The next three weeks passed quickly, and before Nora knew it, Arthur was back on night raids, and she was trained up and working well. Her part time hours kept her in the office for three days a week, while she spent the other four days in a careful balance of studying and trying to allow herself as much downtime as her body and mind needed.

However, she felt like something was missing.

It was a peculiar feeling, but one which had wriggled and burrowed its way into her mind since she'd met that redheaded stranger in the sandwich shop.

She couldn't really stop thinking about him... but she didn't want to go looking for him in case she found herself disappointed, which she definitely would do since he still hadn't managed to find her three weeks after their meeting.

She'd wondered if she shouldn't have been so aloof, but she knew there was nothing she could do about that now.

And so, on Monday morning, she pulled on a simple black dress, slipped on her white plimsolls, and picked up her backpack to head to the office.

She'd recently found out that certain magical objects could be enchanted without ramifications, and so she'd managed to get her hands on a Muggle MP3 player and with Arthur's help, had charmed it to work within the Ministry walls.

So when she reached the Ministry atrium she placed her headphones over her ears and pressed play, drowning out the hundreds of people swarming around her.

She'd just reached the lifts when she felt someone staring at her. It was a tingle on the back of her neck which alerted her, and she turned to see the old woman who she'd seen weeks before standing by a pillar, staring over at her. Nora shrugged it off and stepped into the now-waiting lift.

She was pushed to the back of the lift by the witches and wizards who'd walked in after her, and the doors were about to close when a hand darted in between the black iron gates. The lift operator opened the doors again, tutting at the late passenger.

"Sorry," came a man's voice, and Nora tried to hold in her excitement when she realised who it was - the redheaded stranger!

Although tall, she was standing behind a good few people, and so even on her tip toes she could just about see his hair, but not who he was with. And she couldn't hear their conversation when she removed her headphones.

About three stops into their journey, the lift cleared of most of the passengers, leaving Nora, a few Ministry workers, the redheaded man, and his dark haired friend. Nora couldn't see much more, and they aren't talking to each other, but the way they stood left her with no doubt in her mind that they were together.

"Level two, Department-"

Nora drowned out the operator's words as they came to a sudden stop, and pushed to the front.

"No," the dark haired man said, shaking his head. "We're meant to meet them downstairs."

"Right," the redheaded man replied. "Are you sure that-"

He stopped speaking and Nora looked up to see him staring at her while she pushed past his friend. She managed to keep the frown off her face. His floppy hair had been cut, cropped back. He was still handsome, of course, but there was something different in the way he looked at her now which made her feel less attracted to him. Which she found very odd.

Also, she wondered if he'd always had a freckle on the tip of his nose. She'd not noticed it before... then again, she'd only met him once. She couldn't assume to know him or his kissab- nope. She couldn't assume to know his normal, absolutely normal face all that well.

Still thrown from the fact that the stranger had changed just the smallest amount since she'd last seen him, she ducked her head and slipped out of the lift as the doors began to close.

At the last moment she dared to look back, and smiled at him, thinking that maybe it was just a trick of the light.

Despite herself, Nora held his eye for a second, winked (she didn't know why), and then turned and left when the lift zoomed off.

She thought about the wink, and how stupid it was... How stupid she was... For the rest of the day.

xXx

The next time Nora came across the stranger was in Flourish and Blotts, not two weeks later, not two months later, but two days later.

She was looking for a romance novel. Something to curl up and read so that she could try and remove a certain man, who obviously wasn't interested in her, from her mind.

She was stood in one of the quieter sections of the shop, eyes flickering from cover to cover as she read the names and occasionally pulled a book out to read the blurb. She'd commandeered a small table which she was using to hold her 'will buy' and 'might buy' stacks of books, and was slowly but steadily adding to each pile.

She'd just picked up a rather raunchy covered story which had a topless wizard on the front, when she was interrupted.

"I reckon you owe me dinner for winking at my brother..."

Nora shoved the book back onto the shelf and turned to see the floppy haired stranger standing in front of her. She thought it was incredibly odd... his hair was back to normal, and he didn't... he didn't have the freckle... Twins.

"You're a twin..." she waited for him to nod, and then said, "You know you still owe me lunch for bumping into me... Won't this just cancel that out?"

He just grinned, shook his head, and placed his hands in his robe pockets. He was in a light green today which suited him perfectly, but made Nora feel out of place in her teal corduroy dungarees and white top.

"Well..." he said, "you issued a challenge to find you, but then disappeared off the face of the earth, so in most places that would invalidate your lunch as you reneged on your part of the deal which was to not make finding you too hard. But then you bumped into my twin brother and winked at him. It's not your fault really, we are identical, but I still reckon you owe me dinner for the emotional damage you've inflicted."

"Emo- emotional damage? And lunch isn't off the table, you're the one who didn't look for me..." Nora complained.

The stranger scoffed and raised a hand to his chest. "Well, it took me two minutes to realise you worked at the Ministry of Magic, and I'll have you know I ate that Merlin-awful gruel they call lunch for four days in the café and you never turned up, so I just thought you'd come by the Alley sometime and I'd find you then. But I'm guessing you've been avoiding the Alley as well?" Nora ducked her head and he let out a chuckle before he continued, "Exactly. So, you're the one playing hide and seek, stomping on people's hearts left right and centre, which invalidates lunch, but then you upped the stakes by flirting with my brother..."

"Hey! Okay, I'll admit I didn't exactly make it easy for you, but I take offence to both of the last counts. I wasn't stomping and I thought I was winking at you..."

"Ah, so we look the same then, that's fine," he said, turning on the spot.

Nora was sure that he was joking with her, as she was joking with him, but for the briefest of seconds fear and worry crept in, and she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Well you're not identical. But I made an educated guess and put myself out there. So sue me."

The stranger turned around immediately, a smug smile playing on his face. She would have thought he was overly confident, had it not been for the slight blush creeping its way onto his face.

"We're not identical?" he asked slowly. "Because of the hair?"

"No..." Nora replied. Though she instantly regretted it.

His smile grew. "No? Pray tell?"

Nora pursed her lips, crossed her arms, and looked around for a few moments.

"Fine, dinner's on me if you can really tell the difference," he said, still grinning.

"And if I can't?" she asked, the smile sneaking its way back onto her own face.

"You can buy me a drink?" he asked, his blush rising slightly.

Nora grinned now, and nodded. "I accept your terms. He has a freckle on the tip of his nose. You don't."

The smile dropped from her face when she saw the stranger's reaction - his jaw slackened, and he just stared at her blankly for a moment.

"Oh god, I was wrong, wasn't I?" she asked, grimacing.

The stranger recovered, swallowed thickly, and shook his head.

"Then you're creeped out that I noticed that?" she asked worriedly.

Again, the stranger shook his head.

"You're not?" she asked, frowning.

"No... I uh- not even our mum knows that. It's how I tell us apart in pictures from before my ear..." He coughed and trailed off, looking around. Nora tried to get a look at his ears but she could only see a little bit of each of them, which looked normal... "Anyway," he said, "uh... I'm impressed."

Nora grinned. "Then how about we upgrade my reward to breakfast?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in what she hoped was a flirty way.

Her favourite meal of the day was breakfast. Well, a good breakfast cooked not by herself. On an average day, Nora didn't eat anything between waking and getting to the office or library. Every so often she'd eat a banana or something, but she always felt the need to get stuck into the day before she ate anything. So on the rate occasions that she had a long, leisurely wake up, she'd treat herself to pancakes, or waffles, or better yet, she'd go and sit in a Muggle restaurant and pay for someone else to make her breakfast foods.

The stranger's splutter and further reddening made her re-evaluate her words.

Before she could say anything to cover her mistake, he replied with a simple, "Dinner first?" and she nodded quickly, wishing that the floor would swallow her up whole.

She gulped and, hoping to change the subject, said, "I'm Nora, by the way."

"Nora?" the man asked, frowning slightly. For a moment she was worried he might know who she was, but then he nodded and replied, "I'm George. Well, George W-"

"Wait!" Nora cried over his words.

He stopped talking and turned, looking over his shoulder sharply for a any danger.

"Oh, no, sorry," she said, grimacing. "I just meant..." she ducked her head when he turned back to her, and she stared down at her white trainers. "Well... This is weird, but... Look, I don't want to lie to you, but I also don't want you to know who I am... It's... complicated, and I'd rather you just know me for me rather than for my surname..."

She looked up and the stranger looked like he was thinking for a moment, his blush disappearing as he paled. But then he nodded. "What did you have in mind?" he asked, his voice thick for some reason.

"Well, I have a... an incognito surname I've been using. But I don't want to lie to you and pretend that's my real name. I don't know why, I just.. I just want you to know it's fake, but I can't tell you my real surname. Not yet... Would you be okay with us using fake surnames? I promise I'll be one hundred percent honest with you about everything else in my life to the point where you'll probably run for the hills..." she said, letting out a small laugh.

George nodded.

"Okay, then hi George, I'm Nora Islington."

"Hi Nora Islington, I'm George-"

"Fake surname."

"What?" he asked, bemused.

"I get a fake surname so it's only fair you do too. Then we can't have any presumptions about each other, we'll both be on the same page. You don't know anything about me, I don't know anything about you."

If possible, George grew slightly paler, but he nodded nonetheless. "Okay... I'm George..." he looked around for a moment. "King," he said, looking at the cover of one of the romance novels on the shelf.

Nora chuckled. "I like it."

"George King?" he asked, frowning.

"Yeah, you've got a good sense of humour. George King,... Geor-King? You're joking?"

George's grin made Nora's stomach feel like butterflies had attacked it again, and she knew why she'd been unable to stop thinking about him for weeks.

"Are you free tonight?" he asked, eyeing up the small stack of books on the small table next to her.

"It's my day off," she said, shuffling in front of the table to hide the titles from view.

"Mine too," he replied, smiling. He checked his watch and thought for a moment. "Give me fifteen minutes and I'll meet you back here?"

"Sure," she said slowly. At her answer, George began to walk away from her, towards the front door of the shop. "You know it's only about three, right?" she called after him.

George winked at her and replied over his shoulder, "It's dinnertime somewhere in the world..."