Muggles & Spark Plugs - Arthur Weasley

20: Forgotten Letters

"I've been worried about you, Fred."

"I thought you were ignoring me, like how you usually do."

Ivory continued, "Your family's worried about you, too, you know."

"And how would you know about that?"

She sighed and pulled out a stack of parchment from within her bag. "Here."

Fred took the stack with an expression of bewilderment. "How did you get your hands on my mail?"

"I found it."

"Where?"

"On that desk in the common room, the one by the boys' dormitories."

"How-?"

"That doesn't matter, just read them!"

"Ivory, how did you get my mail?"

"Don't you use your brain because it's rather obvious!" She snapped. Blush crept up her face and Ivory softened her tone. "I'm - I picked it up and brought it to the dormitory and read them."

"All of them?"

Her voice was quiet when she answered. "Yes."

"Did you think I would never want to read them? Did you think they were just there, like how the old saying goes, finders keepers?"

"Fred, I needed to know what it was like to have someone who cared to write each and every week, a-and then I realized what it was to care about someone but never have them notice."

"Never have them notice? Of course, my family notices!"

Ivory's gaze shifted to the wall behind Fred. "I'm not talking about them; I'm talking about yourself, Frederick."

He did not speak another word. Out of the corner of his eye was the only way he could look at her face and see if she was honest or not.

"You're not looking at me."

"I - I know."

"Look at me, Ivory, really look."

She did. Knees shaking, she turned and looked at him, at the way his eyes stood out little by little due to the ever-increasing dark circles beneath. His hair was a mess, strands going this way and that in a wild airbrush of style. His eyebrows creased in the space between. His skin had taken up a palette of pale discolor. He was constantly shaking. Shaking, shaking, shaking. It had become a part of him, all of it had.

"I don't even sleep anymore," he blurted. "I don't, I cannot. I see the eagle everywhere. What does it matter if my eyes are open or not? The eagle is still there. It is everywhere. I-I saw it that day in the hallway when you didn't believe me and I see it in my dreams last night and I see it everywhere, bloody everywhere!"

"Frederick..." She stopped and looked again at his eyes. "You need to calm down. It sounds rather...like you need some help."

"I already got my help and that Draught of Cease and whatnot did not help."

"Draught of Peace, and I didn't believe you when you told me about the eagle yesterday."

"How could that've been yesterday? It was last month!" He threw up his arms.

"No, it was yesterday, the nurse released you from the hospital yesterday."