Almost Lover

DISCLAIMER: Characters and background world belong entirely to J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic, etc. The quotations in the text are taken from the song 'Almost Lover' by A Fine Frenzy/Alison Sudol.

AUTHORS NOTE: Lyrics from 'Almost Lover' by A Fine Frenzy. This story is from the POV of a briefly mentioned and never seen Muggle girl in Half-Blood Prince. Please leave a review!

"We're off to the village, there's a very pretty girl working in the paper shop who thinks my card tricks are something marvellous...almost like real magic..."

-George Weasley, Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

I walk through deserted streets where the remnants of raucous nights out linger like dead leaves all around. There is a pool of vomit on a street corner and it makes me gag to smell it. Empty cans of beer are rolling about in the wind and someone has thrown a traffic cone onto the pavement. Village kids like to make up for the lack of entertainment provided for them and Saturday night is always boisterous in Ottery St. Catchpole.

I've taken a second job because the paper shop just doesn't pay enough. I wake up at five and deliver the morning paper to everyone in the surrounding area. It's not bad, really. I don't even mind the hours. I cycle through the half-light and feel the crisp morning air wake up every pore of my skin, reminding me that I'm alive and that I'm a part of this world.

This morning I am not actually working as it's Sunday but I have gotten used to waking up at five so that's when I wake up. I was never very big on sleeping. I like to be doing something.

Today I've left my bike behind in favour of refreshing my limbs. Maybe it'll help me get fit. I'm not fat but sometimes I look at my body and feel that typical pang of revulsion that I think most girls feel now and then. I'll never be perfectly toned, tall and hourglass shaped. I'll never have blonde hair and striking eyes and my skin will never be flawless. I sometimes wonder if that's why he stopped talking to me.

Goodbye, my almost lover,

Goodbye, my hopeless dream,

I'm trying not to think about you,

Can't you just let me be?

He comes into the shop with the usual tinkle of the bell on the door and I am not expecting anything special. Just another customer, come to buy a card for their granddaughter or some airmail paper, is what I assume. But it's a pair of boys about my age, red hair blazing on their heads. They're identical and dressed in woolly jumpers that bring a smile to my mouth before I can resist it.

"Can I help you, boys?" I ask in my usual friendly way. There is something more friendly than normal about my manner though. I can't help it. Somehow, they are irresistible.

"Nope, just looking around," one of them says with an amicable jerk of his head in my direction. I smile at him and stay behind the counter, hugging a mug of hot tea and watching them.

"This should do, George," says the one who spoke to me. He shows his brother the box of all the shop's playing card decks, then picks it up and brings it to the counter. I raise my eyebrow at him.

"You're not thinking of buying all these?" I say suspiciously. His eyes twinkle and he nods his head. "But there are at least fifty..."

"We buy in bulk," pipes up the other twin, resting his hand elbow on his brother's shoulder. "We own a shop, you know."

I wonder how high my eyebrows can raise before they disappear off the top of my forehead. They can't be more than nineteen or twenty and they own a shop. I've just dropped out of the education system because I have finally admitted that I'm not as clever as I wish I were and am working in a lousy little shop. I don't believe that these two can be that far above me in the world.

"What kind of shop?" I ask skeptically. "Where is it?"

"It's out of town," says the one who I have surmised is called George. "It's a magic shop." He winks at his brother and I suddenly feel a pang and wish I hadn't been an only child. I would have liked a twin to wink at and rest my elbow on.

"Really? A magic shop?" I say. "What does that make you two then, magicians?"

The one whose name I don't know laughs heartily and nods. "Yep, you might say that!"

"Show me a magic trick then," I suggest with a doubtful look. The nameless one, still laughing, claps his brother on the back.

"You show her, George," he says. He winks and George takes one of the packets of cards out of the box.

"Righto then," he says chirpily. He takes off the plastic and shuffles the cards with ease and agility in his fingers. I watch him, still suspicious but I want to keep looking at him. I like that I have an excuse to look at him. His eyes twinkle like little pools of spring water and his hands are long-fingered and lithe. He is quite tall but not lanky and not too awkward looking. He's comfortable in himself and confident. Even before I know the other's name, the twin called George stands out for me. His brother seems more upfront and his laugh is louder, but I can't help watching George. It's a king's name, an English name. I think randomly of history classes and royals. I don't even know why.

George lays the deck of cards on the table and pulls out a polished wooden stick from his pocket.

"What the hell's that?" I say with a smirk.

"My magic wand, of course," George replies. His eyes hold mine.

"It doesn't look much like one," I remark. "It's not black with a white tip or anything. It's just a stick."

"Black with a white tip?" the other twin says. He looks genuinely confused for a second but then brushes this off. "My dear...what's your name...?"

"Julie."

"My dear Julie," he continues, "Fred's the name, pleased to meet you. This is George and he's about to dazzle you with his unbelievable magic tricks, aren't you George?"

"Oh, definitely," says George. "This is my magic wand, see? Excellent, isn't it? Well anyway, I'll bet you anything that the first card in this deck will be...ohh, I don't know, the ace of hearts?"

"You shuffled them, you cheated," I state immediately. George hands me the cards.

"Feel free," he says. I shuffle them and lay the deck on the table. He points the 'wand' on the top of the deck, and then turns over the card. It's the ace of hearts. He predicts the next card, and the next, and the next, until he's told me what fifteen cards are going to be in advance.

"That's just impossible," I say. I'm genuinely astonished and have no idea how he's doing it. I've always quite liked magic; I used to watch magic shows on TV when I was younger and once my mum hired a professional magician for my birthday. That was a long time ago. Today I don't think I've ever seen such improbable tricks.

I cannot wake up in the morning

Without you on my mind,

So you're gone and I'm haunted

And I bet you are just fine.

There is still moisture in the air and though I can't see it, my face is soaked by it like the grass. I've left Ottery St. Catchpole behind now and I'm on the outskirts, where there is farmland and nothing but screeching early morning birdsong. The fields on either side of the little path I walk along now are vast and scattered with spring flowers. Many of the flowers haven't woken up yet; their petals are still closed tightly together to protect themselves from the chill of the world when it's dark and inhospitable. Sometimes I wish that I could do the same - that I could just close myself up from the world for a while and become oblivious to it all. Then I could forget him and those times that weren't so long ago but seem a lifetime ago, because nothing else has happened in my life since then. I don't think anything really happened before him, either. There is just him in my head. There is very little, before or after.

My mum thinks that I have become too introverted and moody, this past year. I was always the pleasantly happy girl, at school and at home and at work. I was always the one with the smile because I couldn't think of much else to do but smile. I was happy: simple and happy. I never wanted much and I never asked for it. That was why George was such a...what? Surprise, delight, miracle, bolt from the blue. I never expected him. I was never all that interested in romance, least of all the unexpected, whirlwind, unpredictable kind. But then, sometimes I ask myself: was it really a romance? I suppose that's the worst part of it.

Well I'd never want to see you unhappy,

I thought you'd want the same for me.

He comes back for the third time, but this time his twin isn't with him.

"Shock, horror! George without Fred? What's the world coming to?" I say with a laugh. George sticks his tongue between his teeth and leans over the counter.

"My dear brother had intended to come and say hello, but unfortunately he became tied up with a very attractive client of ours disappeared somewhere...He's living the Christmas spirit to its fullest!"

Somehow that makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I don't care at all that Fred is off with some girl, but the idea of an 'attractive' girl just makes me feel paranoid about myself. I try and picture Fred saying the same thing about George and I, but can't. I feel so plain, but George is looking at me at great length and I blush despite myself.

"Did you actually want to buy anything?" I ask.

"Nope," he replies shortly. He's grinning - nothing new there. I wonder why he's always so happy. Then I suppose that I am too. Why bother being miserable? There's nothing all that terrible in the world. I grin back at him.

"I'm closing up soon," I say. I hope he understands what I'm hinting. I'm no good at this sort of thing.

"Is that so?" he says. "Then I guess I'll have to take you for a walk in the snow, rather than sitting in the warmth. No harm done, I'm sure it'll be marvellous."

I can feel the dimple in my cheek becoming deeper as my grin widens and refuses to go away.

I lock up the shop and grab my coat. It's cold outside but the snow is the cheeriest sight I could imagine and we plough our way through it in high spirits. He wants to take me to the top of a hill nearby as he says there's a nice view there. I feel slightly ashamed that, though I've lived here all my life, I haven't ever climbed the small hill just outside the village. George leads me through the snow as the light begins to dim around us.

"Have you got any magic tricks that don't involve cards, then?" I ask him, as we trudge through the new snow along the country pathways.

"Oh, so many, you wouldn't believe," George says.

"I'd have to believe, if I saw them," I tell him. "I'd love if you could teach me some!"

He laughs at that and taps his nose. "A magician never reveals his tricks, Julie! Statute of Secrecy and all that..."

"Statue of who...?" I say, but he's started running and I have to run to keep up. He grabs my arm and pulls me along with him and we start heading up the hill, slipping comically on the snow and ice, heedless of danger. The air cuts my breath as I try to breathe and laugh and the same time, but it's all blissful, utterly blissful.

At the top of the hill, which is quite steep and very high up at the top, we look down on the whole area. It's England as England is in fairy tales and folklore. It's peaceful and filled with little, comfortable homesteads and it's drenched in snow as it should be at Christmas. Everything is normal and ordinary, yet somehow beautiful. And everything inside my head is probably normal and ordinary, yet it does not seem that way to me. I feel as though I have been attacked by emotions that I have never understood or even thought much about before. George pulls me towards him. His arm wraps around my shoulders and I hope that it never ever leaves, just like a cheesy character in a cheesier movie.

"It's gorgeous up here," I whisper.

"Yep, sure is," George agrees. "You never been up here before?"

"Never," I admit guiltily.

"Well, now you have," says George. "It kind of feels like the world is all okay up here, when you're just looking down at it."

I look at his face and realise that, probably for the first time since I met him, he isn't smiling. I notice that there is a small crease in his forehead.

"The world is okay," I tell him, not sure what an eloquent person would say. "Everything's lovely."

He looks at me and then looks back over the view from the hilltop. I hear him sigh and it sounds strange coming from him. I realise then that I don't know George Weasley, not really.

"Yeah, you're right," he says after a silence. "The world's good. Well, I better get back home. My mum'll kill me if I'm out too late, plus I need to find that twin of mine."

"Oh, okay," I say. I can't help feeling disappointment cloud my brain.

When we get to the outskirts of the village, he tells me he'll leave me now. I nod and say goodbye, but before I turn away he kisses my cheek. I hope that he puts my red cheeks down to the cold, because I feel awfully embarrassed that I blush at just a tiny gesture.

"See ya later, Julie," George says, grinning again.

"Happy Christmas," I murmur, biting my lip. I turn away to walk home but look back a moment later, just to see him once more. He's gone.

More than once, I wonder if he really is a magician. A real one. The thought makes me smile. That would explain all of it. He's put a spell on me.

But I know that's not true.

The sweetest sadness in your eyes,

Clever trick.

The top of the hill is not covered in snow today and neither is the view. Instead there is mist, which is still showing no sign of clearing, despite the morning growing later. I can hardly see the beautiful view that I shared with him today. Maybe it's symbolic. I was never very good at English at school. I never quite got the hang of metaphors and similes.

It's cold up here and I wonder why I'm actually doing this. Not that I'm doing very much - just standing alone and silent. But I'm here because he was here. I'm here because of memories, however small and insignificant.

Insignificant. That's a word that's plagued me these past few months. I think I saw it in a newspaper article and for some reason it stuck with me and took on new meanings, new associations. Insignificant - that probably describes it all. It was nothing really, nothing at all. I am insignificant, that I am certain of. He was insignificant and so was whatever there was between us. It's all relative. I only thought it was so huge and so important because I had nothing else to compare it to. But it meant so much to me...If it was that insignificant, why have I not forgotten it? I argue with myself a lot, as I stand, alone on a hill that looks upon a misted landscape.

And when you left, you kissed my lips

You told me you would never ever forget these images.

He hasn't gone off me - not yet, at least. He comes in several more times to the shop, to say 'hi' and show me card tricks, which, just because he's doing them, never get old. He tells me jokes and asks me about myself. I feel uncomfortable talking about my life and realise soon that there isn't a whole lot to say, so I try and ask him about his job, schooldays, etc, but he just brushes off my questions with jests. He seems so unwilling to reveal anything about himself.

I tell him that I would like to visit his shop but he tells me it's quite far away and not that interesting anyway.

One day, when I haven't seen him in three weeks and think he's forgotten all about me, he comes to visit the shop and asks if I'd like to go for a picnic. The snow has melted and spring has already begun to turn into early summer.. He tells me he's lost his wallet so I'll have to buy food. I shrug and acquiesce, caring little for chivalry in such matters.

George looks uncomfortable in the shop, where I buy us sandwiches and takeaway coffees. He seems relieved when we get out of the village. Some things I don't understand about him, but don't know how to ask him about them, so I just forget about it.

We find a spot under a tree and he lays out a blanket that I hadn't noticed he had before.

We sit and chat about family for a long time. He has many more siblings than just Fred and talks so enthusiastically about each one that I am enthralled. He is reluctant to discuss their jobs in too much detail - his younger siblings are in boarding school in Scotland, his other brothers work in the government, in banking and abroad, but that's the extent of his details - but he tells me endless stories about them. I learn all the jokes and escapades of the Weasley family and feel like I know all their personalities intimately by the end of it. I wish I had something similar to regale him with, but with no siblings and ordinary, hardworking, docile parents, I can't think of much to say. I want to tell him about my friends, but what would I say? A few normal girls who work around the village or have left to go on to do bigger things in towns and cities. No one special or fantastic, though I suppose that I love them in a way. I feel boring and strangely lonely compared to George.

He tells me that we are not far from his house and I instantly ask if I can come visit.

"No, not today, I don't think," he says with a slightly sad smile. "My parents are really busy and I don't suppose anyone else is home."

"Oh, all right," I concede. Once again with George, I feel unwillingly disappointed. But I cheer myself up by looking long and hard at his handsome face and gaily sparkling eyes. I remember that the world is good and think wistfully that I reminded him of that. I wonder if he ever thinks about that.

When it gets very dark he tells me he should leave and I know I should too, though I hate to part from him. Before we walk our separate ways, he hugs me tightly and I feel his breath on my ear, warming me and whispering wordless messages that I cannot understand. He kisses my cheek and then his lips move towards my mouth. We kiss for the first and last and only time. It is slow and almost unmoving and silent. I want it to last forever and keep my eyes shut tightly, hoping. When he breaks away, his face still rests against mine.

"I won't forget any of this," he whispers, his voice sounding different and strained.

"I never could," I say, my voice choked. I want to kiss him again but before I do he releases me and smiles a lopsided smile.

"See you soon, Jules," he says. "I'll probably come to the shop next week sometime."

But he doesn't.

So long my luckless romance,

My back is turned on you,

Should've known you'd bring me heartache,

Almost lovers always do.

The tree is exactly the same as it was when we sat underneath it. By now it is late morning and my legs are tired. The mist still hasn't cleared. It was not just morning mist. It will not lift today.

I sit beneath the tree and muse that it must be about a year since the day we sat together beneath it. I try and try but I can't stop thinking about him - my almost lover, my almost happy ending. Not quite.

I have been sitting under the tree a long time when I see the flash of red hair moving slowly along a road in the distance. I jump to my feet and realise that I am most definitely driving myself insane but no matter how much I rub my eyes I see the figure in the distance and I know that it's him. I have to run, I have to see him, so I do.

I run, slipping and falling numerous times on the wet grass, and eventually I reach the road. And I'm right. Or am I...? The young man walking ahead of me, unaware that I'm behind him yet, only has one ear. But he has the same stature, same hair, same everything as George. But one ear...

"George?" I say, not loudly. He turns around and sees me. I know in that instant that he does not recognise me and not for the first time my heart plunges into disappointment. "It's me, Julie."

"Julie?" he says. "Oh...Julie. Hello."

I walk towards him and my whole body is shaking. "You remember me?"

"Erm...yeah," says George. Close to him, I can see that his face his deeply lined where it had once been smooth and his eyes are surrounded by shadows so dark they seem to have blotted out the sparks of laughter that I remembered being there.

"Your ear..." I begin.

"Silly accident," George interrupts, forcing what might be a smile. "I need to be more careful."

I don't know what to say. I never do.

"Where's Fred?" I ask, at a complete loss. But George's face pales at the question and I suddenly realise that where I once saw more joy and humour than most people see in a lifetime, now I see the opposite. There is such pain and sorrow in George's face that it sends a cold shiver along my spine.

"Julie - I've just come from Fred's funeral." The words send a physical burst of pain through my body. This isn't how it was supposed to be or how I imagined it would be. I never pictured this. I don't understand it.

"Oh my God..." I breathe. "I - oh God, George, how?"

"It doesn't matter," he replies in a low voice. "I'm going to go. I've got to be with my family. I think you should go back to the shop - or - home or something."

I nod and turn away from him. He begins to walk on and for a minute I do the same, but I soon turn around and watch him. He doesn't look back, nor does he disappear this time. He just walks on and keeps walking, slowly and deliberately. The tears that stain my face as I watch him go are mostly for him, but some are for me and I rub my face so hard it hurts, punishing myself for those selfish tears.

The mist takes him sooner than I'd hoped. He is swallowed up by the world and I know that I won't see him again. He is walking back to wherever he came from - a world that he would never have let me enter and would never even tell me about. I don't know what that world is. Maybe it is excitement and life and emotion that I have never known. Maybe it is magic. Maybe he was born from magic and mystery and that is where he is returning. Whoever he is, I was never and will never be a part of him. I never understood George, not really.

At last I head back to the village. Tomorrow, I have a shop to open and when I do, maybe I'll think about the magic shop that George will be opening at the same time - the shop that I will never see, the magic that I will never believe in anymore, but that I almost, just almost, believed in once.

PLEASE leave a review!!! I want to know how to improve and what you thought of this. Thanks for reading!