You were just a kid.

That’s what he told himself, anyway. Over and over. She’s just a kid. She’s Ron’s year. She’s here for the summer. That’s it.

But somehow, “just a kid” didn’t quite fit the way you said “what do you think about magical theory post-Goblin Rebellion?” or the way your brow furrowed when you practiced the wand movement for Cheering Charms.

And it definitely didn’t match the way he caught himself thinking about you hours after you’d gone back to the girls’ room upstairs.

Bill Weasley had always been good at keeping things neat. Orderly. Contained.

Top of his year. Twelve O.W.L.s. Head Boy. Curse-breaker for Gringotts. Fluent in Gobbledegook. He knew his place in the world. Knew how to read ancient ruins and dodge magical traps and decode entire systems of wandless defense.

But he couldn’t figure out you.

Not really.

It wasn’t like you two spoke much at first. He was always coming and going from work — loud greetings, quick hugs for his mum, stolen sips of tea between assignments. But then there was that one evening in the garden, just after supper, when everyone else had gone in and you’d stayed outside with a book open on your lap.

“You know,” he said, casually stepping down the porch steps, “you’re holding your wand too tight.”

You blinked up. “What?”

“For that charm. The Cheering one. You’ve got a death grip on it. Your wrist’s too stiff.”

You frowned, and he found it ridiculously charming.

That was how it started. A few minutes here and there. Then an hour.

By the third evening, he was bringing parchment and diagrams. You’d ask questions like “why did Flitwick never explain this this way?” and he’d smile into his teacup.

By the fifth, you had inside jokes. By the sixth, he was waiting for you to come down the stairs before he left for work.

He never crossed a line. Not once.

But there was something there. In the way your eyes lit up when you finally mastered a charm he’d shown you. In the way he watched you when he thought no one else noticed. In the way your knees brushed beneath the table — not an accident, never an apology.

He should’ve stopped. Should’ve pulled away.

But you were brilliant in a way that drew him in. Not because you were perfect — but because you wanted to be better. Because you saw the world like a puzzle to be solved, not a place to merely survive. Because you met his intellect with curiosity instead of intimidation.

One night, he lingered in the kitchen after you’d all come back from the orchard. You were wiping jam off your cheek with your sleeve and laughing at something Fred had said — but when you caught Bill’s gaze, everything else faded for a second.

His mouth went dry. Yours parted, just barely.

And then you looked away.

He wasn’t sure if you blushed. He wasn’t sure if he did. But he remembered the silence that bloomed in that moment. Charged. Quiet. Like you’d both realized the same thing and were too afraid to say it out loud.

He told himself it meant nothing. Just summer. Just studying. Just a girl with questions and a boy with answers.