I Remember You // George Weasley x Fem!Reader

Saint George Gideon Weasley

Weeks pass, and George doesn't hear your lovemaking anymore.

You're still bringing them home, that he can tell by the jingle of your keys late in the evening in the hallway, but your theatrics have been muted. Muffliato, he suspects.

So George waits for you. He waits for you outside on the balcony, but he only ever catches the tail end of your door shutting just as his opens. That feeling of only barely missing his mark isn't new to him. It's always felt like he was waiting for something, something he didn't even know he'd been missing.

It isn't until one rainy spring day that he sees his opportunity. It's pouring out, and George has only just returned from work when he sees you at the front door to the building struggling with your keys and a few bags of groceries. Without saying a word, he grabbed the door for you. George helped you inside the building and then took your groceries, allowing you to lead him up to your apartment where you let him inside.

He was surprised by how quickly you seemed to have completely unpacked — until he saw the wand hanging out of your back pocket.

"What's this?" He asked while snatching it up when your back was turned.

You spun on your heel quickly, heat growing in your cheeks. What was that about having nothing left to fear?

"Funny looking stick I found earlier."

"Oh yeah?" That cheeky bastard laughed while moseying it about. "Any idea what core it has?"

Thank fucking god.

You took a deep breath and let it out with a relieved smile. "Dragon heartstring."

"I suspected a silencing charm. It's been weeks of zip from this side of the wall."

"How about I jinx my mirror then? You can tell me if my physical performance is just as convincing as my verbal." You said.

And a little intrusive thought of what that scene might entail flashed through George's mind. One so vivid and realistic he could've sworn he was there.

He leaned his elbows against your kitchen island and cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, don't threaten me with a good time, darling."

You laughed, but a melancholic feeling blanketed your existence.

It felt like you'd been here before — with him, specifically. Your back and forth nature was nothing short of first hand, completely natural. It felt like you'd admired before this the way he didn't bother to hide his teeth when he laughed, yet still tucked his hands nervously into his pockets because he didn't know how to properly flirt with girls; felt like you'd laughed yourself to tears with him time and time again, and not just in another life.

"Do you smoke?" You reached for your pack of cigarettes on the counter and without answering, George was heading for the back door.

You couldn't remember the moment you started smoking, that first drag that did you in, got you addicted to the hurt, but that burn was one of the only things that kept you going some days. But it wasn't the nicotine you were addicted to, it was the pain of feeling alive, and when you stepped outside and lit up that first stick, you felt more alive than you had in over half a decade.

"These are the kind that I smoke, too." George mentioned while stealing one from your pack without asking.

And it was strange, what happened then.

A little flash of a younger him. One baby faced and not as lean stealing a cigarette from your pocket and sticking it behind his ear. You couldn't call it a memory, but it didn't seem like a fragment of your imagination either. You shook your head like an Etch-A-Sketch to clear out the picture.

From what you remembered of your younger years, all England springs were like this. Cold and dark and rainy, making way for all of the life that was to bloom come summer. You leaned back against the outside of your apartment to keep the little rain droplets from snuffing out the fire at the end of your cigarette. A moment later, George joined you.

"Want to tell me about your travels now?" He asked, shadow bleeding into yours and merging as one.

Two hours and half a pack of cigarettes later, he knew all about how you took off on a whim at the height of the war. How you'd made friends with hippies in California and traveled a foreign country with strangers from Maine, about the time you'd given them all actual magic mushrooms in Kings Canyon National Park, and when you went on a week long bender in New Orleans after catching word that the war had ended back home.

"Holy hell." George laughed at your rendition of your friend believing himself to have transformed into a vegetable whilst high. "You've got gall. Mum would've killed me! She was bad enough after I lost a bloody ear."

You looked at him with confusion, and he turned his head to show you the healed (but still jarring) cavern where a lobe used to sit.

"Christ." You mumbled.

"Yeah. Glad you left when you did."

But you weren't, and you could never put your finger on why. It was a sound decision for an eighteen year old to make — but it was one you'd always regretted. From the moment you woke up across the pond, you felt an overwhelming remorse, like you'd made the worst decision of your life.

You'd kept track of the war, of course. Kept track of the casualties via those voices on the secret radio station that listed them off day after day. You'd waited to hear the names of your friends back home, but they never came. None of them rang a bell, not a single once. All you heard were those of your family once the war was over and bodies were stacked up around Hogwarts like bags of feed for livestock.

"Saint George Gideon Weasley." You said while reaching up to brush his old wound, stropping short by what felt like an invisible shield. Like you were two positive ends of a magnet reflecting off of each other. "Get it? Because you're holey?"

George's heart dropped.

What a shit joke. A shit joke that only he would come up with — and had. He turned back toward the rain and searched for a sign from Fred, anything to tell him that it was time to take the plunge. And he didn't find one, but the fact that your sense of humor was just as low quality as his was enough.

"I had a brother." He said after taking a long, deep drag. Like you, the pain of being alive was something that he clung to these days. "A twin. I lost him during the last battle."

"I'm sorry to hear that, George."

He waved you off, having heard plenty of apologies over the last half decade.

"He was a lot better at this than I am — flirting, picking up girls, all that shit. I think he might've already found his way into your bed if he were still around." George laughed at the last bit, accidentally exhaling his smoke too soon. "What I'm getting at is, why don't you let me take you out? If no one else is doing it for you, why not go for a Saint?"

But you'd heard this line of questioning before. Somewhere in the back of your mind, it lingered like the moon late into the morning. In a perfect world, you absolutely would go on a date with George Weasley. You'd give him every shot you could if only because he was persistent, and that was really doing something for you.

But if he was a saint, then you were the sinner. And while opposites might attract, they surely aren't sustainable.

You looked up at him, and the evening sun shone through pink and orange clouds to brighten your face like a fever dream he'd once had. George knew your answer. He'd heard it before.

"Because then I'd have to forget you. How could I ever do that?"