My eyes shoot open. In my chest, my heart threatens to break my ribs and Fred stares at me. For a second, I'm so distracted by the brown of his eyes that I forget where I am. Outdoors, from the sun peaking in through the canopy of greenery over our heads.

"Morning," Fred's eyes run over me, wide and unblinking. "I still love you, in case you'd forgotten."

His grip on my arm is tight, nearly punishing.

"What happened?" I try to sit up, but he practically holds me down. I twist my eyes to where he kneels on the ground beside me, his trousers soiled by the dirt.

"You fainted," Fred continues to stare at me. "Love, I know I'm swoon worthy, but you took it a bit literally."

I blink, lifting a hand to my head. I feel fine. From my spot down here, it's far less dizzy.

"Can you apparate?" he asks. "I don't want to leave you."

"What?"

"I need to get Robbie."

When I roll my eyes, I feel the press of a headache. Yeah, let's call in Robbie. Oh, and George too, while we're at it. Let's invite everyone in who is only going to panic.

I feel fine, but in the pit of my stomach I know that something is wrong. It's been wrong for a long time. Maybe it's like the last time I fainted, but I'm not convinced.

"I'll deal with it later."

Fred doesn't let me up. He only continues to stare at me.

"This isn't normal, is it?" he asks.

I shake my head, "not typical, no. Although I did have goblin wine on an empty stomach and then started spinning about."

Fred glares at me. I try to sit up and he pushes me back down to the ground. While his hands are firm, they aren't aggressive. I know the cruelty of a man, and I could never find it in Fred.

"No sense worrying Robbie now, you mean?" Fred continues. "Because I'm not being funny. If this is serious, I'll be right cross with you."

"It's not serious."

Fred's eyes trace my face again.

Breath catches in my chest.

"Listen, Fred..." I hesitate. "Look, this isn't the right time for this conversation. You just had a panic attack-"

He recoils, pulling his hands back into his lap. With narrowed eyes, his gaze presses against me.

"I did not."

Finally, I sit up. Fred makes no movement to stop me, and I pause when I expect him to pin me down. I hesitate, bracing my weight on my elbows behind me. From here, I can see Fred's chest rising and falling. He breathes. I could almost reach out and press my hand against his chest, hoping to feel the echoes of his pulse. Mine has only just quieted.

"No, Fred, you did."

"I think I'd know if I was sick in the head," he snorts.

He's got no clue. Genuinely. I think for a second that he might just be playing it cool, but I don't think he is. He thinks he's normal. I know I'm not. My chest squeezes constantly, and it's all but impossible to bear. I bloody fainted. Just, what am I supposed to do with that knowledge? Intellectually understanding the feeling doesn't change it. At least I understand though. Fred, for all his cleverness, cannot grasp what has happened to him.

He has changed. Not just physically. He hides it well, conceals all the differences. But he has changed just as I have.

Does the Fred I love even exist anymore? Did the Fred I love truly die when I killed him, just as the Larkin he loved did?

"Oh come off it," Fred sighs. "Don't look at me like that. I don't know what George told you, but I'm fine."

George has said something to Fred about this kind of thing then, but I suppose he neglected to mention to Fred that we haven't spoken in weeks.

"You don't hide things from me," I swallow. I reach my hand over, resting it on his knee. No pulse, but this way I can feel his warmth. "We don't... fuck."

I began this by hiding things from him. I am the one who regressed. Yet here I am, demanding something that I haven't been willing to give. I'm supposed to be happy with this. It's all I've allotted myself.

It's not what I want. Perhaps we can't be together romantically, but I can't lose him regardless.

When I stand, Fred leaps to his feet to brace me. I'm not entirely up to apparating quite yet, but I can stand on my own. If I wanted to anyway. Yet, I don't shove him away. I lean back into his hand as he holds it to the small of my back, guiding me out of the orchard.

I want him to know things about me. I hate that I don't know who he is, loathe that he might not know who I am.

"On the first anniversary of the final battle, your whole family went to your grave at the same time," I begin. "We hadn't all been together since your funeral. Sometimes I went with George, Robbie, or Percy, but it was all of them there just as it had been not quite a year before. And your funeral was the second worst day of my life. And I fainted."

It was hot, that May, and I'd stood outside in all black. It wasn't customary, of course, to wear all those layers, but it felt right. People were out celebrating that day, and of course I wasn't. When I stood too quickly, the heat overwhelmed me.

"Take me there," Fred says.

He hasn't been, but he doesn't live far from the gravesite. I played up my drinking to him earlier. Certainly, I've had so little and it's been so long that it should be safe to apparate, but I'm still a bit dizzy. If I splinched him, well, I suppose there are a million other things I've done that I will never make right.

"You're sure?" I glance over at him.

Fred nods, "positive."

I pull out my wand and apparate.

We snap into the cemetery. Fred grips my arm tightly, preventing me from swaying. He guides me through the cemetery. Of course he knows where we're going; every Weasley since the 1200s has been buried here. Not all of them were interred forever. After fifty years, they'd often get dug up and replaced. The Travers could afford to pay for the graves of all our dead. My mother lies in our lot now, without Landry. I won't be able to afford her plot soon.

"Where'm I?" Fred whispers.

In synchronous steps, we reach the spot that I visited often. The charm I cast to keep the flowers from wilting has long since lapsed. Otherwise, his tombstone looks the same. I bring him to the brown slab that bears his name. The date of his birth and the end of the battle are etched below it. Sandwiched between that and the Weasley Wizard Wheezes which collect at on the ground is a quote.

Half the battle is winning. The other half if laughing.

Fred squats over his grave, "bit grim, innit?"

"We made it work," I say.

I never really thought about what Fred would think of his tombstone. At least, not concretely. I could imagine his ghost thinking we were all dreary, but not the spot itself. He is buried amongst family, where he would belong if he were meant to be dead. He wasn't though.

"You visited often?"

I nod, "the ground's probably toxic with all the pints we've poured out for you."

Fred looks back at me with a wicked grin, "only drink on special occasions, do you?"

"Well, I always dumped out my whole pint," I smile.

Fred quirks an eyebrow, "and your date with Bitterwood was special too, was it?"

I bite my tongue, holding back from letting him get that final rise out of me. Fred reaches a hand over and gently squeezes my calf. He turns back to his tombstone.

"Good quote though," Fred says. "Who was it?"

"Vanya Hitherswitch," I lean forward. "She was Godric's second lieutenant during the siege of Bonnyrigg."

Fred crinkles his nose. I doubt he remembers it from history of magic.

"Sorry," I manage. I lean forward, pressing my hand down on his shoulder. "I know its nothing grand-"

"I just hate how sad I made all of you," he grabs my hand, squeezing it.

"You didn't do anything," I correct.

"Right, well, you were grieving, and I wasn't here," Fred turns up to look at me. "You know, I shouldn't have left you."

"I made you leave," I correct.

Fred shakes his head, "at the battle. I let you walk down that hall alone. One second I lose track of you, and as a result I... my whole... For fuck's sake."

He quiets, turning back to the coffin. Really, we kidnapped Fred. He thinks we saved his life. Only, I walked away from him. My eyes were on Landry, my charms always failed me.

"Fred, at the battle-"

"The cemetery's nice," he cuts me off. "I mean, I wouldn't holiday here, but it's got a certain charm."

He's ridiculous. Often intentionally, but I can't listen to it. So, I kneel down beside him. My palms feels sweaty and I'm not sure where to put them. He continues to hold one against the shoulder of his suit jacket as I shift to his side.

"I lost track of you," I swallow. "I took you from me."

Something flickers in Fred's eyes, "it's fine."

"It's not fine! I failed you!" the words punch out of me, louder than I intended them to be. I can feel my hand shaking, rattling beneath his. "I failed you, Fred. For the past two years, I've been trying to make up for it."

Fred grabs my hand, moving it to the hollow of his neck. There it is. His pulse. His racing heart beneath his flesh. I've examined enough cadavers to know he lives.

"Well, I didn't ask you to the Yule Ball even though you were right fit, so I'm still trying to make up for that," Fred smirks.

I twitch my nose, "that's an entirely different level-"

"And I didn't go to your mother's funeral," Fred says. "Even if she was vile."

"You weren't welcome there."

"And you weren't either," Fred insists. "All day we can play the game of who failed who more or who abandoned who more often. I do it enough without having to talk about it. I'd rather we played games that were fun, actually. We used to have fun."

I nod. Even in the war, at the most tumultuous of times, we had so much fun.

"Come on," he nods. "Let's get some food for that empty stomach of yours."

I take him and wedisapparate.

~~~~~

I usually put these markers in later, for sections anyway, so please enjoy that this marks the end of part 2 of this book (haha, I don't think I even mentioned that we ever had a part 1, let alone that we left it). But, a great big old turning point.

What do you think of Fred? Of their conflict? I am so so happy with how it's moving forward haha.