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bellatrix-la-strange · 5 years

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Lee Jordan’s Untold Love Story

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Fred Weasley’s funeral was held on a Wednesday, two months after the Battle of Hogwarts.

His entire family was in attendance, as were his friends from Hogwarts, acquaintances he’d made in the brief stint of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, and trusted comrades brave enough to house and hide three escaped freedom fighters from Voldemort’s forces.

And that’s what they’d been—Fred, George and Lee. Freedom fighters.

There was a casket with Fred’s body in it. As per wizarding tradition, every member of Fred’s family had touched their wand to the wood and inscribed his last resting place with a piece of their magic. It could take on many forms, each one unique to the person who left it and their relationship with the deceased.

(When it was George’s turn, a line of fire snaked out of the tip of his wand and burned the silhouettes of a hyena and a coyote lying on their sides, heads resting on each other’s tails and turned towards each other so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. A perfect yin-yang.)

In the back, on the outer edge of the last row, was Lee Jordan. He sat unnaturally still, only the slightest swish of wind ruffling his hair betraying his statue-like demeanour. He didn’t have a very good view of the Weasleys up ahead, but his seat was precisely positioned so as to let him see straight past the sea of bowed heads and extravagant hats to the coffin containing his late best friend.

Lee’s mourning was a silent one. He kept his lips sealed shut by mere force of will and didn’t let a single sound escape even as Fred’s casket was engulfed in white flames and the last remains of the man he’d loved were burned off the face of the earth.

George turned back and caught his gaze then, as though he, too, could sense the change in the air, a sudden heaviness, a dulling of colours as the last thing left tying Fred’s soul to their plane of existence was brutally severed.

You should be up here, George’s eyes seemed to say. With us. You’re his family, too.

Lee shook his head and lowered his gaze. While the ceremony continued around him, he concentrated all his attention on the bouquet of white dittanies and forget-me-nots squeezed between his hands.

“We can’t just stand by and do nothing! There are people dying out there, Lee, and my entire family is right in the thick of it,” Fred exclaimed, pulling at his hair with one hand and waving his wand around the air with the other. “Fucking hell, my brother is out there, running around with The Boy Who Lived, the only person in this entire fucked up world the Dark Lord wants to see dead more than anything. My little sister—Ginny—she’s…”

“Hey hey, stop. This?” Lee pointed a finger at Fred. “This stops right now. It’s not helping anyone if you worry yourself to death. We’re at war, Fred, as you so aptly pointed out, and everyone is in danger. You’re a pureblood traitor and I’m a mudblood mutt—”

“Don’t you dare call yourself—”

“I don’t believe it,” Lee hastened to add, “but it’s the truth for now. How long do you think it’ll take before they come for us? We’re not exactly hard to find.” Shrugging his shoulders, Lee turned around on the spot, arms spread wide, and pointedly looked around the colourful joke shop.

Despite himself, a hint of a grin pulled at the corner of Fred’s mouth. “I just feel so useless tucked in here, hiding, while the rest of my family is out there fighting for their lives.”

“All right,” Lee said, nodding, “I can work with that. So what do you want to do?”

Fred’s head snapped up from staring holes into the ground. “What?”

“You’re not the only one who’s been feeling restless lately. I can tell George is about two days away from blasting through the front door, Death Eaters be damned, and while there are some things I’ve enjoyed about being holed up in here for days on end with nothing better to do other than enjoy each other’s…company, there’s only so much more I can take of these four walls. So what do you want to do?”

“I want to help in any way I can,” Fred stated. “We don’t have to fight to be useful, there are other ways to help people. We opened up this store because we wanted to bring laughter and joy to other people’s lives, remind them that no matter how hard things get, they could always find a pocket of brightness in here. But they took that away from us, too. We need a way to bring that back, spread the word that we’re not gone and we’re not done. Not by a long shot. They need to know there are other people out there who are fighting, too.”

“Hope.” Lee said softly. “They need a reason to have hope.”

Fred nodded. “And so do we.”

“So it’s decided, then? We’re going to go out there and spread hope to anyone who will listen.”

“In any way we can.”

Lee and Fred stared at each other then, taking in every detail of the person they loved most in the world, one of the many they’d risk certain death with.

“I’ll go tell George.”

“I feel like James Bond.”

“You’ve mentioned him before. Is that another one of your Muggle celebrities? Oh, wait, no— is he the one who’s a spy and goes on adventures around the world? There’s a number on the cover of the book, right? Seven-something.”

Lee grinned, pleased Fred had remembered one of his favourite characters. “Double-oh-seven. That’s the one.”

Fred snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s the one. You’re going to have to lend me the book some time. How else am I supposed to keep up with you if I don’t get half of what you’re saying?” he teased.

“I don’t know, you seem to have no trouble at all keeping up with me any other time.” Lee turned heat-filled eyes on Fred and watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed past a sudden dry mouth.

“For Merlin’s sake!” hissed George. “We’re in the middle of a mission and you two can’t even keep your flirting to yourselves for the few hours it would take us to finish here?” There was a noise then, a crunch of twigs underfoot, and the robed figure of a Death Eater passed by their hiding place, completely unaware of their presence thanks to the many protective charms in place. Still, the trio waited ten minutes in silence before George continued. “It’s been years, surely you’re past the honeymoon period.”

“It’s all about keeping the romance alive, brother. After all, how can I truly call myself a proper prankster if I don’t find the time to seduce my fiancé on the outskirts of the Death Eater camp we’re scouting?” Fred philosophized.

“Fiancé?” asked George, eyes opened so wide Lee was afraid his eyeballs would plop out. “As in, actual fiancé? With a ring and a wedding and a marriage licence?”

“A candy ring,” Lee supplied. “I’m afraid it’s all eaten up now and I really doubt we’ll find time to plan a party anytime soon—are we even allowed to get married in the magical world?—but other than that, yes, proper fiancé.”

It was a good thing they’d used so many enchantments on their hiding spot in the end. Though no one could have foreseen it, only the strength of a thrice reinforced Silencing Charm was able to keep George’s whoops and cheers contained.

“You’re thinking too hard.”

“That’s funny, I recall you saying the exact opposite countless times before.”

Lee shrugged, shoulder scraping against the door-jamb. “I stand by all those other times, by the way, but it’s hard not to make a comment when you start scrunching up your face in a way I’ve never seen before.”

“Never? Are you sure?” Fred leaned back against the couch, legs spread and arms hugging the backrest as he looked up at Lee from between the locks of ginger hair falling on his forehead. They’d been on the run for months now, moving their radio operation from place to place every few days to make it harder for the Death Eaters to catch up to them. Needless to say, self-grooming had fallen on the wayside in favour of survival.

“Positive.”

Fred snorted, bringing up a hand to scratch at the weeks old scruff on his cheeks. “Harsh. I have feelings, you know? I’m not just some beefcake built for your viewing and playing pleasure.”

It was Lee’s turn to snort, but he sobered up quickly and levelled his fiancé with a sober stare. “You’re thinking bad thoughts again. I can tell when you do that, you know. You get clingy and distant at the same time. You wake up in the middle of the night and hardly get any sleep.”

“You notice that, huh?”

“We’ve been friends—best friends—for just shy of a decade. I know you better than you know yourself at this point. Only George and Molly would be able to give me a run for my money.”

“No, they couldn’t,” Fred said softly. A tap of his hand against his leg and Lee was settling down on his lap, hands interlocked behind Fred’s head and neck bent down so their foreheads were just shy of touching. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” said Lee, in that same tone of voice that one uses when confessing a deep secret. “Me too.”

“So what do we do?” asked Fred, rubbing circles on Lee’s back.

“We push through it. We don’t let it control us, but we also don’t forget that it’s there. We use that fear to our advantage because it’s always great to have just a tiny bit of it in the back of our minds; when the time comes, that little nugget of fear might just end up saving our lives,” said Lee, his voice calm and sure as his fingers teased out the knots in Fred’s hair.

“Mmm,” Fred sighed. “See? This is why I’m marrying you.”

“My superior intellect and sage-sounding advice?”

“And your smashing bod,” Fred grinned, pulling Lee in so they were chest to chest and allowing his hands to wonder and squeeze.

Not to be outdone, Lee grabbed a handful of Fred’s hair and pulled, catching his lips when his head was tilted back. They kissed for a while, lips parting, hands wandering and hips rocking smoothly, as if they had all the time in the world. Eventually, the kisses slowed to pecks and the pecks morphed to content, lazy nuzzling.

“This is what we have to look forward to,” murmured Fred, eyes half closed so only a sliver of blue was visible through a curtain of fine lashes. “After the war is over, we can do whatever we want. The shop was doing well, once we open it back up we could definitely afford our own place, one close enough to the Floo network so I can travel to Diagon Alley in the mornings and you can get to whichever news station was lucky enough to land you—maybe the Daily Prophet, after they get rid of all the Death Eaters—”

“I’d rather work for the Quibbler, thank you very much,” muttered Lee, afraid that if he spoke above a whisper his voice would break and betray the tsunami of emotions he was drowning in.

“Right, so no Daily Prophet. You go to the Quibbler and I’ll go to the shop and and since I’m my own boss, I’ll probably get home before you which means that I will cook dinner—”

“That chicken dish I like?”

“Exactly,” Fred smiled, closing his eyes and leaning back so they were now lying on the couch with Lee’s head resting on his chest. “So I’ll cook us dinner and by the time you get home everything will be ready and maybe George will have come back with me from the shop and on some nights we can invite Ron with Hermione, and Harry will be back with Ginny at that point for sure, and Percy will be just around the corner at the Ministry so maybe he’d like to join as well—”

“This place we live in, is it a home or a halfway house for wayward Weasleys?” asked Lee.

Fred shrugged and said, “Why can’t it be both? In any case, mum will insist on seeing us at least once a week so Sunday nights will be spent at the Borrow and that leaves Saturday nights at your parents’ house...which doesn’t leave that much time for us, so maybe we can push it down to just twice a month?”

“Agreed,” said Lee. Then, almost shyly, “You’ve really given this some thought.”

“It’s the rest of our lives, Lee,” said Fred, “there’s nothing better to think about.”

“...and that’s it for tonight, our dear listeners. Remember to keep your wireless at hand to catch more from Potterwatch and I know we can’t make any promises, but I’m making this one anyway: we will be back. So keep fiddling with those dials: next password will be ‘Umbitch’. Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.”

George let out deep breath and removed the headphones covering his ears, shaking out his hair like a wet dog and wiggling a finger in his ears. Sitting across him on the same dilapidated table, Fred and Lee were going through the same rituals, the former stretching out his back against the chair while the latter picked up and put away their equipment.

“I think that went well,” George said. “We had twice as many people listening in than last time. With any luck, those aren’t all Death Eaters plotting out ways to find us and tear us apart limb from limb to then use our skulls as ceremonial cups.”

“You should write poetry, George,” said Lee, “who wouldn’t want such vivid imagery of their own demise planted in their mind as they’re on the run from the most dangerous wizarding organization of all time?”

“You think so? Thanks, mate,” George smiled from ear to ear and said, magnanimously, “I’m sure you have some talent too, and when you find it, I’ll make sure to encourage you as much as you did me. I won’t forget this.”

Lee shared an eye roll with Fred, who was chose to keep silent, looking on in amusement, and said, “I’m sure you won’t, George. In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful and—” The colour drained from Lee’s face as the words got caught in his throat. He turned panicked eyes on the Weasley twins and brought a finger up to his lips, taking out his wand and moving on light feet to the door.

The twins exchanged puzzled looks of their own but followed the protocol they had in place for situations just like this one. They charmed their feet silent with a mumbled spell and went about the room, packing up their stuff and removing any evidence that they’d been there in the first place.

When all was said and done and Lee still hadn’t moved from his vigil by the door, Fred walked up to him and whispered, “What’s going on?”

“I-I’m not entirely sure,” Lee stammered, “I thought I heard something—a cough.”

“That’s what we set up the perimeter alarm to sound like,” Fred supplied.

“I know! But it’s been almost fifteen minutes and nothing’s—”

A mild-mannered cough interrupted Lee and was followed by a feminine sneeze. Lee could feel the tension in the room suddenly reach an all time high as the three of them processed their predicament.

“Someone’s coming,” hissed Fred, “and they’ve set up Anti-Apparition wards. We can’t apparate away.”

“Any ideas?” asked Lee, shuffling lightly on his feet so his body was covering Fred from anyone bursting in through the door.

There was a resounding boom around them, followed by the house shaking on its foundations and the windows blowing out to pieces. George, Fred and Lee locked eyes and nodded their heads as one.

“Get the brooms out, Freddy,” said George, “we’re going flying.”

Dust covered every surface of the great hall. There were beds set up on the floor; the right side for the injured and the left side for the dead.

Fred was lying on his back on sheets of white, features soft and relaxed, as though he were dreaming the most wonderful of dreams. He was resting on the left side of the hall.

He was surrounded by his family. His mother held his head between her hands and rocked herself over his prone body, barely coherent enough to recognize the arms wrapped around her torso as those belonging to her husband who had his face buried in her hair, darkening her auburn tresses with his tears.

His siblings were arranged close by in various forms of distress. Ron was holding onto Hermione like she was the only thing keeping him up while Ginny had her head tucked into the crook of Harry’s neck, fingers idly tracing shapes on the palm of his hand as they both stared blindly into the distance. Percy and Charlie were sitting back to back on the dirty ground, the former with his head bowed down to his chest and hands grasping at a bleeding leg while the latter was inspecting the new ugly burns running up and down his arms. Bill was standing tall and weary with his wife in his arms and George…

George was lying down next to his dead brother, legs out straight, arms at his sides and face looking up at the enchanted ceiling. No one would be able he wasn’t as dead as his brother if it weren’t for the tear tracks continuously running down the sides of his face and disappearing into his hair.

Lee watched this all from a distance. He couldn’t tell where he was in relation to his dead fiancé and would-be family, but he couldn’t just see it all; he could feel it, too. It was a gaping wound in his chest, festering and growing by the second until it became so large it felt like it was swallowing him whole and any life he had left was being choked out of him by grief and heartbreak.

The war was won. Voldemort was dead and his remaining Death Eaters were being rounded up by the vengeful families of their victims and if they weren’t caught tonight, there always tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and the one after that one and so on.

They had all the time in the world now.

But for Lee, within the cavernous walls of Hogwart’s great hall, at that very moment, time stood still. And he didn’t think it would ever start again.

Lee woke up with a shuddering gasp. His legs moved of their own accord and propelled him from the bed, running to the bathroom where they landed on the floor with a resounding smack as his stomach hacked up its contents into the porcelain bowl. He spent a few seconds catching his breath before flushing his vomit down the toilet and stumbling to his feet.

The cold water felt wonderful on his overheated skin. He let it run over his hands then washed his face and cleaned out his mouth. Supporting himself on the edge of the sink, he lifted his head and stared at the reflection looking back at him in the mirror.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he muttered.

“I’ll say. I’ve been waking up to this for the past three months and I never get tired of it.”

Lee smiled and relaxed for the first time since waking up as two wiry, freckled arms wrapped around his stomach from behind and brought his bare back against an equally bare chest.

“What was it this time?”

“Another nightmare,” Lee murmured.

“The same one?”

“Mhmm,” Lee hummed.

“I’m sorry, love.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Really? Because I’d consider getting hit by a deadly, rare curse which has my family thinking I’m dead and nearly succeeds in actually killing me, leaving you with recurring nightmares of my death and the ensuing life without me, to be kind of my fault.” Fred’s voice was gritty from sleep and his breath was warm against Lee’s neck as he leaned forward and placed a kiss there.

“You’re right, I should be coming to you for restitution,” said Lee, his face betraying nothing after years of experience pulling pranks alongside the Weasley twins.

“Damn bloody right you should.” Fred turned Lee around so they’d be face to face. “I’m sad to say I’m all out of money at the moment and unfortunately Gringotts doesn’t open until well into the morning.”

“I can’t possibly imagine waiting that long,” Lee announced. “How will I cope?”

“Therein lies my problem,” said Fred, nodding his head solemnly. “

Fred levelled Lee with his best ‘come hither’ look, wiggling his eyebrows for extra effect, and Lee couldn’t take it anymore. He snorted with laughter and said, “Really? Now? And that’s what you’re going with?”

“I’m standing by it and after all, there’s no time like the present,” Fred winked. “Even if we do have all the time in the world, best to sometimes live in the moment, don’t you think?”

Lee thought back to his nightmare, to the very real memories sprinkled in between the nightmarish sequence of Fred’s death and his funeral. He remembered all those moments stolen in between missions and Potterwatch broadcasts and fights with Death Eaters. He recalled the flash of memories, one more precious than the other, which had run through his the second he’d walked into the great hall and spotted Fred’s body among the dead.

“Yeah,” he said, eyes catching on the band of gold on his finger and dashing to catch the same glint on Fred’s own finger. “We can live in the moment. For now.”

#harry potter #harry potter au #before the final battle #after the final battle #on the run #potterwatch #after hogwarts #lee jordan #fred weasley #lee jordan/fred weasley #george weasley #romance #angst #fluff #one-shot #allusions to ptsd #canon compliant until it's not #ao3 #ffn.net

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