The Language of Flowers | Fred Weasley

31: C A M E L L I A- pity

After our talk on Friday, Fred and I went a week without talking. Fred didn't show up for detention all week, which was a good thing, I told myself. I did all the work myself, thinking about what I had said and thinking about how I felt.

He didn't just avoid me during our detention time. In Charms, he ignored me, at meal times, in the common room. I knew everyone else could sense the tension, but I refused to talk about it. I had to fix things with Fred first.

All I had wanted last Friday was time. Time to think. Time to worry. It seemed all I had now was time. Too much of it. There was nothing to distract me anymore, all I could do was let my thoughts rage with themselves. That's what I did most of the time that week.

Unsurprisingly, this was the state George found me in.

I was seated near the edge of the lake on a smooth rock, my knees curled to my chest and my head resting on my knees. It was so soothing by the lake, and not too many students came over here, which made it the perfect spot for thinking. The only students who came over here were Durmstrang students but they kept to themselves.

I used all of my free time not just to think about Fred, but other thoughts that had begun to worry me as well. How the school year was going to go, what would happen this summer with Aunt Adollya, and what next year was going to be like. I was practically done with school, a scary thought, but going back to Aunt Adollya's house was an even scarier thought.

Aunt Adollya was getting worse every year, making me study harder for the next school year as if my very life depended on it, and when I would refuse, the punishments just kept increasing in severity. The worst part about the summer was I only got to interact with other people once in a blue moon and it was almost always the Malfoys, the Diggorys, or the Halworths, my friend Abby's family. I loved whenever the Diggory's or the Halworth's came over because I could hang out with Cedric or Abby, but I hated when the Malfoy's came over.

I could not stand Lucius, who always talked about how the work of  He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named must be continued. My grandmother never had the dark mark, but she was a supporter of pureblood supremacy. Lucius always looked down on me, since he was never sure of my blood status. I could stand his son, Draco, sometimes but Draco spent too much time trying to do things his father would do rather than things Draco would do. Draco also hated Gryffindors for some odd reason, so he would ignore me during the school year and talk to me in the summer. I felt bad for him, the boy didn't have any close friends he could tell important things to.

With a storm of thoughts in my head, I had gone to the lake probably a dozen times that week, trying to clear my head. Between classes, before night curfew, early in the mornings, the lake was where I was. It was in the middle of one of these thinking times at the lake, that George snuck up on me out of nowhere and sat next to me. I didn't acknowledge him, I just let him sit.

We sat silently for close to fifteen minutes, I'm sure, not a word from either of us. Nobody walked by either, because most students were at Hogsmeade today, since it was Saturday. It had been a surprise to me that George had stayed behind, George and Fred both loved going to Hogsmeade.

"I need to tell him I'm sorry." I began quietly, turning slightly to look at George. He was staring into the lake, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Yes, you do."

As much as I didn't want to talk about this topic, I needed to. Holding everything in wasn't going to help, and George knew his brother better than anyone so maybe he could help a little bit to figure out what I should do. If I had to talk to anyone, I guess George wasn't a bad choice. "I still don't know how I feel."

"Yes you do."

"Is that all you're going to say?" I asked.

"I don't really need to say anything, you already know the answers and you're not willing to admit them to yourself."