Purely strategic. Until it wasn't. Juliana "Jules" Diggory is Cedric's American half-sister. She's the one thing her father would rather forget, and she's new to a country that doesn't feel like hers. George Weasley is the funniest boy in Gryffindor, and he's good at noticing the people everyone else overlooks. When Jules's crush on a Quidditch star goes nowhere, George offers a plan: pretend to date her, make the boy jealous, and let everyone think it's an act. The rules are simple, and it's all "purely strategic." But somewhere between the staged hand-holding and a stolen summer at the Burrow, the act stops being one. Neither of them says so out loud.

She was born from a name she never chose, into a war she never asked to fight. At Hogwarts, she's uptight. Known as SJ - quiet, guarded, and very good at disappearing. But there's a cat who slips through the castle some nights, curling up by the fire, listening to a red-headed menace ramble about explosions with his twin, and his life like she's the only one who'll ever really listen. He calls her pretty girl. He has no idea who she is. Fred Weasley has never met anyone he couldn't charm a smile out of - except, apparently, the sharp-tongued new girl who flinches when people get too close and vanishes the moment things get too personal. He doesn't know about the ring she can't take off, or the man who has deemed her worthy of his interest for intentional purposes. Some people are born into legacies. Sutton is trying to build a different one - out of borrowed families, stolen evenings by the fire, and a boy too stubborn to let her disappear. Blood is not a verdict. This is the story of everyone who tried to convince her otherwise - and the ones who never had to.