Confident | Fred Weasley

Chapter 99 | Plan

Sarah, scrubbing the breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink, peered out the kitchen window. It was pouring with rain, so much so that the greenhouse flooded.

Seeing as this was at Headquarters and not her own home, she wasn't concerned. Mad-eye had been aggravated by her complacency and stormed outside in the downpour to stop their plants from flooding. Fred and Sarah, with an excellent view of him stomping around the muddy garden from the kitchen window, had laughed heartedly.

Now, Moody was inside again, grumbling about how the plants had almost been ruined. She had nothing to stop her thinking about the Daily Prophet that was yet to arrive. She had been glancing out the window so much that it appeared as it she had a strange twitch.

Fred, yet to depart for work, was sat at the kitchen island, watching Sarah carefully. From her tossing and turning the night before, Fred knew she hadn't slept well. That could be due to not being a home, somewhere that Sarah was used to sleeping, but Fred knew it was much more than that. Sarah often carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and didn't tell anyone or ask for help until she was crushed.

Sarah turned away from the window for the thousandth time, continuing to scrub the frying pan in her soapy grip, "Fred, don't you need to be heading to work?"

Fred's eyes flickered to his watch, "We're not opening today, so there's no urgency. Anyway, I want to see the Daily Prophet before I go."

Last night, a group of Death Eaters stormed into the shop with their wands raised. The group included Montague and Jugson, who had clearly been waiting to jab their wands into their chests and question them about Sarah. They made a right mess of the place, knocking over shelves, smashing bottles, rifling through their paperwork, and messing up the flat. They left reluctantly after Fred explained their story, how Sarah had left him. The smug look on Montague's face when Fred mentioned that had filled him with rage, but he managed to keep his temper under control. The Death Eaters had left a lot of cleanup for them, so Fred and George elected to close the shop the following day.

Sarah frowned, drying the pan with a tea towel, "It's supposed to come at eight, but they've become more and more sporadic about it. Remember a while ago when it came at ten?"

"Yeah, I remember," Fred groaned, "I hope it comes soon. The Death Eaters really fucked up the place last night - glass everywhere. Capri nearly cut herself..."

Seeing the shop that he had spent the last few years of his life building in tatters had stung more than he expected. It wasn't just a building. It housed their products, which Fred liked to consider parts of himself and George; their ideas, childhood memories, their desires, and their imagination. Seeing it all destroyed and damaged, especially by Montague, had been like receiving a nasty curse.

"I wish I could come," Sarah commented wistfully, once again staring longingly out the window at the troubled, grey sky.

"Trust me, it's best you don't," Fred muttered darkly, "It's not how you remember it at all. Not just the shop either, Diagon Alley is all..."

"All what?" Sarah asked, turning to Fred with furrowed brows.

Fred considered his words for a moment, before answering, "It's miserable. It's filled with Death Eaters and dark, dark people. There's homeless muggleborns all over the alley who've had their wands snapped. They have all sorts of injuries, Merlin knows from what."

Sarah's face was pale in the grey light. She shut off the tap, and dried off her hands before whispering, "This is all just so horrible."

"It was like this last time," Moody spoke up in his gruff voice, "Misery everywhere. You can't let it get to you, can't let it consume you, or else those bastards have already won."