14. Unanswered Letters

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October 1998

Angelina had been sending owls to George once a week since Fred's funeral, but he hadn't opened a single one of her letters, they were all gathering dust in the drawer of his desk. He couldn't explain why he didn't just throw them all away, maybe he knew he would want to read them eventually. Other than Lee and himself, Angelina was Fred's closest friend. George assumed she was writing to him because she needed his support, but he felt like he had nothing to offer her. He couldn't even help himself, how could he ever comfort her?

He was hoping maybe she would eventually give up after five months of not hearing from him, but that wasn't the case at all. As he was getting ready for another mundane day of work he heard a tapping sound on his bedroom window. It was just like clockwork, her owl showed up at 7 am every Tuesday. George laid his orange tie over his shoulders before opening the window and retrieving the letter from Angelina's owl, Phineas, who nipped as his fingers while he did so. It was very much like Angie to tell her owl to pester George into replying, but he wasn't in the mood for it this morning.

"Get out of here, you annoying thing." he tried to shoo the grey owl back out of his window but the bird just flapped his wings at him angrily in return. "I'm not opening it, now go." George persisted, but the owl stayed planted on the window sill and tilted his head, large unblinking orange eyes glaring back at him.

Phineas usually went away after George shooed him for a second time, but this morning was different, he wasn't budging. Apparently Angie was sick of not hearing from George and told Phineas to stay put until he gave in.

"Merlin, I'll reply to her this evening if you just leave." George surrendered, earning him an approving hoot from the owl which finally departed.

George pocketed the unopened envelope before closing the window and doing up his necktie. He grabbed his maroon jacket from the end of the bed, locks of fiery hair fell into his face as he did so. His messy hair always fell into his eyes despite his best efforts to brush it away from his face, he knew he was long overdue for a haircut and a shave to be quite honest, but covering up all the mirrors in the flat helped him avoid facing his own appearance. He didn't really care what he looked like these days as long as he didn't ever have to see himself.

As he descended the spiral staircase down into the store he was met with Verity who was taking inventory before opening the store, her brows furrowed making her normally carefree face look quite stressed. The shop was running low on a few things due to George's lack of interest in inventing new products, without Fred he just didn't have the motivation or creativity.

"I know you don't want to hear it, but this is everything we are low on." Verity said, handing him a piece of parchment.

"You're right, I don't want to hear it," he said flatly as he shoved the parchment in the same pocket Angelina's letter was in, not giving it a second look. It was quickly becoming the pocket of George's problems for the day.

"I can run to Zonko's, but I think they're getting tired of helping us out." she offered.

"I'll figure it out." he huffed, though he was not intending to solve that particular problem today at all. He promptly walked right by Verity and retreated into his office as he had been doing nearly every day since 'returning' to work.

To be quite honest, George hadn't done much work at all since agreeing to come back. He spent most of his days in his office, staring at the wall or scribbling mindlessly on scratch pieces of parchment. The guilt he felt over leaving Charlie and Verity to run everything on their own was overpowered by his feelings of hopelessness. It was difficult enough to get out of bed each day, going through the motions was enough effort in George's eyes.

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