A/N: This is basically a completely different side of Deathly Hallows due to everyone being separated. We know what happens with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Now its time to see what happened with Ebony and Chelly at the same time and what happened with Luis and Oliver at Hogwarts…
Disclaimer: I only own Ebony, Chelly, Luis, Stark, and the bits of Lorraine and Adam
DEATHLY HALLOWS
CH. 1 ANOTHER DAY
The day was dull, as unappealing as all the others before it that summer. Birds flew across the blue sky landing in the birch tree just outside the open window, chattering away with their families, snuggling in the cool shade the branches provided. They'd talk for a bit longer before flying their separate ways, knowing at the end of the day when the sun came down they'd all be one happy family again in that tree, in their home.
Ebony envied the birds. They were a family. They had each other. She was alone. Her family was gone. Her mother had long since died. Sirius was dead never to come back. And now her father was taken from her. Wanted for the murder of Albus Dumbledore and with that came the line drawn in the sand, where friendships were broken and trusts shattered. Harry had all but disowned her for it, calling her father a murderer and because she refused to believe it, because she knew there had to be more to it than that, the last of her family was gone. She could see the Weasley's house from out the window in Chelly's room.
She had relocated there. Chelly had found it unwise for her to go back to her house seeing as how Death Eaters would be everywhere and with what had happened she might need a different atmosphere for awhile. Lupin had full heartedly agreed being the only family she had left, especially now that he had married her cousin Tonks on a whim that summer. That had made Chelly ecstatic, she had always hoped they'd get together and have furry pink werewolf puppies. The change wasn't a bad one either, she had to admit. She could keep an eye on Harry this way when he arrived at the Weasley's. And she could see George. Her fiancé. It felt weird to even think that. She was engaged. The ring on her finger proved that it wasn't a dream. He had asked her to marry him when this was all done, when this war she was fighting, even if Harry didn't want her help, was over.
Lorraine stared out the window with her, frowning when she didn't see anything. She looked at Ebony then back out the window then at Ebony again. "Seriously, what are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
"I can see that. Are you waiting for something?"
"Only the impossible," she mumbled.
Lorraine rolled her eyes and left towards the kitchen. "You and Chell are one of a kind. You stare at nothing out the window, talk about shit none us understand, and eat everything in the fridge."
"Hey," she defended. "That's more your sister on the latter part and less me."
Lorraine opened a new box of cereal and set it back in the cupboard. "Yeah, but you've been living here for nearly three weeks. Don't you have a home?"
Ebony winced slightly and Lorraine stopped mid crunch, her spoon clattering to her bowl as she realized what she said. "Oh shit, sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
"It's okay," she shrugged. "I just don't feel like going home yet. Chelly didn't think it was a good idea either. But sooner than later we'll be off."
"Where to?"
"I don't know yet," she said but they did know. They just couldn't tell her family as a precaution to serious consequences. The same reason she was betting Harry hadn't told the Weasley's what he planned on doing when he arrived at their house. Which judging by the calendar, was tomorrow night. He was still with the Dursley's in the meantime. But word from the Order was that they had a plan to get Harry out of the Dursley's by using decoys. She'd had a meeting set up later in the week to discuss these things.
A sliding door opened near the far right wall and Chelly slid out, apparently having taken the slide to exit her room. She stood on her feet and stretched, her back cracking in three spots. "Morning."
"You mean afternoon," Lorraine pointed at the clock that read 1:53.
"Whatever," she shrugged and grabbed a blue bowl from the cabinet and took out the same box of cereal and the remaining milk. "So what's on the schedule today?"
Ebony shrugged and moved over to sit on one of the barstools at the bay in the kitchen. "Meeting later."
"Why does that not sound fun?" she mumbled and poured her cereal into the bowl, shaking it nearly empty. She closed the box and slid in back into the cupboard then used the rest of the milk but threw away the carton.
"It never is," she said. "You know how they are nowadays."
"I know," she sighed through a mouthful of cereal. "Which is why this should be fun."
"They're going to tear me a new one."
"I know," she slurped.
"They might not be any nicer to you."
"I know."
"Guilty by association and all."
"I know."
Lorraine, who's eyes had been bouncing back and forth in confusion finally spoke. "Meeting with who?"
They both looked at her and then looked away and she got it. "Ohhh…right…secret crap and all that. Forgot you guys are like the CIA." She put her dish in the sink. "I'm gonna go watch TV. I feel like watching an FBI flick suddenly."
"You always watch crime thrillers," called out Chelly to her older sister.
"At least I know what's going on in those," she called back and Chelly sunk into her chair, spooning another mouthful from her bowl. The repercussions of being involved in something secret were not being able to tell anyone about it, not even your family and as much as it made them angry it was for their own good.
"You don't have to do this, Chell," she said quietly across the table.
"Yea, I do," she nodded. "Snape was my friend, too, and I'm not letting you go through this alone."
"But it makes you look bad."
"Not like I don't already," she snorted. "We're going to do this. We got a wedding to go to in a week and Harry comes to the Weasley's tomorrow and we see the Order later on about this."
"Seriously, when was the last time you spoke to Luis? When did you last see Luna? Or Oliver?"
Chelly ate another bite to buy time to think. Neither of them had spoken to Luis since leaving school and she wrote Luna letters, but ignored the subject of Snape entirely. The same when it came to Oliver. She had only spoken to him in letters and hadn't received one back from him in a week. "Long enough."
"This is already tearing your friends apart," Ebony shook her head.
"Like it's not tearing yours up," she reminded her. "When did you last talk to Stark or George?"
She thought about it. She hadn't seen either of them since the funeral and she'd written very few letters. "Doesn't matter."
"See, there's my point."
"This is my father, you don't need to feel obligated to help."
"Ebony, for the last time I'm doing this and its final," she dropped her spoon into her bowl for emphasis.
Her older brother Adam walked in then, whistling as he entered the kitchen, glancing at the clock to see it past noon. "Hey, you're up out of bed early, Chell."
"Hey, you're ass isn't attached to the couch after all," she shot back.
He chuckled as he picked out the cereal and grabbed a bowl. "No but my groove is in it."
"I'm willing to bet on that," Chelly said and rinsed out her dish, leaving it for the enchanted sponge to clean and finish.
Adam opened the box and poured out the cereal, frowning when only three fruit loops came out. He shook the box only getting crumbs and looked inside as if it might have been stuck. "We just bought this and it's empty."
"Yup," Chelly picked at her teeth and patted her belly. "I left you some."
"Three pieces!"
She shrugged, "That's what you get for spending your time on the couch…and eating the last brownie." She slid off her chair and Ebony followed her down the hall, leaving her brother cursing in the kitchen and headed towards her friend's bedroom.
Chelly's room was odd to say the least but Ebony expected nothing less of the girl who was related to Luna by blood, and therefore was anything but disappointed with her friend's room. There was no door to walk through, no normal tranquility to call home with a bed and a dresser and a television set with a stereo. Not when it came to Chelly. Her friend slid part of the wall away with a wave of her wand. This would cause most people to gasp in shock but not Ebony.
She remembered the first time she had entered Chely's domain. She had slid a part of the wall away down one of the many hallways that was towards the far left of the house and crawled in, beckoning Ebony to follow. With a puzzled frown Ebony did so and found she had to stay on her hands and knees, there was no standing up. There was only three feet max if she sat up and the space was just as wide.
She twisted her head to look above her and saw a padded step going horizontal, there was one to her right that Chelly was currently moving towards. Chelly climbed up it and then proceeded to crawl on the one directly above Ebony. This had to be by far the weirdest thing she had ever seen. And that was coming from a girl who spent most of her life at Hogwarts where ghost floated around, food magically appeared, candles hovered in air, three headed dogs guarded doors, broomsticks were transportation devices and her uncle/God father was a were wolf.
"Move your ass," she called out from above, already three steps ahead. Ebony crawled up, counting fourteen steps before it broke off onto a larger landing where Chelly sat waiting for her. "Bout damn time. Crawling is not your strong suit."
"Your room is weird," Ebony pointed out and looked at the crawling staircase that still went up a despite the landing they were on.
"This isn't my room. This is just how you get into my room," Chelly took out her wand and waved it at the wall behind her. To Ebony's astonishment it slid open, parting quietly despite for the slight squeak. "Gotta fix that damn thing," she mumbled and moved into her room. It was bigger than the staircase that was for sure. Tall enough to stand in, at least nine or ten feet of head room.
Ebony stood in it now, the memory passing as she sat on the couch that had become her bed over the last few weeks. It was purple for the moment. She glanced around the room, still amused with it. It was painted a polished white all around with a dangling chandelier of a variety of colors hanging on
the baby blue ceiling high enough it wouldn't bump their heads. Chelly's bed was a queen size and to the far left wall facing out with a dark blue sheer curtain tied back around the posts. She could see the sparkles in it from here. Enough to drive Luis's ADD up the wall. A black dresser that matched was to the right and a television sat on it squarely against the wall. A pin up board was to the right of the TV and covered in moving pictures of the group that Chelly had pinned there. A mirror was on the opposite side with her makeup and hair products settled around it and just to the left of the dresser was a door that led to the bathroom. And yet more horizontal crawl stairs were straight ahead on the other side of the room, these ones leading up, one to a slide that went out the back yard, another to the attic that faced the Weasley house and was perfect for spying. Another led to a slide that went out in the kitchen (useful for Chelly tough she had a mini fridge and microwave in the room). And the last slide actually let out the meadow between the Weasley house and hers that opened from a large tree.
Chelly sat on her bed with a sigh. "What time is our meeting?"
"Five," she answered and both looked at the neon clock on the wall. It was past two. They'd Apparate there in a couple hours.
Ebony rubbed at her wrist beneath the bracelet. The Mark was still there, it never faded away now it seemed since the Dark Lord was quickly taking over. The Ministry itself seemed to be falling into his hands and it was only a matter of time she feared. She had yet to see her father though she had conversed with a few of the Death Eater's on Voldermort's behalf, enough to rely information to her and Chelly on the plans and she was only able to tell them they were planning to move Harry from his house but that the Order was suspicious of them. It seemed to be enough, but how long would the charade last…
She heard a rattling noise and turned her head to look past Chelly's bed to where a gray owl was rattling its cage, its head twitching every now and then. "Yeah, yeah, Fidget. I hear ya," Chelly pulled out a box from a drawer on her nightstand and handed the owl a cracker. She nipped at it, wing twitching now.
"You know, I never asked, but is your owl okay?"
"Yeah why?"
"She's twitching."
"She does that," Chelly nodded. "Adam gave her to me. She was his owl first. He wasn't sure what to feed her and gave her some of his energy drink one day, or maybe it was his coffee. She hasn't been the same since. She only sleeps when I sleep…sometimes." Chelly sat back down on her bed. "Where are we going after this, Eb?"
"My house…it's safest. Death Eater's don't know where I live and neither does the Order. It's shielded. When that fails we have a house by the lake that we live in and then…there's Grimmauld Place. It's tightly protected right now. We got enough back up plans to last us awhile."
"When do we go?"
"I don't know…but we'll know when the time is right…"
"You mean when Harry disappears is when we disappear?"
"Exactly," she nodded her head. "We track them."
"How?" she asked.
Ebony smiled slyly, "You didn't think I'd completely leave Harry on his own did you."
"After you socked him in the face I thought it was a sealed deal."
"He just made me mad, it doesn't mean I'll abandon him. I know he'll go to Grimmauld…after that I don't know where he'll be."
"Then how do you track him?"
"I'll be able to hear him," she grabbed her bag and dug through it, the infinity spell was a bit of a pain at times but finally she found the piece of glass she was looking for. She took it out and held it up
for Chelly to see. "It's a two way mirror. Anyone with a piece of it can see what another is doing or hear what they're saying."
"So you'll be able to keep tabs on him at all times and know when he's in trouble."
She slid the mirror piece back into her bag. "Between this and your visions, I think we're set."
Chelly nodded her head, "I keep my bag packed just in case," she pointed to where her shoulder bag, also spelled, sat on the floor near her bed.
"It's sooner than later and if you decide last minute you can't do this I understand."
"It's too late for that, Eb…you forget I know who my father is and not only that, but I know what I saw in my vision and there's more to it, you're right about that. Dumbledore trusted us both with this and we're gonna figure this out and watch Harry like he told us too…now let's watch a movie before we go to our meeting."
Chelly put on Hunchback of Notre Dame and they both fell into a silence, eyes on the movie but neither focusing completely on the contents it displayed. Both were thinking of the task that lay ahead and how difficult it would be for everyone involved in this cyclone of trouble.