Chapter 25—Crash
Thirteen years ago, when Fred and George's eldest sibling, Bill, returned from Egypt for the first time on holiday break, the twins couldn't help but tease him.
Christmas dinner was served, and as Bill finished telling a story animatedly about his latest adventure hunting for ancient wizard treasure, Molly was frowning across the table.
"You know boys," she began, staring pointedly at the eleven year old twins, "you haven't seen your brother in months. It'd be nice for you two to stop your...whatever it is that you're doing, and pay him some mind."
Fred and George knew that tone of voice their mother was taking on all too well. They immediately stopped their snorts of laughter, heads bowed together, and sat up straight. They did their best to adhere to their mother's wishes and appear civilized, but couldn't fight the smirks twitching around their mouths.
"S'alright, actually," Bill said softly, patting his mother's hand gently and smiling across at the twins. "I missed you two little buggers. What's got you laughing anyway, hmm?" He shoved a forkful of potatoes into his mouth and blinked at them expectantly.
The twins exchanged looks, silently communicating with one another for a moment before answering.
"We were just...um...talking about your very important work," George said, feigning innocence with a doe-like expression, his eyes wide and chin tilting downwards.
"Very important," Fred continued, his voice rich with sarcastic sincerity.
"Is that right?" Bill asked calmly, still smiling, as their mother and father groaned, expecting the worst. "Go on."
"It's just-" Fred's pubescent voice cracked a bit as his and George's faces turned identical shades of tomato-red, doing their best to contain laughter, "-it must be so hard!"
"So hard!" George followed, starting to snort again.
Bill chewed thoughtfully, tilting his head to one side. "My job?"
"Yes," George replied.
"Your job," agreed Fred.
"It must be...so hard...being a professional...Alohomora user!" George finally spat out, slapping his knee and exploding into loud guffaws with Fred. Clearly, Bill's job was the butt of some sort of inside joke.
"Now, boys," Arthur began, trying his hardest to sound stern, "your brother does very important work, for very important people-"
"Professional Alohomora user?" Molly interjected, her frown deepening. "Is that what you two have been muttering every time he walks in the room? You do realize his job is extremely demanding, and you two would benefit from taking a leaf out of his book when it comes to hard work, your marks for your first year at school so far are less than exemplary -"
"It's okay, Mum," Bill reassured his mother again. He was well-known within his family for being incredibly even tempered and unphased, which he displayed as he sat there, still smiling good-naturedly at the twins as they teased him. "Sounds like you've got a good running joke there, boys, but I'm afraid you're completely off the mark."
Fred and George looked at one another again, this time, their faces falling slightly. Teasing someone wasn't nearly as fun when they weren't the least bit bothered by it.
"I haven't used Alohomora a single time over in Egypt," Bill continued, spooning more potatoes on his plate. "Not once. And if I ever tried it I'd most likely be kicked off the crew immediately."
"Really, Bill?" Charlie piped up, frowning in curiosity.
"Really," Bill replied, and pointed his fork down the table at the twins. "Not once," he repeated, and winked.
"Isn't it your job to...unlock tombs and stuff?" Fred asked, joking aside, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Fred," Bill said softly, looking between both him and George. "The ancient Egyptians used a lot more than simple locks on doors to keep their most precious items hidden away. A simple 'Alohomora' is not going to do the trick."
The twins gaped at him: his even tone, his lack of defensiveness, his sense of calm.
"Let me tell you something about Alohomora that they won't teach you in school," he continued, and the twins immediately perked up and leaned forward, their interest piqued. "It's easy. It's too easy. If you can open up something with Alohomora...well, the keeper didn't care enough about the thing to lock it up good enough in the first place."
"That's...not always true," Charlie said, but his tone of voice sounded like he was questioning himself as he said it.
"It is true," Bill said calmly, polishing off the potatoes and setting down his fork gently. "Alohomora means they didn't care."
The memory of Bill's words floated through Fred's mind as he reached forward to open the door at the bottom of the stairs.
"It's probably locked, mate," Lee said, last in line of the group, standing on his tip-toes to look over George, Ava, and Fred.
The words had barely escaped Lee's mouth as Fred grasped the doorknob and jiggled the round handle back and forth, firmly locked in place. He looked over his shoulder, meeting eyes with George for a second before turning back around and pointing his wand at the door.
"Alohomora."
There came a light clicking noise, and the door swung open gently, just an inch. Fred saw nothing inside the basement-level room but blackness leaking out of the ajar door frame.
"Alohomora means they didn't care," George whispered softly from behind Ava, and Fred exhaled hard, nodding once and nudging the door open wider with his foot.
The four of them filed in slowly, walking gently and cautiously as though each footstep would set off an alarm, or crack the very foundation of the building. They stood beside each other, formed in a line, each of them attempting to squint through the complete and utter blackness surrounding them.
"I can't see anything," Ava's voice floated into the darkness from Fred's right.
"No shit, Sherlock," Lee muttered, immediately followed by a slapping sound and an "oof!"
"Children, children," George murmured. "Lumos Sphaera!"
The four of them leaned back, narrowing their eyes and shielding their faces at the sudden explosion of light that had erupted from George's wand. Several large bubbles of blindingly-white illumination bounced along the ceiling softly, like balloons hovering around a room for a party of some sort.
Fred blinked hard, adjusting to the new level of brightness, and subconsciously gripped his wand tighter at his side as he observed the room, expecting the worst.
It's size was smaller than a proper bedroom but larger than a broom closet. The walls were painted in a flat shade of beige. They were covered in a combined layer of dust and small, black pockmarks in explosion-type shapes, reminding Fred and George of their own bedroom back at The Burrow—a museum of memories, each mark reminding them of an experiment or spell gone wrong. A small, cot-like bed was pressed against the wall farthest from them, and although Fred knew it wasn't, it looked like it had been recently slept in; the pillow was rippled and had a head-shaped depression in the middle and the sheets were mussed.
Fred shifted his feet, making a light scraping noise, like paper against concrete. The four of them looked down at once, and saw exactly what the scraping had sounded like—the floor was littered, absolutely covered, with layers upon layers of sheets of parchment, visibly caked in dust.
"What the bloody hell is this?" Fred muttered, frowning and looking around the room some more. Against the left wall sat piles of wooden crates, resting on top of one another in clusters, with more shoved under the cramped space beneath the cot. Against the right wall was a long, thin desk, more of a work space actually, covered in additional black pockmarks and scratches upon the wood surface, with empty vials, more parchment, and tiny mechanical parts spread upon the surface.
"It's...Gridgeon's bedroom," Ava said softly, standing beside the cot and brushing her fingertips along the pillow. She jumped slightly as a brown spider revealed itself and scuttled across the blankets.
"No one's been here in awhile," George replied, standing on his toes and swatting at a thick cobweb nestled in the crook of the ceiling and wall.
"His old bedroom," Ava amended, making her way over to the work desk beside Lee, who was cautiously looking inside a dusty cauldron.
"George," Fred muttered. He was crouching and frowning hard as he gently rifled through a pile of parchment papers in his hands, formerly beneath his feet. He inhaled deeply and puffed out a stream of air, blowing away the grisly layer of dust and grime that covered them. George's shoes appeared in his line of vision, and he rose up to stand, still staring down at the discarded parchment.
The two of them were suddenly silent; so much so that Lee and Ava turned away from fiddling with the random items on the work space to look over their shoulder at the quiet twins. They stood together, their heads bowed and mouths open as they looked over the papers; Fred bringing up the next sheet in the pile from the back and placing it on top, filing through them one by one.
"Fred?" Ava asked delicately, craning her neck forward to see what they were looking at but keeping her feet planted.
The twins were quiet for a few more seconds, until they began muttering amongst themselves; a soft mess of voices frantic and anxious and even a little angry sounding.
"All this time...all this time!"
"I can't believe this."
"So...so Gridgeon-"
"He was the one-"
"Pathetic."
"Guys!" Ava interrupted them, her voice louder and impatient sounding. She held out her arms at her sides in an anxious, inquisitorial manner, and the sudden motion made yet another cracked gumball fall out of her sleeve and roll across the floor. "What is this? Gridgeon-"
"Is the actual inventor of all Zonko's Joke Shop products," Fred finished for her. His voice was grave and flat and hollow sounding, as though someone had died. "He was the inventor. He was the brilliant one, the innovator. Not Zonko."
Ava and Lee gaped at him and he sighed, shaking his head and looking down again at the papers. Each of them were covered in hand-drawn pictures; messy sketches of products with arrows pointing to each individual part, complete with descriptive paragraphs and ideas for names scrawled across the top.
Fred's mind briefly flickered back to that day inside the shop, the day he and George picked up The Tickler: a young Gridgeon, muddy brown hair in his eyes, looking down at the product with a mixture of surprise and hurt on his face.
"No, no, it's no problem, it's just that I—he wanted more time to perfect it before it hit the shelves."
"But...but Gridgeon's a Squib!" Lee sputtered in disbelief.
George let out a single, sarcastic chuckle. "Exactly. Makes sense, doesn't it?"
"No! It doesn't!" Lee replied. It was threaded through his voice and written all over his face: I don't want to believe this, I don't want to believe this.
"It does."
The quiet sentiment had come from Ava. She was now standing with her back to the workspace, her spine resting against it with her arms folded across her chest. Hey grey-green eyes were staring across the room, vaguely in the direction of the dusty crates, intently staring at something yet simultaneously, nothing at all. Faraway, and remembering something.
Her gaze flickered back up and shifted from Lee to the twins. "He...he couldn't do magic of his own. Didn't have it in him. So." She paused, letting her hands rise and fall and clap against the sides of her legs. "He made things. Things that would do the magic for him, without the need of spells."
Ava's words continually swirled around inside Fred's skull like water circling a drain: 'He made things. Things that would do the magic for him, without the need of spells.'
"The bombs," George said softly, clearly thinking identically to his twin. The Acid Bomb Gridgeon had used that very first night on Ava in the alley; the cloak-less, Muggle Merryweather solider launching the tiny metal ball at Bill in the shop, sending a shockwave of vibration and force throughout the place, shattering the little glass that was left.
"He's giving Muggles the ability to do magic," Fred mused, and he couldn't deny the sudden onslaught of anxious butterflies that flitted around his stomach as he said the words.
"Hey," Lee said suddenly. "What year did Zonko's open?"
"1985," Fred and George chorused together.
Ava chewed on her bottom lip in thought. "Gridgeon can't be that much older than you three, a few years at most...Zonko's opened when you were...seven? Which means Gridgeon was...no older than ten." Her stream of consciousness ended there, and she looked up to the twins again. "His grandfather was using him since he was ten."
"He was locked in here since he was ten," George added.
Fred found himself whipping his head to the side, shooting his twin somewhat of a dirty look. "Don't tell me—you're feeling bad for him?"
George sighed loudly and shook his head. "'Course I'm not. People make their own choices. Harry grew up locked in a closet and he didn't become a mass murderer and rapist, am I right? It's just got me wondering, you know? How did this even happen? How did he go from this Squib-child to angry teenager to...Merryweather? How does Merryweather fit in with all of this?"
The room suddenly took on the same stale tone from earlier, after Fred had spat out "coward" like it was a dirty curse word. The discomfort in the room was nearly palpable, and whether she realized she was doing it or not, Ava's arm reached backwards, her palm resting against the back of her neck where the MW tattoo sat inked.
"Alohomora means he didn't care," Fred said, echoing George's words earlier. He let out a salty laugh. "So I guess that means Zonko never cared enough to seal the sodden door after his grandson left. Didn't care enough to realize one day, someone could just waltz down here and find all of this shit."
"Fred-" Ava started, taking a step forward, but she stopped in her tracks as George wound up his leg and gave a strong, angry kick to the nearest crate. His foot crashed clean through, with bits of wood flying everywhere.
The four of them left the old room in a silence, and none of them bothered locking the door behind them.
The door leading into the kitchen of The Burrow swung open with a slam, and Ginny jumped in her seat, a biscuit frozen halfway to her mouth.
With one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched in surprise and confusion, she watched as Fred and George trudged in together. Their jaws were set and their eyes were low as they headed straight for the stairs.
"What-" she began.
"Not now, Gin," one of them interrupted instantly, followed by the thundering of their feet jogging up the stairs.
Ginny sighed heavily, shoving the biscuit in her mouth while she stood and dragged her feet as she walked over to the still-ajar door.
"What, do you two live in a barn?" she called over her shoulder, scowling. She kicked the door, swinging it almost shut until a pale hand shot out from the side of the frame and caught it before it closed.
Ginny stumbled backwards in surprise as Ava stepped into the doorway, her hand still resting on the wood. The two made eye contact; Ava looking forlorn and Ginny's mouth dropping open a bit in shock to her appearance, some biscuit crumbs falling out from between her lips. The girl was covered in layers of the seemingly most random things one could ever find themselves covered in: her jeans and black cloak were coated in fluffy grey and black goose feathers, and her long blonde hair was encrusted with crushed pieces of candy that were flashing from pink, to purple, to blue, to green, and back again. There was also what looked like Butterbeer foam stuck to her upper lip.
Ginny burst out in laughter and Ava let her hand slide down the door and drop down to her side.
"What's so funny?" Ava asked in a flat monotone, sounding utterly defeated.
Ginny clapped a few times before wiping tears of mirth away from her eyes. "I'm just...I'm just so happy!"
"Happy?" asked Ava, still sounding unamused.
"Happy," Ginny repeated back to her, her cheeks aching from grinning so hard. "Ecstatic, even. It's just...well, I didn't think I would ever see you look this bad! You're not perfect! You're not perfect! I'm so relieved that you can look fucked up too, praise Merlin!"
Ava rolled her eyes and trudged past her, stopping in the middle of the kitchen and sighing. She reached up to the cloak's clasp around her neck and let it fall to the floor, clouds of goose feathers floating through the air after.
Still giggling, Ginny shut the door and whirled back around, pressing her lips together and looking at the feathers with raised eyebrows.
"Ava...if you and Fred have gotten yourselves involved in some kind of bizarre, feathery sex game, I'm telling you right now, I don't wanna know."
Ava stared back at her, just blinking several times as Ginny smirked and stepped forward, leaning down to retrieve a biscuit off of the plate on the table. "Pecan shortbread?" she offered, holding it out in front of her.
Ava eyed the cookie for only a second before scrunching up her nose. "I've had enough sweets for the day, thanks." She reached up and held out a chunk of her hair, which looked sticky and hard to the touch. Several pieces of candy shell fell to the floor. "Care to help me wash this out?"
Five minutes later, Ava was bent over the deep kitchen sink, her head under the gushing stream of water from the faucet. Ginny stood behind her, furiously pumping yet another pool of soap into her hand and slapping it on to the side of Ava's head.
"Ow! Ginny, what the fuck? I said wash me, not assault me!"
"Beauty is pain!" Ginny roared in reply, using her fingernails to scrub her down to her scalp, feeling triumphant at the sound of several candy pieces clattering to the bottom of the sink.
A sudden shadow passed over their faces, interrupting the buttery sunlight streaming in through the window over the sink. A second later, both girls jumped in place as a loud slamming noise echoed across the property. Ava attempted to raise her head from the sink to take a look, and promptly banged it against the faucet, sending water spraying everywhere.
"Shit!"
Ginny momentarily ignored her, standing on her tip toes and craning her neck to look out the window, squinting through the glass. A delicate cloud of dust was swirling through the air, originating from a dark pile of something on the powdery dirt drive.
Just a few seconds later, something else apparently fell from the sky and made a crash-landing to Earth beside the first. Ava continued to struggle, clumsily trying to back up from the sink and repeatedly catching her ear or hair on the faucet over and over again, cursing aloud each time.
"Give it up, Goldielocks!" Ginny said bossily, pushing her against the sink once more, reaching out and shoving her head under the stream. She began washing Ava's hair again, but she was absentmindedly doing it now with little effort, her hands resembling a cat kneading its paws on a blanket. She was watching in interest as more items rained down from up above, crashing on to the drive or grass beside it and destructing into millions of tiny pieces.
"What's going on out there?" Ava gasped, coughing against the water.
"It looks like...oh my God, are those all of Fred and George's old Zonkos products?" her hands froze on Ava's hair as she gaped out the window.
"Figures," Ava said, sounding like she was thinking out loud. She caught Ginny's attention; she jumped in place a bit as though awakening from a trance and went back to scrubbing Ava's hair with effort, determined to remove the candy.
"What figures?"
As Ava explained to Ginny what had just happened back in Hogsmeade village, the aerial parade of Zonko's items being discarded from out the twins' old bedroom window continued. By the time Ava was finished recounting the story, all traces of the gumballs were gone and Ava was finally allowed to remove her head from the sink, hanging her wet head upside-down to wrap it in a towel, and flipping it back up to see a horrified look on Ginny's face.
"That's why they looked so...murderous, when they came in," she finally said, watching open-mouthed as a large lime green flag emblazoned with the joke shop's signature black Z fluttered to the ground outside.
Ava was leaning her back against the sink, and briefly looked over her shoulder out at the yard before turning back to Ginny.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are they so upset? I get that they used to go there a lot as teenagers, Fred told me as much, but like you said...murderous." The last word ended in a murmur as more items came falling through the air past the window.
Ginny leaned alongside Ava, folding her arms across her chest. "Zonko's wasn't just their favorite store...it's part of why they are who they are, honestly. Don't get me wrong, they were always mischievous little jackasses, but they didn't start the elaborate pranks, really, until they started visiting Zonko's." She fiddled with a hole in her sleeve against her elbow. "They absolutely worshiped the man, and he took a certain liking to them from the beginning. Treated them like-"
"Sons," Ava finished for her, remembering Zonko's strangled yell as he ducked behind the check-out counter at the shop.
"Exactly. With everything you just told me...I mean Zonko being a big fat liar, faking his talent and enslaving his Squib grandson to invent for him? They must be feeling like part of their history just...died. Like part of their story was never real."
Immediately following Ginny's words, the largest shadow preceding the loudest crash yet exploded from the outside, and both girls whirled around to see an enormous wooden crate splintered into pieces, random objects falling out from the inside and rolling across the grass.
"Now that does it!" shrieked a voice, and Ginny and Ava whipped their heads to the side to look at one another, their eyes as round as coins.
"That's Mum," Ginny whispered hurriedly, her face panicked. "She hasn't had to deal with the twins' shenanigans in years, she's lost her immunity to their noise! She's gonna be pissed, come on, let's get out of here!"
Ginny grabbed Ava's arms and twirled her around, the towel around her head swinging out behind her, beginning to frog-march her out of the room in an attempt to escape her mother's wrath, but she was too late.
"Ginny!"
"It wasn't me!" Ginny yelped in reply, turning around in dread to greet the sight of an infuriated Molly.
"I know that!" her mother snapped, jabbing her index finger at the ceiling and pointing. "Them! What are they doing?! Rose just got to sleep, she was up all night screaming her blessed little head off, oh, Hermione is going to have a cow—Fred! George! Get down here this instant!"
The three women stood frozen in an expectant silence for a few moments, before one last thing went sailing by the window and exploded upon the ground in a small fireball, and the wails of a crying infant filled the air.
"Boys!"
With a loud popping noise, Fred and George Apparated into the kitchen. Their expressions were noticeably lighter than before and upon their appearance, they were already leaning back slightly with looks of mock horror on their faces as Molly whirled around to place her hands on her hips and shriek at them.
"That baby has been up crying nearly every hour, driving your poor sister-in-law to tears, this is the first time in almost a day Hermione's been able to lay down and get some rest, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves-"
Ginny giggled, stifling the noise with a hand over her mouth as her mother continued her tirade.
"-absolutely disgraceful what you've done to our yard, you know how hard I work to keep everything looking nice, and to top it off you've sent the pigs running amok-"
Ginny giggled again, and Ava nudged her, leaning in to whisper.
"What are you laughing at?"
"This," Ginny said, gesturing to the scene of beratement in front of them. "I dunno, call me crazy but anytime I'm not the one getting yelled at is a good time-"
"-you are mad if you think you're getting away from this unscathed, you will clean up every bit of trash from the outside, NO MAGIC, George, as a married man now I expected more from you—Fred Gideon Weasley, you stop your smirking and look at me IMMEDIATELY!"
Fred's gaze had drifted to look over his mother's shoulder at Ava, smiling slightly and wiggling his eyebrows at her flirtatiously as he was getting yelled at. He jumped in place, cringing like a dog who'd been swatted with a newspaper as George moaned, tilting his head back and rolling his eyes exaggeratedly.
"Muummm, come on now, we were just engaging in some therapy!"
"Therapy?" she repeated back to her son, fire still in her voice.
"Therapy!" George repeated back to her, nodding enthusiastically. "Ridding ourselves of the past, doing what we need to do to feel better, letting things that hurt us become yesterday's news—speaking of news, Mum, you don't want to look at the Prophet today, really, it'll give you a heart attack-"
"Fred, George? You're here? Is Ava with you?"
The soft, gentle voice floated from the staircase, and Hermione emerged, her daughter on her breast and a blanket thrown over her shoulder.
"Hermione, dear," Molly said, her volume falling down about a hundred levels and affection threaded through her formerly angry voice. "My boneheaded sons would like to offer you their utmost apologies for waking Rose, you go back to relaxing and I'll take care of her-"
"It's okay Mum, that's not what I'm here about," Hermione replied, smiling graciously at her mother-in-law. She shifted Rose to one arm and used her other to dig through the pocket of her dark blue skirt. Her hand emerged with a large silver coin, catching the light streaming in through the window above the sink and sending a twinkling, blinding prism around the room as she turned it from side to side between her thumb and forefinger. "I've got a new message from Dakota."
Different location. No suspicions upon return.
Steady
Not sure why location moved.
Heard a rumor. Will update.
Steady
Rumor is true. Will update.
Plans in the works. Will keep my ear out.
Steady
Four days after the confrontation at Zonko's, the entirety of the Order sat gathered in the Treehouse. It was quiet among them as they sat on the edge of their seats, everyone seemingly terrified of making a noise too loud of moving too abruptly.
"What the bloody hell does 'steady' even mean?" Fred muttered, thumping his elbows on the tabletop and frowning at the large chalkboard on wheels. On one side was all of Fred's original notes from their meeting a few weeks ago, with the list of mission objectives and printed out photographs of the American Six. That side was flipped and facing away from them; tonight they stared at the side that they'd been using to copy down and keep track of all of Dakota's coin messages. The first column of them seemed to indicate that Merryweather's headquarters had been moved, but he'd never specified why or to where. Frustratingly enough, those were about as specific as the messages got: as they wore on, they saw less actual news and more of just the single word: Steady.
"That is annoying, isn't it?" Ava muttered back, scowling along with him.
"I suppose it means everything is steady, with no new developments," came a light, airy voice from the next table over. Luna sat perched on the long bench, her thin legs crossed Indian-style and her head cocked to the side, giving her the appearance of a curious bird in a nest. "I suppose he wanted to abide by the rule of sending messages everyday, without having to go into detail."
Lee raised his eyebrows at her. "You know, for a guy who went and shot you, you're awfully understanding of him."
Luna's lips, coated in a lipstick color so brightly pink it was borderline offensive to the eyes, upturned slightly in a smile. "Oh, I don't hold it against him, really. Just doing what was needed to make an impression. We've all done things like that, haven't we?"
"No," chorused the voices of Lee, Fred, George, Charlie, Bill, and Neville.
"Mmm," she merely hummed back in response, absentmindedly reaching over to Neville's plate and eating one of his steamed baby carrots by hand.
"Has the gunshot wound affected her in some way? I mean...is she okay? Has she...always been like that?" Ava whispered to Fred, leaning into him and touching her head to his.
He smiled and turned his head to the side, his nose pressing up against her hair. He inhaled the scent of it deeply for a second before extending his lips to kiss the side of her head, and whisper back into her ear, "She is absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent herself."
"It's been three minutes, where are they?"
The urgently voiced open question had come from Percy, at the third table. He was taking the time to look down at his wrist watch every six seconds or so, becoming more and more anxious with each glance.
"You're right, Perce, surely they're dead," George replied sarcastically, sending a low rumble of laughter through the room.
Percy's face flushed red. "This isn't about punctuality, George. Dakota's message is quite clear, isn't it? They should have been in and out."
Everyones' eyes drifted over to the chalkboard, where Dakota's last message—the one that had distracted Hermione enough to avoid strangling the twins for waking baby Rose—stared back at them, begrudgingly reminding them Percy was right.
Wednesday. Nine o'clock. Maverick's pub. Pick up.
Harry, Ron, and Kingsley had left the Treehouse not even five minutes ago to go and retrieve whatever Dakota Murray was dropping off, leaving a room full of anxiety and hand-wringing. No one had any idea what they could be coming back with.
At that moment, the roar of growing flames in the fireplace-signaling an incoming party from the Floo network-sent a ripple of excitement through the Order. Most craned their necks, if not jumped to their feet, to get a better view of the now-sparkling emerald green fire.
Ron and Harry stepped out almost simultaneously, Ron stumbling a bit and Harry looking slightly naked without his glasses. They were clutched in his fist at his side, and he rose his hands to his face to replace them, coughing a bit at the smoke.
"Well?" Fred sputtered, on his feet and looking back and forth between Ron and Harry desperately, clearly noticing Kingsley's lack of presence.
"He's coming," Ron replied, nodding.
"Kingsley?" Fred pushed, but the flames grew and crackled again, and his question was answered.
Kingsley's leg extended outward first, gold and brown robes swirling around him, and then came the rest of him—except his right arm, which remained behind in the flames. He seemed to give it a little tug, and his arm appeared—with Dakota Murray himself at the end of it.
"What—what's he doing here? Is he the pick up?" Fred demanded, looking at Dakota the way Molly looked at a speck of dirt she missed while scrubbing the kitchen floor. He was wearing Merryweather's official uniform: all white cargo pants, with a white long-sleeved shirt and white bullet-proof vest on top. It was all terribly streaked with ashes and burn marks after traveling the Floo. There was a long white gun strapped to his back, and two smaller pistols on his hips, which everyone was currently eyeing with suspicion and disgust.
Dakota was fighting to keep his balance after his journey through the Floo; he was stumbling in place and reaching his arms out like that of a sleepwalking man, looking for something to hold on to. Kingsley gently nudged him in the direction of the stone mantle surrounding the fireplace, and he leaned against it, nodding at Kingsley in thanks as he coughed.
"Nice to see you too," he said, his voice strained, squeezing his eyes shut. "I think I'm gonna be sick. Pass me a bucket or something, will ya?"
Fred could practically feel the irritation twinging around his chest at just the mere presence of Dakota; everything about him annoyed Fred. It was more so his twangy Texan accent than anything else; he made the word "nice" sound like "nass".
Harry's eyes were round as he darted to the other side of the mantle to fetch the medium-sized cauldron resting on the floor, reaching out and shoving it into Dakota's arms just in time. He plunged his soot-covered face into it immediately and the room was filled with the sounds of his retching.
"Harry, dear, is that—is that my stew pot?" Molly asked in a delicate voice, perking up in her seat.
Harry's lips parted in surprise as he looked back and forth between her and the cauldron Dakota's face was buried in.
"So it's puke-soup for dessert, then?" Ron asked the room, looking around grinning and waiting for a comical response, which he didn't receive.
"That smells ripe," Lee muttered, tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, his hands traveling to rest on his abdomen. "I think I'm going to be sick as well."
"Oh my God, if he pukes too, I'm going to puke!" Ginny exclaimed, jumping to her feet and clapping a hand to her mouth.
"Everybody shut up, no one—no one else-" he paused to shoot a dirty look at Dakota, whose face had emerged from the cauldron and was now just leaning against the mantle, panting, "-is puking." He strode over to the sickly Marine, tearing the vomit-filled pot out of his limp hands and stomping outside.
"Where's he going?" asked Neville, looking slightly green as well with all the talk of puke.
"He's throwing the cauldron over the landing," George said simply, watching his twin out the Bay window and shrugging. "Sorry Mum, we'll get you another."
The door swung open and Fred returned, the cauldron indeed gone from sight. He placed his hands on his hips and raised a single eyebrow while looking the soldier up and down in disgust.
"Have you recovered yet? Need someone to tuck you in bed and sing you a lullaby, too?"
Dakota's head shot up to shoot Fred a look of pure venom, and he took a shaky step forward. "One of these days, Fred, one of these days!"
"Is there a rest to that threat, or are you leaving it open-ended?"
Dakota jabbed a soot-covered index finger outwards, pointing it to Fred's chest. "I just risked my sweet ass for you, you jackass!"
"Dakota," Kingsley suddenly said in a stern, booming voice. "Enough."
Fred smiled smugly.
"And you, Fred," Kingsley added, wiping the smirk off Fred's face. "You're supposed to be our leader, no? Act like it."
Fred's instinctive defensiveness flared up inside of his chest again, but, doing his best to control his temper, he closed his eyes and counted to five slowly. By the time he reached three, he managed to convince himself not to pummel Dakota Murray to death, and by the time he reached five, his fists had actually unclenched.
"Sit," he said to Dakota, jabbing his head towards the first table.
"I ain't no dog," Dakota muttered, but did as he was told and settled down on the bench, across from Ginny. He began removing the guns from the various straps along his body, and placing them down on the wooden table with loud clunking noises. When he looked up, he noticed Ginny staring at him warily.
He smiled a little. "Hey," he said to her softly, nodding at her and winking.
"Now I'm really going to vomit," Ginny muttered, turning away.
Fred made his way to the front of the room, standing beside the chalkboard with Dakota's messages.
"How long are you here for this time?" he addressed the soldier, fighting to keep his tone even.
Dakota scratched the back of his shaved head. "Well...forever."
Fred's eyes bulged out of his head, and George made a choking noise, and leaned forward to stare at Dakota from down the table. "I'm sorry, I definitely heard wrong...what the fuck did you just say?"
"Language," Molly hissed from the next table over.
"I'm here forever, I guess," said Dakota, shrugging and reaching around his torso to start pulling at the velcro of his white kevlar. "I've got news. Once I tell you, they're gonna know I betrayed 'em."
"Why's that?" Ava asked, looking back and forth from him to Fred.
"Because we'll be fightin' them the day after tomorrow."
"What?!" Ginny shrieked.
"Like I said, my ears must really be in dire need of a cleaning, once again—what the fuck did you just say?!"
"George, language!"
"Everybody shut up, please!" Fred commanded, holding his hands up, but even he looked surprised. "Dakota, what are you talking about?"
Dakota arrogantly rolled his eyes and leaned forward across the table, snatching up the half-drunk bottle of red wine from in front of Ginny and bringing it to his lips for a swig. He was sure to let out a refreshed sounding "aahhh" before placing it back down and licking his lips, staring straight at Fred the whole time. It had seemingly turned into a bit of a game, now: who could piss off the other the most?
"You heard me," he said simply, unsticking the other side of his kevlar vest. "Something's goin' down Friday. Something big. We gotta be there to intercept them. This is our chance."
"Elaborate."
Dakota drank directly from the bottle of wine again before answering. "Rumor has it we moved headquarters due to yet another breakout." His eyes drifted over to Ava, winking to her as well, before traveling back to Fred. "Mass rioting. More prisoners on the run."
"Oh—oh my God!" Ava exclaimed, her jaw dropping and leaning eagerly across the table to look down at Dakota. "Who was it? How'd they break out? Do you know their names?"
"Don't know their names," Dakota said lightly, and let his bulletproof vest fall to the floor with another loud thud.
"Would you know them if you heard them? Annie 'Fox' Wu, Callaghan Forrester?"
"I said I don't know their names, damnit, woman!" Dakota snapped.
Fred's face twisted in outrage and offense as he took just a couple wide strides forward, closing the space between him and the table. He bent down, slamming his palms down on the wood and leaning forward threateningly.
"You expect protection from us, huh?" Fred's voice was soft, but dangerous.
Dakota did nothing but stare back at Fred, hard-faced, and Fred leaned in further.
"You never speak to her like that again, hear me?"
After a few seconds, Dakota offered Fred a curt nod, which Fred returned and took as his cue to back away and resume his original spot.
"Once again...elaborate."
"Rumor has it the ones that escaped were more test subjects. Ones like you," Dakota nodded towards Ava. "And they are wastin' no time at all findin' replacements. But they're branchin' outside of the country for these ones. Need to break up the pattern from the disaster that was the American Six."
"You know," Vladimir's deep voice suddenly interjected. "You keep using this word. 'Rumor'. We do not operate on rumors. We operate on facts. Just how reliable are these rumors?"
"Branching outside the country?" Charlie followed, raising his eyebrows at Dakota. "Branching out, where, exactly?"
"Rumors are very reliable. More or less factual, I'd say." He raised his arms above his head to stretch, arching his back and puffing his chest, his hazel eyes shifting over to Ginny again as he did so. "See, the thing with the military is, you're never going to get a straight story from your commanding officers. Not supposed to ask questions. We find out the truth for ourselves and pass it along, and hope it doesn't turn into a game of telephone."
"What's that about telephones?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"Not now, Arthur," whispered Molly, leaving her husband crestfallen.
"And as for where they're branchin'...well, we'll be takin' a bit of a trip." Dakota looked up through his eyelashes at the group. "Y'all ever been to the Caribbean?"
"Oh, for the love of God," said George in a low voice, and beside him, Lee guffawed in laughter and reached over, slapping his pink, sunburned skin hard.
"I dunno, Fred, I don't think I'll be doin' so well on a beach," said Hagrid uncomfortably, shifting around in his seat and making the bench creak beneath his enormous size.
"Beel!" Fleur said loudly to her husband, scowling. "I cannot follow zis fool all over ze world! We 'ave children!"
"Wait, wait, wait," said Fred, waving his hands back and forth in the air erratically. "The Caribbean? Why the Caribbean?"
"There's a Veterinary school down there, on St. Kitts." Dakota began drumming his fingers against the table top. "Ross University. Fresh faces, sharp minds. They want best of the best. They want students. Target a group the night after partying or somethin', make it look like a tragic accident." He shrugged. "Authorities in the Caribbean are apparently a little...slow on the uptake. They're confident they can get away with snatchin' a few up."
After his words, the room was verging on the brink of chaos; no one was even pretending to pay Fred attention anymore as they spoke with one another in hysteria.
"Your information is quite valuable, Dakota," Arthur said loudly, holding his hand up and managing to hush the over-excited group. "But I'm afraid it's...incredibly short notice. You cannot expect us to drop everything at the expense of this rumor, we need time to strategize, time to plan, and there is simply none of that right now-"
"Big hat, no cattle."
Fred narrowed his eyes and shifted his feet. "What did you just say?"
Dakota's lips were pursed hard, so much so that they were crinkled together in almost a pucker. He suddenly exploded; his fist slamming down on the table right before he jumped to his feet, making everyone flinch in surprise.
"You," he nearly snarled, jabbing his finger to point at Fred again. "Big hat, no cattle. You talk a pretty big game, Fred, makin' all kinds'a promises, makin' all kinds'a threats." He held his arms out at his sides. "You talk the talk but you don't walk the walk. You say you wanna take down Merryweather, you say you wanna help the cause, hell, you act like you wanna avenge your little girlfriend-" globules of spit flew out of his mouth on the last word, and he pointed at Ava over his shoulder with his thumb, "-but I have yet to see it. Get on my level, Fred! I just risked my ass and left Merryweather for good—for you! Return the favor. Grow a pair and fight."
George sprang to his feet, closely followed by Lee, and they began yelling. Fred suspected they were most likely defending him in some way, but, as his father jumped to his feet as well, yelling and gesturing wildly and calling for order, the noise blurred together. The background chaos turned into melting ice cream left out in the sun; all of the screaming and stomping of feet melded into a dull, unintelligible roar.
Fred's heart was pounding harder and harder inside his chest, and all he wanted to do was look at Ava.
Everyone around her on the benches had moved to standing, all pointing at one another with loud voices and angry faces and bits of saliva flying everywhere. But she remained sitting—incredibly calm looking, actually—her forearms resting on the table top, and Fred was grateful: when he looked at her, she was already looking straight at him. Their eyes met, and a sense of silent conversation moved through the air.
Dakota is right, her eyes said.
I know, his own admitted.
We have to go.
I know.
The scar across her throat. The tattoo on her neck. The gash from the gunshot wound on the side of her leg. The blood on her arms, long washed away and gone by now, bright red and sticky from helping Sarah give birth to Gridgeon's son down in the Cube.
We can't let this happen again.
Fred swallowed hard, straining against the lump in his throat, and dipped his chin deeply in a single nod.
"We're going."
Even amongst the Order's uproar, his short, calm statement brought on a sudden quiet. Most faces were gawking at him in a stunned silence. Even McGonagall had been yelling; her cheeks were pink and her hat was askew.
Dakota, whose jaw was wide open mid-yell at George, froze in place for a moment before turning to Fred. He looked confused with himself; convinced he hadn't heard correctly.
Fred sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets, tearing his eyes away from Ava and now staring straight at the Marine.
"I know you're not an idiot," he said quietly, "but I need you to realize something."
The whole room was teetering on a precipice; shocked at Fred's calm and lack of temper, looking back and forth between him and Dakota in a state of shock as the two exchanged quiet, respectful words. You could have heard a pin drop.
"What's that?" Dakota asked.
"You...you telling us this...us going, to St. Kitt's to intercept them...you realize you're putting Taylor in danger, right?"
At the mention of his sister, Dakota softened. His puffed chest fell as he exhaled deeply, and the arrogance and rage melted away from his face.
"It's just that...if anything, we've learned by now that Merryweather acts out when they feel threatened, right?" Fred continued. "So if you're telling us this...and you're going to be there with US, fighting THEM...well, if your sister is still alive somewhere, they might use her as an act of revenge. You realize that, right?"
Fred counted the moments in quiet to a full twelve seconds before Dakota answered.
"I know."
A soft murmur traveled through the room.
"You know?"
"I do. Look, I'd give anything to find Taylor—and hell, I'm ashamed to say this, but there's one thing I can almost say I want a little more!"
"What's that?" Fred asked softly.
"Justice." Dakota said the word slowly, emphasizing the sound of each and every letter as it escaped his mouth, as though to highlight how much it actually meant to him. "I want Taylor back, but if I can prevent ten more Taylors from happening...ten more...you, I forgot your name," he twisted his torso and vaguely gestured towards Ava, and shrugged at Fred soulfully. "Then I can put my head on my pillow at night, and rest easy. I can know that I did my job. Can you say the same?"
Fred's eyes traveled over to Ava's again, and he knew what he had to do.
"We're going."