Someday, I will own something of great importance. This will not be Harry Potter, as J K Rowling already owns it.
Fitting In
Once Ryua stopped thinking of her encounter with Molly Weasley in the kitchen, she found herself eminently able to enjoy herself. She joined Fred and George in their pranking, and showed them a few curses with interesting effects for various trick candies in the future… after which she vowed never to eat anything of their making. Feeding it to people would be a different story, of course…
Within a week, she'd managed to sneak into Bill and Fleur's room, setting a heat-sensitive jinx on the furniture. Much to Fred and George's delight, every time the two of them spent the night, sparks flew from whichever piece of furniture happened to be… in use. Naturally, they'd planted their own test fireworks throughout the room…
It was about 1:30 AM when they came bursting out of the room, slightly scorched, very harried, and stark naked… to see Fred, George, Ginny, and Ryua waiting with wizard cameras at the ready. Fleur, absolutely furious, had started flinging Veela fireballs at them… so Ryua cheerfully put up a shield, which sent fireballs bouncing in all directions… which collided with walls. Being stone, the walls didn't mind much, although some of the tapestries came off rather badly. And a curtain… and much of the floorboards… and a chest of drawers… and the last of Fred and George's firecrackers…
Mrs. Weasley promptly grounded all six of them.
Bill tried to protest, sort of… and then decided he had no chance of changing his mother's decision. Fleur made the same protests, they were adults, they shouldn't be punished for acting like it… and then subdued when a sleepily amused Lupin pointed out that it was her fireballs that had trashed the corridor.
Fred and George didn't seem to mind; it was apparently something they'd had a lot of practice with. Ginny was likewise not perturbed… although Ryua was different. "So… Gin. What exactly occurs now that we're grounded?" she asked on the way back to their rooms, where Mrs. Weasley had furiously sent them. The only parental 'discipline' she'd ever had before usually involved blood and pain…
"Um… mostly, we ought to just stay out of her sight… she'll have probably forgotten about it by supper anyways," Ginny replied cheerfully.
"Oh." Much better than Lucius…
"And you and I should be back in her good books by lunch, maybe earlier if we help with dishes… She's still convinced that Fred and George are the real troublemakers, and just drag us poor innocents along in their diabolical plans!"
"Sweet," Ryua said, grinning. "If only she knew…"
Ginny was right, after the two of them volunteered for dishes, Molly completely forgave them. They spent a few hours poking around in the Black dungeons, looking for the forbidden and illegal objects Ryua knew had to be there. After all, if the Malfoy house had the dark ancestral inheritance, the Blacks definitely would. Ginny did manage to find an old torture room, managing to get herself stuck to a magical automatic rack. Luckily, she yelled the moment she was grabbed, and Ryua turned it off, scolded it sharply, and locked the doors before any other bored torture instruments decided to play.
Before they got into much else, however, an announcement of incoming Order members came over the magical intercoms. Ginny explained that it was standard operations now, so if they were injured or being chased or tracked, the whole house was prepared. "And," she put in darkly, "It's a signal from Mum to go to our rooms until she says we can come out…"
"Well… We'll have to go through the entrance hall to get to our rooms from here, no?" Ryua said, eyes sparkling.
"Why, you're quite right!" Ginny said laughing, "I guess we'd better get to our rooms on the double then,"
The two of them skipped merrily up the long sets of stairs, and waited very nicely in the shadows, out of the way, since the hall was crowded with familiar and strange people. Dumbledore was debriefing a tired, bratty looking pink-haired witch in one corner, "Tonks," Ginny whispered, pointing them all out in turn. "And Dung, Fred and George's favorite friend, you know Charlie and Snape, and… that's Card, one of the newest members. He's the one cleaning off his sword…"
A quiet, attentive-looking man stood in one corner, lovingly wiping congealing blood off of a blade, obviously magic-forged. "He looks like he could be a relative of yours…" Ryua muttered back. Indeed, he had a Weasley's red hair, blue eyes almost as pale as Ryua's, and the pale skin of the whole family.
"Nah. He's from another clan, one of the wizards Charlie's been conscripting from other countries. Cardington Greenbay's his name, but he hasn't been very chatty. Only Dumbledore and Charlie really know anything about him."
"That's good enough, really. If Dumbledore trusts him…" Ryua said, leaning back against the door frame. Luckily for them, Mrs. Weasley declared that lunch was ready, and everyone followed her with undivided attention. Ginny and Ryua casually slipped into step behind them, avoiding notice right up until they all had the customary squabble over seats.
Mrs. Weasley didn't even blink twice, just served everyone up huge bowls of hot beef barley soup, and numerous platters of biscuits. The rest of the house was miraculously seated before anyone ate more than a bite, of course, and the meal turned bright and cheerful. Tonks knocked over two pitchers of water, and tipped a plate of biscuits into Ron's lap over the course of the meal, making Ryua intensely pleased that she hadn't sat next to the clumsy Auror. Ron kept glaring at Ryua, since she was giggling at him, which only made her giggle more…
After they all ate far too much, the kids all got kicked out of the room so the adults could talk. George groaned as he heard his mother put a charm on the door, and Fred sighed, stuffing the Extendable Ears back in his pocket. "I keep hoping she'll forget…"
"Ah well. We've got those sweets to work on, remember?"
"Oh, the ones that do…"
"Yep! All we have to do…"
"Is fix the flavor,"
"Since no one will eat a candy that tastes like dung bombs…" The twins cheerfully walked off, chatting brightly about whatever diabolical invention they were cooking up at the moment. Shaking her head, Hermione flounced off, obviously perturbed that they were doing something potentially deadly again. Laughing, Ginny followed her, although whether to calm her down or irritate her more was anyone's guess.
Ryua glanced back to see Ron and Harry talking, Harry smiling and shaking his head, obviously not agreeing with whatever Ron was trying to say. Shrugging, she turned to follow Ginny and Hermione down the hall.
Without warning, she was hit from behind, and she stumbled forwards, fumbling for her wand. She yelped with surprise as fingers dug into her ribs, and she sent her assailant flying upwards to stick to the ceiling. Only then did she realize that the fingers hadn't been painful, and she hadn't been hit hard enough to disarm or knock her to the floor…
She heard a thump behind her, and she whirled around to see Harry hit the floor, laughing so hard he couldn't stand up. "I… I told you so…" he gasped, waving a finger in the vague direction of the ceiling. Biting her lip, trying to hide a smile, Ryua looked sheepishly up at the ceiling, where a shocked and flustered Ron was futiley trying to un-stick himself.
"Sorry Ron…" Ryua said, waving him down. She even set him nicely on his feet, instead of just dropping him. "You really can't sneak up on me like that…"
"Bloody Hell!" Ron said, eyes wide. "You're really on edge!"
Ryua barked a short laugh. "Ah… you could say that…" she said ruefully.
Ron turned to look at Harry, who had just forced himself to his feet, still giggling. "What're you laughing at?" he said, glaring. This promptly made Harry collapse with laughter again, and Ron stalked off into their room, slamming the door behind him.
Harry managed to choke down his laughter at the sound, looking merrily up at Ryua. "That was brilliant… I told him it wouldn't be a good idea… but Ron's never listened to anyone anyway…"
She grinned, still a little embarrassed at her overreaction. "Well… hopefully he won't do it again… He's lucky I was in such a good mood, he might have come off way worse…" This set Harry giggling again, although he was already sitting on the floor. "It's true! I'm on a hair trigger here… Quit laughing!" she said, trying to suppress her own laughter bubbling up. She reached down to smack him gently on the shoulder, her grin broadening.
"Can't… breathe…" Harry said, his green eyes bright, tearing up he was laughing so hard.
Ryua considered smacking him again, but it didn't seem to have done any good before. Laughing, although not nearly so hysterically, she sat down next to him. "Well, I don't think we're allowed in our room now…"
"Nah, guess not…" he replied, gasping for breath. "Cause Ron's in a snit…" he dissolved into giggles again, causing Ryua to look over quizzically at him.
"What was so funny about that?" she asked, grinning. Just because she didn't get the joke, didn't mean the laughter wasn't infectious.
"I… have absolutely no idea…" Harry said in between spurts of laughter.
"Dude, you're hyper…" Ryua said, shaking her head and chuckling at him. Not that it seemed to be such a bad thing, she rather liked this mood to most of the ones she'd ever been in.
"You're right though," he said, suddenly completely back in control. "Ron's not likely to want to see either of us for a couple of hours at least…"
"And Hermione and Ginny appear to be doing 'girl stuff'…" Ryua said, peering down the corridor they'd gone down. She still was a bit vague about what 'girl stuff' was, as she didn't spend much time with girls, outside of the Quidditch team. "If we go anywhere near Fred or George, I'd bet my wand that we'd become guinea pigs…"
"In fact, they're probably looking for some right now… Why don't we just leave Ron all alone up here, and go somewhere else?"
"Sounds brilliant!" Ryua said, grinning. "Me'n Ginny were working our way through the dungeons before lunch…"
And so they found themselves in the dungeons, peering into rooms, jumping back more often than not. "Yeesh. I thought my family was paranoid with the booby traps…" Ryua muttered as she blew up the fourth biting doorknob. And these weren't the joke doorknobs, these ones had fangs as long as a finger, tipped with poison.
"Makes me kind of glad I was raised Muggle… the worst thing that ever happened to me opening a door was a can of paint balanced on top…"
"One thing for Muggles; they're ingenious," Ryua remarked, carefully knocking bits of poisonous knob into a corner. She winced at another exploding stone in the floor; Harry had lobbed a piece of the late doorknob into the room, a hard-learned lesson. They'd both gotten slightly singed on the third room, before they knew to be quite so paranoid. Ryua sent a globe of werelight into the room, so they could check for anything else obvious before going in.
"You know, this would make a lot more sense if there'd been anything in these rooms," Harry sighed. Six trapped rooms, and the only thing they'd found was a nest of petrified dragon eggs. Ryua had pocketed some shells, of course, one never knew when the illegal stuff would be needed, and it was difficult even for someone like her to get.
"Looks like this one's a dud too… unless you need human bones for something," Ryua said, peering in. A skeleton lay crumpled on the floor, twisted into the most incredibly painful shape, fingernail scratches still visible on the door and walls. "Must've been a practice victim for torture…"
Harry shuddered. Ryua winced, apologetically. "Sorry, I keep forgetting you aren't used to this sort of thing…"
"Well… I've had a bit more of a sheltered upbringing…" Harry said, grinning, and carefully not looking at the skeleton. He paused, sighing. "I don't know how I'm going to manage."
"Manage? Manage what?"
"Voldemort. Apparently, I have to kill him, or he kills me…" Harry replied, leaning on the doorframe.
"And, no one would have been teaching you about the killing curses yet…"
"Fake Moody did, two years ago…"
Ryua shook her head. "Nah. He showed you what they looked like. The teachers aren't allowed to teach you stuff like that."
"Great." Harry hung his head with a sigh. "…I tried last summer… but I can't use any of the Unforgiveables…"
"Why not?" Ryua asked, leaning on the other side of the frame.
"Dunno. I tried to curse Bellatrix, but it didn't work… I think she said something about righteous anger, or something like that."
Ryua smiled, a dark, empty expression. "She's right. You can't just want revenge, or to set the balances equal… you have to really want to cause the pain, to hear the screams, to drink them up like a plant does sunlight… You have to know exactly what you're doing, what the spell's effects are, what they're supposed to do, what they are capable of, and… what you're capable of…" she broke off with a shudder, remembering her own exhilaration, her lust for pain.
Harry leaned forward, looking up at her face. "You… you really know, don't you?" he asked, quietly.
"Yeah." Ryua replied, just as quietly. Shaking her head, she looked up, forcing herself out of the dark places of her mind. "I should teach you," she said, as if her last little speech hadn't happened.
He seemed kind of taken aback at the abrupt change, and Ryua could tell that he wasn't going to forget it any time soon. "Teach me?" Harry asked, blankly.
"How to kill someone, how to keep yourself alive in a duel to the death… that sort of thing. Like the DA meetings… only much more intense, and not just defense anymore." Ryua said, thinking. "We could even work it into the DA, I suppose… but not as much as I want to teach you. I'd get expelled…"
"Oh." Harry said. He seemed slightly less than thrilled.
Ryua looked over at him. And for a split second, she could almost understand what it was like to be innocent, to be teetering on the brink, and not wanting to go any farther. For a moment, she almost wanted to say forget it, but then something else occurred to her. "Harry, if it's not me teaching you… it'll be Voldemort. And I want you alive and well, whereas his entire energy of life is poured into killing you slowly and painfully and thoroughly."
He grimaced at the thought. "Well, when you put it that way…"
She smiled, almost sadly. "But not right now. Not for a while yet. I want to enjoy my summer…"
Harry met her gaze, his eyes haunted, but with hope and excitement and joy there too. "Yeah. Speaking of which, if Mrs. Weasley catches us down here, we'll be grounded…"
"I guess it has been a couple hours…" Ryua said, biting her lip with a mischievous grin. "And I think I smell food anyway…"
Author's Note: I'm so, so sorry it's been taking so long. I have no time in my life anymore.
And thank you everyone, for letting me know you still care! It's important, it really is. Avalon, Rohan, Jason, HPF139 (I know what you mean about the computer problems...) my ever faithful JeanieBeanie... (I considered wating for the sixth book, but I dont' want to be giving spoilers this early on anyways... and I have no idea when I'll be able to get a copy of it!)
And Meeper! I have a new reviewer! I'm so happy. And, the puppy dog eyes work on me just fine... but not the various computers I need to update the story... Heh. And I'll tell you about Draco in a chapter or two!
