20 August 1997
"Gabaldon," Fred murmured, picking up two thick novels with a red, tartan pattern on the covers. "Those'll be before Gaiman, but after Fyleman…"
"Why are you doing this again?" Angelina asked, partially concealed from view by books. He reached out and shoved a teetering stack aside with a grunt to find her laying with her head hanging backwards off the arm of the small, tan sofa, skimming an upside-down anatomy book. Crookshanks, who was roosting like a large chicken atop her stomach, let out an irritated grumble.
"It's a grand gesture," Fred replied succinctly, turning back to the rather daunting task at hand. Three days, give or take, and he was just now starting the Gs.
"We both know damn well that Hermione is immediately going to reorganise everything in here anyway."
"That very well may be," Fred reasoned levelly, "But still, it's the principle of the thing."
"George never gestures," Angelina mused to herself, making a sour face at whatever was on the page of the text that she was leafing through. "And I like him just fine for it."
"Yes, well. I'm not George. I'm Fred. And I gesture."
Angelina shrugged and they lapsed back to a companionable silence, the radio in the corner filling the gaps in conversation with fuzzy music and increasingly propagandic news bulletins.
Perhaps a half hour passed when, much to Fred's confusion, there was a knock on the half-shut door behind him. Unfolding from the ground and navigating around mountains of books, as well as their discarded and forgotten plates from lunch earlier, he stumbled toward the wall and swung it open to reveal –
"Mum?" Fred asked, reeling backward slightly and then leaning around her to look down the hall for any sign of his brother or Lee, who were down in the shop. "What are you doing here?"
And indeed, there his mother was, barely reaching his shoulder.
"Mrs. Weasley," Angelina half-exclaimed, sounding equally surprised as she scrambled to sit up and ejected Crookshanks from his perch in the process. The kneazle arched his back, hissed, and hastily fled the room.
Fred's mother stepped back and watched him sprint past her ankles with a raised brow.
"Am I not allowed to pay my sons a visit?" She asked Fred, brushing a hand over her skirt.
"Erm," Fred looked helplessly at Angie, who seemed for all the world like she was trying to will herself straight through the wall behind her and down into the alley, before turning back to his mum. "No, of course it's fine. Why don't we go to the living room, though? Bit of a demilitarised zone in here."
Angelina shared one last "better you than me" look with him before Fred stepped around his mum and led her back down the hall and into their living room. It wasn't messy, per say, but he'd likely have done a bit of tidying up if he'd known she was coming.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Fred asked as they passed the kitchen. He was quietly wrestling with how… stilted it was, having her in his flat, just the two of them. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been truly alone with his mother, without his dad or one of his siblings, namely George, present.
"Water is fine," she said, going to take a seat on the sofa and fidgeting with the haphazardly placed throw pillows. Fred procured two glasses, filled them, chilled them, and gave the bottle of firewhiskey tucked beneath the cupboard a longing look before following after her.
"What is it that you were working on back there?" his mum asked curiously as he handed her one of the glasses.
"Oh, uh, just a project. Something for Hermione."
He'd deduced that she would come up sooner or later, so there was no sense in attempting to sidestep the topic. Furthermore, he didn't have any desire to.
"Is she… living here, then?"
Fred bristled a little. "Not at present, which I'm sure you know. But if – when – this is all over, then yeah; I reckon so. She's welcome to, at least."
His mother just nodded, though the look on her face was pensive.
"And does Angelina…?"
"You'd have to ask her or George," Fred replied with a shrug, though he knew that Angie hadn't been back to the flat she supposedly shared with Alicia in weeks. "Did you come over here simply to ask after our living conditions? Because it's hardly Sodom and Gomorrah. Most nights we get takeaway and play Exploding Snap with Lee."
"No," she said, sitting forward to set her untouched glass on the low table between them. "And even if it were, I was young once, too, you know. In the sixties, no less."
Fred immediately did everything he could to banish that comment and whatever she might meant by it from his mind.
"No, I came because – well, you see, before she left, I actually had an interesting conversation with Hermione."
"I've found that most conversations with Hermione are interesting; she's a rather intriguing person."
"So I've gleaned."
"You're talking about the day that you sent her here with the biscuits," Fred guessed, noting the hint of surprise on her face with just a touch of smugness. "She told me. We don't keep secrets, not about that sort of thing."
Just about where she is, what she's doing, and how likely she is to be killed at any given moment. Semantics.
"I understand," Molly said, before lapsing to a long, painful silence that seemed to slow time itself. Fred fought the urge to check the clock on the mantle, fairly certain that the arms had to be moving backward.
"So," he started awkwardly, "Shop's doing decently. Nothing like it was this time last year, but mail-orders have been fairly steady, and we still get a bit of foot traffic. Seems the students of Hogwarts are still wreaking havoc when and how they can. I mean, from the volume of puking pastils we've been shipping out, I imagine the corridors are practically overflowing with – "
"Why didn't you tell me that you were seeing Hermione?" Molly interrupted him, and Fred shut his mouth before slowly sinking back into his seat.
"I didn't see the need," he finally replied. "With the way our family gossips, I figured our dalliance would come to light sooner than later."
"Yes, but it's not a dalliance, is it? You've been together… what, eighteen months? And you're talking about her living with you."
"Twenty months," Fred corrected, holding eye contact and refusing in the very marrow of his bones to feel any sort of guilt about their evasion. Refusing to apologise, which she so clearly wanted him to do.
The fact of the matter was that Molly Weasley, for all that she was his mother, she was also, and always had been, his biggest critic. And he would listen to it, try and tune it out the same as he always had. Whether it be about his schooling or his experiments or his aspirations, lofty though they may be, that was all fair play. But there was one facet of his life, one beautiful, bright, glowing piece of himself that he would hold fast to and absolutely not allow to be disparaged. One part that was, for all intents and purposes, off limits.
And that was, and always would be, Hermione.
He sank into that resolve, arming himself and preparing to defend her and them at whatever cost when his mother surprised him and turned the conversation on its head.
"She said that you think I'm not proud of you."
Fred, at an utter loss for how to respond, said nothing.
"She didn't say it outright," his mother corrected. "In fact, she was exceptionally adamant about not speaking on your behalf, but it was… implied. Which lead me to spend quite a bit of time thinking on it."
"And?" Fred asked tightly, caught off guard by the surge of emotion that struck him.
Molly got up from the sofa and walked toward the windows on the other side of the living room, the ones that overlooked what remained of Diagon Alley.
"I've told you some about my brothers, haven't I? Fabion and Gideon."
"I-I suppose," Fred stuttered, once again capsised by the rapid change of topic. "They were twins, we're named after them."
"Mmhmm," Molly hummed in confirmation, glancing over her shoulder and then back out the window. "You have a lot more in common than just your names, though.
"Fabion and Gideon were a great deal like you and George, eerily so. Always getting in trouble, ignoring what people expected, constantly looking for the next great thing. And then the last war began, in all its brutal glory and uncertainty… well, I suppose they thought that was it. We tried to tell them to be careful, to think for a moment before offering themselves to the front lines, murky as they were. But war is started by old men and fought by young men, and they were just two names on a very long list of casualties."
Molly's voice grew thick and Fred's spine rigid as, willingly or not, he hung on every word.
"I remember I was making tea when Albus flooed and told me what had happened to them. Ron was just a baby, and I was terribly pregnant with Ginny, and I remember thinking that… that he was lying. Or mistaken, at least. That there was no way that my brighter-than-the-sun, havoc-wreaking brothers, who'd defied death more times than I could count, could have finally succumbed to it. It simply wasn't conceivable.
"They were dead. Of course, they were. They'd been tracking two Death Eaters outside of Manchester and walked right into an ambush. It was over quickly, as far as they could tell. But perhaps Albus just said that in an attempt to spare me."
Molly turned back to him then, whisking tears from beneath red-rimmed eyes as she reclaimed her seat and leaned toward him.
"I see so much of them in you boys, I always have. And I cherish that, but it also scares the absolute bloody hell out of me."
Fred tried to swallow, but he found his mouth suddenly cotton-dry.
"I know that I made some mistakes raising you boys," Molly said hoarsely. "And I didn't support you in the ways that you wanted me to. The ways that I see now that I should have. I'm sorry for that, and I'm sorry for making you feel like you have to keep me at a distance. That you have to keep parts of your life from me."
Fred realised his hands were trembling and he clasped them tightly together, confused and overwhelmed and wrestling with all the parts of him that, for years, had waited and wanted so badly to hear these words from her. And when he was finished with that inner toiling, the emotion that won out, the one that bubbled to the surface and remained, wasn't forgiveness or contentment or satisfaction. It was anger.
He got to his feet and paced the length of the room, running a hand roughly through his hair as he turned on his heel to face her.
"So you think that coming here and apologising after a decade of telling me that what I wanted was wrong, that who I am wasn't enough, that it's all just okay now? That I'm meant to hug you and smile and say it's alright? Tell you that I understand? Because I don't.
"I don't understand how you could brag about Bill being head boy and Charlie being a dragon-tamer, how you could champion Percy – perfect prefect Percy, who pretends he doesn't even know any of us – and then turn around and tell me that my dreams are rubbish. That I should just give up on them and pursue something that you think worth my time.
"Well mum," Fred said gesturing broadly and laughing a little hysterically, realising only then that hot tears were stinging the corners of his eyes. "You were wrong. They weren't rubbish. And I am happy, and I am successful, and I have a woman that I love more than the sun and all the bloody stars, and I am done seeking approval from you, because I can see now that I was never going to get it."
Chest heaving, he let his hands fall limply to his sides as he looked at his mother, the sad, grief-stricken expression on her face. And it was then that he felt pity for her. Not because of anything he'd said, and not because he didn't mean it, but because there were clearly things that she needed to work through, and they didn't have anything to do with him.
"I'm sorry about your brothers, mum, I really am. I know it must have been hard to see so much of them in us. But we aren't them, and putting the weight of their ghosts on our shoulders wasn't fair."
Molly swallowed hard and, once again, brushed the tears from her cheeks before she took her handbag from the couch beside her and got to her feet.
She made for the door, stopping a few feet in front of him with an earnest look on her face.
"You're mad at me, and you have every right to be. But I'm not going to stop trying, Fred. And no matter what you might think, I am proud of you."
Fred took a deep breath, grit his teeth together, and nodded once at her as she turned and made for the door. As she placed her hand on the knob, he finally spoke.
"Who was it that killed them? Fabion and Gideon."
He didn't know and hadn't ever thought to ask. His mother turned, a somewhat surprised expression on her puffy, ruddy face. But she answered him.
"They weren't sure exactly, but Albus told me that the ambush was led by Dolohov. Antonin Dolohov."
Fred was sitting on the sofa some time later, just staring into the rug and processing the conversation. Everything his mother had told him, everything he'd said to her, when soft footsteps approached from behind and the cushion to his right sank.
"How much of that did you hear?" He asked after a spell, his voice coarse.
"Enough," Angelina said, shrugging in his periphery. "I tried to block it out, but my wand was out here and the two of you didn't bother to put up silencing charms."
Fred silently bobbed his head and, in a true contradiction of character, Crookshanks emerged from beneath the armchair across the room and came over to nudge his head against Fred's shin. He thought about reaching down and scratching behind his ears, but that seemed like it might be pushing his luck.
"Your girlfriend has naughty books," Angelina blurted suddenly and Fred, thoroughly caught off guard by the comment, turned to look at her with an incredulous expression. Angie just nodded sagely, her eyes somewhere distant. "All throbbing rods of velvet-wrapped steel and rosy nipples and quivering quims. I'm not a blushing virgin, but that was some harrowing shit."
Fred just blinked at her. Once, twice, and then he was laughing. It started as a snort and descended into great guffaws that shook his shoulders and made his stomach ache. Then, slowly, the laughing stopped, and his eyes were burning for an entirely different reason again. And for the first time since Hermione had left, Fred began to cry.
Because he missed her. He missed her smile and her laugh and the comfort of her presence. He missed how she always knew exactly what to say, what to do, even when it seemed like the very world was crumbling around him. He missed the peace she offered him, without expectation or reproach. He missed her.
Angelina didn't say anything, her and Crookshanks the sole witnesses to his inevitable unraveling. She just reached her hand out, placed it on his shoulder, and let him cry.