Chapter 9
Harry and George did not expect to be brought to the ground on their walk, but there they were in the snow next to Hermione and Ginny and Ron.
"There you are! I wondered where you were." Harry said, leaning on his elbows near Ron. "Figured you'd come by eventually."
"I was before I got kidnapped by these loons." Ron muttered, eyeing Hermione and Ginny murderously. "I don't even know what we're doing out here!"
Hermione shushed him and Ginny silenced Ron's complaining with a look, turning back to their hidey-hole view of Fred and Rebecca across the courtyard.
"Sneaky." George whispered, taking the other side of Hermione. "I feel entirely left out of all this spying."
"It's not spying!" Hermione blushed--She knew it was. "It's documenting."
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On the bench they had no idea they were being watched on, Fred and Rebecca had found a topic to talk about.
"Hawai'i? You can't swim!"
"It's not like that's a requirement, Fred!" Rebecca laughed. "When you think about it, it's not absolutely perfect? The sun, the warmth, the...well, I guess that's about it. It's enough for me."
Fred shook his head. "If I could visit anywhere in the world, it would be...Oh, I don't know."
"I'm over here spilling my darkest dreams and you 'don't know?'" Rebecca teased.
Fred sighed, thinking it over. She was right, he should answer back as honestly as she was. "I'd visit Amsterdam."
Rebecca pursed her lips, trying to think. "Where's that--Holland?"
Fred rolled his eyes. "I guess you don't know absolutely everything. No, it's not. Holland is the region but the country is the Netherlands." Rebecca's surprise was evident and he laughed, tapping his temple with his hand not currently resting on her shoulder. "Not only pranks going on up here, love. Mostly, but not entirely."
Rebecca leaned her head on him. "It's not fair how much heat you put off."
Fred wondered once more in his short life if the pounding of his heart would be audible. "S-Something like that." They chatted a few more minutes before Harry appeared at the end of the walk. "Better go on inside, I guess."
Rebecca sensed the disappointment at the idea in his voice and found a degree of it in her, too. She didn't really want to leave where she was. The wind blew particularly hard and she sighed. "Just as the wind builds."
Madam Pomfrey had expected nothing less than a longer-than-short-walk, but she still was quite cross. "A short walk, you said. Out! All of you, out!"
"Me too?" Harry asked cheekily, looking to the door.
"Into that bed before I tie you to it!" Madam Pomfrey nearly shouted. These antics were hereditary, she swore as she remembered James' own difficulties with lying still.
"Didn't mean to get you into any trouble." Rebecca said softly at Harry's shoulder as she hugged him. "You'll be alright?"
"I think I'll be just fine." Harry smiled. "I can be alone for an entire day."
Rebecca nodded, kissing his cheek before stepping back into the group everyone else had formed behind them. She had a fleeting concern about Christmas as she struggled to leave Harry for a night. How would she leave him for a holiday?
"We're going to be busy." Hermione said, grinning as Rebecca scowled. "Yes, I do know you're thinking about Christmas and yes, I do know you're going to have a lovely time at the Burrow."
"I don't like this. You're the one that's left every year." Rebecca was a little excited though. Molly had written in her letters about all the things they would have to do in the few days of break before the day itself: Bake cookies, decorate the tree, shop. "Can't think about it right now though, I have to go to the library."
Hermione's jaw dropped as she was filled in. "Student-taught lesson? That's ingenious! Let's go!"
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Rebecca had never found herself to be a nervous person. She did not care what other people thought and, while in the Muggle world, hadn't had anyone to care. Trying to think about standing in front of her classmates in mere hours, though, left her feeling nauseous.
"Can I help you?" Hermione asked, knocking on the frame of the bathroom door. She'd watched Rebecca mistie her tie twice now. "What are you thinking right now?"
"I'm not going to teach anybody anything."
Hermione bit back a smile. "Well, you know that's not true. I'll be right there and I'll be able to do it."
"Of course you'll be able to do it, I mean people who need to be taught." Rebecca looked at Hermione and Hermione could see that she was actually nervous.
"Hey, don't be daft." Hermione pulled Rebecca's tie proper and reached up for the locks of hair that usually hung in front of her ears. "I've seen you do this in class, you're memories are...more fluid than others. All you have to do is focus and you can pour them." Hermione twisted the curls and pinned them at the back of Rebecca's head. "I know you can do this."
"What if you're wrong?"
Hermione raised an eyebrow cheekily. "I am never wrong. Let's go, you need breakfast."
Harry was pacing in the common room, perhaps even more nervous than Rebecca. "Do you think she can do it?" He asked down the line, making his way back to Fred after they had all said yes.
"Yes!" Fred snapped, making sure Rebecca and Hermione hadn't come down yet. "Don't you?"
"Of course!" Harry looked away from Fred. "I just want this to go well for her."
"We all do. But if you keep asking, she's going to think you're doubting her and-" Fred stopped talking accidentally. Hermione and Rebecca appeared at the top of the stairs and something was different.
George stood in front of Fred, rolling his eyes tiredly. "You're not breathing and while I don't particularly care, mum and dad will."
Fred didn't even hear him, finding a breath and his voice at once. He stepped forward with a grin, holding his elbow out. "Professor?" His playful tone hid his daze.
"Student?" Rebecca dove into their playing headfirst, soothed by Hermione and ready to get this over with.
"Breakfast?" Fred realised what was different as she linked her arm through his. The curls that normally framed her face, the ones one of her hands would idly play with while she was deep in thought or school work, were pulled back so that her eyes were on full display. The green of them seemed particularly bright and the slightest bit of her lightning bolt showed.
"That should be satisfactory."
"As long as there are muffins?"
Rebecca turned her head sharply, a smile making its way through her mock-seriousness. "Five points to Gryffindor!"
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Rebecca thought Professor McGonagall had been joking when she said Rebecca was to leave ten minutes before the end of class to get to Charms, but then she remembered that Professor McGonagall did not joke.
Ten minutes was a long time to wait in an empty hall and she spent every second of it trying to quell her mounting internal panic.
"Good morning!" Professor Flitwick held the door as the previous class left, waving Rebecca in as the class was empty. "Are you ready?"
"I think so." Rebecca paused, setting her bag down at her usual spot. "Are you sure about this, professor?"
"Yes, Rebecca, I am sure." Flitwick glanced at her, smiling slightly. "Now, for the most part, you are going to be on your own. I'll be at my desk in the case of an emergency, but I will not intercede until that point." He paused, seeing her panic heighten another notch at the word 'emergency.' "I will be entirely unneeded."
Rebecca nodded, acknowledging that he'd spoken and not that she agreed with him. This was feeling more and more like a stupid idea. And of course, by the time Rebecca had finally decided that this was as horrible an idea that the felt it was, the first of her classmates had arrived and Flitwick moved to his desk.
Rebecca took a slow breath, meandering around the desks to the steps Flitwick had to the raised platform in the middle of the classroom. Keeping her attention off the slowly-filling seats of confused and murmuring students, she laid out some of the marble sheets on the lip of the chalkboard and erased what was there. Thankfully, Professor Flitwick had left his easel up.
Ron closed the door when the bell rang, nodding his head to Rebecca. He might have liked to give her a hard time, but he also wanted her to do well. He knew that she could do well.
"Lost your way to your seat, Potter?" Goyle called, bringing a few sniggers out of those around him.
Rebecca straightened her shoulders, tapping her wand to her leg. "I'm going to be showing you how to do the Infunde charm today, actually. How to impart your memories."
The laughter died down and Malfoy sat up a little straighter, suspicious. Rebecca sighed and picked up her rendering of Harry falling. "I did this a few nights ago. The proportions are correct, my colours too. The details are clear as a photograph, and-"
"Show off." Malfoy coughed.
Rebecca's face flooded with embarrassment. "Yes, it does seem like I'm 'showing off.' Thank you for noting how well I did, Draco." Her only respite was that his face burnt too at being publicly called out in return. "It appears I have a knack for this so I'm going to show you how I do it."
Rebecca set her own back down, the image facing the board. "Before magic is even involved, you have to have a memory. Something, somewhere, someone, it doesn't matter. You have to choose something you know well enough to have a perfect image in your mind though. Anything you're forgetting will be forgotten in your rendering."
Rebecca set a blank tile onto the easel, not noticing how the door at the back was eased open and then closed without making a sound. Fred and George had slipped out of Potions to watch the lesson.
"Now that you've probably got a few ideas on what you want to recreate, you've got to think about it a little. I've chosen the bench down by the Black Lake." She reached up and wrote the numbers one, two, and three on the board. "I'm getting closer as I think about my memory down there, and by that I mean-Draco?"
Draco's hand--the one not still wrapped in the unneeded bandage--was in the air. "How exactly does one 'get closer' on a memory? Not all of us are robots."
The class was filled with laughter again, but Rebecca felt no embarrassment. Flitwick watched carefully, ready to step in if the heckling proved too much to deal with.
"If I had reached the end of my sentence--which you didn't let me do--I could have explained it." Rebecca turned and leaned against the board. "'Getting closer' to the memory is putting yourself more into it than just remembering something. I'm at the Black Lake, the sun was out, the trees were still green, things like that. That's your first step."
Rebecca went to the easel, waiting a few seconds before casting the first version of her memory. "Infunde." She stepped back and held it out as she walked in a slow circle. "See? It's wrong. These wonky bits are supposed to be people, the trees were bigger, the water was brighter. This is only the first step. Second is the people or, if you don't have any, the other subjects you have. The main focus can't be saved for your last try because it'll need some touching up."
Rebecca put the first attempt on the lip with the others and put a new one up. "Neville?"
"I was just wondering when we'd think about the smaller details."
Rebecca smiled. "Careful, you'll finish all I have planned to say and then we'll just stare at each other." She went to her second attempt and talked through what she was thinking about. "Two of my friends were down with me, we were skipping stones. George was down in the water digging around, Fred was up on the bank. I'm thinking carefully about them, what they were wearing, how they were positioned, what I need to add to what I managed to do in my first try to improve on it."
George turned and looked at Fred to see if he thought her joke had been funny, but Fred didn't notice. He was listening to the lesson more intently than they did their own.
"Infunde."
The picture was better, that was perfectly clear as she walked it around. "Now's the final part, the little details. Fred had his pants rolled up to his knees, the sun wasn't over there, the trees should be a little taller." Rebecca looked out at them all. "Now, you're going to take three tiles of your own and-"
"How are we supposed to do it when you couldn't even?" Draco called, looking at his hand boredly. He didn't feel any more confident in his abilities to impart a memory than he had. "Yours still isn't even done!"
"You're absolutely right." Rebecca surprised Fred with that response, he had expected something more antagonistic from her. "I'll finish it for you, to ease any lasting insecurities you have in your abilities." There it was.
Rebecca swapped her second attempt with the last blank tile she had and held her wand to it, closing her eyes and focusing. It took nearly half a minute, but the class watched in anticipatory silence. Rebecca was going over everything: The minute details of Fred's face as he looked back at her, the angle George's arm had been at as he ducked for a rock, the shadows the evening sun was leaving. When she was sure she was ready, she cast the charm a final time. "Infunde."
The marble took longer as well, filling with the colours and the lines of her memory. Rebecca looked at it and found a sense of pride in it that she didn't have for the other one. There was something to be said about bringing a pleasant memory into being more than a horrible one.
Rebecca picked it up and walked in a slow circle again, starting opposite of Draco's side of the room. "This is my memory. When I think about this day, this is what I see." Fred and George were astonished as she passed the center of the room. It truly was like looking back in time. In front of Draco, Rebecca paused. "I hope this is satisfactory, Draco. I'm excited to see what you come up with."
Draco scowled, turning his eyes to the desk in front of him angrily. The rest of the classroom jumped into motion as they chattered about what they were going to try as they made their memories into reality.
Most of the classroom, at least. Draco's scold didn't fade as he grew increasingly more upset as he went over every facet of his life and failed to find anything he loved enough to recreate. Rebecca's memory was practically dripping with love and Draco couldn't remember anything in his life that brought that to him.
"Do you think it went well?" Rebecca asked quietly, stopping at Professor Flitwick's desk before she was going to walk about the room and answer questions as they popped up.
"Think so?" He laughed and shook his head. "Know so. I am so excited to see what they come up with!"
Rebecca walked away with a smile, stopping at Neville and thanking him for asking questions while she was up there. Fred and George watched, talking quietly, as she flitted around the room. She never showed a lack of patience and left each and every conversation with encouragement.
When she got to them, however, she was nothing but surprised. "You're here? D-did you watch the lesson? What about Potions?"
George waved his hand. "Snape heard how important it was to us and let us go."
Rebecca took a second and raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"No." Fred checked the time. "We left for the bathroom an hour ago."
Rebecca laughed and shook her head. "What did you think? Learn anything?"
"I think you were brilliant." Fred answered honestly. "I feel like I could do even better than we did last year which is saying a lot. We had to do self portraits--shouldn't be hard, right?"
"I do believe I remember asking if you both needed glasses." Professor Flitwick answered, appearing behind Rebecca. "Take a seat and give it a go, an honest go. I could be persuaded to call this emergency tutoring if Professor Snape were to question me about your absence."
An explosion echoed through the room and Professor Flitwick left them with a humoured smile as he went to clean up Seamus' mess.
"Catch me if you need anything, I'll just be around." Rebecca said, lifting slabs onto an empty table in front of them.
Most of the students had made their way through the first two steps easily, it was the final details they were struggling with. Raising her voice loud enough to announce to everyone, she tried to convey how she best got everything through the charm. "If you've tried and tried and can't get that last bit, put yourself back more. Think about how you were feeling during that memory. What you were thinking. You'll be surprised how much more you will remember as soon as you stop trying."
Hermione, as Rebecca predicted, picked up the skill quickly. She showed Rebecca her finished rendering of the Hogwarts' Express in all its glory. Next to her, Ron was stuck. He had chosen a moment from their trip to Egypt and couldn't get the top of the pyramids just right.
"Why would I have looked at the top of them?" He asked as Hermione leaned over and tried to explain what they would have looked like.
"Problem?" Rebecca asked Harry, noticing how he hadn't started yet.
"Nope." Harry gave her a cheeky grin. "Still collecting all my details, that's all."
Rebecca left him and made her way to the other side of the room, finding Draco to be upset. "You're stupid steps don't work, you know. This isn't how I remembered her at all."
Rebecca looked down at his memory. It was foggy, distorted, unclear. "Who is it?"
Draco grimaced. "She was my dog. This? This is just hideous."
"Don't say that." Rebecca said, running her hand over the marble. "I see the general shape, okay? Did you...I don't know, take her on walks? Bathe her?"
"Of course."
Rebecca tried to think about things people who had dogs had probably done. "Did you play fetch and sneak her food from the table?"
Draco sighed as if he had anywhere better to be. "Yes and yes. What does this have to do with your failed lesson?"
"Remember more than this one image of her. Remember all the time you had with her, too." Rebecca gestured to his attempt. "You're fighting yourself because you've almost got it all here."
Draco just his jaw out, not liking how she read him. "I never said she died."
Rebecca looked over her shoulder, wondering if there could be more to Draco. "You didn't have to. You used the past tense and it hurts to talk about her, I can see that. Keep trying, Draco. I know you can do it."
Draco turned back to his tile and wished her encouragement didn't feel nice.
Rebecca found herself drawn to the back of the room to Fred and George's bickering. "Memories are private, George!" Fred had his hand on his tile, holding it to the desk.
"I showed you what I did!" George countered, trying to lift it. "It's only fair, Fred!"
"Really?" Rebecca asked, looking behind her to make sure the clamour of the other students covered their argument.
"Sorry." They said in unison, feeling properly chastised.
She looked to George. "George? Fred is right, memories are private and you can't make anyone share them." Rebecca turned her attention to Fred. "Fred? George is right. If you weren't going to share then you should have said so before he showed you."
Rebecca sighed and made a point of looking at George and not his memory. "May I look, George?"
"Yes, thank you for asking." He looked pointedly at Fred.
"Is this the day you pulled that prank on Ron?" Rebecca asked, covering her laughter with her hand. "That was so horrid of you two!"
Fred chuckled, but George looked at him again. "I'm sharing with Rebecca, Fred. Not you."
Rebecca rolled her eyes at the two of them and excused herself to Harry who was calling for her.
Fred waited for her to leave. "I'm sorry, George. I should have said I didn't want to share mine before hand."
George nodded. "I know."
"I just don't want it to become public knowledge--you know?" Fred chewed at the inside of his lip. "I'd like it to stay between us for now."
"Are you saying I'm a gossip?"
Fred sighed and prepared himself to turn his memory over. George gasped as he saw it. It was of Rebecca the weekend before, when she looked up at Fred on the bench. Her hair was defined by individual strands where it could be seen outside of her cap, snowflakes resting where they landed before they melted.
Her eyes were brilliantly captured, the green heightened by the white of the snowy surroundings and the flecks of gold illuminated by the reflection of the sun. Her breath was frozen in time, her mouth frozen in a smile as she had been in the middle of a laugh.
"What?" Fred asked as George said nothing.
"Mate..." George tore his eyes away from it, looking at Fred curiously. "You won't show this to her?" Fred went to tilt it away from him again, but George caught his arm. "It's brilliant."
Fred stuck the tile under his arm and shook his head, feeling conflicted. "I'll see you at lunch, okay?" He ducked out of the classroom before George could say anything. George sighed and faced the front of the class again, finding Rebecca finishing helping someone else on her way to Harry.
"Did you get it, Harry?" Rebecca asked, leaning down over his shoulder. The bell rang and the students began to file out loudly.
"Yeah, I did! I want to show it to you." Harry turned it so she could see it perfectly and she was a little surprised. There were next to no photos of her before the Weasleys and it was strange to see herself outside of a mirror.
Rebecca put her elbows on the desk, resting her chin in her palms. "Is this when we-"
"The first time we met." Harry answered, smiling.
Rebecca laughed. "Is that really how I looked to you?" She was scrawny, swimming in the hand-me-downs. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses, her hair wild.
"What's wrong with it?" Harry asked, worried he'd made a mistake.
Rebecca looked to him, shaking her head. "Nothing, it's perfect. You did a really great job." She looked past him. "I see you remembered what the top of those pyramids looked like, Ron!"
"No help from you." He retorted, teasing her.
Draco loitered by the door, his tile held in front of him and he nodded for Rebecca to come to him. "Do you want to see it?"
Rebecca shook her head. "Only if you want to share it. Our memories are private and it is entirely up to you."
Draco hesitated, but only slightly. He turned the tile and put it in her hands. There was a dog in the middle, exactly as he remembered her.
"This is magnif-Draco?" Rebecca was standing at the door alone.
Professor Flitwick walked up to her with her finished tile as the others made their way out the door where they waited for her. "Rebecca, I think this was a perfect success and I am very excited to write to some of my colleagues who went to the summit about these results."
"Professor, Draco left this with me."
Professor Flitwick looked at it. "That's quite the creation. I'm surprised he didn't want it."
Rebecca looked at it and put it under hers. She could feel that she wanted to do something with it. "Maybe some memories hurt to much to keep out of us."
They were silent a moment and Professor Flitwick--like many of those in Rebecca's life--wondered just how much misery had been brought onto someone so young to have such astute realisations.
"Thank you, for the opportunity." Rebecca looked sheepish. "I hope it was good enough for extra marks?"
"More than enough so." Professor Flitwick walked her to the door after she put away her work into her bag. "Have a happy holiday, Rebecca. I'll see you after we return."
Rebecca joined the others outside and noticed Fred's absence. "Where did Fred run to?"
"Said he had to do something, but he'd meet us at lunch." George repeated, slipping in the excuse Fred had so rudely failed to even provide.
"He wasn't upset, was he?" Rebecca walked with George behind the other three who were talking. "I meant to come back to you two, just ran out of time."
"Of course not." George nudged her with his elbow. "You did really well."
Rebecca went to thank him when Hermione turned around in a whirl. "Wait, if you try to impart something you dreamed..."
Rebecca considered the theory, shrugging. "If it's a dream you remember, it would be in your memory."
Hermione nodded, dragging Rebecca into the wormhole of an idea that she knew they would both run to the library to research further the second they had an opportunity. "But at the same time, if it's only a dream-"
"The memory wouldn't be as prominent." Rebecca finished, fully caught.
The boys turned their conversation to Quidditch as Rebecca and Hermione continued to finish each other's sentences, quickly left behind as their thoughts went faster than they could keep up.
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