So much happens in this chapter and I finished it just in time for the weekend posting. So here you go!
Bookcozy: I'm so sorry to hear you had a rough day! I'm glad to have brought you some happiness with the last chapter. I needed a reprieve from the angst as well. Every time I think of the Marauders, it just breaks my heart how hard it must have been for Sirius and Remus. I couldn't even imagine pushing through that level of pain. Cheers to Nessa's drunken candor being a catalyst for a serious conversation between her and George ;)!
readerfaye: Very happy belated birthday! I have impeccable timing, it would seem! I understand the Alicia feelings LOL. I write her personality, but I still have to work not to hate her. Some people just bring out the worst in each other, and she certainly isn't ready for George.
Chapter Eighteen
If she made me choose between you and her, I would always choose you.
She hadn't even opened her eyes the next morning before the words were echoing around in her head. They were bouncing off of her skull like it was completely empty, reverberating so harshly that it made her head feel like it was vibrating. She almost didn't want to open her eyes. As if that would erase the entire thing from her head.
She truly could not wrap her head around where she stood with George anymore. It was such a weird mixture of awkwardness, anger, and attraction. He confused her at almost every turn of her life at this point. The arguing between them had stopped, sure, but that was really only part of the problem. The bigger issue was that she was confused about what was happening between them at all half of the time.
They were friends, but was that the end of it? One moment he was comfortable with the way their relationship stood and then another he was sleeping with her on the couch because she was too much of a mess to sleep on her own. Another moment he was working on his relationship with Alicia and then telling her that he would choose her over his girlfriend. Really, the entire thing was starting to feel like a delusion. It was incredibly irritating. Like some sort of vicious cycle she was playing with herself to see how long she could last before she lost every one of her marbles.
She was honestly starting to believe she'd not had any to begin with.
"Are you just going to pretend to be sleeping?"
She was sick of Ginny Weasley, too. It was her fault she had a headache in the first place — Really, why did she agree to drink the eggnog? Did she learn nothing from her past mistakes?
Groaning in frustration and ignoring Ginny's laughter, she opened her eyes slowly and waited for them to adjust. The brightness of the light coming in through the window did not help with her headache. It felt like daggers to her eyes and if the blinding light was any indication, it had to have snowed the night before.
When her eyes adjusted, she chanced a look at Tori, who was glaring down at her presents and rubbing one of her temples in a slow circle. At least someone else was feeling about as poorly as she did because Ginny was ripping her way through her presents as though it was just any other day for her. Although, Ginny had never drank before, so she'd had maybe an entire glass' worth of the beverage before she'd started feeling giggly and loose. Nessa almost wished she could say the same, so that she could pretend she didn't have the world's worst headache developing behind her temples.
Groaning, she rolled over to grab the water bottle George had set next to her and came face-to-face with a porcelain face and horrid black eyes. Screaming in surprise, she kicked her legs frantically to untangle them from her blankets and pushed herself out of the bed as fast as possible.
Ginny and Tori had dissolved into a fit of laughter as Nessa stared at the doll in her bed in abject horror.
"That reaction was definitely worth the pounding in my head from your screaming," said Tori with a grin, still rubbing one of her temples.
Nessa glared at her, holding her head between her hands to slow the pounding in her own from the sudden noise and movement she'd made.
"Why would you put that in my bed?"
Ginny snorted.
"We didn't," she said with an amused smile. "You must have fallen asleep with it last night because you were cuddling with it this morning."
Nessa gaped at her. She'd had far too much to drink if that were the case. And why would George have let her sleep with the thing? Stupid prat.
"Get it back in the closet before I set it on fire," she said seriously, pulling herself slowly to a stand to unwrap her gifts.
Ginny rolled her eyes with a snort, but put the doll back in her box and shoved it to the back of their closet before she returned to opening her own presents. Opening her presents was certainly slower than it would normally have been as she was just trying to move her head as little as possible in order to keep her head from pounding too much.
She opened the Dursley's gift first because it was always something ridiculous — this year it was a used cigarette lighter. She rolled her eyes and wondered idly why they'd even had one to begin with, but she supposed people used them for more than just cigarettes. The note that had come with had been a list of suggestions for using it which all included some way for her to burn herself in the process.
She gave Peanut, who was loafing on her bed, watching her open the gifts with mild interest, a roll of the eyes and an apologetic look.
"Sorry, Peanut," she said in the high-pitched baby voice that she used to speak to her feline. "They didn't send anything for you to sniff at this year. Mr. Weasley might like it though, yes?"
Peanut meowed back at her and Nessa assumed that was agreement and scratched her behind the ear, cooing at her distractedly for several minutes before returning to her presents.
Mrs. Weasley had given her her usual Christmas sweater — a deep purple with a blue V on the front — that she immediately pulled over her head. They were always so soft and warm and the fact that she made them for her and Harry always made her heart a little warmer. She'd also made a dozen home-baked mince pies, some Christmas cake, and a box of nut brittle. Feeling a little warmer now, she moved onto the rest of her pile of gifts. Harry had gifted her a set of rare Potions texts she'd been eyeing when they'd been staying at the Leaky Cauldron over the summer. Tori had given her a set of gold bracelets and an unreasonable amount of white chocolate. She rolled her eyes with a smirk at the Dungbombs and sarcastic note that Fred had given her, stating that he knew how much she loved them and there was no need to express her gratitude to him.
Cedric had gotten her a gift as well, something that made her sigh in relief because she'd gotten something for him when he'd said something to her in Hogsmeade and then had promptly started worrying that perhaps he had just been joking. Opening it, she grinned a little. It was a simple thing: just some sort of loosely woven bracelet in the Hufflepuff yellow and black. Interesting that he'd gone with those colors instead of the scarlet and gold of Gryffindor, but she hardly cared. She slid it onto her wrist and grinned wider at the box of Fizzing Whizbees. Her grin quickly turned into an eye roll at the note he'd stuck to the box that read:
So you don't have to go climbing into barrels again, gorgeous.
Using the paper that Cedric had used to wrap her gift with, she crumpled it up and chucked it across the room for Peanut, who immediately pounced on it and began batting it around the room frantically.
Grinning, she set all of her gifts aside and looked at the only two remaining.
She left George's gifts for last, something she'd done the year prior as well.
She didn't know what she was so nervous about honestly. They were just presents. One of them was the birthday present he'd given her that she'd never opened. It was small, thin, and rectangular. The other was likely the Christmas present because it was wrapped horridly in some sort of snowflake paper. Truthfully, it looked like he'd put the gift in the center and then just squished the paper together around it and in a bundle at the top. It was even smaller than the birthday gift, although thicker, and was perfectly square.
There was a part of her that almost didn't want to open them at all because what if it was something thoughtful? It likely was — George had been particular about the gift he'd given her last year. She eyed her sleeping Puffskein, Archie, in his cage. She loved the thing, honestly. He was always so content and squealed happily when she got him out of his cage to play with him. She'd taken to doing so after she'd had a particularly rough day, so it was no surprise that he was sleeping still. She'd had a lot of those lately and he was likely exhausted.
Sighing heavily, she decided to open the birthday present first. She couldn't avoid the thing forever and it would be so awkward now that they were on semi-friendly terms again to look at him and not have opened his gifts still. Reluctantly, she pulled the paper from the material. She gaped at it when it came into view.
It was just a photo, but it was one she'd never seen before in her life and certainly hadn't taken. It was from the year prior when the four of them had been eating lunch under the tree by the lake. It had been an attempt for Nessa to avoid the stares of her classmates, who were under the impression that she and her brother were attacking students. The twins had thought it would be horribly funny to start a snowball fight when they were mid-meal, despite knowing that both Nessa and Tori despised the snow.
She watched as the two of them dropped a pile of snow on her and Tori's heads. They'd frozen in surprise for half of a second before Tori was shooting up to run at a cackling Fred with fire in her eyes. As the two of them disappeared off the side of the frame, Nessa watched herself look up at a doubled over laughing George Weasley, grab a snowball, and throw it directly into his face. He sputtered a little in surprise, but recovered quickly and went chasing after her when she tried to run away from him when he made another snowball. Before she could even leave the frame, he'd grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the ground, spinning her in a circle as he shoved the half-melted snowball into her laughing face.
She stared at the picture as the scene replayed over and over again in front of her. It was a bittersweet memory, one she had forgotten about almost entirely until she had seen it again. George had been her rock in the year prior and the photo made her feel both happy and made her want to cry.
She missed him.
Clearing her throat roughly and blinking away the tears in her eyes, she set the photo aside and tried to distract her melancholy thoughts by focusing on the next gift. He'd used far too much wrapping paper for something so small.
When she opened it, she stared at it in confusion and wariness. It was a black box, so small she could fit it comfortably in the palm of her hand. There was a red button at the top that she suspected she was supposed to press, but nothing else. She picked it up gingerly and inspected it more closely, looking for any indication of what would happen when she pushed the button. She found nothing of note.
Resigned, she decided she'd have to push the button and see what happened. If it ended up covering her in slime or pus, she'd just never speak to him again.
The moment she pushed it, the room was enveloped in darkness so black that she couldn't even see her own hands in front of her, causing all three girls to scream in surprise.
"What the hell?" said Tori frantically. "What's happening?"
"I don't know," said Nessa, suddenly irritated that she'd have trusted some weird button given to her by one of the Weasley twins. "George gave me some button and I pushed it —"
"Well, that was stupid," said Ginny, who sounded close to laughing.
Whenever she could see again, she was going to hex her. Magic outside of school, be damned.
But before she could let her irritation with herself or Ginny or George grow out of proportion, dots of light began appearing all throughout the blackness, lighting the darkness around them gradually to a dark navy blue littered with glittering white.
Stars. They were stars.
"Holy shite," Tori whispered appreciatively, looking around herself in wonder.
"It's beautiful," said Ginny in amazement.
Nessa was awestruck. This sort of magic was…phenomenal. She couldn't even begin to piece together how he'd made it work or how he'd made the stars so realistic. It was almost like he'd reached up into the sky and grabbed them himself.
There were some that were scattered and twinkling merrily, others that formed a large cluster cutting across the "sky", so that it was lit a much lighter blue than the rest, some clustered so close together that it was pure white. The stars clustered around those spots weren't quite as bright, but bright enough to turn patches of the sky a blue-ish sort of purple, which eventually faded out to the darker navy color where the pattern of stars became less clustered and more spread out, some of the solitary ones sparkling so bright that they were almost blue.
She couldn't breathe through the beauty of it. She loved the night sky and had always found it cathartic to lay down under it and look up at the beauty of the stars and moon above her. There was a comfort in looking up at that kind of vast beauty and knowing that there was something bigger out there than her and her problems. It made them somehow feel smaller, less intimidating. At least for the time that she lay there staring up at them.
She turned slowly, gaping at the stars around her, watching Ginny reach out and try to touch one with her hand. They were everywhere. Not a stretch of sky untouched for longer than several centimeters. She could have looked at them for hours on end. But all of a sudden the thoughtfulness of the magic in front of her, the amount of time he must have put into a gift like this, the sort of intimate knowledge he had of her anxiety and what brought her comfort — what made her happy —- was overwhelming.
It cracked her completely wide open.
She pushed the button again hastily to erase the darkness around her and stumbled backwards, smothering the sob in her throat. Tori tensed and reached out to grab her hand, but Nessa shook her head frantically and darted for the door, bounding hastily down the stairs to avoid her friends' concerned faces and get a moment to herself.
Of course, when she entered the kitchen, all of the Weasleys were there. It was Christmas after all.
There was a moment of everyone wishing her a Happy Christmas before they realized she was crying. Fred and George were the first to their feet, grins fading quickly from their faces and opening their mouths to ask what the problem was, but she didn't give anyone any more time to ask her what was happening, grabbing her coat and boots and rushing out the door without putting them on, ignoring the concerned voices calling out behind her.
It had snowed a little the night before and she had to hastily push her feet into the boots before the snow could soak into her socks. She threw the coat on as she was racing toward the garden in an attempt to put some distance between herself and her friends as quickly as possible. She followed the same path she and Tori had followed the first day they'd come back and Tori had been the one to need space. It was much quicker to travel the dirt path toward the clearing that housed the treehouse she'd hid in for hours only days prior.
The barely held together rope ladder didn't even cause her pause this time around and she nearly slipped a few times in her haste to get to the top. The wind was harsh against her face and she hadn't brought her gloves, so her hands were already killing her. By the time she had gotten into the tree house, her tears had frozen to her face, but the chill was at least a little better with the walls surrounding her, although she didn't dare take off her coat.
There was only a moment of relief, though, before she was sobbing outright and sank into one of the bean bag chairs in the corner, curling in on herself in an attempt to control the spasms.
She should have known opening them would upset her. She'd thought she'd been prepared for whatever it could have been, but God, the man was always so thoughtful. It made her heart hurt. She wanted the entire thing to stop hurting altogether. The pain was almost so intense she couldn't breathe through it anymore. Nearly just as intense as it had been when he'd first started ignoring her.
Maybe she'd just bottled it up, pretended it didn't bother her because it was easier. Maybe she'd let herself get distracted with Cedric Diggory in an attempt to pretend like she was moving on from the whole, stupid thing. But this didn't feel like moving on. She missed her stupid, idiotic best friend just as much as she had to begin with. The fighting had been such a nice release, and now that she didn't have that, it almost felt even worse. It was harder to be so close to being back to their normal banter, but still be so far apart from each other.
Although maybe she should find some relief in how much thought he'd put into her gifts. It surely meant he was just as upset about the state of their relationship as she was. Because she certainly wouldn't have put that much time or effort into making a gift for someone she didn't care about.
But somehow it only made it all feel worse. Because if he cared so much then why was he still being too stupid to talk to her about anything?
A knock at the door startled her and made her try to get control of the sobs enough to talk through them.
"Go away, Tori," she said, her voice thick with tears despite her attempt to speak normally.
She didn't want to talk to anyone and have them tell her it was going to be fine or that George was just too stupid to fix it or that he did care about her. She didn't want the excuses anymore because she was tired of hearing them and she was tired of making them for him.
"It's Fred."
"Oh," she said in surprise. How he'd known to look for her here, she had not a clue. "Go away, Fred."
There was a heavy sigh that she could hear through the door before he spoke again.
"C'mon, munchkin, let me in."
Biting her lip to keep it from shaking at the fond tone he'd put behind the nickname, she took a deep, shaky breath.
"Fine."
She didn't look at him when she heard the door open and he stepped inside. Maybe if she didn't look at him he'd pretend he didn't know she was crying. She was getting sick of crying. It made her nose run, and her head hurt, and her throat and nose burn. She startled again when, instead of using the beanbag chair next to her, Fred fell onto what was not being used of her own. When he tugged at her arm, she went without fighting because she was just so tired of fighting. She was just tired in general.
"What'd he do now?"
"Nothing," she said honestly, trying to control the burning in her throat enough to keep talking. She had to take several breaths after she said it because for some reason talking made it harder to control the sobs. "I'm being dramatic. It was just the Christmas presents he gave me."
"It must have been something horrible then if the Dungbombs aren't what got you so upset," he joked, rubbing her arm comfortingly. She smacked him lightly, but said nothing. She didn't have the energy to pretend to laugh when she was still trying to hold back tears. He sighed heavily. "Were they that bad?"
"No," she said, voice breaking harshly. "They were — they were perfect. That's the problem."
Fred didn't say anything for a moment and she could practically feel the confusion coming off of him in waves.
"I don't understand," he said eventually.
Nessa sniffled and tried to find a way to put into words how she was feeling.
"What he gave me," she said eventually. "He would have had to put so much time into it. I can't even imagine how much — the magic behind it would have taken months to perfect, Fred. What am I supposed to do with that?"
"I still don't understand."
She couldn't tell if these words made her want to cry or scream.
"I don't understand what he's doing, Fred," she said in frustration, her voice breaking again. She closed her eyes and took a stabilizing breath before trying to speak again. "It's so confusing. He tells me that he'd choose me over Alicia last night…but did he not already do the exact opposite? He didn't speak to me for weeks at the beginning of the year because of her. Then he says he doesn't want to confuse me, but gives me a gift that would have taken bloody ages to make me even though we can't be in the same room together without you or Tori without dissolving into awkward silence. Nevermind the fact that he gets all pissy about Cedric and is still there every time something bad happens. I don't understand any of it. What does he want from me, Fred?"
"I don't know, munchkin," he said, softly, giving her a tight squeeze when she made a dejected noise. "I wish I could explain it all to you, but I don't think he knows what he wants any more than you do. And I don't want to make excuses for him, but Alicia has been…well, don't tell him I told you this, but she's been a bit emotionally manipulative with him lately. I don't think he's really in the right frame of mind to figure out how he feels at the moment."
"I understand that," she said, frustration mounting as she got up to start pacing. "I don't need him to figure out the whole thing with Alicia. Although, truthfully, I wish he'd do himself a favor and call it quits. But I'm tired, Fred. Not just the physically exhausted kind of tired, but emotionally tired…it feels like I've been wrung out completely. And I'm so sick of waiting for him to man up and apologize for being such a stupid git, y'know, because it's been months."
"He wants to talk to you, darling, he just doesn't want to upset you after —"
"That's just another excuse and you know it, Fred Weasley," she interrupted, pointing an angry finger at him. He closed his mouth abruptly and grimaced at her, which was truthfully the only answer she needed. "I'm not asking him to choose between me and Alicia. That's stupid and I'd never — I mean, I never meant to come between the two of them, even if she insists on trying to put me there. I'm asking him to be my friend." She deflated sadly all of a sudden and tried to ignore the welling in her eyes again. "What is so hard about that? I can live with the confusion about why he gets pissy with Cedric flirting with me or why he called me gorgeous even though he insists he doesn't want to confuse me about where we stand. I can even live with the fact that he may never fancy me back. But this…with the awkward silences and the keeping our distance so it doesn't piss off Alicia and going back and forth between friends and not friends. I can't handle this for much longer. I feel like I'm going mad."
Fred stared at her a moment in surprise at the unloading of all of her emotions. Not particularly surprised that she felt them, but more that she'd unloaded them at all. She was so tightly wound all of the time, so reserved, so carefully put together and fake smiles to hide the pain underneath. But he supposed you could only really go on with feeling things so intensely and bottling it up for so long before it all came exploding out. Between George and the news about Sirius Black, she likely didn't have much emotionally left to give.
Truthfully, though, he didn't know what to say to any of that. Because he wanted to say that George was going to talk to her — after last night, he was almost certain of it — but he wasn't sure when that would be at this point. He wanted to tell her to hang onto their friendship a little longer because he didn't want either of them to end up hurt more than they already were, but that felt a little selfish because she was clearly at the end of her tether.
So he said none of the things he wanted to say and just looked at her sadly, opening his arms again in invitation. She laughed sadly, but went into them for a hug, sinking back into the bean bag chair and sighing into his chest.
"It would have been so much easier if I fancied you instead," she said, only half-joking, looking up at him from his chest without lifting her head.
Fred hummed in amusement and grinned at the ceiling.
"Certainly would have made much more sense," he said, feigning seriousness. "I'm the more attractive twin, of course. Maybe you just got us confused?"
His feigned confusion coupled with the way he was pretending to check her temperature with the back of his hand to her forehead made her laugh, though the sound was a little wet still. He seemed okay with it, regardless, and squeezed her playfully again.
"I didn't confuse you, but I'll let you go on believing you're the more attractive one if it keeps your little heart happy, Freddie."
"That'd be much more heartwarming if you didn't have that smirk on your face," he said, ruffling her hair intentionally and laughing when she huffed at him in irritation, trying to smooth her locks back down over her scalp. "But anyway, I don't think I'd be much better, darling. I don't date, remember?"
She knew she shouldn't say what popped in her head immediately at these words, but it was only the two of them in here anyway and she was curious to know if her assumption of the situation was correct. It would either be horribly awkward or he'd laugh in her face. Neither of those options sounded particularly appealing, but it would make her feel better to be on more even footing with a man she'd cried in front of twice about his brother.
"Even Tori?"
Her assumption had certainly been correct.
She'd never seen Fred Weasley go from relaxed to tense so quickly in all the time she'd known him. She sort of felt a little bad about springing it on him all of a sudden, but maybe it would help if he had someone to talk to about it. Based on George's responses when the two of them were together, she didn't think he'd said anything to his twin about how he felt. Which she imagined was particularly difficult for him, considering how close they were.
"I — what does Tori have to do with anything?"
His attempt to keep his voice casual likely would have fooled anyone else. But she'd always been observant, especially of the Weasley twins. They were everything she'd always secretly wished she could be and, before they'd been friends, she'd been a little intimidated by them. They had big personalities and were rarely apart, but she'd assumed, even then, that there had to be something that would set them apart from each other. After they'd become friends, the observations of them hadn't really stopped. They'd just become a little easier because she didn't have to make them from a distance like some sort of creepy stalker.
Fred had a higher voice from his twin, only slightly, but she could tell now that the sound was fractionally higher than it normally was. And even though he'd relaxed and placed his grin back in place, he'd started tapping his pointer finger and thumb together, a nervous tic she'd noticed of his when they'd been studying in the library the year prior. The grin was also a little less wide, not nearly wide enough to show the dimple on his right cheek.
"I see the way you look at her," she said softly, trying to convey that she wasn't judging him because he half-looked like he was going to bolt. "I won't say anything to anyone, if that's what you're so tense about."
He stared at her for a long moment. She was a little afraid she might have shocked him to death, but he eventually cleared his throat roughly and looked away from her.
"It doesn't bother you?"
She stared at him, her brows furrowing in confusion.
"Bother me? Why would it bother me?"
"Because she's my sister."
Nessa snorted and gave him a hard look.
"No, she isn't," she said, working very hard not to roll her eyes at the ridiculousness of that statement because she could see the self-loathing on his face plain as day. "If she were, she'd have red hair and way too many freckles, for one thing. Ginny is your sister."
Fred shook his head, refusing to look at her still.
"Mum and Dad, they….they always told us Tori was family. Our sister. Even if they didn't give birth to her. It's the rule. We all accepted it, treated her exactly like we would have Ginny. It was easier than breathing," he paused, looking horribly pained. "And now I — I look at her and that's not what I see at all. And I have no idea when the entire bloody thing happened."
"She isn't your sister, Fred," she said firmly. "She grew up as part of your family and your parents didn't want her to feel different from the rest of you. It's a very sweet gesture on their part, but that doesn't make her your sister. Not really, anyway. You aren't doing anything wrong."
He looked at her then, his face a mask of incredulity.
"Tell that to Mum then because if she knew, I'd be six feet under."
"When have you ever cared what your mother thought?" she said with an eye roll this time. "You can't help how you feel, Fred. What are you going to do…ignore it and pretend you don't love her?"
He made a pained sound at the thought and let his head come to rest on the wall behind him with a thump.
"I don't know," he said, voice thick with emotion. She tried not to act surprised when he didn't try to brush off the love part of the statement. She'd sort of expected him to, if only in an attempt to convince her he wasn't in as deep as he was. "Maybe. I don't think she's noticed anything yet, so I probably could."
"She hasn't, but I don't think she's looking hard enough, honestly," Nessa agreed. "But that isn't really the point. You can't ignore it. You'll either drive yourself mad or end up regretting it for the rest of your life."
"How do I even tell her something like that, Nessa?" he said dejectedly. "Hey, sorry, I know you think of me as a brother, but I'm in love with you and think you hang the moon."
"The last part was good, but I'd leave out the rest, to be perfectly honest," she said. She laughed good-naturedly when he gave her an exasperated look and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I'm serious, Freddie. I'm really counting on you to be the smarter twin here." Fred snorted. "Have you told George?"
"No," he said morosely. "I hate myself for that too. We never keep secrets from each other. But, I don't know, what if he looks at me like I'm disgusting or —"
"You know he wouldn't," she interrupted. "He loves the both of you and if that's what you wanted, I doubt he'd make much of a fuss about it. Maybe a bit of a shock, but he'd get over it."
"A bit of a shock, she says," he said with a sarcastic laugh. "That's a very nice way of putting it. Anyway, I haven't worked up the nerve to say anything to him about it and I didn't think anyone had really noticed anything different. Although, I guess I should have known that if anyone did, it would be you."
She sighed heavily as she stared at him. He did such a great job of hiding it because the two of them had always had an odd sort of relationship. From the day she'd met Tori, she'd thought she'd been exaggerating about her interactions with Fred Weasley. They were always so emotionally fraught and explosive. And then she'd met them and it had been almost exactly as she'd expected, except she clearly had the man wrapped around her finger and he hadn't looked at all like he minded all that much.
She'd thought they were just close, but the more she looked, the more that look on Fred's face started to make a lot more sense to her. It certainly explained how easily Tori could bring him to his knees with a single tear.
Personally, the fact that no one noticed it themselves had to be because they just didn't believe that Fred saw her in any other way than a sister. Because that's how his siblings saw her, and they refused to look any deeper than that. Because it was very obvious to her and she didn't know Fred even half as well as George did.
"Look, Fred," she said seriously, looking him hard in the eyes. "The sooner you stop being stupid about this, the easier it will be." She placed a hand over his mouth when he opened it angrily to retort and kept talking. "I'm not even going to pretend like I have any idea how confusing this must be for you because, truthfully, I don't. And if you don't want to say anything to your family or George then I'll keep the secret for as long as you'd like. But I'm going to make this brutally clear to you: She is not your sister. The sooner you get that through your thick skull, the sooner you can stop looking so miserable and actually do something about it. And, personally, I think you should be miserable thinking about how much of a pain in your arse she's going to be than moping about something as stupid as what your mum will think when she finds out."
She could feel him smirking under her hand, but all she could see were his eyes, which, thankfully, had an amused sparkle in them again. He raised an eyebrow when she didn't immediately move her hand away and she gave him a hard look before she let him talk again.
"That was very comforting, your highness, thank you," he said finally, smirk still firmly in place. She huffed at him and he laughed. "Don't look at me like that. I'll stop, but if Mum tries to kill me, I'm going to need you to cause a diversion."
She rolled her eyes, but took his outstretched hand and shook it anyway. If a diversion was the only stipulation to get him to pull his head out of his arse, then she'd do it.
If only getting George to do the same was even half as simple.
As if she'd conjured him from her thoughts alone, there was a soft knock on the door and George was standing awkwardly in the doorway, eyeing the two of them in a shrewd sort of way. He seemed to relax a little when he saw them casually sitting in one of the chairs. Nessa could feel Fred shaking with the attempt he was making not to laugh at his brother's obvious relief, but she was too busy staring at him, suddenly remembering why she'd come up here in the first place.
"Er — Mum wanted me to check that everything was okay," George said, shifting uncomfortably.
Fred raised an eyebrow as though he didn't truly believe him.
"Well, you can tell her that we're fine then and we'll be in for breakfast in a bit," he said, a note of challenge in his voice that Nessa didn't understand.
"I actually —" George cleared his throat, looking at Nessa imploringly. "Well, I wanted to talk to you first before you went back."
Suddenly, she felt ready to be sick.
Had she really wished he would grow a pair and talk to her? Because all of a sudden, she wanted absolutely anything other than having one out with George Weasley in their treehouse. She had no idea what she was supposed to say. She wanted to run again. She wanted to use Fred as her excuse to get as far away from George Weasley as possible and avoid the conversation entirely. She'd already cried over him once and if the conversation didn't go the way she hoped it would, then she was going to be feeling much worse.
"Munchkin?"
She pulled her gaze from George's to look over at Fred. He was looking at her for some sort of direction about what she wanted him to do. If the steel in his eyes was any indication, he'd have absolutely no problem telling his twin to leave and she could avoid the conversation for as long as she'd like.
She loved him a little more in that moment, honestly.
"It's fine," she said quietly, making a split second decision before she could overthink and convince herself to get the hell out of there. George relaxed a little more at these words, but Fred was still looking at her in a probing sort of way, as if he thought she was lying. She put a hand on his forearm and tried to give him a comforting smile, but it felt shakier than she'd have liked. "Really, Freddie. I'll be okay."
He made a skeptical noise, but acquiesced, pulling himself up into a stand and booping her on the nose playfully. Despite her anxiety, the action pulled a smile from her and he winked at her before heading for the door.
"Try not to be too much of a git," he said to George as he passed by. "If I have to come back out here, you'll look just like those birds."
"They look like anteaters," Nessa said before George could make a scathing retort.
"They aren't anteaters," they said in unison, affronted. "They're birds."
"If you say so," she said sarcastically.
Fred pointed a warning finger at her.
"Don't start, Potter," he said. "Georgie might be too soft to push you off this treehouse, but I'm not."
Nessa snorted.
"I love you too, Fred."
He gave a last wink to her and a parting glare to his twin before he was gone, closing the door behind him. Neither she or George said anything for a long moment until the silence stretched out between them for so long that it became oppressive.
God, maybe she should have gone with Fred.
"I need you to say something before I start laughing," she said finally.
She could feel the urge bubbling up in her chest as the silence became more and more awkward, and it would be horribly insensitive given the current state of their friendship. Not that she was really in control of that particular nervous habit, but still.
A ghost of a smile flickered across his face, but he cleared his throat and humored her without mentioning the comment.
"I — er — are you feeling okay?"
She was definitely going to laugh.
This was probably the most awkward she'd ever felt in all her life. Most of the time that she laughed in uncomfortable situations, it was because she was experiencing some form of second-hand embarrassment — like last year when Ron had gotten that Howler. Very rarely did she find herself in the sort of uncomfortable situation that sparked the urge for her. This was certainly one of them though.
Especially because he was so awkwardly feigning interest in the pictures that lined the wall instead of looking at her.
Swallowing hard, she said, "I've been better."
It was the truth. Now that Fred wasn't here to distract her, the pounding in her head was harder to ignore and her eyes felt dry from crying. And looking at him was bringing up the awe she'd felt when she'd realized what he'd made her for Christmas and how quickly it had turned to heartbreak.
"Nessa, I —" He paused, taking a long breath in through his nose and running his hand through his hair. His own nervous tic. "I really don't know how to start this conversation," A nervous laugh that she truly understood because she was trying to keep her heart rate at a normal level. These sorts of conversations were exactly the ones that made her anxious in social situations. "I just — I hate this. Us. I don't — I really don't know how to fix this, Vanessa."
She opened her mouth and then closed it again because, truthfully, she didn't know either. Her relationship with George had always been surprisingly easy. For all of the time she'd been worried, they wouldn't have gotten along, it had taken him about half a second to worm his way into a permanent spot in her life. The awkwardness that she felt around him now felt miles and miles away from where they'd been before.
How did you fix distance like that? Was an apology enough?
"George, I don't know what to say about any of this," she said finally, trying to remind herself over and over that she was not going to laugh and she was not going to cry. She was going to be an emotionally stable human being during this conversation if it killed her. She'd laugh maniacally to herself later if she had to. "I don't — I don't understand you right now."
George made a frustrated noise and tugged at the hair on the side of his head as a means to release some of the irritation he felt at himself.
"I don't understand myself right now either, to be perfectly honest," he said angrily, although it was clear he was angry with himself more than her. He sank into the beanbag chair next to her and stared morosely out in front of him. She had to choke down another laugh at how ridiculous they must look, having a serious conversation while being seated in the most ridiculously childlike seats in the world. "I can't even figure out what I'm supposed to be feeling about anything half the time and Alicia — she just makes the entire thing more complicated and I just — Merlin, Nessa, I'm just sorry for being so unbelievably stupid."
Nessa was trying very hard to look anywhere but at him. She didn't know what to say, really. She'd expected to know. She'd expected that the moment that he'd finally said he was sorry or admitted he was at fault that it would feel better, but it didn't. Not really. And not because she didn't believe him because his voice conveyed every level of pain and remorse that she'd have expected from him in a situation like this. A certain level of self-hatred she wasn't particularly used to hearing from him, of all people.
But she was just so…angry.
That's what it was. Maybe she hadn't given it much thought through the despair she felt every time she looked at him, but the apology just pissed her off more. She wanted to throttle him, scream at him. A nasty part of herself wanted to make him hurt as badly as he'd hurt her. And that part of herself scared the hell out of her, truthfully.
So she said nothing and George started speaking again to cover the silence, sounding very close to rambling, in his desperation to fix the entire situation.
"An apology isn't enough and I know that. Personally, if you wanted to hit me, I don't think I'd judge you for that," She snorted derisively because she'd only just been thinking about how much she'd love to punch his stupid face. He huffed an understanding laugh, but kept talking anyway. "And there's really no excuse good enough to treat you the way I have —"
"Give me one anyway," she said, still refusing to look at him.
He hesitated for a moment, but she refused to back down. If he was going to apologize, she wanted to know what exactly had felt like a good enough reason for him to treat her the way he had in the first place. Even if she fully agreed that there was no excuse good enough.
"It had nothing to do with Alicia," he said eventually.
"Do you really expect me to believe that?"
She was looking at him now and he inhaled sharply at the intensity of her gaze. She was clearly upset, but there was a spark in her eyes that she was hiding the sorrow behind. The sorrow killed him, truly, but the spark gave him hope. Because if he could still anger her enough to put it there, then he could likely still win her over.
"It didn't," he said firmly. "I shouldn't have let you believe that it did, but I didn't know what to say when I found out how you felt about me and I thought that if I could just keep my distance that maybe the answer would come a little easier. And then the longer it took, the harder it was to talk to you about it."
The fact that she understood exactly what that felt like did not soften her anger at all. It just made her more angry because she was so sick of feeling sorry for him when she was always the one that got hurt. People thought her empathy was a gift. Truthfully, most days it felt more like a curse — the intensity of feeling another person's emotions as though she were the one in their position was overwhelming.
"So you just let me go on believing that she was more important to you than I was?" she said with a scoff. "How very sweet of you, George. This conversation is really just making me feel worse, truth be told."
George tried not to let the words spark any irritation or anger on his part. No one liked being confronted with the things they'd done wrong, sure, but he was well aware that, of the both of them, he had the least right to be angry.
"Love, I —"
"I hate when you do that," she said harshly, suddenly jumping to her feet to glare down at him. "I hate when you call me that when you know I'm cross with you, do you know that? It makes me feel badly for being cross with you in the first place and I —"
She stopped talking abruptly because she was going to cry again and she refused to give him the satisfaction of upsetting her so thoroughly again.
"I don't want you to feel badly about that, Vanessa," he said, bewildered by the sudden change in topic. "You have every right to be angry. I won't say it if it bothers you."
"What bothers me, George, is that you can be so unbelievably stupid. What bothers me is that you can ignore me for weeks and have not a care in the world about it —"
"That's not true," he said softly.
It had killed him to ignore her. The entire thing had been horribly painful.
She stopped talking again, but only to point at him dangerously, the spark in her eye turning into a full on fire right in front of him.
"Don't interrupt me," she said angrily. "You had three months to talk and you didn't. So, you're just going to sit there and listen as though your life depends on it, — and it just might, by the way — do you understand me?" He took the safer route of nodding, rather than arguing. "As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted…I am bothered about the fact that you can ignore me for weeks, argue with me for weeks, and then just turn up out of the blue anytime I need you. I am so sick and tired of looking at you and wondering what I could have possibly done that would make you choose Alicia over me, but then tell me that if she asked you to choose between us, you'd choose me. When you very clearly did not do that when the opportunity arose. You are my best fucking friend, George, and you just threw it away like it meant nothing to you. I would have never done that to you. Not once. So whatever stupid excuse you're about to make had better be worth it because I swear to God, I will hex you in this treehouse if you say one more horribly stupid thing to me."
George stared at her for a second after her tirade, partially in surprise, but also partially because he was a little afraid to talk too soon in case she had something more to say and got angry with him again. When she didn't say anything still and kept glaring at him like she wanted him to catch fire right in front of her, he said the first thing that came to his head.
"I'm your best friend?"
The look of angry incredulity nearly made him laugh. If he'd had a death wish, he might have.
"That's what you took from that?" she said in exasperation.
He rolled his eyes before he could stop himself.
"I heard all of it, don't get your knickers in a twist," he said, pressing his lips together to keep from laughing when she screamed in frustration at him. He was really pushing his luck, but he figured if she were going to kill him, she'd have done it already, so he could afford to take some risks. He gave her an imploring look and said, "Will you please come here, love?"
Her nostrils flared and she crossed her arms petulantly, refusing to budge from her position standing above him. He wanted to push — he certainly wasn't above begging her, honestly —- but he'd learned long ago that it was best to just wait for her to decide what decision she felt comfortable with. He'd save the begging for when she was refusing to forgive him, if it came to that.
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity before she seemed to deflate all of a sudden and took a step toward him. He might have felt relief at this, except she was clearly going to cry again and it was making him want to rip his heart out of his chest so he didn't have to feel it cracking.
When she came close enough, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to sit with him in his chair, squeezing her against him and ignoring her weak attempts to get away. He just hugged her until she gave up fighting him and hid her face in his shirt. It was an odd mixture of relief and sorrow when she stopped trying to get away from him again. He was relieved that she was at least feeling generous enough to let him get so close and the smell of her — something fruity, like mango or maybe peaches — was relaxing, but he could also feel his shirt getting wet from where she was hiding her face and he hated himself a little more for that knowledge.
He didn't say anything for a while, but she refused to look up at him, which he might have been a little thankful for. It was hard for him to think when she was looking at him.
"You never did anything wrong, Vanessa," he said eventually. She barely moved when he spoke, so he assumed it was safe to keep talking. "I was a coward and I didn't — I didn't want to hurt you —" She shifted then, making an angry noise in the back of her throat, but he tightened his hold and hid his face in her hair. "Listen, sweetheart. I promise you can yell at me all you want afterwards, okay?" She stopped moving again, but there was a grumbling that told him exactly how she felt about that and he cleared his throat to suppress his laughter. "I didn't want to hurt you. I know that I did, and you didn't deserve that, and I hate that I'm the reason we're here right now. I just — Alicia said you fancied me, but I told her she was reading into things and then when I overheard Fred and Tori, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do after that. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn't know if that would make you feel worse, and then Alicia really lost her head about me wanting to say something to you —-"
"I never wanted to come between you and Alicia," she said quietly, if a little awkwardly. His hold tightened again and he sighed heavily into her hair.
"I know you didn't. You haven't. She likes to pick a fight and that's — well, that's really neither here nor there," he said, clearing his throat again. "Anyway, I felt like I was being pulled one hundred different directions and no matter what I did, someone would end up hurt, and I….I made the wrong choice. The fact that Alicia hated you was just some charade I could hide behind to avoid admitting that to myself."
"Why didn't you just say something, George?" she responded brokenly.
"I don't know, love," he said, his voice full of self-loathing. "I told myself I would. But after a while, I'd avoided it for so long that saying something was harder than running away, so I didn't. But then, y'know, Alicia took that to mean that I was choosing and then she started trying to insult you when you weren't around and I figured if she thought that, then you probably did and then we got into that argument and you stormed off and then I knew you thought that and —"
"Breathe, George," Nessa said, trying not to laugh because the more he talked, the faster the words came out and it reminded her too much of all of the times she'd done the same thing. And there was a sort of pleasure in knowing that he was at least upset enough to be panicking a little, which was likely a little cruel of her, but she'd never really seen him so nervous before.
"Right, sorry," he said sheepishly, taking a deep breath and then starting again. "The fighting was just easier, I guess. I didn't want to push you into talking to me, and I was pissed at myself for letting it get so bad, and the only way I could get you to react to anything was by fighting. Which if I weren't so bloody dense, I might have realized it was just making it harder on you, but y'know, by that point I think I was really only working with one brain cell, so…"
She snorted, but didn't disagree.
"But you were there, at least," he said, softly, twirling a strand of her hair around one of his fingers in an attempt to distract himself. "And knowing that felt a little less intense. I figured there would come a point where I'd stop being a coward and say something to you, but then everything with Murton happened and I —"
"Made another excuse," she said firmly before he could say otherwise. He chuckled.
"I was going to say that, love," he said placatingly and she made a noise of suspicion. He poked her in the side in retaliation and grinned when she squealed in surprise and tried to squirm away from him. "Behave yourself. I'm spilling my guts out here, alright?"
"George," she said warningly, hiding her stupid smile in his shirt, so he couldn't see it.
She hated herself a little because she wanted to be angry still. To tell him that he was an idiot and a buffoon and that what he'd done was unforgivable, but he was so hard to stay mad at. There was a comfort that came with being near him and she, unfortunately, could not convince herself that she didn't understand how complicated the whole thing must have felt for him.
She also couldn't pretend like she didn't understand avoiding a problem until it got worse and worse. Especially not to George, who had been the one to drag her out of the library every time she'd done the same and told her that she was letting her anxiety get the better of her. And there had been at least one occasion where she had stopped talking to him because she didn't know what to say after she'd lost her temper with him. Not really the same thing, but close enough that she understood how it would feel.
She startled when he used a finger to tilt her face up to look at him. She tried not to let the butterflies in her stomach distract her from whatever he was about to say next because his face was deadly serious.
"I could sit here and give you every excuse I've given myself in the last three months, if that's what you'd like, love," he said, his voice laced with sorrow and regret, but horribly honest. The emotion behind it alone made her tear up again and he'd hardly said anything. "But I don't think it would make much difference. I can't go back and change it no matter how much I'd like to have handled it all differently. All I can really say now is that I'm sorry. For all of it. But mostly because I ever made you feel like our friendship wasn't important to me because the thought of losing you makes my chest ache. You were right when you said you'd never have done that to me. You wouldn't have because you're loyal and sweet and you're kind to people who truly don't deserve it. You're all of those things even after everything you've been through and I respect the hell out of you for that."
"You're going to make me cry again, George," she warned him, her throat closing around the words.
He smiled at her sadly and touched his forehead to hers.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. It hurts me when you cry," he said truthfully and she took a shaky breath to try to control the urge, but he still had to swipe away a tear with his thumb. "I don't deserve you. I know that. And I certainly don't deserve your forgiveness. But I'm asking for it anyway."
God, she hated him. He was such a stupid sap, and he made her stupid heart flutter when he looked at her like that, and he knew exactly what to say to crack her open completely. Every part of her wanted to forgive him and move on from the entire thing.
"I'm not above begging, you know," he said seriously.
Because, truthfully, he was not, and the silence as he waited for her to give him any indication of what she was feeling was making his heart thunder.
The words drew a watery laugh from her and he smiled a little at the sound. He missed the sound of it — hadn't even really realized how much until he heard it again.
"I want to forgive you so badly it hurts, George," she said honestly, but his heart stopped anyway because he could hear the 'but' coming. "I miss you."
"I miss you too," he said gently, placing so much emotion behind the words that his voice cracked with the truth of them. She closed her eyes to hide the pain, and he had to wipe away another tear. "Tell me what you need, sweetheart. I'll give you anything."
She made a pained noise in the back of her throat.
"I — I can't do this again, George," she said with a shuddering breath. "I can't. Alicia is still —"
"Alicia doesn't matter," he said immediately, squeezing her wrist until she opened her eyes again. "I can handle Alicia."
"George —"
He put a hand over her mouth to keep her from talking and she huffed despite herself. A ghost of his grin appeared on his face, but he kept his features serious.
"It won't happen again, Vanessa. I promise you."
She believed him. If only because he adamantly refused to look away from her when he'd said it. And maybe she was just weak at this point because she was so tired of being angry.
She squeezed the wrist of the hand he had still covering her mouth and he removed it, looking for all the world like he was waiting to take a death blow.
"Do I have to pretend to like her?"
He huffed a laugh despite himself.
"No, love," he said. "I wouldn't believe you even if you did."
She initiated the touch this time, resting her forehead on his again, and watching as he released a slow, anxious breath.
"You are, without a doubt, the stupidest man I've ever met, George Weasley," she said truthfully, smiling at him gently. "But I forgive you."