Beginning of the End
Authors: Starchild and Saavik
Chapter Twenty-Four: Imagination and fiction make up more than 3/4 of our real life. (Simore Weil)
***Disclaimer*** See Chapter Seven.
When you see // ..// it means the person is thinking and not talking.
********************
"Mum! Hermione's here." Ron rushed forward and grabbed his friend into a hug. Hermione laughed and pushed the red head back as she stepped out of the Burrow's living room fireplace.
"Ron, I've only been away for a few months! Ginny, you look..tired. Is everything alright?"
Ginny didn't get to answer as Molly Weasley came into the room and grabbed her guest up into another brutal hug. "Oh, dear I am so glad you came. I was worried I wouldn't see any of Ron's friends this year, and we only have a week before you return to Hogwarts."
"Isn't Harry here? I haven't heard from him in over a month. I have his birthday present, since Hedwig didn't visit I had no way to send it. I didn't think the Dursleys would like to have Harry getting Muggle mail."
Ron stopped smiling. "Harry is at Hogwarts. Dumbledore," at his mothers sharp look Ron added, "Headmaster Dumbledore owled us and said that Harry was helping Sn..Prof. Snape with potions brewing for the new term and would be at Hogwarts and to busy to come this year. He even had mum pick-up an extra set of school supplies for him because he couldn't go to Diagon Alley."
Hermione looked skeptical. "He's helping Prof. Snape, with potions?"
"I know dear. I had my doubts too, but Prof. McGonagall assured me he was fine. Prof. Dumbledore's been away abroad and the other Professors have so much work they brought in some students to help out. I believe she said that Neville Longbottom was already at school as well."
Ginny saw Hermione go from started to disappointed. "It'll be okay, Hermione. I'm sure they didn't call you for a good reason. Neville and Harry both live with relatives and not their parents. I've been writing back and forth with Neville since the end of your fourth year. His grandmother's been under the weather, and you know how Harry's summers are. I'm sure the Headmaster was just using this as an excuse to bring them to the school early."
Ron looked at his sister then back to his friend. "Ginny's right 'Mione. I'm sure they didn't forget about you..owh!" His mother elbowed him and hugged Hermione again.
"That's right dear. You're still top of your class, Harry needs the extra time studying and so does Neville. You are already years ahead of both of them."
Hermione lifted her head. "Your right, and I did make Prefect."
Ron's face now fell. "Prefect, you're a prefect. You do know that now we'll have to HIDE from you!"
Molly laughed and left the three kids alone in her living room. Ginny looked at the two friends as they hauled Hermione's bag up to her room. Ginny sighed. It was almost a week till classes would start. One more week to stay at the Burrow. It just didn't feel like home this year. The twins had started their joke shop up in Hogsmeade. They still lived at home, it was cheaper. But tensions were high. Their mother was extremely displeased that the twins had found start-up capital and worried about where it came from. They refused to tell her, or anyone, where the money had come from. Ginny privately thought that Harry had made a donation, or flat out bought into the operation. It made sense, who else did they know with that much money. And the twins were lousy gamblers.
Then there was the fact that Arthur Weasley was so busy. He had officially left the Ministry when Hogwarts declared itself autonomous last year He now worked directly for Dumbledore coordinating mission reports and organizing meetings. While scatterbrained in his home life, Arthur was extremely efficient at work. Ginny slowly walked outside.
Not only was her father always away now, but her mother was working again. Molly Weasley had put her career on hold to raise her gaggle of children. Now that her youngest was in fifth year she was free to go back to her passion, map making. The twins would have died had they ever found out that the Marauders had enlisted her help back in their school days to make the infamous map. Molly had been apprenticed to a mapmaker in Hogsmeade and the infamous band had bribed her considerably to help them. Molly had found the parchment in Harry's things last summer and had told her daughter and the boy-who-lived the whole story. She even gave Harry the rest of the map, the section that showed the rest of Hogsmeade and a few tunnels under the lake and out into the forest. They were on orders not to use those passages, but Ginny knew that Harry had investigated them as soon as school started. She had hid from him twice in the tunnels. She was grateful that her mother had taught her how to hid from the map, Harry never knew she was there.
Molly's maps where always detailed and accurate. She was normally able to plot unplotable buildings and could find most hidden passages. Dumbledore had her working on mapping out the Malfoy family estates along with the Lestranges' and the Flints'. To do all that Molly had to first SEE the houses and grounds. Ginny was worried her mother would get caught trespassing. She shivered. Lucius Malfoy was not known to be kind to intruders.
Ginny sat down on a garden bench and began to absentmindedly pull up some knot grass growing in the container next to it. She wanted the week to go faster. At Hogwarts she didn't feel useless. Here everyone had a job. Her father and mother were working for the Order of the Phoenix. Charlie had some new job for the Order that he wouldn't talk about but that brought him back to England. Fred and George had their rapidly expanding business, and Ron was working on ways to help Harry face the Dark Lord. Now Hermione was here and she would be helping Ron. That left Ginny all alone again.
She missed Bill. His death the last summer had been especially hard on her. A gust of wind came and blew the youngest Weasley's pile of grass away, she watched the blades twirl in the shafts of sunlight and then turned back towards the house. //Maybe Hermione will be able to figure out what's been happening to the garden gnomes. Mother is at her wits end, not that she liked them, but to have them all disappear at once makes her nervous.//
Xxxxxxxxxxx
It was approaching dinner time when Hedwig swooped into the Burrow and deposited a letter in Fred's lap. "Hey Ron, Harry sent a letter!"
Suddenly the whole house was crammed into the kitchen. Ron grabbed the letter from his brother and tore into the parchment. He started to read out loud.
"Dear Ron and Hermione, If I figured this right Hermione should be at the Burrow by now. I'm sorry I couldn't make it this year. I had, well, one of those," Ron paused. "Mum, I don't think."
Mrs. Weasley cut him off. "He had a vision didn't he. I know about them Ron. We all do." The assembled family sadly shook their heads and Ron picked the letter up where he had left off.
"I had, well, one of those nasty visions. I saw Moldieworts," The twins started to snicker and Ron grinned. Hermione, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley tried to hide their smiles as they shook their heads disapprovingly. "I saw Moldieworts planning the attack on the American school. I tried to get to Dumbledore in time, but I obviously was to late."
The kitchen was suddenly silent. Ron took a deep breath and continued. "I left his office right before word came about the attack. Evidently Dumbledore got to the school right after the American aurors arrived. They found one class and one teacher left alive. Nobody else made it. I heard McGonagall talking to Snape the other day. She said that the survivors were coming to Hogwarts this year and that the teacher would be our new muggle studies professor.
Neville is here at Hogwarts too. He's helping Prof. Sprout in the greenhouses, and guess what, I'm working with SNAPE! Yeah, I'm still alive. He's not really that bad when he doesn't have hundreds of kids irritating the crap out of him." Ron ducked his mothers attempt to slap him for language.
"I'm just being true to the written word mum!" Ron grinned as Molly sat back down and glared at him. He started to read again.
"Neville has been getting on my nerves lately. He won't take my word for it that Snape's a good guy and has been following me around. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden he stopped pestering me about Snape's loyalties and started following SNAPE himself. I give the git a good three more days before he boils Neville alive just to get left alone. You can't tell it during the school term, but Neville is worse than Dobby!"
Ron and Hermione cringed. They had been recent additions to Dobby's Christmas list last year. As friends of THE Harry Potter they had been given special attention by the over zealous house-elf.
"I meet the new professor, sorry, instructor I mentioned earlier. She arrived yesterday and the American students this morning. They are really different. I can't explain to well, you'll just have to meet them to find out.
The school is so different in the summer. It's quite and feels like a graveyard. It's sort of, well, spooky. I've been so busy I haven't had time to write. I'm sorry, I know Hermione was probably worried. I bet Dumbledore owled Mrs. Weasley but didn't think to tell her. I'm almost out of time, I have to go show the new students around. Until the sorting they're all in the guest quarters and they will need to be shown to the Great Hall. Remember how lost we were in our first year? They seem to have it worse. Neville and I have bets going on what house each one will land in. Oh and guess what, one of them is a werewolf, and I quote, 'proud of it'!. His name is Dan. Ron, he SLIDE down the banisters. I mean he ran straight into the entryway saw the stair case ran up it then slide down, right into McGonagall. She looked ready to hex him. Snape actually grabbed her wand arm to stop her. Well, I really have to go. See you guys in about a week, and good luck with the summer garden de-gnoming. Harry"
The room remained silent until George burst out laughing. "Right into McGonagall. Oh I would have paid good galleons to see that!" Fred joined his brother and soon everyone was laughing but Mrs. Weasley.
"I still can't figure out what happened to those gnomes."
"Mum, their gone. You hated them, we hated them, the cat," Charlie pointed to Crookshanks who had sauntered in and was now resting in Hermione's lap, "hated them. Be happy." Molly nodded and then turned to the still laughing twins.
"Boys would you go down into the cellar and get me some canned tomato sauce for supper. It should be back in the old dungeons off the main corridor. I think I put them there when your father moved that collection of wire into the cupboard last week."
The twins nodded and set off on the chore, a few minutes later they came back up the stairs empty handed and set down at the table. "Where's the jar?"
"Ah, what jar mum?"
"The jar I sent you to get George. Are you too alright, you look pale."
Fred's voice was a little shaky and weak, "We're fine mum. Just tired." The two stood up and left the room presumably to take a nap. Molly shook her head.
"Those two will be the death of me. Ginny dear can you get me that jar?"
"Sure mum." Ginny started for the cellar steps when her mum called out for her to stop.
"Never mind, I found a jar up here already. I must have brought it up earlier and forgotten. Maybe its not just the twins I should be worried about. I'm to young for senility."
"Oh, mum you have a good couple of decades before we have to worry about that!"
Ron dodged the dish towel thrown at his head and jogged off to his room with his sister and friend in tow. Charlie chuckled and went to help his mother with dinner. Arthur was going to come home early and they were planning a family meal, the first one of the summer with everyone home. Charlie smiled. He couldn't wait to see the look on his brothers face when he found out about the dragons.
A/N: Simply LL&P if you review. If you don't, I curse you! Mwhahaha! Sorry, evil moment. Saavik
Authors: Starchild and Saavik
Chapter Twenty-Four: Imagination and fiction make up more than 3/4 of our real life. (Simore Weil)
***Disclaimer*** See Chapter Seven.
When you see // ..// it means the person is thinking and not talking.
********************
"Mum! Hermione's here." Ron rushed forward and grabbed his friend into a hug. Hermione laughed and pushed the red head back as she stepped out of the Burrow's living room fireplace.
"Ron, I've only been away for a few months! Ginny, you look..tired. Is everything alright?"
Ginny didn't get to answer as Molly Weasley came into the room and grabbed her guest up into another brutal hug. "Oh, dear I am so glad you came. I was worried I wouldn't see any of Ron's friends this year, and we only have a week before you return to Hogwarts."
"Isn't Harry here? I haven't heard from him in over a month. I have his birthday present, since Hedwig didn't visit I had no way to send it. I didn't think the Dursleys would like to have Harry getting Muggle mail."
Ron stopped smiling. "Harry is at Hogwarts. Dumbledore," at his mothers sharp look Ron added, "Headmaster Dumbledore owled us and said that Harry was helping Sn..Prof. Snape with potions brewing for the new term and would be at Hogwarts and to busy to come this year. He even had mum pick-up an extra set of school supplies for him because he couldn't go to Diagon Alley."
Hermione looked skeptical. "He's helping Prof. Snape, with potions?"
"I know dear. I had my doubts too, but Prof. McGonagall assured me he was fine. Prof. Dumbledore's been away abroad and the other Professors have so much work they brought in some students to help out. I believe she said that Neville Longbottom was already at school as well."
Ginny saw Hermione go from started to disappointed. "It'll be okay, Hermione. I'm sure they didn't call you for a good reason. Neville and Harry both live with relatives and not their parents. I've been writing back and forth with Neville since the end of your fourth year. His grandmother's been under the weather, and you know how Harry's summers are. I'm sure the Headmaster was just using this as an excuse to bring them to the school early."
Ron looked at his sister then back to his friend. "Ginny's right 'Mione. I'm sure they didn't forget about you..owh!" His mother elbowed him and hugged Hermione again.
"That's right dear. You're still top of your class, Harry needs the extra time studying and so does Neville. You are already years ahead of both of them."
Hermione lifted her head. "Your right, and I did make Prefect."
Ron's face now fell. "Prefect, you're a prefect. You do know that now we'll have to HIDE from you!"
Molly laughed and left the three kids alone in her living room. Ginny looked at the two friends as they hauled Hermione's bag up to her room. Ginny sighed. It was almost a week till classes would start. One more week to stay at the Burrow. It just didn't feel like home this year. The twins had started their joke shop up in Hogsmeade. They still lived at home, it was cheaper. But tensions were high. Their mother was extremely displeased that the twins had found start-up capital and worried about where it came from. They refused to tell her, or anyone, where the money had come from. Ginny privately thought that Harry had made a donation, or flat out bought into the operation. It made sense, who else did they know with that much money. And the twins were lousy gamblers.
Then there was the fact that Arthur Weasley was so busy. He had officially left the Ministry when Hogwarts declared itself autonomous last year He now worked directly for Dumbledore coordinating mission reports and organizing meetings. While scatterbrained in his home life, Arthur was extremely efficient at work. Ginny slowly walked outside.
Not only was her father always away now, but her mother was working again. Molly Weasley had put her career on hold to raise her gaggle of children. Now that her youngest was in fifth year she was free to go back to her passion, map making. The twins would have died had they ever found out that the Marauders had enlisted her help back in their school days to make the infamous map. Molly had been apprenticed to a mapmaker in Hogsmeade and the infamous band had bribed her considerably to help them. Molly had found the parchment in Harry's things last summer and had told her daughter and the boy-who-lived the whole story. She even gave Harry the rest of the map, the section that showed the rest of Hogsmeade and a few tunnels under the lake and out into the forest. They were on orders not to use those passages, but Ginny knew that Harry had investigated them as soon as school started. She had hid from him twice in the tunnels. She was grateful that her mother had taught her how to hid from the map, Harry never knew she was there.
Molly's maps where always detailed and accurate. She was normally able to plot unplotable buildings and could find most hidden passages. Dumbledore had her working on mapping out the Malfoy family estates along with the Lestranges' and the Flints'. To do all that Molly had to first SEE the houses and grounds. Ginny was worried her mother would get caught trespassing. She shivered. Lucius Malfoy was not known to be kind to intruders.
Ginny sat down on a garden bench and began to absentmindedly pull up some knot grass growing in the container next to it. She wanted the week to go faster. At Hogwarts she didn't feel useless. Here everyone had a job. Her father and mother were working for the Order of the Phoenix. Charlie had some new job for the Order that he wouldn't talk about but that brought him back to England. Fred and George had their rapidly expanding business, and Ron was working on ways to help Harry face the Dark Lord. Now Hermione was here and she would be helping Ron. That left Ginny all alone again.
She missed Bill. His death the last summer had been especially hard on her. A gust of wind came and blew the youngest Weasley's pile of grass away, she watched the blades twirl in the shafts of sunlight and then turned back towards the house. //Maybe Hermione will be able to figure out what's been happening to the garden gnomes. Mother is at her wits end, not that she liked them, but to have them all disappear at once makes her nervous.//
Xxxxxxxxxxx
It was approaching dinner time when Hedwig swooped into the Burrow and deposited a letter in Fred's lap. "Hey Ron, Harry sent a letter!"
Suddenly the whole house was crammed into the kitchen. Ron grabbed the letter from his brother and tore into the parchment. He started to read out loud.
"Dear Ron and Hermione, If I figured this right Hermione should be at the Burrow by now. I'm sorry I couldn't make it this year. I had, well, one of those," Ron paused. "Mum, I don't think."
Mrs. Weasley cut him off. "He had a vision didn't he. I know about them Ron. We all do." The assembled family sadly shook their heads and Ron picked the letter up where he had left off.
"I had, well, one of those nasty visions. I saw Moldieworts," The twins started to snicker and Ron grinned. Hermione, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley tried to hide their smiles as they shook their heads disapprovingly. "I saw Moldieworts planning the attack on the American school. I tried to get to Dumbledore in time, but I obviously was to late."
The kitchen was suddenly silent. Ron took a deep breath and continued. "I left his office right before word came about the attack. Evidently Dumbledore got to the school right after the American aurors arrived. They found one class and one teacher left alive. Nobody else made it. I heard McGonagall talking to Snape the other day. She said that the survivors were coming to Hogwarts this year and that the teacher would be our new muggle studies professor.
Neville is here at Hogwarts too. He's helping Prof. Sprout in the greenhouses, and guess what, I'm working with SNAPE! Yeah, I'm still alive. He's not really that bad when he doesn't have hundreds of kids irritating the crap out of him." Ron ducked his mothers attempt to slap him for language.
"I'm just being true to the written word mum!" Ron grinned as Molly sat back down and glared at him. He started to read again.
"Neville has been getting on my nerves lately. He won't take my word for it that Snape's a good guy and has been following me around. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden he stopped pestering me about Snape's loyalties and started following SNAPE himself. I give the git a good three more days before he boils Neville alive just to get left alone. You can't tell it during the school term, but Neville is worse than Dobby!"
Ron and Hermione cringed. They had been recent additions to Dobby's Christmas list last year. As friends of THE Harry Potter they had been given special attention by the over zealous house-elf.
"I meet the new professor, sorry, instructor I mentioned earlier. She arrived yesterday and the American students this morning. They are really different. I can't explain to well, you'll just have to meet them to find out.
The school is so different in the summer. It's quite and feels like a graveyard. It's sort of, well, spooky. I've been so busy I haven't had time to write. I'm sorry, I know Hermione was probably worried. I bet Dumbledore owled Mrs. Weasley but didn't think to tell her. I'm almost out of time, I have to go show the new students around. Until the sorting they're all in the guest quarters and they will need to be shown to the Great Hall. Remember how lost we were in our first year? They seem to have it worse. Neville and I have bets going on what house each one will land in. Oh and guess what, one of them is a werewolf, and I quote, 'proud of it'!. His name is Dan. Ron, he SLIDE down the banisters. I mean he ran straight into the entryway saw the stair case ran up it then slide down, right into McGonagall. She looked ready to hex him. Snape actually grabbed her wand arm to stop her. Well, I really have to go. See you guys in about a week, and good luck with the summer garden de-gnoming. Harry"
The room remained silent until George burst out laughing. "Right into McGonagall. Oh I would have paid good galleons to see that!" Fred joined his brother and soon everyone was laughing but Mrs. Weasley.
"I still can't figure out what happened to those gnomes."
"Mum, their gone. You hated them, we hated them, the cat," Charlie pointed to Crookshanks who had sauntered in and was now resting in Hermione's lap, "hated them. Be happy." Molly nodded and then turned to the still laughing twins.
"Boys would you go down into the cellar and get me some canned tomato sauce for supper. It should be back in the old dungeons off the main corridor. I think I put them there when your father moved that collection of wire into the cupboard last week."
The twins nodded and set off on the chore, a few minutes later they came back up the stairs empty handed and set down at the table. "Where's the jar?"
"Ah, what jar mum?"
"The jar I sent you to get George. Are you too alright, you look pale."
Fred's voice was a little shaky and weak, "We're fine mum. Just tired." The two stood up and left the room presumably to take a nap. Molly shook her head.
"Those two will be the death of me. Ginny dear can you get me that jar?"
"Sure mum." Ginny started for the cellar steps when her mum called out for her to stop.
"Never mind, I found a jar up here already. I must have brought it up earlier and forgotten. Maybe its not just the twins I should be worried about. I'm to young for senility."
"Oh, mum you have a good couple of decades before we have to worry about that!"
Ron dodged the dish towel thrown at his head and jogged off to his room with his sister and friend in tow. Charlie chuckled and went to help his mother with dinner. Arthur was going to come home early and they were planning a family meal, the first one of the summer with everyone home. Charlie smiled. He couldn't wait to see the look on his brothers face when he found out about the dragons.
A/N: Simply LL&P if you review. If you don't, I curse you! Mwhahaha! Sorry, evil moment. Saavik