Forget Me Not || George Weasley

Chapter 22

When Olive was sorted, she knew without a doubt that the hat was correct. 

Not because she found herself to be particularly brave or courageous. Nerve. It was the word that stuck out to her the most. Nerve. Having nerve didn't necessarily mean doing the right thing or the chivalrous thing. It meant doing something, anything, and sticking by it. 

When she first stood in the rubble of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, she felt it again. Nerve. It had taken nerve to accept the money she'd been offered to do it. Nerve. But it had also taken a bit of Slytherin ambition. In more ways than one. The Gryffindor nerve only appeared again when people began asking how she had done it. She wouldn't say. Not in this life time. 

"You're awfully quiet over there."

Olive doesn't bother smiling. Her grandfather wouldn't know the difference. 

"Just thinking. It's been a busy few days." That wasn't a lie. The last few day's before the start of Hogwart's term had eaten away at her energy. She knew Jackie was feeling it too. She'd insisted her only employee take the weekend off, and in turn Olive had decided to close Florean's for the afternoon so that she could spend one of the last days of summer sitting on her Grandfather's green lawn. She'd never closed the shop again. It took nerve, maybe a little more than she'd thought she was capable of. 

Franklin lets out a loud snort, and Olive cant fight the small grin that tilts her lips when she stretches out in the grass next to the lazy blood hound. She tucks her face in the crook of his neck, closing her eyes at the feel of his soft fur on his cheek.

"Thinking. Don't you have a spell to make it more quiet when you do that?"

Olive laughs, rolling onto her back and patting Franklin's stomach. She looks over at where her grandfather is rocking in his favorite chair, his sunglasses protecting the very little sight he has left from the sun. He's smiling, and his head is tilted her way when she asks, "You mean to tell me that my thinking is too loud?"

The laugh that sounds from his chest makes her smile wobble slightly. Her grandfather's laugh took up his whole body, loud and clear and deep in a way that made her eyes sting with joy. She wanted to hear him laugh like that for a long time. 

"Yes, that is exactly what I mean," He muses playfully, and Olive stretches to nudge his rocking chair with her toe, grinning when he points in her direction exactly and warns, "Don't you even dare."

Olive rolls onto her stomach, folding her arms and leaning her chin on them so she can listen to her grandfather loud and clear. She quirks a brow when he continues, "It sounds like a tree falling in the middle of an empty forest."

His smile looks like he can see the gears turning in her head, and when Olive stays silent, he teases, "It's only a sound if there is someone around to listen. Out with it, Olive. What's bothering you?"

Olive bites down hard on her lower lip, ignoring the burn of her scar. Her chest aches with the urge to say what she feels, to say that she remembers so much and not enough, and that her head has been aching since she threw away the entire batch of pumpkin pasty ice cream and had failed in her attempts to make it better. Instead, she keeps her voice light as she replies, "It's nothing. My head has just been bothering me."

His brows knit together behind his dark glasses, "Are you sure those healers are doing their jobs? Your Grandmother always said they were the best, but Ms. Johnson lives just up the road--"

"Oh," Olive interrupts, her smile slowly returning, "Been talking with Ms. Johnson again have we?"

Her grandfather's cheeks turn pink, and the reason she doesn't curse her ability to flush so easily is because she gets it from him. He waves of her question, insisting, "She's been a nurse at the hospital for years--"