𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚎𝚗 𝚍𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎. fred weasley

𝚡𝚡𝚡𝚟𝚒𝚒. 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚗

✦✧✦

     Cress's morning is the worst one she's had since coming to this forsaken house. First, she wakes up to her eyes caked together from dried tears, her mother's weight a solid but unwelcome presence on top of her. She pushes her off with a grunt. Second, through her hazy mind, everything from the previous night comes rushing back towards her like when a reel is spinning uncontrollably, and you can't quite make out what happens because it's moving too fast for your eyes until it's over and the puzzle pieces fit together.

     It almost makes her sick, the way she acted. Her voices are happy with the outcome, but Cress thinks that can't mean much, not when Augie said that her voices being content means that Cress is not.

     Godric, could she have self-sabotaged anymore? Not only did she tell Fred that he should have been in the tournament, she basically implied that he should have died, and that is so, so wrong.

     She didn't mean any of it, not even the thoughts afterwards. The only thing that she had meant to tell Fred last night was her apologies, her grievances. She wasn't supposed to bloody go off on him.

     Too late now, her voice says as she goes into the bathroom to get ready.

     When Cress looks in the mirror, red spiderwebs spindle through her eyes, irritating her as she washes her face. She pushes her hair out of her face with a headband, sighs into the sink, and tries not to cry before breakfast this morning. So far, she had been going for a personal record of five days without crying before breakfast and she would like to keep it that way.

     Third, when Cress walks out of the bathroom, Blythe pushes herself against Cress's personal space, prodding, wondering just exactly what Fred did to her last night.

     "Honey, it's not good to keep it in," Blythe scolds. "If he hurt you in any way. . ."

     It sounds like a threat. An unnecessary one. "No. No, Fred didn't do anything. It was me."

     Takes two to tango, little Cressy, the voice coos.

     Cress tells her voice to shove it, brushes off her mother's concerns because yes, it was her fault. She's an idiot. Fred had been trying to help. Cress wouldn't allow it. That's all. Please.

     Fourth, when she walks out of her room, she's smacked right in the back with a large trunk that sends her flailing down the stairs. Along with her tumbles Ginny Weasley, and they both are a pile of limbs when they land on the bottom floor. Two flights down. Cress is going to have some serious bruising. Her head smacks against the wall as the portrait of Mrs. Black screams at them all for being half-breed mongrels with no future or use to the earth.

     "OH, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!" Mrs. Weasley's tinny voice bellows throughout the compact house. "BOYS!"

     Fifth, Fred and George Weasley saunter down the stairs with the audacity to look sheepish for their actions. Despite her ill feelings from last night arising, Cress's stomach flips. Part of her wishes to apologize to Fred for her behavior because Merlin knows it wasn't fair to him for her to shoot off like that. But that's all washed down the drain when Fred takes one glance at her and scrunches his nose like he does when he can't quite figure out a problem, and Cress's mouth tastes sour. She had never thought she'd come to loathe a look she once adored. (She had also never thought that she would become a problem that Fred Weasley had to worry about and that sucks.)