We will meet again ~ Fred Weasley

- For Now, At Least -

"The reunion should have felt familiar, but it didn't. Beneath the laughter and old friendships was something heavier now—fear, secrets, sides already beginning to form. We were all still standing together, but for the first time, it felt temporary."

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The days at Grimmauld Place settled into a strange sort of routine after that.

Not peaceful exactly.

There was too much tension hanging over the house for peace.

Too many whispered conversations behind closed doors. Too many late-night meetings. Too many newspaper headlines folded quickly away whenever Harry or Katherine entered a room.

But still...

There were moments.

Small moments that felt almost normal.

And Katherine clung to them desperately.

It was the only thing that stopped both her and Harry from losing it.

Most mornings began loudly.

The twins usually started arguments before breakfast even began, Ginny threatened to hex people at least twice a day for irritating her, and Hermione spent most of her time trying unsuccessfully to force everyone into cleaning the house properly.

Katherine mostly floated somewhere in the middle of it all.

Sometimes helping Mrs Weasley in the kitchen.

Sometimes sitting with Sirius in the drawing room while he told stories about her parents. It was her favourite part of it all.

Sometimes she would be lying with Fred on the dusty old sofa upstairs while he read Quidditch magazines aloud dramatically just to make her laugh.

But it was Harry she worried about most.

He tried to hide it.

Tried to act normal.

But Katherine knew him too well.

She noticed the nightmares.

The way he flinched whenever someone mentioned Hogwarts.

The anger simmering constantly beneath his skin now.

Sometimes she found him sitting alone in a old member of the Black family's room upstairs, late at night, staring blankly out the window at the dark London sky.

And every time, she sat beside him quietly without saying anything.

Because Harry had always understood silence better than words.

One afternoon, after being shouted at by Mrs Weasley for "cleaning horribly," Katherine escaped upstairs with Ron.

Neither of them had actually intended to help clean in the first place.

They ended up hidden away in one of the quieter upstairs bedrooms with a stolen packet of biscuits and a handful of chocolate frogs between them.

Dust floated lazily through the strips of sunlight coming through the curtains while the muffled chaos downstairs echoed faintly through the house.

Ron was sprawled across the bed throwing Chocolate Frogs into the air and catching them lazily.

Katherine sat cross-legged beside him peeling the wrapper off another frog absentmindedly.

"You know," Ron said eventually, "Hermione threatened to stab me with a quill earlier. She's so on edge lately!"

Katherine snorted softly.