The Sight Of Eternity With You

Alone Together

"Hey....I thought you'd be at the Burrow?"

George looked up at Fred as he leaned against the doorframe to the office, George boxing a fresh batch of nosebleed nougat.

"Hard to be there when your younger siblings and friends are all walking around with some form of survivor's guilt," George muttered, turning back to his inventory list. "I'll go back when they go to school in a few days."

"Mmmm," Fred made a noise walking to his desk, "yeah...Harry approached me about it."

George nodded, thinking about his conversation with Harry the day he arrived at the Burrow, explaining how he regretted how things turned out—how if he'd only stopped for two seconds, Sirius and Harper wouldn't have paid the ultimate prices.

"Do you think if we'd left her at school....would it be different?" George spoke softly, vanishing the contents of his cauldron with his hand, and reaching for ingredients for puking pastels.

"No...actually it would be worse," Fred sighed, he put his hands behind his head and leaned back. "Our shop wouldn't be standing right now, we wouldn't be opened, and we'd all be dead. You, me, Angelina, Lee? We'd all be dead fighting those pricks from taking her."

George nodded slightly, "you can go on without me...I have this list I want to finish."

Fred rolled his eyes, reaching for the list and looking it over, he got to his feet and began collecting ingredients to work on himself. "You can't go anywhere without your wand," Fred muttered lowly.

"Mate—"

"—I would like to work on my shop as well," Fred gave him a pointed look. "You aren't the only one still in pain, we all are, George. And will be until we can get her back." George's heart stopped momentarily at the last comment.

They sat in silence, occasionally asking for ingredients, but they worked mostly in silence. It was a silence that hadn't been present during their school days, only growing over the last few months.

"Could I have my wand back?" George asked after a while of silence.

Fred looked up, frowning, "what for?"

George took a deep breath, sometime since he'd gotten the news, his wand had been taken—presumably by Fred or Ginny. He rubbed his pointer finger with his thumb, frowning as he heaved his shoulders.

"I want to look through Harper's diary and..." his stomach plummeted, "I need my wand to open it."

"Angelina has never—"

"Ange wasn't given the password," his voice quivered slightly.

Fuck, I was doing so well today

Fred seemed to read his mind, reaching to his back pocket for a key, he opened his desk and gently placed George's wand on a pile of papers.

"Does it have to be your own wand or can I open it for you?"

"I'm not so dense that I would walk myself into a viper's den just to save Harper. Give me some credit."

"No, but you've been plotting..."

"All failures," George reached for his wand, pulling the diary out from his desk. The light thud it made on the table sounded like he'd dropped the golden egg Harry had to retrieve from the dragon during the tri-wizard tournament.  He lifted his wand, looking at Fred expectantly, with a sigh Fred covered his ears before George preformed the charm to unlock the full contents of the diary.

"Harpsichord," he barely got the word out of his mouth, sticking in his throat like a piece of honey that got lodged in his windpipe along the way down.