Author's Note: I wrote this story ten years ago todayand honestly hadn't given it all that much thought in those ten years, but as I was checking out an old email account I was surprised to see that I had a got a like on this story as recent as 2019. I was like wow people still like this story? As far as I could remember this was the most awfully embarrassing thing I'd ever written(that's not even close to being true. I've written far worse) but after rereading this story I see it's not so bad. It needed some polishing, all right a lot of polishing, but I found myself falling in love with this story and this ship all over again. Writing this story got me through a really, really, really hard times in my life. Seriously. The people who commented on this story probably aren't even on FF anymore, but if you are I just want to say THANKS. You really did help me get through a deep depression. Anyway hope you'll enjoy this story (and all of the changes I've made) ten years later. XOXOXO

Part One:Denial

I try and block out everything
But it loops inside my head
And I try to wash away the feelings
But they still won't admit this is dead
I still feel like I need to be put on trial
So, they expose the evils of this boy in denial

The Hidden Evils of a Boy in Denial-Chris Holland

The flat smells unbelievably foul. It's littered with empty Firewhisky bottles, take away containers, and empty potion bottles. The windows are painted black. Roaches scuttle over the counters and climb up the walls. Furry mold has grown on dishes left in the sink in the tiny kitchen. Dust thick enough to see clings to everything. My boots stick to the grimy film that covers the floor. Old stained dirty urine smelling mattresses line the walls. In the corner a rat is gnawing at something that's been left to rot in a carton.

I walk the rows of prone bodies until I get to the mattress that George is lying on. I'm looking directly into his face, but I still cannot believe it's him. He doesn't look like himself at all. He's so thin and his skin is paler than I've ever seen it in my life. Dark circles ring his eyes, and his eyes themselves are bloodshot and glassy. They stare unfocused at the ceiling. Drool is running down his chin although some of it has dried on the front of his shirt which is caked with mud, dirt, and Merlin only knows what else. His hair looks as if it hasn't been washed or combed in ages. I bend down and slap his face.

"George wake up!" I call loudly but he doesn't stir. I point my wand into his face and cry "Sobrius!" After a few moments George seems to become a little more cognizant.

"Let's get out of here." Bill says. "The smell is turning my stomach."

I nod. I've never been to Knockturn Alley before, and never want to return. "It's just as well." I say. "It's all I can do for him. He's stable at least."

We apparate to St. Mungo's. George is taken to the 4th floor;Spell Damage. Never in a trillion years would I have ever thought George would be the type to start using psychoactive spells and potions. The George Weasley I'd seen just now was not the one I have known for practically all of my life. Then again the George I've known practically all my life had always been with Fred. Fred and George were like peanut butter and Jelly, broomsticks and quidditch, Christmas and Santa Claus. When you thought of one you automatically thought of the other. They just went together.

"How are you doing?" Lee Jordan asks as soon as we meet the rest of the search party in the lobby of the hospital. The Weasley Family, myself, Lee, and the old Quidditch team have been looking for George for the past two weeks. Today we found him;one week before the anniversary of The Battle of Hogwarts.

"I don't know? None of this seems real." I shake my head and hug my arms around myself. "I think it's still sinking in."

"I know. I feel like I've let him down. I mean I knew he was in a bad way just not this bad."

"There is no way this is George." I say and start sobbing. Lee hugs me.

"It will be all right, Angelina. George is strong he's going to make it through this." He leads me to the bank of seats in the lobby. I sit down and put my hands between my legs to stop them from shaking. I cannot get the image of how George looked out of my mind. So broken and hallow. His eyes had been void of any emotion at all.

"You didn't see him. He looked so gone so dead." I clench my fist. "Why'd he do this to himself? Is he trying to-." I stop unable to finish the sentence because my throat has closed up as tightly as my clenched fist.

"I don't know, Angelina." Lee says. "I don't know."

"I want to thank the two of you." Molly Weasley says coming into the lobby and hugging both of us.

"Don't think of it." Lee and I say together.

"How is he?" I ask standing up to give her a proper hug.

"He's a lot better then when you first saw him, but he's still got a long way to go." Molly gives a long quivery sigh. "He's still got to deal with what made him turn to those potions and spells in the first place."

"I'm so sorry. Is there any thing that I can do?" I ask.

"You can get the hell out of here!" Ginny shouts at me. She has appeared suddenly beside her mum and glares hard at me.

"Ginny!" Molly snaps.

"Well everyone knows it's her fault George ran off." She snarls.

"Ginny I didn't-."

"Shut up!" Ginny screams at me. Her whole face has gone a bright shade of red. "What are you like Angelina?" Ginny asks shaking her head. "You know George is going through hell, but you still ended things with him to be with Oliver."

"I'm not with Oliver." I say. "It's really complicated, I love George, but he needed help. Help I couldn't give him." My hands are shaking. "I tried, but the closer it got to the anniversary of -."

"Don't!" Bill interrupts. "You don't have to explain yourself. You're not to blame for George's addiction. Nobody is but George. So leave Angelina alone, Gin."

I may not be to blame but I still feel guilty. Just like I will feel eternally guilty about not being by Fred's side when he died. In that split second that I had to decide which area of Hogwarts to defend I'd gone on to the Astronomy Tower with Alicia Spinnet and Oliver Wood. Once we got there curses were flying every which way. The other two raced up the stairs ahead of me, but for some reason I looked out of the window onto the lawn and saw something that made my blood run cold. Colin Creevey. Somehow he'd managed to sneak back inside the castle. He was valiantly battling two death eaters at once. Little Colin Creevey.

I raced down the stairs as fast as I could. "Please, please, please let me make it to him in time." I chanted. I couldn't believe that he held off two death eaters for this long. He was a true Gryffindor all right. I was almost there. As soon as my feet touched the grass the Death Eater pointed his wand at Colin's chest. Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. I was running but it felt like I was running in quicksand.

"NO!" I screamed as a green jet of light shot out of the Death Eater's wand. "NO!"

"Avada Kadavra!" Colin's lifeless body crumpled to the ground and didn't move. He looked like a doll lying there.

I screamed and then I pointed my wand at the Death Eater and shouted "Impedimenta!" Colin's murderer flew back and hit the ground with a hard thud. I was shaking with rage. How could anyone kill Colin? He was just a child. Now he was dead. A dead child.

"Crucio!" Yelled a second Death Eater that had sneaked up behind me. His spell hit me square on the back;right between the shoulder blades and the force in which it was cast knocked me off of my feet. My wand flew out of my hand but I didn't even notice. The pain was the only thing I could feel.

I had never felt pain like that before in my life. It was like being skinned alive. There was no getting away from the pain. It was everywhere, inside me, outside me, all around me. The pain consumed me, sharp like knifes, searing like acid, and it burned like fire, but stung like frostbite. I crawled up to my hands and knees to try and fight back, but the Death Eater kicked me in the ribs knocking me back down to the grass.

"Crucio!" The death eater yelled. The pain. I had to get away from the pain, but it wasn't easy because the pain was even inside of my brain making thinking almost impossible. In my sheer will to get away from the pain I dragged myself across the lawn by my arms. I felt too weak to walk, but I was determined to get away from him.

The Death Eater stepped closer to me, stepped over me, and shouted Crucio again and again and again.

I lie on my back sobbing. He stood over me laughing and breathing deeply. He straddled me pushing my hips down into the cold wet grass. I could feel the dampness seeping into my clothes. His weight sent fresh waves of pain through me. I used what little strength I had left to try and prize his wand from his hands. If I was going to die I was going to die fighting until the very end.

He laughed as I wiggled feebly beneath him. I kept trying to fight him off, but his weight and the pain was too much. I stopped struggling and just closed my eyes. I had absolutely no strength left.

"Was it as good for you?" He asked perversely.

I realized in that moment that he was getting off on all of this. He wanted to kill me slowly. This man, whoever he was, meant to torture me to death. I felt so weak almost like I was dying. Something was taking me, and at that point I wanted it to take me. The Death Eaters hand's started pulling at my clothes. I could feel his hands sliding my shirt up and then pulling my jeans down.

"Crucio!" He screamed and then the blackness took me.

When I woke up I was in St. Mungo's. The memories of what happened were fuzzy if they were there at all. I'd been given Sedativus;a potion that is the Muggle equivalent of a medically induced coma. I'd been under for four weeks.

George was asleep in the chair beside my bed giving me the impression he'd been waiting there a long time; waiting there for me to wake up. His lined face actually had stubble and there were bags under his eyes, but still he looked so peaceful sleeping.

I sat up slowly and painfully and shook his shoulder gently. "Wake up, Georgie Porgie."

"Wot?" George said jumping up.

"Where's Fred?" I asked smoothing down his rumpled hair.

George's eyes evasively turned from me to the window. There was a long and uncomfortable pause.

"Where is Fred?" I repeated. I was starting to feel cold.

"Angelina, Merlin I-." Really cold.

"Where's Fred?" I asked cutting him off. The icy feeling was traveling straight up my spine. "Where's Fred!?" "Where's Fred!?"

George started crying. It was an awful sound to hear. "Angelina, please you're already hurt."

I was subzero.

"Where's Fred!?" "Where's Fred!?" "Where's Fred!?" I kept screaming. I started hurling objects off my bedside table. I knew that I was acting hysterically. I knew I was acting madly, but I knew if I stopped screaming George was going to tell me, and then it would be real. "Where's Fred!?" "Where's Fred!?" "Where's Fred!?" My voice was so loud it hurt my own ears it hurt my throat, but I couldn't stop yelling.

"You know Angelina. He's dead."

I was frozen solid.

I stopped screaming then. My mouth fell open into a perfect O. It was like someone had pulled the rug from under me and I was still waiting to fall. George just looked at me and blinked. The world seem to have slowed down and I could hear every mundane sound in the room. The clock ruthlessly ticking our lives away. The birds outside tweeting; they had no clue. The commercial on the wireless for broom polish that seemed obscene in it's cheerfulness.

"How?" I asked. My voice had gone hoarse from yelling. I felt the air leave my lungs.

"Rookwood." He said flatly. He had time to get over his anger.

I wanted to say something more, but I started crying huge wracking sobs. George took me into his arms. We both cried and it felt like we were breaking apart. Like when we got done crying there would be nothing left of us. It felt like it might actually be possible to die from crying. Our noisy cries filled my ears, the whole room, whole floor, all of St. Mungo's. Crying at that moment was just purely a release of sorrow; there was nothing soothing or therapeutic about it. It was the kind of crying that seemed merely perfunctory as it didn't even offer us the benefit of release.

"Ginny I'm sorry." I say pulling myself out of that memory, and coming back to the here and now.

Ginny doesn't say anything. She just flings herself down in one of the seats and starts chewing on the inside of her jaw. She turns her head and looks out the window rather than look at me.

"Don't mind her." Charlie says. "She'll come around when she finally calms down."

"Down, hun? What about George?" I choke out. My tears seem to want to strangle what little strength I have left out of me. "What's he going to be like when he finally comes down?"

"Angelina, Angelina, wake up."

Slowly I open my eyes. Charlie Weasley is smiling down at me. "Here." He says handing me a cup of tea and a muffin. "You could probably use something to eat."

"How is George doing?" I ask and stifle a yawn least I knock Charlie out with my morning breath.

"Better. He's lucky there was no permanent damage done. He'll be sent to rehab here at St. Mungo's and fortunately not to jail."

"I should have never left him." I say.

"This isn't your fault. Now come on and drink your tea or it'll go cold."

I drink the tea and eat the muffin just to make Charlie happy.

"I slept here all night?"

Charlie nods. "We thought it best to leave you here. We all figured that you wouldn't want to go home." I smirk. Of course I wouldn't want to go home. Not when I don't have a home to go to. Not really.

"Do you think I'll be allowed to see George soon? I need to see him."

"Not for awhile. Why don't you go home and take a nap. I'll let you know the very moment you're allowed to see George. I promise."

"Thanks, Charlie." I stand up and hug him.

Charlie rubs my back. "Don't worry Angelina you'll get through this and so will he."

I apprate to my house. I rent a three bedroom cottage in Ottery St Catchpole. It's the last place I thought I'd be living and at first I did hate living here, but now that I've been here for awhile I'm starting to see it's charm. I have Mrs. Weasley to thank for that. I started spending a lot of time with her when I first arrived in Ottery St. Catchpole. It was two days after I found out that my Quidditch career was over as quickly as it had begun.

It happened in what seemed like a split second. It was a match against the Falmouth Falcons. Graham Montague, my old rival from Hogwarts, knocked me off of my broom, actually he pulled my broom out from underneath me resulting in him being expelled for the rest of the season. It didn't matter because it was too late to save me. The fall from my broom triggered my old war injury. Prolonged torture from the Cruciatus Curse causes adverse side effects. I have fainting spells and blindingly painful headaches. I have to take a potion to prevent the seizures that might occur sometimes. I have bouts of insomnia. Between the seizures and fainting spells my Quidditch career was over. There is nothing I can do to stop any of these side effects they are just something I have to learn to live with.

As soon as I found out that I'd never play for the Harpies I began trying out for several other Quidditch teams, but I was never able to pass the physical exam. Every sports healer in England knew about my condition. Having no job and nothing else to do I couldn't bare living in Holyhead. So I sold my flat and for awhile I spent my time crashing over at different friend's and organizing their flats since I had nothing else to do with my time, but eventually I drove them all crazy.

"Get out of my house you mad woman!" Katie Bell replied. "You rearrange one more thing in my house and I'll rearrange your face!"

That's when I realized that I needed to get a life of my own and I moved to Ottery St. Catchpole. I needed to try and figure things out. Two days after I'd been in Ottery Molly Weasley came over for a house warming visit. I think she took one look at the state of my cottage and took pity on me. I hadn't unpacked anything. There was no food in my refrigerator. I didn't even have sheets for my bed or curtains for my windows. I still had not resigned myself to my fate.

"If you don't mind I could help you settle into your home." Mrs. Weasley politely offered. And help she did. Molly, as she insist I call her, taught me everything she knew about housekeeping and cooking. Much to my surprise I was a natural at cooking. I could see why Molly did it, it kept you busy, engaged all five of your senses, and there was something therapeutic about it.

One day while I was over at the burrow learning how to cook an apple pie George showed up. I hadn't seen much of him since that day in the hospital. He seemed shocked to see me in the kitchen hanging out with his mum as if we were old friends.

"Hey, Angelina. What are you doing here?"

"Learning how to bake a pie." I said. "Your mum's been showing me how to cook."

"Smells good and looks even better, are you sure you cooked it?" George asked.

"Don't tease her." Molly said. "Angelina is doing an excellent job. You could learn a thing or two from her."

"Oh, Angelina has taught me plenty, mostly Muggle swear words."

"I'll bet you learned them by being on the reviving end of them, didn't you?" Molly shot back.

Once George found out that I was living in Ottery St. Catchpole he started coming round more often.

"What brings you home again, George?" Molly would ask him. "I can't remember you stopping by this much before."

"Can't a son stop by and visit his mum without it being suspicious?"

"Who said anything was suspicious?" Molly would tease.

George never did admit that I was the reason he was coming back home so often, but it was OK because we both knew that was why.

Sometimes I'd go to London with him to break up the monotony of life in Ottery. He'd go to work at his shop and I'd go shopping. Afterwards we'd eat lunch in his office. When I saw the state of affairs of his bookkeeping I almost fainted.

"George you should be ashamed of yourself, this filing system is awful. Really awful!"

"Think you can do better Madame Prissy Pants?" I sighed heavily. George knew I hated when he called me that, which is exactly why he called me that.

"A half dead troll could do a better job." I started doing all the bookkeeping as George was such a slob. I took care of the international owl orders too.

"I've been taking advantage of you." George said one day. "I should be paying you. I can't have you keeping my books for free."

"Oh it's nothing really." I said. I was going crazy having nothing to do round my place. Plus it felt good to be needed. Besides it was easy being around George and I loved watching him work on his inventions. Anything was better than being back at my cottage. Especially at night when the nightmares started. I still couldn't remember everything that happened to me during the Battle of Hogwarts but what I did remember was disturbing enough.

"My male pride insist that you let me pay you." He said flicking his wand and making a paper airplane zoom above my head. "You can be my secretary. My sexy secretary who I chase around my desk whilst twirling my mustache."

I rolled my eyes. "You've been watching too many of my Muggle movies."

In the end I agreed to help George on the condition that he call me his assistant and not sexy secretary. We worked side by side everyday and we ate lunch and dinner together. As the days passed I got more and more involved in the goings on of his shop. I helped George cut down on his overhead, reduced his shrink, and condensed the stock room. I even made displays in the shop window.

"You've been really good for the shop." George told me when we were around my place eating dinner.

"Thank you."

"I mean what you've done for the wonder witch line." He whistles. "We can't stock the shelves full enough of your eyelash growing charms. Even Hermione was impressed with the skill it took to make those."

"Well, Hermione only got two more O.W.L.S. than me. Just because I hang around a dropout doesn't mean that I didn't like school."

"Touche. Don't get all shirty, Johnson."

"I am not getting shirty." I huffed.

"Yes you are. I only tease you cos you're so cute when you're angry."

"Fred must have thought the same thing, because anger seemed to constantly be my mood whenever I hung out with you two."

"Speaking of Fred I need you to do something for me, Angie."

"Sure anything." I placed my hand on top of his.

"I-I need you t-to help me g-go though Fred's things." He sniffed. "You know, what to give away, what's rubbish, and what I should keep."

It felt like all of the air had been squeezed from my lungs. All of Fred's personal belongings were just things now. Items without an owner. Once again the finality of never slapped me in my face. Never again would I see Fred or hear him laugh. I wouldn't ever yell at him, or hug him, or anything him.

"Of course I'll help." I said in a tight voice.

"Tomorrow then if you don't mind. I keep putting it off.

"I'll be there." I said, but that night I couldn't sleep. The thought of going into Fred's room filled me with dread. I tossed and turned all night. I didn't know how I was going to be able to touch Fred's things, but I knew what I was going to do it because I wanted to be strong for George.

I still want to be strong for George, but after everything that happen between us I don't know if George wants me to be strong for him. What if a relationship with me is just too much for him? What if he can't get over the fact that I dated Fred before I was with him? It's a subject that we don't bring up much, but it's always there between us like a wall.

My relationship with Fred can best be summed up by the phrase the thrill of the chase. My relationship with Fred was the result of chasing a boy and having no idea what to do with him once you got him. From the first day I met him on the train I had been taken in by Fred's charisma and his devil-may-care attitude. Out of the twins he was always more bold. More suave. More Flash. The Weasley twins were a two man act, but Fred was headlining the show.

He'd even asked me to the dance in the most showy manor possible. I was explosively excited, but I played it cool, you had to play it cool when Fred Gideon Weasley was involved least you help inflate that massive ego of his. We'd been flirting with each other all year in a sort of see who makes the first move sort of way. After the dance we spent the next few weeks looking for places to meet up and make out. Then Fred and George got kicked off of the Quidditch team and I ended things with Fred. The next thing I knew he and George had dropped out of school without even telling me.

I went to their flat in London during the winter break to confront Fred about it. As long as I live I never will forget that day. We were the only two people in the flat. George had left as soon as he saw the look on my face. He knew why I had come over.

"He's in his room." George told me.

"Traitor!" Fred had shouted.

"I'm not having her hex me." George shouted back.

"Don't get mad at me Angelina." Fred said as I burst into his room with my wand pointed at his chest. "You know why I didn't tell you about our dropping out."

"I don't know. I'm feeling I'm pretty thick today, so why don't you tell me about it."

"I didn't want you yelling at me anymore plus you had already dumped me. What did I have left?" He gave me a puppy dog look.

"You didn't leave school because I dumped you. You left school because you never cared about it in the first place, but I do! I really care about school but you don't. I really care about Quidditch but you don't! What else was I supposed to do?"

"Nothing. Face it were two different people going in two different directions."

"We're not that different."

"I don't want to hurt you Angelina, Fred said pulling me down onto his lap, but I think it's best that you ended us the way that you did. You're going off to Wales to play for the Harpies and I'll be in London, he shrugged, I'm not ready for a long distance relationship. I'm not ready for a relationship at all."

I'd been angry at him at the time for saying that to me even though deep down I knew he was right. I couldn't see him settling down for the foreseeable future. Not for anyone. Not even me.

"Thanks for letting me down gently Mr. Maturity." I had snapped at him.

"Are you angry at me?" Fred asked.

"No."

"Really? Cos you look angry. Really really angry."

"OK, I am!" I shouted. "You up and leave school without telling me and then you have the nerve to treat me like child that needs to be coddled, because, what suddenly you have sex and you're a man of the world?"

"Oh, you heard about me and Jenna."

"Yeah, I heard about Jenna."

Fred had lost his virginity to Jenna Vance a pretty blonde haired Hufflepuff girl two years above us. She worked at Madam Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions as a junior potion mixer.

"It wasn't- It didn't happen like you think."

"You don't have to protect sweet-innocent-virginal-little Angelina."

"You say it like those are bad things to be." Fred said stroking my cheek.

"It is when everyone acts like being that way means you're not capable of doing things everyone else my age is." I folded my arms under my chest. Sometimes I wonder if things would have been easier if the sorting hat had put me in Ravenclaw like had almost done.

Fred looked me up and down with a saucy gin on his face."Angelina, stay pure it works for you."

I felt completely incensed. How dare he mock me. How dare act like he was so worldly and above me just because he had sex.

"I'm going to go out and have sex with every member of the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams. Guys and girls." I told him.

"Ooer, mind if I watch?"

"Pig!" I hated how he always played it cool. He always had to act as if nothing could ever shock him. Everything was always a joke to him.

"Look Angelina I really do care about you, but I'm not ready to be a one lady man, besides our lives are just starting and their going in hugely opposite directions. I don't know maybe after all the appeal of our youth runs out and the thought of standing still for awhile kicks in we'll find our way to each other, but right now neither one of us are ready to settle down and you know it."

We'd snogged then. Snogged as if the Earth was burning down and we had only minutes to live. I was crying because we were breaking up, really breaking up. He was my first crush. The first guy I'd gone to third base with, the only guy I'd gone to third base with. I leaving Hogwarts and heading out in to the "real world." I was leaving all I knew to be good and kind behind me. I was own my on. I hated to be alone.

"Care for a cuppa?" Fred asked.

"Sure."

We were sitting at the kitchen drinking tea when George came back.

"Is it OK for me to come back in now? Air all cleared? Feelings all resolved? Orgasms achieved?"

"Come in." Fred said. "It's all done."

"Yeah, we're all done. Finished. Over. Kaput."

For a moment George must have forgotten where he was because the biggest smile lit up his eyes. "Good."

"Good? What do you bloody mean good?" Fred roared.

"I just meant, George said addressing Fred but looking at me;that you're both free now. Free to chose who ever you want to you know be with. I mean really be with."

Well I'm free as a bird now, but I'm still not with the one that I want to be with, and given everything that's happened between us I can't help but wonder if I ever will.