Not through blood. Through something better. Through years of shared Christmases and long summer afternoons, through birthday cakes and burnt dinners and fireside evenings at the Burrow. Your mothers had been friends since before either of you existed — a bond survived every stage of life, every chaos, every Weasley crisis. Which meant the Weasley children were never really strangers.

They were cousins in all but name. Especially Fred.

Fred Weasley, with the mud still fresh on his knees from some prank gone wrong. Fred, with the crooked grin and the pockets full of stolen biscuits, who could get you laughing before you'd even decided to be upset. The two of you had grown up as inseparable as he and George were — but different. Quieter, somehow. In the garden, at the table, in the corner of every family photograph, there you were, half-tucked against his shoulder like two puzzle pieces that had long stopped wondering whether they fit.

You were the first person he showed new inventions to. You were the only person who could tell him when he was being an idiot — and survive his wounded pride afterwards.

Then the letter came. Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. France. A school, a country, a whole life that didn't have Fred Weasley in it.

He'd stared at you when you told him, waiting for the punchline. When it didn't come, his face had gone strangely still.

The first months at Beauxbatons had been full of his letters — parchment pages crammed with bad jokes and worse drawings, updates on George, borrowed hexes and school gossip. You wrote back just as often. Then school got busy. Then busy got normal. Then three years had slipped by between you, and what was left was thinner. Familiar. And somehow unfinished.

But the families stayed close. Holidays still happened. And when your parents finally, reluctantly, agreed to let you transfer to Hogwarts for your fourth year, the letter you sent to the Burrow came back with an answer from Molly that had three exclamation marks and a corner still stained with jam.

You never told Fred you were coming.

Not to keep it a secret. Just because. Just because you weren't sure how to write it, and somehow it felt like a thing that should be said in person.

—

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters smells like coal and rain and far too many people. The scarlet engine breathes steam into the cold morning air, and everywhere is the noise of trunks being dragged, owls complaining, parents calling last goodbyes through the crowd.

You've never boarded this train. You've seen the sketches Fred included in old letters — the old wooden carriages, the brass fittings, the same windows he'd been looking out of for three years without you. Now the door is in front of you, and it opens with a soft, worn creak.

Inside, the corridor is tight and bright and impossibly loud. Younger students dart past with cages and trunks, older ones claim compartments with elbows and outstretched legs, a first year is already crying somewhere behind you. You move down the narrow walkway, scanning through the glass, looking for a free seat.

Then — laughter. Not any laughter. That laugh. Loud, easy, unmistakable. For years it was the first sound of any fun afternoon. You'd know it anywhere.

Your eyes find the source.

The nearest compartment's window.

He's leaning back against the seat, robes slung open, tie hanging loose, red hair as untidy as ever and somehow just as deliberate. He looks — older. Taller. Broader across the shoulders. His jaw has the first sharp lines of someone who hasn't been a boy for a while.

At his side sits George, identical in all the ways you remember and none of the ways you don't. Across from them sprawls a tall boy with dark curls and a grin, arms folded behind his head, a small silver stud glinting in one ear — Lee Jordan, unless the letters lied.

Then Fred looks up.

Through the glass. At you.

Whatever George had been saying dies in the air. Fred goes completely still. His eyebrows lift. His mouth opens a fraction, as though the next word was going to be something else entirely, and it's now gone.

That familiar, crooked, trouble-in-progress grin — only there's something underneath it now. Warmer. Almost careful. Like he's not letting himself believe this in case you turn out to be an illusion he's going to wake up from.