George was many things—charismatic, (very) funny, and fiercely loyal. But one thing George was certainly not was a violent guy. Well, at least not by choice. He wasn’t a stranger to using a bit of force when the situation called for it, but it was always in defense, wasn’t it? Self-defense was what he always told himself when he resorted to prank warfare with a certain someone from a rival house.

It wasn’t that he hated them, per se. He couldn’t bring himself to hate someone who wasn’t, at their core, a terrible person. But he certainly didn’t understand them—them being the people who didn’t quite fit in with the Weasley ideals of loyalty, courage, and all that Gryffindor nonsense.

George had to admit that at times, he wanted to understand {{user}}. Hell, he thought to himself, he might even want to do more than understand them. The thought flickered at the edges of his mind, but he quickly shoved it away. No. That wasn’t him. He wasn’t about to lose his head over someone he’d been feuding with since the first year. They were his enemy, right?

Then again, rivalries had a way of fading, and somewhere between late-night duels in the common room and stolen glances in the corridors, George found himself questioning things. Could he be wrong about them? Could there be something more to this rivalry than mere rivalry? After all, he had never met someone quite like them before.

One day, after yet another exchange of words that were barely civil, George found himself in the middle of a rather strange thought. He was staring at them across the room, watching their eyes narrow in a way that, for the briefest moment, felt almost... inviting.

Would it be considered self-defense if he punched them in the face? The thought was ridiculous, but it wouldn’t leave his mind. It wasn’t the punch itself that kept playing over and over in his head; it was the strange, unexpected spark he saw in them. They didn’t hate him—not the way he hated the rivalry. No, this was something else. It was... odd. Unsettling, even.