Chapter 16
The dungeons were especially cold and unwelcoming the next morning to the Potter Twins. Rebecca woke with the teasing of a headache, the slight discomfort behind her eyes threatened to give way to a much pain issue but refused to inch pass merely an irritation.
Plus, after such a late night with a professor who not only treated them kindly, but offered the hope of hearing about their parents, Snape's animosity was a stark contrast.
"Nothing to say today Potter One? Potter Two?"
Rebecca had learned it was best to just sit silently in Potions. Sometimes she sat next to Ron, other times Hermione. Rarely did she sit next to Harry as it seemed to encourage Snape's bullying, but he'd asked her to and Rebecca couldn't say no.
She wished she had said no, however, since Snape seemed especially in the mood for a row.
"Or, rather, has the sole brain cell shared between the two of you gone on holiday?"
Rebecca stifled a sigh. He'd said that one before.
"Are we going to be crafting this potion today or are we going to play twenty questions all class?" Draco's snide voice rang out from the back of the class where the Slytherin students freely misbehaved.
"Mister...Malfoy." Rage washed off Snape in waves. "How kind of you to redirect my teaching. I was unaware of your licensure."
The students around Draco sniggered while Draco himself remained stoic, nearly bored. Snape launched into another tirade, wasting the rest of class on it. When the hour finally ended, Rebecca watched for Draco to thank him, and found that he never joined the rest of the exiting students.
Shouldering her bag and saying that she'd meet up with the others later, Rebecca turned back towards the Potions classroom.
"I think you'll find life quite miserable if you disrespect me like this again." As if Snape's tone wasn't threatening enough, the man continued. "I would hate for word of your insolence to reach your father. Do I make myself clear?" Snape's voice, while in its usual drone, had a menacing edge that warned it was not to be messed with.
"Crystal." Draco answered casually. "May I go now?"
Rebecca tried to make it look as if she hadn't heard anything, that she had been walking back to the classroom still.
Draco marched down the hall without even giving her a second look, that is, except for the moment he slammed his shoulder into hers.
"I was just going to say thank you!" Rebecca called after him, not letting him anger her.
Draco stopped abruptly, not expecting that. He'd already heard her voice in his head telling him not to fight the battles she could, something pretentious and righteous and perfectly Potter-like. He hadn't expected a thank you.
"Don't."
That was all Draco said before he continued out of the dungeons, onto wherever it was he was off to next.
Rebecca wondered about what exactly he had been referring to long after the morning had passed.
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"Slytherin's beaten Ravenclaw...Slytherin's beaten Ravenclaw..." Oliver had his back to the team and his eyes turned up to the board with the scores from every match of the season so far. "If Slytherin's beaten Ravenclaw..."
"Heard Snape was particularly foul today." Fred mentioned, swinging a leg over the bench next to Rebecca, who was sitting behind Harry.
"Not particularly, I don't think." Harry answered plainly.
Fred nodded, pursing his lips. "Well, all the same, he shouldn't be allowed to treat you two like that."
"It's alright." Rebecca said at last, finding that while it wasn't alright and it did bother her, she didn't want it to bother Fred.
"It's-" Fred fell silent at George's look and redirected the conversation from the dead end he'd been driving it to. "It's not looking like Oliver's going to be done any time soon."
"Probably not." Harry grumbled under his breath with another stifled yawn. Their dementor lesson really had done a number on him and he didn't dare complain because he knew that Rebecca wouldn't even consider sleeping until she had polished something for Buckbeak's defense that night.
"Sneak a rest then." George sat up a little straighter, being the wall in which one Potter twin or the other leaned on. "We'll tell you when he's done."
"Wake us before he notices we're not listening?" Rebecca asked, not bothering to argue against a moment--if not of sleep, of at least her eyes resting.
"You hardly listen to me half the time." Harry whinged.
"What?" Rebecca hadn't even been talking to him, but she saw an opportunity and took it.
"I said, 'you hardly listen to me half the time!'" Harry repeated.
Rebecca left her eyes closed, though she could feel him looking at her, and smiled a little. "What?"
"'You hardly-'" Harry's voice cut off abruptly. "I know what you're doing. It's not funny."
George glanced over his shoulder, an entire conversation's worth of communication being sent to Fred in just the knowing lift of his eyebrow.
Fred nodded. He knew when to admit that he was wrong. As terrified of being laughed off, as insistent that Rebecca never feel forced to be someone she wasn't for him, she had unknowingly told the two of them that there was no reason Fred could postpone their evening.
As Oliver prattled on and on about odds, dragging Angelina up to the board to help him calculate every possible outcome of every match between the cup and the next match, Rebecca and Harry did manage to drift into light dozes that they needed.
But, when Oliver turned around to show off his hard work, more of his team had their eyes closed than not and those that were still awake were dangerously close to not being so. "IS THIS QUIDDITCH PRACTISE OR NOT?!" He shouted, clapping his hands and sending them all to their feet in seconds. "To the pitch!"
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Ron and Hermione were the only ones out of their friend group to not attend Quidditch practise that night. They leisured around the Great Hall as supper was finished and the tables cleared themselves slowly.
Ron, once again, was furious at Hermione because Scabbers had gone missing and it had to have been her or Crookshanks fault. But, everytime he insisted it was Crookshanks Hermione insisted that it hadn't been.
"Maybe," Hermione said at the end of her rope. "Just maybe, you should take better care of your pet!"
Ron gasped. "You don't know what you're talking about." And she didn't. Ron took excellent care of Scabbers, he was one of the few things that he got to say was only his. Ron wanted to keep going, to keep fighting with her, but the second he opened his mouth to say something that most certainly would have started a nasty spat between them, a big, brown, screeching owl came soaring in at them.
Hermione caught the letter as it fell, immediately recognising the letter on the front. "It's Hagrid." She said, tearing into the envelope and holding her hand to her mouth as she read far faster than Ron could have thought one was able to do so.
"What is it?" Ron demanded, eyeing the curious splotches of water that had blurred the occasional, shaky line of writing.
"They've rescheduled Buckbeak's trial." Hermione said quietly. "The first week of March."
"That's hardly six weeks from now!" Ron shook his head. "Bloody Malfoy, I wager. Anything else?"
"Hagrid's going to lay everything out tonight, everything from the case. Anyone who wants to help has been invited. He'll be at the entrance at half-six to walk us down."
Ron sighed. There wouldn't even be enough time to sneak down to the pitch to catch the end of practise. "Alright then. Are you ready to go?"
Hermione looked up at him confused. "Are you going?"
"As much as I don't want to go through your notes again, yes. I know that you're going to go down, aren't you?"
Hermione scoffed. "Of course I am. What does that have to do with you?"
Ron gave her a bored look. "I'm not going to leave you to walk to Hagrid's on your own. Murderer on the loose, you know?"
"I am perfectly capable of walking to the entrance of the castle without accompaniment, thank you. Besides, Hagrid will be there."
Ron shook his head, sticking his hands in his pockets as Hermione stood up and gathered her things. "I'm still going down with you. Can you even imagine the look on Rebecca's face if she heard I'd left you to work on it while I did nothing? I've got more life to live--not looking for an early end really."
The last remaining fraction of tension between the two of them left as they laughed together, continuing to giggle to the half-giant just turning to leave.
"I wasn' sure if you were comin' or not." Hagrid cleared his throat, failing to hide the thick voice that betrayed the depths of his emotions at seeing them.
"Of course we're coming to help!" Hermione chided. "Rebecca and Harry will kick themselves when they hear that there was an opportunity during practise."
Hagrid let out a single chuckle. "I don't doubt it. Hedwig flies to my hut mor' an the Burrow, I think. I've got a whole collection of her notes, and yours now that I think about it."
Ron looked at Hermione with an I-told-you-so smirk while she simply ignored him.
The walk down to Hagrid's hut was lit by intermittent never-dimming torches, the most recent of anti-Sirius Black apparatus around the castle. Hagrid let out a sniffle and refused to look at either of them as he spoke. "I never could'a done all this by myself. Not done it and had a chance of savin' him."
Ron and Hermione weren't quite sure what to say, though they both did put an arm around their large friend. Hagrid took a deep breath, blew his nose in his massive handkerchief, and shook his head. "Now let's get her done. Between you," He motioned to Hermione. "And Rebecca, I'm likely to have more paper than Madam Pince does in the library!"
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Sometimes overtiredness makes itself known in lethargy. A person feels so tired and heavy that nothing is possible except to find sleep wherever it could be found. Other times, for no explicable reason, overtiredness manifests itself in a burst of energy.
That is where Rebecca found herself after practise, practically bouncing with pent up energy.
"Ready to go?" George asked, pulling his jumper on and looking towards the door. "Fred's out-"
"Where are you going?" Harry asked, hurrying after them.
"We're going to...read." Rebecca said with a straight face despite the obvious half-truth.
"Read. Right." George repeated, rolling his eyes. "Won't be out too late Harry, don't fret."
"I wasn't-" Harry sighed. They had already run towards the door where they collided into Fred and then took off in another direction. "Fretting."
Fred, who was in front of Rebecca and George and wouldn't slow down to walk beside them, stopped so suddenly at the junction of their corridor and another, that George and Rebecca smashed right into him.
"Oi!" George snapped, rubbing his arm. "Mind it a bit you-"
Fred only shook his head, holding his hand out with a collection of trouble-making in his palm. Rebecca plucked one up immediately, poking her head around the corner and finding what had made Fred stop so abruptly: A collection of older Slytherins loitering.
"Where're we meeting?" Fred asked, catching Rebecca's wrist just as she went to throw their prank into motion.
"That one bench under the window near the kitchens." George moved, sending his dung bomb at the feet of no other than Marcus Flint and turned to sprint away with a mad laugh.
Rebecca and Fred soon followed suit, Rebecca laughing and staying ahead of the following Fred until the Slytherins gave up and the bench with George lounging on came into view.
"Well it's about time, isn't it?" George remarked teasingly. "I thought you'd never get here!"
"Is this about the note?" Rebecca asked, sitting between them. "I didn't-Wait." She paused, thinking over the note and where she'd found it. "How did you leave it on the door without going up the stairs?"
"Hardly important." George spoke before Fred could. "Yes, it is about the note. We've had our fun and now it's time for-"
"Don't be a prat, George." Fred sighed.
George couldn't understand why Fred had pushed against letting Rebecca be privy to their idea, to their hope. But he could see that Fred was clearly agonising over how she would react. "It is about the note, yes."
"But before we can even talk about it, you have to know that it's okay to say no to us." Fred said quickly. "We're not telling you, or pushing you."
Rebecca nodded, growing slightly more confused and far more nervous as to what they could be talking about.
"We have an idea." George led, nearly hoping Fred would take the reins back if only so he could watch his twin realise that there never was a reason to worry. "I've been working on a few things lately."
Fred interrupted. "We've been working on a few things." Realising that George had done that on purpose, Fred continued. "You know how we do our adjustments to Zonko's, additions and upgrades really."
"Yeah, I know."
Fred smiled. "Thing is, we keep getting stuck. Either George refuses to admit I'm right or we can't fix early detonations or-"
"She gets it." George scowled theatrically.
"We need a third person, a tie-breaker, another partner." Fred finished. "And we were hoping you would be interested. You already come on nearly all our pranks, certainly every one that you come up with."
"And then you and Harry earlier, just before Oliver snapped out of it." George laughed loudly.
Rebecca laughed too. "So all of this has been to ask if I'd help you?"
"No." Fred and George said, falling serious simultaneously.
"We want you to join us." Fred clarified. "And you've given us an idea already."
"How?" Rebecca leaned back on the bench between them, far more comfortable than she had been just minutes earlier. Sometimes it still felt like a dream, the three of them. A dream that could be taken away at any moment.
"When you were acting like you couldn't hear Harry, remember?" Fred let George explain the idea, a biscuit that would muffle your hearing temporarily. Rebecca nodded, added in, countered with ingredient options that would work better. And even Fred himself was wondering what he had been so worried about.
If she'd said no, Fred was afraid that he'd lose his love for the idea and bring George down with him. Fred was afraid that this idea, this thought that had taken up his thoughts so deeply, would have come between their trio. If it had come between Rebecca joining them or not, Fred didn't know which direction he would have gone in.
But there had been nothing to worry about.
"If you took a diluted anti-hearing potion, maybe try a 3:1 first and go from their, you could either add it to dough or make a powdered version and add it to the flour!"
"We." Fred joined the conversation again, leaving his pondering for before bed. "If we took that, we could also..."
They sat there for nearly an hour working on where they'd get supplies, workspace ideas, other pranks they could come up with. Rebecca was the perfect fit for the role they needed most: The bridge. She found solutions in their disagreements before the brewing fight could bubble over, sometimes coming up with a solution resulting in an entirely different product direction better than before.
"But, we need a name!" George insisted again, after the other two had reassured him that while it was important, it could wait.
"Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes." Fred blurted out, the idea striking him like a bolt of lightning.
George mouthed the words, nodding slowly. "Three w's on purpose?"
Rebecca hadn't realised the coincidence, but looked to Fred for the answer as she did.
Fred only shrugged. "Guess it was just meant to be."
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The fireplace in Hagrid's hut popped occasionally, warming those inside comfortably. The candles had burnt low, and the work that had needed to have been done had managed to be made gigantic into manageable.
But, at Fang's barking reminder, they had all lost track of time. "Crikey! I've got to get you two back up to the castle, curfew was a half hour ago!"
Ron grabbed their jumpers hung by the fire while Hermione put what they had been revising last into the proper piles. "Feeling better Hagrid?"
Hermione's head shot up, surprised to hear such an astute question leave Ron. Two hours of work normally would have left him brain dead.
"I'll jus' be happy when this is all over." Hagrid's voice took on a darker tone. "I'd have freed him tonight, yesterday even, if I knew they wouldn't send me to Azkaban for it. I can't go back."
The walk back up to the castle was punctuated with the presence of the usual professor to catch them after hours: Professor McGonagall. Hermione and Ron said their goodnights to Hagrid and offered a few final words of encouragement.
Hagrid headed back to his hut with visibly less worries clouding him and, while they were making their way back up to Gryffindor Tower, Professor McGonagall let how highly Hagrid was praising his helpers slip.
"If he were to compliment you any higher," Professor McGonagall had the smallest smile. "You'd all have to be put on a permanent pedestal." She praised them for their assistance. The Fat Lady let them in without much conversation.
Harry and Rebecca were hunched over parchment across the room, oblivious to the Portrait Hole opening due to the level of concentration in their work. McGonagall's heart panged at the sight of such unruly dark hair and eyes so lit with determination. All she could see was the ghosts of her students lost in the past.
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Fred, George, and Rebecca, had all toppled into the Portrait Hall seconds before curfew had technically started, laughing wildly and loudly. Harry had returned to the Common Room immediately after practise as the essay that Snape had assigned last minute was proving much harder for him than he'd expected.
Bent over his abstract, unconnected ideas, Rebecca slid into the seat next to him to catch his attention after Fred and George filled Lee in on their adventures. Even though the seat was really meant for one, Harry scooted to the edge to make room for her.
"Not going for handwriting, I see." Rebecca murmured, scanning over his work.
Harry scowled and looked at her. "Bugger off, it's still the one for Snape."
Rebecca nodded, relenting. "Add something about the Wolvenshire daffodil here, it'll seem like you were paying close attention."
Harry looked her over head to toe before turning back to his essay. "Did you have fun?"
"Yes, I like reading."
He paused again to look at her, but he didn't say anything. Other than that they had better have left Ravenclaws alone so that they aren't more angry when they play.
"You seem cross." Rebecca noted.
Harry sighed and set the quill down. "Ron and Hermione aren't back. Neville said that he saw them heading out of the castle after supper, but not since then. And this essay...isn't that enough?"
Rebecca nodded. "I'm sure Ron and Hermione are fine, unless they've finally murdered the other in an argument. As for the essay, you and I can finish that right now." She propped her head up by putting her elbow on the table and pointed at his parchment. "Now, write this here..."
Fred and George had been abandoned by Lee when Angelina and Katie came down from the girls' dormitories and had secured seats near the fire to finally chat about how easily Rebecca had agreed to the project.
"You know what my favourite part of her joining is?" George asked, smiling deviously. "I'll never lose again."
"Lose?" Fred scoffed. "Lose what?"
"She's not going to pick your side in any argument because she'll feel like she's playing favourites--I'll never lose an argument again!"
Fred stood up and smirked. "First, I'm not her favourite. Second, if I was, wouldn't it make more sense that she'd choose me over you every time?" Fred left George to think over that, deciding it was late enough to shower and go to bed without being ridiculous.
He had hardly set his hand on the rail up the stairs when George connected all the dots and shouted.
"Bollocks!" The few students around George looked at him strangely.
Oblivious to the entire interaction, Harry finished his sentence and sat back amazed. "I've been working on this blasted essay since it was assigned and you just finished it in twenty minutes!"
Rebecca shrugged. "You just needed a little magic. You had all the framework there already."
Harry chuckled and piled his things up to take them up to his room, looking up as Ron and Hermione hurried to them.
"He's gotten the date changed!" Hermione told them sadly. "Now it's the first week of March."
Harry and Rebecca looked at her with identical aloofness.
"Malfoy's father got Buckbeak's trial pushed up." Ron said bitterly.
Rebecca couldn't hear how Harry was trying to justify that it would be alright, that they were prepared enough already, because she so filled with anger. Her brain seemed to buzz with it, her insides feeling as if they were crawling.
Harry glanced at his twin, knowing that she wasn't listening to them and finding that all too much of her was betraying how she was really feeling.
"We've got our work cut out for us." That was the last thing she said before going to bed herself.
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