Everything Changes // Fred Weasley

chapter 2: a new, crippling fear

September 1st, 1994

Naomi shook me awake the next morning, and in my exhausted state, I could just barely make out a figure sitting across from me on her bed. I rubbed my eyes a few times until they came into focus and realized that the figure was a tall, red headed male, who I could only assume was George Weasley.

"How the hell did you get him into the house?" I said, impressed by my twin, who up until this point had never done a single thing that was against our parent's rules. I was beginning to wonder how much she really was telling me about her life at Hogwarts.

Naomi just looked at me and put her finger over her mouth, indicating that it was a secret.

"George Weasley" the boy said, getting up from Naomi's bed and holding out his hand for me to shake, "Pleased to meet your acquaintance"

I pushed the covers off and sat up in my bed, catching a glimpse of Naomi playfully roll her eyes as she walked over to her desk and grabbed a stack of papers, which must have been what she had been working on all night.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Gemma Walters." I said, taking his hand, "I heard you're the guy who's gonna get me into Hogwarts this year."

"Well we're certainly going to try." He responded with a smirk, looking back at Naomi who was standing there with a huge grin across her face.

"It's not gonna be easy though," Naomi said, pulling up her desk chair for George and taking a seat next to me on my bed, "But I really think it's going to work."

George stared intently at Naomi as she spoke, hanging on to her every word. He looked at her as though she were the most perfect person he had ever seen before, and my heart began to ache at the thought. I missed having someone look at me like that.

"But we have to work fast," She continued, "The Hogwarts Express leaves in four hours, and George can't miss that train"

"What about you?" I asked, pushing away my own selfish thoughts.

"Don't worry about me." She said with a sly smile, locking eyes with George, "We figured out a way to get there without the train."

"I'd be coming with you if my mum didn't insist on escorting us to the station," George added, "She would lose her head if I didn't show up."

"Fair," I said, shrugging my shoulders and scooting back up against my bedroom wall, "So what's this magnificent plan of yours, then?"

Naomi and George excitedly began explaining exactly how they were going to get me into Hogwarts. They bounced back and forth between each other as if they shared the same brain, their eyes both sporting the same gleam of excitement as their plan began to unravel before me.

That morning, George got up at the crack of dawn to talk to his dad before he headed off to work, asking him about enchanting cars to make them fly, and how one could possibly do that, for research purposes of course. His dad was thrilled that he had asked about that, so he was eager to give him every detail he needed, no questions asked.

"Isn't it like, illegal, for you two to practice magic outside of school?" I said, raising one of my eyebrows and glancing back and forth between the couple.

"Don't worry about that," Naomi replied, "I wrote to my friend who just turned 17 a few weeks ago and she said she would love to help. She'll be here soon to enchant your car, and then we'll head to Kings Cross Station to drop off Georgie."

"Okay..." I said, not too positive that this was all going to work. Things tended to go wrong whenever I was involved. Not because of anything I did or didn't do, I was just flat out unlucky. There was never really anything I could do to stop it.