A/N: This one is the grand finale! This story was quite fun to write—thank you SharkiesGirl for the challenge!!
"The boys" mean Alicia's little brothers. Don't think they're canon, but oh well—can't you see George loving little boys to play with?
This chapter is AU/SU—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't review!
Disclaimer: How about YOU go ask JKR for the rights to HP, see where it gets you!
Prompt: Tree
He's standing under a tree when she arrives, smiling at him in her beautiful way.
"Alicia," he says, offering her his arm.
"George," she responds with a grin—the grin that never fails to be there.
"How are the boys?" he asks, customarily.
"They're lovely." She tells small anecdotes, his favorite part of the afternoons, and he laughs and sighs at all the right places.
These afternoons are everything to him. Her smiles and stories, his attentiveness—he can't help but fall in love with these days as he does with her. She is his tree, his stronghold in these past years when he's been so bloody lost in the forest of stupid old life. His tree grows stronger every day, and with it, so does he.
"And you? How are you?" It's always the end of the afternoon—they ask about each other. It's the part he dreads, because she has to know his weaknesses.
"I—I'm alright. Angelina keeps coming round, looking…lost."
"Oh," he says, because he can't think of a response.
"Yeah. She needs lots of help right now, I think."
"Alicia." He stops her leisurely walk with his suddenly penetrating gaze.
"Yeah, George?" she asks, bewilderment showing on every crevice of her perfect body.
"Alicia, it's been three years since—Fred died." (How long it's taken him to say that without breaking down! He's infinitely proud of himself now.) "I love you. I want to marry you."
She's taken aback by his sudden directness—he can see it in her face. But she composes her features into that smile that he adores once more. "Is that a proposal?"
"It is if you say yes."
She smiles, her eyes filling with tears. How cliché, he knows she is thinking, because he can read her now like he was once able to read Fred. "Of course I bloody say yes!" she laughs, and rushes into his arms, ignoring the obvious Muggle movie ending it seems to be.
"I love you, Alicia."
"I love you too, George. How could I not?"
And so, through the ending of his world, a new beginning comes.