Enough
George flies them to a deserted field somewhere between Canberra and Sydney before apparating them to the hotel. The door to the room slams shut behind them, and Hermione takes a stumbling step towards her bed.
George seizes her arm and pulls her to face him.
“Are you alright?” he asks roughly, his hand running over her cheek and hair as his eyes search for injuries. “He didn’t—”
“I’m fine,” Hermione says, taking a shaking breath and closing her eyes. “But he got—George, he got my wand.”
“He what? ” George cries. He releases her, hands dropping to his sides as his gaze snaps to her face. “How—”
Hermione nods, her eyes burning. She puts a hand up to cover her face and chokes back another sob. “He disarmed me—I was running and he hit me in the back—and I couldn’t—he had it—and—”
George runs a hand through his hair, a muscle feathering in his jaw as his eyes sear her skin.
Hermione bites her lip, her head beginning to pound as images flood her. Yaxley holding out her wand, the snap echoing through the hall, those white pillars receding in darkness.
George shakes his head slightly, mouth pinching. Hermione almost takes a step closer, almost reaches out to wrap herself around his chest, when George’s eyebrows draw together and he rounds on her.
“What were you thinking, splitting up like that?” he demands.
“What?” Hermione blinks and frowns at him.
“In the library! You ditched me and took off—”
Hermione stiffens as George’s words hit her. She narrows her eyes. “I was just trying to get out of there. I wasn’t—”
“I had no idea where you’d gone,” George scowls. “You and Yaxley both just disappeared all of a sudden and then I hear you scream like you’re—”
“I ducked into a different corridor to avoid a curse,” Hermione says. She swallows, shivering slightly as she remembers the flash of purple. “I wasn’t trying to separate us.”
George glowers at her, unsoftened. “I told you we had to stay together! Ever since he showed up, that’s been the one thing—”
“What was I supposed to do?” Hermione snaps, bristling. “He was coming after me and if I hadn’t moved I would’ve been hit—”
“You should’ve stayed by me so we could have—”
“If I had stayed with you I would’ve been killed!” Heat rushes into Hermione’s cheeks and angry flames lick the inside of her chest. She swallows and takes a step back, crossing her arms over her chest.
George’s scowl deepens, a scarlet flush creeping over his ear and down his jaw. “I could’ve helped! We could’ve—”
“He was right behind me, George! What could you possibly have done? The best plan I could think of was to move—”
“Yes, it was an absolutely brilliant plan, Hermione. Really well done letting Yaxley get your wand.”
Loose tendrils of hair fall into Hermione’s face and she smacks them away as she glowers at him. “Like you would have done any differently?”
George glares at her, the flush burning its way across his cheeks. “Yeah, I would’ve! Because you don’t separate! When you split up everything goes to hell, so I would’ve—”
“What, what exactly would you have done?” Hermione demands, scowling. “Please enlighten me.”
“I would’ve deflected! I would’ve turned and fought him! I would’ve—”
“Still left Yaxley there instead of finishing him off and turning him in to the authorities?” Hermione bites out.
George stops, eyebrows crashing down. “What does that mean, Granger?”
Hermione clenches her jaw, swallowing the shame cresting in her throat. “Just that you were the one saying you regretted not finishing him off when you had the chance,” she says through pursed lips. “And now when we had the opportunity to turn him in—”
George’s face goes fuschia. “I was trying to get you out of there!”
“You didn’t have to do that!” Hermione says.
“Actually, I really fucking did!”
Hermione’s chest heaves, the vision of Yaxley bearing down on her, wand raised, swimming up in her mind. She swallows heavily, throat constricting. “I’m so sorry that one time I didn’t have a plan—”
“Don’t even start with that bollocks,” George snaps. He crosses his arms over his chest and fixes her with a blazing glare. “There hasn’t been a bloody plan since we got here.”
Hermione wheels back, mouth falling slightly open as she gapes at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like!” George throws his hands up, the muscle in his jaw jumping forcefully against his skin. “You’re asking what my brilliant plan would’ve been, when you brought both of us across the sodding world without any idea of what to do!”
The flames in Hermione’s chest explode up into her mouth and her breath catches. “You didn’t have any problems with that when you were begging to join me!”
“I thought you knew what you were doing!” George yells. “Or at least had some idea of where we were looking, something a little more specific than an entire fucking continent!”
“I told you what I knew! I told you everything—”
“It still doesn’t—”
“Leave, then!” Hermione cries, her voice snagging in her throat. “Go, if this is so awful! Nobody’s making you stay.”
George’s jaw works furiously, one hand coming up and running haphazardly through his hair. “Is that what you want?” he asks, voice harsh. “For me to just piss off and leave you here to deal with Yaxley?”
“I don’t care what you do!” she shouts. Pressure builds behind her eyes, and for a moment Hermione is furious to think she might start to cry. “Everybody leaves eventually, don’t they? Ron left us in the middle of the country and Harry—”
“I’m here!” George bellows. “In case it’s escaped your notice, I’m still bloody here—”
“Because you’re running away!”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“It is!” Hermione cries. A piece of hair falls over her eyes and she swats it away, heat radiating from her cheeks as her eyes once again burn. “And I don’t know what you want from me! I can’t stop the pain like you want me to, I can’t undo the past. I’m not Fred!”
“I’m not either!” George explodes.
“I know that!”
“No, you clearly don’t!”
George’s scowl deepens, the angry flush blazing across his face as he sets on Hermione. “Fred’s the one who makes the mad plans! He’s the one who says ‘fuck it’ and just makes things work. Not me! I’m just the guy who figures out how to not get caught, who makes sure we don’t actually get ourselves killed. He’s the one who would’ve snuck into the library in the middle of the night, not me!”
He pauses, breaths coming out in heavy bursts. His mouth twists and his expression burns. “So, sorry, Granger. I’m sorry that Fred’s dead and you’re stuck here with the brother who’s completely fucking useless!”
Hermione stands rooted to the spot, feeling as though her insides have been doused in ice water. George’s mouth continues to work, his hand again coming up to run through his hair. She is horrified to see tears glimmering at the edges of his eyes, fat drops falling and streaking his cheeks.
“I’m sorry that he’s dead and I’m not,” George says, voice cracking. “Trust me, I wish it were the other way around.”
In an instant, George seems to deflate, the anger and heat rushing out of him like air from a popped balloon. He falters and then sinks onto the edge of the closest bed, head in his hands.
Hermione watches, her stomach twisting and throat tight, as his shoulders begin to quake.
Deep, guttural cries fill the hotel room. George folds in on himself, elbows on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders, as the sobs wrench violently from his chest.
Hermione sucks in a breath, her body frozen as she takes in the sight, hears the sounds. She tries to think of who she has seen in such a state before, what she had done to help them.
All she can think of is Harry, who always insisted on being alone when he fell apart.
The thought of leaving George alone now feels wrong, almost cruel. He takes another shuddering breath, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and something in Hermione’s chest bursts.
She takes a step forward, legs stiff beneath her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, tentatively putting a hand on George’s shoulder and pressing lightly. “I’m sorry, George.”
George doesn’t respond, but she can hear a battered inhale and a renewed gush of tears.
Hermione presses her fingers into his back, slowly kneading the junction where his neck meets his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have brought up Fred,” she murmurs. “I shouldn’t have said you’re running away.”
George swallows audibly, his hands dropping down onto his knees.
Hermione catches a glimpse of his pink, swollen face and her lungs pinch. She drags her thumb over his shoulder and up towards the back of his neck, smoothing the tense tendons and wishing there was a way she could brush away the pain still evident in his face.
“I don’t know if I’ve properly said this to you,” she whispers, rolling the pad of her thumb into the base of his neck, “but I’m so sorry that he’s gone.”
“It should have been me.”
Hermione’s heart drops into her stomach and she freezes, thumb still ghosting over George’s neck. “What?” she asks, staring at him.
George takes a frayed breath and turns to look at her, eyes glossy. “It should have been me who died,” he says, the words breaking as they hit the air. “It would have been better for everyone.”
“Oh, George—”
Hermione drops to sit beside him, an arm wrapping around his neck and pulling him towards her. He sinks into her, and she doesn’t stop to let herself feel embarrassed by the way she cradles his head on her shoulder. One of George’s arms comes to wrap around her back, clinging to her.
“I mean it,” he chokes out. “Fred was—he would be able to get those products to work. He would have been able to finish off Yaxley tonight.”
Hermione puts her other arm around him, holding him closely to her. She runs a hand over the back of his head, her fingers snaking through his hair.
“It wouldn’t be better,” she whispers. “We’d all be just as cut up, if it had been you. Fred would be just as lost without you as you are without him.”
“I don’t know about that,” George mumbles into her shoulder.
Hermione squeezes her arms more tightly around him, trying to remove any remaining space between them. George takes another roiling breath, his shoulders shaking against her.
Hermione leans her cheek against the crown of his head and weaves her fingers through his hair. She doesn’t know what to do, what to say. So she sits there, at the edge of a mattress in a hotel in muggle Sydney, and holds George Weasley as closely as she can.
They sit together for an indefinite amount of time, until George sniffs loudly and sits up, his arm still wrapped around Hermione’s waist.
“Sorry,” he says thickly, running a hand over his splotchy face.
“Don’t apologize.” Hermione lets one arm drop, the other loosening around his shoulders. She swallows and leans closer, eyes flickering over the tear streaks carving into his cheeks. “Are you alright?”
George shrugs, the corner of his mouth twisting. “I don’t know.”
The arm around her waist withdraws, and George gets slowly to his feet. He runs a hand over his face again, and then through his hair, before moving to the top of the bed and dropping once more. His head comes to rest against the headboard with a soft thud and his eyes flutter closed.
Hermione awkwardly shifts on the bed and crawls to sit beside him, leaving a small chasm of space between their legs.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks quietly.
George exhales, his chest depressing. His eyes open slightly and he turns to face her. Hermione shivers as she meets his gaze.
“There’s nothing to say,” George rumbles, leaning heavily against the headboard as his eyes bore into hers. “He’s just gone.”
Hermione bites her lip and leans towards him, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. George’s fingers find the spaces between hers, interlocking their hands and holding tight.
“Tell me about him,” she says softly.
George swallows heavily and shifts, his gaze moving to their clasped hands. “Why? You knew him.”
“Not like you did.”
“I don’t—” George trails off and takes a breath, his hand tightening against hers.
“He snored horribly,” he says after a moment. “Sounded like a bloody ghoul was in the room every night. And he was always losing things. It would drive me mad, because half the things he lost were mine and then Mum would yell at me for not keeping track of them.”
George’s thumb runs against Hermione’s wrist. She stays quiet, watching him.
Another breath.
“He was an absolute tosser sometimes. He’d go up to girls and chat them up pretending to be me just because he knew I’d hate it. And then he’d take the mickey out of me for being embarrassed afterwards. And he always forgot to put out the fire so I’d have to go out in the morning and check to be sure he hadn’t burned the flat down. And he’d leave his socks in the hall if he didn’t feel like putting them in the laundry so they’d just be sitting there and—”
George’s breath catches. Hermione squeezes her fingers around his, pressing against the crook of his thumb.
“And he hated fudge,” George continues, his words growing thick. His grip loosens and he turns Hermione’s hand over in his, rubbing a slow circle into the center of her palm.
“Ever since Christmas when we were nine. We had a contest to see who could eat a whole tin of it the fastest, and he got sick all over the kitchen. But Mum would still give us a big box of it every year, and I love it so I would always eat it. And he never told her he didn’t like it because he didn’t want her to feel bad and he didn’t want her to stop making it for us.”
George’s fingers wrap around Hermione’s again and he shifts, his legs knocking against hers.
“It was my idea for us to split up during the battle and have him go with Percy,” he whispers. “I thought we needed to cover more ground.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Hermione murmurs. She wriggles her hand free of George’s and brings it up to brush a piece of hair from his face, her fingertips dragging gently across his temple.
George closes his eyes, his face pinching. “I should have been there.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to stop it,” Hermione says. Her hand drags down the side of his face and onto his shoulder. She flattens her palm against his neck and holds him gently. “It was an explosion. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.”
“I could have taken his place.”
Hermione shuffles against the mattress, turning to lay on her side and facing George more fully. George moves in tandem, rolling towards her and propping himself up on his shoulder.
Hermione runs her thumb against the back of his neck, her eyes tracking slowly down his face, cataloging each fine line and tear track.
“That wouldn’t have been any better,” she says. “You know that.”
“He’d still be here, though.” George’s lips contort, his voice growing rougher. He stretches an arm out between them, his hand landing lightly on Hermione’s hip. “He’d be here, and I wouldn’t have to just think about him all the time.”
Hermione chews her lip and drops her eyes to the mattress between them. She finds herself suddenly very aware of their proximity, the way their breath mingles in the small space between them and the steady weight of George’s hand on her.
She lets her eyes wander back up to George’s face and finds him watching her. His eyes are soft, his face still dewy in the dim light. The thought flashes through Hermione’s mind that he might just be the loveliest person she knows.
A second, quieter thought comes next. Hermione does her best to squash it, though echoes of it linger even after she forces it aside.
She would rather like to spend every night in this way, curled up beside George and feeling him look at her with that soft, reverent expression.
Her fingers curl against the back of George’s neck, and she feels his hand tighten on her hip in response.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” she hears herself say. “That I didn’t care if you leave.”
She pauses, takes a breath, her gaze staying on George’s face. “I—I’m glad you’re here with me, and I don’t want you to go. I couldn’t do this without you.”
George gives a thin smile. “You’d be just fine without me, Hermione. You would be brilliant all on your own.”
“It wouldn’t be the same, though. You’ve made everything better. And—and you were right earlier. At the library, if you hadn’t been there—”
“You would have been fine,” George says softly, almost to himself. His fingers dance against the hem of her shirt, and Hermione bites her lip.
“I’m sorry for shouting like that when we got back,” George says. “It wasn’t—” He pauses and takes an unsteady breath, his eyes closing again. “You scared me. I couldn’t find you and then I heard you scream and I thought—”
“I know.”
Hermione brings her hand up to run through his hair again and lets herself sink deeper into the mattress. “I knew you would come find me, though.”
A clock on a nightstand reads half past one in the morning in a small hotel room in muggle Sydney. In that small hotel room Hermione Granger lays next to George Weasley, her fingers weaving through his hair while his hand clutches her side. Neither makes any move to get closer, too afraid to break the silent spell that has woven the gentle cocoon they find themselves in. Yet neither moves apart.
Tomorrow they will have to form a new plan, Hermione knows. They will have to go back to the library and face the danger head on. But tonight they are alive, even though by all accounts they probably shouldn’t be. Tonight she lays side by side with George Weasley in the half darkness, her knees knocking against his and her breathing slowing to match the rhythm of his own.
Tonight, that is enough.