It’s lovely, this May. I appreciate it in a way I didn’t last year. I think I maybe could go outside, if I wanted to risk being seen. Fred can see me and he isn’t out of time.

Instead, I confine myself to the drawing room. My father’s chair sits facing the muggle town down the valley. Even though it’s twilight, I can make out the buildings, lit with their strange muggle lighting. Even though Robbie has explained electricity to me several times, its one of the few muggle things I can’t be bothered with.

I lean over the back of the chair, pressing the weight of my elbows down against the fabric. My father would hate the orientation. When we had company over, he’d charm the view to obscure the muggle town. Diplomatically, my mother explained it was to make our summer home feel more private, but I knew the real reason. Muggles, distasteful disgusting muggles, needed to be kept as far away as possible.

And now I’m looking right at the village, from my family villa. It has technically been months since I’ve seen another person, and probably longer since I interacted with a muggle. I’m still so far away.

"You still don’t drink coffee, right?” Fred asks behind me.

I shake my head, refusing to allow myself to look back at him, and really digest how different he is. Would this be how he was supposed to be, if he had lived? Still fighting, even so far after the war is over? Built and Spanish speaking and somewhat organized?

Would we have actually gotten married? Or eventually, once the war had calmed down, would I have gone back to the person I truly was? I’m not the girl he asked to marry him. Worse. I’m the girl he stole a coin purse from at the World Cup. I’ve retained nothing I learned from him except the sorrow of his loat.

“Or I suppose you’re just all rest from your six-month long nap.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” I affirm.

When Fred and I went out for coffee, I tried it a few times. Fred likes the stuff on occasion, if you mix in cinnamon or honey, something sweet and wonderful. Once, I dared sip it, and suddenly I remembered my mother. I couldn’t place the exact taste, and Fred had to tell me it was vanilla and nutmeg. That is the only coffee I could tolerate.

I tried to drink it again after his death, but I just couldn’t get the combination right. Eventually, I gave up.

“Good thing I made you tea.”

I hear the teacup thunk against the wood table behind me. I don’t even look back at him.

“It’s a good view, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I exhale. “Yeah, it is.”

“I also have stuff leftover from lunch, if you want-”

“When’s George waking up?” I ask, looking over at Fred from behind my shoulder.

His lips go tight, pressing together. He runs a hand through his hair, blowing air out from his lips, “few hours at least, I reckon.”

“I should get brewing then,” I decide, spinning around finally and peering past him at the door.

Fred wants me to wait for George, so we can take the next bout of drought at the same time. I only agree if he’ll let me double the next batch, so I’m down for a final year. Already, I can’t imagine waking up six months from now and seeing a different version of Fred. It’s happened twice now, and he’s bordering on physically unrecognizable. Actually, his shape is more like Charlie’s than Fred’s even though Charlie is quite short.

“If you’re going to kiss me like that, at least let me buy you dinner,” he says.
I scrunch my nose, “that was a year ago.”

“Not for you though,” he says, leaning over and resting one of his hands on the back of the chair. I smell cinnamon on his lips. “You kissed me, what, two days ago?”

“Well, I’m a changed witch,” I shrug.

Fred’s gaze flickers to my lips, “in all the best ways.”

My heart flutters with my chest. I cannot allow it. I duck out from under his arm and head into the study. Fred trails behind me, even though I don’t need him to. When we get there, he shows me all of his potioneering supplies, all lined up on different shelves. His knack for potions, while fine, never rivalled mine. When we were together, I did all of the brewing. Now, he has a whole ton for his use without me.

It's not a full collection though, but there is enough to brew what I need. I take stock of the other supplies.
He’s got tons of things to make bombs.

Thankfully, he leaves me to my work. I spend the next few hours perfecting the droughts of living death. The steps have become so rote that my mind unfortunately is able to wander. I imagine Fred standing where I stand, bent over the desk and leaning his elbows on the wood, brewing bombs. Unless I were to forcibly drug him, I don’t know that I could stop it. Dying once, it seems, was not enough for him.

For all of my reminiscing, it’s become easier to picture things in my head. Now, I imagine it. Fred at underground meetings, helping a resistance we know will fail. Preparing for a coup that is coming no matter what he does. Building bombs. Showing up to battles. Dying a second time, and it’s my fault again because I told him about the coup, not thinking about what he would choose to do. Never ever do I think about how my actions impact him.

Leaving him, over and over. Refusing to tell him about what my brother Landry was doing. Apparating Silas out of a fight when he could have died. Offering to fulfil my brother’s wishes and pump out purebloods like the broodmare I was bred to be. All of it slowly killed Fred. My rebounded shield charm was the final act of incompetence that killed him.

And it’s just going to happen again.

“You’re cross with me,” Fred points out.

I hadn’t realized he had entered the study. I roll up my sleeves, wiping the steam off my brow and stare at him.

“I’m not cross,” I murmur, even though the potion is simmering right now, and I won’t need to properly tend to it for another ten minutes. I’ve been soaking in the wet air that rises from the cauldron.

Fred scoffs. His nose twitches, “George is awake, and eating dinner. So you’re also avoiding him now, if you refuse to come.”

I tap my fingers at the bottom of the table. The potion is done now anyway. There’s nothing left to do, not even a need to watch it while it settles. Fred crosses deeper into the room, standing at the other side of the desk. I retreat my hands, tucking them behind the cauldron.

“Out with it then,” Fred lifts a hand.

“There’s nothing-”

“We’re not strangers, love,” Fred stares at me through the steam. “I can tell when something is bothering you.”

I step aside from the cauldron, so the air between us doesn’t feel so hot.

“Why are you getting into this coup stuff?” I ask.

Fred smiles, “Lark, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Really?” I turn my head to twist the open supply jars on the desk shut. My hands crave action, something and this will hopefully satiate. “The right thing to do is risk your life when George and I violated several laws and blew through millions of galleons to give you a second chance? To never see your family again? To send me home without you again? That’s the right thing?”

“I’m not going to sit idle when something bad is happening,” Fred counters, staring at me.

“It’s another war, Fred!” I grab some of the shut jars to move them to a shelf, turning my back on him. “Again!”

“I’m not on the front lines,” Fred insists. “I’ve taught them how to set up a rebel radio, and how to make illegal portkeys. I’m also teaching them Order strategy. The coup, it’s not like it was in the UK. They’re just disappearing people, not outright murdering them.”

He doesn’t even admit to the bombs.

“And the people they are disappearing, you’re confident those people are right as rain?” I raise an eyebrow, glancing at him over my shoulder.

His chest tightens. Obviously, he’s got no idea. My knowledge of the future doesn’t go so far as to know where dissidents are being taken, or what is being done to them there.

“I’m fine,” Fred insists. “I am being careful.”

“Bombs are not careful,” I say.

His face falls, and I turn back to the shelves.

“How did you know?”

“I’ve got a mastery in potions, Fred,” I swallow. “You think I don’t recognize components?”

His silence meets me as I finish reorganizing the supplies. I hear his footsteps closing in on me as I place the last jar back. He grabs my hand from behind, still clutching the jar and shifts it to a different shelf, slipping it back into position. Still holding my hands, he guides me to the next empty spot, and then the next.

“It’s something they’ve been experimenting with,” Fred whispers. “I brewed a couple testers for them, since your father has a pretty good potion set here.”

“You wouldn’t even let me brew proper bombs during the war,” I say. We even considered turning other potions into bombs, but he said it was too risky. I agreed. It’s extraordinarily difficult to guarantee blast radius and to transport them safely. Handling bombs is just as deadly as brewing them. “This is too dangerous.”

“Don’t you miss that?”

My hand tightens around a jar. I clutch it, bringing it close to my chest and spinning around. My back presses against the shelf and I look up at Fred.

“The war?” I ask, eyes wet. “How could I miss that?”

“Blimey, you know that’s not what I meant,” Fred shakes his head. “Don’t you miss the feeling you get when you do a good thing even when it’s hard?”

I do good. I work in the joke shop when George needs a break. When Robbie wakes up screaming, I go to her bedside. I helped set her up with Sullivan Fawley. A million small kindnesses a day, but none of them are big enough. He’s right; the best I felt was when I was working for the Office of War Crimes.

Really, I undersold my involvement. When the war trials ended, they offered me a spot as an administrator for the Wizengamot. George needed my help though, and I needed to atone to him more than I did to the entire wizarding world. After all, I took his brother.

“Before the war, whatever I did was always hard,” I manage. “Good or bad. Now I do good, and I do it safely.”

Fred studies my face.

“I won’t build bombs again but I’m not going to stop helping them,” he swallows, then bites his bottom lip. “If you wanted to, you could stay awake to keep tabs on me.”

No, absolutely not. A year, in isolation with just Fred sounds like a nightmare. Even now, I can’t let my eyes rest on him too long, or I’m going to start to dwell. These past two years, dwelling was like setting up a protective ward. Slow, measured, rhythmic. Look at Fred’s photo, visit his grave, whisper with his brother about our time at Hogwarts. It was like a pulse.

When my back is to him it’s practically impossible, and now facing him I cannot help but linger on my memories. His legs intertwined with mine as we lie in bed, the smell of smoke on his shirt after a day of inventing, his laugh, his voice, his smile, his everything.

I can’t be with him. We’re doomed to fail. The only time we were stable and together was during a war, and I accepted his proposal with death looming over our heads, knowing that I wanted to be with him until we both died. That much, I suppose, will always be true.

And I know that if I stay awake with him, in confined quarters, I won’t be able to stop myself. Then, I will have to tell him that I had sex with Marcus Flint, on the night we buried him, and I will lose him once again.

~~~
Oop. It is finally out. Yeah, it wasn't George. This is an insane whole other degree of drama haha. Let me know what you think! Does Larkin feel more reasonable now? How do you think this came about? I just love reading your analysis and theories!!