For my darling Ned [isaacswolfsbane]. Happy Christmas, Neddy! Hope you enjoy.

Thanks to my Sam and also the lovely Bex for the editing help, and to everyone who helped encourage me to finish this.

..**..

George is seven years old and sitting at the dinner table, talking with Fred about Heaven-knows-what when he suddenly goes silent. His eyes go wide and round. Then he screams, loud and piercing. Fred looks at his screaming twin and starts bawling. George goes silent, looks around the room, and bolts from the table.

Molly and Arthur exchange a look and Arthur gets up from the table, leaving Molly to comfort Fred as Bill continues helping Ginny, who didn't even flinch at the chaos around her.

Arthur finds George curled up in a tiny ball underneath his bed. He leaves the overhead lights off so that he can see through the veil of darkness that George is hiding within. Carefully, Arthur eases himself to the floor a reasonable distance from the bed.

"Georgie?" he asks quietly. In response, he gets only sniffles. "Buddy, do you want to tell me what's going on?"

In the shadows, Arthur can tell that his son is trembling.

"George?" Arthur tries once more. George whimpers in response; the sound is so forlorn and alone that something inside of Arthur cracks.

"That's okay, buddy. You can stay there as long as you like. I'll be right here."

Arthur grabs a pillow off Fred's bed and tucks it behind his back, settling as comfortably as he can against the boys' dresser.

Arthur hears the sounds of Molly, Percy, and Charlie cleaning up dinner as Bill puts Ron and Ginny to bed before George stops trembling. By his measurement, it has been nearly two hours before George speaks.

"Daddy, I'm scared."

His heart breaks. That's the first time in weeks George has referred to him as Daddy instead of Dad. "What are you scared of, bud?"

George sniffs loudly. His eyes are skittering all over the place, unable to focus in one place. "I don't know," he finally admits quietly. "I was okay, and then I was scared."

Arthur is confused, until he isn't.

"Let me go get your mum."

He comes back with both Molly and Fred.

"I think it's time that both of you boys heard about this."

Fred holds out a hand, and George crawls out from under the bed and takes it, both of them sitting on the edge of Fred's bed while Arthur and Molly sit on the edge of George's.

"When people are born, both Muggles and magical folk, they're born linked to somebody else. They call linked people soulmates — two people who share the same soul, the same spirit. It's someone you'll be especially close to — a best friend, a great love. When your soulmate feels things really strongly, you can feel it too. That's why George got scared — because his soulmate was scared, and George felt it."

"Why was he scared?"

"You don't know it's a he, Georgie. It could be anyone you're linked to. And that's the hard part. You can't know why they feel things. You just know that they do." Molly's voice is gentle. She can see how tightly he is clinging to Fred's hand.

"How am I supposed to make them feel better, then?" George nearly yells. Molly feels her heart break.

"Oh, darling. I'm sorry. I know it's hard."

"It's stupid," George mutters. "It's doesn't make any sense!"

"How are we supposed to find them?" Fred asks.

"You don't usually find them on purpose," Arthur tells him. "Usually it's someone you get to know, and then later you realize. Because you can only really tell if you're in the same place as them."

George looks sullen, and Fred just looks curious.

"I think it's time for bed now, boys."

In another country, Seamus Finnigan's screams fade into sobs as his father slams the door with a finality that tells everyone present that he isn't coming back.

..**..

It takes George far longer than he feels like it should to realize that the echo of loneliness he lives with is not his own. He figures it out when he's ten years old and talking to Fred. Fred says he's not sure if he's felt anything from his soulmate, but sometimes he feels like he's flying, soaring high on a broom when he really has his feet flat on the ground. George gets waves of contentment when he was feeling happy, or waves of playfulness when he was feeling tired, but otherwise it's mostly just the loneliness — loneliness present so often he didn't even realize it wasn't his own.

..**..

Seamus Finnigan is lonely. His da left when he was just old enough to remember the leaving — the screaming fight, the door slamming. Six years of marriage gone in a heartbeat, because his mam was never brave enough to tell him she had magic. Not until Seamus jumped down the stairs and floated to the bottom, unharmed.

It wasn't about the magic, Seamus knows. It was about the lies.

His da left, and his mam remarried — a Pureblood this time, like she was supposed to the first time, according to Seamus's grandparents.

Seamus hates his stepdad. Mostly because his stepdad kind of hates him back. Seamus is a reminder of his mum's rebellion, her Muggle ex-husband. He's the half-blood stepchild his stepdad never wanted.

His half siblings aren't that bad, except for the fact that they think they're better than him because they're Pureblood, and because that's what their father has told them.

Seamus feels like he should be grateful — he knows things could be so much worse. His mum loves him and provides for him and makes sure that his stepdad never lays a hand on him.

He has friends at primary school, but he's never allowed to invite them home, where accidental magic could happen at any time, and they rarely invite him to their homes, because they know he won't reciprocate.

It could be worse, but that doesn't mean he isn't lonely.

Sometimes Seamus feels things that don't make sense. One time, he was coloring when he suddenly laughed so hard his ribs hurt. Sometimes he feels a flash of adrenaline when he's just sitting down, sometimes a spark of anger when there's nothing to be angry at. But they always fade.

He never asks, because he doesn't want his mum to tell him he's crazy.

..**..

Fred and George try out for the Quidditch team together in their second year. Charlie is captain, but Charlie also outright refuses to show them any favoritism (although he tells them privately that they'd better kick ass like he knows they can, so that he can put them on the team without being accused of nepotism).

They do kick ass. And, as they usually do, they kick ass together, working in flawless synchrony.

When they land, though, Fred is frowning at the sky.

George quirks an eyebrow at him, but Fred just gives him a small head shake, and then tips his head slightly in a way that says, not here. George blinks, but shrugs minutely, and heads over to the bench to join the crowds watching the Chasers try out.

He's watching second years Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet dominate the field when Fred finally joins him on the bench. Fred is staring intently at the pitch, but he's not really watching the Chasers. Instead, his eyes are pinned on the Keeper. Katie slips a Quaffle past him and through the hoops. Most of the crowd is cheering, but Fred is… wincing?

George follows his gaze to where Oliver looks furious that the Quaffle passed him by. His eyes widen.

"Wait, are you?"

Fred shushes him, blushing furiously. Later, when Oliver makes a brilliant save and does a loop on his broom, whooping, George watches a small smile creep across Fred's face.

..**..

It takes Fred almost a year to talk to Oliver about it, despite George prodding him. Even then, it's mostly an accident. Oliver flops down in the middle of the Gryffindor common room one day, groans dramatically, and then flops his arm over his eyes.

Alicia looks at him like he's crazy. Angelina asks if he's okay, and without even thinking, Fred says, "Oh, he's fine. He just has an essay due tomorrow that he's stressed about and he wants to complain instead of working on it."

And Oliver frowns at him. "How do you even know that, Freddie? Even I forgot about it until about an hour ago."

Fred froze. George manages to get out something about Percy saying something about it, mostly for the benefit of Alicia and Angelina, and then loudly announces that Fred is now volunteering to help Oliver with his essay and cheerfully shoves the pair out of the common room, yelling at Fred with his whole face to just fucking tell him already.

And Fred does.

They're weirdly touchy feely friends now, but Fred swears up and down that nothing else is happening, and George believes him.

..**..

Hogwarts is amazing. Seamus knows that he has never felt joy and awe quite like this. He'd thought, growing up with magic, on stories of Hogwarts, that it would be special, but he hadn't expected how much it all is.

Candles burn above them but never melt. More food than Seamus has ever seen at one time has appeared from seemingly nowhere in front of them. He is surrounded by people, happy chattering, familiar hellos.

The boy beside him introduces himself as Dean Thomas, and then says he's a Muggleborn. Dean is proud of this. Seamus isn't exactly proud, but he's never been ashamed of his dad, either. "I'm half and half," he says cheerfully. "Me Dad's a Muggle; mam's a witch. Bit of a nasty shock for him when he found out." This is possibly the biggest understatement Seamus has ever uttered, but maybe it doesn't matter because none of these kids know him, and none of them need to know anything he doesn't want to tell them.

That idea is weirdly freeing. He can be whoever he wants to be.

Down the table from him, George Weasley is wondering if all of the joy he is feeling is his, or if maybe some of it is echoes. And if he takes a closer than usual look at the first years, well, that's nobody's business but his.

..**..

It's nearly six months later when Dean asks him if he knows who his soulmate is. Seamus gives him a blank look in return. Dean is his best friend (and a thrill goes through him every time he thinks those words), but sometimes Dean says things and Seamus has absolutely no idea what those words mean in that order.

"My what?"

Dean frowns, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "Your soulmate? You know. The person who you get the emotional echoes from?"

Seamus stares at him, feeling a tingle of hope that maybe he isn't crazy, at least not for this. But he doesn't dare hope too much. Not yet.

"Emotional echoes?" he asks carefully.

"Like… like when you feel things that don't quite make sense. When you're sad and then suddenly you're feeling happy and you can't explain it?"

"You mean… that happens to everyone?"

Dean chuckles. "Yeah, Shay, that happens to everyone. It's from your soulmate — the person you're connected to by your soul. They're supposed to become something special to you. Mum says most people fall in love with their soulmates, but not everyone. Some of them are best friends, and some are mentors."

Seamus thinks of the way joy and laughter that doesn't seem to belong to him sometimes sparkles along his nerves, sings through his blood. He smiles at the thought of whoever might be producing that joy.

He's not crazy, and he's not alone. These feelings mean something. They're from someone.

Dean, though, is frowning at him. "Dude, why did your parents never tell you any of this?"

Seamus shrugs, and then grins and waves it off. "I never asked."

He doesn't see the way Dean is still frowning at him as he walks away.

..**..

Sometimes, George thinks, it's hard to tell exactly which emotions are his and which belong to his soulmate.

It's easiest to tell when they're out of place, like the spike of anxiety when he has a free period, or the swoop of excitement when he's in Herbology. He doesn't even like Herbology.

Sometimes, though, he's at a Quidditch game and he'll feel a flare of excitement just before he turns to see that the Seekers have spotted the snitch, and it'll feel just like his own excited focus, only half a second too soon. Sometimes, he'll wake up on Monday morning dreading it more than usual, and he'll wonder if that's coming from someone else.

Honestly, it seems like kind of a shitty system. How is he supposed to identify a soulmate from this? Sure, Fred managed, but only when in extended close proximity and because Oliver is expressive as hell. It seems like there are so many ways soulmates could just pass each other by, and no one would ever know.

..**..

All students return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please.

Confusion reigns, but after the year they've had, no one seems to want to disobey McGonagall's orders echoing through the hallways.

They make their way to Gryffindor tower in a flood.

It doesn't take long for the collected students to recognize that three of their number are missing — Ron, Harry, and Ginny.

Seamus finds Dean. The conversation volume increases as the Gryffindors try to figure out if anyone knows what is happening. They go quiet as Harry and Ron bolt through the portrait hole. There is a clamor as everyone tries to ask what's happening, and then a silence as McGonagall comes through the portrait hall right behind them. She gives them an odd look, but then seems to decide it isn't important.

"Hogwarts is being closed." The entire House is in a uproar at McGonagall's words, but they are silenced by a stern look. "The train will come for you tomorrow." She seems to hesitate. "Please head to your dormitories to pack your bags now."

No one notices the way she catches Ron's arm, except George and Fred and Percy, who have not taken their eyes off of her. Harry looks to Ron, who nods at him to go along. Oliver does the same, only looking to Percy and Fred. As the rest of the house make their way up the stairs, the Weasley brothers make their way toward McGonagall.

A cold shock of dread runs down Seamus' spine while he is packing. His soulmate, he concludes, has clearly just had what is happening sink in for them.

But over the course of the day, the dread doesn't fade. Instead, it just mingles with a mournful sadness that Seamus doesn't understand.

He falls into a discontented sleep and wakes up to a shot of pure joy and Dean announcing that there's going to be a feast right now and that nobody's going home after all.

He won't understand any of this until years later.

..**..

A fission of pure fear runs through Seamus' chest on his way back from the Halloween feast in his third year, and he doesn't understand until the whole column of Gryffindor stops in front of the Fat Lady. Her portrait has been torn to shreds.

"Someone get the headmaster!" calls out their Head Boy, Percy Weasley. But Dumbledore is already there, and it's not until they have reached the Great Hall that Seamus fully realizes that his fear had come before he even knew to be afraid.

..**..

George wakes up in the middle of the night to a bolt of the purest fear he's ever felt, and the faint sound of screaming. He sits bolt upright. In the bed beside him, Fred has also woken and is sitting up more slowly. By the time he's upright, George is out of his bed and halfway to the door.

"Where'goin?" is mumbled from one of the other beds. Fred starts to reply, but George is already on the move. The screaming has stopped, but the terror hasn't.

Unsure of where to go, he descends to the common room. When no one is there, he turns, but there are boys beginning to descend the steps, most blearily scrubbing at their eyes. "What happened?" someone asks. George just shrugs.

Then Ron comes downstairs, pale as a ghost, Harry hovering carefully at his side. Their dorm mates follow them, all looking dazed and vaguely panicked. George makes his way over to them, but Percy is there first.

"Ron, what happened?"

And Ron tells him about waking up to Sirius Black standing over him with a knife.

They managed to rouse most of Gryffindor tower, including McGonagall, who tells them all to quit partying and go back to bed, until Percy tells her that Ron dreamed of Sirius Black (and wow, sometimes Percy is honestly the worst at being supportive) and Ron snaps back that it wasn't a dream, and McGonagall goes pale and hurries out, telling Percy to keep everyone in the common room.

George stares at Ron for a moment, wondering, but then he thinks about transfiguring Ron's teddy into a spider, and Ron crying and George laughing, and he thinks that kind of terror would've transmitted. He takes a closer look at the boys who share Ron's dorm, but honestly, waking up to Ron's scream could've terrified anyone in the Tower. George mentally shrugs and settles back in an armchair, waiting for news with everyone else.

..*..

It's when Gryffindor is playing for the Quidditch cup that both of them realize that their soulmate is also a Gryffindor.

Emotions are running high, but they seem to have wound up in a loop where one of them gets excited, which excites the other, until what they both end up feeling is almost too much to be contained in one body. When Harry catches the snitch, each of them feels like they might explode.

..**..

The week before the World Cup somehow turns into an extended version of the same sort of massive feedback loop.

One of them will get excited, and this will remind the other of what's coming, and that person will get excited, and around and around they go.

Seamus's mam says he can bring a friend, and Seamus doesn't care that it's probably mostly so that she doesn't have to entertain him. There's no question that he's bringing Dean, who is his best friend and who has never seen a professional Quidditch game before.

He doesn't tell his family that Dean is Muggleborn until Dean's mum pulls up in a minivan and he has no choice. His stepdad shatters a chandelier. His mam says nothing.

Dean's mum is calm and poised even in the face of obvious hostility. Seamus loves her immediately.

In the end, his parents can conjure no reason why Dean cannot come, and so they let him. They have a whole week at the campsite, and Seamus and Dean take full advantage of their state of minimal supervision to roam the campground and the surrounding woods each day.

The match itself is like nothing Seamus has ever experienced. He's more excited than he's ever been; Ireland is dominating the field and Seamus is on his feet the whole time, Dean cheering beside him.

He can feel a weird doubling of emotions every time a great goal or save happens, as his stomach seems to jump twice as high as it normally does. It's bizarre and exhilarating and he's never felt so connected to his soulmate before as he does now, experiencing everything in synchrony.

Ireland wins, and Seamus feels like he might explode.

They're still celebrating in their tents, telling stories and laughing when Seamus feels a spike of fear that doesn't take long to turn into terror. He bolts up from his seat. Dean stares at him, baffled, but Seamus doesn't even notice. His soulmate was here. Something is happening, here, that has terrified them.

"Shay?" It's Dean, concern etched across his face."What's up?"

Seamus shakes his head. "It's fine. I'm going for a walk."

Dean stands up. "It's the middle of the night, dude. I'll go with you."

Seamus looks at him, hoping the fear creeping through his veins isn't visible across his face. "I really don't think that's necessary. I'll be right back. You stay here." Seamus slides out of the tent before anyone else can protest — his mam looks like she plans to, so he doesn't give her the chance.

Fires are still lit all around him, where people are still outside and celebrating in groups too large to fit in tents. They give the whole landscape an eerie, hellish glow.

No one nearby seems to notice anything amiss. They sit at their fires, chattering and laughing and drinking.

Far off to the north, though, there's something in the sky.

Dean, unsurprisingly, has emerged from the tent whole Seamus was surveying. He follows Seamus' gaze. "What is that? Is that some sort of celebratory thing?"

"I don't think so," Seamus says. He turns toward his friend. "Please. Please, stay here."

Dean rolls his eyes. "You don't even know what you're walking into. You think I'm gonna let you do it alone?"

And what is Seamus supposed to say to that without being a hypocrite?

When they get closer, the campfires around them are deserted — some extinguished, some left burning. They can hear screaming before they can really understand what they're seeing.

Seamus carefully creeps forward, keeping tents in between him and whatever is happening on the ground, eyes fixed on the sky.

"That's the camp director," Dean whispers over his shoulder. "That must be his family."

And so they are. The campground director, his wife, and their two children float in the air.

Even from some distance away, Seamus and Dean can tell that a multitude of tents are on fire.

"We need to get out of here," Dean hisses at him.

Seamus looks at him, and then retreats behind the tent they are crouching beside. They're still a good distance away from whatever is going on on the ground.

"My soulmate is nearby," Seamus confesses. Dean, as he always does, takes this information entirely in stride.

"Okay, but your soulmate is likely a teenager, as you and I are also teenagers, so we should probably let the real adults handle this. Now, my guess would be most people sent their kids off in the direction of the woods, if not took their whole family that way. So let's go toward the woods, likely toward your soulmate, and also away from here."

Dean is usually a man of few words, so when he says that many sentences in a row, Seamus tends to listen. He nods sharply, knowing Dean will see it well enough in the dying firelight where they are, and they creep toward the forest, careful and quiet.

Seamus doesn't know exactly what he expects to find when he gets to the forest, but it's not the quiet darkness that greets them. Most people seem to have fled deeper into the woods, leaving only a few curious (or foolish) souls near the campsite.

The terror thrumming through his veins has settled into a fierce concentration tinged with fear.

Seamus doesn't know how he expected this to help, but he's not sure he could've made another decision. That sort of raw terror was incredibly motivating — to have sat and done nothing seems impossible.

Dean is looking at him as though he's ever so slightly mad, but Seamus doesn't care. He knows these woods fairly well after a thorough week of exploration; he sets off on a path to a large clearing, thinking maybe people will congregate there.

They have congregated, those that have found the clearing, but it's so dark he can't tell who anyone is and Seamus knows that this exploration was all pointless.

Dean claps a hand on his shoulder, acknowledging the same thing but also letting him know that it's fine.

..**..

So the World Cup was a mess, but at least one good thing came of it. Fred and Oliver finally got their shit together and admitted they were both mad over one another.

By the end of the summer, George finds himself glad Oliver has already graduated, because he loves Fred dearly, he does, and Oliver was his friend first and his captain for years, but if he has to continue seeing them together all the time, he's going to strangle someone with his bare hands.

He doesn't want to lay blame, but sometimes he wonders if Fred and Oliver might not have been a catalyst for the way Percy pulls away from them all, that summer. Oliver was Percy's best and often only friend, and the one person Percy could always say liked him best of all the Weasleys. Oliver and Percy were weird friends — they had completely different interests, but they were in the same year and somehow they'd become intensely loyal to one another, to the point where Oliver would defend Percy whenever Fred and George tried to tease him.

Fred and Oliver getting their shit together made Percy feel like people were always going to choose his brothers over him, and George suspects this may be part of why he throws himself into his work so thoroughly, and part of why he's so snappish at Fred and George in particular.

Not that George appreciates being lumped into this, but he's resigned to it at this point.

At least when the summer ends, Percy stays home, and Oliver stays at his home, and George can get some blessed peace to properly wreak havoc.

..**..

It's the night before the second task of the Triwizard Tournament when Dean suddenly goes very still. He and Seamus are sitting on a couch in the Gryffindor common room, nominally studying but mostly just lounging.

The common room is mostly empty — or maybe that's just the notable absence or Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who always seem to occupy more space than should be physically possible.

"All right, mate?" Seamus is frowning at Dean. Dean's hand is at his sternum and it looks like he's feeling for something that isn't there. He doesn't seem to hear Seamus at all. Seamus places a hand on his arm "Dean," he says just a little louder. Dean startles, and then turns to look at him. His eyes look weird and vacant. "You're scaring me."

Dean blinks, and seems to shake off… something.

"Something's missing," he finally says, and wow, that's incredibly unhelpful.

"What?"

"Here." He taps his sternum. "Something's missing."

"Look, mate, I know you're a man of few words, but honestly, that's so few words I don't even know what you're saying."

At this point Dean just looks vaguely bewildered.

"I don't… I don't know."

And what the hell is Seamus supposed to do with that? "Do you want to go see Pomfrey?"

Dean hesitates, and then shakes his head. "I doubt this is her area. I'll just… wait and see for a bit."

And only because the vacant look in his eyes has mostly faded does Seamus agree.

..**..

Dean and Seamus traipse out to the stands near the black lake, excited despite the rain. The last task, they got to watch the Champions battle dragons. They can only imagine what will come next.

They are not expecting to sit in the rain for an hour and stare at the surface of a lake, waiting for a head to emerge, and then squinting to identify who it is through the haze.

This seems poorly planned at best.

Just over halfway in, blonde hair breaks the surface. Fleur comes up coughing and flailing, and perhaps most notably, doesn't seem to have recovered whatever it is the Champions are supposed to be recovering. She climbs onto the dock, looking mournful as someone gets her a towel.

Cedric comes up next, and whispers run through the crowd as people realize what it is that he's retrieved — or rather, who.

Cho Chang, Cedric's girlfriend, is gasping for air beside him. As the realization that the Champions are retrieving people from the bottom of the lake runs through them all, Fleur's high, piercing yell rends the air. "NON!" They follow the sound and find Fleur struggling in the arms of someone on the docks, clearly trying to reenter the lake. "Non, non! Gabrielle!"

Seamus thinks about being in her shoes, about realizing someone he loves — Dean, probably, as his best friend in the world — is trapped beneath the Black Lake, waiting for him to come save him. Thinks about realizing that he had failed at saving Dean.

Even more than when watching them face the dragons, Seamus is glad he is not a Champion.

It's only a few minutes later when a shark's head emerges with Hermione Granger in tow, and rapidly transforms back into Viktor Krum.

When Harry's head breaks the surface with two others in tow, though, Seamus is distracted from the scene by Dean suddenly gasping for air beside him. His eyes are wide and he's suddenly shivering.

"Dean? Dean!"

But after a moment of not responding, Dean's breathing and pulse start to slowly return to normal. He's staring at the docks intently.

"It's her," he says finally, looking down at the Champions and their loved ones. He felt the surge of affection when Fleur hugged her little sister, the flare of warmth and the feeling of coming in from the cold as someone cast a warming charm on her.

Seamus follows Dean's gaze, and then things about the last 24 hours. "Fleur's sister?"

Dean is nodding and Seamus doesn't know what to do with this information. Wonders what Dean is going to do with this information. But when he asks, Dean just shakes his head. "What am I supposed to do? She's like ten."

And so she is.

And in the end, Dean decides that he feels too weird reaching out to a ten year old, but not reaching out at all feels unfair to her, so he owls Fleur's parents via the post office because it feels more official that way, and he asks them to let him be Gabrielle's friend, first. Asks to owl her, just to get to know her.

They ask for a meeting in person.

Seamus offers to go with him for moral support, but Dean, despite looking practically green with nausea, refuses and says this is something he needs to do alone. They meet him in the Three Broomsticks on a Hogsmeade weekend — international travel being easier for two adult wizards than for one underage one.

After thoroughly interrogating him about everything he's ever felt from Gabrielle and every single one of his intentions, they tell him that they appreciate his responsibility and candor in reaching out to them.

Dean gains a pen pal. Gabi, he tells Seamus, is funny and sharp as nails and still working on her English but getting better by the letter. When Dean tells her they are soulmates, Gabrielle tells him that this is good, because it means they will be friends forever.

..**..

And suddenly Voldemort is back.

Voldemort is back and Seamus' mam almost doesn't let him come back to Hogwarts and Seamus can't stay in that house. In the end she lets him go, but only just. And Potter says Voldemort is back and the Ministry and Umbridge say he isn't and Seamus isn't mad at Harry, not really, he's just still terrified at the thought of being kept from Hogwarts and his friends. So he yells at Harry in front of everyone in the common room.

Harry yells right back at Seamus, and Seamus feels horrible but he's made his stance, and he's sticking to it.

George isn't in the common room at the time, because he and Fred are in their dorm planning. He feels the spike of rage and fear and guilt, and he wonders.

And then Harry does his interview with Rita Skeeter, and Seamus knows that he has no concept of what Harry is going through, but he knows that his stubbornness is only making it worse. So he apologizes. He lets Dean drag him to a D.A. meeting.

It feels like no time at all passes, but suddenly Seamus is sitting for his OWLs when he feels a spark of pure joy start in his chest and spread all the way to his fingertips.

He is baffled by this, until Fred and George burst into the hall, trailing massive fireworks of art. That's enough to make anyone feel this sort of glee.

Not long after that, the Ministry is suddenly acknowledging Voldemort's return and their world seems to get much darker very quickly until there are Death Eaters in their school and the D.A. are fighting them, alongside adults who call themselves the Order.

And then Dumbledore is dead.

Dumbledore is dead by Snape's hand.

And Dean and Ron and Harry don't come back to Hogwarts and Seamus and Neville have become the de facto leaders, along with Lavender and Parvati.

And Seamus is terrified but defiant as hell, and he will not go down without a fight.

..**..

George isn't sure what exactly is happening at Hogwarts, but he knows it's bad.

He knows his soulmate is still at Hogwarts because he felt the pure awe of that first Hogwarts boat trip across the Black Lake during his third year. He felt the excitement every year following. He felt the dread this year.

He knows it's bad because within a week of school starting up again, his very soul screams out in pain. Fred finds him on the floor of the back room of the shop, where he had been taking inventory. His muscles are still twitching.

"What the hell was that?"

"Cruciatus, I'm pretty sure." He spits out a mouthful of blood from where he's apparently bit his own tongue. "And if that's what it feels like secondhand… Jesus."

"Fuck," Fred replies, and yeah, that about sums it up.

"Ron and Harry and Hermione had better get their shit together and finish whatever adventure quest they're on soon," George says. "This is going to be brutal."

He isn't wrong.

It's not just the Cruciatus, although there is plenty of that. It's pain of all kinds — sharp and cutting, dull and throbbing, guilt and grief and the sour feeling of not doing enough to help.

George tries to keep his own mood light in the hopes that some of it will carry over. He lets himself dwell on the highs of inventing and tries not to think to hard about how bleak everything seems.

There is an ache of loneliness that doesn't belong to him from missing someone he doesn't know lodged in his chest and he hurts from wounds that aren't his, but he also carries someone else's fierce defiance and conviction. He does his best to live up to that.

After a year of pain, George feels the Galleon he's kept in his pocket burn. Ginny was visiting he and Fred, and they grab Lee from where he's working downstairs and promptly Apparate to Hogsmeade. The walk down the tunnel is an emotional roller coaster, and George gets a wave of determination, then pure joy, then confusion.

And then George is stumbling out of the tunnel and Ron is there, and Harry too. Except that no one seems to know what they're there for.

George finds his eyes tracking to the Gryffindor seventh years in the room, noting who was at Hogwarts this year and who wasn't. He knows their names from Ron, learned them carefully without saying why after figuring out his soulmate was a Gryffindor. He looks at the bruises still forming on Seamus' face, the scars lining Neville's arms, the still healing cuts littering Lavender and Parvati, and he thinks that sort of fierce determination could belong to any one of them.

..**..

Seamus is tired, and bruised, and beaten down, but when Harry, Ron and Hermione come through the portrait hole, he's on his feet and ready to fight.

And then Dean is there and Seamus is hurling himself at Dean.

But then Harry says they aren't fighting, yet Ginny and Fred and George and Lee are piling out of the tunnel.

Dean hasn't got a wand, what the fuck? And then Harry is asking about Rowena Ravenclaw and leading Luna out. The Room gets even louder as they leave, more people piling in and people greeting long lost friends and Fred and George cracking jokes above it all. A large black man shows up with their old Defense professor and suddenly Seamus is being introduced to the Order of the Phoenix and Professor Lupin is saying that he's heard about Seamus' rebellion and he's proud, seriously, what the fuck?

Then Fred and Lee are explaining Potterwatch to Katie, who somehow got left out of that loop, and George is explaining his absence as a host by talking about all the work he was doing on the broadcasting side.

Then Harry is back and they're all flooding out to the Great Hall to organize, ready to defend their school and their home.

The Weasleys and Harry don't flood out with the rest. Instead, Ginny and Mrs. Weasley are arguing and when his mum yells at him for bringing Ginny, George feels a spike of guilt so strong Seamus can feel it in the Great Hall.

Then Percy is there, and Seamus is getting pride instead, as George forgives his brother for his idiocy and loves him for his courage.

They make it to the Great Hall just as Voldemort asks the whole school to give up Harry to spare themselves, and the surge of rage George feels at that isn't just his.

Fred and George take charge of covering the tunnels leading into Hogwarts, splitting up so that they can cover more ground. It seems like it takes no time at all (but also an eternity) for Death Eaters to break through the outer defenses, and then Hogwarts is a battlefield in the war they all knew was coming but nobody ever wanted to see. Students and teachers and D.A. members are fighting against Death Eaters.

In some ways, Seamus thinks the students are more prepared than those on their side who have left school. They've been fighting this battle all year. They've gotten used to pushing past the pain, to carrying on. They know, intimately, what the Death Eaters are capable of. People like Oliver and Fred, like Angelina and Alicia, they've felt the fear, yes, and the oppression of a Ministry ruled by Death Eaters, but they haven't been in the thick of things. Fred has seen George struggle under the weight of his soulmate's pain, but George was getting it second hand, which means Fred was only seeing it third hand. Seeing it in person is different. Seeing their friends die is different.

Seamus and Luna and Ernie wind up on the grounds, defending the castle, trying to stop the Death Eaters from ever reaching it. There are dementors, a hoard bigger than Seamus has ever seen, and he thinks Harry is going to drive them back but Harry seems broken, and Seamus realizes that as much as Harry has been in the middle of this war, he hasn't been in the middle of the battle they've all been fighting all year. Not to minimize what Harry has been through, but he hasn't spent nine months watching his friends be tortured, being tortured himself. And Seamus knows that Harry has always bourne the weight of their whole world on his slim shoulders.

Seamus casts a Patronus, and watches his fox dart toward the dementors, and he can only hope that Harry can get over his shock and guilt quickly, because there is no denying they need him.

Then suddenly there are giants, and what the hell are they supposed to do about that? So they scatter.

It's not long after that when Voldemort's voice declares a cease fire, and their side slowly but surely convenes in the Great Hall.

..**..

George didn't know.

It doesn't seem possible. How could he not know when it seems like his world should've stopped turning?

But he didn't know.

He walks into the Great Hall, not knowing what to expect but not ever expecting this.

Fred is lying on the floor in the middle of the Hall. His eyes are closed.

Without thinking, George is on his knees at his side. He takes Fred's hand. His hand is cold. This isn't possible.

Percy puts a hand on shoulder, says something George doesn't hear. He is numb. It feels like he's underwater, gasping for air.

The grief hits him like a physical, tangible wave, and suddenly he is sobbing, heaving in great gulps of air. Every cell in his body is crying out in pain.

On the other side of the Great Hall, Seamus falls to his knees. Dean is at his side, asking, but Seamus just shakes his head because how do you explain a grief this visceral?

George doesn't even notice when Oliver kneels on the other side of Fred, takes his other hand. There are tears shining in his eyes. Oliver knew. He felt it, a brief flash of pure joy, and then an overwhelming numbness, as though a piece of him had been torn away, and he knew.

The first word's that penetrate the veil of grief surrounding them are Voldemort's. "Harry Potter is dead."

All movement in the Hall stills.

"The battle is won." At this, there is a stirring. They have lost their figurehead, yes, but they have lost their figurehead before, only a year ago. Those who are left are fighters. They never really fought for Harry. They believed in him, but they fought for themselves; they fought for their world.

They fought for their freedom. Voldemort threatening to slaughter them is nothing new.

George doesn't know if he has the strength to stand and face Voldemort, until he feels that now-familiar undercurrent of determination. He borrows his soulmate's strength and uses it to straighten his own spine. He lets go of Fred's hand, claps him on the shoulder, and then stands.

They spill out the castle in defiant rage, en mass, as one being. Voldemort tries to silence them, but his spell cannot hold.

Neville is rushing forward, proud and angry, and Voldemort laughs at him, but Seamus and all the students at Hogwarts this year know better. Neville is easily overlooked, but he has a core of pure steel.

Voldemort spells the Sorting Hat onto Neville's head and lights it on fire, to which Neville responds with the sort of badassery that only Neville can: he pulls the sword of Gryffindor out of the hat and kills Voldemort's snake. This seems an odd choice, but Voldemort is clearly enraged by it.

Then there are centaurs and giants and Harry is gone but reinforcements have arrived.

And suddenly they are once more in the midst of a firefight, backed into the Great Hall, in such close proximity that spells are flying every which way.

George is fighting with borrowed ferocity and pure adrenaline, packing his grief into a tiny box and shoving it away to deal with later.

Oliver is fighting with pure rage.

Voldemort seems to believe that by killing Harry he will have broken them, but that only shows how little he understands them. He hasn't broken them; he's given them a martyr.

George watches his mother kill Bellatrix Lestrange and he's knows that it's for them, for all of her children, for Ginny and for Fred. Voldemort looks enraged by Lestrange's death, and he aims his wand at Molly, but Harry is there, alive and throwing up a shield.

The fighting around the Hall has ceased, all eyes on Harry and Voldemort as they circle each other. They taunt each other, seeming to Seamus only to be delaying the inevitable, until Voldemort casts the Killing Curse and Harry casts a Disarming charm that he learned in second year. And yet somehow this works.

Voldemort's body hits the floor of the Great Hall, echoing in the frozen silence.

It's over.

It's over.

..**..

It's over, but that doesn't mean they're free.

Seamus finds this out the first time he tries to go near the Dungeons and instead winds up hyperventilating in the hallway.

Dean finds him sitting there, his head in his hands, breathing deeply and deliberately. He's sure Dean has his own trauma, but he still doesn't know how to explain. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to have to.

Dean just helps him up and together they move toward the Gryffindor Common Room.

Dean also seems to understand when Seamus says he can't go home. His mam is all too happy to help Seamus rent a flat in London (because if she can't see him, she doesn't have to face the reminder of her youthful rebellion). He and Dean rent a two bedroom flat in Diagon Alley.

They don't talk about what happened to them.

Dean doesn't talk about spending a year in forests, doesn't talk about being kidnapped and held by Death Eaters. Seamus doesn't talk about the torture he experienced, much of it at the hands of his own classmates as the Carrows forced them to turn on one another or face even worse.

He and Dean have always cohabitated well, and sharing a flat doesn't turn out to be much different from sharing a dorm.

Seamus immediately knows he's going to need something to do with his time if he doesn't want to be driven insane by his own mind. He starts exploring Diagon Alley for places that are hiring. Seamus still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, long term, but he knows he has time to figure it out.

After asking at a few places, he finds himself wandering into Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. There are a few customers in the store proper, and George Weasley sits slumped at the checkout counter.

"Hello," Seamus says. George looks up at him.

"Seamus, right? Hello."

Seamus nods. He thinks about asking how things are going, but he can guess the answer.

"Any chance you're hiring?" he says instead.

George looks him up and down. "How are you at maths?" he finally asks.

Seamus shrugs. "Good enough."

George shrugs as well. "Sure, why not."

And that, it seems, is that. George puts him on the schedule, which currently features only George, Lee Jordan, and occasionally Ron, and trains him how to use the cash register.

George seems subdued, but Seamus can't claim to have known him very well before the war. Ron tells Seamus once that they're concerned about him, but Seamus thinks that it's only been two months since the war ended and George lost his twin. They are all of them still grieving who they've lost. Most days, he can still feel his soulmate's grief like a living thing. He wonders who it is. He wonders who they lost.

In August, when the Hogwarts letters go out, the shop gets busier. Seamus gets a letter informing him that he's considered a graduate despite never having sat for his NEWTs, but he can come back and retake his seventh year if he wants to.

He doesn't want to. He can't even imagine walking down into the Dungeons for potions class, eating in the Great Hall every day.

He tells George about the letter and George says, "They don't get it, do they?" Seamus doesn't know how George understands, but clearly he does.

George lives above the shop, alone. Seamus starts inviting him to dinner mostly because he suspects that otherwise George doesn't get a lot of human interaction outside of the shop. Sure, Angelina and Alicia and Katie all visit sometimes, and once Oliver, who left with a tear streaked face, but George rarely leaves.

Seamus can't cook, but Dean can, and he never minds cooking for three if given warning.

So it starts with dinner about every other week, and it turns into Seamus deciding George needs to experience Muggle cinema, then other weird Muggle things, until they wind up in a Muggle magic shop.

It's been six months since the end of the war. It's the first time Seamus has really seen George laugh. It's more magical than anything in the shop.

Seamus makes it his mission to ensure George laughs more often. He finds out that George has a weakness for Muggle fantasy movies — the Muggle concept of elves will never fail to make him smile. They go to cinema more often. Seamus convinces Dean to help him rig up a television in their apartment so they can watch movies that aren't in the cinemas. He doesn't notice the way Dean looks at him with a bemused smile the first time he and George watch a movie on the couch.

George falls asleep during a movie, leaning on Seamus' shoulder, and Seamus pulls the blanket off the back of the couch over him and comes to a realization.

He's not sure when it happened, but sometime in the last year, between the movies and the fake magic and the fantasy movies, he has fallen in love with George Weasley.

..**..

And some days, Seamus calls in sick because he can't leave his apartment without trembling. And some days George never opens the shop because he can't get out of bed. And they're a mess.

But Seamus is beautiful when he smiles. Sometimes he can even make George laugh, which is much harder than it used to be. He makes George tea without even being asked. And from his friendship with Dean, George knows that Seamus loves with the ferocity of a Gryffindor and the loyalty of a Hufflepuff. He's clever as hell and great with their line of minor explosives. He's good with people, too, most days.

Despite everything they've all been through, Seamus smiles easily as breathing. He remembers names and details about all of their regular customers, so well that as soon as Billy Petosky walks through the door he's already smiling and asking how the fireworks went over with Billy's little sister. Sometimes George is jealous of how easy Seamus makes it all look.

But then Seamus finds his muscles trembling for no reason, and when George asks, Seamus looks at him and says, "are you sure you want to know?"

George nods. Seamus breathes deeply, and starts to explain the year of his life he's never told anyone about.

George looks at him in horror as Seamus tells him about his first detention, received for "disrupting class" by telling Alecto, who was teaching Muggle Studies, that it wasn't true that Muggles bathed in mud.

Alecto had given him detention. That night, he'd learned what the Cruciatus curse felt like.

He explains that as the year had progressed, the Carrows had gotten more creative, and things had gotten much worse. At some point, they had figured out that forcing the students to harm each other was a much more effective method of torture than brute pain.

Seamus' voice cracks as he explains the first time Ernie has turned his wand on him. Ernie had been shaking, trembling so badly it has thrown his aim off, but Seamus had begged him to do it, knowing that Ernie would face much worse if he hadn't cooperated.

Ernie hadn't been any good at the Cruciatus. After having him ineffectually practice that, Alecto had turned to simple cutting curses.

Seamus feels the tears start to run down his face as he explains that the four seventh year Gryffindors, he and Neville and Lavender and Parvati, had made a vow together, that they wouldn't turn on their classmates, no matter what it did to them. That they wouldn't hold it against anyone who did, but that they wouldn't.

This is why they faced the brunt of the Carrows rage. They took that rage onto themselves on purpose, hoping to spare their classmates as best as they could.

Seamus looks up to see George staring at him, shock and wonder and awe and rage all written across his face.

"You're incredible," George finally says.

Seamus shrugs uncomfortably.

"No, you are," George insists.

And Seamus doesn't know what he's supposed to say to that.

..**..

Gabi and her parents come to London for a week. She's a spitfire full of sass and a surprising amount of grace for a fourteen year old. She and Dean get on like a house on fire.

Seamus likes her loads, until she waltzes into the shop, looks between George and Seamus, and then says to Seamus, "You're right, he is cute."

Seamus goes. "Gabi!"

George, though, is grinning wildly at the pair of them, so he can't be too mad.

"Cute, huh?" George asks when Dean has sufficiently distracted Gabi with the Pygmy puffs.

Seamus knows his face is still flushed. "I… erm." And then he looks at the way George's eyes are twinkling at him, and he thinks, fuck it. "Yeah, fucking adorable," he says. "Want to get dinner?"

"Seamus, we have dinner all the time."

Seamus throws his head back and laughs. "Fuck you, George. Want to go on a dinner date?"

George's grin spreads across his whole face. "Love to."

..**..

They go to dinner, a Muggle Italian restaurant just outside of Diagon Alley. They walk back holding hands. Seamus can feel his joy, bubbling up like the glass of champagne he's had to drink.

He's giddy and he feels like a twelve year old on his first ever date, but he doesn't care.

They reach the shop, and Seamus doesn't want to say goodbye, but he does anyway.

George doesn't let go of his hand. Instead, he turns so that they're properly facing one another, puts his other hand on Seamus' cheek, and says, "I'd really like to kiss you now, if that's okay?"

Seamus nods, breathless and nervous and excited.

When George kisses him, his nerves crackle and fizz, every part of his body tingling. And then, suddenly, the feeling amplifies, creating a feedback loop of emotion that is unmistakable.

Seamus gasps, pulling back just a little.

"Did you feel that?"

George nods, beaming.

"Did you know?"

George's hand, which has dropped to Seamus' shoulder, runs a small circle. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a guess."

Seamus laughs, letting his head fall against George's shoulder.

"I didn't have a goddamn clue."

George chuckles, and Seamus can feel it in his bones. "Really? I figured you'd know in your second year, when Ginny was taken."

Seamus groans, lifting his head. "Oh my god, that makes so much sense now!"

George chuckles again. "At the very least, I figured you'd know after the battle." His glee fades, but his smile doesn't disappear, and Seamus notes this as a mark of how far he's come.

Seamus shrugs. "A lot of people lost someone. Honestly, at one point Dean tried to convince me it was Dennis Creevey. He nearly succeeded, too."

"That's nothing," George says. "For like thirty seconds, I honestly wondering if mine was Ron." George is laughing again, and Seamus is laughing with him.

And yeah, being soulmates isn't any kind of guarantee. They're still a mess. They still have bad days, and worse days. Seamus still wakes up screaming most nights, but George is there to ground him. And when George wakes up suffocating under the feeling of being alone, Seamus will talk to him about everything and nothing until he can sleep once more.

They're broken, but they fit, and that's all either of them ever asked for.