Chapter 19
"You didn't ask what I think, but I want-" Hermione began, her voice not cold or unkind and barely above a whisper. It was far from both, actually. "I want you to be sure that this is what you want to do. That's all." Hermione was nothing but worried--empathetic, even.
Rebecca had managed to find the path. It appeared to her exactly as it had their detention during first year, a faintly illuminated path through the now-grown bushes that brought no delay as she simply raised their broom a little higher.
"You can't see it, can you?" Rebecca whispered back.
"See what, the ground?" Both girls had taken to whispering once they passed the entrance to the forest. There was no way of knowing who or what was around them in the darkness they couldn't see through and the trees older than they could imagine.
"The path?" Rebecca pointed out the line she was following.
Hermione shook her head.
"And yes," Rebecca answered the original question. "I am certain this is what I want to do and I'm happy you're here. I don't think I could do this alone."
"We shouldn't be doing this at all." Hermione laid her cheek against Rebecca's back, settling in for however long a ride they were in for. "But I'm glad I'm with you, too." They were quiet a moment or two, and then Hermione spoke again. "I thought about the possibility of this happening."
"Me hijacking our trip to force you into the forest so I can demand answers from a tree?" Rebecca glanced over her shoulder. "You should go into fiction, you'd make a fortune."
"Poorly worded, but yes." Hermione chewed at the inside of her cheek. "I think this is a good idea."
Rebecca jerked the broom to a stop. "You what?"
Hermione looked around carefully. "Keep going and I'll explain." The broom resumed its slow crawl. "I looked up the astronomy charts to find the dates for what you had listed from the centaur books. It's not the end of spring, it's the beginning of summer. The stars and the planets align the second week of June. We can't keep working with half-answers and outdated-facts. Not if we are to know how dangerous this truly is."
"I didn't know you guys were still thinking about all that."
"Of course we're still thinking about it." Hermione sighed. "And we've all found you during a glimpse at one time or another. We all hoped you were just daydreaming about Fred."
"Nice."
"But then..." Hermione shuddered against Rebecca. "Becs, what would have happened if you'd stayed in the water earlier? If I hadn't been there?"
"Probably breathed." Rebecca raised a hand from the handle to lay it on the back of Hermione's. "But you were there, and I am fine."
"All the same, we're still thinking about everything from the books and the Wollstone Wood's prophecy because one of us is going to find a way out and your brother couldn't find his way in a library even if he had both your brains." Hermione looked up at the weight of something looking at them and grabbed Rebecca sharply. "STOP!"
Staring down at them, directly across the path, was a massive, glowering centaur.
Rebecca stopped the broom but didn't dismount in case she needed to get her and Hermione out of there quickly. The centaur in front of the others, the one that seemed to be their leader, looked familiar. "You were there last year, weren't you?" Rebecca asked. "When we brought Umbridge to you?" The centaur jerked its head in a single nod. "Then you know we mean no harm."
"We know far more than you." The centaur's voice was gravelly and solemn. "We know why you are here."
"Then you'll let us pass." Rebecca tightened her grip on the handle and Hermione linked her hands around Rebecca's middle. The seething anger, the rage, came off the centaur in waves. "If you know more than we do," Rebecca elaborated when nothing was said. "You must know I only want answers."
Again, nothing happened.
Rebecca cleared her throat and looked straight up at the centaur. "Hitchuri agrante, yeturian?"
Finally, a reaction was given. The centaurs began to huff and move where they were, hooves stomped and dragged through the dirt of forest's ancient floor. "Ronan!" A younger centaur surged forward. "She speaks the tongue of-"
"Enough!" Ronan, now named, crossed his arms. "You'll do well not to speak our tongue again, youngling. Your kind has not enough legs to hold the weight of our race's oppression."
Rebecca, ever surprising to Hermione, didn't lash out against such a chastising. Instead, Rebecca bowed her head deeply. "I meant no harm, I hope my intentions were greater than my offence."
Ronan cocked his head. This two-legs was the strangest he had ever discovered on their lands. "It was. Greater, that is." Ronan turned his large body and waited for Rebecca to bring the broom to his side so that he could lead them further into the forest. "These are dark times and one can never be to defensive. I will take you to the Woman-in-the-Wood, though she has not spoken in many moons."
"I know." Rebecca answered Ronan's question as to how she could know. "The Wollstone's Wood, right? That's what we call the Woman-in-the-Wood?"
"You magic are all alike, renaming that which is already named."
"That's not-" Rebecca turned her head back to the path, wrangling her temper down. "The Woman-in-the-Wood, she speaks to me. In my dreams, she comes, but it's been months and I-"
Ronan had heard of two-legs the Woman-in-the-Wood had chosen, but none that had happened in his lifetime. There was supposed to have been one from his father's time as leader of the tribe, but his father forbade discussion of the boy. "The Woman-in-the-Wood, that's where I will take you."
Rebecca kept her eyes focused on what was ahead of them. Hermione wondered if Rebecca was tense with anticipation or fear.
Perhaps it was both.
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Ginny lie in her bed with the ball she had nicked from Rebecca's discarded jumper the week before. She wasn't entirely sure of its purpose yet. All Ginny knew was that no matter how hard or how far she tried to throw it, the ball flew back into the palm of her hand with a stinging slap that was fairly therapeutic as Hermione and Rebecca had yet to return.
It was nearly midnight and they were only supposed to have been gone a little bit, not hours.
Ginny sat up in her bed and crossed the empty room to crawl across Rebecca's bed for a clear view out the window. The Black Lake reflected the stars in the distance as usual, and there wasn't any smoke rising anywhere. Ginny couldn't think of anything to look for that would tell her if they weren't okay.
Settling back into her bed, Ginny scowled. "They better not be causing trouble without me."
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Rebecca and Hermione were surprised to see the constant movement of other centaurs around the edge of the clearing the path opened up to. The gnarled roots of the tree were illuminated by the numerous fires burning intermittently; the shadows cast from the dancing flames warped the brown hues of the tree's bark. The flickering light made it seem as if the the face in the tree were dancing too.
"You may go." Ronan held his hand in front of Hermione as the girls stepped onto the ground. "She will stay."
"We came together, we'll stay together." Rebecca argued.
"No one approaches the Woman-in-the-Wood uncalled for."
"It's alright." Hermione held the broom at her side. "I'll stay right here." Rebecca didn't make any indication that she would step away, so Hermione leaned forward and caught her eyes. "I'll be right here."
Rebecca nodded and took a step closer to the tree; as much as she didn't like the idea of separating from Hermione--even by this slight amount--concessions had to be made for the truth.
The leaves left over from the last storm crumpled under her trainers and Rebecca was grateful that her pajamas had been rolled already. The outside sounds seemed to quiet and, like when Wilhomena had reached her through her dreams, the air grew warmer towards the tree. Just like before a storm, the air felt filled with electricity and the sense that something was coming, something strong.
Rebecca laid a hand on the section of root nearest to her and closed her eyes so that she could focus on reaching out into the magic around her. "Wilhomena?"
"You should not be here."
Rebecca kept her eyes closed. She could sense the weakness in the Woman-in-the-Wood's soft voice. It sounded as if the voice from within the tree were leagues away, as if just being able to make herself loud enough to be heard was weakening her.
"Take some, I can share. We need to talk."
Rebecca brought to mind sliding a stack of sweets across the table like when she, Fred, George, and Cedric played exploding snap. Then, to slide some of the magic out of herself--out of her body's reserves--Rebecca gave Wilhomena strength. It left her tired and out of breath, bit no more so than if she was in the middle of a tough quidditch scrimmage.
Wilhomena felt the strength flood through her. It was the most she had had in years, lifetimes even. "Where does this come from?" Horror tinged her voice unintentionally.
Rebecca misunderstood and tried to gather more up from inside of her. "I can give you more. I need a moment, it's sickening how it pours out of me." Rebecca opened her eyes in alarm. "Not that I wouldn't have shared! That's not what I meant! It just-"
Wilhomena, following Rebecca's lead, opened her eyes too. A panic rose through the centaurs all around. The Woman-in-the-Wood hadn't opened her eyes in the realm of the living in centuries. "I need not more, you have spoilt me already."
"It doesn't come freely." Rebecca warned, speaking aloud. "I need answers."
"Do you have the questions for the answers you desire?"
The centaurs ran in circles around the clearing, whooping and shouting and chanting. Hermione was afraid that if Ronan left her side, she would be trampled. Rebecca was entirely oblivious--outside of the sphere she had entered was muffled and grey.
"I won't play word games, I said that the first time we met." Rebecca looked up at Wilhomena intently. "I want to know what will happen when spring ends and summer begins."
Wilhomena's eyes turned down and looked over Rebecca's physical body, noting differences compared to her spectral. "You make yourself bigger in your head, noticeably so. You are but a child!"
Rebecca's jaw set in defiance and Hermione could hear traces of Rebecca's rising indignation in the wake of the centaurs slowly beginning exit. "You chose me! This is your bloody task, your bloody riddle! I didn't seem such a child when I gave you some of my magic, did I?"
"I meant no offense. On this, you are mistaken. Changing your appearance from the physical to the otherworldly is a rare enough feat, but to combine this with the sheer depths of your power? Mysterious...especially when one considers the wand in your hand."
"What about it?" Rebecca held it higher so that Wilhomena could see it. It was brown and shockingly similar to Harry's. Where his seemed to be more rugged, hers was smoother and had a line that circled up from the bottom before going the length of the wand entirely. Ollivander hadn't told her the core, only that it had once belonged to someone remarkable.
"Your wand's history is plagued with shadows, you must bring it into the light."
Rebecca realised that she had found her question, the one she decided needed to be answered before any other. "I don't want to play games! What happened to Regulus Black? That's my question. Answer it, without riddles."
Wilhomena's eyes steeled. Hermione, still barely able to hear the one side of the conversation spoken, found that the eyes out of the rough bark could express emotions as well as any other. "I told you. I failed him."
"How?"
"I do not wish to speak of this?"
"How do I know you won't fail me like you did him, then? How do I know your stupid prophecy is real anyway?"
"Watch yourself." Wilhomena warned, her eyes narrowing into a glare Rebecca matched. "You ought not disrespect me as you are."
Rebecca smiled bitterly. She was enraged by the tree's superior tone and an angre rose up in her that reminded her of that which Voldemort's influence had brought out in her in years past. "Should I take back what I have given? Leave you too weak to talk and leave the forest as it was?"
Wilhomena's emotions ebbed and flowed and Rebecca could feel it through their connection. The tree's leaves rustled as if a wind blew through them, though the clearing was entirely still. The centaurs, all but Ronan, had left.
"I cannot tell you what happened to Regulus Black for I do not know." Rebecca went to interrupt, but was silenced. "He came here. He called for me. Like you have seen yourself now, I was too weak to climb out of the fog. I could not get to him before he left." Wilhomena was silent a moment. "He did not return here before I felt his departure from the earthly plane."
Rebecca found a new hardness in her, an obstinance. She had resigned herself to whatever fate would have in store for her and she was growing to resent it. Rebecca was wrong. "Well, I'm not coming back and I'm not going to call for you. This is it."
Wilhomena's thoughts revealed that she thought Rebecca was being foolish.
"What was it you just said? You were shocked by the power I imparted? Fine. I will get stronger."
"No, child. Such aspirations have never led men to success--only heartache and failure."
"But I am not 'men.'" Rebecca let go of the branch, cutting of the flow of power from herself to WIlhomena. They both felt the effect instantly: Rebecca was filled with the hum of power she had thought was the environment and Wilhomena felt the pull of the spirit plane pull her back into the fog again. "I am Rebecca Potter Weasley and I'm not taking and of this shite. Not from you. Not from Voldemort. And not from another fucking prophecy. I have had enough of those for a lifetime."
Hermione and Ronan stared at the situation in front of them with differing degrees of abject wonder as a sheer, wispy line grew more visible around both the tree and Rebecca. The circle slowly moved closer and closer until it was only around Rebecca and bright enough to illuminate her against the darkness of the forest surroundings.
Wilhomena tried to fight against her retreat, to collect the last bit of herself. "Beware the fall..."
Rebecca stood in the silence that grew out of the empty vessel as Wilhomena's presence returned to wherever it stayed. Rebecca's power became her own once more and she tried to put away what she had tapped in to, but it was like filling in a valley with a spoon. The power seemed to flow through her blood, flower in her fingertips. Her body burned with excess that continued to pile higher.
Ronan reached out to grab the girl as she stepped closer to the tree and the strangeness, but Hermione dodged him.
"Rebecca?"
Rebecca heard Hermione but couldn't move. It was taking everything in her to keep herself together. Hermione noticed how Rebecca's hands trembled and, when Hermione laid a hand on her shoulder, a current passed through them. The immediacy of what Rebecca felt would have been her falling apart pushed back and Rebecca was left needing to move before she imploded.
"Hermione!" Rebecca cried out, leaning forward and leaving her friend with a kiss on the lips. "You're a genius!" Hermione stood in shock while Rebecca ran towards the very-confused centaur to give him a high five. "Let's go!" Rebecca scooped up their broom from where Hermione dropped it.
"What happened?" Hermione asked. "Were you able to speak to her?"
"You were right." Rebecca couldn't wipe the grin off her face, though Hermione not getting on the broom threatened to. "This was a good idea--no, a great idea!"
"But what happened!" Hermione shouted. She grabbed Rebecca by the shoulders and held her in place, trying to understand where Rebecca's sense had gone. Hermione was frightened by what looked back at her: Rebecca's eyes were dilated to points, her cheeks casting a stark contrast from her hair with splotchy red patches over her cheeks. Heat crept off the skin underneath Hermione's hands like something out of an oven. "Do you need Madam Pomfrey?"
"No! I feel good!" Rebecca looked down at her hands and saw how they were brighter than they should have been, how a light threatened to grow from them. "Hermione?" Her joy was gone, fear taking its place and then some more.
"You need to calm down." Hermione grabbed Rebecca's hands and held them closer despite the heat that came off them. "You need to turn off whatever she's done!"
Rebecca's eyes fluttered closed. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Calming down seemed as impossible as jumping to the moon. "I can't! I don't even know where it's coming from!"
Hermione pulled Rebecca's head into her shoulder, gently rubbing her back. "It's alright, okay? You need to slow down."
Rebecca tried to pull back, afraid of failing and hurting Hermione.
"You won't." Hermione spoke softly. "I know it. Just breathe."
Rebecca followed Hermione's slow breaths and focused on every one. Ronan pranced uneasily behind them. Eventually, the calls of his tribe to leave the two-legs to their own won. Hermione didn't pay his exit any mind. She held Rebecca like that for minutes, until the unhealthy, impossible temperature of Rebecca's skin faded to more of a slight fever.
Hermione held Rebecca's hands before she let go of her completely, turning them towards the light. They were as pale as they should have been.
"I don't know what that was." Rebecca whispered.
"You said you gave her power?" Hermione glanced at the tree over Rebecca's shoulder. "What does that mean?"
"She-wherever her spirit goes...it's far. I passed on some of my magick so that she could stay to answer my questions."
"I don't know how you do the things you do." Hermione directed the broom towards the castle, leaving Rebecca to hold on and continue breathing. "But I do know that magick isn't like a faucet, you cannot turn it off and on when you're done with it."
"What is it like then?" Rebecca asked tiredly. The elation and then the terror and the questions still running rampant in her mind were catching up with her.
"A dam holding back an entire ocean."
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"I won't ask you to lie about what we did." Rebecca was the first to speak in the silence she and Hermione had kept going under the Invisibility Cloak. "But-"
"But that's exactly what we're going to do." Hermione reached forward and laid a hand on Rebecca's shoulder. "I won't say anything. I want us to go to the library tomorrow, to check on a theory I have."
"You mean go to the library today?" Rebecca glanced over her shoulder with an attempt at normalcy. "Sorry."
"Yes, today then." Hermione nodded, repeating herself. "I want to think a little longer anyway."
"Am I going to like it?" Rebecca got nothing in response. "Great. My favourite type of research."
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"This-" Rebecca grit her teeth and tried to keep her anger inside of herself. "This is insulting!"
Hermione wondered if she should have approached the subject more gently. "No! That's not how I-Look, read this part and-"
"I am not an obscurial!" Rebecca raised her voice, ignoring the shush Madam Pince had already sent their way. "I do not hide my magic!"
"You're going to get us thrown out!" Hermine offered the librarian an apologetic grimace.
"Good!" Rebecca narrowed her eyes at the book. "It's not like we're doing anything useful in here."
"Just read it. I wouldn't talk about this without a good reason."
"Obscurial." Rebecca read quieter than she had been since they sat at the back of the library. That's what Rebecca needed added to her reputation--another degree of freakiness. "A witch or wizard who suppressed their magical self. Usually at the hands of extensive violence or..." Her voice trailed away. "You think what? I stored it up through those years?"
"That's exactly what I think." Hermione's hand moved closer to Rebecca's, but not all the way. Sometimes speaking about Rebecca's past left her grateful for physical comforting, other times it left her afraid of it.
Rebecca moved her hand the final distance so that Hermione's rest on top of it.
"I think, knowingly or not, you managed to force it to the lowest, lowest part of you. I think that's where you draw whatever-that-was-from-last-night from. I think this is how you can do what you do." Hermione's eyes flit over the page. "A part of it, at least."
"How would you explain all this?" Rebecca asked without the anger from before. All of the fight inside of her was fading to a sadness older than her years. "I've never caused mass destruction or-" The end of Lavender's poked out from behind the shelf she was loitering at nearby. "Oi, Brown! Quit eavesdropping and get a fucking move on before I-" Madam Pince stood up from her chair, silencing Rebecca's too-loud voice for a moment. "Before I'll have found my permanent tester!" She finished with a whisper just as threatening.
Hermione sighed. "Sometimes silence is the best form of attack."
"You pulled that straight out of your arse." Rebecca shrunk under Hermione's reproachful look. "Well, you did!"
"And yet it was still wise advice." Hermione turned the page and turned them back to their research. "Do you feel like you belong?"
"What kind of a question is that?" Rebecca rolled her eyes. "Of course I belong." Hermione kept reading the page, waiting for Rebecca to think about the question longer. "Belong where?"
"In general." Hermione had to wait a long time before Rebecca answered.
"I'm...I'm not a blood Weasley, but I share their home and love them. I'm a Potter, but sometimes I only feel like I am by name." Rebecca's free hand fidgeted with the corner of another book on the table. "I don't feel like a Muggle because I only knew the house and school f-from before. I don't feel like a witch because I only know what I've been taught since the Weasleys--how can I fully belong here?"
Hermione listened carefully and could tell that Rebecca was finding more and more potential in the idea of something relating to the obscurial formation.
"I belong with Fred, that part I'm certain."
"That's good--you should be."
"I want you to tell me I'm wrong then." Rebecca's anxiety became her for a moment and she didn't let a wall come up to hide it as she would have years earlier. "You've never lied to me, Hermione. I know you'll tell me the truth, okay?"
Hermione nodded.
"I belong with Fred." Rebecca's heart fluttered just repeating the statement, but the doubt and guilt left her feeling sick. "But I worry that he's putting himself in danger when he's with me. By being with me. Voldemort has seen in my head, in my thoughts. He knows how I-"
"You are wrong." Hermione caught Rebecca's eyes and let her honesty be seen. "Stupidly wrong."
"Do you think so?" Rebecca asked quietly.
"I know so." Hermione squeezed Rebecca's hand. "If don't think there's a world out there where you're not with him. The two of you are like separate pieces of the same thing, do you understand?"
Rebecca took a shuddery breath and nodded quickly. That was what she needed to hear, that was what soothed the dark memories wanting to resurface because of such a topic. "Then what does this all mean, knower of things?"
Hermione closed the book with a muffled thump. "What does it mean? Nothing. It's just a theory and, no matter how true or not, it must have resolved itself enough or else your obscurus would be wreaking havoc and hurting people."
"So you mean to tell me that I just poured all of that out to prove a point?"
"Yes."
Rebecca stared at Hermione. "I love you, but I hate you."
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"Afternoon, Professor Slughorn!" Rebecca called.
Harry and Ron were none the wiser about her and Hermione's midnight detour, nor the purpose of their time in the library, and Ginny was only cross a little while.
The Potions Master looked at the group of children looking towards him and turned back the other direction, offering only a weak wave.
"I'm sorry." Harry offered quietly before Rebecca could hide how her face fell. "I see that's not working."
"Nothing to be sorry about." Rebecca muttered and pulled her bag tighter over her shoulders. "Who cares about Potions anyway?" Her voice betrayed that she did, quite a bit at that. Potions had become one of her most enjoyable classes without Snape there to torture her. She had already passed along updated recipes of their original goods through Fred, and she was playing around with new ideas formed by the skills Slughorn imparted on her.
Before the disastrous attempts at getting the memory as Dumbledore had tasked them with, Rebecca had spent many afternoons going over 'theoretical' questions about ingredient interactions. Now, Slughorn did his best to never be in a room alone with any of them.
Ron and Hermione glanced at each other behind the twins' backs as Rebecca reached into the small pouch she had attached to the strap of her bag. She pulled something small and dark out of it and then threw it up at the ceiling over her shoulder without looking back.
"What was that?" Hermione asked nervously, moving ahead so she was beside Rebecca and trying to keep from looking suspicious. Quidditch might not have been Hermione's greatest interest in the world, but she knew that if Rebecca didn't play the final--with Harry already benched as a part of Snape's punishment post-Draco--the other Gryffindors might put them on trial. Ginny was making an exceptional Seeker, but the team would have been all the better with everyone in their usual spots.
"Name is in progress." Rebecca seemed to come a bit more to life as shouts and laughs trickled out of the corridor behind them. "It'll sprinkle for a minute or two, but the water won't puddle on the ground. New idea."
"What's the point of that?" Ron asked. "Doesn't seem like that big a deal."
"It's not." Rebecca shrugged. Fred and George would have understood--sometimes a prank didn't have to be a 'big deal.'
When classes ended for the day and they all made it back up to the common room, Ron accidentally threatened to send Rebecca straight back into the grey that had appeared earlier. "They're trying to kill us!"
"Don't say things like that." Rebecca had scolded him sharply. Fred, despite his better wishes, told Rebecca the real news whenever he got any. Sirius and Remus were continuing their scouring of the country to gather support for the Order wherever they could, people continued to go missing, people continued to show up dead. "Do your bloody essay, maybe you'll learn a better phrase."
Ron muttered darkly to himself and dipped his quill into the well between them. "Can I check yours? I'll make sure it's good and all."
Rebecca rolled her eyes and handed the scroll she had been scribbling on for ages over.
"You're a horrible person." Ron grumbled.
"What?" Rebecca smirked. "Qu'est qu'un problème?" She pulled her real essay out of her bag and whacked him in the head with it before handing it over. "I had to test the latest batch of French Fancies I'd finished before sending it to the shop."
Harry smiled and turned back to his essay, blissfully unaware about the owl on its way towards them.
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"What did he say?" Rebecca asked curiously as Harry paled over the letter he had received from Hagrid. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Harry held the letter out to her.
"Harry, Rebecca, Ron, and Hermione,
Aragog died last night. Harry and Ron, you met him and knew how special he was. Hermione and Rebecca, I know you'd have liked him. It would mean a lot to me if you'd nip down for the burial later this evening. I'm planning on doing it round dusk, that was his favourite time of day. I know you're not supposed to be out that late, but you can use the cloak. Wouldn't ask, but I can't face this alone.
Hagrid"
"Oh, that's so sad." Rebecca murmured, looking over the note and reading more than his words, but how upset Hagrid had been when he wrote them. "That was his Acromantula, he talked about him in class a few weeks ago."
"You remember something like that from weeks ago?" Ron stared at her.
"We have to go." Rebecca said firmly. "It's only right, he asked for us specifically."
Harry felt a gnawing at the back of his mind, the same feeling he'd had last time he looked at the Felix Felicis. "I think you need to go, Rebecca. I think you need to for all of with some luck."
"What are you going on about?" Rebecca laughed. "Luck? It's a funeral."
"Liquid luck." Harry nodded, certain of himself as he said it aloud. "Something's telling me you have to."
"Something or someone?" Hermione asked carefully.
"It's not Voldemort, if that's what you're asking. It's a feeling." Harry grinned. "Besides, who knows how the evening will go with luck in play?"
Rebecca tried to capture some of Harry's enthusiasm as they piled back into the boys' room, where they seemed to spend most of their trouble-planning time. "Or we could all just go to the funeral under the cloak like Hagrid said..."
Ron put his hands on his hips vaguely reminiscent of Molly. "I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single possible way for the four of us to fit under the same cloak we all did when we were eleven. Most of us have grown."
Rebecca flipped him two fingers and took the vial out of Harry's hand. "Half then. You'll keep the rest for whatever you choose."
Harry rolled his eyes and motioned for her to stop stalling.
Rebecca smelled the potion carefully, still uncomfortable at the idea of magically-induced good luck. She brought the vial to her lips and took two quick swallows, leaving just under half left for Harry to keep.
"How do you feel?" Harry asked excitedly. They could all see that something was clearly settling over her.
"Brilliant!" Rebecca stood up with a little hop. She felt ten feet tall. She wasn't missing Fred, she wasn't thinking about homework or home, she wasn't planning for the shop. Rebecca was entirely focused on the current moment. "I've got a funeral to go to. Catch you later!" She paused at the end of Harry's bed and plucked his old coat off the post. "Borrowing this!"
Ron sat back pleased with himself, letting out a little sigh.
"What's the matter?" Harry asked quickly. If Ron had thought of someway this could go wrong, he better share it so that Harry could worry too.
Hermione laughed loudly, unable to stop completely as she gave an explanation. "He's just happy he doesn't have to see the spider!"
"I-" Ron nodded. "Absolutely."
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Harry's coat was exactly what Rebecca needed in the brisk evening weather of late April. She sauntered out of the castle, greeting whomever she passed. The air had a feeling to it that usually would have had her wishing Fred was beside her to enjoy it, but not overwhelmingly so with the Liquid Luck. No, it had her thinking about how quickly summer was approaching and that they would then be together again.
With the cloak tucked under her newly assumed coat, Rebecca was stopped by a portly body half-hanging out of a cracked open Herbology greenhouse window. "Professor?"
Professor Slughorn, who had been trying to nick some more of the leaves Madam Pomfrey had already said he had gotten enough, startled and slammed his elbow onto the edge of the glass. "Merlin's beard, Rebecca!"
"Sorry!" Rebecca grinned and took the scissors from his hand, along with the box he had been trying to fill. Rebecca deftly filled it without a single bite from the hissing plant, a feat. "Probably thought I was Professor Sprout. Aren't you lucky I'm not!"
Slughorn rubbed his twinging arm. "Why would that be an issue?" He tried to feign innocence.
"The sneaking around, jumping when you saw me, the fact that these tentacula leaves are very valuable and hard to come by." Rebecca's jaw dropped. "Professor!"
"Yes, Rebecca?" Slughorn's nervousness seeped into his voice.
"I simply must be going now. I hope this is enough." Rebecca put the now overflowing box into his outstretched hand and continued on her way as merrily as she had been before.
"How did you get out of the castle?"
Rebecca turned around, still walking backwards slowly. "Right out the front door, sir. I fancied a visit down to Hagrid's. He's a very dear friend of mine--not to mention a bloody wicked professor."
"Rebecca!" Slughorn gasped in shock.
"Sir!" Rebecca mocked back.
Slughorn noticed how visible the scar down her face was with her hair pulled back as it was, pulled back as she rarely--if ever--did. The mark around her eye, in addition to her lightning bolt, left her looking older. Horace wasn't looking at a child as he considered all of his students as, but an adult. "It's nearly nightfall. Surely you realise I cannot allow you to be roaming the grounds by yourself."
"By all means, come along!" Rebecca waved an arm over her shoulder before leading the way down the familiar, winding path to Hagrid's hut.
As their distance from the castle grew, Slughorn fell farther and farther behind Rebecca's increasing pace. "I must insist you accompany me back to the castle at once!"
"That would be counterproductive!" Rebecca called back before pausing on the outcropping that overlooked Hagrid's pumpkin patch.
"What makes you say that?" Slughorn panted as he caught up with her.
"I'm expected at the funeral."
Slughorn paled at the sight ahead. He found his own purpose to speed him along as Rebecca began to hurry again; Slughorn left behind his old man's gait that had him trailing behind. There, in front of Hagrid, Fang, and now Rebecca, was the largest Acromantula Horace had ever seen.
Hagrid didn't say anything other than a quick greeting to both arrivals as they stepped up to the body. Rebecca wrapped her arms around Hagrid as far as she could, wishing she could give him some of the lightness coursing through her to replace his sadness. "I'm so sorry."
"It's-" Hagrid wiped his nose and blew it into a kerchief that could have covered a small table. "Don't tell the others, Rebecca, but I'm glad it's only you. You understand."
Rebecca nodded and took his side.
Horace finally found his voice after walking a full circle around the still body. "How on earth did you manage to kill such a beast?"
"KILL SUCH A BEAST?" Hagrid roared before dissolving back into tears. "My oldes' friend he was."
"He just misunderstood, Hagrid." Rebecca patted the half-giant's arm. "He didn't mean it. Aragog was a king among men."
Hagrid took a shuddering breath and offered Horace a forgiving nod. "I know. It's just, spiders are seriously misunderstood creatures." Hagrid turned back to Aragog. "It's the eyes, I reckon. Tend to unnerve some folk."
Rebecca agreed and lifted her hands to her mouth and made a pinching motion. "Not to mention the pincers."
Hagrid stared at her a long moment as she clicked and moved her fingers in and out. "Yeah, I reckon that too."
"Hagrid," Horace spoke in the silence that formed as the three looked over the carcass. "The last thing I want to be is indelicate, please know that, but Acromantula venom is uncommonly rare. Would you allow me to extract a vial or two? Purely for academic purposes, of course."
Hagrid looked off into the distance before answering. "I don't suppose it's doing him any good now, is it?"
"My thoughts exactly!" Horace stepped forward and dug around in his coat pockets. "Always have ampoule or two about me just for this reason."
Rebecca scratched Fang's head and listened to Hagrid's laments about the loss of such a young life.
"I wish you could've seen him in his prime. Magnificent he was, just magnificent."
Horace took his place with the others a few minutes later, a clinking of the newly moved vials following him as he walked. "Would you like me to say a few words?" He offered. Hagrid nodded immediately. "He had a family, I trust?"
Rebecca answered, remembering the stories Harry and Ron had told her and Hermione of their trip into the Forbidden Forest while the girls were petrified. "Oh yeah, quite a large one."
Horace bowed his head. "Farewell..."
"Aragog." Hagrid gave the name again when Slughorn faltered.
"Farewell Aragog, king of the arachnids. Your body will decay, but your spirit lingers on. And your human friends find solace in the loss they have sustained."
Horace's words filled the onlookers until he turned and looked them both over. "How about an unsullied drink?"
Hagrid couldn't have agreed with the idea more. He had a bottle of brandy and three cups on his table before Horace and Rebecca had even crossed the doorway. The minutes turned to nearly an hour and, as Rebecca had been privy to watch, Horace and Hagrid were heavily inebriated. Their singing proved it as much as their wobbling in their seats.
After their final song, Hagrid downed the rest of his cup and poured himself another. Rebecca shook her head and showed her mostly full cup when Hagrid offered her more, but she had yet to do more than sip cautiously. She was afraid of the alcohol counteracting the splendid surety of herself that the Felix Felicis had given her.
"I had him since he was an egg, a tiny little thing when he hatched!" Hagrid laughed, filled with memories and heartache. "No bigger than a pekinese!"
"I once had a fish. Francis!" Horace's speech was slurred, but understandable. "He was very dear to me. One morning I came downstairs...he vanished. Poof!"
"That's odd, innit?" Hagrid asked Rebecca. She nodded.
"That's life though. We go along and then suddenly, poof!" Horace clapped his hands.
Hagrid's head went back at the sound like it had cast him asleep and he was snoring before his head thumped against the wall behind them.
Horace met Rebecca's eyes, though he seemed to be miles away. "It was a student who gave me Francis. One spring afternoon, I discovered a bowl on my desk with just a few inches of water in it. Floating on the surface, a flower petal."
Rebecca listened carefully as the tone of the hut shifted. She could sense that the story was leading into something very, very important.
"As I watched, it sank. Just before it reached the bottom, it transformed into a wee fish. It was beautiful magic, wondrous to behold. The flower petal came from a lily." Horace sat Rebecca once more and noticed how much like her mother she looked. "Your mother gave me that gift." He had to clear his throat to continue. "The day I came downstairs, the day the bowl was empty, was the day your mother..."
Rebecca wanted to look away from him, she wanted nothing more than to hear nothing else on the subject. The pain the idea of the parents she had never known, the life she had never been able to have, couldn't be completely masked by the potion and it left an ache in her chest that didn't ebb or go away. With it came the whispers of memories, of the darkness Rebecca had lived in before the Weasleys, before she had been abandoned.
"I know why you're here." Horace's voice pulled her out of the shadow it had cast her in. "But I can't help you. It would ruin me."
Rebecca swallowed the lump in her throat and remembered her task. "Do you know why Harry and I survived, professor? The night we got these?" She reached up and brushed her finger against her lightning bolt scar. "Because of Lily and James. Because they sacrificed themselves. Because she refused to step aside and because he refused to give us to him. Because their love was more powerful than Voldemort."
"Don't say his name."
"I'm not afraid of the name, professor!" Rebecca stood up and rest her hands on the table, leaning over it towards Horace. "I'm going to tell you something, something other have only guess at. It's true. Harry and I? We are the Chosen Ones. Only we can destroy him, but we need to know what Tom Riddle asked you to do so. We need to know what you told him all those years ago in your office."
Horace shook his head, tears welling in his eyes.
"Be brave, professor. Be brave like my parents." Rebecca stared at him, still standing. "Otherwise you disgrace her. You disgrace him. You disgrace every person who has ever laid their lives down to the monster you helped create to protect the ones they love. Otherwise...otherwise the bowl will remain empty forever."
Slughorn paused a long moment before speaking. "Please don't think badly of me when you see it. You have no idea what he was like, even then." He raised his wand to his temple and pulled out a white wisp. His hands trembled to the point where he couldn't get the end of his wand to line up with the ampoule he had left, and Rebecca had to steady it before the lid could be replaced.
When she left Hagrid's hut and the two drunken men inside, she had her accomplished mission in Harry's coat pocket.
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"You got it!" Fred laughed triumphantly from his side of the mirror, his grin clear even though both of them lay in their dark beds. "I know you would! I told you so!"
Rebecca laughed. There were still traces of the potion in her system and seeing Fred only seemed to heighten them. "YOu were right. All's well that ends well."
"Yes, all's well that ends well." Fred felt something compel him to speak further. "Have I ever told you that that's one of my favourite things to hear you say?"
"No, you haven't." Rebecca raised an eyebrow and gave him a cheeky smile. "What else do you like?"
Fred chewed his cheek, trying to pick just one. "I like to hear you talk to yourself while you work, or sing even though you never know the words." Rebecca laughed and buried her head under her pillow as Fred continued. "I love to hear you laugh, it's my favourite sound in the world. If I could hear it every minute of every day, I think I would."
"You've gone too far now." Rebecca raised her head from its hiding place. "If you heard me laugh every minute, how would I tell you that I love you?"
Fred considered the problem and had a solution instantly. "Then I'd head you laugh every minute except for one."
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