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The two clocks in the room tick a second off from each other, Fred notices, as he loosens his tie and waits for Harry to come back with the coffee. He lays down on one of the beds. The sheets smell like vinegar. He remembers, once, in first year when Lee told Fred and George that his mother cleaned with vinegar and baking soda. "What are they?" he'd asked, and the three spent the rest of the month in detention for making Snape's cauldron overflow during potions.
The door creaks open and Fred looks up. "They have shitty coffee here," Harry says, holding out one of the paper cups, "And I burned myself pretty bad taking the stairs."
"I thought they had an elevator here," Fred says, sitting up and taking the cup, "Bones would be sadistic if she put us in the eleventh floor of a dorm and didn't at least give us a way up."
"It was broken. I was going to apparate, but then a whole slew of girls came rushing down, giggling in Norwegian," Harry says. He runs a hand through his hair and rolls his neck. "You know, we could scry for her." There is a pause and he sits down on the bed opposite and kicks off his shoes. "I hate this damn assignment."
Fred leans back down into the blankets and folds his hands across his stomach. "No kidding." He closes his eyes and turns his nose into the pillows and thinks very hard about the scent of candy.
+++
Once, during the war, George tried to make a strawberry pie for Luna's birthday. She was living with them, after the Death Eaters found out that the real Narcissa was dead. The Order didn't know if the Death Eaters had figured out that the polyjuice plant was Luna, but no one wanted to take chances. So Fred, George, and Luna lived as muggles, owners of a confectioner's shop that they bought from an older couple looking to retire. One of the three would pull sugar, another would tend the shop, and a third worked on whatever the aurors asked them to study—the twins were the only experimental wizards left on Harry's side, even if their only experience was jokes and fake wands.
The pie was a disaster, half cooked and sour. "It's wonderful," Luna said, "Perfect for catching flying bats."
"Wait, aren't they real?" George asked before Fred kicked his shin under the table.
"They're all real," Luna said, "but I thought it would be nice if we decided to catch something you could see too."
+++
The problem with Norway, Fred knows, is that during the entire trip it had been a) cold, and b) grey. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the place. He just can't stand the way he breaths when he is here. Too shallow and quick. They are staying in a dormitory, of sorts, some school in Oslo that Bones has connections with. They aren't allowed to use magic, and they have to find Luna Lovegood. If George was here, he would know where to go find her. Which may not actually be true, but Fred likes to think it is so. George had certainly been the better half. He stops pacing and sits down on a stone bench, waiting for Harry to finally come back with food and, hopefully, information.
Everyone around him rushes through the cold and no one looks at the sky full of grey clouds.
"She's in Trondheim," Harry says and Fred turns around, "That's what the grocer said. He said that she moved to Trondheim.
Fred reaches for one of the bags Harry carries. They are cloth, all of them, decorated by hands and carved designs pressed in paint. Luna made them. They are burlap, but softer with wear and he starts walking back to their lodgings, eyes downcast, forgetting the sky.
+++
The week before Luna's father was strung up by his intestines over the rafters in the family kitchen, Luna dragged them all to a muggle film fest. It was a local affair, the films mostly made by school kids who had seen one too many slasher films at the second run cinema. The films were projected on a sheet hung up in an alley a few lots down from the confectioners', and everyone sat on blankets and snacked on the free candy Luna gave out. A few children ran about in some made up game that no one understood and they all watched fifteen five minute films and laughed and chattered. The next day half the Weasley family was dead.
It was Harry and Seamus who delivered the news. They came into the shop, Fred taking the first shift in the front, Luna and George working on reverse engineering a new Death Eater potion that was dropped off the night before. Each night a package appeared for them to research, create, define, refine, understand. They ever only had one day, and they could never close the shop to work on it because it would create suspicion, but the last few weeks had been calm. Even the death counts were lowered, from the little they heard. But then Harry and Seamus walked in, threw their door open, and Fred dropped a jar of saltwater taffies.
"Your mother's dead," Seamus said, as Harry looked at the jar of candy, broken, on the floor, "Your mother and Bill and Charlie, and Percy too."
Harry's hands trailed over labels written in Luna's lopsided writing: caramel, gum drops, peanut brittle. Fred noticed his nails where dirty, and his right hand had a bandage stained red. There was a ticking of a clock, loud and persistent, the only sound until the shop door opened and the bell rang, and shouted laughter came in from the street.
"Give me ten pounds worth of truffles and make it snappy," said the girl who ran in. She had a crooked grin and bit her lip, joking and happy. Harry and Seamus moved to the side, looking at the muggle invading the shop. Harry was still avoiding eye contact, but Seamus was reaching in his pocket and Fred supposed he thinking of throwing her out. He recognized all of the neighborhood kids, but he couldn't always place their names, though he knew Luna would know who the girl was, if she was here. He moved to the register, an automatic response.
"Ten pounds buys a whole lot of truffles," he said, trying to smile. Sara, he thought, the girl's name was Sara. "Prize money from last night I take it?"
Sara smiled, brilliant and wide, her eyes lighting up. She had glasses and her hair was knotted in two tuffs in back of her head. "You saw? I was so busy hiding behind my hands during the film I wasn't sure who was there and who wasn't. Did Luna like it? I showed it to her last week, and she thought it was brilliant, but she's always a bit strange about stuff, so I wasn't sure."
"She loved it." He turned around to find the jars with truffles. "What kinds do you want?" he asked, already taking down the most likely ones before her answer.
"Surprise me," she said, grinning, "These are the last I'll have for a while—I have an internship in Oslo that I'm leaving for next week."
He measured out a new kind Luna had made—strawberry filled—and handed them to her in a paper bag. "Here you go, on the house for the next Hitchcock." She laughed and raced out. "Thanks," she called from behind her, the word cut off as the door slammed and the bells jingled to a stop.
The door to the back of the shop opened and Luna walked in. "Was that Sara?" she asked. She had a streak of green powder across her cheek, and she bent down behind the counter, rummaging through their box of cleaning supplies. "Minor spill back there," she said, standing, "Too bad I missed her if she was here."
She carried a bucket and some rags and headed into the back room when Harry looked up. "Hello Luna," he said, "We want you to go back in."
Fred watched as she set the bucket down on the floor and turned around. I'll never be able to eat candy again, he thought. That and: George doesn't yet know that the world's ended, again.
+++
They rent a car—a van, actually—and send a letter (muggle post) to Bones to tell her their progress before they leave for Trondheim. Luna's the only one they have left to find, all the others were easy. Even the hard ones only took a few days—the Parvartis, India (found: drinking tea and eating curried lamb); Kevin Fitch, Mexico (found: studying the lifespan of slugs); Rose Zeller, China (found: a deaf nun); Terry Boot, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, and Ginny Weasley, Italy (found: on the first annual 'fuck the census!' auror hiking trip; they weren't precisely on the list of people to track down, but Fred and Harry were fairly pissed at Bones for not allowing them to go along with the rest of their department so they took a slight detour); Remus Lupin, South Africa (found: helping a muggle research team from Canada study the effects of magic on the natural world); Draco Malfoy, New York (found: drinking a martini and wearing Armani).
But Luna had always been on the difficult side.
"She gets it from her mother," Harry says, as they head out of town. Fred is driving, and Harry is struggling with the map. "Do you know how to fold these damn things?"
Fred shakes his head. "Only map I ever did anything with was the marauders map. Don't know about muggle ones." He wishes he could read Norwegian road signs. "I thought her mother died when she was a kid. How did you know her?"
Harry crumples the map and shoves it in the glove compartment. "We can use a damn direction spell, if we need to," he says, then runs his hand through his hair. "I never knew her mother. Her father told me when he was hanging from the rafters." He cuts off and looks out the window. Fred doesn't know what to say. It starts to drizzle.
He clears his throat. "You were the one who found him, right? But I thought he was dead when the aurors got there."
Harry looks up and shakes his head. "No, he was magicked alive until Luna touched him. She had to touch him or he would have stayed alive like that forever."
Fred thinks he hears Harry swear under his breath. "We got them—you got them—in the end. We won."
"I sat with him for three hours waiting for the Order and he told me about how her mother made potions and her face burned and he and Luna were the ones who found her and how her hair was melted to her head and she smelled like roasted meat and over-ripe strawberries. And that's when he started the paper."
"It was his choice to print what he did," Fred says, sounding stupid even to himself. They both know that it was Luna's position in the Order that got him killed. "He knew the risks."
"You know something funny," Harry says, "Luna always believed in those crazy animals, even as a kid. She and her mother would go looking for them. I always kind of assumed it was when her mother died that—anyway. She always was a bit unhinged."
They drive in silence for the rest of the day, rain a pattering mist.
They were booked for a hostel in Trondheim, cheap and easy, on Bones' instructions. She was already pissed that they hung out in Italy for two weeks 'on a lead' and came back empty handed, and, now, the fact that it's been three weeks already and they haven't found Luna is making her yell more than usual. They get at least a letter a day, each, reminding them that Scotland Yard needs the last of the census information by July 10th, and at July 6th, they're in a bit of a pinch. Not that Bones doesn't have eighty other names with a 'missing' stamp on them, but Luna Lovegood is the only one who worked for the Order, the only one missing that the muggles are worried about.
"But she's not dangerous!" Fred had shouted when Bones gave them her name, "She was undercover for god knows how many years and her dad fucking died—let the girl have a rest, is all I'm saying. No one knows where she is, no one has to know."
When Fred had looked to Harry for support, Harry'd only said, "We shouldn't use magic. The only people who'll be able to find her are non-magic users."
Bones had nodded. "Good," she'd said, "Now get this done."
+++
After the Weasley deaths they were all pulled back, immediately, of course. At the Order headquarters (in the abandoned Hogwarts castle) everyone was running around and looking frantic and hurried and talking about how many casualties there were, and all Fred could think about was whether he put the "Sorry, We're Closed!" sign in the door of the shop. His mouth tasted sweet and he didn't have time to find a drink to wash it out.
Harry had whisked Luna off right away, to prep her, Fred guessed. He still couldn't picture her being undercover, really; when he and George first found out, right before she came to live with them, George's response was: "Bloody hell. She really is off her rocker." But that was the only part about her job that made sense.
He and George were shuffled into the old potions room, given a box of jars and told to reverse engineer each one. For a moment Fred was going to ask when the funeral was, until he looked at George's scowl and refrained. He found out later that they had all been burned in an incinerator—their mother, Charlie, Bill, and Percy—but when he asked for their ashes, they told him that they had been in a large group of bodies, and that all ashes were dumped in the lake.
"Has to be bad for the fish," he'd said, weakly, but by then the war had finished, and George was losing weight, and Ron and Hermione were talking about setting a date, and Luna was still missing (except she wasn't, exactly, because she sent George a huge basket of strawberries the day that George went into surgery; it was just that after the war she never checked in and no one ever heard from her or really went looking), and Susan Bones called him into her office and said:
"You're going to be an auror because Harry is requesting, specifically, that he wants you on his team."
"Team for what?" Fred had asked, and Susan replied:
"The muggles want to make an announcement about us, because of the way that the war ended, so we're supposed to do a census; we're supposed to make a record of all the wizards who are British citizens."
So, after all of that, Fred hadn't really had the patience to say a thing about the burial. He just didn't give a damn.
+++
They take a wrong turn on the way to Trondheim and end up with a flat tire.
"We should use a spell, to fix it," Harry says, after three hours of kicking the hubcap and having no one drive by. They are on the inside of a hairpin turn, van practically backed up the side a mountain.
Fred shakes he head. They haven't used spells since they got here, and while he isn't sure why Harry's so certain only non-magic users can find Luna, he thinks he knows why Harry is so eager to mess with their chances by reaching for his wand—he would much rather say: "We couldn't find her", than "We found her and I'll never be able to see her again, because she told me, finally, that she'll never forgive me for what I did to her".
"What if trolls come?" Harry asks, "Trolls live in Norway, right?"
A breeze shifts the tree branches slightly and Fred smells pine. "Didn't you and Ron and Hermione go up against a troll once?"
Harry laughs, briefly. "Yeah, first year. How we got to be friends."
They sit, for a while, on the hood of the car, and Fred watches as the moss over the trees sways and how the light peeking into the forest slowly grows dark. He's about the reach for his wand, screw the mission, when he hears the growing rumble of a bad muffler and, finally, sees the headlights of a car come from around the bend. It's a rusted old thing, the car, but it stops and a woman gets out.
She says something in Norwegian at first and Fred calls out. "Do you speak English?"
He hears a laugh then: "Do you need any help?" and Fred watches as Harry nearly falls off the car in shock.
"Luna," Harry says, taking a step forward, then not making a sound.
+++
The first week back was a whirlwind of potions and debriefings and reunions, followed by the inevitable: "Have you seen so-and-so? They're dead?" Fred and George fell into bed every night with aching feet and numb fingers, getting up each morning to find more and more people who had been in hiding get called back. Ron and Hermione arrived in the first few days, then Victor Krum, Ginny, and a whole slew of faces that Fred stopped seeing.
"The muggles are starting to figure out, a bit," Ron told them in rushed whispers a few days after he got back, "Harry's aunt and uncle died along with nearly everyone else on their street, so they have his cousin, Dudley, in for questioning, but it's mostly for show—there's no way that they could have been killed by a muggle and the authorities know that."
"What happened to them?" George asked, but Ron had to hurry off then, and they never got an answer.
And then, Luna's father died. Official word was that his murder was a result of his paper: he printed accurate death counts (unlike the Daily Prophet) and reported on muggle casualties (unlike the Daily Prophet), but then Harry came back to Hogwarts with Draco Malfoy in tow and told everyone that the war was to be over in two months or else.
+++
Luna is older than Fred remembered. It isn't that she looks different, she just looks more real.
"I don't actually live in Trondheim," was all she said when they told her where they'd been going, "I commute." She moved their luggage to her car and told them that she would call a tow truck tomorrow. "No one drives this road but me anyway. You must have gotten really lost."
They are in her house, now, and eating fish with potatoes. It's a small place, with a tin roof and two different colors of siding, but the inside is cozy, and there's a fireplace that Luna lit as soon as they got in and she shrugged off her coat.
"You must not have used magic," she says, simply, as she comes back in from the kitchen with milk. They're in the main room now, it seems, with a small table for eating, and, over on the other side, by the fireplace, an old orange sofa and some arm chairs. The floors are all wood and they creak, but they are covered in bright rugs, some green and red and one that's violet-blue.
Harry shakes his head and Fred half nods, before going back to the food. He's hungry, though he hadn't noticed it when they were sitting by the car, and Luna's a better cook than he remembered.
"I figured that's why no one had found you before," Harry says, without making eye contact, and Fred realizes that being Harry Potter must be having conversation after conversation that you would give anything to get out of. "Where did you paint the map?"
Luna pauses, then smiles, somewhat, before sitting down. She has a mug of something, and she's not eating, and Fred watches her, openly stares, for the first time since they met her on the road. Her hair is longer now, and pulled back in a pony tail. It's almost starting to grey. Her ears are pierced and she has sea shells dangling down from the lobes, and she wears thin silver glasses, and before he can ask 'what map?' or 'why no magic?' he says:
"Did you come here because of that girl—Sara? The one who won the film fest?"
Luna looks at him and blinks. "Who?" she asks, "Was that someone from the candy store?" She shakes her head. "Draco got me a job as a web designer for a Mexican tabloid. It runs out of Norway."
"Draco?" Fred asks, and Harry sighs.
"You talk to him still?" he asks her and she nods.
"Called him last week."
Fred takes another bite of potato and swallows. "You talk to Draco?" he asks, but they ignore him, and he isn't really surprised.
"He said you visited him on the Ministry's orders," Luna continues. "Who's Minister now, again, I forget."
"Susan Bones," Harry says, "And he uses magic all the time so why do you talk with him?"
"You impersonate someone and their mother for long enough and you get attached," she snaps, then takes a drink from her mug. "He can only call me anyway. If he tried to visit me he wouldn't be able to find the mountain, much less the house. Only the people who can see the map can find me."
"And only if they don't use magic," Harry says. He shakes his head. "I was there for that briefing too Luna, and you weren't supposed to use the spell for your own benefit. It was supposed to be so that you'd be safe as Draco."
She scowls. "I didn't want anyone to find me," she says, "and I would have been around people using magic all the time, which means that you wouldn't have been able to find me either." She looks at Fred. "Secret keeper charm, but in this case the secret keeper is a map, like the one that Harry has, of his father's—invisible, unless you know the password. And if you knew the password then you'd have to use magic to see it and you can't get near me if you use magic, unless I programmed it in..." She shakes her head. "It's all just techno babble," she says.
She stands up and takes away the plates and cups. Fred's surprised to find that he finished everything and he half stands to help her clear the table, but she motions him to sit down. "Habit," he says wryly, "Mum drilled it in to us pretty good."
Luna smiles, full fledged and slightly nutty, and Fred remembers this, this Luna that lived with him and his brother for almost a year. "Yeah, I know," she says, laughing, "But you can just relax now. I've got it covered."
For the rest of the night she and Harry don't talk to each other directly—Luna only asks Fred questions, about girlfriends, and Ron and Hermione. Safe topics. She talks about her job. Harry doesn't say much of anything at all.
"I've only got one spare room," she tells them later. "You two mind sharing?"
Harry stands up so quickly that Fred starts. "I'm tired," he says, "and we don't mind."
Luna nods and leads him to a back staircase that Fred hadn't even noticed. "Up the stairs and to your right," she says, not bothering to take him all the way up herself. "The sheets should be clean and there are towels in the closet."
Fred stands up, not quite sure if he should follow, when Luna turns around. "There's two beds there, don't worry," she says. "They're for Lise and Anne Marie when they come—I'm their god mother." She rubs the back of her neck and starts to shift the chairs, an inch that way, an inch back. "Their mom's my secretary. She's raising them herself."
She sits at the table. "So. Fredrick." She looks up at him. "How's—what's really happening?"
Fred shifts and then goes over and sits across from her. "They're announcing—they're announcing the wizarding world to the muggle one. It's been, oh, coming since the end of the war. Since Harry's aunt and uncle died, really." The table is made of wood and Fred traces the grains with his fingers. He doesn't avoid eye contact, exactly. Perhaps this is how Harry does it, he thinks. It's not avoidance if there's something just as important elsewhere to look at. "The muggles want to know about all the British wizards, each and every one."
"It's a witch hunt," Luna says, "It's a witch hunt and they're making you do their dirty work for them."
Fred looks up. "I thought—you've been living around muggles—hell, we used to live around muggles. They're just like wizards. I don't think they'd, you know, burn us. It's just because there are so many things that can't be explained and the muggles are sick of us—" endangering their lives, Fred thinks to himself, but he doesn't say it aloud. "In any event, Egypt wanted to make the announcement too, so England decided to join in, and the rest of the world is going to have to follow. And, really, Luna—they're just like us."
Luna nods. "Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I'm afraid of." She sighs then blinks at him, as if she was just noticing something. "Where's George?"
"Dead. Of some kind of muggle disease—cancer, I think. It was from all the potions that we worked with. Some of them were pretty, well, toxic." Fred's voice doesn't waver, but he still looks at the table. It is interesting wood, dark and smooth.
"Draco mentioned he was sick," Luna says, "I asked him just as I was leaving England. I wish..." She trails off and looks down at the same wood that Fred is studying. "I wish I had been there, maybe. I just couldn't. I couldn't do what he was asking anymore."
"Harry," Fred says without asking, and Luna nods.
"Draco is easier. Because he, well, he doesn't actually like me. Or any of us, and he just got out of the Death Eaters because, oh, a whim, I don't know. So he's easy. It's Harry that's hard because he cares, see, but in the wrong way." She looks at him and frowns. "The thestrals, from my father's house? They followed me here, and now they mate with the moose in my backyard. That's how other animals, magic, muggle, that's part of how they're created right? Harry never believed me about the animals. I'd report in and sometimes I'd sneak in a mention of an animal I saw at the Malfoy Manor or one that I made up, and he never knew the difference. Even when it was an animal we learned about with Hagrid, he never—" She shrugs. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll see you in the morning."
She gets up and leaves Fred sitting at the table, watching the wood. Eventually he gets up too and gets into the bed next to Harry's, but he doesn't think he'll fall asleep—until it is the next morning and Harry wakes him up at quarter to five.
"We have to get out of here," Harry says to Fred, who's bleary-eyed and nowhere near coherent. "We found her, she's living here, we can tell Bones any damn thing we please. Now hurry up and get dressed, I just want to go."
Fred shakes off the covers and pulls on his clothes. Harry is waiting impatiently and tapping his foot, but Fred gives him a look and quickly brushes his teeth without water, puts on deodorant, brushes his hair.
"Why is it is so important that we leave, now?" Fred asks.
Harry just grabs his arm and shoves him out the door and down the stairs. "Just trust me, we don't want to stick around. Not for this, not for Luna," he says as they scramble down the stairs. At the bottom Fred stops and Harry almost keeps walking into his back. "What's the matter?" he whispers, "Fred, we have to get out of here, now."
"Hey Harry," Luna says from the table, looking out the back window. She doesn't look over at them and Fred fidgets. "What do you want to do about the car?"
Fred takes a few steps forward and Harry extricates himself from the stairs and walks around so he's standing in front of Luna, blocking the window. "We can apparate home," he says to her, "And magic the car out of here too, I suppose."
Luna doesn't look at him. "Can you see the themooses?" Luna asks and Harry raises his hands and slaps them down on the table, but Fred looks out the window. Half-thestral, half-moose.
"Yeah," he says, "but they aren't as big as I expected."
"They're still babies," Luna says, and Harry finally sits down opposite her and looks around behind him. "I think it's good the muggles will know, now, you know," she says, "That wasn't my problem before. It's the—herding people, I guess. I don't like the idea that I'm being watched. Tracked."
"But you're watching, tracking, those creatures," Harry says, looking down at the table.
Luna nods. "Probably," she says, "I didn't say I was better."
Fred watches them, and begins to walk to the door.
"Wait," Luna walks over to him, and places her hand on his arm. She is barefoot and Fred wonders if her feet get cold. "Don't leave."
Fred laughs. "I'm going for a walk," he says, "Should I be worried about trolls?"
Luna smiles, then laughs. "You think we need to talk?" she asks, and Fred nods. "And I should get in contact with Bones if it's alright with you," he says. She nods.
"You can use magic if you want. I set the spell so you can find me, no matter what. Both of you, actually." She coughs and tries to hide a smile.
Fred rolls his eyes and walks out the door. "Don't get into trouble," he says, and thinks about how he could combine candy and practical jokes. Later, as he's walking back along to road to Luna's he sees wild strawberries and picks them, hoping that they are ripe.
+++
So this is how it ends: Fred will grow old and sell magic tricks to muggle children and candy to magic children—though the word muggle is discouraged now—and sometimes he will get letters or calls from his old boss asking him for a favor, a potion to be made or a spell to be studied, and he'll refuse. He will wake up one day and go to his father's funeral, and, even though Arthur Weasley is the sixth person in the family to die, he's only the second one with a service. Sometimes, when people ask for Fred's name, he tells them it's George. He gets Christmas cards from Hollywood's newest up-and-coming director, and she offers him bit parts, if he wants them. He thinks, briefly, of introducing her to Draco, but then decides against it, though he hears a few months later that they're the next big celebrity couple (and a few months after that that they've broken up). Every ten years or so there is a census, and one of the questions asks: "Can you do magic?" He leaves it blank. His favorite question, however, will always be: "Do you have a magical disability?" He wonders what Remus Lupin puts. Every now and again he gives a guest lecture at Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall, against all reason and logic, is still alive, and his favorite part of growing up is learning that when she was a student she had more detentions that Fred, George, Lee Jordan, and all the Marauders put together. When he's bored he starts up his computer and checks out a website written only in Norwegian and Spanish. He's learning to speak the former. Once or twice a year he goes to a mountain outside of Trondheim to visit his godchildren—George and Lily. He hopes someday they'll start Hogwarts so he can spoil them rotten. And, on the days when he misses them so much it hurts, he drives to a house where a newspaper man once lived (and died) and he taps the walls and says: "Actias luna" and watches as a map of the whole world spreads out against the ceiling and walls, until, finally, the curves of the continents curl around the fjørds of Norway and a dot appears: "luna moth", and, if he looks at it just at the right angle when the light comes through the window and hits it, he can see a whole series of other dots as well: "Gred" and "Forge" and "Dragon" and three dots, usually superimposed upon the first: "G." and "L." and "the boy who lived".