Forget Me Not || George Weasley

Chapter 37

Fix.

It wasn't his fault, the way he said it. But it hurts, a bruise like ache that crawls up her neck and settles behind her eyes. Fix. Fix.

She wanted to be fixed too.

She swallows down the pain that the past throws in her face, the hurt that word causes as it rattles around in her head. He didn't mean it like that. It still hurt. It hurts.

"Were you injured too, son? I reckon you were there at the end as well. Olive's tried to tell me what she remembers."

Olive's hand slips and she almost slices the tip of her finger off with the knife she has gripped right in one shaking hand.

Oh Merlin.

George is quiet, very quiet. And she's halfway to the door when he finally clears his throat and says calmly, "I'm mostly deaf on one side, but other than that not so much. Just missing an ear."

There's another silent pause, and Olive feels her eyes water once again when her grandfather hums softly before saying, "Just an ear, eh?"

She hears George breathe in slowly, and she closes her eyes tight, trying to remember what exactly had set him off at the Burrow. What his brother had said to upset him. If she thought about it for a moment she was sure she would remember it. If she just had a moment.

"My brother."

It's mangled, choked. And she hurriedly wipes away a tear from her cheek at the words. Calm despite the obvious pain in them. It was a good thing she wasn't in there.

She may have just hugged George in that moment.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Another pause, "Did you bring any joke things with you from your shop?" Her grandfather seems to know that whatever George has to say about his brother is too painful to articulate.

And Olive wipes away another tear, turning back to her cooking and listening with a wobbly smile as George lets out a laugh at something her grandfather says and the familiar smell of vanilla tobacco reachers her nose. 

It isn't until after dinner, a dinner that is spent with laughs that Olive closes her eyes to hear again and again, that she gets a moment alone to truly soak it all in.

Her grandfather had clearly taken a liking to George, the two of them even teaming up to throw teasing jabs her way during dinner. They'd talked about work, how George and Olive were already preparing for the Christmas holiday. George told him about Lee and his family, and Olive had melted behind her glass of water when his hand had found hers under the table. She'd held it the entire time he talked about his siblings, only letting go to spoon more vegetable onto her grandad's plate.

He told George about her grandmother, about the first time he saw magic. About the walks he liked to take with Frank and how he was thinking of starting up a garden. And when Frank had lifted his head from his spot on the floor, her grandfather had said nothing in protest when George slyly handed the dog a piece of chicken. They're still laughing now, talking like old friends in the house behind her.

She keeps her arms wrapped tight around her body as she stands on the porch, watching the lazy blood hound meander through the dark grass and wondering briefly if her grandfather wishes as much as she did that her brain was still the same.

Fix.

She was glad he couldn't see. Her scar would be a painful reminder of those months where she had been restricted to St. Mungos, confused and restrained and hurt.

The screen sounds behind her, her lips twitching slightly when an arm brushes hers and a low voice says, "Your grandfather is hilarious. It must have skipped a generation."