Timing of Chapter: GOF. World Cup. Twins are 16, Tori is 15.

Rating: T


Chapter Six

It was weird how something could go so horribly wrong within such a short period of time. How one moment she could be lying in bed, giggling with her best friend about Viktor Krum and her stupid mess of a relationship with Fred, and the next they'd been running into the forest for cover from dark wizards attacking the Muggles at the campsite.

She supposed that part hadn't been so bad — well, for her. For the Muggles it had been horrible and sick. Watching them being dangled above the crowd like dolls had been disgusting. The fact that anyone would find that amusing, would not see it as utterly inhumane, was something she so despised. But it hadn't hurt her. She'd been safe.

Not the way that the Dark Mark had hurt her when it had appeared above the tree line. She'd forgotten what it looked like, some of the details having fogged in her mind, but the moment she'd seen it, it had dragged her back into that horrible place. She could feel it all again — the fear, the pain, the panic. She could hear it all again — the screams, the laughing, the begging.

She didn't think that there was anything — aside from the dementors — that had the ability to bring back the memory of her mother dying. The moment she'd seen that mark above her, her entire body had frozen, her eyes locking on it as if they'd been glued to the spot.

She could hear the others talking in the tent, trying to figure out what had happened with the Muggles and why someone would send the Dark Mark up into the air when the entire Ministry was on duty for the evening.

She couldn't find it within herself to care, really, the sounds of their voices moving past her like it was being filtered through water, the words distorted and unintelligible.

She jumped when George's hand moved to touch hers where it sat gripping one of her knees. He wrapped his pinky around hers as if they were making a pinky swear. From her other side, Fred's thumb wrapped around hers tightly.

They'd not done that since they were children, and she stared at their hands for a long time before she returned the pressure by curling her fingers around theirs.

It was a movement that was only theirs, a sign of solidarity and acceptance among the three of them. A sign that the three of them were three pieces of a whole, that they'd accepted her into their relationship and loved her as strongly as they loved each other.

Her vision blurred as she stared at that one hand, some of her jagged edges smoothing, and her senses coming back to her slowly. The smell of gunpowder hit her first, then the more subtle smells of cinnamon (George) and chocolate (Fred). She could feel them both on either side of her, sitting so close that the line of their bodies met hers, their legs and shoulders pushing into her from both sides.

The sound of the voices around her hit her next.

"Look, can someone just explain what that skull thing was?" Ron was saying impatiently. "It wasn't hurting anyone…Why's it such a big deal?"

Tori moved for the first time in an hour, glaring at him harshly. The twins' fingers tightened around hers.

"I told you, it's You-Know-Who's symbol, Ron," said Hermione, before anyone else could answer. "I read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."

"And it hasn't been seen for thirteen years," said Arthur quietly.

"That's not true," Tori said, her voice dull and devoid of emotion.

"What's that?" Arthur said, looking at her cautiously.

"It's been only eleven years," she said. "There was one over our house the night Mum died. I remember seeing it when we were leaving."

Nessa flinched and Arthur seemed to pale rapidly. There was a very long silence following this information, one which none of them seemed to know how to break. Tori didn't know how to help them with that. She was drowning in memories — the screaming, the silence, the sounds of Arthur looking for her in a panic.

Ron, however, had the social awareness of a common gnat.

"I don't get it," Ron said, frowning, his tone cautious as he looked at Tori. "I mean…it's still only a shape in the sky…"

"Ron, You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed," said Arthur. "The terror it inspired..,you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside…" Arthur winced. "Everyone's worst fear…the very worst…"

There was another long silence. Then Bill, removing the cloth from his arm to check on his cut, said, "Well, it didn't help us tonight, whoever conjured it. It scared the Death Eaters away the moment they saw it. They all Disapparated before we'd got near enough to unmask any of them. We caught the Robertses before they hit the ground, though. They're having their memories modified right now."

"Death Eaters?" said Harry, looking at his sister in confusion. "What are Death Eaters?"

His sister had spent the majority of her first two years of Hogwarts in the library, too socially anxious to make friends and unwilling to answer the school's questions about her younger brother when she'd first arrived. She'd spent quite a bit of time learning about the man who had killed her parents, and it was no surprise that Harry looked to her for the answer.

Vanessa Potter — her best friend in the entirety of the world, someone she trusted even more than the Weasley twins beside her — was a spitting image of her mother, resembling Lily so completely that they could have been twins. With long auburn hair that was stick-straight, a short stature, and the distinctive almond-shaped emerald of her eyes, she was a very pretty girl, whose anxiety had a tendency of muddling her opinion of herself.

But Tori had never met anyone as strong and resilient as Nessa.

She was a petite girl, standing at only 5'2", but she held herself in a way that made other people feel small. Not that she noticed — too trapped in her head most of the time, letting her social anxiety and insecurities cloud her assessment of herself. Tori didn't quite understand how she didn't see it herself, but it was one of the things that she loved most about her; she didn't let the trauma of her life keep her down. She was resilient despite her anxious thoughts and behavior. She didn't give up.

Tori didn't know how her best friend didn't see it — the bravery she had even through her anxiety, the strength she carried herself with. She could see that resolve now, in the spark of her eyes, the straightening of her spine, the way she looked at her brother.

"It's what Voldemort's followers called themselves," Nessa responded patiently. Everyone, except Tori, flinched at the name and the casualness with which she spoke it. "Some sort of warped idea of playing God, calling themselves that. Those masks are — were a symbol of their status, their power, their allegiance. It's why so many people ran for the woods rather than helping the Robertses."

"I think we saw what's left of them tonight," said Bill. "The ones who managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban, anyway."

"We can't prove it was them, Bill," said Arthur. "Though it probably was," he added hopelessly.

"Yeah, I bet it was!" said Ron suddenly. "Dad, we met Draco Malfoy in the woods, and he as good as told us his dad was one of those nutters in masks! And we all know the Malfoys were right in with You-Know-Who!"

"But what were Voldemort's supporters —" Harry began. Everybody flinched again. "Sorry," he added quickly.

"Don't apologize," Nessa said sharply, causing her brother to whip his head toward her in surprise. "It's only a name. It holds power only if you allow it to. You give him exactly what he wants when you refuse to say it."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence at these words, and there was not a single person in the tent who didn't look particularly embarrassed. They'd all refused to say it at some point or another, though Tori had grown up in a household that feared nothing more than Lord Voldemort.

Nessa and Harry didn't have that sort of upbringing to weigh them down from saying the words, and Nessa had always outright refused to give the man who had murdered her parents more power over her than he already had.

"What were You-Know —" Harry caught his sister's sharp expression and cleared his throat. "What were Voldemort's supporters up to, levitating Muggles? I mean, what was the point?"

"The point?" said Arthur with a hollow laugh. "Harry, that's their idea of fun. Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for fun. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn't resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them," he finished disgustedly.

"But if they were the Death Eaters, why did they Disapparate when they saw the Dark Mark?" said Ron. "They'd have been pleased to see it, wouldn't they?"

"Use your brains, Ron," said Bill and Nessa snorted. "If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power, and told all sorts of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people. I bet they'd be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied they'd ever been involved with him when he lost his powers, and went back to their daily lives…I don't reckon he'd be overpleased with them, do you?"

"So…whoever conjured the Dark Mark…" said Hermione slowly, "were they doing it to show support for the Death Eaters or to scare them away?"

"Your guess is as good as ours, Hermione," said Arthur. "But I'll tell you this…it was only the Death Eaters who ever knew how to conjure it. I'd be very surprised if the person who did it hadn't been a Death Eater once, even if they're not now…Listen, it's very late, and if your mother hears what's happened she'll be worried sick. We'll get a few more hours sleep and then try and get an early Portkey out of here."

They all stood slowly and dispersed without a word, heads churning with the events of the evening. Arthur helped Bill heal the cut on his arm as Nessa gave Harry a hug before he headed off to bed. Hermione and Ginny waited for her and Tori by the door, but Tori didn't bother making her way toward the exit; instead, she took Fred's outstretched hand mutely, and let him pull her toward the bedroom he shared with his brothers. Arthur looked as though he might insist that she sleep in the girls' tent, but instead, he sighed heavily, his eyes sorrowful, kissing Tori on the top of her head and waving her off to bed.

She'd have smiled at him if she had the energy, but her body felt heavy and she could barely pick up her feet, shuffling them across the ground instead. She stood awkwardly at the side of the bed as Fred rearranged the pillows before he laid down and opened his arms for her. She climbed into the cot without a word, scooting into his side and wrapping an arm around his middle.

They didn't speak at first, just stared at each other until Arthur and Bill ended up settling into bed themselves, until Charlie's snoring could be heard throughout the tent.

She felt like she was numb, drifting away from the world and being abandoned at sea. She felt like she was comatose, her body working and her mind whirring but her ability to react to the world around her had long been abandoned. She was sure he could see it in her eyes — that drowning desperation — but there was a steely resolve in his own, as if his calm demeanor alone could keep her grounded in reality.

Eventually, when he was sure everyone else was asleep, he spoke.

"Here," he said quietly, reaching down and rustling in his bag. She stared at the teddy bear he was holding out to her as if she couldn't quite believe her eyes. "Take Spike."

She blinked at it a few times before reaching out for it with a shaking hand, pulling it into her chest and burying her face in his head. It smelled like the twins — gunpowder and cinnamon and chocolate — and it thawed some of the cold around her heart.

"Why do you have him here?"

"I brought him just in case," he said.

"Just in case," she snorted, looking up at him inquiringly. "What would make you grab a teddy bear neither of us has used in years before coming to the Quidditch World Cup?"

"I didn't have him when you needed him last year," he said simply. "I'll have him from now on."

She couldn't quite believe the words he was saying at the moment. They were, quite possibly, the most ridiculous things anyone had ever said to her. A sixteen year old man with a teddy bear in his backpack at the World Cup or stuffed inside his trunk at Hogwarts…it was the oddest thing she could have imagined him doing, but it made her heart swell in her chest.

Last year, the dementors had single-handedly destroyed her mental health. She hadn't told Nessa, but she'd snuck into Fred's bed every time that they'd come too close, and she could hear her mother screaming in her ears. He'd let her, talking her down from crying every single time, making her laugh, and never saying a word to anyone the next day.

She'd managed with his help, despite the fact that he could be the most infuriating human being she'd ever met. He was soft for her when she needed him to be, and she didn't know what to say to him when he was sweet like this — when he was handing her his childhood teddy bear as a form of comfort.

She hadn't needed Spike in years, but he'd given him to her every time she'd been upset when they were younger. She could feel the place on the bear that had become more worn than the others from where her finger had rubbed repeatedly back and forth.

Molly and Arthur had attempted to get her to move into Ginny's nursery for a month before she'd been able to leave the twins, but Spike had gone with her. When she'd finally given Spike back to Fred, he'd put him in their closet and told her that he'd be there whenever she needed him.

She hadn't seen the bear since, and she was surprised to see it now, after all these years. Surprised to know he'd kept it.

They both jumped when someone climbed out of bed, so caught up in each other that they hadn't realized anyone else was awake.

A set of legs appeared next to them as George jumped down from the bunk above them. He was standing over them a moment later, holding his pillow and giving them both an expectant look.

"Well, budge over then, I'm not just going to stand here all night," he said seriously.

"You cannot be serious," she whispered back at him. "There's no way the three of us will fit —"

George rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and climbed into the bed by force, shoving her aside and into Fred. Fred swore when she elbowed him in the stomach by accident.

"There, see, we fit," George said, sounding amused.

They looked more like a can of sardines, squished so tightly together that she couldn't exactly tell where one of them ended and the other began. Fred was nearest the wall, squished sideways and barely able to move without elbowing or kneeing Tori by mistake. Tori was squished between them, her own elbow digging painfully into his stomach. George seemed the most comfortable of the three of them, though he was teetering precariously on the edge of the bed.

"We do not," Fred said, his voice sounding muffled.

"Sorry, what's that?" George said with a grin, fluffing his pillow and closing his eyes. "Didn't catch that."

"George, you oaf," Tori laughed, the sound making some of Fred's tension relax. "I can't sleep squished in between you two all night."

"I'll have you know that this position is one that many girls at Hogwarts have dreamed of being in," he said haughtily.

"Gross," she snorted, elbowing him deliberately in the stomach. He grunted and Fred might have laughed if he had enough room to do so. "Get out of my bed —"

"Your bed?" Fred grumbled, still sounding muffled. "I'm about to kick you both out of my bed —"

"Hang on, hang on," George said from behind her. "We can figure this out."

He sat up, allowing Tori to shift back and breathe a little and Fred took the opportunity to gasp air into his lungs before his twin decided to lay back down and try to suffocate him again.

George took his pillow and chucked it so that it hit Charlie square in the face. The older man awoke with his arms flailing about wildly.

"The dragons! They've caught the Snitch! They've — they can't catch the Snitch!"

Tori had to bury her face in Fred's chest to smother the sounds of her giggling. George was grinning widely, clearly using all of his effort to keep from laughing.

"Charlie, be a mate and expand this bed, would you? I'm not supposed to be using magic, am I?"

Charlie barely looked like he was awake at all as he rustled around to grab his wand.

"No, right, dragons can't use magic," he mumbled sleepily. He found it under his pillow and pointed it in their direction.

"If he kills us by mistake, George, I want you to know that I'm the one that hid those magazines under your bed for Mum to find," Fred said.

George snorted and reached over to smack Fred upside his head, and Tori was laughing so hard that she had to cover her mouth with her hand. Charlie mumbled something under his breath and the bed beneath them expanded to give them more room.

"Cheers, mate," George said, lying down again before he sat back up suddenly. "Oh, could you toss me that pillow? If you don't mind."

"Sure, sure," Charlie said sleepily, moving his arm around blearily and grabbing one of the pillows on his bed before tossing it in George's direction.

"Cheers," George said again. "You better get the Snitch back from those dragons — don't want to lose the match, do you?"

"No, can't lose the match to those damned dragons, no," Charlie said viciously, rolling over onto his other side and snoring again immediately.

Fred looked like he couldn't quite believe anything he'd just heard, stuck between exasperation and amusement as George settled on the other side of her and let her roll onto her back between them.

"That was…surreal," he deadpanned, sending the three of them into a fit of laughter that had to be smothered behind hands and into their pillows to keep from waking the rest of the family.

It was a blessing they all slept like the dead. They'd all had to learn to in order to survive in a house filled with crying and screaming children, Molly Weasley's yelling, and random explosions from the twins' bedroom. A disadvantage at times, but an advantage in this case when they could speak freely without waking the others.

"He's never going to get married, is he?" Tori said, wiping tears from under her eyes. "Molly will be so disappointed."

Fred snorted.

"Might not marry a bird, no, but he might marry the dragons," he said. "You should have heard him earlier, talking about this one dragon — Bessie, was it, George?"

"Oh yeah," he said, grinning up at the ceiling. "Bessie has eyes as blue as the sea. She's nesting now — very difficult pregnancy, see — but she's the fiercest dragon of the whole lot of them, and she's going to make it through —"

"Stop it, the both of you, I can't breathe," Tori gasped through her laughter. "This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"I hardly believe that," George said behind her, lacing his fingers with hers. She knew what he was doing; using humor as a way to distract her from the numbness she felt. He'd grabbed her hand the same way the night her mother had died, and she took a slow breath in through her nose. "Don't you remember that time that Fred met that Muggle girl in the village and told her that he knew karate to impress her —"

Fred groaned, covering her his face with his arm as they laughed at his expense.

"And he tried to break that board with his hand —" Tori said, grinning widely.

" — but broke his hand instead," George sniggered. "But the best part was what he told mum, do you remember?"

"That I sat on it and it broke," she said with an eye roll, kicking Fred lightly in the shin.

He was grinning now, despite his embarrassment.

"It seemed possible. You'd eaten six bags of chocolate that day," he said.

"Because you dared me to!" she whispered hotly. "I felt sick the whole rest of the day!"

"Pity it didn't stop you from eating chocolate altogether," Fred said, raising an eyebrow at her. "I've got to hide all mine —"

"Please," she snorted. "I found that ridiculous stash in the baseboard —"

"She probably sniffed it out," George said with a snort when Fred huffed, cutting them off before they could bicker about something as ridiculous as a chocolate stash. "Like one of those cadaver dogs."

The two of them sniggered at her, and she rolled her eyes.

"I don't know what you're laughing about!" she told George with a smack to his shoulder. "What about that time we went to the Muggle zoo and you stole a penguin?"

"Yeah and then you put it in the bathtub —" Fred snorted with a shake of his head.

"It needed water," George said, as if this were entirely reasonable. "And I didn't see you complaining when you were sliding with it around our room."

"There was that one time too where he really wanted that lollipop in the village," Fred said with a grin, nudging her with his arm. "But mum had told him no because we had candy at home —"

"It wasn't the candy I wanted!" George said indignantly.

"Yeah, but then you told that shop lady that you didn't want to go home because we didn't get fed there," Tori said with a snort. "You told her that we were going to have to go home and eat scraps from under the table and that Muggle lady showed up to make sure we weren't being starved —"

"They Obliviated her!" George said with a huff. "And I never did get that lollipop, did I?"

"I thought Mum was going to kill you —" Fred snorted.

"Nah, when she asked I told her that I was Fred," George said dismissively, grinning charmingly when his twin lifted his head to glare at him incredulously. "So it would've been you that had been dead, except Tori told her I was lying —"

"Fat lot of good it did me," she muttered. "She sat us all down and yelled at us for ages. You'd think I'd have told the shop lady myself the way she looked at me."

The twins sniggered, and there was a silence that descended on them again, as they all stared at the tent ceiling above them. It did very little to protect against the horror outside, the tent glowing in shades of muted green. She could hear people outside, gathering their things and making hurried movements in an attempt to leave the campsite as soon as possible, as if the Dark Mark above them would draw Voldemort to their very location.

Fred sighed heavily, shifting next to her.

"Well, it's been awhile since the three of us have shared a bed," he said conversationally, though the topic was mildly depressing.

It was true. As they'd gotten older, she'd wiped the trauma of her childhood out of her memory in an attempt to cope with it. After the first month or two sleeping with Fred and George when she'd first arrived at the Burrow, she'd managed to cope on her own. Last year had been the closest she'd come to regressing, but she'd only ever gone to Fred, and told George that he could sleep in his own bed.

She didn't know why. Something about Fred soothed something in her, and it had been a very long time since she'd needed George's help in calming her. Maybe she'd opened the dam last year or something. Maybe it was just like being punched in the gut over and over until her lungs couldn't function properly without additional support.

She didn't know, but either way it was depressing.

George snorted at the words.

"Yeah, not since that time that Mum and Dad forgot to put a Silencing Charm up, and Tori came running into our room screaming her head off —"

"Don't, don't, don't," she said, covering her ears to block the sound of his talking before she could remember the incident. "I don't want to think about that!"

"Yeah, well, we didn't want to hear it any more than you did," Fred said, gagging. "You woke us up, and how are we supposed to go back to sleep listening to that? Think I had nightmares for a week."

"Nightmares?" George said, looking mortified. "I couldn't even look at her for a month straight. She took me to Mungo's, do you remember? Thought I'd come down with a bad case of Levitation sickness somehow."

Tori laughed.

"What did you tell the Healer again?" she said.

"That he'd hit his head falling out of a tree," Fred said with a snort. "She said it was a concussion –"

"Pathetic," Tori snorted.

"Alright, shut up, the both of you," George said, turning onto his side and closing his eyes. "If I'm not appreciated around here, I'll just go to sleep. Keep your voices down."

Tori met Fred's exasperated expression and rolled her eyes, but obliged, turning to face Fred again and watching him reach forward to tug on one of her curls. She shook her head, smiling sadly at him, but there was a crash outside that sent the three of them sitting up immediately before she could tell him to go to sleep.

"What the hell was that?" she whispered fearfully, searching for her wand under the pillow she'd been sharing with Fred. George's was already in his hand, but he relaxed when there was the sound of soft swearing from outside.

Tori released a large breath and fell back onto the bed with a bounce.

"Fucking Nessa," she said, running a hand through her hair. "What's she doing walking around like a herd of stampeding hippogriffs?"

Fred scrubbed a hand down his face, and gave George a disappointed look.

"When you go out there to talk to her, be sure to mention that there are children in Wales who didn't quite hear her," he said, lying back down. "I'm trying to sleep in here."

George hesitated, giving her a hesitant look, clearly debating if he should leave her to check on Nessa or stay where he was. If it were Fred, she'd have rolled her eyes — she didn't know why — but she just smiled at him and nudged him out of the bed with her foot.

"Go, Georgie," she said quietly. "I'm fine. She's probably out there staring at the damned thing like Voldemort is going to pop out from the sky."

Both twins flinched, and she'd have made fun of them except she'd only recently started saying it herself, and she didn't really blame them. She'd have still been avoiding it if her life hadn't turned into such a mess. Finding out that her father had been wrongfully convicted of mass murder and that the rat that had lived in her home had killed not just her best friend's parents, but also her own mother, had given her the sort of perspective of the world she hadn't needed nor wanted.

It felt silly going about refusing to say a name after that.

Neither one of the twins commented on the name usage, but George stood, sighing in an exaggerated fashion, as if he were preparing for a long excursion.

"Suppose I should go then. This knight in shining armor stuff is getting a bit exhausting," he joked. "Really takes it out of you."

Fred laughed when Tori made a face at him and kicked him hard to get him to leave the room.

"Too right, George," Fred said, folding his hands behind his head and grinning widely. That was, until Tori took George's pillow from beside her and swung it right at his head. She could hear George laughing as he walked out of the room to go and find Nessa — likely to be the disgusting sap that he was — but Fred did not find it nearly as amusing. "Give me that," he snarled, wrestling the pillow from her hand and throwing it onto the floor. "You're not allowed to use the pillows anymore."

"You are not my knight in shining armor, Fred Weasley," she said impatiently.

She certainly didn't need one of those, the stupid prat. It was the audacity of the man next to her that made her want to scream into a pillow sometimes.

He was infuriating.

"Believe me, sunshine, I know," he snorted. "It's what we call a joke. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with those, seeing as you're a bit uptight at the mo —"

His breath left him in a whoosh as she elbowed him in the stomach, pretending like she was resituating herself to a more comfortable position and had merely slipped.

"Oops," she smirked when he narrowed his eyes at her.

"Oops, my arse," he grumbled, grabbing her hands and holding them together at the wrist between them. "You think I was born yesterday?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"Do you want to sleep on the floor?"

"You'd never make me sleep on the floor."

He scowled at her, seeming stuck between wanting to argue that he would, despite the fact that it was a clear lie, and admitting she was right.

He did neither, rolling his eyes at her smirk, and pulling her toward him.

"Will you come here and shut up?" he said, annoyed. "We're never going to get any sleep with you here bickering with me."

She grumbled under her breath at his ordering, but she went anyway, letting him wrap his arms around her in a sideways hug and returning the squeeze.

He was such an odd person — mostly, brash and insensitive, but soft and considerate for the right people and under the right circumstances. So few people got to see Fred Weasley like this — it was reserved solely for her, George, and (more recently) Vanessa Potter.

And she'd never have told him so — because it would make her sickeningly sentimental — but this was her favorite side of Fred Weasley. She liked his charm, and his unwavering loyalty. She liked his bravery and his wit. She liked that, infuriating or not, he knew how to make her laugh and that nothing she said had ever offended him so much that he'd cut her out.

But there was something addicting about watching him soften for her, and he did it for her more than he did for anyone else.

"Does that bother you?" she said softly. "Our bickering, I mean."

He pulled back from her slightly, his forehead wrinkling in confusion.

"Bother me? Why would it bother me?" he said, bewildered.

"I don't know," she said, meeting his gaze. "Maybe you think it's annoying. Or that we don't get along. Or that all we do is fight —"

"Tori, you know that I'm not fighting with you, don't you?" he said, looking mildly concerned.

"No, I know that, it's just — I mean…is this what normal people do?"

He looked at her for a long moment before he snorted.

"First of all, comparing us to normal people might be a bit of a stretch," he deadpanned. "You eat chocolate by the truckload and you used to put worms in your hair —"

"You used to put worms in my hair because you were hoping they'd scare me," she corrected pointedly. "I just didn't care about them being there —"

"Potato pohtato," he said, dismissively. "Anyway, the point is that I'm not trying to have the same ol' relationship with you as your next-door neighbor —"

"Do you even know the next-door neighbor?"

"Are you going to let me finish or are you going to keep asking me ridiculous questions?"

There was a moment of consideration as he looked at her impatiently before she answered.

"I'd really prefer it if I could do both," she said honestly.

She grinned at him when he closed his eyes and took in a slow breath. She might have thought he was counting to five under his breath, but she was too amused to ask.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked at her firmly.

"The short answer is no, it doesn't bother me when we bicker," he said as if she'd never interrupted him at all. "I think we're both secure people and we know that we won't do any real harm to our relationship. I'm not bickering with you to be mean-spirited —" he paused thoughtfully. "Well, not anymore — you know, it sort of fell off somewhere between forcing you to eat mud and putting snakes in your bed —"

"Both fantastic things to bring up at a time like this, by the way," she deadpanned.

He grinned at her cheekily and squeezed her waist in the spot that he knew tickled her. She jumped with a gasp and kicked him lightly in the shin in retaliation.

"I just like playing with you a bit — you're witty and strong-willed, and it's occasionally very annoying, but it mostly just amuses me. You're good for me. I like that you're not afraid to tell me when something I say bothers you," he said softly, tugging on a curl again and looking at her in that way that made her insides go haywire. "I like that you're not afraid to tell me I'm being a prat or that I went too far with a prank. I just might also like riling you a bit," he admitted with a grin and she rolled her eyes. "You're passionate and bold, and that doesn't scare me, Tori. And you've never once needed a knight in shining armor — anyone with eyes can see that."

She liked those things in him too. His recklessness, his sense of adventure, his honesty with her even if he knew she wouldn't like the answer — they were all high on her list of reasons why she trusted Fred Weasley more than anyone else.

He never lied to her. He never let her go into any situation alone. He never tried to hold her back. He was unabashedly himself, and it gave her the confidence to be the same.

It gave her the confidence to be honest with him in return, even if the words she said aloud were ones she didn't want to admit to anyone.

"I can't feel anything," she whispered to him. He watched her carefully as she breathed through the panic that statement caused. "I — it feels cold. Every time I think about it, there's just…nothing. Like I've turned it all off. And I don't want to be the sort of person that turns myself off, Fred. I can't feel anything, I can't —"

Her words coming out higher and faster than she'd have preferred, as if speaking about it would make the feelings worse.

"Shhh," he soothed, running his hand over her cheek carefully and keeping his eyes locked with hers. They were calm — they were always calm.

He and George had that ability to be unwaveringly calm in the face of chaos, to be leaders in the midst of panic. They'd mastered the art of being unflappable by becoming comfortable with the chaos around them, and it was so much harder for her to panic about the fact that it felt like her emotions were being sucked into an empty black hole when he was looking at her as if this were a simple, normal, every day sort of problem that he just had to work to fix.

She calmed a little, leaning into the touch, and keeping her gaze locked with his, hoping — by some miracle — that that unflappable nature would be transferred to her somehow through the contact alone.

"It feels like — like I can't focus on anything, like I'm going to stare at the ceiling until I fall asleep," she said, her voice coming out calmer now. "It feels like there's this pressure on my chest, but I don't know how to make it go away, like I don't care enough to make it go away. Like something went out the moment that mark went into the air and I can't — I can't feel anything."

Numbness had always panicked her. She'd always been emotional. And not necessarily in a bad way, like people normally used the word. She'd always been happy and carefree, unafraid to show excitement no matter how ridiculous it felt. She'd always allowed herself to feel anger or express how she felt to others.

To feel nothing was…startling. It had only been a few hours, and the fact that it hadn't come back yet — she couldn't stand it. That emptiness was debilitating somehow; she'd have preferred to cry or scream or have her chest feel like it was being crushed with sadness that she couldn't breathe through. She'd have preferred to grieve.

"Nothing has gone out, Tori," Fred said calmly. "You're protecting yourself from difficult emotions until you learn how to process them. They'll come back —"

"How do you know?" She said, the panic setting in again. "It doesn't feel like they will. It never lasts this long — never —"

He cut her off by lowering his mouth to hers gently. Her entire body tensed, but her heart stuttered and started again and her brain started racing again. There was a spark of something in the middle of that numbness that made her feel relieved.

Just a momentary flicker of emotion — something warm and calm at the same time that it was exhilarating — but then he pulled back and cocked his head to the side as if he were merely testing a theory.

She didn't care what he was doing.

"Again," she said breathlessly.

He obliged, pulling her in again and kissing her soundly without another word.

He hadn't kissed her since the night after the Quidditch match. They'd talked about it briefly when they'd first gotten back to the Burrow. Molly and George had noticed them behaving oddly around each other and they'd had to work it out as best they could, but they'd not really come to an agreement on anything other than the fact that they'd have to stop making things awkward.

So they had, and she'd tried to pretend she didn't notice when he took his shirt off when they played Quidditch or the way his arms flexed when he was rolling up his sleeves or the way he smelled so good. She'd also pretended not to notice the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

But it really hadn't done her much good, had it? She still thought about that kiss constantly and she still gravitated toward him like a moth to a flame, returning over and over again no matter how many times she got burned. He was the stupid flame, and she hated that as much as she loved it, the kiss warming her again from the inside out.

It was stupid, what they were doing. Any one of his brothers could wake up and see them. His father could wake up and see them. George could walk back in. They'd have a lot of explaining to do if any of those things happened, but she kissed him back anyway. She tightened her hand on the cotton of his sleep shirt and tugged, letting his entire body line up with hers and sucking the warmth from his body as much as she did from the feel of the kiss.

This one was different — the one in April had been desperate and all-consuming and rushed, whatever residual anger and unvoiced feelings having clawed their way to the surface and taking what they wanted without a moment's consideration for the consequences. It had erased every thought in her head other than him, erased every fear or concern or worry she'd ever had. It had been as messy and complicated as the state of their relationship had been from the moment he'd touched his lips to hers.

But this one was entirely different. His hand tilted her face back, his fingers curling in her hair gently. His mouth was firm, his grip tight and possessive, but the kiss itself was reassuring and gentle somehow. Like when she sat on the shore and let the waves crash over her feet before the tide pulled them back out to sea — shocking with every slant of his mouth over hers, but gentle whenever he pulled back for breath before he came back in again.

He was kissing her in a way that no one had ever kissed her before. With a level of such reverence and respect that it would have made her sway toward him if she'd been standing.

And in the back of her head, she knew that whatever they were doing was dangerous — they were toeing the line they'd so carefully drawn, making things unbelievably more difficult for each other. They were being reckless, as was their very nature.

But he was strong and confident and she couldn't help it anymore. She was attracted to him, and whatever doubts that would creep back up the moment that he pulled back were silent when he kissed her.

And the numbness was receding with every brush of his nose against hers. The darkness was being beaten back with every caress of his thumb across her cheek, with every beat of his heart against her hand.

She could have likely let him kiss her forever, but there was a sleepy grunt behind them that made them jump and pull apart — a nice reminder from Charlie that they weren't alone.

He was breathing heavily when he met her gaze again, but there was something hopeful in his eyes that she didn't know how to process.

"We can't keep doing that," she whispered, despite the fact that her grip on his shirt didn't loosen and she didn't move back.

"Why not?" he whispered back, unconcerned by the statement.

"It's wrong."

He smiled sadly at her, uncurling her fist from his shirt and nudging her backward a little to put some space between them. She flinched because he'd never done that before, but he rolled on his back so that their shoulders touched and he could look up at the ceiling.

"How can something be wrong if it feels this good?" he said quietly.

She didn't have the answer to that question.

She didn't have it in that moment when he'd asked her, and then told her to go to sleep when she hadn't responded. She didn't have it by the time that George climbed back into bed on her other side, swallowing her in warmth on all sides. She didn't have it the next morning when they all woke up, and she and Fred went back to normal as if nothing at all had happened.

She wanted to have the answer. It would have been so much simpler to know why it was wrong when it felt right.

But she didn't — and he knew it every time he looked at her.

And she knew it as well as he did — she was always going to end up coming back to him. Like a moth to a flame, no matter how many times she got burned.