Unlikely || George Weasley

Chapter 9 - Introductions

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, May 30 1998

"One more box, Fred." George shouted over his shoulder.

"Great, put it with the rest of them! Could you do the cauldron after that? I'm swamped back here!" Fred called back.

George put the final box of puking pastilles on the shelf and sighed, hanging his head in resignation. They'd put it off as long as they could.

He pulled out a pair of thick rubber gloves from his apron pocket and grabbed the bottles of cleaning potions he'd borrowed from the Burrow's kitchen. The cauldron of display love potion hadn't been emptied when the twins went into hiding, and the liquid had festered and gone off without being disposed of properly. While he had only got an E in his potions OWL, George still knew the dangers of out of date potions. Scourgify and other spells wouldn't do the trick – this needed manual scrubbing and a special order of treatment to completely clean the cauldron and save it from being thrown out. It was a mid-range pewter one that Fred insisted they shouldn't replace if they could disinfect it fully.

George cast a bubble-head charm over his face to avoid intoxicating himself and passed through the encasing shield Fred had set to contain the putrid fumes from the rest of the shop. He set to work

Fred kept weaving and jogging across the room, putting the last touches in place for the grand re-opening.

"Why did you let Verity take the bloody day off? We need her, we're running out of time!" Fred said as he reattached the wire line over their heads, levitating the hysterical unicycle Umbridge figurine back in her rightful place. He then began drawing green and pink streamers with his wand to decorate the windows.

"You know why. It's her Mum's funeral today." George responded in laboured breaths, his arms already tired from the exertion.

"Oh. Yeah."

George glanced at his brother to see his guilty expression. The Ministry hadn't even found Verity's muggle-born mother's body. So yeah, George thought, I let her have the day off.

"I'm floo-ing Angelina, she said she'd help out if we needed. And we do." Fred said in a tired voice and disappeared into the office.

George kept working for another twenty minutes until he finally scraped the last of the love potion off the bottom of the cauldron. He leant backwards, resting his body against the cool of the floorboards. His shirt was sticking to his back in the muggy heat. May was morphing into an even warmer June and the shop was getting stuffier by the day. He removed the bubble of air from round his face and charmed the fan in the corner of the room to turn on, moving the stagnant air around.

"Heya, George." Angelina said, approaching from the office. Fred had his arm slung over her shoulder, beaming. She'd been round a few times since the twins had moved back into the flat above. It was obvious to anyone how much happier Fred looked with her nearby.

"She couldn't resist my masculine charm and has come to save the day!" Fred crowed, pecking her on the cheek. Angelina rolled her eyes but smiled at his insufferable yet adorable attitude.

George sat up. "Hey, Ange."

She looked back at Fred. "You mean you basically begged me to come over," she teased. "What do you need me to do?" She asked, pushing up her sleeves and looking around the shop.

George groaned and pulled off the rubber gloves. "What don't we need you to do, more like."

"Clean the windows, set up the fireworks display, rehouse the pygmy puffs and deep clean the enclosures, sweep the stairs, write a press statement, go to Gringotts, find the disillusion hats, charm the toys-" Fred rattled off, counting on his fingers until Angelina shut him up with a finger pressed to his lips.