was alright to though he'd rather take a curse that admit it.

There was a crash and then without warning Archie skidded into the room, slid to a complete stop and righted himself against the dresser. Lara sighed. Her now eleven year old son was already dressed in Hogwarts robes and his red hair was sticking up like an electrocuted hedgehog and more to the point he was clutching his new wand with a glee that could only mean something bad.

"You know Dad I can stop the two of them arguing if you want—"

"No" Fred said reaching for his own wand. "Arch, you know you can't do magic until you walk through those castle walls and I don't fancy another visit from the your grandfather because you've alarmed seventeen muggles by turning your sisters into badgers"

"I never did that—great idea though cheers Dad!"

Fred laughed, Lara sighed because honestly her boys were so similar sometimes it was hard to tell apart the adult and the child.

"Come on" Fred said trying to ruffle their son's hair (he jumps nimbly out of the way, all of her children are complete freaks when it comes to their hair) and he holds out his hand to her and she takes it linking their fingers together like she did all those years ago when he told her he might be falling a little bit in love with her.

So much has changed and yet nothing at all.

Lara McIlroy is not a witch. But as corny as it sounds she thinks her life has some incredible kind of magic in it.

---

And there you go I hope you enjoy. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and safe New Year.

Enjoy.