Sisters
Padma-and-Parvati. That was what they had been all of their lives. Nothing separated them. Not being sorted into different houses. Not different interests. Not the fact that Parvati spent more time with her friends then she did with her sister. Nothing. They had a bond that ran deeper than Legilimency, deeper than sisterhood. They were like two sides of the same person. When Parvati suffered her first breakup, Padma cried with her before she knew anything was wrong. After the disastrous Yule Ball, they both knew, without words, that they were never setting each other up on blind dates again. They knew when the other felt pain, joy, fear, rejection or anything really. And that is where things start.
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Li Su was in Transfiguration, working with Padma to turn their ice cube into a tea set. Suddenly, Padma stiffened, and then fell. Padma writhed on the floor, screaming, and sobbing, crying out not for someone to help her, but to help her sister. Her wonderful, brave, noble-to-the-point-of-stupidity sister who had gotten in trouble on purpose to help her friends. The class huddled around her, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw alike, because even the people who weren't in the DA knew she was one of theirs, and they knew somehow, that her pain was helping protect them. A minute later, the pain lifted, and Padma looked up and whispered "I will be talking to Fearless Leader about Vati. Jesus, this hurts!" and it was code, and they all knew that it was code. The DA people immediately got the message: the Gryffindors had done something stupid, and Parvati had been hurt. Terry Boot and Michael Corner also understood, by virtue of the Muggle Expletive and their knowledge of the Bible and spell roots, that it had been the Cruciatus Curse. They told the others, and one by one, faces turned grim with understanding.
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Minerva McGonagall was neither deaf, blind, nor dumb, but as Padma thrashed on the floor, she was, as did happen rarely, confused. She recognized the effects of a Cruciatus Curse, but she knew no one had cast one on Padma. The instant the girl came out of it, though, she knew what had happened. Parvati had been tortured. Minerva also knew who knew about student rebellion, because the seemingly innocent comment was picked apart by Boot and Corner, and a chain message passed thru the class leaving all but one Hufflepuff and about three quarters of the Ravenclaws looking grim. Then Li Su fiddled in her pocket for a minute, looking worried. A second later, Susan Bones Pulled a Galleon out of her pocket, examined it, and started another chain message. When the chain got to Padma, her teeth clenched, and her breath hitched. "If she is not okay I will..."She received multiple looks in the first word, but at the last word her tongue twisted and McGonagall recognized more extra-ordinary spell work as the Fidelious Charm took effect. In that moment, Minerva McGonagall knew that almost all of her older students were resisting the Carrows, and she knew that they were organized.
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Later that day, Padma ran to the Gryffindor portrait hole the minute classes were over. She cast a Muffalito that only muffled noise moving away from the portrait hole. Than started casing every loud spell she knew. Eventually the Fat Lady swung outward to let her in. "Shhh," Lavender Brown told her. "I cast a Muffalito," Padma responded. Then she was inside Gryffindor and running, running, and she couldn't get to her sister fast enough. Padma took the stairs to the girls dorms two at a time. She pushed thru Ginny and and a few other girls, to see Parvati, bruised, battered, and in pain, but alive. The sisters gazed at one another and told each other how it had been for them, silently of course. Then they cracked jokes, and thought about what they wanted to do to Snape, and for a minute, they were no warriors, resisters, or even adults. For the first time in so long, since before Dumbledore died even, they were themself. Parvati-and-Padma. Vati-and-Addy. Hamēśā kē li'ē bahanōṁ
A/N: This is set in the year where Snape was Headmaster.
