III. The Solan Affliction
"Don't tell your mother you've been gambling."
Sirona turned her head at the sound of Mr. Weasley's voice as she descended the stairs. She looked back at the twins, who were assuring their father that the money they had made, they had big plans for; therefore, they would not be telling their mother anything about it. Sirona slowed until the Weasleys caught up with her on the stairs.
"What are these big plans of yours?" she asked curiously, and the twins both shot her identical, mischievous grins.
"Now, we can't go telling you that," George said.
"Right you are, George. It's top secret," Fred added, and she sighed.
"Do be careful with whatever it is," she implored, knowing that whatever it was probably wasn't the best idea in the world; ever since she became a prefect, they had stopped letting her in on some of their more crazy plans, which she figured was best for everyone. Fred's grin widened.
"I do believe she's worried about us, George."
"I'm touched," George proclaimed, grabbing his heart dramatically. Sirona sighed and shook her head at their teasing.
"On second thought, blow yourselves up. What do I care? Might make my life easier. I've already got Damara and Damona to look after this year."
"Hateful wench," Fred teased, and Sirona's heart melted a bit when a muscular arm came around to rest on her shoulders.
"If I could survive my sixth year looking after these two," Charlie said, jabbing his finger in Fred and George's direction, "then I'm sure you'll do just fine with your twins. Granted, being in the same house makes it a bit easier. Do you fancy them for Ravenclaws?"
Sirona turned her face to the side just a bit, not wanting the older boy to see the blush that was creeping onto her face.
"I'm not sure. We Bordeauxes rarely all fit into the same box," she said. "At least only one of my twins is a terrible troublemaker, so I suppose that'll make it easier."
"You're lucky. Between being Quidditch captain, prefect and looking after the both of them, I had it hard. Lucky they met you to keep them out of too much trouble."
Fred and George simultaneously scoffed at this, and Sirona let out a small laugh.
"I resent that!" George said.
"She's just as much a troublemaker as we are. Only difference is she's got a shiny prefect badge to hide behind, which she really should be thanking us for in the first place."
"Yeah, we always made sure she never got landed in detention with us whenever our plans went south. Had we let her get into trouble with us a few times, Dumbledore never would have given her such a position."
"Only because you forced me to participate in the first place," she said before giving Charlie a pointed look. "I was an unwilling participant every step of the way."
"Lies!" George gasped from behind them.
"That prank we pulled off with the house point hourglasses second year: Her idea!" Fred accused, and Charlie's brows raised in a humorous way.
"And to think I thought you were an innocent bystander that my brothers just happened to take an interest in. I've been duped!" he said, and Sirona could feel his rumbling laugh as his arm playfully pulled her closer.
"I have no clue what they're talking about," she lied with a big smile plastered on her face.
Sirona made her way down the stairs, out of the stadium and through the woods to the campsite, laughing and singing songs for Ireland's victory with drunk passers-by that waved Irish flags and twirled green ribbons around them. When they made it back to their tents, Fred seemed to notice something that he hadn't previously as he looked all around them.
"Where's your brother?"
This caused the others to look around for Saegon as well, and she waved their worries away dismissively.
"Miss him, do ya? I'll be sure to tell him you asked after him," Sirona teased. "He's been put on duty tonight. By the state of the Irish, I think he'll have his hands full."
"Well, then, pop on over to our tent then," Charlie told her, and though she had already planned on doing so without an invitation, hearing him say this made her want to giggle like a small schoolgirl.
"Yeah, all right. I'm just going to go sit my things down," she said, motioning towards her tent. As Charlie turned to duck into the Weasley tent, Sirona grabbed onto each of the twins' shirts and pulled them towards her own.
"Well, I do say, Sirona, I'm flattered, but I'm not very comfortable doing anything so scandalous with my brother here," Fred teased, and Sirona rolled her eyes.
"Well, you can leave, mate. Rona and I will have fun all our own," George said, causing Sirona to laugh as he pulled her into a tight embrace. She pushed away from him.
"Oh, be quiet, you two," she said as she walked to the small kitchen and rummaged through one of the cabinets. "If I were wanting to celebrate in that way, I would have grabbed someone far less likely to ruin the mood."
"I take offence to that!" Fred exclaimed. "We're perfectly capable of sweeping a woman off her feet."
"Sure you are, Fred," Sirona quipped sarcastically. Fred and George exchanged devious looks before they both grabbed Sirona under her arms, hoisting her into the air, a bottle of amber liquid clutched in her right hand.
"Look at that, Fred. She's swept clean off her feet," George said as Sirona kicked her feet in the air, trying to find the ground.
"Put me down, or you don't get any!" she threatened, and the twins dropped her unceremoniously onto the lumpy couch, falling onto the cushions on either side of her. Fred grabbed the bottle from her and inspected the label.
"Quintin Black, top shelf stuff. Have I mentioned how much I love your brother?" Fred asked rhetorically as Sirona grabbed the bottle back and uncorked it. She lifted the bottle to her lips and titled her head back, letting the scotch run down the back of her throat. She handed the bottle back to Fred, feeling the warmth course all the way down to her belly.
"Please, if this was Saegon's do ya think I'd be letting you drink it? He'd skin you two alive and make me watch; I nicked this from Gus last week," she said as Fred passed the bottle to George after taking a swig.
"Stealing from your mum's boyfriend?" Fred teased.
"How very troubled teen of you," George added as he passed the bottle back to her. She settled back into the cushions as she lifted the bottle back to her mouth, passing it back to Fred when she was finished.
"What do ya reckon's with the dress robes requirement this year?" she asked thoughtfully. She had had to listen to Cissonia complaining about why she didn't get to have new set of dress robes as well, as they weren't on her, Damara or Damona's list of requirements.
"Don't know. George and I get to wear Bill and Charlie's old robes from one of our cousins' weddings last year."
"Mum's picking out Ron's robes from some second-hand shop; I'm sure they'll be ghastly. I can wait to take the mickey out of him for it."
Sirona lightly punched George in the arm, causing him to almost miss his mouth as he went to take another sip of the liquor.
"Oh, be nice. You two should know how much hand-me-downs and second-hand clothes suck," she said.
"Oh, what would you know about it? You're the eldest daughter of your family; it's your poor sisters that pulled the short straw," Fred teased. He was right; typically, Sirona got new clothes which were then passed down to Cissonia, who passed them down to the twins when she was finished with them. She always tried to take good care of her clothes for that very reason.
"I'm concerned that they're going to make us parade around doing ballroom dances," Sirona said after taking her turn at the bottle. "Since when have we ever needed dress robes?"
"What's the matter? Two left feet?" Fred teased, taking the bottle from her.
"I'll have you know that I'm a fair dancer. It's just the dressing up, the race to find dates to whatever event they're forcing onto us, I'm not a big fan of it all."
"Perhaps you're just worried that it'll give Chambers an excuse to finally ask you out," George said, laughing. Sirona grimaced. Kevin Chambers was a Beater on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, and ever since Sirona's third year, he'd expressed an interest in her. Unfortunately, the two had nothing in common, but this did not seem to deter the boy. She had agreed to go to Hogsmeade with him during her fourth year, and she had been bored beyond belief the entire time as they tried desperately to hold conversation with one another; he had done most of the talking. She spent a good portion of her time at Hogwarts trying to find excuses not to be alone with him lest he ask her out again.
"Exactly! You know I'm too kind to say no to him! What if he asks me to go with him and I have to spend the entire night bored out of my mind? I swear, if that happens, you have to promise to watch after my sisters after my heart stops beating from lack of excitement," she said dramatically. George rolled his eyes.
"Just tell him you're going with someone else," he said. "I'm sure Lee would go with you if you threw in one or two Potions essays."
"Or — one of us could go with you," Fred offered. "At least you know we wouldn't be a bore to have around. After all, I look absolutely dashing in Bill's old dress robes." At this offer, George gave Fred a questioning look as he took the bottle from him.
"Yeah, I suppose I'll think on it," Sirona said, absentmindedly smoothing the tips of her hair between her fingers. She loathed school functions that forced you to socialise by way of small talk and niceties; Lockhart's Valentine's Disaster two years prior had made her want to slam her head into a wall repeatedly until she woke up in the Hospital Wing just so she wouldn't remember it. Someone — no doubt, Chambers — had thought it a grand idea to send her a singing Valentine; it had come during the middle of Charms class, and she had been absolutely mortified.
Once the three of them were pleasantly buzzed — or maybe a tiny bit more than that — Sirona hid the bottle away, and they walked back over to the Weasleys' tent. Charlie and Mr. Weasley were having a disagreement about cobbing, and while on any normal day, Sirona would have used her knowledge of Quidditch to join the conversation being had, she did not think that talking to Charlie while intoxicated was the best idea. She opted instead to play a series of Exploding Snap games with Fred, George and Bill, claiming victory in three out of the five games played before George decided to stop playing altogether.
She didn't remember having been really tired, but at some point, she'd fallen asleep on the chair with a particularly ugly crocheted cover. After a while, the Weasleys had decided to go off to bed, and Fred was shaking her awake.
"Don't you have your own tent to sleep in?" he asked cheekily as she blinked a few times, trying to register what was going on.
"Your brother might really skin us if he thinks you've spent the night. Come on, up you go," George said as he and Fred grabbed her arms and pulled her to her feet. She was too tired to argue much, so she just rubbed her eyes sleepily and mumbled "G'night" to the twins as she left the tent.
As she approached her tent, she could see the entrance flap blowing in the wind.
That's odd, she thought, I thought I zipped that up when I left. Maybe Saegon's back.
Sirona ducked into the tent, zipping up the entrance behind her.
"Saegon?"
"Rona! Sirona, wake up!"
Sirona opened her eyes, feeling very dazed and confused. She blinked a few times, her eyes adjusting to the dark of the tent as the lanterns seemed to have burned out a while ago. She looked up into the concerned faces of Fred and George, wondering what on earth had just happened. She sat up slightly, propping herself on her elbows and took in her surroundings. She was on the floor of the tiny den in her tent, and she hadn't the slightest clue as to how she'd gotten there. She looked up at the Weasleys with mild panic on her face.
"'S' going on?" she asked groggily, her voice surprisingly hoarse as though she'd been screaming.
"Why're you on the floor?" George asked, but Fred interrupted him.
"There's no time to explain; we just need to get to the woods," he said, trying to pull her to her feet. Sirona lifted herself up and quickly looked around for her wand, which was, oddly enough, still lying near the entryway of the tent, having rolled under a small table there. She grabbed it on their way out of the tent, fingers curling around the hawthorn wood tightly as she tried to remember what had happened after she'd arrived back at her tent.
Once outside, Sirona could hear roars of laughter and jeering from somewhere on the field. She could make out the sight of people fleeing in masses into the woods. They were joined by Harry and Ron, and a strong, green light burst forth, and she turned see a terrible sight: Hooded figures wearing masks were marching across the field, wands raised into the air. Sirona looked up above the masked wizards and saw four people, their bodies being twisted and contorted against their will; two of them were only children. To Sirona's dismay, more people were joining the group rather than trying to stop them, and she couldn't quite fathom why.
Screams echoed down the field, and several of the tents were now catching fire as they were being blasted out of the way, and Sirona was thankful that Fred and George had thought to check on her; otherwise, she'd probably still be lying on the floor of her tent. How had she gotten there? She hadn't been tired enough to pass out, and surely her wand wouldn't have rolled so far away from her even if she had. She had a vague metallic taste in her mouth, and her head was pounding. She reached a hand up to feel a tender lump that had formed on the back of her head. Clearly, she had hit the floor hard, but why?
"That's sick," came Ron's voice, and Sirona had to concur as she watched the smaller child be spun around in the air, his body limp.
They were joined by Hermione and Ginny, followed by Mr. Weasley. The three eldest Weasley brothers had burst from their tent as well, fully clothed and wands in hand.
"We're going to help the Ministry," Mr. Weasley informed them. "You lot — get into the woods, and stick together. I'll come and fetch you when we've sorted this out!"
Sirona started to panic. Where was Saegon? Had he ever come back to the tent? Was he okay? She made to follow Mr. Weasley as he dashed off after his sons, but Fred grabbed her and Ginny's hands to pull them towards the woods. She tried to pull her arm away, but Fred only gripped her hand tighter.
"Let go!" she demanded, stumbling over her feet a bit. "My brother's out there!"
"You mean the one far better equipped to handle this situation than yourself? For sure, he's definitely going to need your help," he responded as he continued to pull her towards the woods. While she knew he was right, she hated the fact that he could be sarcastic even in a moment such as this.
When they reached the woods, they all turned back to look at the scene once more. The crowd beneath the poor people in the air had grown even as Ministry wizards tried to break it up and make their way to the centre. People were pushing past them, and Fred pulled her and Ginny along again, George following closely behind them.
Sirona wasn't sure how long they'd run down the dark path in the woods, but they finally came to a stop. George was leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. Sirona had noticed that when they stopped, Fred had let go of Ginny's hand, but he was still holding onto hers tightly as though afraid she might run off. Normally, she would have pulled her hand away at this point, but she was shaken and completely frazzled, not just about what was happening back at the campsite, but because she couldn't recall what had happened after she'd gotten back to her tent.
"Lumos!"
Light from Fred's wand flooded around them. Ginny was leaned against the tree as well, sticking securely beside George, who was looking at Fred and Sirona's hands curiously. Fred seemed to notice this and finally let go of her hand, taking the smallest half-step away from her. George looked back up at Sirona.
"What happened to you?" he asked, motioning vaguely to his face as though to tell her that something was off about her own. Sirona's brow furrowed.
"What?" she asked, perplexed. She reached up to touch her left cheek and felt nothing.
Fred brought his hand up and swiped his thumb along her right cheekbone, and she winced at the contact, feeling a slight stinging sensation. When he pulled his hand back, Sirona could make out flecks of what she supposed was dried blood on his thumb. She reached her own hand up to discover what felt like a small cut about an inch long under her eye.
"It was there when we found you," Fred informed her. "What happened to you after you left our tent?"
Sirona, who was still gingerly touching the mysterious cut, opened her mouth to respond, but she honestly did not have an answer to his question. The three Weasley siblings stared at her expectantly, and she shrugged her shoulders, brows still furrowed in confusion.
"I – I don't know," she answered truthfully in a worried tone. "I can't remember."
Fred and George exchanged concerned glances, seeming to remember something, and Sirona's mind, too, flashed back to The Incident during her second year, or rather what she could remember of it, which was, quite similarly to this situation, not much. George slid down the tree until he was sitting on the ground, Ginny following his lead. Fred dropped himself to the ground as well and pulled on Sirona's hand to get her to do the same.
"Reckon we can wait here for a bit. Should be able to hear if anyone's coming," Fred told them.
After a while, something green glittered from above. The four of them turned their faces upwards. At first, it was hard to make out through the leaves of the trees above them, but Sirona eyes widened as she finally realised what it was. There in the sky, shining amongst the stars, was the Dark Mark. She heard a small gasp from Ginny, and Sirona seemed to shrink at the sight of it. She and Fred slid closer to George and Ginny, and Fred put an arm securely around Sirona's shoulders upon noticing that she was shaking, something she hadn't even realised she'd been doing.
Sirona was unsure of how long they sat there, but finally Fred spoke up again, pointing out that the screaming and loud blasts had stopped. The four of them got to their feet and tentatively made their way back to the campsite. There was no sign of the masked people from before, only frightened-looking people and smoke rising from the remnants of some tents that had been burned to the ground. Luckily the Weasleys' and Sirona's tents were among the ones still left standing. They made their way into one of the Weasleys' tents and found Bill, Charlie and Percy.
"Thank Merlin you're all right," Bill said, pressing a bedsheet to his bleeding arm. "Where are the others?"
"We lost them; thought they were right behind us, but I suppose we got separated," George said. Charlie, who seemed relatively unharmed — though, there was a large rip in his shirt — made his way over to them, eyes scanning over his younger siblings, looking for any injuries they might have acquired. Satisfied with finding none, his eyes moved to Sirona.
"What happened to you?" he asked, coming closer to inspect her face, pulling an old, tattered handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing it on Sirona's face, trying to wipe away the dried blood there.
Sirona shrugged, thinking that the small cut on her face was a relatively miniscule injury to be making a fuss about compared to Bill's arm or Percy's bloody nose. However, as an older sibling herself, she knew that she would've done the same if it had been one of her sisters or any of their friends, so she let him to fuss over it for a bit, allowing him to push her into a chair and waiting patiently as he went to dab the cloth in a bit of water. He returned to her, cleaning the small cut.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, talking about the mere shrug she'd given in response to his question. "You don't know what happened?"
"She doesn't remember," Fred elaborated in a semi-concerned voice. "We found her like that, passed out on the floor of her tent." At this answer, Charlie furrowed his brows, seeming to remember The Incident as well. Sirona wanted to ask him what he thought it meant, but didn't want to voice the question aloud, so she just stared at him with pleading eyes. Charlie bit at his lip nervously as he met her gaze but said nothing more about it.
Right as Charlie had finished wiping away the dried blood and dirt from the scratch, Sirona heard a familiar voice coming from somewhere outside the tent.
"Sirona!" Saegon called frantically, and Sirona jumped to her feet and rushed out to see her brother, who had a nasty-looking bruise forming around a bloody spot on the side of his head.
Sirona ran to him, wrapping her arms around his middle tightly, not wanting to let go. He hugged her to him, smoothing her hair soothingly as he breathed a sigh of relief. He ushered her inside of their tent, relighting the lanterns with a quick flick of his wand.
In the light there were a couple things about the inside of the tent that Sirona had not previously observed. Firstly, the wooden chair that had been sitting near the couch was knocked over. Then there was the small coffee table, which she had been lying beside when she was awoken by the Weasley twins; it had been moved from its original spot by a few feet as though someone had knocked into it; some of the things that had previously been residing on it were scattered on the floor. These weren't monumentally ominous things in and of themselves, but they put Sirona on edge. Saegon didn't seem to really notice.
"Are you okay?" Sirona asked, looking up at the wound on the side of his head; he had pulled the bottom of his shirt up to dab at it, exposing some bruising around his ribs.
"I'm fine," he said, though his voice didn't sound very assuring. Sirona disappeared into the kitchen to grab a cloth and dip it in one of the kettles of water that Saegon had procured earlier that morning. She returned to him and pushed him towards the couch, motioning for him to sit as she picked the wooden chair up off the floor, positioning it so that she was sitting in front of him.
"What happened?" she asked as she started to gently dab at his injury. Saegon winced a bit, opening his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Sirona gave him a curious look as she wiped the blood from his face.
"I honestly couldn't tell you," he finally said.
"What do ya mean?" she asked, growing increasingly nervous at his cryptic answer. Saegon began to bounce his leg nervously and flinched away from Sirona's hand as she put too much pressure on the wound. He shot her an anxious look.
"I don't remember, Rona."
Sirona's heart seemed to leap into her throat at his words, her mind now flashing to something far bigger than The Incident: the day Mr. Cromwell had died. There were very few things that put the two eldest Bordeaux children on edge. The most common one was the thought or prospect of something happening to any of their siblings. Another, however, centred around a phenomenon that seemed to have, so far, only happened to the two of them, and that was an acute form of memory loss, the origins of which were unknown to them.
The first time this had happened to Saegon was when he was sixteen, on the day that Mr. Cromwell had died; only he and Sirona knew about that incident. The first time it had happened to Sirona was during her second year at Hogwarts, which Fred and George had simply named "The Incident." On a cold, winter morning, Sirona had gone out to the Quidditch pitch to practise her flying in preparation for an upcoming match against Slytherin. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the Hospital Wing, confused and freezing. According to Charlie Weasley, he'd brought the Gryffindor team out for practice, and they'd found her just lying there in the snow; he'd carried her all the way up to the Hospital Wing himself. Some had just assumed that she'd fallen off her broomstick, but Sirona hadn't had any injuries consistent with a fall to the ground, not even a bruise; though, she was left with a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right.
The two siblings had had this happen to them very sparingly over the years. Once, Sirona had woken up in a chair in the back garden when just a second before, she'd been wide awake, reading a book. Once, Saegon had gone to run an errand for his supervisor only to find himself in a completely different part of the building just a moment later. It was a very rare occurrence, something that they could each count the number of with only one hand, so they had never made too big of a fuss about it, able to explain each incident away with simpler explanations. Perhaps Sirona really had fallen off her broom during second year. Maybe Saegon just had a bad habit of zoning out. Maybe Sirona had been more tired than she originally thought when she'd sat down to read Pride and Prejudice that day. Even the day that Mr. Cromwell died could have been explained away by a severe case of emotional shock. Though, the uneasiness seemed to linger in the back of their minds whenever they remembered — or rather did not remember — one of these moments.
"What do you remember?" Sirona asked quietly, and she watched as Saegon furrowed his brow in concentration.
"I was on my way to my post, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up on the ground with a pounding headache," he said, motioning to his head. Sirona was quiet for a moment before finally deciding to tell him about her own strange experience earlier that night.
After her own story, the two sat in silence for a while longer. Sirona kept dabbing at the side of Saegon's face, though she had long since cleaned away all the blood and dirt, and he was no longer bleeding. Neither of them ever particularly liked to bring the subject up because the uneasiness that accompanied it was always hard to shake afterwards, sometimes lingering for days. Then, there was the fact that this did not seem to happen to their younger siblings, not that either of them would wish for such a thing. They just found it rather odd that only the Solan-Bordeaux children seemed to suffer from this strange affliction.
Sirona shook her head, desperate to make the uneasiness in her chest settle down.
"You know, I was drinking earlier tonight," she admitted. "Perhaps I was more intoxicated than I thought I was, and maybe I blacked out and — caught a corner of the table with my face on the way down."
Saegon nodded. Normally, he would have scolded her for drinking, but in that moment, he was just happy to have something to explain her experience away with.
"It was pretty hectic tonight," he said. "I obviously got knocked on the head. Probably just a concussion is all."
Sirona nodded fervently at this explanation of things, eager to have something less ominous to blame all of this on. Saegon ran a hand through his black hair and let out a tired sighed.
"Right, well, that explains it well enough. It's getting late; we should get some sleep before the morning comes. Mum's gonna have a right proper fit tomorrow; I'm sure it'll be all in the papers in the morning if she doesn't manage to hear about it before then."
Sirona groaned a bit, having not yet thought about how their mother would react to the whole ordeal. They stood from their seats and slowly moved to their respective beds. Sirona quickly changed into her nightdress and crawled under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force away the uneasy thoughts swirling around in her head until she finally drifted off to sleep.