"She had spent so long believing she had to survive alone that she had forgotten she had a place to come home to."
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*explicit*
Katherine had been awake for some time.
She had no idea exactly how long.
She simply knew that she had been lying there quietly, unwilling to move because Fred was sleeping so peacefully beside her.
One of his arms rested loosely around her waist, his hand remaining exactly where it had fallen during the night, as though even in sleep some instinct had told him to keep contact with her.
Katherine looked at him.
His eyes moved faintly beneath his eyelids, his breathing slow and even as the morning gradually brightened the room. Every so often, his nose wrinkled slightly with an exhale, and a strand of red hair fell across his forehead.
There was something almost sacred about seeing him like this.
Fred was rarely still.
He was noise and movement and laughter. He was always making somebody laugh, always finding something to say, always planning the next ridiculous thing he intended to do at the shop.
But asleep, he was simply Fred.
And Katherine loved that version of him just as much.
Perhaps more.
She had spent so long learning how to survive that moments of peace sometimes frightened her almost as much as the difficult ones.
Peace meant there was nothing demanding her attention.
Nothing to fight.
Nothing to fix.
Nothing to run from.
She could simply lie there beside the person she loved and let herself believe, for a little while, that this was what her life was supposed to feel like.
Safe.
Warm.
Ordinary.
She smiled faintly.
Some people might have found it strange that she could spend so long watching someone sleep.
Katherine didn't.
For her, it was reassuring.
Fred's chest rose and fell.
He was there.
He was real.
He was safe.
And for someone who had spent so much of her life terrified that the people she loved could disappear without warning, there was something deeply comforting about having physical proof that he was still beside her.
She had almost finished conquering those old instincts now.
Almost.
The ones that told her she should run before she could be left.
The ones that whispered that loving someone meant eventually losing them.
The ones that convinced her that the safest thing she could do was keep one foot outside the door.
She had tried running from Fred.
It had never made her safer.
If anything, it had only taught her how lonely safety could become.
YOU ARE READING
We will meet again ~ Fred Weasley
Fanfic________________________________________ It's always been the two of them. No one else. In fact, they had never expected to need anyone else. Hogwarts changed that. School proved that family isn't just about the blood that runs in your veins, you c...
