Katie Bell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hogwash2010-08-15 03:57 am
bell_katie) wrote in hogwash2010-08-15 03:57 am
(no subject)
Who: Katie Bell & George Weasley
What: A discussion of (ahem) private matters
Where: Diagon Alley, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, the Leaky Cauldron
When: Early evening
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
Though Apparition was not particularly her favorite mode of travel, Katie had to admit that it was convenient for as often as she traveled back and forth between Holyhead and London. It was early evening when she arrived in Diagon Alley, the sky overhead soft and rosy with the last light, the streets still as busy as they might have been at midday. She loved Diagon Alley in the summertime, the peddlers and stalls set up on the streets, the restaurants expanding onto their outdoor patios, the leisurely atmosphere. The wizarding world was a small one, and she was always amazed at how easy it was to spot someone she knew on every trip.
Still, she was running a bit later than she would have liked after a long day on the Quidditch pitch, and the lines at Gringott's were long enough to make her shift impatiently from foot to foot, her stomach grumbling and muttering to itself. She had several errands to run; the banking came first, and then she had to make her way to Quality Quidditch for another jar of handle polish before she dropped into Twilfitt and Tatting's to be measured for a new set of dress robes, something she had needed for longer than she'd have liked to admit.
All this, of course, took her past the bright storefront of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She paused briefly, considering. She was still thinking of Ginny, still a bit troubled by the previous night's conversation. Going into the family shop wouldn't ease her mind particularly, but she had an urge to visit, to see Ron and George... it had been too long since she'd talked to any Weasley but Ginny. It had been too long since she had talked to George. Without another thought, she crossed the street and slipped into the shop. Dress robes could wait.
Inside, the shop was caught in the evening lull just before closing. Verity the shopgirl had gone on to bigger and better things since the war, and the new girl was killing time by pricing a stack of books in one corner, rapping their covers sharply with her knuckles if one of them blew high-pitched paper raspberries through its pages or fell open to inch crab-style across the floor towards the exit. They had titles like Great Hoaxes of the Ages, Muggle and Magical or Philogelos and Feghoot's Book of Instructions to Young Brides, a relatively small section compared to the other busy displays and packed shelves. Lately the shop always seemed to be in the midst of expanding some section or moving everything around, with the aisles blocked with boxes that forced customers to wind through aimlessly, past all the eye-catching devices that sought to separate the impulsive buyer from his Galleons.
Ron was out, and the door to the back room stood open, where George sat doing inventory on the boxes of Self-Inking Quills. A Muggle record-player that had to be forty years old at least sat next to him on the floor, a battered portable model that would, in theory, fold up into a very unwieldy yellow plastic case. Arthur had only tried to take it apart twice, so it still worked all right, playing an old Bill Cosby record that popped and hissed. George knew the routines too well to laugh, although the timing of the line "you have to be careful with eggs..." made an absent smile cross his face as he worked, almost blissful.
Once a body set foot in the joke shop, it was hard to remember anything else existed. It was the kind of place in which hours could be lost, slipping away in waves of nostalgia and laughter, and even when the shop was near closing the walls still seemed to vibrate with delight. It was a safe place, a good one, made for nothing but happiness. Katie slid her fingers along the shelf filled with Skiving Snackboxes, remembering the wrong end of the Nosebleed Nougat that Fred had given her once. The edible Dark Marks had gone, she noticed, but the bins of ton-tongue toffee and canary creams still stood in their old places. As she wandered past, Katie stopped to stroke the little pygmy puffskeins with a careful fingertip. One of them nuzzled cozily into her palm, and she lifted it out, carrying it with her in her cupped hand. George and Ron were nowhere in sight, and she wondered if she'd missed them altogether.
The wall behind the cash register was filled with the shimmering daydream charms, murmuring to themselves in starry-eyed wonder, the love potions in their garish pink bottles. The door to the back room was open, and Katie followed the crackly, unfamiliar voice to find George sitting on the floor with his back to her. His hair was longer now than it had been in school, she thought, the fire-bright tangle of it brushing his collar.
"Doesn't anybody work here?" she asked dryly, leaning against the doorjamb. She grinned.
He twisted around at her voice and grinned when he saw who it was, leaning forward to lift the needle and turn the record-player off. "I'm working! Sweat's dripping off my brow, it is. And Linnet should definitely be working out there--she didn't waste company time asking for your autograph, did she? I dock her pay for every syllable of personal chatter, it's a tight ship around here." He closed the box of quills and sat the inventory book on top. "What're you doing here, did you duck inside to escape from your hordes of crazed fans?"
Katie curled her lip at him. "Ha ha. You didn't see me twenty minutes ago, a bloke outside Flourish and Blotts tried to pull a chunk of my hair out. Giant bald spot, right here." She bent her head forward, rifling her fingers through her pale blond frizz. "And really, they try to pull my robes to pieces... can't go anywhere in public anymore, it's really embarrassing. --She didn't even see me." Katie grinned, her quick white smile there and gone as quickly as it had come. George made her a little nervous. George probably made quite a few people nervous, which tugged at her heart. It had been years, and she still worried about finding the right things to say. "I was running a few errands and I thought I'd stop in and say hullo. I see Ginny every day, but the rest of you lot are avoiding me."
"Yes, where could I be keeping myself--glad you solved that conundrum," he said, though he was still smiling. The back room was cluttered; Fred used to tidy things up without thinking about it, by no means scrupulously neat but just more inclined to put a vial of powder back in its rack when he was done with it. The thought made George get up to square things away a little, the scrolls on the work-table and the several iterations of a few prototypes. "Bill's around, busy with the brood. Ron's in here most days but ducked out early, lazy sod. How've you been, keeping Ginny out of trouble?"
"Absolutely. I'm just here to collect my monthly paycheck, she made it through July alive." She grinned at him again. The puffskein was burrowing under the sleeve of her cardigan and she coaxed it back out again. "She was at my flat just last night, we had dinner and lazed about. It made me wonder how the rest of you are. --Are you hungry? At liberty to leave anytime soon?"
"I'm disappointed, here I've been paying you to get her into more trouble. Builds character." At her question he hesitated, a few moments of dead air--the twins had always filled the gaps in each other's conversation, finishing sentences or adding refinements to a joke, picking up each other's threads and trains of thought or riffing on an idea until it reached absurd proportions. At times, George just talked more, trying to say by himself what the two of them would have said, but at other times he was rudderless, not sure how to answer an ordinary question. "Yeah," he said after a second. "Yeah, we're closing up here, so--we can do something in a few minutes here. If you want to, I mean."
That tiny awkward silence was enough to tip Katie off balance. On the Quidditch pitch, Katie was nimble, almost graceful, utterly confident; in everyday life, those qualities rarely manifested, leaving her awkward and a bit boyish. It was her sense of humor that carried her, her relentless energy, but she never seemed quite at ease unless she was on a broom, doing the one thing she knew for certain she was good at. "I'm not much for eating alone," she said, still smiling, but there was something gentler in it.
"Yeah, no, that's brilliant, I haven't really...you know how it is, living alone. Don't get a decent meal unless I go home for a weekend. Right--" George cut himself off to put himself out of his misery, and finished straightening up the work-table--faster than before. Doing something outside of work with Katie was unusual enough to be interesting. The rest of the room was fine as far as he was concerned, and he and Katie went back into the front of the shop. "Linnet, you've closed up before, yeah? We're heading out, just remember to cover up the Pygmy Puffs--they get nervy and pee their cages otherwise."
"Yes, sir," Linnet said, nursing a papercut that one of the books had given her. "Goodnight."
"She calls me sir, isn't that fetching?" George commented with faux-pomposity to Katie. "Ron could stand to learn a few things. Where're we going?"
"I'm not sure, I hadn't got that far yet." Katie carefully replaced the Pygmy Puff in with the other custard-colored balls of fluff, dusting her hand off on her jeans. "We could always tuck in at the Cauldron, it's not as rubbish as it used to be, or maybe we've all just dulled our senses. Or we could do Muggle food-- Ginny and I did that last night-- or we could go to that little place that's where Fortescue's used to be."
"I still miss Fortescue's," George said as they headed out of the shop, keeping Katie on his left side. He could hear well enough on his bad side but it was often difficult to pick up conversation or other particular sounds, especially in a crowded place. "Leaky Cauldron's all right, or I wouldn't mind doing Muggle food with my exciting Muggle-aware friend. Just keep me from drinking out of the fingerbowl and we'll be fine."
"Exactly what kind of establishments do you think I frequent, Weasley? --I do miss Fortescue's, though, like you were saying. Ice cream still doesn't feel right anywhere else. I was hoping they'd open it back up and run it in his name after everything, but..." Katie gave an awkward shrug, her hands in her back pockets. "Can't have everything, I guess. Let's go to the Cauldron, I could do with a heavy bit of shepherd's pie, my stomach's shrinking by the minute."
"Good enough, then." They elbowed through the crowd in the narrow alley, past the stalls and vendors tucked in between the shops. Diagon Alley had recovered, which was the important thing, even if places like Fortescue's would never be the same again; it was pointless to dwell too much on things like that. The Leaky Cauldron had improved over time too, just as Katie had said, a little less shabby inside but still dark, the early evening light filtering through the dusty window panes. George held the door for her as they went inside. "They'd better not clean this place up too much, I'll miss the thrill of never knowing if pea soup might be the last thing I ever see..."
Katie snorted. "I'd bet my weight in Galleons that they started to circulate all those rumors themselves," she said, as they found a table in the crowded tavern, one of the smaller ones tucked beneath the stairs that led to the lodging rooms above. "Although the first time my mum ever brought me to the Alley through here when I was a kid, I thought I was being punished. Never seen so many people with such sour faces. It's gotten better since the war, though, I think... brighter, a little, yeah?" Don't talk about the damned war, Katie. Did it come up this often in everyday conversation, and she was only noticing it now because of George?
"Pubs are supposed to be dark," he said as they sat down. "But they're also supposed to be cozy, so I can't defend them too far." The mention of the war made him glance back across at her, just to gauge her reaction--he had often been guilty in the past of talking too much about it without noticing that other people would rather be discussing anything else. Not these days. He'd learned to shut his gob no matter how much it was still on his mind. "Yeah, Diagon Alley's bounced back. Not that we didn't enjoy being the one of the last holdouts when things were rough, but it's a little better for business without the Death Eaters, yeah?"
She had met his eyes when he glanced up at her, and though she was uncertain of what he wanted, what it meant, she gave him a brief smile. She had always talked to him merrily in their school days, an effortless camaraderie borne from long hours on the pitch, and she found herself a little anxious to regain it, to see that easy light in George's eyes again. "I bet a handful of Death Eaters tried to get some good use out of Skiving Snackboxes, though," said Katie. "I'd have faked a puking attack if I were in their shoes."
George laughed. "Sure, 'Puke your way to freedom, lads!' Good luck to them. I remember when you got the wrong end of the Nosebleed Nougat that time, you were a bloody mess. Product most likely to earn us owls from angry mothers. I told Fred when we first came up with the whole idea that it was a recipe for disaster, which of course meant it was top priority to make it a reality..."
"I am convinced to this day that that was no accident," said Katie with a good-natured scowl as the barmaid came over. Katie ordered a gillywater for herself and a cold butterbeer for George, after consulting him. She was grateful for the interruption. He'd brought Fred up himself, which was a reassuring sign. As the barmaid walked away, Katie pressed her lips together, and then said, "All right, George, I'm rubbish at pretending not to be awkward. Honestly, I want to know how you are. If I'm sticking my nose in where it's not wanted, tell me to sod off and I will, but I just... I think about you, I do. I wonder how you are."
It always felt like a bit of a failure when people asked; he made an effort to act normal, as if Fred was perpetually somewhere just out of sight but coming back soon, even though he knew he wasn't fooling anyone. And the twins had never been much for serious conversation in the first place. "Yeah, I don't...you can ask, Bell, that's all right," he said after a moment, fiddling with a thread in the cuff of his jumper. "It's not off-limits to you. Am I being too much of a drag?"
"What?" It genuinely surprised her. "No-- God, no. That's not what I meant, George, you're not being... no." She had touched his sleeve, she realized, an urgent little tap of her fingers to reassure him. "It isn't that. It's just... sometimes it's worse when people don't ask and talk around it the entire night and you leave feeling worse off than before, and I didn't want it to be like that. So I thought maybe I'd ask first, just so... just so we could know."
"Okay. Good." This really was awkward. With Fred it had been hard to ever feel quite this self-conscious, always assured that someone else in the room felt the same, that they could talk about it later and laugh. "I mean, I get why people don't want to mention it, I do. It's depressing. And I reckon they think I'll lurch around all mad with grief as soon as they mention his name, like John Cleese in the dirty-fork sketch or something. You know the one, 'No, Mungo! Never kill a customer!'" George had a fairly thorough knowledge of Muggle comedy, although he was foggier on other pop-culture details like which of the Beatles were still alive or the plot of Star Wars. "But I won't, you know. Fall apart on you. I'm all right."
"I'm not worried about you falling apart. Bit of the opposite, really, you want the truth." Katie's smile was lopsided. "It got annoying sometimes, after my mum died? The way people would talk about her in some whisper, like she'd magically become sacred just because something shit had happened to her. I just wanted people to talk about her like she was my mum, you know? And I guess that's what I'm asking, is how you want me to talk about Fred, when it's not really avoidable-- or if you'd even want me to avoid it. I feel like I'm talking a lot."
"No, that's it exactly," he said with a bit of relief. "Talking in whispers, or making a big production of not mentioning him. Or the 'Fred would have wanted' game. I hate all that rubbish--Mum and the rest aren't so bad, but..." He trailed off, unwilling to say anything too critical. "You don't have to avoid it on my account. It's not like I'm going to think, 'oh dear, here I was having a wonderful time and she went and reminded me.' I think about him all the bloody time. I just don't want to get to the point where I'm--well, a case like that, for example," he said, indicating with a nod a patron sitting over by the bar, a sad bastard of the Cauldron's old stock who looked like he hadn't cracked a smile in decades.
"I don't... think you really ever could, George." Katie sat back as the waitress brought their drinks, settling them on the table with a comfortable clunk. When she was gone again, Katie slid her fingers around her glass, the condensation slick against her skin. "I won't avoid it, just... yeah. You still think about him a lot? Does your family-- do they bring him up? How is it?"
"You know who's been really decent is Percy? Our dustups with him were legendary, of course, but he was...he was a brick." He had been patient when George demanded to know every detail about what had happened, last words and who had been standing where and what the blast had been like. Even when the same questions came up over and over, Percy had answered each as conscientiously as if reporting for the Ministry. "We all try to make it easy on Mum, though. Sometimes it's like a big teetering stack of dishes, you know--Ron tries not to upset Ginny so that they won't bother me and so on, and we all try to keep the worst from Mum."
"God, yeah. --I wouldn't have expected that from Percy, not really, not after... it's funny sometimes." Katie sipped her drink again, brushing a drop of gillywater off her lip with the back of her hand. "I don't think I've ever even been to your house-- no, that's a lie, once I swung by with Ginny and said hullo to Molly-- but I feel like I have all these opinions about everything and it's none of my business. I shouldn't even nose in now, I just... think about you lot all the time. Molly and Arthur, you, Ron-- how... is Ron, by the way?" It was a little too nonchalant.
"Ron? Oh, you know, all tangled up with Hermione--figuratively speaking, of course. Mum's always after him about when he's going to make an honest witch out of her." He picked up his glass, adding, "I don't think he's in much of a rush, though."
Katie made a small noise of affirmation, eyebrows raised from behind her glass. Holding off Ginny's impending heartbreak was probably the best idea for everyone; since the night previous, Katie had had the disturbing recurring thought that if they did marry, Ginny would fume and stay silent until, finally, she stood up in the ceremony, taxed beyond her capability to bear it, shouting that she loved Hermione. All of it was awkward, and even worse was that Katie knew it, and that she was worrying about it now when she just wanted to talk to George. "No? How's-- Hermione and everything? I mean, are they just disgusting?"
"They've been acting like an old married couple since before Ron even had to shave, so they might as well go for it and make Mum and Dad happy, if you want to know what I think," said George with a snort. "But then we all thought the same thing about Ginny and Harry, and that didn't work out. Not so much the married part, but we thought it was a sure thing." Katie's expression was a little odd, and he wondered if she was bored. "Soap opera rubbish, anyway."
If he only knew. Katie had the sudden urge to tell him, just to prepare someone for Ginny's eventual confession, but the idea of betraying Ginny's confidence was embarrassing. Dealing with the fallout would be a nightmare. "It's not soap opera rubbish," she said, grinning at him. "What about you? Hauling anyone home that your Mum disapproves of?"
"Oh, well..." George said with a tone of vague but impenetrable discontent, a tight smile that suggested a problem he was too stiff-upper-lip to mention. Fred, had he been there, would have detected the faintest flicker of a nigh-invisible eyelash; nobody else could have. "It's--always been difficult for us..."
Katie felt her stomach drop. Oh God. She doubted that George really trusted her enough to make such a confession, but if Ginny had done it... her mouth was dry. She managed to say, "Oh?" before she took another mouthful of gillywater.
There was a long pause, in which he toyed with his glass, making rings of condensation on the scarred wood of the tabletop, before finally meeting her eyes and saying, "Listen, Bell, can you keep a secret? A real one."
She almost dropped her head into her hand. She'd never really have expected this from George, not really, but then again... who ever really knew anyone? She'd never have expected it from Ginny either. "Yeah-- yeah, of course, mate. You all right?"
"Yeah, just...we never told anyone this before. Fred'd kill me if he knew--I just think it's time to start being open with people, though. What does it matter anymore? Times have changed, everyone's more accepting." He bit his lower lip, tracing a finger through the rings on the table. "What it was--we had to, ah, have a bit of surgery done, just after we were born. Muggle surgery with the knives and everything, Dad used to tell horror stories about it to Ron every time the little squirt complained about seeing the healers." He smiled briefly. "The technical name was omphalo-ischiopagus conjoined twins. Sounds like an incantation, doesn't it? Mostly we were rather lucky, not joined at the heart or the liver or anything else like that. It was actually just a little bit lower, at the, erm, pelvis."
Katie's mouth was hanging open slightly. "Muggle surgery? They--" She closed her mouth then, sitting forward, her hands curled around her glass. He seemed so nervous, not meeting her eyes, but... "You're... George, if you're taking the mickey..."
"I'm not," he said dully. "Though I guess it must sound that way, yeah? Sometimes I think that was part of the reason we were so...I mean, keep everyone laughing so they don't realise there's something wrong with you, that sort of thing. And it worked, Angelina Johnson barely had to think twice when Fred asked her out--but nothing ever went very far, for either of us." He seemed to realise he had lost his place in the story, and sat back in his chair a bit. "Good job I'm telling you this before the food gets here, eh? We did share some organs, part of our intestines, luckily not as far back as the kidneys. The plumbing was all right internally, but externally...bit of a mess. St. Mungo's did a lot of work for us, a little at a time, but of course even the healers have limits to what they can regrow. And, well, they did a brilliant job all things considered--we were out there on the Quidditch pitch all the time, never a hint that things weren't right. Nobody guessed."
"Yeah, no, I suppose Skele-Gro wouldn't have done you any favours," said Katie, trying for a joke, but it strained and cracked and fell utterly flat. He wasn't kidding. Good God. She hadn't seen George look so sombre in ages... she felt a brief indignant flare of heat beneath her breastbone. What was it with the Weasleys and confessing to her lately? What was she supposed to do with all of this? But it was George. Was she... no. That was ridiculous. "I... no, I mean, I never had any idea, I never would've known--"
"I probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all," he said, his expression still clouded. "Hermione was a bit of inspiration, even though we'd never have admitted it--fighting on behalf of creatures that look odd. We used to think maybe someday it would all be different, that somebody would understand. There was this...what was it, six years ago now? At Christmastime. There was this girl we fancied at home in Ottery St. Catchpole, worked at a Muggle paper shop. Really fit. Fred knew I fancied her more than he did so he made himself scarce, but I was too nervous to tell her about it. Warn her, like. We were in the backseat of her car. Things were getting heated and I finally told her, look, you won't like what you see down there. She said don't be silly. But then when she felt it, she...she just started crying..."
All Katie's work to keep her expression neutral and sympathetic was failing miserably, and she could feel it. Her fair skin was flushed up to her hairline; she could feel the heat of it when she passed her hand over her forehead. "I just thought... I thought you were going to tell me you were... I just thought you were going to tell me you were gay, George, I'm a little bit... God, I'm so sorry."
"Really? Well, then maybe now's the time to tell you something else..." He made the mistake then of looking back up at Katie, sitting across from him blushing and embarrassed, probably hideously uncomfortable...and he lost it. Heads turned in the Cauldron, even that of the sad bastard at the bar. The twins' laugh had always been one of their most notable features, loud enough to spook wildlife when they were outside, constantly erupting from their room on the second floor of the Burrow. Since the war, it hadn't been quite so easy to get a laugh out of George, but when he did there was a raucous edge to it, deep in the gut and impossible to smother, full of the deep satisfaction of a professional. His chair scraped back a few inches as he doubled over to rest his forehead on the table. "Oh, Bell, bless you..."
When he started to laugh, Katie was visibly confused. She blinked, sitting back in her chair, and she was uneasy; they were being stared at, which was one of her least favorite things in the world (something she had had a hard time adjusting to after she joined the Harpies). After a moment, however, her face cleared. "Oh-- my God. You--" Her hand flashed out across the table and gave him a sound crack on the head, quite rivaling a strike from Molly Weasley. "You arsehole, you-- oh my God, I'm so embarrassed--" She slouched back into her chair, covering her face with her hands.
"Ow--" He fell back when she hit him but did not stop laughing, shoulders shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we'd been sitting on that one for ages--" he began, but was not yet at the point of being able to finish a sentence. It had begun as a private joke with Fred, a completely false and medically improbable story they'd made up and added details to gradually over several years, enough that he couldn't even remember the entire canon. All it would take to set them off was one of them murmuring sadly, just like the paper girl...
Katie was mortified enough that she felt as if she might actually tear up, something that only made her angrier. She made a sound almost like a snort, leaning her elbows on the table with her face still buried in her hands. "You're not bloody sorry, you're pleased as can be--"
"I'm a little bit sorry! I stopped before you got too sincere." His mirth was dying down, and he reached for his glass now that he was reasonably sure he wouldn't choke. "C'mon, that was hilarious and you know it."
Katie's skin was still crimson, even her neck and chest mottled with embarrassment. The idea of admitting to it was humiliating, but if she were frank, George was right. It was hilarious. She still wasn't ready to acknowledge his victory here, but he was laughing... it was good to hear George laughing, at least. She showed him her middle finger and finished her gillywater before she wrinkled her nose. "All right, you git, it was funny."
"Yeah, that's the spirit. I kid because I love, Kates, you know that." He was well flushed himself from the laughing fit, so pale ordinarily that blushing always made him look ridiculous. There was nothing else like it, the rush after getting off a joke that was disgusting or taboo or even just complex. "Hang on, we don't actually come off as gay, right? Wouldn't want to lead all the lovesick lads on."
"Absolutely homosexual, queer as pink tights and sequins on Fire Island," said Katie, still slouched deep in her chair. She scraped her hands through her untidy hair, rifling it until it stood nearly on end.
"Ah, too bad. All those disappointed boys and misled girls who will never know the true delights of my mangled mandrake..." He grinned at her, still largely unrepentant, although he didn't like to let Katie get too mad at him. "I assume that answers your original question, though--haven't hauled anyone home for Mum to disapprove of. Because I'm a juvenile arsehole."
She kicked him under the table, still a little petulant, but a smile was sneaking across her mouth again in spite of herself. "I hate you," she told him, arms folded across her chest. "I really do. You could've kept me going for proper ages with that, because I am a nice person. It does answer the question, however, and I've got to say that women are probably bloody lucky you've stayed off them if you'd pull that sort of thing all the time." She was still trying to hide her grin.
"I would, too. It's an exciting life my future wife is going to live. She'd better enjoy herself now, her peaceful and serene spider-free existence, because it'll all come to an end one day." He set his glass down again. "Oi, so that's me and Ron and Hermione, what about you? Any lucky wizard get to ring the Bell?"
"Oho, clever, I like that." Katie thieved what she thought of as a well-deserved sip from his glass after he set it down, the butterbeer rich in her mouth after the mild, bright gillywater. "But yeah, no. Nobody knocking down my door here. I guess they all know how desperately I yearn and pine for George Weasley to prank me into an early grave."
"Which I would be only too happy to do, sweetness. Seriously, though?" He was a little surprised--he'd always thought Katie was fit. She was a mate, of course, but he wasn't blind; she had a great smile, and her light hair always looked windswept, just off the Quidditch pitch. He picked up her glass when she took his. "Huh. Who'd have thought it'd be this difficult to find takers for a cute professional Chaser and an up-and-coming respectable businessman? Life's not fair, I say."
"You're not so bad yourself, Weasley." His surprise pleased Katie, the tips of her ears pink. She thought briefly of the night previous, when Ginny had asked after her romantic life, and then she pushed the thought away. She slid George's butterbeer back at him and stretched a little, feeling the sweet pull in the abused muscles of her back. "Oi, I'm tired of sitting down. I spent at least seven hours flying today, my arse is half-numb. --We could always make one of those idiot pacts they have in Muggle movies, you know. If neither of us finds anyone by the time we're a certain age, we'll give up and I'll let you put spiders under my pillow and you'll let me imitate your mum to the best of my ability and nag you until your ears-- eh. Until your other ear falls off." She grinned, lopsided, but there was a delicate tingle in the very tips of her fingers.
"And there I'll sit, happily deaf, just saying 'yes, dear' every few minutes when you look at me expectantly. Sounds nice, I reckon. When's a good age to decide everything's hopeless, thirty-five? Forty?" During the darker months after the funeral he'd ruminated in self-pitying fashion over the prospect of being alone for the rest of his life, after his siblings were all paired off, but by now he could shrug the idea off as maudlin. "Nah, you'd want to be young enough to still look good in the dress. --You haven't ordered food yet, we could take a walk and come back, if you wanted."
"Oh my God, yeah, that'd be lovely. I mean, I could eat them out of house and home, but I didn't realize how much I was aching until we sat down. A walk would be brilliant." She stood up, straightening the legs of her jeans as she bent at the waist for a moment, stretching with a groan. She straightened up, brushing her hair out of her face. That pleasantly queasy sensation was in her stomach. It wasn't exactly rare when she talked to George, if she were truthful. "Thirty-five sounds good to me, I think I could keep my girlish figure until then."
"It's a deal, then," he said with a grin as they got up, offering her his hand to shake on it. "Takes a load off my mind, I'll have someone to heal my bunions and read labels with small print out loud. And someone who's such a good sport about awful Siamese twin jokes."
Katie slid her hand into his and gave it a good squeeze. "Don't go building too rich a fantasy of our geriatric years here, Weasley, I still have to survive a Quidditch career and you could blow the entire Alley into oblivion with one misplaced knickknack." Her hand lingered for perhaps the tiniest fraction too long, and when she drew it away she offered him her arm. "Stroll down the alley at dusk sounds like a good way to put a seal on a completely unromantic wedding proposal."
"True, yeah, we never know what awaits us," he said, and if the words might have suggested a grimmer undertone, he gave no sign, still smiling. She forgave him, and from his point of view he'd entrusted Katie with a beloved old joke, something to allude to and laugh at for years, which was what friends were for. He wouldn't have embarrassed just anyone this way. He took her arm to keep her close on his good side, and they headed out of the Leaky Cauldron to the Alley.
What: A discussion of (ahem) private matters
Where: Diagon Alley, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, the Leaky Cauldron
When: Early evening
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
Though Apparition was not particularly her favorite mode of travel, Katie had to admit that it was convenient for as often as she traveled back and forth between Holyhead and London. It was early evening when she arrived in Diagon Alley, the sky overhead soft and rosy with the last light, the streets still as busy as they might have been at midday. She loved Diagon Alley in the summertime, the peddlers and stalls set up on the streets, the restaurants expanding onto their outdoor patios, the leisurely atmosphere. The wizarding world was a small one, and she was always amazed at how easy it was to spot someone she knew on every trip.
Still, she was running a bit later than she would have liked after a long day on the Quidditch pitch, and the lines at Gringott's were long enough to make her shift impatiently from foot to foot, her stomach grumbling and muttering to itself. She had several errands to run; the banking came first, and then she had to make her way to Quality Quidditch for another jar of handle polish before she dropped into Twilfitt and Tatting's to be measured for a new set of dress robes, something she had needed for longer than she'd have liked to admit.
All this, of course, took her past the bright storefront of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She paused briefly, considering. She was still thinking of Ginny, still a bit troubled by the previous night's conversation. Going into the family shop wouldn't ease her mind particularly, but she had an urge to visit, to see Ron and George... it had been too long since she'd talked to any Weasley but Ginny. It had been too long since she had talked to George. Without another thought, she crossed the street and slipped into the shop. Dress robes could wait.
Inside, the shop was caught in the evening lull just before closing. Verity the shopgirl had gone on to bigger and better things since the war, and the new girl was killing time by pricing a stack of books in one corner, rapping their covers sharply with her knuckles if one of them blew high-pitched paper raspberries through its pages or fell open to inch crab-style across the floor towards the exit. They had titles like Great Hoaxes of the Ages, Muggle and Magical or Philogelos and Feghoot's Book of Instructions to Young Brides, a relatively small section compared to the other busy displays and packed shelves. Lately the shop always seemed to be in the midst of expanding some section or moving everything around, with the aisles blocked with boxes that forced customers to wind through aimlessly, past all the eye-catching devices that sought to separate the impulsive buyer from his Galleons.
Ron was out, and the door to the back room stood open, where George sat doing inventory on the boxes of Self-Inking Quills. A Muggle record-player that had to be forty years old at least sat next to him on the floor, a battered portable model that would, in theory, fold up into a very unwieldy yellow plastic case. Arthur had only tried to take it apart twice, so it still worked all right, playing an old Bill Cosby record that popped and hissed. George knew the routines too well to laugh, although the timing of the line "you have to be careful with eggs..." made an absent smile cross his face as he worked, almost blissful.
Once a body set foot in the joke shop, it was hard to remember anything else existed. It was the kind of place in which hours could be lost, slipping away in waves of nostalgia and laughter, and even when the shop was near closing the walls still seemed to vibrate with delight. It was a safe place, a good one, made for nothing but happiness. Katie slid her fingers along the shelf filled with Skiving Snackboxes, remembering the wrong end of the Nosebleed Nougat that Fred had given her once. The edible Dark Marks had gone, she noticed, but the bins of ton-tongue toffee and canary creams still stood in their old places. As she wandered past, Katie stopped to stroke the little pygmy puffskeins with a careful fingertip. One of them nuzzled cozily into her palm, and she lifted it out, carrying it with her in her cupped hand. George and Ron were nowhere in sight, and she wondered if she'd missed them altogether.
The wall behind the cash register was filled with the shimmering daydream charms, murmuring to themselves in starry-eyed wonder, the love potions in their garish pink bottles. The door to the back room was open, and Katie followed the crackly, unfamiliar voice to find George sitting on the floor with his back to her. His hair was longer now than it had been in school, she thought, the fire-bright tangle of it brushing his collar.
"Doesn't anybody work here?" she asked dryly, leaning against the doorjamb. She grinned.
He twisted around at her voice and grinned when he saw who it was, leaning forward to lift the needle and turn the record-player off. "I'm working! Sweat's dripping off my brow, it is. And Linnet should definitely be working out there--she didn't waste company time asking for your autograph, did she? I dock her pay for every syllable of personal chatter, it's a tight ship around here." He closed the box of quills and sat the inventory book on top. "What're you doing here, did you duck inside to escape from your hordes of crazed fans?"
Katie curled her lip at him. "Ha ha. You didn't see me twenty minutes ago, a bloke outside Flourish and Blotts tried to pull a chunk of my hair out. Giant bald spot, right here." She bent her head forward, rifling her fingers through her pale blond frizz. "And really, they try to pull my robes to pieces... can't go anywhere in public anymore, it's really embarrassing. --She didn't even see me." Katie grinned, her quick white smile there and gone as quickly as it had come. George made her a little nervous. George probably made quite a few people nervous, which tugged at her heart. It had been years, and she still worried about finding the right things to say. "I was running a few errands and I thought I'd stop in and say hullo. I see Ginny every day, but the rest of you lot are avoiding me."
"Yes, where could I be keeping myself--glad you solved that conundrum," he said, though he was still smiling. The back room was cluttered; Fred used to tidy things up without thinking about it, by no means scrupulously neat but just more inclined to put a vial of powder back in its rack when he was done with it. The thought made George get up to square things away a little, the scrolls on the work-table and the several iterations of a few prototypes. "Bill's around, busy with the brood. Ron's in here most days but ducked out early, lazy sod. How've you been, keeping Ginny out of trouble?"
"Absolutely. I'm just here to collect my monthly paycheck, she made it through July alive." She grinned at him again. The puffskein was burrowing under the sleeve of her cardigan and she coaxed it back out again. "She was at my flat just last night, we had dinner and lazed about. It made me wonder how the rest of you are. --Are you hungry? At liberty to leave anytime soon?"
"I'm disappointed, here I've been paying you to get her into more trouble. Builds character." At her question he hesitated, a few moments of dead air--the twins had always filled the gaps in each other's conversation, finishing sentences or adding refinements to a joke, picking up each other's threads and trains of thought or riffing on an idea until it reached absurd proportions. At times, George just talked more, trying to say by himself what the two of them would have said, but at other times he was rudderless, not sure how to answer an ordinary question. "Yeah," he said after a second. "Yeah, we're closing up here, so--we can do something in a few minutes here. If you want to, I mean."
That tiny awkward silence was enough to tip Katie off balance. On the Quidditch pitch, Katie was nimble, almost graceful, utterly confident; in everyday life, those qualities rarely manifested, leaving her awkward and a bit boyish. It was her sense of humor that carried her, her relentless energy, but she never seemed quite at ease unless she was on a broom, doing the one thing she knew for certain she was good at. "I'm not much for eating alone," she said, still smiling, but there was something gentler in it.
"Yeah, no, that's brilliant, I haven't really...you know how it is, living alone. Don't get a decent meal unless I go home for a weekend. Right--" George cut himself off to put himself out of his misery, and finished straightening up the work-table--faster than before. Doing something outside of work with Katie was unusual enough to be interesting. The rest of the room was fine as far as he was concerned, and he and Katie went back into the front of the shop. "Linnet, you've closed up before, yeah? We're heading out, just remember to cover up the Pygmy Puffs--they get nervy and pee their cages otherwise."
"Yes, sir," Linnet said, nursing a papercut that one of the books had given her. "Goodnight."
"She calls me sir, isn't that fetching?" George commented with faux-pomposity to Katie. "Ron could stand to learn a few things. Where're we going?"
"I'm not sure, I hadn't got that far yet." Katie carefully replaced the Pygmy Puff in with the other custard-colored balls of fluff, dusting her hand off on her jeans. "We could always tuck in at the Cauldron, it's not as rubbish as it used to be, or maybe we've all just dulled our senses. Or we could do Muggle food-- Ginny and I did that last night-- or we could go to that little place that's where Fortescue's used to be."
"I still miss Fortescue's," George said as they headed out of the shop, keeping Katie on his left side. He could hear well enough on his bad side but it was often difficult to pick up conversation or other particular sounds, especially in a crowded place. "Leaky Cauldron's all right, or I wouldn't mind doing Muggle food with my exciting Muggle-aware friend. Just keep me from drinking out of the fingerbowl and we'll be fine."
"Exactly what kind of establishments do you think I frequent, Weasley? --I do miss Fortescue's, though, like you were saying. Ice cream still doesn't feel right anywhere else. I was hoping they'd open it back up and run it in his name after everything, but..." Katie gave an awkward shrug, her hands in her back pockets. "Can't have everything, I guess. Let's go to the Cauldron, I could do with a heavy bit of shepherd's pie, my stomach's shrinking by the minute."
"Good enough, then." They elbowed through the crowd in the narrow alley, past the stalls and vendors tucked in between the shops. Diagon Alley had recovered, which was the important thing, even if places like Fortescue's would never be the same again; it was pointless to dwell too much on things like that. The Leaky Cauldron had improved over time too, just as Katie had said, a little less shabby inside but still dark, the early evening light filtering through the dusty window panes. George held the door for her as they went inside. "They'd better not clean this place up too much, I'll miss the thrill of never knowing if pea soup might be the last thing I ever see..."
Katie snorted. "I'd bet my weight in Galleons that they started to circulate all those rumors themselves," she said, as they found a table in the crowded tavern, one of the smaller ones tucked beneath the stairs that led to the lodging rooms above. "Although the first time my mum ever brought me to the Alley through here when I was a kid, I thought I was being punished. Never seen so many people with such sour faces. It's gotten better since the war, though, I think... brighter, a little, yeah?" Don't talk about the damned war, Katie. Did it come up this often in everyday conversation, and she was only noticing it now because of George?
"Pubs are supposed to be dark," he said as they sat down. "But they're also supposed to be cozy, so I can't defend them too far." The mention of the war made him glance back across at her, just to gauge her reaction--he had often been guilty in the past of talking too much about it without noticing that other people would rather be discussing anything else. Not these days. He'd learned to shut his gob no matter how much it was still on his mind. "Yeah, Diagon Alley's bounced back. Not that we didn't enjoy being the one of the last holdouts when things were rough, but it's a little better for business without the Death Eaters, yeah?"
She had met his eyes when he glanced up at her, and though she was uncertain of what he wanted, what it meant, she gave him a brief smile. She had always talked to him merrily in their school days, an effortless camaraderie borne from long hours on the pitch, and she found herself a little anxious to regain it, to see that easy light in George's eyes again. "I bet a handful of Death Eaters tried to get some good use out of Skiving Snackboxes, though," said Katie. "I'd have faked a puking attack if I were in their shoes."
George laughed. "Sure, 'Puke your way to freedom, lads!' Good luck to them. I remember when you got the wrong end of the Nosebleed Nougat that time, you were a bloody mess. Product most likely to earn us owls from angry mothers. I told Fred when we first came up with the whole idea that it was a recipe for disaster, which of course meant it was top priority to make it a reality..."
"I am convinced to this day that that was no accident," said Katie with a good-natured scowl as the barmaid came over. Katie ordered a gillywater for herself and a cold butterbeer for George, after consulting him. She was grateful for the interruption. He'd brought Fred up himself, which was a reassuring sign. As the barmaid walked away, Katie pressed her lips together, and then said, "All right, George, I'm rubbish at pretending not to be awkward. Honestly, I want to know how you are. If I'm sticking my nose in where it's not wanted, tell me to sod off and I will, but I just... I think about you, I do. I wonder how you are."
It always felt like a bit of a failure when people asked; he made an effort to act normal, as if Fred was perpetually somewhere just out of sight but coming back soon, even though he knew he wasn't fooling anyone. And the twins had never been much for serious conversation in the first place. "Yeah, I don't...you can ask, Bell, that's all right," he said after a moment, fiddling with a thread in the cuff of his jumper. "It's not off-limits to you. Am I being too much of a drag?"
"What?" It genuinely surprised her. "No-- God, no. That's not what I meant, George, you're not being... no." She had touched his sleeve, she realized, an urgent little tap of her fingers to reassure him. "It isn't that. It's just... sometimes it's worse when people don't ask and talk around it the entire night and you leave feeling worse off than before, and I didn't want it to be like that. So I thought maybe I'd ask first, just so... just so we could know."
"Okay. Good." This really was awkward. With Fred it had been hard to ever feel quite this self-conscious, always assured that someone else in the room felt the same, that they could talk about it later and laugh. "I mean, I get why people don't want to mention it, I do. It's depressing. And I reckon they think I'll lurch around all mad with grief as soon as they mention his name, like John Cleese in the dirty-fork sketch or something. You know the one, 'No, Mungo! Never kill a customer!'" George had a fairly thorough knowledge of Muggle comedy, although he was foggier on other pop-culture details like which of the Beatles were still alive or the plot of Star Wars. "But I won't, you know. Fall apart on you. I'm all right."
"I'm not worried about you falling apart. Bit of the opposite, really, you want the truth." Katie's smile was lopsided. "It got annoying sometimes, after my mum died? The way people would talk about her in some whisper, like she'd magically become sacred just because something shit had happened to her. I just wanted people to talk about her like she was my mum, you know? And I guess that's what I'm asking, is how you want me to talk about Fred, when it's not really avoidable-- or if you'd even want me to avoid it. I feel like I'm talking a lot."
"No, that's it exactly," he said with a bit of relief. "Talking in whispers, or making a big production of not mentioning him. Or the 'Fred would have wanted' game. I hate all that rubbish--Mum and the rest aren't so bad, but..." He trailed off, unwilling to say anything too critical. "You don't have to avoid it on my account. It's not like I'm going to think, 'oh dear, here I was having a wonderful time and she went and reminded me.' I think about him all the bloody time. I just don't want to get to the point where I'm--well, a case like that, for example," he said, indicating with a nod a patron sitting over by the bar, a sad bastard of the Cauldron's old stock who looked like he hadn't cracked a smile in decades.
"I don't... think you really ever could, George." Katie sat back as the waitress brought their drinks, settling them on the table with a comfortable clunk. When she was gone again, Katie slid her fingers around her glass, the condensation slick against her skin. "I won't avoid it, just... yeah. You still think about him a lot? Does your family-- do they bring him up? How is it?"
"You know who's been really decent is Percy? Our dustups with him were legendary, of course, but he was...he was a brick." He had been patient when George demanded to know every detail about what had happened, last words and who had been standing where and what the blast had been like. Even when the same questions came up over and over, Percy had answered each as conscientiously as if reporting for the Ministry. "We all try to make it easy on Mum, though. Sometimes it's like a big teetering stack of dishes, you know--Ron tries not to upset Ginny so that they won't bother me and so on, and we all try to keep the worst from Mum."
"God, yeah. --I wouldn't have expected that from Percy, not really, not after... it's funny sometimes." Katie sipped her drink again, brushing a drop of gillywater off her lip with the back of her hand. "I don't think I've ever even been to your house-- no, that's a lie, once I swung by with Ginny and said hullo to Molly-- but I feel like I have all these opinions about everything and it's none of my business. I shouldn't even nose in now, I just... think about you lot all the time. Molly and Arthur, you, Ron-- how... is Ron, by the way?" It was a little too nonchalant.
"Ron? Oh, you know, all tangled up with Hermione--figuratively speaking, of course. Mum's always after him about when he's going to make an honest witch out of her." He picked up his glass, adding, "I don't think he's in much of a rush, though."
Katie made a small noise of affirmation, eyebrows raised from behind her glass. Holding off Ginny's impending heartbreak was probably the best idea for everyone; since the night previous, Katie had had the disturbing recurring thought that if they did marry, Ginny would fume and stay silent until, finally, she stood up in the ceremony, taxed beyond her capability to bear it, shouting that she loved Hermione. All of it was awkward, and even worse was that Katie knew it, and that she was worrying about it now when she just wanted to talk to George. "No? How's-- Hermione and everything? I mean, are they just disgusting?"
"They've been acting like an old married couple since before Ron even had to shave, so they might as well go for it and make Mum and Dad happy, if you want to know what I think," said George with a snort. "But then we all thought the same thing about Ginny and Harry, and that didn't work out. Not so much the married part, but we thought it was a sure thing." Katie's expression was a little odd, and he wondered if she was bored. "Soap opera rubbish, anyway."
If he only knew. Katie had the sudden urge to tell him, just to prepare someone for Ginny's eventual confession, but the idea of betraying Ginny's confidence was embarrassing. Dealing with the fallout would be a nightmare. "It's not soap opera rubbish," she said, grinning at him. "What about you? Hauling anyone home that your Mum disapproves of?"
"Oh, well..." George said with a tone of vague but impenetrable discontent, a tight smile that suggested a problem he was too stiff-upper-lip to mention. Fred, had he been there, would have detected the faintest flicker of a nigh-invisible eyelash; nobody else could have. "It's--always been difficult for us..."
Katie felt her stomach drop. Oh God. She doubted that George really trusted her enough to make such a confession, but if Ginny had done it... her mouth was dry. She managed to say, "Oh?" before she took another mouthful of gillywater.
There was a long pause, in which he toyed with his glass, making rings of condensation on the scarred wood of the tabletop, before finally meeting her eyes and saying, "Listen, Bell, can you keep a secret? A real one."
She almost dropped her head into her hand. She'd never really have expected this from George, not really, but then again... who ever really knew anyone? She'd never have expected it from Ginny either. "Yeah-- yeah, of course, mate. You all right?"
"Yeah, just...we never told anyone this before. Fred'd kill me if he knew--I just think it's time to start being open with people, though. What does it matter anymore? Times have changed, everyone's more accepting." He bit his lower lip, tracing a finger through the rings on the table. "What it was--we had to, ah, have a bit of surgery done, just after we were born. Muggle surgery with the knives and everything, Dad used to tell horror stories about it to Ron every time the little squirt complained about seeing the healers." He smiled briefly. "The technical name was omphalo-ischiopagus conjoined twins. Sounds like an incantation, doesn't it? Mostly we were rather lucky, not joined at the heart or the liver or anything else like that. It was actually just a little bit lower, at the, erm, pelvis."
Katie's mouth was hanging open slightly. "Muggle surgery? They--" She closed her mouth then, sitting forward, her hands curled around her glass. He seemed so nervous, not meeting her eyes, but... "You're... George, if you're taking the mickey..."
"I'm not," he said dully. "Though I guess it must sound that way, yeah? Sometimes I think that was part of the reason we were so...I mean, keep everyone laughing so they don't realise there's something wrong with you, that sort of thing. And it worked, Angelina Johnson barely had to think twice when Fred asked her out--but nothing ever went very far, for either of us." He seemed to realise he had lost his place in the story, and sat back in his chair a bit. "Good job I'm telling you this before the food gets here, eh? We did share some organs, part of our intestines, luckily not as far back as the kidneys. The plumbing was all right internally, but externally...bit of a mess. St. Mungo's did a lot of work for us, a little at a time, but of course even the healers have limits to what they can regrow. And, well, they did a brilliant job all things considered--we were out there on the Quidditch pitch all the time, never a hint that things weren't right. Nobody guessed."
"Yeah, no, I suppose Skele-Gro wouldn't have done you any favours," said Katie, trying for a joke, but it strained and cracked and fell utterly flat. He wasn't kidding. Good God. She hadn't seen George look so sombre in ages... she felt a brief indignant flare of heat beneath her breastbone. What was it with the Weasleys and confessing to her lately? What was she supposed to do with all of this? But it was George. Was she... no. That was ridiculous. "I... no, I mean, I never had any idea, I never would've known--"
"I probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all," he said, his expression still clouded. "Hermione was a bit of inspiration, even though we'd never have admitted it--fighting on behalf of creatures that look odd. We used to think maybe someday it would all be different, that somebody would understand. There was this...what was it, six years ago now? At Christmastime. There was this girl we fancied at home in Ottery St. Catchpole, worked at a Muggle paper shop. Really fit. Fred knew I fancied her more than he did so he made himself scarce, but I was too nervous to tell her about it. Warn her, like. We were in the backseat of her car. Things were getting heated and I finally told her, look, you won't like what you see down there. She said don't be silly. But then when she felt it, she...she just started crying..."
All Katie's work to keep her expression neutral and sympathetic was failing miserably, and she could feel it. Her fair skin was flushed up to her hairline; she could feel the heat of it when she passed her hand over her forehead. "I just thought... I thought you were going to tell me you were... I just thought you were going to tell me you were gay, George, I'm a little bit... God, I'm so sorry."
"Really? Well, then maybe now's the time to tell you something else..." He made the mistake then of looking back up at Katie, sitting across from him blushing and embarrassed, probably hideously uncomfortable...and he lost it. Heads turned in the Cauldron, even that of the sad bastard at the bar. The twins' laugh had always been one of their most notable features, loud enough to spook wildlife when they were outside, constantly erupting from their room on the second floor of the Burrow. Since the war, it hadn't been quite so easy to get a laugh out of George, but when he did there was a raucous edge to it, deep in the gut and impossible to smother, full of the deep satisfaction of a professional. His chair scraped back a few inches as he doubled over to rest his forehead on the table. "Oh, Bell, bless you..."
When he started to laugh, Katie was visibly confused. She blinked, sitting back in her chair, and she was uneasy; they were being stared at, which was one of her least favorite things in the world (something she had had a hard time adjusting to after she joined the Harpies). After a moment, however, her face cleared. "Oh-- my God. You--" Her hand flashed out across the table and gave him a sound crack on the head, quite rivaling a strike from Molly Weasley. "You arsehole, you-- oh my God, I'm so embarrassed--" She slouched back into her chair, covering her face with her hands.
"Ow--" He fell back when she hit him but did not stop laughing, shoulders shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we'd been sitting on that one for ages--" he began, but was not yet at the point of being able to finish a sentence. It had begun as a private joke with Fred, a completely false and medically improbable story they'd made up and added details to gradually over several years, enough that he couldn't even remember the entire canon. All it would take to set them off was one of them murmuring sadly, just like the paper girl...
Katie was mortified enough that she felt as if she might actually tear up, something that only made her angrier. She made a sound almost like a snort, leaning her elbows on the table with her face still buried in her hands. "You're not bloody sorry, you're pleased as can be--"
"I'm a little bit sorry! I stopped before you got too sincere." His mirth was dying down, and he reached for his glass now that he was reasonably sure he wouldn't choke. "C'mon, that was hilarious and you know it."
Katie's skin was still crimson, even her neck and chest mottled with embarrassment. The idea of admitting to it was humiliating, but if she were frank, George was right. It was hilarious. She still wasn't ready to acknowledge his victory here, but he was laughing... it was good to hear George laughing, at least. She showed him her middle finger and finished her gillywater before she wrinkled her nose. "All right, you git, it was funny."
"Yeah, that's the spirit. I kid because I love, Kates, you know that." He was well flushed himself from the laughing fit, so pale ordinarily that blushing always made him look ridiculous. There was nothing else like it, the rush after getting off a joke that was disgusting or taboo or even just complex. "Hang on, we don't actually come off as gay, right? Wouldn't want to lead all the lovesick lads on."
"Absolutely homosexual, queer as pink tights and sequins on Fire Island," said Katie, still slouched deep in her chair. She scraped her hands through her untidy hair, rifling it until it stood nearly on end.
"Ah, too bad. All those disappointed boys and misled girls who will never know the true delights of my mangled mandrake..." He grinned at her, still largely unrepentant, although he didn't like to let Katie get too mad at him. "I assume that answers your original question, though--haven't hauled anyone home for Mum to disapprove of. Because I'm a juvenile arsehole."
She kicked him under the table, still a little petulant, but a smile was sneaking across her mouth again in spite of herself. "I hate you," she told him, arms folded across her chest. "I really do. You could've kept me going for proper ages with that, because I am a nice person. It does answer the question, however, and I've got to say that women are probably bloody lucky you've stayed off them if you'd pull that sort of thing all the time." She was still trying to hide her grin.
"I would, too. It's an exciting life my future wife is going to live. She'd better enjoy herself now, her peaceful and serene spider-free existence, because it'll all come to an end one day." He set his glass down again. "Oi, so that's me and Ron and Hermione, what about you? Any lucky wizard get to ring the Bell?"
"Oho, clever, I like that." Katie thieved what she thought of as a well-deserved sip from his glass after he set it down, the butterbeer rich in her mouth after the mild, bright gillywater. "But yeah, no. Nobody knocking down my door here. I guess they all know how desperately I yearn and pine for George Weasley to prank me into an early grave."
"Which I would be only too happy to do, sweetness. Seriously, though?" He was a little surprised--he'd always thought Katie was fit. She was a mate, of course, but he wasn't blind; she had a great smile, and her light hair always looked windswept, just off the Quidditch pitch. He picked up her glass when she took his. "Huh. Who'd have thought it'd be this difficult to find takers for a cute professional Chaser and an up-and-coming respectable businessman? Life's not fair, I say."
"You're not so bad yourself, Weasley." His surprise pleased Katie, the tips of her ears pink. She thought briefly of the night previous, when Ginny had asked after her romantic life, and then she pushed the thought away. She slid George's butterbeer back at him and stretched a little, feeling the sweet pull in the abused muscles of her back. "Oi, I'm tired of sitting down. I spent at least seven hours flying today, my arse is half-numb. --We could always make one of those idiot pacts they have in Muggle movies, you know. If neither of us finds anyone by the time we're a certain age, we'll give up and I'll let you put spiders under my pillow and you'll let me imitate your mum to the best of my ability and nag you until your ears-- eh. Until your other ear falls off." She grinned, lopsided, but there was a delicate tingle in the very tips of her fingers.
"And there I'll sit, happily deaf, just saying 'yes, dear' every few minutes when you look at me expectantly. Sounds nice, I reckon. When's a good age to decide everything's hopeless, thirty-five? Forty?" During the darker months after the funeral he'd ruminated in self-pitying fashion over the prospect of being alone for the rest of his life, after his siblings were all paired off, but by now he could shrug the idea off as maudlin. "Nah, you'd want to be young enough to still look good in the dress. --You haven't ordered food yet, we could take a walk and come back, if you wanted."
"Oh my God, yeah, that'd be lovely. I mean, I could eat them out of house and home, but I didn't realize how much I was aching until we sat down. A walk would be brilliant." She stood up, straightening the legs of her jeans as she bent at the waist for a moment, stretching with a groan. She straightened up, brushing her hair out of her face. That pleasantly queasy sensation was in her stomach. It wasn't exactly rare when she talked to George, if she were truthful. "Thirty-five sounds good to me, I think I could keep my girlish figure until then."
"It's a deal, then," he said with a grin as they got up, offering her his hand to shake on it. "Takes a load off my mind, I'll have someone to heal my bunions and read labels with small print out loud. And someone who's such a good sport about awful Siamese twin jokes."
Katie slid her hand into his and gave it a good squeeze. "Don't go building too rich a fantasy of our geriatric years here, Weasley, I still have to survive a Quidditch career and you could blow the entire Alley into oblivion with one misplaced knickknack." Her hand lingered for perhaps the tiniest fraction too long, and when she drew it away she offered him her arm. "Stroll down the alley at dusk sounds like a good way to put a seal on a completely unromantic wedding proposal."
"True, yeah, we never know what awaits us," he said, and if the words might have suggested a grimmer undertone, he gave no sign, still smiling. She forgave him, and from his point of view he'd entrusted Katie with a beloved old joke, something to allude to and laugh at for years, which was what friends were for. He wouldn't have embarrassed just anyone this way. He took her arm to keep her close on his good side, and they headed out of the Leaky Cauldron to the Alley.