my best friends brother - fred weasley

lxv. departure

The night before the trio had planned to leave, I couldn't sleep. All night I tossed and turned, woke Fred up, read a book, practised a few tiny charms, and reorganised my backpack before deciding to go down and get a glass of water.

"Oh shit!" I dropped the glass on the tiles when I saw Charlie Weasley watching me from the dining table. We both cringed as it shattered on the ground loudly, afraid it was going to wake up everyone. I knelt down to pick up the shards of glass and felt a quick sting, I had sliced my knee open. Charlie had already cleaned the mess up by the time I had grabbed a tissue to wipe the blood off of my knee.

"Are you alright?" He asked putting his wand back into his pocket.

"Uh, yeah." I muttered, placing the tissue in the bin. "I just wasn't expecting to see you here."

"I meant your knee, not the scare." He said blankly, pointing to the blood that was now dripping onto the floor.

"Ah. I just need a bandaid or something." I laughed quickly, avoiding his eyes that were staring straight at me with confusion.

"Why don't you just use magic?" He asked, turning to the cabinet below the sink, grabbing out a small box of bandaids.

"Um..." I trailed off, half focusing on the pain of the cut, half on why Charlie Weasley would be here. "I just wasn't raised that way."

"Oh, I didn't realise you were a muggle." He said, kneeling down in front of me to clean the blood off my leg.

"Oh I'm not!" I laughed nervously as he wiped the blood off my calf, peeling the bandaid from its wrapper. "My mother is and she hates wizards and stuff and I just never used magic as a kid only at school and I just don't use it that much now because-."

"You can relax, the bandaids on." He stood up and cut me off from rambling.

"Oh. Thankyou." I ducked my head sheepishly as he grabbed another glass. "Um... what are you doing here? Not in a rude way or anything. I'm just... curious." I folded and unfolded my arms awkwardly as he filled the glass with water.

"I was here to give a message to Ron, Harry and Hermione." He smiled as he handed me the glass. "But they left just before I got here."

"They what?" I dropped the glass again. Charlie looked down at me, annoyed but also amused.

"They left." With a flick of his wand, the mess was gone and the floor was dry. "Sorry to be the one to tell you."

"Oh, no I knew they were leaving." I turned to grab a plastic cup this time. "I just thought they were leaving tomorrow."

"Clover, it's 6am why are you dropping all these glasses." Fred groaned from the bottom of the stairs.

"I-I..."

"Charlie?" Fred made his way over to us slowly, making sure he doesn't step on any rogue pieces of glass.

"Morning, Freddie." Charlie smiled and gave Fred a hug.

"What's all this?" Fred said, confused why I was in the kitchen at 6am, making noise with his older brother.

"Charlie came to tell Harry something, but they had already left." I crossed my arms grumpily, and noticed that Fred didn't look surprised.

"Okay, and?" Fred looked between the two of us expectantly. "They said that they were leaving tonight?"

"No. They said that they were leaving tomorrow night." I stared at him from across the bench.

"No, they said they were leaving on Thursday night..." I thought hard about what day the trio said they were leaving, trying to recall the conversation.