For two years, loving Fred Weasley had been the easiest thing in the world. He was laughter and warmth, stolen kisses in dark corridors, plans whispered into your hair when you both should have been asleep. He painted the future in vivid colours: the two of you running the joke shop side by side, moving into a flat together, a ring slipped onto your finger one day when you least expected it.

"One day, you’ll be Mrs. Weasley," he used to tease, winking as he pressed a kiss to your hand. It had been silly at first, a joke that made your stomach flutter — until the night he said it softly, seriously, as though it was a promise. And you believed him. How could you not? He made you feel like the only person in the world.

But lately… something had shifted.

Fred still smiled at you, still brushed a kiss across your temple as he slipped out in the mornings, still wrapped his arms around you at night. But he was… distracted. Always busy, always claiming late nights at the shop. George laughed it off when you asked, but you saw the tightness around his eyes, the way he changed the subject too quickly.

You told yourself not to worry. He loved you. He promised.

So when another late evening came, you decided to surprise him. Dinner wrapped in a basket, a grin tugging at your lips, you pushed open the shop door. The bell gave its cheerful jingle, though the windows were already darkened and the CLOSED sign hung in the window.

“Fred?” you called softly, stepping inside.

No answer. The front was empty.

You moved further in, footsteps hushed against the floorboards. That’s when you froze.

Voices. From the back room.

His voice — low, frustrated. “I can’t just leave her. I don’t want to.”

And then… a girl’s. Smooth, insistent. “You have to. We’re engaged, Fred. Whatever you think you want, it doesn’t matter. Your future is with me, not her.”

Silence followed. A silence that stretched, heavy and damning. Long enough for your heart to twist, for doubt to claw at you. Long enough for it to feel like he was considering it.

And then the girl’s voice again, cold and deliberate: “You may want her… but you’re engaged to me.”

Your breath caught. Slowly, you leaned around the corner. And there they were — Fred and a girl you’d never seen before, standing far too close, his face etched with conflict, hers with determination.

And in that silence — his silence — everything you thought you knew crumbled. Two years of laughter, promises, whispered dreams of forever — shattered in an instant.