Fred was good for his word when the morning came. Emma awoke to him kissing her neck tenderly, wondering where she was for a moment, until she remembered that she had left Hogwarts, graduated, and she was living with Fred and George in London.

Living together.

Mrs. Weasley would have fits, but Emma wasn't sure when they would tell her that they'd married, when they would feel comfortable telling her that they'd eloped secretly.

She would have fits about that, too, so Emma figured that one set of fits couldn't be any worse than the other.

Of course, they weren't married yet. That was on the agenda for the day, though.

"Good morning, beautiful," Fred murmured, kissing her lips gently when he saw that her eyes were open and that she was awake and aware of him. "Did you sleep well last night?"

Emma shrugged.

"I suppose so," she sighed. "I don't know that I didn't."

"Your face was so peaceful this morning," he sighed. "I couldn't bring myself to wake you."

Well, that was sweet of him.

"Come on, we've got to get breakfast and go on about our day," he said gently. "We've got lots of things to do."

They got out of bed and dressed, Fred going out of his way to dress her, making the pitiful excuse of wanting to be helpful when she knew he really just wanted reasons to touch her. Then they went out to the kitchen, made some quick breakfast, gulped down some tea, and then he led her down to the shop.

"Wow."

That was all she could see when she saw the splendor that was Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She was bombarded by an onslaught of color, motion, and sound that threatened to make her sick.

"There's so much stuff!" she said, shocked. "How did you get all this done so quickly?"

Fred just winked at her the way he did when he wanted to keep a secret, so she merely rolled her eyes internally and let him lead her around the shop, pointing things out here and there that he thought she would be impressed with.

"And these!" Fred said excitedly, pointing out some boxed sweets. "These you might be familiar with."

Emma picked up a box and read, "Puking Pastille. Oh, yes, Fred, I don't think any of us will ever forget these, Katie most particularly."

He winced a little at that, but kept leading her boldly through the shop.

"What's that?" Emma asked, pointing to a pink stand with pink and purple merchandise all over it. She never thought she'd see such colors in the shop, and Fred wrinkled his nose at it.

"Wonder Witch line," he said. "You don't need any of that stuff. It's silliness."

Emma still wondered what was there, but she sensed that Fred really didn't want to tell her about it, so she didn't press him and decided she would ask George or Tien about it later.

"C'mon," Fred said, grin restored. "Let's go out so I can spoil you!"

George begrudgingly said that he, Verity, and Tien would be able to handle the shop without Fred, not that Fred bothered waiting for that answer before yanking Emma away into Diagon Alley where they stopped for ice cream at Florean's first thing.

"Two peanut butter and raspberry swirls, please," Fred said happily, and Florean Fortescue himself served them their ice cream.

"I'll have to drop by that shop sometime," Florean told Fred with a smile. "My customers all say wonderful things about it. You're a huge hit!"

"Thanks, mate!" Fred replied. "You'll get a discount, too!"

Fred explained as they ate their ice cream and looked at the brooms in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies that Florean had been very good to them since they'd arrived, giving them discounts when they'd first arrived and turning lots of business their way when they'd first opened their doors.

"Mail orders from Hogwarts were plenty steady, but that can only account for so much of our business," he said with a shrug. "I figure it will go down a bit next year, too, without Umbridge to force the students to rally together. We'll still get plenty of sales, but it won't be the same."

Once they finished their ice cream he dragged her into Madam Malkins to get her several sets of robes, which he had delivered to the shop in his name.

"George'll put them in our room," Fred said excitedly. "C'mon, Muggle London!"

They went out into the world of Muggle London, which Fred had changed some of his money to Muggle money for the purpose of shopping.

"We need to get you some more clothes," he insisted. "You'll have a uniform for work, and you've got some wizarding clothes, but you're going to want to go into the Muggle world sometimes with friends, and you don't have a lot of Muggle clothes in your trunk."

He was right, of course.

"Besides," he said, kissing her neck as he walked her into a large shopping center, "I want to get you a fancy dress for your wedding day."

Emma had never known how much Fred would want to spoil her, as he had never really had a lot of money before, but now that he was suddenly rolling in Galleons, he seemed to want to spend all of it on her.

"Fred, you can't keep buying me stuff all the time," she told him as he carried the bags. "For one thing, we're going to run out of room in the flat..."

"I know," he assured her. "I'm just making up for the one thing I can't buy you right now, but so want to."

Emma frowned, unable to think of what he was talking about.

"A wedding ring, you silly girl," he laughed, kissing her cheek. "Come on, now, I'm making you Mrs. Fred Weasley as soon as we can get you to sign the papers. Move it, love!"

She laughed, letting him lead the way.

The getting married to Fred wasn't anything like Emma had dreamed growing up. There was a document to sign, a man declaring them man and wife, and Fred kissed her for good measure, but they were just Fred and Emma one moment, and then they were handed papers that promised they were man and wife a moment later, Fred and Emma Weasley.

"We're married," Fred whispered when they'd gotten back to the flat, lying in bed together, just staring at each other. "You're Emma Weasley. We're married."

"Yes," she said softly. "We really are."

"This is weird," he admitted. "But... but I like it."

"Me too."

What did it mean to be Emma Weasley? Apparently it meant the exact same thing as being Emma Norwick, just with a different last name, which was also not what Emma had expected. She didn't have any different duties or expectations for her once they were married. George didn't even know the difference, and if George couldn't tell something had changed, it must be that nothing had changed at all.

They had agreed that Fred wouldn't tell George and Emma wouldn't tell Tien, but that those two would be the first to know when they finally did spread the news.

In the meantime, Emma was helping at the shop, ringing up purchases, since she couldn't answer questions about the product or recommend things like the others all could. She waited for her N.E.W.T. scores and the letter she knew would welcome her to her job at the Ministry. She waited for her first Order meeting. She pulled her fair share in the chores at the flat, and she and Fred made love each night, having been so starved of each other while she was at school.

"I'm so proud of you," she whispered one night after a long day at the shop. "You have built such a wonderful life and when everyone seemed to think you two weren't going to amount to anything."

"You didn't think that, did you?" Fred teased. Emma just laughed, kissing him, not wanting to answer the question. She'd always know they were brilliant, of course, but there had been times, when they were younger, that she had been very, very worried that Fred and George would 'not care' themselves into being absolutely worthless.

She'd never been so glad to be wrong about anything in her life.

Life as Emma Weasley wasn't so different from life as Emma Norwick, but she decided that she liked it better, if only because she felt she had some right to Fred, some right to knowing that no one would take him from her, and if death should choose to do so, she would have a right to mourn as his wife instead of just a girlfriend.

It gave her more rights, and in a time of war such things suddenly felt so much more important than she would have ever anticipated. She only wished she could have told Sirius all about it.

Emma found herself being woken up by Fred's lips at her breast, and her eyes fluttered open sleepily, seeing him nibbling her nipple lightly. She bit her lip to hold in her moan, and she realized that he was looking at her skin and hadn't realized that she was awake.

There was something in his hand, she realized, something with a Ministry seal and her name on it. Before she had a chance to reach for it, he moved his mouth from her breast to her stomach and she moaned in protest, startling him.

"You're awake," he said softly, looking up at her. "This came for you just now."

She unceremoniously ripped the letter from his hands and he just chuckled, turning back to pressing his lips to her skin as she tore the envelope open, revealing her N.E.W.T. scores, which was exactly what she had hoped to find.

"Well?" he whispered against her skin as she scanned the parchment. "How did you do?"

"Three O's!" she said breathlessly. "And I passed everything, even History!"

"Even Potions?" he teased.

"I got an E!" she marveled. "I don't even know how I managed that, Snape never indicated that my work could get such a score!"

Fred snorted.

Well, so maybe she was never going to get a representative score from Snape because she was a Gryffindor. Still, she'd barely passed in all of the practice exams with Snape, even when she did manage to pass. By consequence she'd thrown herself into that exam most vigorously of all, and apparently it had paid off.

"Hey, did you see this?" Fred said, holding up a smaller piece of folded parchment that must have fallen out when she'd been paying attention to her scores.

Emma took the parchment from him and opened it, scanning it quickly.

She'd already had a pretty good idea what it was going to say, but the confirmation was both relieving and terrifying all at once.

"Well," she sighed, "I've got a job. I start Monday. I've got to get robes for work this weekend."

"I'm on it, love," he muttered, kissing her cheek. "I'll talk to Dad and get it all sorted out for you. Don't worry about a thing."

She rolled her eyes behind the parchment.

Fred was wonderful, but his insistence on showering her with gifts could get a bit burdensome at times, and she was already getting annoyed by it. She decided not to worry about it at that moment, that she could start throwing fits when she had her own income to throw into the picture, which wouldn't be too long at all.

Of course, they couldn't live in the fairytale world of her living in Fred's bed and having no other responsibilities but helping out where she could around the flat and shop. The real world had to sink in sooner or later, and it turned out to come upon them rather sooner than anyone would have liked.

An Order meeting was called at Grimmauld Place, and the three of them were invited.

So Fred and Emma arrived at Grimmauld Place hand-in-hand, with George trailing a little behind them, and Molly pushed a plate of biscuits on them almost the moment they walked in the door.

"I heard from Arthur that you got the job at the Ministry, dear," Molly said kindly to Emma. "Congratulations! You must be so excited!"

Maybe Molly wasn't aware that Emma basically had to take the job because of the Order, regardless of whether or not it was actually the thing Emma wanted to do most, but she took a biscuit and thanked her secret mother-in-law graciously for the praise.

There were plenty of familiar faces amongst the Order members: most of the Weasleys, a couple of Hogwarts professors - current and former, and a few people Emma really only knew by face and name and stories she'd gotten from Sirius while she was at headquarters over Christmas. Fred and Emma settled next to Bill, who was looking even more jolly and Weasley-ish than usual, which was really saying something if Emma considered it. Bill had always been such a Weasley.

"Hey, brother," Bill said to Fred. "Hey, brother's girlfriend."

Emma just smiled and greeted him softly, but Fred frowned.

"Her name's Emma, Bill," he said sharply. "Anyway, have you got any idea what this meeting's all about?"

Bill shrugged.

"New members, so it could just be mostly getting you all into the swing of things, but there've been some negative blips on the radar recently and so I'm sure we'll discuss those."

"Like what?" Emma asked.

"You're not reading the papers, are you?" Bill asked, brow furrowed.

But she barely had a chance to begin shaking her head when Dumbledore cleared his throat, raised his hand, and called the meeting into order.

"Thank you," he said softly, as the room grew silently almost instantly. "As I am sure you have all noticed we have several new additions to our number. You're all quite familiar, of course, with Molly and Arthur's twins, Fred and George. Their joke shop is on Diagon Alley, as you probably know, and is in fact home of some quite delightful tricks and magical marvels." The twins bowed comically in their seats. "We all so have Mr. Lee Jordan, who is working for the WWN, which will give us some fresh insight into the media leads, and Miss Emma Norwick who is working in Arthur Weasley's old job at the Ministry, because as many of you have heard, Arthur has been promoted."

There was a smattering of applause, and then Emma's heart jumped clear into her throat.

She hadn't thought about it earlier, but now that she thought about it, there was a vague recollection that the little slip of paper had said that she was the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. There was only one elderly wizard reporting to her, but still...

She was technically in charge of something, and the thought was terrifying.

The news, she found, was two deaths that were a blow to their cause which had happened quite recently. Amelia Bones, not an Order member but a Ministry worker very outspokenly on their side of things, had been killed. Apparently her brother had been an Order member during the first war, so the Order was claiming her as one of their own. The other death was Emmeline Vance, an actual Order member who hadn't been old enough have been fighting in the first war, but she'd been active from the first in this second war.

It was all so real. The deaths, the war, the possibility that she herself could become a target in the mess that was the war. Sirius dying was one thing, but finding herself in the middle of it all was another thing entirely. She really had to recognize the risks she was taking when she saw Molly Weasley dabbing her eyes sneakily and Emma realized that she and Fred really didn't know when they were going to tell his family that they'd gotten married. She didn't know when she'd next talk to her own parents, either, much less tell them that she'd eloped.

The rest of the discussion was really not relevant to Emma at all, since she hadn't started her job yet, so she just listened with most of her energy and looked around at the others in the room with the rest of her energy.

Her eyes fell on Remus Lupin, and she thought of Sirius as well. Remus was already looking much older than he should, and Sirius had as well. She could contribute that to lycanthropy and Azkaban, but Emma knew that a part of it was the war. All she had to do was look at Mad-Eye Moody to know just how dangerous a job she'd taken on.

Kingsley, the man who was shadowing the Muggle Prime Minister, Tonks the Auror who was Sirius's cousin... They were young, in the prime of their adult lives, although admittedly not as young as Emma and the twins. Still, they were already starting to bear the signs of having fought in and lived in the war. If this war dragged on very long at all, they would no doubt be quite old before their time. Would Fred? Would Emma? Would George?

It was strange, thinking of Fred and George aging at all.

Sure, she had seen them as old men when they'd had the Aging Potion backfire in their sixth year, but it wasn't the same thing. What about those years in between? They were so childish, so incredibly youthful, that she could hardly believe they would ever really age until they were so old that they aged all at once, as they had when they'd tried to outsmart Albus Dumbledore.

She looked up into the headmaster's eyes then, as if she were looking for answers, but all she found in those blue eyes was a knowing look and she didn't know how he knew, or how she knew that he knew, but it was clear to her in that moment that three, not two, people sitting at that kitchen table knew that she was Emma Weasley, and no longer Emma Norwick.