If You'll Have Me | George Weasley

Chapter 6

THE BEGINNING of July was already nearing, and the girls had found themselves beneath a willow tree one evening, residing by the creek where the branches hung low like a canopy above their heads.

It was peaceful to lie there, flat upon her back, and on the lawn. To do nothing but watch the clouds pass above them, and to savor the white noise of the breeze brushing by. The faint chirping of birds. The sound of Hermione's feet against the earth as she scoured through the grass, searching for the most yellow dandelions to braid into Ginny's hair, who had been picking the white ones instead.

The red head squints her eyes against the sun, looking back to the Burrow to see if her brothers and Harry had come from the house yet, but they hadn't. The girls had sent them inside to bring them ice lollies, but fifteen minutes had already passed, and the girls didn't doubt that they had gotten sidetracked the moment that they stepped inside. They didn't mind it, either.

It was not often that the girls got time to themselves, but how they enjoyed it when they did. How Eleanor enjoyed it; To get a break from the boys and their unnecessary jokes and commentary. To not have to feel Fred's knowing glance from across the room any time that she would dare to look at his twin, and when he would look back.

And George looked... Different to her. Not in a physical sense—Not in the way that his hair hung around his face, or in the way that he would carry himself—But in a way that she only noticed when she spoke to him; When she had drunken conversations with him in the living room at dusk, and when he would open up a little more each time. That's what looked different; The way that he spoke, the way that his comfort had shifted with her. Him as a whole.

"How've you been liking it here?" Ginny's asks, keeping her voice low as if to sustain the peacefulness surrounding them, but the boys' voices echo in the distance, and Hermione sighs as she begins to weave a dandelion into a strand of Ginny's fiery hair.

"I love it." Says Eleanor, and while it was a simple response, it was all that needed to be said. Life at the Burrow was different, to say the least, but she had adjusted to it rather quickly; The late nights and the sleeping in, the long days beside the creek... It was far better than any summer she could have dreamt up at her family's estate, or even Italy, for that matter.

A part of her felt guilty for admitting that to herself, and did not want her appreciation for her parents to go unnoticed, but she could not deny that it felt easier to breathe here. That the sun shone brighter, and that there was nothing here to hold her back from what she wanted to do, which in this moment, was to do nothing.

It was not often that her mother allowed her to do that in France.

"Incoming!" A male voice startles Eleanor, and just as she opens her eyes, she sees a paper wrapped package hurtle past her, falling heavily to the ground before tumbling a few more inches and coming to a halt.

The package had very obviously been from her mother, given the delicate packaging that was now dented due to Fred's manhandling, and it was heavy. Elle had only hoped that she hadn't been sent more paints. In years past, her mother had already bought her enough oils and acrylics in hopes to spark her love for painting again. It never did.

Elle turns to Fred, sending him a particularly annoyed glare, to which he responds with an apologetic smile before turning to his twin, who was just now approaching with two ice lollies in his hand.

And unknowingly, her expression softens at the sight of him.

"You were supposed to catch it." George teases her, nodding to the package that sat in her lap, but she only responds by reaching to take one of the ice lollies from his hand, lips pressed into a thin line.