Twins of Peace- Chapter Five:
I was forced to take several deep breaths when I entered the Great Hall of Hogwarts. For the one month I been in the infirmary I hadn't seen the hall. Hermione crossly grabbed my hand and dragged me to the Gryffindor table, because I kept stopping to look at the drapings the teachers or the ceiling. I recognized Professors Snape and Dumbledore, and Willow waved to Hermione and I almost giddily. She seemed almost as euphoric as me. Madam Pomfrey was there too sitting at the edge of the table next to an empty.
Hermione gasped. "Professor Trealney's not here!"
"Ugh, Harry," Ron groaned. "This might mean we get an actual teacher!"
"Hmm, lets see," she continued her appraisal. "That blond hussy's up there. Looks like in the DADA seat."
"Fleur!" Harry and Ron said together. "There is a god." Ron mumbled.
I looked at the woman in question. She was currently conversing with Willow, wildly animating the conversation with hand gestures. She looked nice enough. I'd have to ask Hermione what she'd done other than being blond. Her hair was quite long and the color was like Draco Malfoy's. Malfoy…
My eyes and mind wandered from Fleur over to the Slytherin table. I found Malfoy quickly and felt stupid as I tried to stare at him without him or anyone else noticing. His heard jerked around after I'd been staring for about twenty seconds and glared straight at me. Our eyes locked for a brief moment before the sorting hat opened its mouth to sing. I waited for that odd connection that people are always experiencing in movies and books, but it didn't happen. I drew my eyes away blushing furiously vowing to pay no attention the Slytherin Dragon, no matter what my dreams said.
With the last new first year sorted (Samdi Jenkins a Ravenclaw) Professor Dumbledore stood up at the head table. He knocked his spoon to a goblet and cleared his throat. Instantly the Hall quieted waiting for him to speak.
"Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts. I'd like…" In the middle of his sentence the doors of the Hall flew open. A woman stepped in breathing heavily. Her short hair was tousled all over her head and her robes were askew all over. She looked up at all of us and smacked her forehead. Her groan was audible throughout the room.
"I'm late." She said stating the obvious, moving quickly to Professor Trealney's empty seat.
"Professor Chase, we were beginning to worry." Dumbledore smiled down the table at her. "Now, I'd like to introduce three new members of our staff. Professor Fleur Delacour for Defense Against the Dark Arts," she got a rather loud applause, much from the boys. " Professor Willow Rosenberg for History of Magic." At this there were many thank yous from the students. Professor Binns had obviously not been widely loved. "And Professor Cordelia Chase of the previous dramatic entrance for Divination." Many proved indifferent to this and gave scattered applause.
"As usual the Forbidden Forest is off limits and the staff begs you not to disturb the Whomping Willow as it seems to have developed a disease of some sort. It's more violent than normal. Please be sure to keep in mind that the school will be receiving and harboring many visitors this year. They'll be assisting myself and others in various tasks and we'd all appreciate your cooperation." He stopped, stroking his beard. "I find it unnecessary to summarize the details of last year but I do want to tell all of you that if anything ever happens asylum here is open to you all."
*~*
I was excited but tired the next morning when I went to breakfast with Hermione. The tiredness was a problem but one I had hoped to be rid of at breakfast, but then Hermione informed me that coffee was not served to students and for good reason. This meant that I would be a bitch for at least half of the day. Growing up in a café had gotten me hooked to the stuff when I was ten, and Remus had obliged during the summer. Now I was to go with out it. Deaths would occur. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had tried to keep Hermione and I up the night before gossiping. Now what gossip a person could acquire after being in the school for less than five hours was beyond me, but it was obviously possible because they'd gone on, and on, and on…
"Piper?" A jab in my side stopped the word 'on' from its continuing run through my mind and for this I was grateful. "You look tired. We've got History of Magic first and usually that would be a sleeper but I suspect this year it might be interesting." Harry smiled at me offering a pitcher of pumpkin juice.
"Only caffeine can save me right now. Sugar maybe." I dumped a liberal amount of syrup on my pancakes hoping for a quick sugar rush.
"Piper has a bit of a caffeine addiction, almost as bad as a druggie." Adrian explained half joking. "Anyway, what's the rest of our schedule?" His was still folded next to his plate.
"Double History of Magic first, Potions, lunch, then Herbology in the afternoon and after that we're done." Said Hermione. "We should leave now."
The rest of us rose and followed behind her, seeing as making Hermione late for a class probably wouldn't have been a good idea. When we got to the classroom people were already filing in. We fell in at the back of the line and went in ourselves. I noticed that members of all houses were in the class on not just the usual two. Also I was quite sure some of the people were too young or old to be in the fifth year. I noticed Fred and George's heads among the throng and then realized that many people had siblings in the class, and my brother and I were one of three pairs of twins in the class.
"Whoa!" Ron whispered when we walked in. The room was bright, with sun shining in through all of the windows. Everything was very clean and organized and there were new looking portraits on the walls. The place must have changed a lot because every one but Adrian and I were staring around the room.
Willow was standing behind a polished wooden desk at the front of the room smiling nervously at us. She wasn't wearing robes, but a jumper and white blouse. It made her look young and vulnerable, but I could feel (I wasn't sure if any one else could) a weird surge of energy coming from her. No matter how young she looked she wasn't someone to be messed with.
"Professor Binns left it kind of dusty. It was dark too. No more shades." She said as we all began to sit. "This next thing might sound a little weird, but I'd appreciate it if you'd call me Willow. The oldest student in here is eighteen and the youngest it fourteen, and I'm only twenty-one. I…I just wouldn't feel comfortable with someone not even ten years younger than me calling me professor. You guys ok with that?" A general murmur of agreement went up, and Willow continued.
"Um, you've been studying goblin raids and wars since you started here, so I thought maybe you'd like to do something different. Worldly history is important and all, I-it's good to be able to tall someone when the giants revolted but I think, and Headmaster Dumbledore agrees with me, that in these and coming times personal history is more important. Knowing who you are and where you come from is knowledge worth having. Has anyone here ever bothered to look at their family tree and go beyond grand parents and great grand parents?" A few scattered hands went up, mine among them. I'd attempted but answers hadn't been particularly forthcoming.
"That's what we're going to be doing this year. Over on that shelf I've gathered each one of your family trees as far back as I could go. This is a yearlong project where each of you will look into your family's histories and find something interesting, like a mystery, a peculiar quirk, or an old curse that you didn't know about. Do as much research on your mystery or oddity as you can. That will be the topic for your paper to be handed in at the end of the year. I have every class from fourth year up doing this project that's why you're all mixed together. This way you can work with your siblings, and that's not a choice, and it will give you a chance to meet people that you might usually have never considered meeting. Are you with me so far? Yes Hermione?"
"When you say mystery what kind do you mean exactly?"
Willow bit her lip, searching for an answer. "Well, suppose that every person on your fathers side of the family is left handed and doesn't have the use of their right hand. You could look to see if there was ever a curse placed on your father's family. If you're muggle born it might be something like, your great times something grandfather disappeared in the revolutionary war or maybe your families Arabic but it seems they've lived in England since the beginning of time. Things like that. And you don't have to solve the mystery by the end of the year, because in some cases that might be impossible; just write about it. I don't care how long the report is as long as it shows that you've worked hard and didn't give up.
"I'd like you to move to sit with your siblings if you have them. If not you can sit where you'd like. I'll pass out your family trees I've collected and you can begin deciding what to do."
Hermione looked to Ron, Harry, Adrian and I. "This sounds very promising. Much better than what we've been doing."
"'Ey Ron." Fred, George, and Ginny drew chairs up to our table, each ruffling Ron's head as they sat. Their friend Lee also came over with his fourth year sister following behind him.
"What do suppose we'll find?" asked Lee keenly. "I've never actually bothered looking at our tree."
His sister sighed. "Lee you've gotta know something, granddad isn't speaking to the air every year at Christmas."
"He might as well be." Answered Lee, then turned back to Fred and George who were looking over the parchment Willow put in front of them.
The girl sighed again rolling her eyes. Her beaded braids knocked against each other as she shook her head. "What's your name?" She asked me, turning from her brother.
"I'm Piper Black." I said, looking up from my family tree. "That's my twin, Adrian."
"I know. He and those royal pranksters over there were up talking pranks last night in the common room. I'm Candra Jordan. You two are new right? I don't remember you from last year."
"We're from America, a Muggle family."
Candra's face lit up. "Does this mean maybe you know what's been going on TV?"
"Yeah?" I said with a raised eyebrow.
"Can you please tell me later?" She grinned. "In the common room?"
I nodded. I decided that I liked Candra. Something in the way she acted and talked. Her voice had held remnants of sarcasm when she'd been talking with her brother, like me when I talked with Adrian. She flashed me a smile as she turned back around to deal with Lee.
I turned back to my own brother who was sitting with Harry as they went over their parchments together. I looked at ours and grinned as I saw it had dad's side of the family on it as well. For all the secrecy veiled over his family I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I looked it over once more and saw one thing that stood out. It read William Winthrop 1840-1880: reported missing. If I was reading the thing right he was my great times nine uncle. There were instructions on the top of the sheet for finding out more information on our relatives. Adrian seemed to know what I was thinking and touched his wand to William's name. The words on the paper swirled around becoming four immense paragraphs of information on our uncle including a picture. The man in the picture was not moving in normal wizarding fashion but staring up at us unmoving. William had curly brown hair cropped at his ears and wore a pair of old fashioned wire glasses. Other than his sharp cheekbones he was unremarkable.
"He was a poet, a bad one though. Called William the Bloody for his 'bloody awful poetry'." Adrian said in an amused tone. "He was refused affection by the woman he loved. Last seen with what's thought to be a local whore in an alley. He'd just come from Cicely's house after being publicly rejected. He disappeared after that. His mother died from the grief and his sister, our great whatever grandmother, moved to Scotland with her husband and child."
"There has to be some sort of…I dunno, scandal here." I said, frustrated. "Dad wouldn't clam up over nothing. He's told us everything else. Who was the woman he was with?"
"They don't know."
"Then that's what we start with."
"I take it, this is our project then?"
"Yup. Everything else on here looks normal. Of course unless we read everything about everyone we don't know this for a fact, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess this is the reason dad refuses to talk."
"We should also look at who he associated with, also that Cicely woman. That might give us some clues. But I'm willing to be that woman did off with him."
"Have you decided on your project?" We looked up to see Willow peering over out shoulders.
"William Winthrop, aka William the Bloody, disappeared one night in 1880. We're gonna see if we can find out what happened to him." Said Adrian. "He was our uncle."
Willow looked a bit stunned at our words but she recovered quickly. A sickeningly large grin became plastered on her face and I could've sworn she was holding back laughter. "Giles is going to kill me for this, but…Good project. Make with the detective work." With an approving grin she moved over to Harry.
"Well that was weird." I commented when she had left our row.
"Yeah well," Adrian said opening a book from the shelf. "You heard her, make with the detective work!"
*~*
Where Willow's classroom had been bright and serene Professor Snape's was dark, damp, probably moldy somewhere, and this guy certainly wasn't about to invite us to call him Severus. It was like going from Heaven to Hell in five minutes flat. He didn't say good morning or anything, in fact his first word was 'Sit' like he was talking to a group of dogs. It was obviously directed at us Gryffindors; all the Slytherins smirked in delight.
I heard the yelled order and sat, knowing that this was at least one class I was guaranteed to fail so I didn't have to bother paying attention anyway. Science had always been my worst subject in school and Potions defiantly seemed to have a lot of similarities. No my time would be spent staring at Draco Malfoy. Discretely of course, as I was sitting with Harry, Ron, and Hermione and planned to work with Hermione because she would actually know what she was doing. Hermione was the type who seemed to understand anything whether it was fact or theory. I needed hard facts that couldn't change which is why I was best with History or any sort of Math. George Washington will always be the first president of the US and two plus two will always be four. In something like Potions there could be dozens of theories as to why something worked or didn't, and you could always substitute one ingredient for another. I couldn't processes it at all. This plus the fact that dad almost got Snape killed guarantied low marks.
"You will work in these pairs for the rest of the year." Snape stated in an uncaring voice. I listened only to hear where my friends and I would be. "…Weasley and Mr. Black…Potter and Goyle" Harry looked amazed to not be pared with Malfoy. "Granger and Patil…Miss. Black and Malfoy…" At first I though hadn't heard right, but then Hermione and Harry were whispering their condolences and Snape was ordering me to hurry up and move.
This was not going to be a good year.
Malfoy glared at me as I sat down beside him. I sighed deeply and made no move to talk to him, instead I focused my attentions on the board where Snape was writing out the instructions for the day's lesson. Thanks to him I actually had to pay attention, there could be no discrete staring if I was sitting right next to the person.
When it was time I stood up to collect the ingredients while Malfoy stayed and set the fire under the cauldron. I then set to slicing Hemlock while he sat back and watched. Once I finished the hemlock I put it in the cauldron as directed then stared expectantly at Malfoy.
"Well?" I asked tapping my foot.
"Yes?" even that one word sounded arrogant and drawled.
"I just cut up five hemlock roots. You can grind the obsidian." I said in a tone I might've used on a five year old.
"Or you could and save me the trouble." It wasn't a suggestion but and order, not that I planned on taking crap like that. No matter how cute he was.
"Or," I said sweetly. "You can do it your own damn self."
His gray eyes locked with mine. "You think you can talk to me like that?" His voice sounded angry but his eyes…they just looked tired. As if he didn't want to fight this fight, but instinct and habit drove him.
"I just did. Now are you going to grind the stupid rock or not?"
With a hard glare he reached out to snatch the mortar and pestle from my hands. I gave them up with out a struggle and went to hand him the rock. We both grabbed for it at the same time causing our fingertips to touch for not even two seconds, but when they did it felt like being shocked by a live wire.
"What was that?" Malfoy demanded.
"Damned if I know." I said breathing heavily. I looked his hand and gasped, "Your hand is glowing."
"So's yours." He responded. "What did you do?"
"Nothing I told you!" I almost yelled, but I really didn't want to attract Snape. I looked at our hands. They were both glowing pale yellow that seemed to be fading quickly. I touched it with my other hand and nothing happened. "It felt like falling into the tub with a hair dryer."
"Mr. Malfoy, is Miss. Black hindering your attempts at making this potion?" Some how the grease ball had snuck up behind us.
Both of us quickly moved our glowing hands behind our backs. I watched Draco from the corner of my eye worried at what he'd say. He'd say yes, I knew it. Detention on the first day, I was not looking forward to it. By now everyone on our side of the room was looking at us waiting for Draco's answer, as Snape had posed his question loudly.
"No sir." Draco said, swiping a lock of his hair behind his ear. "We're just adding the obsidian."
Upon his answer many of his fellow Slytherins raised their eyebrows in question but quickly went back to their business. I was struck completely dumb. From the encounter I'd had with him in the robe shop and our earlier conversation he'd struck me as the snobby bastard type. But then there was the look in his eyes; maybe he wasn't so awful after all.
I grinned with my back to him. Now if I could only sort out this glowing hand situation…
*~*
Dear Dad and Remus,
Well, I survived the first week without pain and injury. Though I am coffee deprived, if you'd like to be the best dad and godfather in the world send me a pack of Foulders Instant!
Seems so far that Transfiguration and Arithmancy are my best subjects, but History of Magic is fun. And dad guess what we're doing? We're researching our family history! Ha! Adrian says I shouldn't gloat 'cause you'll find some way to get us off the project, but you wouldn't do that would you? Puppy eyes.
Also I was wondering what do you two know about glowing hands as a reaction from touching some one. Do y'think it's some weird thing from moms side or maybe a spell. Could you look? Candra (Lee's sis) helped me look in the library but we couldn't find anything relevant.
Adrian and Harry are fine and will be writing, but Adrian's currently serving detention with the Weasley twins and Lee. They blew up the Slytherin toilets. You two would be proud.
Much luv,
Piper
Dear Hayden,
I know you can keep a secret. This has to be secret! Can you look up William Winthrop in your files and see what you find. Willow's assigned us a family history project and he was our uncle back in the 19th century. Willow said that if Giles knew she was letting us do this project he'd kill her (not literally I'm sure, but still…). He up and disappeared one night and we're trying to find out where to. If you do find out where he went Adrian and I don't want to know. We figure finding out ourselves will be half the fun. We'd really just like information on him personally and his whereabouts that last night he was seen. We know he was seen in an alley with some woman. Knowledge on who she was would be lovely hint, hint.
BTW thanks for the batteries and headphones. Lavender Brown snores so I listen to my music while falling asleep.
Luv ya,
Piper
Dear Lee-Lee,
Enclosed is a file about your Uncle William. The information you asked for is in there, including the name of the woman with him in the alley. This might not help you much as I doubt there is information on her at Hogwarts and I would not be permitted to give it to you. Though if you ever do find out about her it's only a jump from there to finding out what happened to your uncle. I know very well, but as you asked have with held the information.
Good Luck,
Hayden Murdock
P.S- You can tell Willow Giles will not kill her for letting you two peruse this project choice. In fact when I told him about it he started laughing. And occurrence one does not see much.
Dear Piper,
In the package are different parchments of spells and occurrences that might cause you hand to glow when coming in contact with a person. The name of the person would have been helpful but I noticed you very deliberately did not mention his name and since you're my daughter pressing you for answers would be useless.
Also within the package are twenty pack of instant coffee. Don't use it for all night study sessions. I have some very amusing memories of Remus on a caffeine high, and from the look he's giving me telling you is obviously out of the question.
Moony and I will be leaving September 6th on a rat hunt in Germany. We'll be back before the holidays but owls may be scarce.
Love,
Padfoot
*~*
"This really isn't fair." I said sighing. "Willow you obviously know something about this Drusilla girl. She's not in any books we've looked through. Hayden gave us her name, but not anything about her. Willow, please who is she?"
Willow just smiled and reclined against the trunk of the tree. "Not allowed. You two can do this yourselves."
"Willow this is down right cruel." Professor Cordelia Chase, an old friend of Willow's, was also sitting under the shade of the tree. "A little piece of information that's all they need."
"Nope. It's right in their faces, they'll get it."
"What's right in our faces?" asked Adrian, totally exasperated.
"It's only October. You have all year." Said Willow. "Don't worry you'll get it."
Adrian and I had been dwelling on Drusilla for weeks now, and we weren't any closer to an answer on what she'd wanted with William. Willow was no help what so ever always giving cryptic answers like 'It's right in front of you' or 'it's inside you'. There was nothing inside of us that I could think of that could help and the answer sure wasn't in front of us either.
My other venture of figuring out why my hand glowed every time Draco and I touched was at a dead end as well. Candra helped me sort through the spells that Remus had sent. We'd thrown our about twenty ridiculous ones but there were still fifteen left that were plausible in everyway, and some of them were down right scary. Like the Soul Mate Principal. Glowing hands and electric shocks could mean that Draco and I were soul mates. I was not ready to believe that at all. I was looking to the more mundane solutions like we'd both rolled in some sort of weed, even though I knew that hadn't happened.
"Maybe she was a banshee and killed him." Adrian said, drawing me from my thoughts.
"Possible," Willow nodded her head. "But there was no body, and banshees aren't clean."
"Right now I'm kinda going for, he didn't really love Cicely and he ran of into the sunset with this Drusilla woman. Love is fickle and the stupidest being in the world is a man with an erection." I stopped seeing astonished looks from the two professors. "What? That's what Constance told me, and really it's true. William was probably thinking with his dick and ran off with this woman with no regard to the pain and suffering he'd cause his family."
"Ugh Piper," Adrian rolled his eyes. "The guy wrote love poetry. He was a pure romantic. I doubt he'd just runaway from Cicely."
"A romantic. Right!" I though I heard Professor Chase say under her breath.
"What?" Asked Adrian.
"Night!" She said quickly. "I said it's almost night. Probably almost time for dinner. We should go in."
*~*
A few nights later I left our dorm at about eleven o'clock, telling Hermione and the Gossip Girls (Lavender and Parvati) that I'd been in the common room. That was of course a total lie. Hermione was the only one who noticed the coffee packet in my hand. I took two books I was using for the history project and headed to the school kitchens to study. There I could get some hot water and a mug along with no distraction. The house elves were trained to be silent and unseen, so they wouldn't talk to me unless I addressed them first.
Not having the luxury of an Invisibility Cloak I had to be extra careful while sneaking through the halls. Twice I had near misses with Mrs. Norris, but I reached the bowl of fruit portrait unscathed. I tickled the pear praying it would be silent, and slipped inside the passage to the kitchens.
The kitchens were usually quiet this time of night, and as I was a regular the elves just nodded at me and sent two to fetch some hot water. I walked over to the two velvet chairs by the fire place, prepared to dump my things on the small coffee table. Problem was, someone's stuff was already there.
"No!" I said, seeing who was in the other chair. "No, no, no! You…why?"
Meanwhile Draco Malfoy reclined in his chair watching me rant. He looked almost amused at the distress I was in. He waited patiently while I finished cursing my luck then spoke. "And you're here because?"
"Because I want to work Malfoy." I spat back. "I wasn't planning on doing it with you."
"Then by all means work," he said darkly. "But don't disturb me."
I could've been an immature bitch and continued the argument, but I sat down in the chair across from him and dropped my books on the table with a resounding thump.
"Your coffee, master and miss." A house elf appeared before us holding a tray with two steaming mugs on it. "Both black with two scoops of sugar."
I took my mug after Malfoy to avoid accidental contact. He took a sip from the mug and relaxed even more into the chair. I cocked an eyebrow while holding back a grin. "So you come to get your caffeine fix." It was more of a statement than a question.
"It seems you do as well." Malfoy said, looking back to the book on his lap.
"It helps," I shrugged. "The late night studying, y'know."
He just nodded. I pulled some parchments out of one of the books I had, and started to go through them. They were all the papers that Dad and Remus had sent, but now they were thoroughly marked up with notes taken by Candra and myself. I sighed heavily, rustling through them. As many times as I seemed to go past it The parchment that discussed the Soul Mate Principle kept appearing back at the top of the pile. Finally I resigned myself to reading it through once more. All this did was send me into an intense brooding mood. I dropped the parchment in disgust and reach to the table to grab my other book. At the same time Malfoy reached for his mug.
"Black!" He yelled at the same time as I yelled, "Malfoy!" There was no shock this time, just the intense yellow glow that surrounded our hands. I looked back to the floor where I'd dropped the Soul Mate parchment. It had disappeared. All of the other parchments were there, but the other was nowhere in sight. I dropped to my hands and knees searching for it, ignoring my hand.
"What are you doing?" asked Malfoy. His breathing sounded heavy. Ha, at least he was worried.
"I had information on this." I raised my head to look at him. "As soon as we touched it vanished, and I need it, 'cause if it was that certain spell then we could die."
*~*
A/n- First of all I'd like to thank all of you who are reviewing! It makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. Second the reason I haven't updated all week is 'cause I've been in Williamsburg with no computer, but I wrote a lot out by hand. It's Friday now so…lets say I type it all up by tomorrow and edit by Monday I can have it up sometime Monday afternoon. Sunday if I'm lucky. Oh some one asked where's Buffy. Well she'll show up. I'm a big Buffy/Spike shipper, and she's got a larger roll in the sequel I'm planning. I'm not sure if the rest of the Scoobies will show up yet but we'll see. Um…Lesee, coming attractions…Drusilla, Peter Pettigrew, Christmas, Buffy, and Voldemort. I'm gonna go upload this, go to the bathroom, and start typing up the next chapter. Toodles.