To be honest, Bill still found fire-balls of rage erupting in his stomach sometimes when he thought about his younger brother's stupidity at the last full moon. Still, these quickly subdued as he remembered George had had his reasons. Stupid reasons, yes, but still reasons. Staring down in the cauldron placed on the living room floor with a safe flame under, half his mind was on the brewing, half was on the events that brought him to brew it.
–
George heard footsteps. Tack, tack, tack, a steady rhythm across the linoleum floor, four to the left, four to the right, then three to the left again. He cracked his eyes open to see a blurred shape with long, red hair flowing over the shoulders pace back and forth by the end of his bed.
"Hi, Bill," he muttered and settled himself better on the mattress. He had passed out shortly after they arrived at St. Mungo's, but it looked like his father and oldest brother had gotten him help anyway.
"George." Bill's voice was just above him and he opened his eyes again, blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, then met Bill's glare as best he could. "You complete idiot!" Bill had grabbed the collar of George's shirt and hoisted his back up from the mattress.
"Oh, am I?" George retorted.
"Yes!" Bill heaved his brother another inch up. "Fred came in just after dawn, scaring both me and Fleur halfway out of our skins, then tells me you've gone and chased after a bleedin' werewolf in the middle of the night and kinda got bitten!" The older's free hair fell like curtains around them, framing their vision to nothing more than each other's faces.
"Bill, could you let go of me now?" George said, swallowing hard.
"Why should I?" Bill flared his teeth, his forearms quivering under the stress of holding his brother's torso.
"Or else I might kinda throw up on you," George answered. Bill let go at once as if he was holding red-hot coals and passed George a basin.
"You know you were stupid," Bill said when George was done, took the basin from his hands and put it hard down on the side-table again before throwing a towel haphazardly in his brother's direction.
"No," George said, falling back on the mattress with a small thump after wiping his mouth and chin. "I didn't just run out in the middle of the night after the werewolf."
"Oh?" Bill said, not in much of a mood to hear George's feeble excuses for ruining his life.
"No, you see, there was a girl," George told him, feeling a stab of pain in his chest at the thought of Lucie.
"Oh, there was a girl," Bill answered sarcastically, but drew up a chair to sit down beside George's bed. "Tell me, then." George took a deep breath and began telling the story, starting with the previous afternoon and picking up the threads as best he could as he went along to make up more or less the whole picture.
When he was done, Bill heaved a great sigh and looked into his eyes again. "I still think it was stupid," he said. "But a little bit brave, too."
"A little bit?" George repeated. "It's the bravest thing I've done since Moldy-pants snuffed it!"
"The stupidest too," Bill said hard, getting up from the chair again just as their father appeared in the doorway. Seeing the oncoming blow-up, Arthur hurried over to them and patted George's hair absently.
"Go and find some tea for us, would you, Bill?" he said softly. Bill snorted, but took the hint and strode out. "How are you?" he asked George the second they were alone behind the screens.
"Perfectly fine, if it's normal to have your heart in your hand," he answered and gingerly lifted his injured hand from the blanket, turning it over to take in the sheer size and colour. It had swollen to over twice its normal size and glowed in purple and red with a hint of dark blue along his knuckles, his fingers stuck out like over-cooked sausages and his pulse made the whole thing beat a sickening rhythm.
"There'll be some some Healers along to see you shortly," Arthur said, still stroking his son's fringe away from his forehead. His blue eyes were soft and worried behind the lenses and George couldn't keep the small twist of guilt in his gut at bay.
"I'll be fine, Dad," George said as calmly as he mastered. "They have the Wolfsbane Potion, right?" He attempted to smile, but his lips quivered as the reality really sunk in. He had known it all along through those cold hours out on the moor with Fred, but first now he allowed himself to worry about his future.
"Yes, they have," Arthur agreed quietly, but George could see the tears wanting to escape his father's eyes.
–
The potion was coming to a boil, but Percy subdued the flame under it before Bill even registered the potential disaster it could cause. Bill wasn't known to bear grudges or be angry for long, but exactly werewolves got to him. Maybe it was a childhood of being warned against going outside after dark, maybe it was that he himself had been attacked once and got away with a warning and several nasty scars, maybe it was both. Whatever it was, he hoped George would get through the night all right.