Forget Me Not || George Weasley

Chapter 8

Jackie doesn't ask question.

That's what Olive likes about her the most. She doesn't ask questions. Which is good, because it's rare that Olive can remember an answer.

Jackie doesn't ask questions when Olive returns to the ice cream shop in the middle of her day off and tells her to go home early. She doesn't ask questions, even though Olive suspects she wants to.

She hadn't been her usual self, she knew it even without Jackie looking at her all gruff and silent with her hands on her hips. Olive wasn't exactly quiet in nature, and she tried to smile as much as she could. She hadn't been smiling when she returned to the shop, and she didn't reply when Jackie told her to have a good night.

Olive doesn't turn her muggle record player on, doesn't charm the tower of ice cream to spin in the window. She usually liked to, it was scribbled all across her planner to remember to do it every morning. Clean, turn on music, check the chilling charms, charm the display. Her list was long, but it kept away that little whisper of anxiety and doubt.

It's not even worth it today. Today, Olive hopes she forgets going to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She hopes she forgets the way George looked like he could maybe smile when he called her 'Ollie.' She hopes she forgets how it felt to hear him say it.

Maybe they weren't friends. Maybe George Weasley was just rude.

Or maybe she'd forgotten how to gauge what to say to someone that had endured such pain two years prior. That she knew to be true. Usually, she just chanced a guess. It's not like she even know what to say to herself about the events that took place two years ago.

She glances down when her fingers start to burn, eyes tracing the tiny little strip up the side of her thumbnail where she'd obliterated her cuticle. She shakes it off, stares out at the ice cream shop from behind the counter.

Imposter. She felt like an imposter. This wasn't even hers, this place.

And so, Olive decides that the slowness of the day warrants an early close. She can only hope she doesn't disappoint a family seeking treats. They could go to Weasley's. Lee would help them.

She wasn't sure she could say the same of George.

Her eyes watch the sun dip over Diagon Alley, the day drawing to an end. And she tried to not remember why she'd told George to get rid of the love potions. She wanted to not remember that thing. That night. If her mind forgot, her body reminded her.

Her soul aches at the surfacing memory, the smell of burnt hair and the taste of her own scream. The heat of blood pooling on her chest. The touch of evil hands and the bruise of wild teeth. Her body remembered. It was just unfortunate that her brain remembered some of it too.

Her hand comes up to press against the scar that stretches across her chin. She wants to remember the ease of happiness, the ease of simple existence. It had been her best talent, just existing. She just couldn't remember how to now.

Olive sucks in a shaky breath, drawing her wand from her pocket to wordlessly snuff out the lights of Florean's Ice Cream Parlor.

If it weren't a Tuesday, she may wander off to a muggle pub and drown her sorrows until she was certain she would forget. But then she wouldn't remember George's favorite product in his shop, she wouldn't remember to say A.F.D and B.F.D.

She wouldn't remember that she had a reason to argue against the pink potion he'd gotten so angry over. A reason she believed in, despite her unwillingness to unearth the context behind it.

So instead of booze, Olive walks up the narrow staircase behind the kitchen doors and decides to wrap her grandfather's birthday present.  She doesn't pause when she hears the sound of knuckles abusing the pink painted door to the ice cream shop. She decides that if she's already pretending, she may as well act as if she isn't here anyway.

She climbs up her stairs, and slowly opens the door. Her eyes find a note she'd left for herself earlier, settled just underneath a box of tobacco and a pipe. Her smile feels fake too, but she remembers. Remembers writing this note, one that tells her she thought to wrap up her grandfather's present in blue.

When she looks at the wrapping paper though, she's uncertain why she'd picked blue in the first place. She's uncertain why the person banging on the door down below is still reprimanding her for being fake.

Perhaps she would remember why tomorrow.

Olive sits on her floor, spreads out her wrapping paper, and begins to neatly fold the satiny blue around the tobacco. It takes her a few tries, she hadn't been good at wrapping when she'd remembered exactly how. Now the process seemed complicated, eyeballing where to cut the paper with her pink scissors so that no glimpse of the box could reveal itself. This was pointless too, her grandfather didn't need wrapping paper. But she did. She needed to fold that paper over the box, cover up the writing on the side until it was a mess of stuck together strips of shiny blue and tape and didn't even hint at what was inside. She needed it.

She wonders if there's a shiny pink paper that matches, one that she can wrap herself up in so that one day in the future, a different version of herself will peel back that paper and gasp in complete joy at the person that lay within.

It's unlikely.

She grabs her planner and writes it down anyway.

Satisfied with her wrapping, she pushes her gifts aside. She doesn't stand. She lies down flat on her back, spreads her arms and legs out wide. She breathes, the way her healer told her to at her last check up.

Breathe. Feel. Think. And the memories would come.

Olive didn't have the heart to tell her the ones she didn't want to already had.

She'd always been too good at listening to orders. She breathes, she feels, she thinks. And yet none of that was enough to figure herself out. It certainly wasn't enough to figure out the likes of George Weasley.

She sighs, and the banging has stopped. She's grateful for the quiet, glad she hadn't turned on music. She settles in to the sound of her beating heart and slowly, her anxiety eases until she doesn't feel the ache of her mouth or the sting of her torn cuticle. She feels a hint of the ability to exist, and she holds onto it tight, white knuckling that taste of a memory that is oh so sweet.

She wonders if George tries to remember the good too, or if that sort of thing is impossible Aft—A.F.D.

She wonders if he recognizes good A.F.D. It had seemed like it. At least until she mentioned the love potions. And then it seemed like George Weasley wouldn't know good if it slapped him in the face. The coldness of his eyes, the unbridled anger in the tightness of his mouth. She was angry too, angry because she doubted she would forget feeling guilty. She couldn't. She felt it like she felt existence, like it could be something more if she let it.

Olive felt guilty for upsetting him.

She didn't regret it though.