The Potter Twins and the Innocent Ex-Convict

Chapter Thirteen: A Book

"Uh, Ron," said Melanie, "who are you talking to?"

He shushed her, concentrating on listening to Helga speak again.

I did not send the house elves after you, Helga protested. When Ron raised an eyebrow, which she sensed, Helga relented.

Perhaps I did, but that was years ago. However, they were told to go and educate the next set of Natural magic users, not to kidnap them in their sleep. That last part was added with a laugh. That was not my fault.

Ron scowled. And he had been having a good nap when that bloody house elf had Apparated (apparently) right next to him, grabbed his arm, and Apparated both of them into the kitchen. Luckily, the house elf had explained something, vague as it was, before Ron felt the need to curse the elf for disturbing his nap.

The other three were looking confused, even Melanie for once. Why aren't the other Founders explaining this to the other three?

Because they don't know this house elf 'situation' as well as I do. Adding on to that the fact that it does drained upon our limited amounts of energy to communicate with your four, none of the other three needed to do that.

…So how are the other three supposed to know this later?

It's left to me to explain everything to you, and then you to explain everything to everybody else.

Ron groaned, but it wasn't as thought he hadn't expected that. I hate explaining things.

He realized that he was getting some weird looks from his friends and wondered how odd this mental conversation was from their point of view.

Listening to Helga's explanation, he couldn't help but admire how well the Founders had planned everything out (even if there were a still some complications). It had been so long, and the house elves were still able to do what they'd been told. The information had been undoubtedly passed down from generation to generation of house elves.

When she finished explaining, Ron looked around for a moment, thinking about how to phrase what he was going to say.

They were in the kitchen and it seemed that most of the work was done for the day. House elves were mainly rushing around to tidy up, and a few were looking at what seemed to be a recipe that Ron assumed was for tomorrow.

"Apparently," he emphasized, hearing a chuckle in his mind before the presence of the Founder faded, "according to Helga…"

There he stopped, feeling overwhelmed. He was calling the Founder by their first names.

He'd tried to emphasize how awe-inspiring that should be to his friends, but they didn't understand it as much as he did.

After all, he had grown up hearing about Hogwarts and those who made it. It would be the equivalent of them meeting somebody from their 'fairy tales' (maybe a Prince Dashing or something, if he remembered it correctly?).

Bringing him out of his thoughts was Hermione's impatience. "Come on, Ron; there's no use for suspense."

"Just thinking." He took a deep breath, wanting to get the explanation over with. "Basically, what Helga explained was that the house elves know what these bracelets mean better than even the Founders do because they have a book, which the Helga in the bracelet had planned to leave for the elves later on and she told me to tell you that all of us should go read this book because the Founders are starting to run out of energy and-"

"Breathe Ron!" Harry reminded him. When he did so, his Slytherin friend smirked in a Draco-esque fashion. "You sound like Hermione."

Melanie snickered. "I'd love to see the two of them debating."

Does arguing count? "Well, anyways…" Ron paused to take a deep breath and to savour the look on Hermione's face. "That's it."

"It that really it?" questioned Hermione, eyes that were hungry for knowledge narrowing in suspicion.

Ron rolled his eyes in response. "I'm not so stupid as to want death by Hermione for withholding information." He got the desired reaction of a slightly aggravated huff.

"Where is it?" They all turned to face Melanie, who elaborated. "The book."

"Where is it, Dobby?"

The house elf fidgeted and wringed his hands. "Master Potter, sir, we is not knowing that."

"How can you not know?" demanded Hermione.

"Frella is sorry, mistress of earth," apologized the house elf who had escorted (witchnapped) Hermione. "Years ago, many years, there was bad people who was wanting to take the book from mistresses Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw and masters Gryffindor and Slytherin. They has hidden it, but not told later house elfs where."

Toggy, who had wizardnapped Ron, spoke up. "It is been told when Natural magicspeople come again, they use their magic to find the book again."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ron saw both girls exchange a look at the word 'Natural.' He filed away the memory for later, hoping he would be able to confront them about it, Hermione's mysterious disappearances, and Melanie's omniscience.

Unless it was a huge coincidence (and Hermione was practising what Muggles though magic was all about; disappearing), Ron felt justified for being slightly suspicious.

"So, let's see if I understand." Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose with a hand. "All we have to do is find a book in Hogwarts with magic that we barely know how to use and won't know how to use properly until we find that book, all because the Founders hid it the book, but in a later time from their memory selves that we know and can actually talk to?"

"Why can't they just look into their future memories like Salazar did?" asked Melanie.

Ron shrugged. "They said something about how it would take a while because those memories were hidden even from themselves."

Though, he thought, it might be because of some odd adult urge to want to test their students.

When he looked around and saw the other three nodding, Harry sighed. "This is going to be first and second year all over again."

"Why is it that we always have to find something or find out about something?"

Melanie grinned. "Don't pretend you don't love the puzzle, Hermione."

~.~.~.~.~

Their busy lives got even busier with this new search.

On the weekdays, after classes, they stayed in their library, usually accompanied by Draco. Occasionally, Neville or a Ravenclaw named Luna would join them, and doing homework was never boring with the former's toad causing trouble or the latter's random creatures.

None of them were entirely sure how Hermione and Luna got along so well, one practical and the other one… not so much. In fact, Melanie even said that it reminded her of how Ron and Draco got along, oddly enough.

The four house elves had become something like their personal house elves whenever they had the time (though it was irritating when their stuff just got organized and they could never find anything).

Every Friday and Saturday night, the four of them would retreat to their dorms early to sleep. They requested for the house elves to wake them up just after midnight so that they could use that time to search for the book.

Harry's invisibility cloak certainly came in handy on those nights, though Hermione had vowed to learn a spell to disguise them after Ron's umpteenth complaint about the cloak being too small (he was the one that had to crouch down the most, after all. Melanie was lucky, being the shortest.).

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, they slept in and had a small meal delivered to their dorms by the elves.

What took up most of their time, though, was work.

It was worse than last year, especially because of Divination. It was obvious that Hermione was starting to feel the strain of all the subjects she was taking, and it had become rare to see her when her hands and face weren't spotted with ink.

They hadn't found much in their midnight searches, though Ron blamed that on the fact that they had to travel together ("I'm working on finding the spell, Ronald!"). Not only that, but they had to be very careful not to get caught by the patrolling staff members (Bloody Black, putting all the professors on edge. Couldn't he have waited a year to escape Azkaban?).

Ron was sure that they would've found the book by now if not for the teachers.

Probably.

~.~.~.~.~

Stupid Binns, Ron thought with a scowl.

He'd finished the rest of his work yesterday (partially, mostly, because of Hermione's nagging, and partially because he wanted today to relax). But, of course, that just meant another teacher would give them work.

And it just had to be History of Magic.

History of Magic was definitely his least favourite subject. While Potions was horrid and Divination dreadful, they both had their interesting points.

The only event that had ever been interesting in a History of Magic class had been when Hermione asked about the Chamber of secrets last year.

How exactly was Ron supposed to find the smallest amount of joy while deliberately cramping his hand by rambling on about something in an essay that was much, much too long? Nobody could even find enough relevant information, except for Hermione and one Slytherin boy who actually liked the subject. Nobody could enjoy doing so, except for those two.

And so everybody (Everybody sane, anyways) was forced to research, ramble, and repeat.

"I don't get it," Ron complained, unable to keep his frustrations to himself. "How can anybody find enough information to write enough?"

Melanie, Harry, and Draco all looked up from their essays and nodded fervently. The four of them turned to look at Hermione, who was editing her essay (which was, of course, longer than the requirement). Sure enough, she put the essay down with a sigh.

"It's called research, Ronald." She gestured at the books surrounding her (though as far as Ron could tell, only three of them were related to the topic).

"I do research," he protested indignantly.

It was true after all; he did research. Perhaps not as much as Hermione, but more than he was sure anybody thought he did.

"What I don't get," said Draco, "is why there's always fire in this room."

Beside him, Ron saw Melanie smirk slightly.

He sighed. "Honestly, it would be nice to do my work without worrying about it catching on fire." He glared at one of the flames, which was slowly, but deliberately, inching towards his essay.

I'll bet Melanie's doing that on purpose.

It stopped, sputtered, and died out, leaving no traces of its existence.

The blond Slytherin grinned in triumph, only to groan in horror when three more small flames appeared in the former's place.

Some frantic hand waving later, the three flames were also no more.

Ron turned to Melanie and mocking lectured, "That's not very nice, you know."

She simply raised an eyebrow at him in response.

"Alright, I didn't really mind watching him trying to put out the fires," he admitted, "but why did you put them out at all?"

She hesitated for a moment before replying. "I didn't."

Ron scanned her face. He knew she didn't like to lie, that much was obvious. Whenever she did, it was obvious from her fidgeting. As well, she kept telling him vague half-truths instead of feeding him with a lie to get him to stop pestering her.

"Then how did the fires go out?"

A shrug.

That's helpful.

Thanks to..

Dazer95: Thanks again! I feel like I'm just repeating myself, but your encouragement is absolutely awesome.

Kind of a short chapter, but I wasn't sure what else to put in it. Don't be shy; leave a review!

Question: If you could choose any book, movie, comic, anime, etc. which one would you want to live in?

~ScaleneGalleons~