" I have never been so interested about learning a new spell before." I smiled as we walked through the crowded halls towards the great hall for dinner. " I mean I love playing dumb so that the teacher has to come over and show me how to do it."
" Even though you have always been the highest graded student in the whole class." Hannah smiled. Waving over to Fred as we sat down with the rest of our Gryffindor house mates.
Hannah had always and a big crush on Fred since the first day that we came to the school and became friends. She once told me that ' it was like seeing my future in a boys eyes. Love at first sight.' I always would laugh at her and tell her she was crazy. But she promised me that one day she would be marrying my bother and we would become sisters because of that. Though we were as close to sisters now, she wanted to be Mrs. Fred Weasly more then anything in the world. I did not know what she saw in my brother other then the fact that he made her laugh, which was always a turn on in Hannah's mind, but other then that, they seemed to have no real connection. But in Hannah's mind their were soul mates, a crush that would not let go, no matter how hard you tried to pull away from it. Hannah thought that she could brush off the Fred fixation but dating someone new, Felix Longbottom, another fellow Gryffindor and son of the herbology professor. It did nothing though, she still had extreme feelings for my brother and then soon broke it off.
" Well sorry that I like to be able to feel stupid for only a mere moment, if it gets me closer to that body, I'll do it every second of every day!" I laughed, taking my place next to my family.
" Who are we talking about?" Fred asked.
" Professor Winchester." Hannah tried to mimic me.
" Still?" Rose asked, rolling her eyes at the both of us. " I think that your theory of having a new teacher needs to be worked on."
" I am missing something and I know it." Fred asked, looking from face to face.
" Their girls Fred." Albus cut in. " You know as well as anyone that they will talk about the newest person they find."
" You can say that again! Specially' when they are that cute." Rose smiled, looking over to the teachers table.
" He's a Taurus, his element is earth, and his planet is Venus." I smiled.
" How do you know all of this stuff?" Fred asked.
" I know things." I shrugged.
" When she becomes obsessed with one thing, you know how wells she looks at every detail of that thing. No matter if it's a band or learning to play guitar. You know that she obsesses until she knows everything, it's just this time its a real person." Rose smiled, looking over at the table of teachers. " Who happens to be looking over in this direction."
" Man I would love to have a detention with that man." I sighed, twirling my spaghetti around with my fork.
It was true what they said about me and obsessing- though I called it simply learning. I could tell you everything about any of my favorite bands, I even knew where some of them lived as a child. I liked to know things about the people that I looked up to and idolized. When it came to the guitar, I was able to learn it easily, but it was the fact of knowing all of the different chords, when you were supposed to play a major or minor that would get to me. I failed to learn to play that, though I could tell you every single note on the instrument and when a certain type of guitar first came out. I knew things and could remember them, that was the thing that made me different for many other people. Most could look up things and remember them for a week, I could remember them for years, word for word.
" What do you think that he did before he came to work here?" I asked.
" No one knows really, I mean I'm guessing that the headmaster knows everything about him- but not even the other Professor trust him because no one knows anything about him. Like he just showed up one day!" James smiled, moving his glasses back onto the bridge of his noise.
" Who cares where he came from or anything before this, I want to make today and tomorrow matter." I smiled.
" You are so sick!" Rose sighed, moving around her plate of food.
" How's Lily holding up?" I asked, trying to change the conversation.
" Pretty good, I mean she's made friends faster then we could get a single detention and loved the fact that she is not in the same house as us! That outcast."
Lily was one of the only members of our family that was not placed into Gryffindor. She had always told us that she was different and knew it. We all would laugh and tell her that she would be welcomed into the house like a family member – well maybe because at times it felt like we were half of the house house!- and everything would be fine. But she would constantly say that she would not be placed into the house with us. So when she got placed into the Ravelclaw house, all of our mouths hit the floor. But she was not alone that year to be placed in Ravenclaw, she had her own friends there that we had all known since they were born. Luna Lovegood's children Lorcan and Lysander Scamander,
we can known the twins it seemed like forever, they had really become a part of the family.
" She seems happy over there." Fred smiled.
" It's kind of scary." I laughed as she looked over and waved.
" Too happy for an outsider." James smiled.
We all ate and talked. Telling one another about all of our new classes and everything that we always seemed to do at the beginning of a new term. We would soon start to grow distant from one another, the same as every year, until Quidditch called as all back together. It seemed to be a thing that all of the family got into really. We all loved to either watch of play the sport. Fred, James, Rose, and Victorie, another cousin, were all on the team. Fred always made me take pictures of the whole game, even when they lost he loved looking over the pictures. I loved to watch them, examine the way that they would play and practice for each game. I loved to know everything about the sport, but knew that there was no place in the sport for someone like me. Someone who could barely stay on a broom, let alone ride around on one doing who knows what. Some people are born gifted, being able to do so many things, I, am not one of those people.
We all made out ways back into our common rooms to start the homework that we already had, it had not been even a week into the school year and I already had a five page paper due by the end of the week about nocturnal night creatures that only live in the southern rim of Africa and an oral examination about one of the spells we had learned, meaning that we would have to show how well we would be able to use it under pressure. Though Professor Winchester was cute, he gave a lot of work. Rose and Hannah got right down to doing their homework, while Fred and I did our artistic thing around the windows of the common room. We always put off our homework and essays till the very last minute, procrastination was in our blood, or at least thats the excuse that seemed to work the best. I was coloring in one of my final pictures.
" Please tell me that she is not coloring in a picture of him." James sighed as he came out of his homework state, shaking the others out of theirs as well.
" Nope." I smiled as I showed them a picture of a very details tiger lily.
" Wow. Wasn't expecting that." James sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
" I need to go talk a walk, be back later." I sighed as I got up, holding my sketchbook in one hand and pencil case in another and started to walk out of the room.
" What if you get caught?" Albus asked.
" What are they gonna do? Give me a detention?" I asked, looking back at the child.
" That'd be a new record for you. Just don't go too far okay?" Fred asked, trying to be the big brother he was supposed to be.
" Until yours who got a detention on the first day, two years ago. Besides I was thinking about going into the forbidding forest and running around looking for werewolf's or vampires!" I said giving Fred a look.
" Be back soon, you brat." He smiled.
Though it was against the rules to be outside of your common rooms after dinner, unless you had a reason like being head boy or girl, or having a late night class, I seemed to wander around the halls, endlessly for hours without being noticed. I loved watching all of the pictures move around their frames, into others and talking to them, seeing the way that the light was different at night, when you were not rushing off to a class or to a friend. Most of the time I would stay in the hallways deep into the night, drawing pictures of the ghosts or of the moving statues.
The ghosts knew me very well around this school, some where even the ghost from a war that went on here, a war that my father battled in. I guess that you could say that there were a lot more ghosts in the school now because of the war, but that just means more people that are here when you need them, people that want to be at school. I swear, if you turn a corner quickly, sometimes you will see him standing there, watching over you. I know that it's just my uncle, Fred, that is watching over us. But it still shocks me that he's there, watching over the family. I have more then often gone looking for him through the castle, trying to be able to talk to him a little more, but never have been able to find his hiding spot. Tonight I was going to try the towers of the schools, places that had been a lookout for the soldiers around. I hoped that tonight would be the night that he would come out of hiding, allow me to talk to him, to get to know him.
" Out early tonight, aren't we Miss Weasly?" Asked one of the paintings, a mother with a newborn child in her arms.
" I could not stand to listen to my family's silence for another moment!" I sighed, stopping at one of the bases for the stairs. " It was driving me crazy!"
" Well do not venture too far out tonight, there are Professors around every corner, looking for students to be out of bed." The painting smiled at me. " I think that they know that we are all hiding something from them."
" Well thanks for not ratting me out. It really means a lot to me." I smiled.
" Anything for you dear, you keep us up to date about everything that is going on, we do not get a lot of attention during the day!" Some said, entering the painting. An elder woman from a few paintings above.
" So what is the news lately?" The elder woman asked, sitting down in the setting of the painting, an old child's nursery.
" The new professor is even more beautiful once you get up close and in person with him. I made him help me learn a spell today and could see every muscle around him move. That man is ripped beyonds belief!" I blushed.
" Oh, I would love for hat man to make sweet masterpieces with me." Another painting, a younger woman, smiled as she moved around her painting.
" You and most of the other girls in the school." I looked up and said to her.
" And how is your cousin doing?" The older woman painting asked, changing the topic.
" She's doing great, for as much as we can tell. Because she got placed into Ravenclaw with her best friends." I shrugged. " Outcast."
" Oh Ravenclaw. What a good house to be in." The older woman smiled.
" Say, have you two seen him tonight?" I asked, looking around.
" Him who?" The younger, mother painting asked.
" Fred." I asked quickly.
" He went that way." he elder woman said, pointing to the towers.
" Thank you." I smiled, moving quickly as I could, nearly running up the stairs.
Ran up the stairs, not caring that I was running out of breath and it was becoming very hard to even run that fast, but still ran for as long as I could. Making my way all the way to the top the of highest tower. Thats where I found him, the man that I had always wanted to meet, the man that i knew so much about without even saying a word to him. I held my rapid breathing as I moved closer to the see-through man, trying to not scare him or allow him to run away. From the back, he looked like a younger version of my father, with a full ear. I moved into the tower with the man and smiled as I tried to come up with things to say, questions to ask. Honestly, I had doubted the word of the paintings, they were neverright, so today was a shock to me. As I moved closer to the man something dropped out of my hand, something that I could not pick up in time, a colored pencil.
" Who's there?" The ghost asked, turning around rapidly.
" Please don't leave!" I begged as the ghost started to turn to go through one of the walls. " I have so much to ask you about."
" You. . . you know who I am?" He asked.
" Of course I do! You are my fathers brother, my uncle!" I smiled as I took a step near the ghost. " You are Fred Weasly. The man that my very brother was named after, the twin brother of my father, George Weasly. My mothers first boyfriend." I laughed a little about the last part. " One of the best prankers that this school had ever seen."
" What types of pranks has George told you about?" He asked, moving back into the rooms with me.
" How you escaped from the school by lighting firecrackers and fireworks off during the OWLS. How you always liked to prank Grandmum and how much she always hated it." I smiled. " I never see Dad so happy unless he is talking about the good times you two had together. Fred- my brother Fred, looks exactly like you and Dad." It was completely true, put the three f them together and you would swear that they were twins the Fred's and Dad was their older brother.
" He named a child after me?" He asked, in shock.
" Oh common! Don't tell me that you have not been looking over us. I see you watching over s since the very first year that I came here, most likely since before we even got here." I said lightly.
" I don't know names that well. I cant remember them for the life of me, I guess even when they are my own name! Or I guess it never clicked that it was George's son and not someone else's kid in the family." He moved his hand through his hair. " How is everyone?"
" Great! If you can't tell because of the populations of gingers that are running through the school!" I laughed. " And how many detentions there are with one teacher during a night. Everyones great!"
" Good."
" Oh, by the way. I am Roxanna. George's second child, first and only daughter." I smiled and shrugged.
" You look more like your mother then you do George." Fred smiled. " Which wouldn't be a bad thing, if it didn't mean you would have these dashing looks."
" Oh your so funny!" I laughed.
" So what are you doing up here?" He asked.
" Honestly? Trying to find you."
" Why?"
" Because. I wanted to know all of the things that Father would not tell me about. What you were really like without all of the sadness wrapped along with it. I guess that I wanted to know all of my uncles." I smiled.
We sat and talked for what seemed like ages, I kept thinking about taking out my sketchbook and starting to draw many different things it in, but deiced against it because I may miss something important about one of the many stories about Fred and my father that had never been heard before. He told so many stories about pranking teachers, leaving school grounds before and after school had begun, just doing so many things that Dad would never had told Fred or myself about. They were funny stories that it seemed would have been told around Christmas time between the two brothers. I could see so much of the life my father had when Fred was alive and how all of it was stole from him with the death of his brother as well. Fred stopped mid-story and sat up from his hover-place and moved towards the stairs.
" Someone's coming." He whispered.
" Shit." I sighed and got up. There was no way to get off of the tower without using the stairs, without making a leap of faith.
" I could try and distract whoever it is, make them go back down the stairs until you can get back to the common room. Still in the same place right?" Fred asked, looking from the stairs to me.
" Yes, but theres no-"
" Who's up there?" A glimmer from a wand poked through the darkness.
" Use in it." I sighed, the voice still drumming through my brain.
" Well hello." The Professor smiled as he got up to the top of the stairs.
" Hello Professor Winchester." I smiled.
" Professor." Fred said in a joking tone.
" What are we doing up here, when we should be in our common rooms?" He asked.
" Trying to have a little family reunion." I smiled, looking down at my shoes.
" Well, couldn't you have done that during a different time?" The teacher asked.
" Nah." I replied.
" Why?"
" Because he-" pointing to Fred. " Never comes out during the day, I had to ask the paintings where he was to be able to get his moment with him!"
" So you are the one that the paintings are hiding?" He asked.
" Crap." I sighed.
" What am I going to do with you Miss Weasly?" Professor Winchester asked. I could name a few things. I smiled as I thought about it. " What's so funny?" He asked.
" Nothing!"
" Detention with me for a week and twenty points from Gryffindor.." He stated. " Now off to bed with you."
" Only for a week. Could have done better." Fred smiled and winked as I went by him. " See you later, Kid."
As I made my way back down to the common room, with Professor Winchester escorting me the whole way back down there, I could not help but to smile. I knew that within a week a lot of things could happen, alone, in a room with a teacher. But I knew the things that I wanted to happen and the things that were going to happen. They were different, but lead to the same thing by the end of the week.
