(GoF) CHAPTER THREE: The Babbling Brook and the Burrow
He led her to a place that was best described as a "babbling brook"—a quaint, secluded, pretty little spot about a five minute journey from where they had left Sirius.
"Discovered it at the beginning of the summer," he explained to her as he kicked off his shoes and headed to the water's edge, where he took a seat and stuck his feet into the water. "Been coming here whenever I needed time alone to think."
"Time alone," she repeated, kicking off her own shoes and coming over to join him. "Without George, you mean?"
"Without everyone. I got used to it, you know—having you around. Having someone to talk to late at night when I couldn't sleep. Making subs for two."
She knew he meant to be kind, but it wasn't working. He was basically admitting he had grown to take her for granted, which didn't exactly make her feel good.
"You look different, you know." He reached out a hand to tuck her hair behind her cheek, but, seeing her flinch away from him, put the hand back down. "It's hard to believe you changed so much in less than two months."
"It's just dirt and grime," she said dismissively. It wasn't, though. Even without looking in a mirror, she could tell her body had changed that summer. Her woman's curves had finally reached maturity. She wasn't a scrawny child anymore.
"El." His voice was strained and tired. "I need you to know how sorry I am. I know I messed up. I know you have no reason to forgive me. But I still need you to know."
It wasn't the first time he'd said it. He'd apologized back in June, too, before she and Sirius had taken off on Buckbeak. He hadn't given an explanation, though—either time. "I just want to know why, Fred. Did you really think those things about me? That I'm some sort of… of…"
"No," he said quickly. "Of course, not. The things I said to you that night—I was a fool. A scared, childish fool. I just couldn't wrap my mind around it, El—around someone like you wanting to be with someone like me."
"And by someone like me," she said coldly, "you mean someone who dates a lot of boys."
"No." He reached for her hand, but again, she pulled away. "I mean someone so beautiful, sometimes it hurts to look at her. I mean someone so brave, it takes your breath away. Someone so special, every other person in the world dulls in comparison. Do you have any idea what it's been like for me this summer, El? Not knowing if you were okay? Not even knowing if…" He trailed off, but his unspoken words were the loudest: not even knowing if you were alive?
His words made her ache with the same longing she had felt that night on Christmas Eve and a thousand times before and after. But along with that ache came the other kind of ache—the kind that she had felt after he rejected her. The kind that she refused to let herself feel again.
"You didn't just protect yourself, Fred," she said, hugging her knees to her chest and looking away from him. "You broke my heart. You took my best friend away from me."
"I know, and I hate myself for that. I've replayed the past six months over and over again in my head all summer, El. I should never have rejected you in the first place, but it's dumping you as a friend I feel even worse about. I never meant to keep it up so long… I just thought I needed… time. Time to figure out how I could ever be close to you again without… wanting to kiss you again."
Again, his words make her ache. Hearing the word "kiss" on his lips quite nearly made her own lips tingle with desire. But did it matter? "And? Did you figure it out?"
"No," he admitted with a bit of a chuckle. But his expression grew serious again. "But I would have found a way, El—like I am now. You just moved on to him so quickly—to Oliver, I mean. And then it wasn't just the being around you that I had to face, but the being around him, too. Do you have any idea what it was like for me, seeing the two of you together? Seeing his hands on you, after what happened between us?"
She had some idea of what it was like. She'd tried to imagine the reverse several times over the years—what it would feel like for her to watch Fred fall for someone like Angelina or Katie. It certainly wasn't pretty. But, then, she hadn't rejected him.
"You don't get to make me feel guilty, Fred," she told him coldly. "You could have had me. It could have been your hands on me."
The sentence seemed to plague both of them with thoughts neither of them should be having, and suddenly Ellie was quite aware of just how close together they were sitting. But Fred didn't dare make a move.
"I know," he said for what felt like the thousandth time. "I only said it to try to explain why it was so hard for me to apologize to you sooner. I never stopped caring, though, El. I never stopped loving you."
But it hurt—it still hurt—it hurt almost too much to bear. She ran a hand through her ratty, unkempt hair, suddenly feeling the urge to scream. "We should go."
"Wait." His warm eyes searched hers, the desperation in them evident. "Just… tell me that we can be friends again, El. Tell me we can find our way back to that, if nothing else."
If nothing else? Was he suggesting that, after all that had happened, he wanted to be more than friends with her? Granted, several of his comments had suggested as much, but she still didn't find it any easier to believe.
"I don't know if we can or not," she finally said, swallowing. "But I'm willing to try."
When Ellie and Fred entered the Burrow an hour later, they were met with cheers of joy and excitement.
"Oh, thank goodness!" exclaimed Molly as she wrapped her arms around Ellie in a bone-crushing hug. "We were so worried—your father really should never have gone off like that—I know Albus believes he's innocent, but honestly—"
"Hang on," Ellie interrupted, eyes lighting up. "Dumbledore believes him?"
"Like I said," said Fred with a small grin. "We have a lot to catch up on."
"Bloody hell, Ellie," said a new voice—the voice of Ellie's pseudo-little-sister, Ginny Weasley—as she came down the stairs. "You look different."
"Yeah," said George, coming over to her from the kitchen and giving her a hug. "Like you haven't showered since you left Hogwarts."
She stuck out her tongue at him as Ginny, Ron, Arthur, and even Percy all came over to greet her. With them two boys she hadn't met yet—more men than boys; older even than Percy. They had to be Bill and Charlie.
"Heard a lot about you," said the shorter, stockier of the two. He was covered in freckles, so much that he almost appeared tan. "Charlie Weasley."
"Yeah—Fred here wouldn't shut up about you all summer," said the other brother—taller, thinner, and undeniably cool-looking, with a ponytail and even an earring. "I'm Bill."
Ellie was thrilled to meet the final two pieces of the Weasley puzzle, and parted her lips to start asking them both all sorts of questions about their jobs and lives, but Molly swooped in to interrupt.
"We'd better let Ellie go upstairs and get cleaned up and settled in, boys." She scanned Ellie's small, canvas bag with a bit of a frown. "Ginny, you can let Ellie borrow some of your clothes, can't you?"
"Of course," said Ginny, who was still eyeing Ellie with a bit of a wrinkled nose. "I'd love to. Come on."
"That's better," Ginny said to Ellie thirty minutes later when Ellie emerged from the bathroom fully scrubbed, shampooed, conditioned, and shaved for the first time in over a month. "Did you not have a shower where you were staying?"
"We didn't exactly have fully functioning plumbing and electrical," Ellie admitted with a frown. "Thankfully, Dad's pretty good with that sort of magic, so we were able to get by. We sort of left in a hurry, though. Didn't exactly get the chance to clean up."
"Left in a hurry?" Ginny repeated. "Did something happen?"
Ellie considered filling Ginny in on the craziness of the past few days, but ultimately decided that now wasn't the time. She had too many questions for the Weasleys, who were undoubtedly waiting for her downstairs. "Can we chat later about all that? Right now, I just need something to wear."
As it turned out, most of Ginny's clothes no longer fit Ellie. One of the few things that did was both a bit formal and a bit cheerful for her taste—a lavender, halter-strap sundress. Impatient to get back to the Weasleys and preferring the sundress to something that exposed her navel to them all, Ellie pulled it on and headed back down the stairs with Ginny.
It was impossible not to blush when she returned to the dining room. All eyes seemed to be on her, but none more so than Fred, who was staring at her like she was all he wanted to look at for the rest of his life.
Which, of course, just made her heart hurt.
"Yeah, yeah," said Ginny impatiently as she took a seat at the table and gestured for Ellie to do the same. "Only thing that fits her now that she has boobs and I don't. Can we get on with it, already?"
Ellie managed a laugh at that, blushing as she turned her gaze away from Fred.
"Firstly and most importantly," announced Arthur, "the Quidditch World Cup is looming, and Ellie, we'd love to have you join us."
Sirius had mentioned as much, but she hadn't allowed herself to hope it was a real possibility. "But… do you have enough tickets? Surely you didn't have enough notice that I'd be coming?"
"Oh, don't be silly," said Molly dismissively; "we got yours months ago, along with the rest of the family's, Harry's, and Hermione's. Weren't about to give it up on the off chance you decided to stay in that ridiculous…" But she trailed off when Arthur kicked her under the table.
"Where did you stay, anyway?" George asked her curiously. "How far did you go?"
Ellie parted her lips to answer him, but she wasn't entirely sure what she should or shouldn't say. Ron and Fred knew the full extent of the story about Sirius, of course, but the rest of them? Bill and Charlie barely even knew who she was.
"We all know everything, my dear," Molly explained as if reading her mind. "When Remus and the kids told Albus, we were one of the first families he reached out to—us and your mother, of course."
"My mother?" Ellie repeated, stiffening. "He told her about Dad?"
"She was furious, naturally," said Arthur. "Didn't quite believe it the way the rest of us did—denial, I reckon." This time, it was Molly who kicked Arthur beneath the table. "Sorry. Anyway—when she found out you'd gone off with him, she was horrified, but Albus managed to talk her down. By the time the Ministry came knocking on her door and asking questions, she had agreed to give them the story we all helped concoct—that you spent the summer at a Muggle political internship in Germany."
"A Muggle political internship?" Ellie repeated, wrinkling her nose. "They believed that?" But then the rest of what Arthur had said sunk in, and she quickly pivoted to the more important question: "Why did the Ministry come knocking?"
"They claimed it was because your Trace dropped off the map," Molly explained, "but we have… other theories."
"Snape," Fred explained to Ellie. "Woke up shortly after you left. Refused to believe any of our story about Sirius—even when Dumbledore told him he believed it."
"So you think Snape told the Ministry about me and Dad leaving together—about him being my father?" asked Ellie. "My own uncle?"
The few people in the room who hadn't already known that Snape was her uncle seemed to blanche at that; Molly and Arthur, at least, weren't among them.
"In all likelihood, yes," said Arthur. "The rumor seems to be out, at any rate—whomever is responsible. But the Ministry didn't have sufficient evidence to try and extradite you from Germany, so they chose to believe your mother's story—at least, on paper."
Ellie's eyes trailed carefully over to Percy, who, she knew, had been seeking a job at the Ministry of Magic since his graduation in June.
"Oh, don't worry about Percy," said Arthur when he saw her expression. "He's not exactly thrilled about keeping secrets from his new boss, Mr. Crouch, but you are family, after all."
His words filled her heart with warmth and happiness, settling her into her final question: "Will I be allowed to go back to Hogwarts?"
"Of course, you will," said Fred. "We would never let them stop you."
His words were, of course, all too touching to her, despite the fact that she doubted Fred would have had much sway over the Ministry of Magic if it had come to that.
"I'm thinking France," announced George suddenly. "Ginny reckoned you went to Spain or Italy, but I told her that was too far."
"Too far?" she repeated, laughing. "France was week one. Italy was somewhere in week two. We were in Austria by week three."
Everyone grew very silent at that. Finally, Molly asked, in a hushed, careful voice, "You mean… you traveled the whole time? Never found a place to settle?"
"No—we did find one, eventually. It was in Poland, I think—or maybe the Czech Republic. I'm not entirely sure."
Another long, heavy pause. Then, in a timid voice, Ginny asked, "Did you like it there?"
Ellie's mind flashed to Aleks at that, and she tried not to shudder. She decided to tell Ginny the one thing she did like about it: "I liked having a home with my dad."
As you're probably starting to see, my GOF will have a thick pre-Hogwarts start just like JKR's did. We still have to make it to the Quidditch World Cup, among other things... but we've got a bit more Burrow action first. Stay tuned for that, and keep the reviews and follows coming!
