Diving Into You | Fred Weasley

59 | In Loving Memory

The briefcase and stacks of papers by her bedside told her enough. Fred had been spending every night in the hospital wing. Her body shook with Fred's sobs as he refused to let her go for even a second, but she wasn't complaining. While it may have felt like only ten minutes since she's last seen him, for Fred, it must have been longer.

"I'm here, I'm with you. Always with you." She said softly. Fred pulled away and she was met with his molten chocolate eyes that glittered with tears.

She brought a hand up to wipe the tears that stained his cheeks, running her index finger over his freckled skin. She traced over his straight nose and furrowed brows, as if trying to commit every last inch of him to memory. For now she knew, not even the sea and the sky could be enough to fill the enormity of her love for him.

"I thought-" his voice cracked slightly, "I thought I lost you." Tears pooled in her eyes at how broken he sounded. It made her never want to part from him again.

"I'm right here. Where I belong." She whispered. Fred pecked her lips slowly, with all the carefulness and love he could tell her in just one touch of his lips on hers. His kiss breathed a new kind of life into her, a tugging at her heart that seemed rooted deeper than just a passing feeling. It coiled rather than hummed, and zinged to life at the small act of intimacy.

It was magic.

They both gasped and looked at one another with searching eyes. "Did you feel that?"

"Mhmm," Naia hummed in confusion, feeling her chest where the magical energy lingered the strongest. If felt different than the ancient magic she was used to. Curiously, she peered down her shirt and sucked in a breath. Right on her chest, exactly where she imagined her heart would be, was a scar. She hissed at its appearance, looking at Fred right after. "What happened to me?"

"The killing curse hit you right here," he gently laid his hand on the scar. The moment his palm made contact with her skin, the same zinging feeling erupted in her chest, and she gasped the same time he did.

"What was that?"

Fred furrowed his brows, thinking deeply. He couldn't ignore how his own magic stirred within him when Naia was this close. Almost like he felt an invisible string tying his core to hers. "I'm not too sure..."

Just then, the hospital wing doors opened and in rushed Emmaline and Sirius. Fred stood up and Naia felt the magical feeling in her chest disappear slightly.

"Puppy!" Sirius cried, coming in to engulf her in his fatherly embrace. Emmaline cried softly to herself, the pregnancy hormones not making it any better.

"What happened?" Naia asked. Emmaline was seated on her bed, leaning on the headboard with Naia's head tucked tenderly to her side just above her stomach. She caressed Emmaline's stomach gently, as if to soothe her unborn baby sibling.

Sirius sighed, taking his place next to Fred by her bedside. They told her how she had been hit with the killing curse only to find her magical core not completely gone upon examination in the hospital wing. She lay there completely dumbfounded, just hearing about how her family tried their best to bring her magic back to life.

"We were sustaining you enough to keep you alive, but it was like you needed the constant support. Padfoot, Harry, and I kept at it for hours, seeing when your magic would take it and function on its own without us muttering the regenerative spells."

"But it worked, then? All your magic? You've given me a piece of yours, is that how it works?"

Emmaline's eyes flickered to Fred briefly, "Well, yes, for a while. But not exactly. It was only when Fred joined that your magic willingly accepted the replenishing spells. The energy shifted too, and we saw it change in color before it flowed back to you."