The Extraordinary Lessons Life Taught George and Felicity

Lesson 1: You're the Same Decaying Organic Matter as Everything Else

"They're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone."
~Piano Man, Billy Joel

George Weasley's attentions were focused on a young woman eating alone at the back of the Leakey Cauldron. She was petite, probably smaller than even Ginny, with short light brown hair that was styled impeccably. Her nose was long and thin, as was her chin, and she looked very clean and put together for someone eating alone at the back of a mangy old pub.

Maybe it was the way she ate that captured his attention, George thought, as he sat at the bar watching her. She ate her food almost the exact same way Harry used to eat his food; as if he had to savor every bite, as if she might not ever eat again in her life. At the same time though, she sat very properly, with her back straight and her shoulders pulled back, her elbows never touched the table and her manners were impeccable.

It was hypnotizing to watch, George found. Especially in his half-drunken stupor.

"Give me another." George placed his empty firewhiskey glass on the sticky wooden bar. They wouldn't cut him off, he always paid his bills, he never caused trouble. Even though he drank to forget why he couldn't laugh, the alcohol didn't let him regain his smile.

How could he be happy when Fred was gone? How could he laugh when he had to run a joke shop that had been their dream, had to look in the mirror to see their face?

Theirs. Us. Ours. Them. We.

George had never thought he'd have to be singular. His. Me. Mine. Him. I.

There was a cruel irony in being a lonely twin.

"Give me some fancy liqueur, something sweet." The young woman George had noticed earlier slid a few sickles across the bar as she seated herself on the stool next to George, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Start a tab."

"I got just the thing for you, love." The barman, Tom, looked down suspiciously at her before placing a stemmed liqueur glass filled with some sort of deep red liquid in front of her.

Hesitantly, she took a dainty sip, licked her lips and smiled sweetly up at the barman. "Perfect, thank you. I always did love berries."

Tom simply nodded at her before turning his attention to another costumer.

"Got something to celebrate or something to forget?" George asked after she downed the liqueur in on gulp.

"I don't know. Both, neither." She shrugged dismissively. "Let me a have a few more and I might just tell you."

George decided he liked this woman. Up close he could see she was younger than she had tried to appear and that she had a scar sitting just above her chin that gave her bottom lip a misshapen appearance when she smiled.

"George Weasley," he grunted, a sloppy, drunken smirk curving his lips. "Resident drunk."

"Felicity," she shook his outstretched hand.

"No last name, darling?" George grunted.

"Not one I like." She shrugged and signaled for Tom to bring her another drink.

The two sat in companionable silence, drinking away their own unspoken woes.

"Nott."

"What?"

"My last name. Nott." George knew Theodore Nott Sr. and his wife had been known Death Eaters, and suddenly he saw exactly how this girl could be related to two lethal mass-murders. From her hardened, challenging expression to the downturned curve of her blood-red lips stained with berry liqueur, he found her suddenly very disconcerting.

"Like the Death Eaters?" He asked stupidly, but when she turned to face him, her hardened features relaxed into a softer expression, and her lips were no longer blood red but dark pink and pouting and she looked suddenly scared and vulnerable.

"Exactly like the Death Eaters." The vulnerability was gone as soon as it had come, and her eyes narrowed harshly. She nodded and took another sip of her drink. "Mummy and Daddy were wonderful parents. Except to their little squib." She scowled and downed the remainder of her glass.

"Oh." George mumbled, internally kicking himself for not being able to form a more coherent and sensitive answer. He wanted to care about this. Through the haze of toxin he'd willingly ingested, he tried to force himself to care.

"All their fortune was suddenly handed over to me, I have no idea why. I've a brother somewhere, a wizard no less, fancy wand and magic school diploma to boot, but they can't find the bloke. So now I'm rich. Rich with the wealth of the people who hated me." She laughed bitterly. "I've just come from Gringotts. I'd never seen that much gold in my life before today." She spat and signaled for another drink.

Somewhere in the back of George's fuzzy mind it registered that the war had ended nearly a year and a half ago, and he found it curious that she hadn't actually collected the money until now.

However, before he could voice his thoughts well enough to avoid slurring his words, Tom's gruff voice broke the silence that had settled between them.

"You sure you can handle this, girl? How're you getting home?" Tom asked.
One look at Felicity's panicked features, and George knew that the girl had no idea,
So he jumped in. Maybe it was a drunken impulse, or maybe there was some omnipotent force urging him towards a twisted fate.

"She's staying at mine. I'm on the couch tonight." It was a well known fact that George Weasley' shop was a success even without Fred, and luckily, the flat George stayed in was just down the street from the Leakey Cauldron, on Diagon Ally, right above his shop.

"What about you, hm? Resident drunk?" Felicity didn't seem at all bothered by George's sudden claim and when the barman had left them to their own devices again, she turned the tables on him. "Got something to forget?"

"Lost a brother in the war. Can't sleep at night, can't look myself in the mirror without seeing his face, can't face my family without seeing the look of grief in their eyes." George found that it was far easier to say that out loud when he was drunk off his arse. He could barely admit that to himself when he was sober, let alone tell a total stranger.

"Well that stinks." She remarked. "But then again, in a world as messed up as ours, what doesn't stink?" She shrugged as if there was nothing to be done about it, downed what was probably her eighth glass of berry liqueur and promptly fell asleep slumped over the bar.

"You're right there, Felicity Nott." George murmured to her sleeping form. "Life stinks."

1138 words
01 July 2016