Lost and Found: Chapter one
AN: This is the continuation of my last story, 'Birthday Present'. If you haven't read that, I guess you can go ahead and read this and understand, but I would really recommend going back to that one first. It has all of the same characters, same rating, everything.
SO, if you came for fremione, but haven't read my last story. Go back to that.
If you have read it, and just want more, thank you so much. I started a new portion to the story because I felt ending with their leaving for the hunt was appropriate, and that I would be in need of a different title for this part. Hope you all enjoy!
She hadn't been thinking when she apparated them here. After being stuck in Grimland palace so long, anywhere outdoors had seemed like a good idea. It was also more likely for them to not be followed, and the first thing she'd thought of in her panic. But it was so painful to look at.
Painful enough for her brain not to register Ron's first scream. She turned to look at Harry, who was scanning the empty perimeter, and only then noticed the blood pouring from their friends shirt as he lie on the forest floor.
She fell next to him, and immediately began pulling things out of her bag, tearing his shirt away and pouring on half of dittany she'd packed. He continued yelling and his hand gripped her upper thigh, but she took no notice or care. Instead her mind was jumping from how to fix this, and how stupid she'd been to splinch him.
She hadn't pictured the clearing, apparition needed a clear image to work properly and she'd had the sight of Fred -standing in the dark, snow at his feet, and a broom by his hips- marring her view.
Now her friend was paying for it.
She had to walk out. Ron was flicking and unflicked that fucking deluminator and it was messing with her head. There was no way she'd tell him to stop though, with the necklace resting around his throat. He would either begin yelling, grit his teeth and ignore her, or say something purely nasty- and she did not have the head space for any of the three.
They had all consecutively decided that after what they had gone through to get ahold of the necklace, they shouldn't risk losing it before they figured out how to destroy it. Which had resulted in the three wearing it in shifts.
She hated to say it, because when Ron had it on, his homesickness only came out in anger, and Harry became snappy, but her favorite part of the day was handing it off to one of the boys.
The metal chain felt like an anchor attached to her neck. She couldn't focus on a single thing her friends were saying without drifting to the thought of her parents, to the students still at Hogwarts, to Fred. What was normally a slight nagging in the back of her head, was now a constant mountain of fear looming over her. Where day dreams of pumpkin pasties used to fill her time thinking, now was daytime nightmares of death eaters tearing through her unsuspecting parents' home in Australia. Images from her bedtime terrors, that had come after the night of Dumbledore's death, pressed into the back of her eyelids with each blink. Neville lying at her feet shaking from the torture of constant crusatuses, Luna hanging dead eyed over the arm of the old hags statue, Ginny neck twisted at an odd angle, Ron staring blankly at Harry's lifeless body, Fred face torn apart and looking up at the stormy ceiling of the great hall.
She kept quiet while the metal rested on her neck. Fearing more than anything what she would say if she didn't.
Ron wasn't like that. He voiced loudly how the food they had was practically inedible, and how he had no idea what his family was doing, if they were okay. It bothered her to say the least, but she couldn't blame him, when she had if on she always felt on edge, better he take it out through yelling than magic.
Harry kept mostly quiet while it was on, but the slightest thing might set him off. Hermione had learned that simply asking him to hand her a certain book might make him tear his hair out in frustration. But sometimes the necklace changed him in a completely different way, he would be fidgety and wouldn't let go of the map to save his life, insisting on checking it every few minutes. The boy who lived claimed it was for all their friends, but he and Ginny had had some sort of falling out the day of the wedding (she'd figured it out, and hadn't questioned him, he did it for her with Fred, and she felt she owed it to him not to pry) and the witch could tell who he was really intent on watching.
Right now he was on watch, and had in fact just began so she could read, but with the damned lights going on and off (though the deluminator didn't change her jug fires) it was maddening to try and pay any attention to her material. So the girl walked out as quiet as she could manage, levitating her jug along with her, and found Harry sitting on a fallen tree outside.
"He's doing it again?" Her best friend questioned as she took a seat next to him, but turned the other way.
"Yes," she hissed "Its driving me mad"
"Why do you think I offered to take first watch" he replied, and she glanced back at him. Harry's knuckles were white, and he was clearly gripping something in his palm.
"What have you got?"
He held up the snitch and she snorted.
"What?"
So she held up her own gift from Dumbledore and he laughed as well.
"We're all obsessed with them, and I'm not even sure they'll be of any use"
"He wouldn't have given them to us if they wouldn't help us." she whispered fingering one of the pages of "Tales of Beatle and the Bard". Though she was assuring Harry, Hermione wasn't quite sure herself. She'd read the book nearly 100 times over now and hadn't found anything.
His brother was insisting they stay open, regardless of the fact that they were only getting a handful of customers each day. Between Hogwarts stating up once more, and people being too scared to leave their homes their business had dropped like a dead cow. Still George claimed they had to stay open, meanwhile the bastard was taking every other day off.
"Please stay with me today mate" he begged one day "We're not designing products at the moment, you have the time."
"Can't, I'm going over to Angelina's" George had answered putting on his robe to leave.
"She can't come here" he snorted.
"She doesn't want to leave her parents alone" his twin murmured. Fred didn't let it get to him by now though, he'd done this everyday he had off.
Which left him there all day alone. Just him, an empty store, and his head.
The Weasley had found it was an awful combination.
All day he spent staring at the shelves. Their inventions stared down at him in his seat behind the register and instead of filling him with the same pride they once had, it seemed like they were mocking him. She'd told him more times than he could count that he was ingenious- that she admired him for everything he could do and it was nothing she'd ever be able to pull off.
But he couldn't find her.
That was what he spent his days off on. Dozens of tracking potions, safety spells, and failed attempts at the silliest things left him shattered every time he tried something new. She'd even left a hairbrush here, which gave him all the DNA he would ever need to find her under normal circumstances, but her concealment spells were better than anything he'd ever be able to pull off to counter them. Fred knew they were Hermione's spells, neither Harry or his little brother would be able to make them strong enough, and she wasn't stupid enough to let them.
So on days he had to work, it was all he could think about. What he had done wrong the day before, and how he could do it better tomorrow.
When staring at the products began to get to him, the redhead would either get up to eat (Merlin knew how bad the Weasley family stress ate) or call Lupin.
His old professor had assured him a hundred times over that they had been in Grimmlund palace a month ago –alive- and had told him what they were doing, but wouldn't let him come with them. However he wouldn't tell Fred exactly what they were doing other than 'It's dangerous, but it needs to be done.'
"They haven't come back to Grimmland palace," Remus had sighed one day when he firecalled the older wizard. His face looked disappointed in the embers, "You know that you're the first person I would notify if they did"
The older order member had begun staying at the black family home after they had realized that the golden trio had gone there. It was slightly risky, between the death eater's Lupin had spotted outside, and the fact that Snape knew the location, but they had all decided the risk was worth it if the three decided to come back.
At first he'd entertained the idea of going to stay there himself. After all, Remus did have a baby on the way and a new wife, did he really need to be risking himself like that? Especially when Fred was there, a bachelor, no children, with a job he really didn't need to be at, and a twin who preferred to spend most of his time away from their home. But after just two visits to see the older wizard he decided that was a very bad idea.
The living room still smelled like her, and the cabinets had several boxes of her favorite tea, the shower one of her soap bars. Everywhere he looked in the damned place he could see her, and until she actually came back, Fred didn't need the reminders.
Especially since once she did, he didn't even know how she would act around him. She'd told him to shove it the last time they really spoke, and hadn't acted pleased to be around him at all over the summer. Not to mention Hermione had been very chummy with ickle little Ronniekins, perhaps he had shoved her over that edge…
Ron, he corrected himself, gritting his teeth. His name is Ron.
It was something he'd only began doing recently to himself, when he had realized that he hadn't thought of his brother by his proper name in years.
The thought had dawned on him one night eating dinner with Lee over.
"Then Ronnie told me I needed to be quiet or he'd tell mum about how we had…."
"When was the last time you called him Ron" his friend had cut in, interrupting his tale from when he was younger.
"I call him Ron" he said then, sitting up and swirling his firewhisky, this was his third glass.
"To his face" the other wizard snorted. "I've never heard you talk about him when he wasn't here and just call him 'Ron'."
His face had begun to twist into a sneer, and then he actually thought about it. Aside from actually speaking to his brother or Hermione, he hadn't called Ron by his name in what felt like forever.
His friend had gave him a questioning look. "Do you remember?"
"Yes" he snapped "I call him Ron plenty, I'm just usually complaining about him when I speak to you" He said lying through his teeth.
The realization had only bitten into the resentment he carried from the night Hermione had left. That didn't mean he wasn't still angry.
Every time he thought about that night he was angry. Yes he went a little overboard, and yeah sometimes he made fun of Ron just a little too much, but Hermione hadn't taken a second to really look at it from his perspective. If she had then she hadn't let it show. He was so angry at her, and at Ron, even Harry.
Ron was obvious, he was entire reason they ever got into such a mess. Harry had taken her away from him and put her in danger. And Hermione.
She'd chosen his brother over him (as most people usually did), then she'd ignored him all summer, made googly eyes with Ron right in front of him, and that was all enough to leave him fuming without adding fire to flame. Worst of all though she'd just disappeared.
The damned witch had left the safety of the burrow to go help her two knucklehead best friends do godric only knew what. She should have stayed, let the wards protect her. Let him protect her.
Now that she'd left, he had finally cracked. Their breakup had put him in a bad mood for months, but that was nothing compared to now that she was really gone. Now that he had no way of making sure she was all right, and well. It had shattered him.
And he was so angry at her for doing it to him. More than that though, he was angry at himself for allowing her to make him feel this way. He'd once been a carefree prankster, without a soul to tie him down and a twin to make sure he always got back up. She'd ruined him.
"He's taking us nowhere, Mione. He's stuck on this bloody idea that the next horcrux is inside Hogwarts and until he's been proven wrong or right, we're not going to get anywhere"
"But what if he is right Ron?" she hissed back as they bent down to collect tinder for the fire that night, a safe distance away from Harry to not risk being heard.
"You said just the other day that it made no sense because You –know-who wouldn't have had time to get into Hogwarts to make one, and if he had then Dumbledore would have found it"
"Yes, but" she pursed her lips and dropped a twig she'd been holding, it was much too thin. "Harry is sort of connected to You-know-who, wouldn't he have the best instincts to go off of on what to do next?"
"Even if he is right" Ron said sighing "There's no way for us to get into Hogwarts at the moment anyway. I'll I'm asking is that we try to get him to forget the idea for right now, so we can move forward. Besides, if one horcrux is inside Hogwarts, that still leaves three others out in the world somewhere, and we have to deal with those too."
"You are much smarter than you cut yourself up to be."
"You are much more of a suck up than you believe yourself to be."
She looked up at him with a tight lipped smile and shoved him. He stumbled, caught his balance and began walking after her once more. Just like he always did.
The twins had finally agreed that they had to close one day of the week. So on Wednesdays they went to see mum and dad. It was a little tricky getting in and out of the home right now, with all of the wards they had up. In fact it was impossible to get in at all unless you had Weasley blood or an army to attack all at once.
Dad had taken to messing with muggle objects even more than ever before. He could no longer go into his job at the ministry when he was a speculated order member, and not having anything to do was messing with his head almost as bad as Hermione's absence was messing with his own. So when George chose to help mum make food, he decided to go outside and sit with his father in the shed as he tinkered.
It was on a day just like this that Fred found it.
He usually went into the shed and was able to push, pull, and turn any and all buttons without fear of anything actually turning on. Nothing in there had worked in years, and his father didn't know nearly enough about muggle technology to fix anything.
But when his fingers twisted the orange knob of a small red box, it burst to life with a static noise.
Arthur jumped up. "I've been looking for the radio!" he burst coming forward and digging the entire red box out of the container Fred had been peering into. He didn't know how his father had been looking for such an object and not been able to find it. The thing was massive and Gryffindor red to boot.
"What does it do" He questioned as his dad heaved the giant contraption onto the table.
His father didn't answer, only twisted at another knob until the static changed, and instead a soft muggle song greeted his ears.
"This is a muggle Radio" he said proudly "I have some much smaller ones but I've been looking for this one,"
"But what is it meant for" he asked again. The music was nice, but surely that wasn't its only purpose?
"It catches sound waves" his father answered sliding his hands over the lid affectionately and not looking at Fred as he spoke. "People send them out from stations they have set up, and this catches it and plays them aloud."
"So someone chose for this song to be playing right now?" he asked scrunching his face up as he looked upon it.
"No, someone is currently sitting somewhere and playing this song right now. Its coming to us through the air and the radio is just helping turn it into a form we can hear."
"So it's only for music" he questioned then, standing from the couch he'd been occupying in the dusty shack.
"Well no" the older Weasley muttered. "Some people will send out their own voices, so they can talk about different subjects, or give the news"
That made Fred's ears perk. "Could we do that"
It was only then that his father looked at him "Yes, but why would you want to?"
"I want to start a news for the war, for people aligned with the light to listen to" he said, speaking faster than he could think. "Could you get more of these, we could give some out to the order members first and tell them to let anyone on our side know about it."
"I suppose it's a good thing I cleared out the ministries box of them before I left isn't it?" Arthur said and glint in his eyes and the Weasley twin smirk spattered across his face.
They had gotten it from someone hadn't they?
AN: First chapter, yay!
Thank you all for choosing to continue reading my story, it means a lot to me.
Please Review!
Mel