Girl's Night In

George tipped back the bottle of Scotch Ale, draining the last dregs from it. 'Come on, Shorty,' he said to Den, 'Let's go see if we can spot Nessie. Les and 'Lina will look after the little snot-monsters, won't you, ladies?'

'Nessie!' I exclaimed. 'I'm not falling for that one, George! You're going to the pub, aren't you?'

George stared at my fiancé. 'Haven't you told her?' he asked.

'Have you ever really thought about how much stuff there is to tell a Muggle?' Den asked. 'I'm still finding stuff out myself.' He turned to me, a smile on his face. 'The monster exists, Les.'

'Don't you start!' I wagged a scolding finger at my fiancé. 'I'm not that gullible.'

'It does, Lesley,' Angelina said quietly. 'What, exactly, has Dennis told you?'

'He's told me that he's an Auror, that you two are both—whatever you are, and so is his boss, Polly. And he's showed me some magic, and I've seen his broom,' I said.

'I'll bet you have, I'll bet you have,' said George, his voice full of innuendo.

'It's almost certainly more impressive than yours,' Angelina told her husband acidly. George burst out laughing.

'There's a lot more for you to learn, Les, sorry,' apologised Dennis. 'There are monsters, too.'

'The correct term is Magical Creatures, Dennis,' said Angelina firmly as she shuffled around in her chair to face me. 'I work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Lesley. You may see some of them at the memorial service. The centaurs, and merpeople will be there, and you may even see the hippogriffs.'

I stared at Angelina. She, like George, was something of a joker. Although she sounded deadly serious, I'd been caught out by that act before. Unable to tell whether she was being honest, I turned to Den. He nodded.

'There will be at least one werewolf there, too,' he said.

'You two go looking for the kelpie,' said Angelina. 'Lesley and I will have a nice girly chat. We haven't had a proper chat since you told her the truth, Dennis.'

'Is that okay?' Dennis asked me.

'You don't ask her!' George protested. 'You tell her! She needs to know who's in charge!'

'One more crack like that, lugless, and you can stay with the kids while Lesley and I go to the pub,' said Angelina firmly.

Sorry, boss,' George replied meekly.

'You're taking it all very well,' Angelina told me after George and Dennis had left on their monster hunt. 'How long have you known, two weeks, three?'

'Two weeks, and two days,' I replied. 'You're the first, the first...'

'Witch,' Angelina supplied. She was very matter-of-fact about it. It seemed that, to her at least, there were no negative connotations to the word.

'You're the first witch I've spoken too since Den told me, and proposed,' I said.

'Tell me all about it,' she demanded. So I did.

'And now you're going to the remembrance ceremony with him,' Angelina observed approvingly when I'd finished my story. She stared into my eyes, and turned serious. 'Thanks for inviting us here, Lesley. This is the time of year when Dennis and George need each other the most. George has been getting better over the years, but this year he's been worse than... worse than… well, he's hiding it well, now that we're here, but he's really down. It reminds me of how he was after The Battle. I think it's this anniversary. Ten years! It's a long time, but right now it feels like it was only yesterday.'

'It's a big anniversary,' I said.

She nodded, and rubbed her shoulder. 'George used to drink himself into a stupor on his birthday, and he didn't resurface until after the Remembrance ceremony. For the first few years after The Battle there was an entire month of grief and drunkenness, and Dennis was the only person he would talk to.'

'Before I knew the truth,' I told Angelina. 'Dennis told me that Colin and Fred both died in a fire, and that's why he and George were so close.'

'In a way it's true. They died in the fire of battle,' said Angelina. 'Dennis and Colin weren't twins like Fred and George, but like the twins, they were inseparable at school. We were in the same house, and in Dumbledore's Army, but I don't think George and Den had even spoken to each other until after they lost their brothers. They bonded in grief.' Angelina's eyes were unfocussed as she stared back into the past.

'It's probably a good thing that they did. George's family, Perce in particular, tried their best to reach out, everyone did, but George couldn't, or wouldn't, talk to any of his family after The Battle. The thing was, George wasn't with Fred when he died, but Perce was, and so were Ron, Harry, and Hermione. We've talked about it, and I think that was George's biggest problem, to be honest. There were five of them in that corridor, but the explosion only killed Fred. George...' Angelina hesitated, and lowered her voice. 'Don't tell anyone else this, Lesley.'

'I won't,' I promised.

'In the immediate aftermath, George wanted it to have been one of the others, preferably Percy, who'd died. Percy had been estranged from his family for a long time, and George needed someone to blame. To be honest, I think George would have been able to cope with any death, other than Fred's. Even when George and I got together it took me a long time to figure out what was really wrong. I finally got an admission from him a few years ago. It wasn't simply that Fred was dead; it wasn't only that George hated himself for not being there, it was because he hated himself for wishing that Percy, or one of the others, had died in his twin's place.'

'Dennis hated himself because the last thing he and Colin did, before Colin left for the battle, was argue. His last memory of Colin is of them fighting and arguing,' I confided. 'Please don't tell anyone else.'

Angelina stared at me. 'They told each other, didn't they? Ten years, and now I finally know why it was that, for years after the battle, George wouldn't unburden himself to anyone but Dennis.'

'Not even you?' I asked. 'You were both in this army thing, weren't you? I thought you were close.'

'We were, at school, but he didn't really talk to me after The Battle, not for a long time,' Angelina admitted. 'I was Fred's ex. George and I didn't reconnect until almost three years later.'

'You were Fred's ex?' I asked, shocked. 'What happened?'

'Fred and I were together for about six months—from Christmas to the summer holidays—in our sixth year,' Angelina explained. 'Fred didn't even finish with me. The summer holidays arrived, and he stopped communicating. The little shit blanked me when we got back to school, so I made him pay. I was Quidditch Captain, and I made both Fred and George suffer in our final year. Then I left school. I didn't see either of them for a while, and I fell in love, and fell out of love, within the space of a year.'

I opened my mouth, but Angelina stared me into silence.

'I don't want to talk about him,' she said firmly. 'It was a grim year, Lesley, and then I almost died in The Battle. Dennis, don't take this the wrong way, Lesley, but he wasn't at The Battle; he doesn't really know what it was like. A motley collection of school kids, teachers, and a few Aurors against, trolls, giants, cold-blooded killers, criminals and psychopaths. Professor McGonagall animated statues, even desks to try to help us. "Protect the fallen and the weak! Defend your home!" she told them. But it was hopeless, and we knew it. There were a lot more casualties on our side than on theirs.'

I reached across and held Angelina's hand. 'You don't have to talk about it,' I assured her.

'I do,' she said, taking a deep breath and withdrawing her hand from mine. 'At around midnight, there was a ceasefire. While we were counting our dead, Tom Riddle offered us a choice. He said that if we handed Harry over, they would spare us. No one believed him. But no one could find Harry, either. Harry owned—still owns, I suppose—an invisibility cloak. It turned out he'd used it to sneak out from the school.

'What happened?' I asked.

'No one knows,' Angelina admitted. 'Well, Harry does, and so do Ginny, Ron, and Hermione. I think Neville and Luna probably know, too. I suspect that the Minister also knows, but reading Kingsley isn't easy. The official story is that Riddle hit Harry with the Killing Curse, and Harry didn't resist. When the spell hit, they both collapsed, but neither of them died. Harry had already survived the Killing Curse once. The first time it was because his mother had died to protect him, and the second time was because Riddle had used Harry's blood to revive himself. They were tied to each other until Riddle used the Killing Curse, and broke the bond.' Angelina shrugged. 'That's the story, anyway. I don't really know. It's old and very powerful magic. Riddle got up fairly quickly, but Harry played dead and the Death Eaters thought they'd won.

'We didn't know any of that that at the time, so when we were told "Harry Potter has fallen! The Dark Lord is unstoppable!" we all thought it was true. They even paraded his body in front of us. I don't know about the others, but I was certain Harry was dead, and that I was about to join him. We were prepared to face Riddle anyway; although we knew that we didn't have a chance. It didn't matter, because we didn't have a choice, either! Then, suddenly Harry moved. He wasn't dead, and all hell broke loose. Neville killed Riddle's snake, Nagini, with the Sword of Gryffindor, then Harry killed Riddle, and somehow we had won,' said Angelina sadly.

'The official story is that Riddle had used Dark Magic to tie himself to life. Ron destroyed Slytherin's Locket; Hermione destroyed the Hufflepuff's cup, which they'd stolen from Gringotts, and Neville killed Nagini. According to Harry, it wasn't until then that Riddle was finally vulnerable.' She shrugged, and cocked her head to one side.

'Sorry, I thought I heard little Fred,' she said. Looking straight at me with a look which said "I've never told anyone else this", she continued to unburden herself on me. 'After The Battle, George wouldn't talk to me, so I tried to make myself a new life. I fell in love again—Martin—he was a good man, I'm glad he's found someone better for him than I was. I left Martin almost three years after the Battle. I blamed Fred for that, because the spectre of his death, was hanging over me. George and I met at Fred's graveside, and we argued. While we argued, well, let's just say we exchanged a few home truths. George still tells people that I was cruel to Fred, perhaps I was. I prefer to think that I was simply cruel to George's memories of Fred. If I hadn't been, well, I didn't need a crystal ball to see that in a couple of more years George would have driven himself crazy. He was becoming trapped in a cycle of grief. He'd turned his natural love for his brother into an obsessive veneration of Fred's memory.' Angelina shook her head, and sighed.' I probably do sound cruel, Lesley, but that was the one thing Dennis couldn't help George with. They could share the pain, but in many ways Dennis was in the same trap. George needed a kick up the arse, so I gave him one. Fortunately, with a bit of help from Gabrielle, and a year in Paris, Dennis managed to find his own way out from his grief.'

'Gabrielle?' I asked. 'Who's Gabrielle.?

'Oh,' Angelina said. She looked at me thoughtfully. 'Dennis wasn't your first boyfriend, was he?'

'No,' I told her, smiling. 'Nor even the second, or third, or...'

'So, have you told Dennis about your exes?'

'No,' I told her. 'He hasn't asked, and I haven't asked him.'

'Fair enough,' she said. 'Then I won't tell you about Dennis and "la belle Gabrielle". Actually, I can't, because I don't really know much. If you want to know, you'll have to ask him.'

'You never met her?' I asked.

'I see her occasionally, at Weasley family gatherings,' Angelina admitted, 'You've met George's brother, Bill, haven't you?'

I nodded.

'And his wife?'

'Only once, but she's unforgettable.' I nodded again.

'Gabrielle is Fleur's little sister,' Angelina told me.

'Shit,' I said. 'She's bloody gorgeous.'

'Yeah, so's Gabrielle; but apparently she's a lover, not a hiker,' Angelina laughed.