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George signed the lease first.
It’s not particularly important, who did what first, never has been. As twins, their firsts are always muddled up in each other’s, one often immediately following the other. Fred flew on Charlie’s broom first, then handed it to George for a ride. George cast a Patronus first, then laughed as Fred’s magpie joined his. Their first kiss happened simultaneously.
On the matter of the lease, it was only that George had his pen in his hand while Fred had his behind his ear, and so he signed George Weasley on the first line to renting 93 Diagon Alley. It was a furniture store before it was an empty lot. The first time George stepped inside—a split second behind Fred—he could still smell the wood and polish behind the dust. Some of the shelving remains from the furniture store’s time. The rest, he and Fred picked up piece by piece, seeking out every bargain they could because a grand in galleons goes far, but they wanted to go farther.
This time, George steps inside first, if only because Fred is still in St. Mungo’s.
Getting kicked out of the hospital for a few hours is a good thing, George tells himself, because it means he can be the only one who sees the worst of the damage. He and Fred took as much inventory with them as they could before the Death Eaters ran them out of Diagon Alley—all the better to operate their owl-order business—but they hadn’t managed to bring all of it.
The place has been thoroughly ransacked, as expected. The floor is a mess of ripped paper and products. Someone threw the entire stock of Ten-Second Pimple Vanishers onto the countertop, leaving a congealed mess of glass and curdled potion. The shelves have been blasted from the walls and someone used the Every Flavor Spray to draw a barely recognizable dark mark on the east wall. George can only assume it was done by some Slytherin he and Fred pranked at Hogwarts. It has a personal feel. Especially with the death to blood traitors bit on the side in poor handwriting.
George stares at the wall for a while. He intends to pick himself up and start cleaning. The shop has been empty for too long. It would be a shame to let it stay in this state now that the war has been over for several weeks. In fact, the scene isn’t even as bad as the worst of his imagination, which sent him dreams of the whole building blasting apart with dark magic.
This is all fixable, really.
Instead, George locks the door behind himself, ignores the broken windows, and heads to the Leaky. He’s in good company there among the rest of the Alley’s residents and business owners, all still celebrating and reeling from the end of the war.
*
In the morning, George visits Fred at the hospital. It’s a shared room with half a dozen other beds—two more than should really fit—but with the screen closed around Fred’s bed and the visitor’s chair, George is reminded of the canopy beds at Hogwarts. He and Fred would close the curtains around themselves and create their own little world, full of dreams and mischief and the kind of perfect, utter understanding that George has only ever found in his twin.
“Break the news to me,” Fred eventually says. He’s eating chocolate pudding, which he claims to be the only edible thing in the hospital. It’s good to see him eat. Only days ago, he had still been in a coma, and George had been dazed, lost, living every moment in anticipation of grief. “Is it that bad?”
George sighs. “Remember that dream we had—”
“Boom.” Fred mimes the Bombarda Maxima wand motion with his hand.
“—it’s better than that.” George makes a face. “It’s going to be a while until we can go back to business.” The war had been hell on business, from the shop’s closure to the limited time they had to create their products. “We were doing so good a year ago and now…” Rubbing his forehead, George shakes his head. “We were going to buy out Zonko’s.”
“We can still buy out Zonko’s,” Fred says, jaw tight. “We’re not over. We’re alive. We survived. So what if we have to start from scratch. Everyone else does, too.”
“Yeah.” George reaches out and Fred mirrors him, taking his hand. There’s a rough scar on Fred’s palm. “We’re doing better than Ollivander. All else aside, we weren’t kidnapped and tortured for months by Lord Fuckdemort.”
Fred barks a laugh and George follows him. It’s a dick move to laugh, considering, but George would say a lot worse to get Fred to laugh again. Even now, his brother is too pale, recovering slowly from the curse that almost took his life. Every time George looks at him, he wants to do something with the anger and fear lodged in his chest. Day by day, it’s getting better. Especially when Fred is nearby, alive and talking.
Later, when George stands up to leave, Fred doesn’t release his hand. Instead, he pulls him closer. George follows. Not because of Fred’s grip, which is looser and weaker than it should be, but because of the look in his twin’s eyes. George takes a step closer, then two, then leans down to catch Fred’s lips in a kiss. When they part, George doesn’t go far. For the first time since the war broke out, he feels like he can breathe again.
“You haven’t kissed me since the battle,” Fred tells him. His lips are close. His breath is warm, sweet from the pudding.
George doesn’t have a proper answer. Just, “I was scared.”
He’s still scared. He wants to put the fear and the violence behind him, but Fred is still in the hospital and the shop is still a mess.
“Me, too,” Fred says. He tilts his head, almost into a kiss. “Me, too.”
*
The next time George approaches the shop, he is prepared. He’s borrowed his mum’s best books on cleaning and sat for an hour with her in the Burrow’s kitchen, practicing her favorite charms until he could do them half as well as she could. Everything feels less daunting with sunlight shining through kitchen windows and Celestina Warbeck’s songs playing in the other room.
George opens the door and gets to work. The easiest task to start with is clearing the floor. He casts an enlargening charm on a trash bag and gets to work. Broken glass and damaged products are thrown in without question, but he takes a second look at the papers, finding paperwork and receipts mixed in with torn pages from books. It’s slow, hard work. After a few hours, George is exhausted yet satisfied to be taking back parts of his old life.
The sign is flipped to closed—not that there are many shoppers around yet—but the front door is unlocked.
Hermione steps through it, closing it behind her with a bang.
“You look like you need help,” Hermione says, striding into the shop and stopping next to the third huge bag of trash. She takes a look around the shop first, then her gaze lands on George.
George flips Cleaning Spells for Dummies over to keep his spot in the book. “Did Mum send you?”
It’s all he can assume based on the fact that outside of DA and Order business, Hermione has rarely sought him out. George doesn’t think she even approves of the shop, although he’s privately convinced that deep down inside, she still loves it. He can’t imagine not loving a shop like Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, back when it was in its heyday.
Hermione shakes her head. “I sent myself. I need something to do. I have too much free time.”
“Aren’t you helping with the Hogwarts reconstruction?”
“Professor McGonagall said that everything left must be done by experts in wizarding construction and wards. She sent us all home, which for me is Grimmauld Place now, and—”
“—you can’t deal with spending time in that place,” George says, understanding the situation.
Hermione nods. Her hair seems to be even bigger than George remembers it, which is charming. “I have my own projects, of course. I’m working on tracking down my parents and the members of the DA who haven’t checked in since the war. And I’m reviewing my sixth year textbooks in preparation for returning to Hogwarts in the fall.”
“So what I’m getting from you is that you want something that doesn’t involve people or textbooks, and you don’t want to sleep.” Despite his words, George’s tone is gentle. He knows what it’s like. “Stay as long as you like. I could use your help.”
Hermione looks like she wants to thank him—which would be weird, considering she’s here to help—but says, “Where do you want me to start?”
“You pick,” George offers. “I bet you already know where you want to start.”
Hermione smiles wryly. “The books. I can’t stand seeing them like that.”
“Go for it.”
Their conversation ends there, but the silence is comfortable for as long as it lasts. Hermione breaks it on occasion, asking if George wants to keep something. George breaks it once to ask if she wants to add to his takeout order. Idly, George thinks about buying a record player to get some music back to the shop. The old one is suspiciously missing.
When she returns the next day, George isn’t surprised. Just happy.
Happiness doesn’t come as easily to him as it used to before the war. Maybe it’s the missing ear; could be that his happiness gland was stored there and got blown off. Or maybe it’s just that Fred is still off-balance after so many months of war and not yet one of peace. When there’s been peace for longer than there was war, maybe that’s when laughter will be as easy as it used to be. For now, George takes comfort in affection from his family, especially his twin, in the pride that comes with hard work, and in the easy camaraderie with Hermione.
The more she visits, the more they talk.
Sometimes it’s about the big things, but more often it’s about the small things. Hermione tells him of leaky tents and cold feet, while George talks about the war disrupting his favorite line of snacks. It’s easier to think about the temporary things that were lost, the things that don’t truly matter at the end of the day. Not of the people who are gone forever. He and Fred had their own missions for the Order and not all of them were a success.
“We’re alive,” George says, echoing Fred’s words, and Hermione smiles at him.
*
“A sight for sore eyes,” Fred declares the shop once St. Mungo’s finally kicks him out.
George walks through the doorway behind him. The clean-up is well on its way, but there’s still loads more that needs to be done. George hasn’t even touched the mess of potions on the counter. “Your vision is as bad as my hearing.”
Fred huffs and waves a hand at the back of the shop. “Look at that, our shelving doesn’t have a scratch on it.”
“That’s what you get when you inherit quality furniture,” George agrees. Everything on the shelves may be broken, but the spells on the shelves outlasted the wards on the shop and the violence of Death Eaters. “There’s something good about it. Starting over. Clean slate.”
“All new Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.” Fred says the name of their shop with relish.
George can feel it in his chest, in his very bones. This is what they were meant to do in life: bring laughter and fun to Diagon Alley, together. “All ours.”
It is Fred and George’s signature on the lease and the shop will always be theirs, but the more Hermione visits, the more that George acknowledges that she’s made her mark on the shop and on the two of them.
The first time Fred sees her going after the inventory list when he gets back from the hospital, he whistles, and says, “Wow.”
George nods. “She’s efficient.”
“Hot, too,” Fred says with a grin, and George laughs because he had the same thought. It feels incredible to share everything with his twin again. Never in their lives have they been apart for as long as they were when Fred was in the hospital.
Hermione comes and goes like a stray cat, a swirl of productivity that takes the shop by storm before she leaves again. Sometimes she brings Crookshanks with her.
She looks at them, sometimes.
George looks back. And when he checks in with his twin, he sees Fred doing the same.
The shop isn’t a part of Hermione’s heart like it is theirs. Eventually, she will leave, whether it is for Australia or for Hogwarts or for the ministry, but George begins to hope that she will return anyway. Just for the two of them.
*
“Oh,” Hermione says from a far corner of the shop.
George looks up from his attempts to clean the front counter, attuned to her in a way that’s oddly exciting. He and Fred are synchronized in a way that feels like a never-ending loop. A comfort, a love down to their very bones. To notice someone in a way that feels similar and different at the same time. He doesn’t know Hermione in the same way he knows Fred, but he sees her, and he hears her, and he wants her.
When George approaches, he finds her holding a pygmy puff in her hands. It’s a wild thing, its fur matted and expression pitiful.
Fred is already there next to her, speaking in a low voice so as not to spook the pygmy puff. “It must have escaped before George and I went on the run. We took the rest of them with us. Our safe house was covered in them.”
Under all that dust and dirt, George thinks its fur might be a Gryffindor red. Quite fitting. “Come on, let’s get it cleaned up.”
Hermione doesn’t let it go for a moment. They head to the sink in the back. George fiddles with the knobs until the temperature is right while Fred uncovers a bottle of pygmy puff shampoo. Hermione washes it with careful strokes of a washcloth, her expression set with determination. Within another half hour, the pygmy puff has been washed and dried, and is eating their dinner leftovers while the three of them watch on.
“I can’t possibly take him home,” Hermione says with a sigh. “Crookshanks wouldn’t stand for it.”
Fred glances at George, then offers, “He can stay at the shop with us, if you like. He’s a cute little thing. I’ve missed the puffs. We sold or gave away all the rest.”
“He’ll have a home here,” George agrees. It’s the least they can do, really, when Hermione has been such a big help around the shop.
Her smile is brilliant. “Thank you, both of you.”
She kisses Fred on the cheek. When she tries to do the same with George, he moves his head with hers, until he’s facing her head on. Laughter leaves her lips, a little breathless, and she’s smiling as she kisses him. George pulls her in before Fred can complain about not getting a proper kiss too, and he kisses her with everything he has, one hand holding his twin’s as he does it.