Elusive // The Weasley Twins

79. Downfall

Cosette had crossed the field and wrapped her hands around Lottie's throat before she even had a second to react. Of course, being able to use magic, Lottie managed to send Cosette flying backwards with ease, causing her to hit the grass hard, sending a shock through her body.

Cosette spent years trying to find someone to blame for Fred's death. She rotated between blaming herself and Harry and even Fred himself, but it turns out all along, it was Lottie who cast that spell in his direction to get his attention. She was the reason he left his post.

"I'm going to kill you," Cosette's voice trembled, but she meant every word. "I should have killed you when I had the chance."

"And I should have killed you during the battle," Lottie told her, twirling her wand through her fingers. "I watched you murder my father, Cosette. You murdered the one person who actually cared about me. He's the one who raised me because my mother was always too busy trying to please the Dark Lord. She wanted nothing to do with me, but at least I could always count on him, until you took that from me!"

"So what, you've spent all these years plotting a way to get revenge?" Cosette asked. "If you want to kill me Lottie just fucking do it, but if I die, you die. Nick's going to wake up and realize what happened and he and George and his family, they're all going to come after you and I highly doubt any of them will show you mercy."

"Oh I don't want to kill you," Lottie scoffed. "That was the original plan. I thought the only way to get proper revenge would be by taking away your life. It seemed fair, didn't it? It wasn't like I could kill the one person who meant most to you like you did for me because he died during the battle."

The way Lottie spoke had every single hair on Cosette's body standing on its end. She wasn't being entirely forthcoming and it whatever her ulterior motive was still wasn't known and that frightened Cosette.

"I tried to keep tabs on you," Lottie continued, and her tone shifted. It sounded as though she was almost annoyed with Cosette, "for those years following the battle, but you disappeared. You moved out of your father's house, you didn't go out in public, it made trying to kill you really bloody hard."

"So sorry to have inconvenienced you-"

Her snarky response was instantly met with the use of the Cruciatus Curse. Cosette doubled over in pain, feeling like every nerve ending was being set on fire. She struggled to catch her breath and even though Lottie only used it for a few seconds, her body continued to shake after she retracted her wand.

"This will go over much more smoothly if you don't talk," Lottie told her as Cosette sat back on her knees, trying to catch her breath. "Anyway, I did the next best thing which was to infiltrate the lives of your friends, mainly the one and only, George Weasley. I applied to work at his shop, got to know him and little by little started to slip into our conversations about how he should reach out to you again."

Cosette thought about how George once told her that he only reached out again because he was content with his relationship with Lottie. He felt secure enough with her that he didn't think he would still be head over heels if she had come back into his life.

But even if he didn't realize it, Lottie had given him that idea.

That thought alone made Cosette's stomach turn.

"And then you showed up at the burrow," Lottie smiled wickedly. "And that's when I realized that he was in love with you."

Cosette shook her head, but it wasn't as though Lottie was looking for an answer. She wasn't wrong either. George had already admitted to being in love with her this entire time.