The First Day

George pointed his wand at a fanciful butterfly-shaped pendant. 'I hope this is the right combination of spells,' he said, cocking an eyebrow at a small pile of melted pewter pendants. 'Here goes nothing.' He closed his eyes and muttered a series of charms, then waited, holding his breath. When nothing happened, he cracked one eye open and stared at the small pendant. It still looked the same.

That is, until he picked it up. It slowly turned a deep red. George's hand closed around the butterfly and he snatched up the chart Ron had found in a shop in some dive in London. 'Anxious,' he murmured. 'Yeah, that about sums it up...'

'Well?' Ron asked curiously, poking his head through the curtains.

'It works.'

Ron held out a hand and George tipped the butterfly into his brother's palm. They both watched fascinated as it slowly faded back to its normal dull silvery hue, then brightened to the yellow-green of early spring. 'Blimey,' Ron breathed. 'It works is an understatement.'

'According to this rubbish, it means you're hopeful,' George supplied.

'How does it work?'

George scribbled a few things in his notebook. 'A charm to measure temperature, one to measure the pulse rate, and finally, one that changes colors according to the temperature. That's the complicated one.'

'How long does the charm last?' Ron wondered.

'Couple months, I guess,' George mused.

'Long enough for them to be wildly popular, cause lots of fights at school, then fade mercifully away into memory,' Ron pronounced.

George snorted. 'If you'd had something like this in your sixth year, you'd have known better than to get involved with that one girl you were snogging at all hours. Or at least she would have known you weren't really into it and broken things off before they got nasty,' he told Ron loftily.

'So where are we getting the trinkets to charm, then?' Ron asked, trying to deflect attention from his past foibles.

'Madam Malkin. She's got loads of stuff like this that doesn't move very fast. So she agreed to sell it to us at cost.'

'Is it just things like pendants, or does she have other things?' Ron poked through a box on the table next to George.

'Rings and earrings mostly.' George closed the notebook and tossed it on a shelf. 'Things cleaned up in the front?'

'Yeah. David and Sasha have gone home, and the front's been restocked, dusted, swept, and ready to open tomorrow.'

'Lovely,' George murmured. He reached into the open box and pulled out a handful of various trinkets. 'Look, tell Mum I'll be here late. I want to have enough of these mood thingies done before we open tomorrow so you can get the window display done.'

'I'll stay. What are the incantations?' Ron pulled his wand from his pocket.

'No. You go ahead and go home. I kind of want to be alone just now.'

Inexplicably stung, Ron pushed his wand back into his pocket. 'Yeah, all right.'

George heard the tone and glanced up from where he sorted the trinkets into pendants, earrings, and rings. 'It's got nothing to do with you,' he said quietly. 'I just don't want to be around people right now.'

'Are you all right?' Ron asked worriedly. 'You've been a bit off-color for a month now.' Ron gazed contemplatively at George, then amended, 'Well, a bit more off-color than usual.'

'I'm fine,' George murmured.

Ron frowned a little, but hung his robes on the hook by the door. 'Right. Well, I'll see you at home, then.'

*****

Ron peered into Bill's old room. Harry sat on the edge of the bed, listening to Teddy's early-morning chatter. Teddy screeched in pleasure when he saw Ron and grabbed the rails of the cot, hauling himself to a wobbly standing pose, bouncing with glee. Ron reached in and gingerly lifted Teddy out. 'Morning,' he said fuzzily, still not quite awake. He took another look at Harry and shook his head. 'When are you going to replace those things?' he asked, indicating the large glasses Harry still wore.

'When I can convince one of you to take me into London,' Harry retorted, following Ron and Teddy down the stairs. He watched in amusement as Ron held Teddy slightly away from him. 'He's not going to explode, you know.'

Ron grunted and set Teddy on the floor. 'Go find Grannie Molly,' he told him, and Teddy sped off to the kitchen on his hands and knees. 'I still have nightmares about the night he spewed those strained peas down the back of my shirt,' he told Harry.

'That was rather disgusting,' Harry agreed, entering the warm kitchen, and taking his place next to Ron at the table.

Molly dished porridge into a bowl and set it in front of Ron. 'Is George up yet?' she asked.

'Dunno.' Ron sprinkled sugar over the porridge and nearly drowned it in milk. 'Bedroom door was still closed when I came down.'

Harry picked up the teapot. 'I didn't hear him come down earlier.' He poured a cup for himself and set it down, pushing it toward Ron, then picked up a small bowl of porridge and a spoon. He stirred it a few times and tested the temperature before offering a bite to Teddy. 'Someone was awake at six,' he said pointedly to the baby who merely ate the porridge and opened his mouth for more.

'Arthur!' Molly called. 'Can you see if George is awake yet?'

Arthur paused midway down the last flight of stairs, and turned around retreating to the second floor. He knocked on the door of Percy's old bedroom. 'George?' There was no answer. Arthur knocked again, and repeated, 'George?' He waited a few moments, then opened the door. The bed was neatly made with no sign of George having slept in it last night. Mystified, he hesitantly opened the door of the twins' old bedroom, but judging from the layer of dust on the floor and surfaces of the furniture, nobody had gone in to even tidy it since before the battle last spring. Arthur gently closed the door against the sight of the two beds set against opposite walls. He went to the door of the kitchen. 'Molly.' He beckoned for her to join him. As she came out of the kitchen, Arthur closed the door behind her. 'I don't think George came home last night,' he said quietly.

Molly paled visibly but her voice was steady. 'We'll send Ron to the shop,' she said quickly. 'I'll go down into the village, and you can go to... To the...' Her throat closed around the word, but Arthur understood. He strode into the kitchen, and grabbed a piece of toast.

'Ron, go to the shop, please,' he said.

'But I haven't finished my breakfast...' Ron began in protest that died when he saw the expression on his father's face. 'Right.' He pushed his chair away from the table, and grabbed his coat from the hook in the scullery. 'What should I do if George isn't there?'

'Just stay there.' Arthur replied, running his hand through his thinning hair.

'Should I open?' Ron asked tentatively.

'Use your judgment, son.'

Ron nodded, and ran into the back garden, pulling the coat over his arms, as he walked down the back garden to their Apparition point.

Harry stood up, his wand already out. 'Where should I go?'

'Harry, you need to stay here,' Arthur said gently.

'But I'm fine!' Harry protested. 'I haven't had a dizzy spell yet this morning!'

'You also haven't been cleared to Floo or Apparate by yourself yet,' Arthur said sternly. 'And someone needs to stay here, in case George comes home, or someone else brings word of him.' Arthur grabbed his and Molly's cloaks from the scullery and returned to the sitting room. Presently, Harry could see Arthur trudging across the snowy lane, in the direction of the cemetery.

Harry sighed and dropped back into the chair. 'It's just you and me, then,' he said to Teddy.

*****

'Oi! Charlie!'

Charlie looked up from the Welsh Green hatchling he was feeding. 'What?'

Adam Rollins, the shift supervisor in the hatchery, jerked his head toward the door. 'Bloke says he's your brother.'

Charlie looked at the door and nearly dropped the bottle of chicken blood and brandy. 'Yeah.' He continued to feed the small dragon until it let the bottle fall from its mouth and belched in repletion, a small spark drifting from its throat. 'Scourgify,' he murmured, pointing his wand at the bottle. He replaced it on the rack by the door and turned to George. Saying nothing, he gestured to the door and led George across the valley to his cabin. 'Look done in,' he commented.

'Yeah.'

'Bathroom's through there,' Charlie said, pointing to a door. 'Go have a wash, and I'll put something together for breakfast.'

'Okay.' Charlie leaned against the counter in his tiny kitchen, waiting for the bathroom door to close, then pushed himself off the counter. He crossed the sitting room to the large fireplace and dug into the flower pot on the mantle and threw a handful of Floo powder into the low flames. Charlie wearily lowered himself to the floor and eased his head into the emerald flames. 'Mum? Dad?'

'Charlie?' Harry fell forward off the sofa.

'Where are Mum and Dad?'

'Out looking for George.'

'Yeah... Well, he's here.'

'What's he doing in Wales?'

'Dunno. Look, just tell Mum and Dad he's here, and I'll have him call them later.'

'Yeah, all right.'

Charlie glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the bathroom door opening and yanked his head from the fire. He slid back into the kitchen, just as George appeared in the doorway. 'Eggs all right for you?' he asked casually, opening a cupboard charmed to stay cool and pulled out a bowl of eggs.

'You can cook?' George blurted.

Charlie smiled a little, and began to crack eggs into another bowl. 'Yes. Just have to do it by hand. It's usually a shambles if I try to do it with magic.' He beat the eggs for a few minutes, then flicked his wand at another cupboard. A battered frying pan landed on the stove. 'Turn that on, will you?'

George reached for the dial and twisted it slowly. 'That all right?'

'Yeah.' Charlie dropped a pat of butter into the pan and watched it melt, then poured the eggs into it.

George gazed at Charlie, placidly stirring eggs in the pan, then burst out, 'Well?'

'Well what?' Charlie reached for a loaf of bread and passed it to George. 'Make yourself useful and make some toast.'

'Aren't you going to bombard me with questions about why I showed up on your doorstep with no warning?'

'Imagine you've got your reasons,' Charlie murmured, grabbing two plates from the cupboard over his head and spooning eggs onto each plate. 'How's that toast coming along?'

'Oh...' Flustered, George jabbed his wand at the bread and several slices flew off browning as they flew through the air.

Charlie handed a plate to George and nodded to the small table in the corner. 'I'm going to have a kip in a bit. You can go anywhere you want on the reserve, except the restricted areas. Wireless is by the sofa. Village is down the road a bit. Afraid I haven't got much in the way of reading material, though.'

'That's all right,' George said quickly.

'I'm off today and tomorrow, and I've got the overnight shift next week,' Charlie said.

'Okay...'

'Just means I won't be here at night and usually sleep when I get home.' He nudged George a little. 'No testing out new products while I'm sleeping, all right?'

'That won't be an issue,' George muttered.

Charlie shoveled the last of his eggs into his mouth and stood up. 'Okay. I'll see you in a couple of hours, then.' He dropped the plate into the sink and ambled to his bedroom, leaving George alone with his untouched breakfast.

*****

Ron poked at a sandwich with disinterest. 'Why would he just take off like that?'

Harry looked up from the large wooden blocks he was using to build a castle for Teddy's stuffed dragon. 'If I'd had somewhere to go last May, I would have done a bunk myself,' he said casually.

'But why?'

Harry gave Ron a severe look over the tops of his glasses. 'Just to get away from it all,' he said. 'To get away from everything that reminds you of things.'

'You did,' Ron retorted. 'Maybe you didn't leave physically, but...'

'Yeah...'

Arthur strolled into the sitting room. 'Teddy down for the evening?' he asked.

'Molly's giving him a bath now,' Harry said.

'Come on, then. I've got something to show you.'

Frowning, Harry scrambled to his feet and followed Arthur to the shed in the back garden. Arthur flicked his wand at the lamp overhead and stood proudly next to a bulky object covered with a tarp. 'What's that?'

With a flourish that rivaled any Muggle magician, Arthur pulled off the tarp to reveal Sirius' old motorbike. 'Hagrid brought it down while you were in Ireland.'

'Been keeping it for a sunny day?' Harry quipped.

'Well, tinkering with it'll give you something to do during the day, if you don't want to bang around the house with Molly.'

'I don't know anything about motorbikes,' Harry admitted, running a reverent hand over the handlebars.

'Ah! I can help with that.' Arthur pulled out a stack of old manuals. 'I got them summer before last when I was modifying it.' Arthur perched on the workbench. 'I know it bothered you to be left behind this morning.'

Harry picked up one of the manuals and began to page through it. 'Yeah,' he replied, not bothering to try and put up a token protest. He knew Arthur would see straight through it.

'Bit galling, isn't it?' Arthur began, sorting through a box of tools. 'After everything you've done to have to stay behind and do nothing.'

'Yeah.'

'It's a good thing you were here when Charlie called this morning,' Arthur continued. 'Molly would have demanded George come home immediately.' Arthur shrugged. 'She means well...' He pulled out a rag and began to polish a spanner. 'Whatever George needs to sort out, he wasn't going to do it here.'

*****

George rummaged through the small bag he'd brought with him. His fingers brushed over soft leather, and he pulled out the book he'd inadvertently taken from Katie on New Year's Eve. He opened the book, and a small scrap of scarlet hued ribbon fell from between the pages. He fingered it, gently avoiding the frayed edges. Sometimes, she'd worn such a ribbon on the end of her plait or around her ponytail at school.

He looked at the place the ribbon had marked. It was splattered with what looked like a tea stain. He felt a flush creep up his neck, and recognized one of the poems he'd read to Katie the most. George let his head fall back against the back of the sofa and he could see the small, dim room in St. Mungo's where Katie lay in the bed, unmoving and unresponsive. 'Sod it,' he muttered, setting the book aside. It brought up too many memories he didn't want to think about right now. He glanced around the sitting room and his eyes lit on the neat row of sketch books in Charlie's otherwise empty bookcase. Curiously, he slid off the sofa and grabbed one of the books.

George paged through it, and dropped the book in shock, looking over his shoulder. Assured he was alone, George looked back down at penciled sketch. He would have been the first to admit he'd often fantasized about what Tonks would have looked like without her kit on, but he'd never dreamed she would have actually looked anything like the drawing that he now stared at, unable to tear his eyes away. 'Bloody hell,' he breathed appreciatively. George turned and gazed speculatively at Charlie's closed bedroom door. George turned more pages, whistling under his breath. He pulled another sketch book off the shelf, then another, leafing through them, impressed with the amount of detail Charlie put into a simple sketch. Each drawing held the date in the lower right corner, and as the years passed, Tonks no longer featured quite so prominently in Charlie's sketches, but the others had been done with an amount of loving detail that George only saw in the ones Charlie had done of their family.

'What are you doing?' Charlie hissed, flushing dully under his freckles. He stumbled across the floor, and gathered the sketch books in his arms. 'Those are private!'

'Then why are they out where anyone can see them?' George countered.

Charlie dumped the books on the kitchen table and spun around to face George. 'Why does everyone in this family need to poke their nose into everyone else's private life?' he grumbled, heading for the kitchen. George heard him bang a teakettle on the counter and stayed sitting on the floor. 'D'you want some tea?' Charlie called.

'I guess...' George replied. He pushed himself to his feet and followed Charlie into the kitchen. Charlie spooned tea leaves into an old, chipped brown teapot and poured the boiling water over them. 'Did you love her?' he asked abruptly.

Charlie sighed heavily and pulled two large mugs from the cupboard overhead. He didn't need to ask George to clarify the "her" of his question. 'I thought I did,' he confessed, pouring tea into each of the mugs, and handing one to his younger brother. 'But it was too easy to leave.'

'What do you mean?'

'When I left school,' Charlie added. 'It wasn't like I just forgot about her or anything. But when I got to Romania and started working, I didn't picture coming back here to be with her or Tonks moving down to Romania to be with me. We were still friends, of course, but that was it.' He left the kitchen, and grabbed his latest sketch book from the table and settled on the sofa. He pulled out a small stick of charcoal and began to lightly draw George leaning against the counter, cradling his mug of tea. 'You need to call Mum and Dad,' he said. 'Let them know you're all right.'

'I will. Later.'

'You didn't tell them you were coming, did you?' Charlie asked, even though he knew perfectly well George hadn't breathed a word to anyone at home.

'I left a note,' George said defensively.

'Where someone could see it?' Charlie scoffed.

'Sort of...'

'Go call them. Now.'

'Fine.' George trudged reluctantly to the fireplace. Charlie got up from the sofa under the pretense of needing the loo, leaving George to speak to their parents in private. He could hear George's voice over the crackle of the flames. 'No, Mum, I'm fine,' George insisted. 'I dunno. A couple of days... I did leave a note! Yes, Mum, I did... It was on my pillow... I'll be home next week, Mum... I just need to think some things over, Dad,' George sighed. 'No, Mum, I can't do it at home.' Charlie fancied he could practically hear George grind his teeth in an effort not to snap at Molly. 'All right, then. Goodbye...'

Charlie made a production of flushing the toilet and washing his hands before he ventured back out into the sitting room. He plopped onto the sofa and picked up his abandoned sketch book. 'How are things with the shop?' he asked.

'Fine.'

'Yeah?'

'Fred wouldn't recognize it,' George mused.

'Is that so bad?'

'Well, the shop was his idea,' George said quietly.

Charlie kept his attention on the sketch blossoming under his charcoal. 'Doesn't mean you can't have your own thoughts about what to do with the shop.'

'Yeah, well, Fred would have had loads of new ideas by now,' George muttered mulishly. 'And everything I think about ends up in the dustbin.'

'So?'

'Means Fred was so much better at it, doesn't it?' George spat.

'You mean to tell me you haven't had a new idea at all in the past eight months?' Charlie asked askance.

'Of course not!' George responded, stung. 'But getting it from an idea to an actual product was Fred's specialty.'

Charlie's eyes followed the line of his charcoal. 'I know everyone's got their own timetable for getting on with things, but you have to learn to live without Fred,' he murmured.

'Why does everyone keep telling me that?' George snarled.

'Because it's true,' Charlie retorted. 'If you keep thinking about how much better Fred would have done things, you're never going to get better at it.' He rubbed a fingertip over the line of George's jaw in the sketch book. 'You're going to spend the rest of your life living under his shadow.'

George's mouth closed and he stared into the fire.