Content notice: alcohol abuse and addiction, reference to suicide attempt

As time passes after the Battle of Hogwarts, Angelina expects the pain of what has happened to become easier to deal with. She survived, as did her family and so many of her friends. Surely, there is a way for her to find comfort in that.

The only huge loss she can count is Fred, and places her in such a better position than most. She tries to remind herself of that at night when the pain is too hard for her to sleep. It never works, but she tries.

When Alicia first invites her out to some Muggle bars, Angelina says no. She doesn't feel like going out and pretending like she can feel happiness when all she can feel anymore is the impending nature of death. Even more, she doesn't want her friends to realize what place her thoughts have been in since the war ended. She's better off keeping her distance.

Alicia is persistent, though, and Angelina gives in rather than reveal anything out loud. She gets drunk with her friends and even enjoys it for the most part after she's had a few drinks.

The next day, Angelina wakes up with a massive headache that makes it difficult to get out of bed, but to her surprise, she slept through the night with none of the nightmares she's come to expect as her regular night time companion.

It's a shock.

She tries not to feel guilty when she buys herself an entire bottle of vodka for herself and drinks it before going to bed that night. It may not be nutritious, but for now, she can trick herself that it's good for her health.

Angelina has been drinking every day for four months when George knocks on her door. She hasn't seen him since Fred's funeral, and she realizes with a jolt that it hasn't occurred to her to worry about him for weeks. Though she can feel the way the alcohol fogs her thoughts, she tries to inspect him for signs of distress.

If she can't sleep without her alcohol, she's sure he's worse off, and she does find dark circles under his eyes. As he looks at her, he wrings his hands together, and she knows he's appeared at her flat prepared for a serious conversation. The same kind of conversation she's been avoiding with everyone she knows since the war ended.

Part of her is tempted to close the door in his face to avoid it, but she can't bring herself to take things that far. He'll only come back more worried than he was before.

"Hey," he says slowly, raising a hand in what seems to be meant as a wave. "I was wondering if we could talk."

She hesitates before stepping aside with a nod. George heads straight for her kitchen as if he knows where it is and sits down at the table opposite her empty glass. Angelina allows herself some relief that she finished off her drink before she answered the door, but her cheeks still burn as she hurriedly places the glass in the sink, hoping George can't somehow see what the contents of it once were.

"Why are you here?" she asks, her voice cracking in a jarring reminder of how little she's been speaking.

Her time has been largely consumed with sitting around the house trying to find the energy to do things. The most work she's done is walking to the store or making up excuses for her parents about why she hasn't found work yet and needs more money.

George takes a deep breath.

"This is going to be blunt and painful, but I need to get it out," he says, watching her closely. She knows he's evaluating how tough she is, and she straightens her shoulders, scared of what he'll find. "I tried to kill myself last month."

Inside, her mind races at the news, but outwardly, she keeps her face emotionless, as if George's suicide attempt is of little note to her. The idea of what she'll do or say if she lets herself feel it fully scares her.

"Oh," she says. "I'm sorry…"

Despite the war she's lived through, no one close to her has attempted suicide. At least not that she knows of. She realizes with another jolt that she can't be sure if anyone has or not, and she wouldn't be surprised if there were more than George. Others who are locking themselves away like she is but have taken their despair farther.

"Don't apologize," George says, waving a hand through the air. "You have nothing to apologize for. It's just…" He runs a hand through his hair. "Percy found me unconscious and rushed me to St Mungo's, so there was no hiding what I tried to do. The Healers assigned me a therapist. I was going every day, but they've let me cut back to once a week now. And I won't lie, it feels good."

He stares at the wood on her table as he speaks, tracing the grains with his finger.

"Recently, she's been asking me about my friends." It takes Angelina a second to realize the "she" George refers to is his therapist. "She wants me to reconnect with people. Thinks it would be good for me to talk about what happened with more people than just her, people who can understand it better. She suggested I start with people who knew Fred as well as I did. So, I talked to my family; I talked to Lee. You were next on the list."

"You want to talk about Fred?"

She feels bile rising in her throat and swallows it back down.

"If you're up for it," George says.

She can hear the way he's trying to keep his voice light, even as he begins tapping his fingers against the table top.

"I don't know if I can," she admits.

Her fingers twitch, itching for another glass of vodka, but she can't drink any of it with George at her flat. She can't let him find the stash of alcohol that she's been carefully building up. She knows he'll catch on if he does.

"That's fine," George says, nodding his head slowly.

He doesn't look surprised at her refusal, and she wonders if he senses her weakness. He looks her straight in the eyes, and her hands tighten into fists before she can hide them in her lap beneath the table.

"Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?" he asks. "That Harpies-Cannon match yesterday was something."

Angelina cringes.

"I haven't been following Quidditch," she to admits.

George's frown deepens, but he nods.

"Understandable. There's been a lot going on."

She nods too, though she's not sure that she can agree. She hasn't been doing much of anything recently. She doesn't even have a job, though as far as her parents are concerned she's doing her best to find one. She thinks they actually believe her.

"I'm sorry, but I have a lot of work to do," she blurts out, panic rising in her chest.

She stands, her hands curling and uncurling as she thinks of something to do that will make her appear busy. George raises an eyebrow and slowly stands from his chair.

"Okay," he says slowly. "Would it be okay if I come back? I'd like to talk more if you're up for it."

"Sure," Angelina replies, not knowing how to refuse without looking more suspicious.

Bile burns at the back of her throat, and she's already running through possible excuses she can give when he returns, ways to be out of the house or unable to talk. She's so consumed with the exercise that she doesn't remember saying goodbye.

George keeps coming back for reasons that Angelina can't explain, and it becomes impossible for her to be sober each time he arrives. His visits are too scattered and unannounced. It's a wonder that she manages to hide the bottles from him.

At first, she lets him do all the talking. He likes getting his feelings off his chest, and it doesn't seem to bother him when she's quiet.

He talks for hours about his memories of Fred, and Angelina drowns it out to avoid the pain she feels. For George, it was therapeutic, but Angelina struggles not to reach for a glass with George sitting across from her.

She doesn't want to talk about her own memories of Fred until one day, during a particularly amusing story of George's, she can't help but laugh along. Thinking of another funny moment with Fred, she recounts it until she's awkwardly trailing off as realization hits.

She wonders what he thinks about her sometimes, but she doesn't ask.

George has been visiting her for six months before he says the words that Angelina hadn't know she was dreading.

"Have you considered therapy?"

Angelina explodes at him before she can reign herself in. She's yelling expletives and demanding to know why he would make the suggestion.

"There's nothing wrong with me," she says. "What makes you think there is?"

"It's not you," George says, keeping his voice low and calm. His hands are raised, but that's doing nothing to calm the ringing in Angelina's ears. "Therapy really helped me, and I convinced Lee and most of my family to go too. I think everyone who went through the war could use someone to talk to. It has nothing to do with being broken."

The words sound genuine, but Angelina doesn't believe him. She's well aware that she's been drunk more often than she has sober for nearly a year. She's learned to hold her liquor, which she'd hoped was good enough to conceal it from others, but she knows it's not good for her, even as she convinces herself she needs another drink. It's that knowledge of just how much is wrong with her that makes her stand and point an accusing finger in George's face.

"Get out," she says. "Get out of my flat, and don't come back."

George does as instructed without getting angry at her and snapping back. He tries to smile at her one last time in the doorway, though it doesn't reach his eyes. The expression only makes Angelina angrier with herself. She slams the door in his face before she pours herself another glass of vodka.

Angelina wakes up unsure of her surroundings. The scratchy sheets around her aren't her own. Her eyes flutter open, and she takes in the hospital room with a sinking feeling of dread. There's a gasp from beside her, and she turns her head to find Alicia watching her with wide eyes. There are still stains from tear tracks down her cheeks.

"What happened?" Angelina asks before breaking into a coughing fit.

Her throat hurts more than she'd realized. She takes the cup Alicia offers her with a shaking hand, doing her best to suck down water through a straw. She drinks for longer than her stomach is happy with to avoid the conversation she knows has to happen.

"You almost died," Alicia says in a controlled but shaky voice as she takes the cup from Angelina and places it on the table beside her bed. "Your owl showed up at my flat in the middle of the night and woke me up by nipping at my hand."

She holds up her hand to show Angelina the cuts that litter her skin.

"I went to your flat to find you passed out in a puddle of your own vomit. When I couldn't wake you up, I rushed you here. You've been passed out for hours."

Angelina can't find the energy to be embarrassed. Instead, she feels numb. She stares at the wall across from her instead of Alicia, her mind running through ways to talk her out of it.

"That was the first time I'd seen you in weeks," Alicia says quietly. "I just thought you were busy. Angelina, what have you been doing?"

"Nothing," Angelina snaps, turning to Alicia with fire in her eyes. "Getting drunk one night isn't a sign of a problem. I didn't mean to pass out. I'm sorry."

Alicia watches her as she goes back to staring at the wall.

"You're telling me this was a one time thing?"

Angelina, not trusting her voice, nods to answer the question. Excuses about having had a busy week that made her want to unwind run through her mind, but she doesn't use them. She knows Alicia will try to find flaws in the stories she spins.

It's quiet for long enough that Angelina has begun debating how to get rid of her owl before it reveals her again when Alicia next speaks.

"The Healers say you show signs of alcohol abuse. They said you appeared to be going through withdrawal while you were passed out."

Angelina grits her teeth.

"I'm fine," she repeats, and for some reason, Alicia doesn't see it fit to argue. They descend into silence until Alicia gets up, saying something about speaking to a Healer.

Angelina has only been awake for an hour when George arrives. Alicia hasn't come back, meaning they're alone, and Angelina can only stare at the far wall as she listens to him settle into the chair beside her bed.

"I was terrified when I heard," he says in a shaking voice.

"Stop."

He freezes, eyes wide as Angelina turns to look at him. There are sparks in her eyes that he hadn't been expecting.

"You always want to talk about Fred," she continues, sudden anger overcoming her, "and the others who died. Has it ever occured to you that some of us don't want to hear about it? You go on and on about how much talking about it helped you, but we're not all like you, George. Some of us would be much happier never thinking about it."

He's quiet for a moment before saying carefully, "I wasn't going to talk about Fred. Or anyone else. I was going to talk about you, but if you don't want that either, then you choose the topic. Anything you want. I'll discuss Monaco's chances at the next World Cup if that's what you want."

He stares at her in a silent challenge to talk to him, and something in her anger drives her to do just that.

She hasn't been paying attention to Quidditch for the past year, so she can't say a thing about Monaco's chances. She can't say much of anything about most things, she realizes as she stares at George. The entire last year of her life has been lived in a haze that she had welcomed, but for the first time, she realizes how much she might have missed.

"What do you do?" she asks George, surprising herself. "You're always showing up at my house at odd hours. How are you making money?"

George's lips quirk upward in a smirk that Angelina doesn't understand until a second later.

"I own a joke shop. Have you forgotten that detail?"

She blinks at him. It isn't that she'd forgotten as it was that she'd associated Weasley's Wizard Wheezes so much with both him and Fred that, somewhere along the line, she'd assumed he'd given it up without his twin brother by his side. Somehow, she never actually asked about it.

"Sure," she says, "but don't you have to actually run that shop to keep it in business?"

"That's what employees are for." George leans back in his chair and crosses his arms behind his head. "Sometimes, I trust them enough to let them take care of things themselves."

Somehow, she finds herself listening to his stories of running the shop for the next twenty minutes. When Alicia returns, she pretends not to notice her friend's shock at her laughter.

For three months, she manages to stay sober through hard work and the knowledge that her friends are watching her. Katie and Alicia come around almost daily, and when it's not them, it's George or Lee. Sometimes it's even other old school friends who arrive, from Harry to Oliver. Knowing that they all know, to varying degrees, what happened to her, she's determined to stay sober.

But then, one night, she cracks. It was easy to go to the store and get the alcohol, and the cashier rings it up for her as if nothing is wrong. The woman had no idea Angelina was going home to drink the entire bottle by herself in one sitting.

When George shows up at the door, she curses to herself without getting up from the couch. Her wards let him through, though, and he rushes in to find her with the half empty bottle in her hands. She cries as he takes it from her, and then she cries into his shirt until she can't cry anymore.

That was the last thing she remembers before she drifts off to sleep.

When Angelina wakes, it's to a crick in her neck. She cringes as she stretches. Realizing another body is pressed against hers, her eyes fly open. She pulls back far enough to see George's face.

Her sudden movements wake him, and her stomach twists as his eyes open. He isn't smiling, and he can see the panic in Angelina's eyes as she looks back at him, the events of the previous night running through her mind.

Her head pounds, but she ignores it as she stands, backing away from him.

"Leave," she says, voice dangerously low.

George cringes and stands, holding out a hand that makes her back further away from him.

"Angelina," he pleads. "Please, let's just talk for a minute."

"No," she says, voice trembling. "You saw what a mess I am. You don't want to deal with that. I don't want you to. Leave. And don't come back."

He looks at her for a moment before saying, "No."

Angelina is so surprised by the forcefulness of his tone that she can't immediately respond. George takes the opportunity to continue speaking.

"I care about you Angelina. I..." He hesitates, swallowing. "I'm in love with you."

Angelina stares at him, trying to process the words. She cares for George, deeply, but she hasn't allowed herself to dream that he feels the same way. Part of her finds it difficult to imagine him letting himself love after what had happened with Fred. Part of her, she has to admit, has felt guilty herself at the idea of happiness after so many have died.

"This is only going to happen again," she says. "I can't stay sober."

George shakes his head.

"It might happen again," he says, "but you can stay sober. I'm not blind to reality, Angelina. That's a bit hard after what we went through. I get that sobriety won't be easy for you, and maybe you'll slip up. If that happens, I want to be there. I want to help you in any way I can. No matter what happens."

They stare at each other for a moment.

"My life is a mess," Angelina says, letting out a sob with the words. "If it's love you want, it's all I have to offer. I don't have a job, and I've spent most of the past year drunk. If you stay, you're staying with a mess. And all the love in the world isn't going to change that."

"I know what I'm getting into." He walks forward until he's standing right in front of her. "That doesn't change the fact that I'm in love with you."

Her heart races as he lowers his face to kiss her. She kisses back, thriving on the electricity that flows through her body, so unlike anything she's felt before or after she'd begun drinking the alcohol. She holds onto it tight, not wanting to let go.

Prompts:

Hogwarts Challenges and Assignments

Seasonal Challenge - Birthstones: opal - "If it's love you want, it's all I have to offer."

Seasonal Challenge - Flowers: celosia - (word) nutritious

Word count: 3,309