Fear | Fred Weasley (DISCONTINUED)

7.

When Fred walked into the room Vera shared with Ginny and Hermione, he didn't know what to expect. As he twisted the door knob and opened the door, he saw the room lights flickering furiously and Vera sitting on her bed with her hands in her hair. She wasn't crying but merely staring into nothing.

"You're safe with us" Fred told her. "We'll protect you"

Her eyes snapped up to meet Fred's. It made his heart leap when he saw furious red ones instead of the soothing black ones. But the red eyes quickly morphed into her regular black ones when Verena saw Fred's confident face. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the lights stopped flickering and wen back to their regular state.
  
"I'm sorry. I was taken aback and then the whole ground started rattling and I didn't know why it was happening. The lights flicker when I'm stressed, it happened when my parents died, it happened once before that when I quarreled with my mother. But the ground rattling, I don't know what these things mean. I don't want to accidentally hurt anyone"  The girl rambled.

"You don't need to apologize and you don't need to be worried or stressed. That's only going to make things go more out of controls. We are here for you and there is nothing you do that could hurt us. Trust me"

The last two words hit Verena differently. She trusted him. She told him about her family and shared her feelings with him. But what really was trust for her?

"Don't tell anyone." "Don't reveal" "People don't always react like Dumbledore did" "Not everyone thinks you're as nice as we do" "Don't trust people easily, it will break you."

Vera could hear her father's echos in her ears. But the Weasleys are different, they didn't question her, they didn't push her, they gave her a home and food without thinking twice.
Fred felt like home to her. The Weasleys felt like family.

Was she overthinking it? She trusted Fred Weasley. Coming to terms with that was difficult. Vera had never questioned her trust for anyone, the people who surrounded her were her parents, her family and occasionally Hogwarts Professors. She never had to question anything around them.

"I do trust you..." These words felt foreign but also felt right. Fred had sensed that she was contemplating what he had said. Sometimes he forgot that Verena had not had a lot of social interaction other than her family. When he asked her to trust him, it never came to his mind that trust wasn't a concept that she was very familiar with.

He smiled at the girl, "That's good. I won't let you down"

Every night Fred would accompany Vera outside to look at the stars and talk and get to know each other. It wasn't something they planned, but it just morphed into something he did.

When Fred was too tired on some days, he would send his other siblings to keep her company.
Bill liked to talk about his findings as a curse breaker and his fiancée. George liked to talk about his prank products. He was slightly sensitive when talking about his time at Hogwarts, something Vera still hadn't understood.

Ron and Harry always came in a pair but it was fun talking to them. They told her about how they found the philosophers stone in their first year or how things went down during the TriWizard tournament and other adventures they had been on.

Ginny talked about anything and everything. She talked about Harry, she talked about the DA, she ranted about who's throat she would slit next because they pissed her off. Vera greatly admired Ginny and loved to hear how violent yet sweet the girl was.

Hermione told Vera about her favourite muggle novels. They made up theories about the novels both of them had read and laughed about nothing in particular.

"You know what I've noticed?" Vera asked as Fred looked at her. "Your siblings are exactly like you. They love to talk, always bustling and really kind. Except Harry, he isn't much of a talker"
Fred smiled at this observation of hers. He always thought that his siblings were adopted or something because they had no similarities whatsoever, but hearing this made him realize they weren't so different after all.

"I wish I had siblings growing up, it must've been so much fun." Fred scoffed at this statement.
  
"They're all a pain in the arse, Bill and Charlie always pull the older brother card on us, Percy is a huge git, Ron doesn't stop eating and Ginny doesn't have to share a room with anyone. We have to fight for the bathroom every morning and tolerate the mess around us" He laughed.

Who's Percy?" Vera was still smiling.

"He's our brother, works at the ministry. We don't talk about him" Fred quickly moved on from the subject. Vera understood that it was something that deeply bothered him and probably even saddened him but she didn't want to push him on answering her questions.