Lover ; George Weasley

Seventy-nine

George

As I grabbed a box from one of the shelves in the stockroom, the door burst open and I jumped, feeling my heart skip a beat before I realised it was just Lee.

"Christ, you scared the shit out of me." I muttered.

"I just met cute little Dahlia in the leaky cauldron." He said, folding his arms over his chest. "How come you haven't told me you broke up with her?!"

He nearly yelled the last half of his sentence. I ripped my eyes away from him and looked down at the box I was holding.

"It's really none of your business."

"Oh, don't do that." He scoffed. "Why did you break up with her?"

I shrugged.

"Dunno."

Lee walked over and snatched the box from my hands, placing it on the shelf.

"That's even worse! Don't tell me you're putting that poor girl through a breakup for no reason."

I pushed my tongue into my cheek, taking a deep breath before I looked at Lee.

"We had a fight. I told her that I was scared that she'd end up going back to Malcolm and after she asked me why I was with her then, I told her she was right... we shouldn't be together."

"You are genuinely dumb, you know that? Why would Dahlia go back to her ex-husband after everything he's done to her?"

I frowned as I looked at him. No one had told him what Malcolm had put Dia through.

"Oh c'mon." He rolled his eyes. "It's quite fucking obvious that that marriage was toxic and abusive as shit. I can't imagine what that must've felt like but she went from being married to him to being with you, someone who actually treated her well for a change. Why would she throw that away and walk back into the same abusive environment that she escaped from?"

I didn't answer.

"Fix this, George." He told me. "Because you should've seen her just now. She seems to have completely given up, and I know you love her."

"Mind your own goddamn business, Jordan."

As I went to leave the stockroom, Lee grabbed onto my arm.

"You're acting like a teenager." He said. "Or even better— a pre-teen. Now I know where Freddie gets his attitude from."

"Just piss off, okay?" I ripped my arms away from him. "My decisions when it comes to my relationships, are really none of your fucking business. I love Dahlia, but I can't sit by and watch her mess up her own life. She's being manipulated constantly and she can't see it."

"So you decided to break up with her?" He asked. "Her being manipulated isn't her fault, mate. She just started therapy. You can't expect it all to go away just like that. She needs you right now. She needs your support."

I clenched my jaw, reaching over to grab the box off the shelf again.

"Yeah, well I need to think about my children."

"Oh, your children." He laughed. "Right... the same children who love and cherish Dahlia? The same children who you have to tell that the woman who has spent the last few months caring for them like a mother would do, isn't coming back? They'll think she left them like their mother did. Everything you're doing here, is just causing damage and you don't even have a valid reason."

Dahlia

"You know what you need?" Mum asked as she handed me a cup of tea before sitting down across from me. "You need someone who'll make sure you'll never end up alone, and someone who can provide for you."

I looked down at the tea.

I can provide for myself.

"If you don't want to go back to Malcolm, that's alright, but you need someone, Dahlia. Someone who wouldn't leave you."

I didn't reply. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered were my girls and as long as whoever she wanted me to be with treated them nicely, then I didn't care.

"Graham Pritchard?" She asked. "He's thirty years old. He's got a little boy the age of three. His wife passed away during childbirth. He's a nice guy. A handsome young gentleman."

Then why don't you date him?

"What do you think?" She asked me, and I looked at her, taking a sip of my tea.

"Can I wait a bit?" I asked. "It's only been a week..."

"So you'll give it a shot?" She smiled. "Great. Yeah of course you can wait, darling. I'll talk to his parents and we'll plan a date for next month."

I sighed.

"Sounds great." I muttered against the cup, closing my eyes for a moment.

"You know what? I should go write them now." Mum got up and smiled at me before she left the room to walk into her study, closing the door behind her.

I drank some more tea before I put down the cup and made my way upstairs. I had my arms wrapped around myself, some sort of comfort as I made my way to my childhood room.

Everything stood as it did when I was a child and lived at home. It was so familiar but there was no type of comfort.

I walked further into the room, eyeing my neatly made bed and all of the belongings I didn't dare to bring with me to live with Malcolm once I graduated.

Everything in here reminded me of my childhood and I tried my best to just forget. It didn't work but at least I tried... that's the way I saw it.

I didn't want to spend any unnecessary time in that room, so I left and closed the door quickly before I made my way to Nadine's room.

I closed the door behind me, looking around and taking in the surroundings of the room where she always stayed cuddled up in the corner of her bed, writing her boyfriend.

I walked over to her window which had a view over the garden. I was always so jealous that her room was on this side of the house while I had a stupid view over the road.

Now it just seemed ridiculous.

I turned around and leaned back against the window, my eyes landing on my mother who stood in the doorway.

"Sorry." I hurried to say, pushing myself away from the window. "I just— I've been thinking about her a lot lately and I—"

"There's a box in her wardrobe." Mum told me. "It's full of stuff that I found in her flat after she passed. I've never bothered looking in it but it's yours if you want it."

She never bothered?

"I didn't know you had gone and cleared her flat." I said. "You told me her boyfriend's family did that."

I remember when my parents found out about her and her boyfriend. They were absolutely raging. She ended up with a black eye that day.

"Why does it matter?" Mum sighed and leaned against the doorway while I walked over to the wardrobe, opening it.

There was a small brown box at the bottom of the closet and I looked back at mum with a frown.

"That's it?"

"I threw the rest of it out."