Weasley Wizard Wheezes, Diagon Alley, London.

As much as George loved his shop, he hated it too. He hated it because everywhere he looked, there was something that reminded him of Fred. Every bit of merchandise, every firework, every ton-tongue toffee...they all reminded George of him and of how they had made them together, how they had run this store together.

George straightened from unpacking boxes and stared out into the shop. Less than three years ago, the shop had boomed with sparks and explosions both of sound and colour; now it was far more drab. The shop was silent and had been for a long time.

"George!"

George cursed under his breath. "Go away!" He called back.

A tiny red-haired witch stepped into the storeroom and rolled her eyes. "Go away?"

George focused on the boxes of extendable ears he was adding to the shelf, avoiding her gaze. "Ginny, I thought you were supposed to be at Quidditch practice."

"Not for a few weeks," said Ginny. "Mum thought that maybe you could use some help down here and since I'm free..."

"I don't," George interrupted her.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Really? Because it looks like..."

"Ginny!" George said more harshly than he meant to. He sighed and straightened. "Sorry. But seriously, I don't want any help." Especially not now. Not when it was almost the anniversary.

Ginny was quiet for a moment, watching him. "We're worried about you," she said quietly. "You haven't been the same since..."

"Ginny," he said again, this time wearily, as he rubbed his hand over his face. He sighed again. "Look, you can't expect me to be the same. I'm never gonna be the same."

"I know that," Ginny said softly. "Just tell me how I can help."

George gave her a pained look. "You can't." He sighed at her hurt expression. "Look, I'll come by the house this evening for dinner, all right? I'll try, but I need to get this done, and I want to do it myself."

"All right," said Ginny, finally, with a nod. "Let me know if you need anything, okay?" When George nodded, she turned around and headed the rest of the way out, and George got back to the boxes.

He was just getting into a groove in moving items from boxes to shelves when he heard the door jingle out front. "Ginny!" He stomped his way out of the storeroom to head out into the main store. "I thought I told you..." He trailed off.

It wasn't Ginny.

Standing in his store was a tall, slender witch, her dirty blonde hair falling in haphazard sort of curly waves around her shoulders. It was her eyes though that stood out-they were a brilliant blue that matched her blue robes. For a moment, he couldn't look away. Where had he seen those eyes before? "Sorry," he told her, averting his eyes and shoving his hands into the pockets of his robe. "I thought you were my sister coming back to bug me because we are closed."

"No, I'm the one that's sorry." The witch's gaze darted back towards the door for an instant before she turned to focus on George again. "The door was open, and there wasn't a sign..."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." George followed her gaze as she looked over her shoulder again. "Are you all right?"

She turned back toward him. "I'm fine."

George shook his head. "You're about as good of a liar as I am."

"Excuse me?"

George sighed. "My twin died, but my family wants me to be okay, so I tell them I'm fine all the time, even though I'm not. You said you're fine, but you're clearly not either." Normally, he didn't like to talk about Fred-it was like a knife to the chest to even say his name, but for some reason, it felt okay to give this brief mention to her-maybe because it seemed that she was in as much pain as he was.

She blinked at him. "You have a point there," she muttered.

For some reason, he couldn't just dismiss her. "Look, I may be closed," he told her, "but you can come in if you like. I can...get you a cup of tea or something."

The witch looked over her shoulder again, before turning back to George and nodding. She took a few steps deeper into the shop. "All right. Thank you."

"I'm George, by the way." George retrieved a jug of water from the counter and poured its contents into a tea kettle.

"Thea."

"Thea? I like that." He tapped the kettle with his wand, before turning toward her. "You're probably going to think this is really strange, but I swear that I've met you before." He used his wand to send tea leaves floating into two teacups. "How do you take your tea?"

"Plain is fine." Thea looked over her shoulder for a fourth time before focusing on him. "We went to Hogwarts together, so you probably know me from there. We were just in different houses."

That would explain it, but, somehow, he was certain that he was thinking about something else. "Do you want to talk about it?" Because there was clearly something on her mind that had her constantly looking over her shoulder. He poured the hot water into two teacups and handed one of them to her. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to though. Everybody wants to talk when they think you're hurting, and sometimes you just need it to be okay to feel how you feel."

Thea shook her head. "It's not that...it's just...I work for the Department of Mysteries, so I can't talk about anything that goes on at work."

George raised an eyebrow. She was an Unspeakable? Before he really had a chance to ponder that thought, the door jingled at the front of his shop.

"Bloody ice cream!" came Ron's voice, speaking loudly from the doorway. "We're supposed to be Aurors, and instead of taking us seriously, they have us getting ice cream!"

George rolled his eyes. "My brother..." he started to explain to Thea, but she had vanished. Briefly, he wondered how she had managed it-probably a disillusionment spell, which meant she wasn't really invisible, but rather that she had made it so she would blend into her surroundings. The other options were much more far-fetched-invisibility cloaks were rare, and if she had disapparated, he would have heard it. George shook his head and headed out to the main part of the store. "Ron, I already told Ginny that I didn't want any help or any visitors!"

"Nice to see you, too." Standing in the middle of his store, was George's red-haired brother Ron, and his best friend Harry, whose messy black hair hid his famed-lightning shaped scar.

"Hi," said Harry when George looked over at him but wisely said nothing else.

George shook his head again. "I'm busy," he said simply. He hardly wanted to explain to his brother that he had a disillusioned witch hiding in the back of his store and that they had been having tea.

"Right," said Ron. "Busy doing what?" And he headed further into the store.

"Ron, I don't think..."

But Ron ignored Harry as he spotted the teacups. "Do you have company?"

Before George could answer, Ron continued, "You do, don't you?" said Ron, grinning. "Where's she hiding?" He peered toward the backroom.

"Ron, stop it!" said George, trying to block Ron. Thea was already spooked as it was; he didn't need his nosy brother scaring her more.

"We need to get that ice cream anyway," said Harry. George hadn't noticed, but Harry had been moving closer to the outside door and was now opening it, motioning to Ron to follow.

"Oh, right." Ron stopped struggling and turned to shuffle out dejectedly after Harry. After a moment though, he stopped and turned back around to face George with a grin. "But don't think we'll be forgetting about this."

"We just stopped in to say hi, but clearly you're busy." Harry grabbed Ron's arm to pull him out of the shop. "Come on, Ron!"

George shook his head for the third time and headed back to the storeroom, figuring that Thea must have gone there to get away from his brother and Harry. "Thea?" he called. The next thing he knew, she appeared in front of him. Definitely a disillusionment spell. "Something definitely did happen at work, didn't it?" And it was something illegal. Why else would she be hiding from his brother and Harry? She was jumpy as it was, but casting a disillusionment spell just because his brother showed up? That was a little far-fetched. But casting a disillusionment spell because two Aurors-in-training had come into his shop? That made a lot more sense. And if she was hiding from Aurors then she was most definitely in trouble.

"I'm not a criminal if that's what you're thinking."

"I didn't say you were a criminal," George said lightly, although it had been what he was thinking.

"But you are wondering why I was hiding from two Aurors," Thea said softly. She wasn't looking at him, but at her unpolished fingernails. Finally, she spoke: "I'm not a criminal, but my boss is." Then she met his gaze. "I don't think he knows I'm considering breaking my vow and turning him in, but if he does, if he even suspects, I wouldn't put it past him to send Aurors after me on a phoney charge. I know that it was your brother and his friend, but I couldn't be sure that my boss hadn't sent them. It wouldn't be the first time he's misrepresented the facts and gotten away with it."

George looked away, considering. Misrepresented the facts... phoney charges... He looked up. "You're Thea Walker, aren't you?"

For a moment, Thea didn't say anything, and she looked at the floor. But then she met his gaze head-on, almost defiantly. "So, what if I am? I suppose you believe the Prophet's version of things then?"

Her blue eyes were blazing, and now he knew where he had seen them before. How many times had he read the Daily Prophet's version of her parents' murders, read Rita Skeeter's articles that had mocked Thea as being crazy-but he had remembered her eyes in the photos-and at school. She had been a prefect at school-had busted him and Fred more than once, and she hadn't seemed crazy then. She most certainly didn't seem crazy now, no matter what the newspaper had said. He turned back to focus on her. "To be honest," he said quietly, "I always thought your story was more believable than the Prophet's-or that idiot Liam's story."

Thea blinked rapidly a few times, fighting back tears.

"Hey," he said. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you cry." He tried to move towards her and nearly tripped over a box, before shifting it out of the way-not that he knew what he was going to do if he reached her.

Thea shook her head. "No, it's not that...it's just that...there's only one other person who really believed me."

George moved another box, so he could stand in front of her. "I don't think that's true," he said quietly. "There are loads of people who know that anything by Skeeter's a load of rubbish."

"Thank you," she said softly, and for a moment, they just stared at each other, as if something magnetic was pulling them together before Thea finally stepped back. "I should go. I need to go back to work...and I need to figure out what to do about my boss." She took a few more steps back, turning to head out.

"Thea?" George called after her. "Is Liam Rowle your boss?"

Thea turned back to face him and nodded.

"Then you need to turn him in," George said seriously. "Say the word, and I'll get Ron and Harry back here. I know that they would believe you over Liam." Normally, he would've stayed out of it, but Liam had been a git back at school, and there was something about Thea that made George want to keep her there longer. It was almost like she was a kindred spirit-like they belonged to a club that nobody wanted to join, and for some reason, he just felt better being around her.

Thea looked as if she was considering it, but then she shook her head. "I don't know. I need some time to think about it."

George nodded. "If you decide you want to talk to them, let me know. I'll make sure you can get in touch with them." And if she did that, he would get to see her again, something he hoped would happen.

"I will," Thea said softly, before turning again for the door.

"Thea?" George called out to her again. When she looked back, he continued, "I'm really glad you wandered into my shop."