stardust ⋮ george weasley

nine :

N I N E

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With winter holidays fast approaching, it only made sense that the Hogwarts instructors would allow them to take one final trip into Hogsmeade before Christmas. Many students needed to go last minute gift shopping or just wanted a final free afternoon with their friends before they headed back home for two weeks.

Adeline and her three best friends were laughing as they trekked down the snowy path. They were near the back of the crowd of students, as Melanie had been overslept that morning, causing them all to be among the last students to leave Hogwarts. Even the Weasley twins and Lee had left before them and were only a small ways in front of them, and they had a reputation of consistently being the last to leave the castle.

"Can we stop by Zonkos first?" Melanie asked, pulling her knit yellow scarf tightly around her. "I need to get some fireworks to scare the piss out of Ethan over Christmas holidays."

Estelle laughed loudly. "Are you still bitter from when he pranked you over the summer?"

"If by 'prank,' you mean nearly blowing up my entire bedroom? Then yes!"

Just as Adeline was about to respond, her boot got caught in a large patch of slippery ice that she hadn't noticed, and she went flying forward. Squealing loudly as she slid out of control for at least a few meters, Adeline kept falling until she hit something hard that she initially assumed to be the snow-covered ground.

Only it wasn't the ground. It was George Weasley.

Adeline was absolutely mortified. Their limbs were practically tangled together, and their noses were mere centimeters from each other with Adeline laying on top of his chest. In the distance, she could hear all their friends laughing at the pair, which only seemed to make the situation worse for her.

But at the same time, with the bright white snow flakes mixed in with his fiery red hair and flustered smile, Adeline couldn't help but notice how cute George looked in that moment. And those thoughts seemed to embarrass Adeline even more, which she thought by that point was humanly impossible. But when he looked back up at her once more, Adeline began to look anywhere but at him

On the other hand, it took George a few seconds to realize what had happened. One moment, he was laughing with Fred and Lee, trying to figure out whether to go to Three Broomsticks before or after Zonkos and what products they should buy. But the next moment, George found himself falling to the ground and into the freezing cold snow.

It took George a few seconds to even remember how to think when he realized Adeline was on top of him. He had absolutely no idea how to react. George could've very easily have become just as flustered as the girl above him or even just laugh the incident off.

But instead he decided to take a page out of Fred's book.

"It looks like you've fallen for me, darling," George teased, sending a wink up at the girl.

Becoming even more flustered than before, Adeline felt her cheeks go bright red not from the cold but instead embarrassment. These feelings only seemed to grow as she attempted to push herself off of him, only to end up placing her hands firmly on his chest. Fred and Lee had to hold back laughter as Adeline frantically moved her hands away.

"I'm so incredibly sorry," Adeline told George as she finally managed to stand up and brush the snow off her knit tights. "I'm not normally a klutz I swear. I think it's just a combination of how tired I am and the fact I can't walk in the snow."

Adeline wasn't lying. The past few weeks had been especially exhausting for her with having to organize Christmas decorating around the castle, choir rehearsals, and studying for exams the professors seemed to love to schedule just before the holidays. She found herself spending more time in the library and Great Hall than her own dorm, and it all seemed to be slowly building up. But Adeline didn't tell anyone how stressed she was, instead letting people infer it from the dark bags under her eyes and her especially quiet demeanor.

"Don't worry about it," George chuckled as he sat up and pushed himself off the ground. "It's not every day a pretty girl falls on top of you like that."

If Adeline could've gone any redder in the face, she would've. Meanwhile, George was mentally applauding himself because he hasn't managed to make a complete fool out of himself in front of her yet.

"Well again, I'm really sorry," Adeline repeated as she headed over to her friends, who were not so discretely giggling over the incident.

George shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Are you...are you alright though?"

She looked at him in surprise before smiling softly at him. The sight of Adeline's smile made George's heart do this strange skip in his chest that he couldn't quite understand. "I'm alright, thank you. It certainly helped that you cushioned my fall."

"Well I'm glad you got to fall on me."

Fred couldn't hold it in anymore. He grabbed onto Lee's arm, laughing hysterically at what was going down in front of him. This caused George to become even more flustered than before, and he found himself wishing that all their friends would go away for just a moment and leave him and Adeline alone.

"Well, I better get going," Adeline eventually said, smiling up at the red-haired boy. "I'm really sorry for my clumsiness."

As Adeline and her friends walked away, George couldn't help but stare at her for a few seconds, grinning to himself over what just went down. When he turned back around, George saw Fred and Lee who both had practically identical smirks painted on their face. "What are you two on about?"

"Nothing," Lee replied in an almost sing-song voice.

"Its just that Adeline might've not been the only one to fall," Fred teased as he wrapped an arm around George's shoulder. "Don't think we didn't notice you staring at her the entire time we were at Three Broomsticks on Halloween."

"I have no idea what you two are talking about."

Lee moved to George's other side and wrapped his arm over George's other shoulder, poking him in the cheek as he did so. "I think you absolutely do, darling."

"Oh dah-ling!" Fred exclaimed in an exaggerated tone of voice, earning a wide-eyed stare of horror from George. "May you bless me with your clumsiness once more!"

"How about you two shove it?"

"Freddie...do you think we should shove it?"

"We absolutely should not shove it, Lee."

Meanwhile, Adeline thought that all of Hogsmeade could hear her best friends laughter.

"I think your face was as red as his hair," Estelle teased, poking Adeline repeatedly in the shoulder.

"We should walk near more ice patches because that was the most entertaining thing I've ever seen," Ophelia chimed in with another loud laugh. "I've never seen Adeline so flustered."

"You all are menaces to society," Adeline muttered. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?"

Shaking her head, Melanie grinned cheekily at the curly-haired girl. "Absolutely not. Any girl who can get George Weasley flustered like that is an absolute legend in my book."

The girls eventually dropped the subject, sensing that they had teased Adeline enough, but the whole incident remained in Adeline's mind for hours. But instead of being embarrassed over her fall, Adeline found herself smiling and strangely hoping that she would find herself having more close encounters with George like that again in the future.

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a/n:

hi guys!! i'm so sorry forgoing my usually monday update. i had a bio final that day (and several more that week) so i was studying so much that weekend. but now i'm on winter break so i should hopefully have a lot more time to write!! i really hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!!

- g ♡