Across The Street || George Weasley

7 - trauma

Y/N's POV

"TELL me about it." George says, entwining his fingers with mine as he plants a soft kiss on my forehead. This is different than Friday. When we finished last time, I pretty much left right away, not wanting to overstay my welcome. It seems George won't be leaving yet, and the idea of him sticking around to talk is nice. 

"Well, it's probably nowhere near as stressful as what you do with running your own booming business. But sometimes work is just a lot to handle. I love my job...but my boss does jack shit. I'm basically running the store on my own and now I need to hire an assistant to help out and that decision is stressing me out because I've narrowed it down to two amazing candidates, but I'm only supposed to hire one." I say hurriedly, all the words tumbling out of me in a rush. 

I feel bad for dumping my work problems on him like this when he just came here to fuck. Especially when I'm sure things at his store a lot busier and crazier than I could ever relate to. But it seems my worries are for nothing, because he doesn't seem to mind my ranting. 

"You just need to take it one step at a time." He says, running his hand up and down the side of my arm. "As soon as you make the decision for the assistant job, then you'll have someone to help you handle the workload and you won't be doing it all by yourself. Who are the candidates?"

I smile, loving the way he's taking an interest in my work. "Luna Lovegood and Pansy Parkinson."

"Well now my original plan of helping you decide has gone out the window. I would be too biased." He chuckles. "Luna is Ginny's bestfriend. And Pansy...well she was quite rude to Ron's girlfriend Hermione when they were at Hogwarts."

"Hmmm...even this past year after the war?"

"No, actually. Now that I think about it, Hermione actually came home last Christmas saying Pansy was being nice...and didn't call her a mudblood a single time."

Mudblood. I'm all too familiar with the word. It's a word that's been used against me multiple times in the past, referring to me being a muggle-born. It's a foul term but one I had grown used to during my time at Hogwarts, especially when it came to Slytherins. 

But over the past year, I've hardly heard the term at all. Of course, there are still those who hold pure-blood values in high-esteem, but they never actually went to the extremes of joining Voldemort's ranks as Death Eaters. Then again, they also didn't fight back against him when he rose to power. They were stuck in the between, too much of cowards to actually pick a side, out of fear of picking the losing one. 

"Then she must have changed her outlook on blood purity after the war. If she was still highly against muggle-borns, I doubt she would have applied for a job where she would be working for one." I note. 

"Yeah, you're right." He agrees before silence falls over us. 

It's not an awkward silence but a comfortable one. It's soothing. It's like we're so at ease with one another that we don't feel the need to fill silence with unnecessary conversation. That kind of easiness is hard to come by. Who would have thought that I would find something like that with George Weasley?

Wait. I need to stop my thoughts from going off on a tangent. This isn't some grand realization about how I've found my person and am going to fall in love with them. No. This is just a comfortable silence shared between two people who have casual hot sex. It's nothing more than that. 

"Can I ask you something?" George asks, breaking the silence. 

"You just did." I tease.

"Haha." He jokes, poking my side.