20 June 1996

"We all ready, then?" Harry asked, glancing around at their assembled party. Hermione tightened her knees around her invisible steed, keeping a death-grip on its mane in front of her. It was mad. What they were doing was completely and utterly mad.

Harry told the thestrals where to go and, with little more than a brush of wings on either side of her, they launched into the sky. For as much as she wanted to, she didn't scream. Instead, she shut her eyes tightly and pretended she was on a broom rather than a thestral. That it was October rather than June. That, instead of nothing but cool air at her back, there was a warm, familiar chest.

She reached for that memory and gripped it tightly; kept it close to her and prayed that the sinking feeling she had was nothing more than paranoia. That they weren't heading into a trap that was fated to end in disaster.

"Breathe, Hermione," Fred said softly in her head. "Just breathe."

oOoOoOo

"So, you think the first of August will give us enough time?" George asked, bent over one of the worktables in their storeroom and attempting to coax the Canary Creams into packaging themselves.

"Yeah, I reckon so," Fred replied, a few feet away and working on a stack of invoices for ingredients they'd had, or would soon have, delivered. "Then we'll get a full month of back-to-school sales in."

"Any chance a certain curly-haired prefect will be hanging about to help with the opening?"

Fred shrugged but couldn't completely hold back a smile. "We talked about it a bit before you and I left, but nothing is set in stone yet. She has to go visit her parents for a week or two first."

He knew he would miss Hermione as soon as he and George started to make plans to leave prior to term ending, but the sheer weight of it now that he was actually gone was still somehow unexpected. Despite their attempts to keep their relationship under wraps, it had been surprisingly easy to find time for one another during the spring term.

Ron and Harry weren't the most observant, and the only two people that really kept tabs on him were George, who already knew about them, and Lee, who after six years still regularly mixed him up with his brother.

It was true, much of that time together had been spent working in silence; she revising for OWLs, he trying to glean everything pertinent from his classes while also scheming things for the shop, but in those four-odd months, Hermione had become a constant.

And, for as exciting as the change was, as exhilarating as it might be to see their dreams slowly become reality, he longed for that constancy so much that it made him ache down to the bone if he dwelled on it for too long. That said, time to dwell wasn't a luxury they had most days.

"Alright, what's next?" George asked, dusting his hands on his thighs after having finally set the Canary Creams to rights.

"Bed?" Fred proposed, glancing up at the clock on the wall. Evening had slipped into night, which was now rapidly transitioning into morning again.

"Probably a good idea," George agreed, stretching. "We have that meeting with the apothecary tomorrow at ten."

Fred finished the form in front of him and then shuffled it to the side to join the stack before getting to his feet. George had just raised his wand to extinguish the lamp in the corner when, without even a hint of preamble, a weasel shaped Patronus burst through the wall and came to a halt between them.

"Fred, George, there's been an incident at the ministry. Sirius is dead. Ron, Hermione and Tonks are injured. Your mother and I are on our way to St. Mungo's; we'll send word when we know more."

The silver apparition disappeared, and everything stopped. His heartbeat. His breathing. Every thought in his brain. It all came crashing to an abrupt, jarring halt.

George was frozen in front of him, arm still extended with his wand held aloft, staring with wide eyes at the place the weasel had been a second ago.

Had it really only been a second ago?

He thought he heard his brother say his name, but he couldn't be sure. It was distant, slow and garbled. His ears were ringing like they'd just borne witness to a detonation rather than a succinct missive from their mild-mannered father.

"Fred? Fred, can you hear me?"

He could. He could hear him. But he didn't have a way to convey that. He couldn't move. Couldn't think.

Ron, Hermione and Tonks are injured.

Ron. Hermione. Injured.

Hermione.

Injured.

His legs buckled, he stumbled backward toward the table, and time started again.