Confident | Fred Weasley

Chapter 100 | Modifications

"Surprise!" Fred exclaimed, removing his hand from her eyes.

Sarah found herself staring at a Christmas tree. It was tucked into the bay window of the living room where the rocking chairs had previously been. A couple of cardboard boxes were tucked beside it, presumably housing the Christmas decorations.

Sarah turned to Fred, unable to fight the smile appearing on her face, "No way! Is that an actual tree?"

Fred nodded, "As real as it gets."

Sat beside Fred's feet, Moose barked cheerfully. He was still wearing his harness as they had only just arrived home from their short but eventful stay at Copper Beech Manor.

"When did you have time to do this?" Sarah asked, wrapping an arm around Fred's waist.

Pulling her closer, Fred answered, "A couple days ago. I was supposed to have surprised you with his on the day that Kingsley got attacked, but obviously..."

"Well, I think it's lovely," Sarah beamed, kissing Fred on the cheek, "We better get decorating. We were supposed to put the tree up days ago."

Fred sent their bags flying up the staircase with a flick of his wand whilst Sarah unclipped Moose's harness. The couple tore open the cardboard boxes and rummaged through the variety of decorations.

"I think we should go blue," Sarah knelt by one of the boxes, holding up a shining, deep blue bauble.

"Why not orange?" Fred asked with a smirk, a pumpkin-coloured bauble dangling from his finger.

Sarah mirrored his smirk, her mind conjuring images of a blue and orange Christmas tree. Someone more tasteful would think it was horrible, but she reckoned that her and Fred could pull it off. They had never been particularly conventional anyway.

The sight of the baubles caused Moose to get the zoomies. He was running around the living room, jumping over the sofa and spinning in circles in anticipation of playing with what he thought were balls.

"Oh, Moose," Sarah laughed, "These aren't toys."

The word 'toys' made Moose even more excited. He moved so

"Good going," Fred drawled with a grin.

Eventually, with the help of a squeaky toy Hippogriff, Fred and Sarah managed to calm him down.

They started decorating the tree, hanging up blue and orange baubles, stringing up golden lights, and twisting tinsel. The finishing touch was an enchanted golden star that sparkled in the midday light.

Sarah stared at the tree and nodded approvingly, "This looks good!"

Stepping back to admire their work, Fred pretended to dab tears from his eyes, "We really do have an eye for design."
    
    
    
Having a research goal invigorated Sarah, pushing her to spend her days pouring over her old textbooks. She paid extra attention to the Charms textbooks, some strange pull in her stomach telling her that the solution to her problem was there. Charms had never been her strong point, but as she read, she found all the learning she had done for seven years coming back to her.

All she needed was a way for the recipe of the Revival potion to be kept secret. She didn't think that was a big ask.

Yet, the textbooks were all very general, which meant Sarah wasn't having much luck. She scoured through the memory charm section of her textbook, just to see. The list of side effects for messing with memory magic spanned three pages, which was enough for Sarah to shrug that idea off again.

Mad-eye and Kingsley were in a similar position. When Sarah visited headquarters, they both complained of the lack of progress they had made. Even Sirius, who had been inducted into their research group, said he hadn't found anything in his collection of books.