Brace For Impact: Chapter Two: Year Two
AN: the flames for this fic are hilarious...because you guys do realize this is an edit/au of a 166 chapter fem harry fic, right?
Best of luck to anyone trying to read this in one sitting, but only four more chapters to go!
Hope Potter's summer started going downhill the moment she stepped back inside Number Four Privet Drive, and she nearly blew her top completely when Vernon locked her trunk in the cupboard under the stairs and put a padlock on Hedwig's cage.
Hedwig, was not very impressed with this, if it wasn't obvious with the scowl she had turned on the man and attempted to peck his hands through the bars of her cage as he slipped on the padlock.
It was almost July and Hope was bored out of her skull. She had, of course, picked the lock on the cupboard the day after her things had been locked away and removed her schoolbooks, parchment, quill and inkbottle, as well as her books on Blood Magick and the Ancient Arts and a journal into which she had made a number of notes into already concerning the Ancient Arts.
Hope was also annoyed by another matter, and that was that no one had wrote her any bloody letters! Not even one!
Okay, so maybe she had been hoping that George would write her at least one, but she was certain that Ron and Hermione would have sent her something, but no such luck. Hope had never felt so downtrodden in her whole life.
"I mean, I can understand Ron not sending letters," Hope complained to Hedwig –the only one who seemed to listen to her these days–, "but Hermione should've, at least."
Hedwig could offer no reply.
"Whatever," Hope grumbled, creasing the last of her Transfiguration homework and shoving it into her book before slamming the book shut on the parchment and opening her Blood Magick book again. "I don't care anymore," she decided, flipping through the pages with a flurry of fingers to look for the passage she had left off on.
Hope traced the Blood Sigil for 'healing' onto the last bit of empty space on the page of her journal before flipping to the next one as her eyes roved over the old book.
Gemstones are a useful medium for employing Blood Magick in that they are one of the few substances that can take in the blood of the user. The effect that the blood will depend both on the runes carved into it and the type of stone it is. Thus, if the stone known both as a Bloodstone and a Heliotrope is carved with a healing rune, its magick is amplified, as opposed to the rune being carved into a simple stone with the user's blood, as Bloodstone is a gem used for healing.
Hope's eyebrows arched in surprise at this new information, but she was forced to shut the book quickly at the sound of voices beyond the door. Hope lurched to her feet, shoving the books and parchment and quill under her bed as she flicked off the light and clamored back into her bed, throwing the covers over herself and turning away from the door with only seconds to spare.
The door was creaked open as her mother's sister peered inside, her eyes falling on Hope's deeply-breathing form and then she retreated, leaving Hope alone.
Hope's eyes opened as soon as the door shut, though she did not move until the Dursleys had stopped moving around all the lights were shut off, bathing the house in darkness.
It was only then that Hope threw her covers aside, fishing out her torch and flicking the light on as she returned to her research yet again, because if there was one thing that hadn't yet failed her, it was magic.
Hope mutinously scowled out her window and into the night. Well, she wasn't going to wait for them to remember that she was their friend, nope, that was not Hope's style. If they wanted to talk to her, then they could do it themselves, because Hope had better things to do with her time!
Common gems used as a Blood-binding element include: Crystal, Onyx, Moonstone, Opal, and Turquoise. Many gemstones are considered far too fragile to act as a base for Blood Magick. Even the weakest Blood Sigils caused such gemstones to shatter from the magic imbued with the runes…
Hope couldn't remember how long she sat there on her bed with the torch in her mouth, its light shining down on the old parchment as she scrawled notes into her small journal, but before long she had to put the quill and ink aside and pick up her lock picks and stumble over to the window and throw it open before fixing the picks into Hedwig's padlock until it clicked open.
Hedwig was only so happy to leave her cage, even if she wasn't allowed to be gone very long, because being out for a short amount of time was at least better than not being out at all. Hope was sure that if Hedwig had to wait until the end of the summer to go flying, the owl would have been driven mad.
Luckily it never came to that, because of Hope's trusty lock picks.
Hypothetically, Hope could have possibly Flashed the trunk to her room, but she was sure the Dursleys would notice if it was gone, and besides, Hope had never Flashed something that was heavier than her.
And she certainly wasn't going to test it out now.
Hedwig hooted dolefully as she hopped onto Hope's arm.
Hope sighed. "I know, Hedwig, I miss Hogwarts too." And then Hedwig launched herself out of the window to hunt.
One upside to the summer was that she was closer to Sylvar and Nath, unlike during the rest of the year, and thus far, Hope had spent practically every day cloistered inside the Feywild Café, even if there was nothing to do, Sylvar was at least better company than the Dursleys.
"Make sure that chicken doesn't burn, darling," Sylvar hummed and Hope carefully flipped it over in the pan, while Sylvar worked on the sauce, which smelled absolutely heavenly. "That'll be a downer."
Hope couldn't help but laugh. "Are the potatoes done?"
"Already sitting out on table." Sylvar's eyes gleamed brightly and Hope could see just a hint of her pointed ears.
It was hard work getting Hope to enjoy cooking food again when it was something she'd been forced to do for the Dursleys for years, but Sylvar had been up to the challenge.
"All done? All right, now we pour in the sauce…" Hope stepped back slightly. "And let it seep in for a minute or two…now, darling, where's our dear Lord?"
As immensely amusing as it was, Nathaniel's last name was Lord, which brought on so many puns by itself that most of Nath's time spent in the café he was grimacing in chagrin.
Sylvar could do that to you.
"He's at work, saving lives, you know." Hope gave a careless shrug. "I called him earlier."
"Does he know you're going into your last therapy session?" Sylvar quirked an eyebrow, turning off the stove and carting the pot out to the table with Hope at her elbow.
Hope beamed widely. "He says after I'm done he'll take me on a trip to wherever I want." It was the nicest thing anyone had ever promised Hope.
"Oh really?" Sylvar smiled broadly. "And what did you pick?"
"Wales."
Sylvar groaned loudly, spooning potatoes onto Hope's plate. "You've got to broaden your horizons, Hope! Wales isn't that far!"
"I've never been to Wales!" Hope burst out.
"The next thing you'll tell me is that you've never been to Scotland!"
"I go to school in Scotland," Hope retorted dryly and Sylvar raised her cup with a "Touché". "Besides, Wales is close enough that if people claim I've been kidnapped, I can come back in a hurry."
Sylvar gave her a look. "Didn't you spend the night at a friend's a few days ago because the Dursleys were annoying you?"
"Don't they always?" Hope muttered. "But yeah, I did."
Dean had given her his address, and she was surprised to find that it was only a few blocks away from where the Dursleys lived. Last week had been particularly trying, so she'd taken her cane and hobbled over to his house, chucking rocks at his window.
"Hope, what the hell?" he'd hissed, opening the window.
"Can I stay the night here?" she'd asked in a stage-whisper. "I can probably climb the side of your house, actually…"
His mother had been startled to find her son setting up pillows and blankets in the sitting room for a girl with a limp, but Diane Thomas had come from a broken family too, and when she looked at Hope, she'd seen the tired eyes, the tensed muscles, and the uneasiness with people she didn't know.
"Sweetheart, you stay as long as you like," she'd said, cupping Hope's chin and Hope had tried not to burst into tears, but the next thing she knew, she was bawling, and Diane had her arms around Hope, rubbing soothing circles into her shoulders.
Then she'd sat them down on the couch, reheated some food, put on Star Wars and let them stay awake into the early hours of the morning.
When she'd come down the next day, it was to find Hope and Dean fast asleep with their heads resting against each other.
"But I don't wanna overstay my welcome with them," Hope said to Sylvar. "The Thomases are great, but things always seem to go wrong when people report the Dursleys for anything."
It had been upsetting when she was a child without any knowledge about magic, but now it was just plain frustrating; somebody was messing with her life cosmically.
Sylvar hummed in annoyance. "What's in Wales?"
"The place my dad grew up is there," Hope said finally, cutting up pieces of her chicken. She'd gone rifling through one of the many papers that Ragnok had given her on the Potter family vaults and properties. Potter Manor had been the Potters primary place of residence, he'd said, and Hope had always felt a little disconnected from her family, so it seemed as good a place as any to start. "Its about four hours away, but Nath's promised to make a day trip out of it."
"Yeah, he's good like that."
Hope looked up at Sylvar, hearing something off with her voice, but not being so sure what it was.
"Anyways, none of your friends have sent any letters?" Sylvar asked. "Not even that boy you like?"
Hope began to sputter incoherently, flustered and annoyed and Sylvar smiled, reaching across the table to squeeze Hope's fingers. "I'm not trying to push you into a corner, twelve's pretty young to be dating, anyways, I'm just saying that he sounds like he's crushing on you pretty hard and from what you said, it sounds like you like him too."
She couldn't help but huff under her breath. "I thought it was a joke at first," she admitted to Sylvar, "I mean he was practically flirting with me and I'm…I'm a nobody." Not in the wizarding world, but certainly in the Muggle one and it was a hard belief to shake. "But his twin shut that down pretty quick."
Fred had scowled and crossed his arms in annoyance, angry at any slight to his twin, but he'd reigned it in and taken a breath, reminding himself that Hope wasn't asking questions because she thought little of George, but because she was confused and used to cruelty rather than kindness. "George wouldn't do that, not to anyone, and especially not to you," he'd told her flatly. "You're the first person he had a genuine interest in…and he likes it when you're happy. He's not the kind of person to mess with someone like that."
"Just as long as he's not pressuring you into anything," Sylvar nodded approvingly.
Somehow Hope couldn't help but find that completely ludicrous. George Weasley pressuring her into something other than going to sleep at a decent time or telling him what spell she used to prank them? Now that would've been hilarious.
"No, nothing like that," Hope said quickly.
"And do you like him?"
Hope turned pink thinking about how his smile lit up his eyes and how his freckles were like constellations on his cheeks, and how he didn't even think when he offered her a hand when she was struggling on stairs, and how he liked to catch her hand while they walked together and kept it, and how he gaped, flustered, when she kissed his cheek.
"I think I'm starting to," Hope realized, impossibly startled by the notion, then she frowned. "But he's not writing me, same as Ron and Hermione, so I'm not telling him that."
"Cold-shoulder is always a viable tactic," Sylvar smirked.
Doctor Jeanna Samuel was the best therapist Hope had ever seen, and there had been a few, but Jeanna didn't sit in a corner jotting notes down about her, nodding only when appropriate, she sat beside Hope, not forcing her to talk and perfectly content in the silence.
"The new school's okay, I guess," Hope admitted, streaking paint across the canvas, "I just made some friends that don't send letters…and we had a professor die during term, so that was wild."
Jeanna seemed briefly thrown off by the fact that one of Hope's professors had died, but she decided not to comment on it, focusing on the thing that was bothering her the most.
"They're not sending you any letters?" she prompted and Hope shook her head with a frown. "Well, there can be a lot of reasons for no contact…maybe the letters got lost in the mail—"
Unlikely, Hope thought, thinking of the owls.
"—or maybe they've been grounded and can't send anything right now."
More likely, Hope thought, for Ron but not for Hermione. Hope glanced to Jeanna out of the corner of her eye and she gave her a smile. "Let's not worry until there's a reason to worry, all right?"
"All right," Hope said with a sigh.
"How has your leg been doing?" Jeanna probed.
Hope shifted it under the table. "Better than it was last summer…I don't think I'm limping as much as I did before, but I've got good days and bad days."
"Healing is a process, but I'm glad you're seeing more improvement," Jeanna smiled kindly. "Are you having any thoughts like you had in the hospital?"
She meant the reason that Hope was in therapy in the first place. No one could say that she didn't need it, of course, given her home situation, but she still remembered what she'd said to Nath when she'd been in the hospital.
"I want to die."
"No," Hope said finally. In truth, she hadn't, but there had been a few moments when she'd wavered, like being in that hospital last year. Hope was certain she'd very nearly had a relapse back to those thoughts, which was why she'd opted to leave a few days ahead of schedule. "Nothing like that."
"Good," Jeanna smiled.
"Hey there, dearest, you look like you're ready for an adventure."
Hope slid her sunglasses down -a pair that she'd stolen from the man himself- to look through the window of Nath's car. "You know you only like this car because a book character who likes sunglasses as much as you has the same car."
"Don't insult perfection, dearest," Nath patted his dashboard as if to soothe away Hope's words. "You wouldn't know a classy car if it was before your eyes."
Hope rolled her eyes, pulling herself into the 1926 Bentley with so much exasperation, it was a miracle she didn't explode. "You're a dork."
And she just knew he was winking behind those glasses.
"Settle in for a ride, dearest," was all Nath said. "Wales is a bit of a drive. There's sandwiches in the back."
"You're my favorite person," Hope promised, leaning back to grab one of the sandwiches.
"Yes, ranking very high given the number of disappointing adult figures in your life," Nath muttered to himself, making her laugh as they sped off into traffic.
Hope had fallen asleep at some point and by the time she awoke again, they were nearly there, driving leisurely through a winding road, past thickets of trees and the edge of the sea. She couldn't help but gaze out of the window in awe.
The only place like it she'd ever gone was Hogwarts, with its forest of trees, the deep lakes, the mountains peaking high beyond sight. It had always made it difficult to focus on schoolwork when all she wanted to do was leave, maybe prowl around the Forbidden Forest (though initially frightening, Hope still found it incredibly intriguing), or swim through the Black Lake. Hope was not someone suited for stone walls and rules.
"We're here…you sure there's a house here?" Nath arched an eyebrow over his sunglasses, looking out as the car came to a stop.
But Hope was out of the door, looking around with interest. She couldn't see Potter Manor, not yet, but she knew it was there; she could just feel it.
"Are you coming?" she asked him, half-hoping he'd say no.
"No," he said, surprising her all the same, "this is for you…go explore, I'll still be here when you're done."
Hope beamed impossibly bright and took off, through the thicket of trees, her fingers trailing over bark and branch.
She didn't know if it was magic in the air…but it was something, and she could feel it.
Her feet paused and she closed her eyes, breathing in and just being. She could hear the wind whistling through the trees, the sound of water running over rocks…and was there anything more magical?
Hope smiled, opening her eyes once more and continuing on.
It seemed like she'd been walking an age before she found a wrought iron gate, tangled with so many vines it might as well've been part of the wilderness.
She brushed her fingers against it the iron, making it glow faintly at her touch and crack open.
"Wicked," Hope murmured, sliding between the gates to look at the manor beyond. The sunlight shone through the windows and mist clung to the ivy and moss winding delicately around the manor, giving it more character than Hope would have thought possible. It was the kind of house you'd hear strange rumors about, Hope thought.
She pulled a key out of her pocket, striding forward to slide it into place. Ragnok had said it was the right key and he didn't strike her as a liar. She twisted it and it clicked open and Hope pushed her way slowly into Potter Manor.
It was bathed in total blackness, despite the sunlight outside, and while Hope could see fairly well in darkness, even she was blind in total darkness. But luckily, Hope had brought a torch with her.
She clicked it on and stepped into the place where her father grew up.
It was…eerie, there wasn't another word for it. Hope took the stairs carefully until she reached the first landing, full of so many doors down a long corridor. The light from the torch shone down over a polished plaque on one room's door with the name James inscribed into it.
Her father's room. Hope lifted a hand to trace over the letters.
There was a small sign tacked onto the door above the name.
Absolutely no one allowed inside! It declared cheerfully. Except Padfoot! Keep out! Pranking Genius within!
Hope wasn't sure how long she stood there looking at her father's handwriting, so very different from her own, but she steeled her nerves and pushed the door open, aiming her torch.
It was large and spacious, very much the room an heir to an ancient family would possess. Everything was neatly in its place. The closet doors were wide open and missing half of his clothes, like the last time he'd been there he'd been in a rush.
There was a Gryffindor flag mounted on the wall and pictures, so many pictures.
Most of them involved him with an arm thrown over the shoulders of two boys, with another on one side, too far for him to reach. There was one in which he appeared to be swooning dramatically in the arms of one of his friends, and the unenthused expression they had made it perfect.
Then there was one where the four were wearing their graduation robes, probably one of the last images he stuck on the wall, since her parents had gotten married almost immediately after graduating. One boy was laughing and a second's shoulders were shaking while the third kept falling in and out of the picture's edge and her father was bracing his hands on his knees, laughing too hard to remain standing.
But there was one last picture that Hope pried gently off the wall, of her father and her mother, arm in arm, looking so unbelievably happy. She had pictures of them, of course, but it hit her every time.
Hope was nearly twelve. They'd died when they were twenty-one. In nine years, she'd reach their age, in ten, she'd be older than they ever had been in life.
And somewhere deep, deep inside, she ached.
"Straighten your arm, you'll never shoot straight with an arm like that."
Hope frowned at Nath where he was perched on his car, relaxing the drawstring of the bow he'd brought with him. It was the first thing he'd done when she'd gotten out of the hospital, and he'd always said it was probably not the smartest idea at the time, giving an angry, depressed kid a weapon, but Hope supposed there was nothing quite like venting frustration via shooting an arrow into a target.
She wasn't that good, but it didn't really matter.
"I know how to shoot an arrow," she snapped.
"Yeah?" Nath bared his teeth. "Prove it."
Hope huffed in exasperation, but tightened the drawstring and released. "Do you take this bow with you everywhere you go?"
Nath rifled through his jacket pocket for his cigarette and lighter and Hope had given up asking why the smoke was always a rich red. "It stays in the car. Adel was an archer."
Hope paused, looking down at the bow, a simple long bow, nearly as tall as she was, carved with care. Adel was the name of Nath's ex-girlfriend, one who had died in a tragic accident. She gathered that he'd never quite recovered from it. "She was really good?"
"The best," Nath smiled sadly, "but sometimes being the best isn't good enough."
Hope frowned.
"Now, did you find what you were looking for in your father's place?" He took a long drag from the cigarette.
Hope threaded another arrow into the drawstring. "You know how you can tell when you don't fit? Like being uncomfortable under your skin?"
"Yeah," Nath supposed with a shrug.
Hope frowned. "My dad's from this…I don't know, noble and powerful family, and a lot of his clothes -what was left, anyways-, they're really high end and he's got this signet ring and I…" Hope looked down at herself, at a bit of a loss. "I'm just Hope."
"There's nothing wrong with that," Nath assured her. "You don't have to be like your father."
"But I'm not like him at all!" Hope insisted, aggrieved, releasing the arrow to dig in her pocket and show him the frozen image of her parents. "Look! I look nothing like him! No one ever tells me I'm just like him!"
Just Lily, always Lily.
Nath took the picture, considering the olive-skinned man with dark tousled hair and hazel eyes behind glasses. "I don't think that's right," he said kindly. "I think you have his smile."
"What?" Hope took it back quickly. "I do?"
Nath patted the top of her head. "Legacy is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. I think your parents would've wanted you to be your own person, the wild child you've always been. Don't try to force yourself to fit into a box that's not even your shape."
And Hope's smile was as blinding as James Potter's.
Hope was used to ignoring her relatives –that's all they seemed to do to each other; Hope ignored them and they ignored Hope–, or at least, to a certain point. Petunia still demanded chores of her daily, and Hope couldn't very well skip out of those, or it would be her head.
But once those were done, Hope was free to do whatever she wanted, well, within reason, Hope supposed. The Dursleys liked it best when she was out of the house and thus out of their hair, as Hope had a bit of an attitude towards them that most people didn't appreciate.
Hope couldn't understand why, but if they had thought she was going to tone down the sass and blatant sarcasm, then they were very much mistaken.
But who didn't like sass and sarcasm?
So, once she was free, she, in spur of sudden boredom, grabbed a cab to the center of London, making for the Leaky Cauldron. She'd been to Diagon Alley a few times that summer but it wasn't like she had much to do, especially since Nath was working and the Feywild Café was closed for the day.
Hope expelled a breath, ruffling her now dark blue tousled curls. It helped a great deal having the ability to change her appearance when she wanted to be incognito.
She pulled open the door and strode inside, easily overlooked by her height and age, passing through the crowd of patrons to reach the rear of the pub, where a door opened to a blank brick wall. The same wall Hagrid had taken Hope through last year when he'd taken her to Diagon Alley for the first time. It seemed so long ago now as Hope limped forward, one hand secure on her cane as she withdrew her wand to tap it against the stone.
When the bricks parted, she was unsurprised to see the street packed with shoppers, but that made it easy to blend in with the crowd.
Getting into Gringotts was more troublesome than she had remembered, though this might've had something to do with her being with Hagrid –who people had often careened out of the way of– so Hope waited patiently in line for the number of witches and wizards to thin out until she could make her way to the podium.
The goblin that looked down at her could have been scowling, but Hope wasn't quite sure, as it was quite difficult to tell with faces like that. Hope grinned up at him, holding up a letter embossed with the Gringotts seal.
"Hello," Hope said in a tone that was very nearly cheerful, "I have a meeting with Ragnok in a few minutes."
Goblins held no titles, therefore it would have been insulting to call them 'Mr.' or 'Lord' or anything similar –or, at least, that was the way they viewed it, as it had been explained to Hope on her first day to Diagon Alley–, and goblins much preferred their given names, as long as they were not spoken with a condescending tongue.
The goblin took the letter from her, unfolding it and reading its contents before glancing her over one last time.
"Wait here," he said gruffly as he hopped down from his podium to move at a leisure pace to find the Head of Gringotts. Hope smirked at the sound of several groans from behind her where the lines continued, well, it couldn't be said that goblins didn't like drawing out the wait-time.
So, Hope waited, smoothing her thumb over her cane where she gripped it until the goblin reappeared once more, motioning for her to follow, which she did so, limping slightly towards the double doors that held within the spacious office of Ragnok.
Unlike his brethren, Ragnok bore the title of 'Master' that befit his position, and he was the only one allowed such a title.
"Miss Potter," he said simply upon her entrance into the office. "How may I be of service?"
"Master Ragnok," Hope said in reply, inclining her head slightly, an action that earned her a glimmer of respect in his eyes. "I have only a few requests of you, actually, and I hope you won't find them too bothersome."
"That would depend on the requests," Ragnok replied, gesturing Hope forward and she took the seat gratefully.
Not half an hour later Hope left Gringotts with her money bag refilled and a package miniaturized in her pocket containing a few new books from her family vaults and several very valuable gems that had been taken from the Slytherin Family Vault. This vault had lain undisturbed for centuries due to family becoming extinct upon the male line, until Hope had claimed it today.
She didn't know if Voldemort had known about it before, but it didn't matter anymore because the vault and its contents now belonged solely to Hope and to her descendants.
It was the gems in particular that she cared more about, since she really wanted to try her hand at Blood Runes, but she still had to wait until she got home to even try that, so Hope wandered off in the direction of Flourish and Blotts.
There were a few people inside, but not that many, so Hope limped off in towards one of the older sections of the shop, tracing lightly over book spines as she mouthed the titles to herself.
"Looking for something in particular?" a voice asked, startling Hope terribly as she whipped around to look upon who had spoken.
Daphne Greengrass gave her a pearly smile. "Sorry," she apologized in a manner that was a bit unrepentant, reminding Hope of just the last year when it had been she who had startled Daphne.
"Oh, forget it," Hope said, blinking a few times before she stared at the Slytherin. "How'd you know it was me?"
Daphne arched a pale eyebrow towards Hope. "Oh, please, as if it's really that hard," the girl scoffed, "you are the only one our age that walks around with the aid of a cane, you know."
Patches of pink appeared on Hope's cheekbones at her words. "Oh, right," she said, chuckling softly under her breath. "Of course, I am."
"Are you looking for some books on the Ancient Arts?" Daphne asked her, smirking a little.
"I'd have more luck in the library I haul around in my trunk," Hope sighed mournfully. "But I guess that's to be expected."
Daphne hummed in agreement. "Since Ancient and Dark seem to get lumped together."
Hope sighed. "I guess you've got to have something to blame when it can't be a witch or wizard."
Daphne sniggered in a way that was distinctly unlady-like. "No truer words have been spoken…do your little lion friends know about your fascination?"
"I think a few of them can guess," Hope admitted, turning back to the shelf, "either that or they don't really know how frowned upon they are."
"Very few do," Daphne had to agree with her there as Hope withdrew an old text from the shelf. Hope frowned at the cover, blowing the dust from it so she could read it before opening it and flicking through the pages. It held some old remedies and enchantments that dealt with herbs as the basis of magic, for healing and warding were just two examples of its uses.
Hm…that sounded slightly interesting, not as interesting as Blood Magick, obviously, but interesting enough.
"Do they know that you're the last living descendant of Salazar Slytherin?"
Hope was so startled that she dropped the book, her heart rate skyrocketing at Daphne's words as her eyes flashed up to meet the blonde's.
"Relax," Daphne said with a careless wave of her hand as Hope glanced around to see if anyone had heard, but, luckily, they were so far into the shop that there was no one else there. "Your secret is safe with me."
Hope knelt to grab the book from the ground before rising to eye the Greengrass heir with suspicion.
"I'm from an old family," Daphne told her, "it's not hard to find the family tree of the Slytherin family…though, it is very extensive."
"Should I take that as a compliment?" Hope asked wryly.
Daphne shrugged. "Just a fact…but it does explain that ring of yours."
Hope's hand tightened into a fist, the snake ring cutting into her hand as she did so.
Daphne grinned in an amused manner. "See you at school." And then she turned on her heel and left Hope to her own thoughts.
The day Hope turned twelve wasn't a momentous occasion in the slightest, in fact, not one soul in Number Four Privet Drive celebrated it, including Hope. Not celebrating Hope's birthday was nothing new; it hadn't been celebrated in eleven years, so why start now?
None of her friends owled, which Hope was still angry about. So, in the stead of having someone to tell her when something was a bad idea, she tried to carve a Blood Rune into one of her gems only to have it backfire spectacularly in her face, making Hope wonder of the merits of carving them into her skin instead. According to her book that was a more powerful medium anyways, but she wasn't sure she was ready to attempt that yet.
Hope shut her room's door behind her and slouched down the stairs and into the kitchen, exhaling a tired breath. She almost headed right back up the stairs to her room when she heard voices, but then she paused to listen to exactly what Vernon was saying.
"Now, as we all know, today is a very important day," he began and Hope made a face behind his back. "This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career," he continued, oblivious of Hope's distaste towards both him and his business dinner. "I think we should run through the schedule one more time." Hope couldn't help but roll her eyes; they had a dinner schedule! Who does that? Who prepares what they're going to talk at during a dinner before the actual dinner? And they thought Hope was the one that was strange in the family; they should have looked in the mirror. "We should all be in position by eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be—?"
"In the lounge," Petunia answered primly, as if that somehow made her more attractive, "waiting to welcome them graciously into our home." She waved her hands around in what she thought was a gracious manner, but Hope thought it was more reminiscent of a sideways windmill.
Hope looked around their 'home' in disgust. It was too clean, and she hated things that were immaculate and lacking sentiment. Nothing Petunia and her family owned meant anything to the three of them. The Dursleys were a family very ruled by public opinion, something Hope cared little for. That was one of the reasons Hope didn't get on well at all with her family; they were complete opposites. And opposites repelled each other.
They were too different.
Hope wished for the thousandth time that month that she couldn't have just stayed with Hermione at her place, but no... so here she was, in her personal hell. But then Hope remembered that Hermione wasn't talking to her and that only served to sour her attitude further. Maybe she should run over to Dean's for the day…
"Good, good. And Dudley?" Vernon said, snapping his fingers towards his son.
"I'll be waiting to open the door," Dudley said, his voice –like always– annoying Hope greatly as he used a simpering tone. "May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?"
"They'll love him!" Petunia cried, her voice lovingly sappy; Hope tried not to gag at Dudley and his mother's reaction to him.
"I certainly wouldn't," Hope muttered under her breath, ignoring the glare the three of them shot her.
"And you?" Vernon demanded coldly, as he often did when speaking to his niece.
Instead, Hope crossed her arms looking distinctly irritated. She wasn't going to stand there and repeat the words he'd told her several days previously, and those words were: "I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there."
Pretending she didn't exist was more like it, if you asked Hope. As if she didn't do that enough already.
"We all know what we're supposed to do," she said in disdain. "What's the point of going over all this?"
"Hope Lillian Potter! You listen to your uncle!" Petunia barked, and Hope could feel the defiance spilling over inside of her at the use of 'Lillian' instead of 'Lily' as her middle name, as if her aunt couldn't bear to even say her dead sister's name. Hope didn't even try to stop the sneer from forming on her lips.
"It's Hope Lily Potter, Petunia," she said frigidly, "twelve years and you still haven't figured that out?" And then she stormed violently towards the stairs, stomping up them with more force than was strictly necessary.
"There goes your dinner privileges!" Vernon roared after her.
"Good!" she yelled back, slamming one of her feet down aggressively for emphasis. "They weren't much to begin with!"
Hope was used to not eating to the point of worrying Ron and Hermione last year because she had a tendency to faint without eating for awhile, but Hope was so annoyed -about her birthday, about her name, about her friends- that she didn't even care.
She slammed the door to her bedroom shut so hard that it rattled the hinges and then she sat down hard on the bed, dropping her cane to the floor and exhaling as she looked around the room.
Her room was so bare. All the items that she cared about were locked away in her trunk which was locked in the cupboard under the stairs, her former living space, and Hope wasn't about to try to Flash the trunk up to her bedroom and back down to the cupboard every night, that would just be exhausting, besides, Flashing too much wouldn't be very good for her health.
She twisted the rings around on her fingers as she flopped onto her back, staring bleakly up at the ceiling and wishing that the summer holiday would be over sooner rather than later.
Hope still held onto that long-lost dream that one day a distant relation would come and rescue her from them this hellhole that only three could call home, just as long as they weren't Salazar Slytherin himself. She rubbed her head tiredly. She hadn't even dared to tell her friends when she'd found out about that, much like how she couldn't tell them about how on-point her ability to predict death was.
Not that it mattered anyways, seeing as none of them were willing to write to her. Hope withdrew her lock picks and fiddled with Hedwig's padlock until the bird door swung free and sighed mournfully as her beloved owl hooted softly, fluttering over to perch on her knee, permitting her mistress to stroke her feathers. Hope could let her out of her cage in her room, if she made sure no one was around to see her, and then she'd let her out for two hours at night when no one was awake, giving her some time to stretch her wings. She knew Hedwig wasn't pleased with the situation, but it could've been worse; she could have been padlocked inside that cage for the whole summer.
"I miss freedom, Hedwig," Hope said sullenly, "I wonder what it tastes like?"
Hedwig gave a sad, low hoot of agreement as Hope stroked her feathers gently and Hedwig nipped lightly at her fingers.
The first few days of summer had been fun, when Hope could stalk Dudley mercilessly, chanting nonsense words that made him grab his buttock and run for his Mummy, but it lost its appeal after Hope had to duck a swipe to the head with a frying pan. Now Hope was unbelievably lonely. Nath and Sylvar just weren't the same as her friends.
She missed Ron and Hermione, and Fred and George, and Lee and Angelina and Alicia, and Katie, and even the Quidditch-obsessed Oliver... she was beginning to get desperate.
But, right now, she was too tired to even think about how miserable she was, having slept terribly the night before, the Blood-Soaked Tree plaguing her nightmares once more.
Hope scrubbed vigorously at her eyes before returning Hedwig to clutch her talons to the top of her cage as Hope fell back onto her bed, falling into a light doze, only to be awakened rather suddenly when the doorbell rang and Vernon's face appeared, cracking open her door slightly to glower at her, and thus missing the owl snoozing on top of her cage. "One word, girl, and I swear—" he hissed through the crack.
"Yeah, yeah," Hope waved a hand carelessly, rolling her eyes for good measure. "Whatever."
His face purpled, but he didn't seem capable of coming up with words, so he simply pulled the door shut as Hope sat up, groaning softly, rubbing at her eyes, as she searched under her bed for the owl treats that she had swiped a few nights ago. Hope muttered a soft swear under her breath as she finally pulled it free, and uttered a muffled complaint.
"Sorry, Hedwig," she told the owl, "it looks like we're almost out of owl treats…you'll only get half of treat if you want them to last."
Hedwig opened her eyes to give Hope a rather distinctly annoyed expression.
"Don't give me that look," Hope said shortly, breaking a treat in half and giving it to her owl. "It's not my fault that we're nearly out."
Hedwig gave her another look that clearly said that it was indeed Hope's fault that they were nearly out of her treats, it wasn't like Hedwig could by the treats, after all.
And then Hope's eyes flashed completely open, because she was not alone with Hedwig in her room, there was someone else there.
Even though she couldn't use it, Hope's holly and phoenix feather wand was in her hand in seconds. She didn't know why, but she always found its warm wood comforting, almost feeling as though it beat, like a heart, against her palm.
"Who are you?" she asked suspiciously, her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. She didn't even know what exactly it was.
It wasn't even close to being human and probably only went up to her knee. Its bat-like ears flapped in the air and it had green eyes seemed almost too big for its head, with limbs painfully clear to see from its sharp elbows to its knobby knees. She would have thought it was wearing a miniature toga, if she hadn't thought it looked more like a ruined pillowcase.
"Hope Potter!" the creature squeaked in a high-pitched voice that made Hope wince and glance nervously towards the door, in case Vernon came up to complain of the noise, which was very likely, given Hope's track record. "So long had Dobby wanted to meet you, miss…Such an honor it is!"
"Right, sure," Hope said exhaustively, lowering her wand after a moment of deliberating. "So, your name is Dobby, then?" It sounded a little like a name, she supposed, in a weird way.
The thing –creature, whatever it was– nodded so fast that its ears flapped against its head from the movement. "Dobby the House-elf," it told her.
"Dobby the House-elf," she repeated faintly, blinking her eyes a few times, "right, of course. So, why are you exactly in my room?"
"Dobby has come to tell you, miss…it is difficult, miss…" Dobby seemed a bit nervous about whatever he had come to tell her –Hope felt she should have been the one more nervous, since he was the one in her room. "Dobby wonders where to begin…"
Suddenly Dobby grabbed her cane –which had been propped against the wall by the window– and began whacking himself in the head with its grip. Hope went past stunned to completely startled, but only for about two seconds, and then Hope had to wrestle the cane from his grasp, hissing, "What the ruddy hell do you think you're doing?!"
"Dobby should not speak or move against his family," the house-elf whimpered.
"There are more of you?" Hope asked dumbstruck.
"Oh, there are many house-elves," Dobby agreed, "but Dobby was referring to the wizard family Dobby serves-"
"You're a servant?" Hope asked in a horrified voice. She had never heard of servants in the Wizarding world, and she certainly had never expected them to look like this.
Dobby smiled weakly. "Yes, miss."
"Do they make you beat yourself up like that?" Hope demanded, disgusted, gesturing towards the bruises forming on his flesh.
"Sometimes they remind Dobby to do extra punishments," Dobby said sadly, his ears drooping slightly.
"That's barbaric!" Hope said, aghast. "Why don't you just leave?"
"A house-elf must be set free, miss," he told her simply. "And the family will never set Dobby free…Dobby will serve the family until he dies, miss."
"That's awful," Hope said in genuine revulsion. She had never heard of something so…sixteenth century. The idea of being with the same family, especially if it wasn't a good family, made Hope glad she was at least human.
"Tis the life of a house-elf," Dobby said gloomily, before brightening unexpectedly, "Dobby has long heard of Hope Potter's triumph over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!"
"I was one year old!" Hope complained, keeping her voice low enough that it wouldn't be heard downstairs.
"Dobby has also heard," the house-elf continued, "that Hope Potter met the Dark Lord for a second time just weeks ago, and that Hope Potter escaped yet again!"
"I suppose that counts as an escape," Hope grumbled under her breath, smoothing a finger over her eyebrow as she remembered the events of the end of the previous year. They were rather vivid.
She should have just kept her mouth shut, because Dobby's face shone with joy.
"Hope Potter is valiant and bold! She has braved many dangers already. But Dobby has come to protect Hope Potter, to warn her, even if he does have to shut his ears in the oven door later…Hope Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!"
One could have heard a pin drop with how quiet it had become as Hope stared at the house-elf in blatant surprise at the words he had just said.
"Excuse me?" she balked. "Not go back to Hogwarts? Are you mad? Hogwarts is my home! I don't belong anywhere but in the magical world!"
"No, no, no," Dobby was shaking his head frantically, trying to reason with her, "If Hope Potter goes back to Hogwarts, she will be in mortal danger!"
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, her eyes sparking an impossible blue.
"There is a plot, Hope Potter," Dobby whispered, looking about as if expecting to see ears listening in on their conversation. "A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year." He had begun to tremble something fierce. "Dobby has known it for months now, miss. Hope Potter must not put herself in danger, she is too important!"
"I'm not, trust me," Hope said dryly, aggravation seeping into her voice, "but what plot? Wait, don't answer that, you'll probably just give yourself a concussion."
"Does this have anything to do with Vol- He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" she prompted instead.
The house-elf slowly shook his head and Hope sighed. "I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It doesn't matter either way, Dobby, because I'm going back, whether there's danger or not, I've got friends out there-"
"Friends who don't even write to Hope Potter?" Dobby asked, instantly making Hope simultaneously angry and suspicious.
"How," she said lowly, cold and dangerous, "did you know that they haven't been writing to me?" The shadows in the room seemed to almost flicker with her anger.
"Dobby did it for the best—" the house-elf stuttered out.
"Have you been stopping my letters?!" she growled, her eyes shifting to an enraged black that now matched the color of her hair.
He was holding a thick pile of envelopes, and that made her even angrier. She could see George's untidy scrawl, Hermione's carefully etched words, and Ron's nearly illegible script. And in the face of her anger, Dobby knew that he was treading on thin ice.
"Hope Potter will have them, miss, if she promises that she will not return to Hogwarts!"
"Give me those letters!" she demanded, lunging for him, but the elf was fast, quicker than she would have thought, and had darted through the door and down the stairs in the time it took her to turn on her heel and head in the same direction.
Her heart hammered. Oh no…
It was a mountainous pudding complete with sugared violets and cream, and it was floating in the air.
"Stop!" she hissed. "They'll murder me!"
"Hope Potter must say—"
"Dobby," Hope said in a voice that was deadly calm, "please…"
"Say—"
"I can't!"
"Then Dobby is sorry."
And the pudding fell with a crash, completely caking Hope in cream.
Hope had never felt so miserable that she was going to be punished for something that wasn't her fault and she hadn't even gotten her letters back in exchange for the injustice.
Hope's face still ached from the smack Vernon had given her and she didn't have any ice to soften the swelling and Hope was completely and utterly miserable.
After that incident with the pudding, then the owl that arrived from the ministry claiming that a Hover Charm was used, despite it not actually being her, Hope was in more trouble than ever. She was then locked in her room almost around the clock with only two opportunities to use the bathroom, absolutely no food, and, to make matters worse, bars had been fitted onto her window so Hedwig could no longer take her nightly flights, leaving her disgruntled.
She couldn't even bring herself to call Nath to beg him to call someone and tell them that she was being starved and hit, but every time he'd tried, the report seemed to disappear into nothing, so why even bother. She was stuck and she didn't know how to get out to call for help.
Even if she flashed out, she'd be leaving all her things behind, besides, there was nowhere to go.
A light shone across her bedroom floor.
She frowned, blinking harshly as she saw a pair of headlights coming over the row of houses to hover beside her bedroom window. She scrambled to the window, throwing it open to clutch at the bars, recognizing the person in the back seat. A blue-eyed, ginger-haired, freckled somebody.
"Ron!"
"Hope!" her best friend grinned and then he gaped. "What's happened to you?"
Hope burst into tears, silent hiccupping tears, scrubbing at her face on the side that remained unbruised. "What're you doing here?" she managed to force out, amidst hiccups, barely noticing Fred and George in the front of what was evidently a floating car.
"Figured you were in trouble or something when you didn't answer any of our letters," Ron said gesturing between him and the twins, thrown off by a distraught version of his friend. "Don't worry, we've come to get you out." He held out a thick rope to her. "Wrap that tight, would you?"
Hope gave a quiet moan. "I'm dead if—"
"Hope," Fred said from behind the wheel, serious and gentle, which was rather unlike him, "don't worry."
George hadn't said a single word, too appalled by the bruising, harsh in the darkness.
Hope's fingers shook, even as she tied the rope tight, stepping back as he revved the car in the opposite direction, ripping the bars clean off, and dropping them right into Petunia's bed of flowers below.
"Get in," Ron said, holding out a hand when the car came close to her window again.
"But, all my things," Hope said, glancing nervously back as she handed Hedwig through the window.
"Where are they?"
"Locked in the cupboard under the stairs—"
"No problem," George assured her from the passenger seat. "We'll handle it."
Hope moved back as the Weasley Twins crawled from their window through hers and George gave her fingers a quick squeeze while Fred pulled out a hairpin and pick the lock. It wasn't as sophisticated as Hope's lock-picking, but it would have to do.
"You taking anything else in this room?" Ron asked tersely and Hope looked down at herself. He turned around politely as she changed back into her clothes, stuffing the mobile in her pocket, and grabbing her lockpicks from the desk. Everything else was in her trunk.
Hope glanced about sullenly. "Just this."
Ron's eyes passed over her. "You look terrible." Her hair was a midnight black and limp, not at all like the full locks that he was used to seeing and the redness around her eyes made her green eyes more obvious. And the bruising around her right eye was quite substantial. "That shiner is pretty big."
Hope's fingers brushed against her bruised skin and she winced. "I've had worse." A few bruises were nothing, it wasn't like when Petunia tripped her when she was seven and she'd broken her leg tumbling down the stairs, or Dudley using her as a punching bag, or even when he'd pushed her in front of that car. She sniffed, rubbing at her nose.
Ron frowned deeply, but he didn't have the chance to say anything about it, because Fred and George carefully maneuvered into the room with her trunk, opening it briefly to stuff her pajamas back in before placing it in the boot of the car.
"Alrighty…" the twins climbed back into their seats, steadying the car as Ron held out his hand to his friend after she'd handed her cane through the window, accidentally knocking Hedwig's cage the ground, earning a loud squawk of indignation.
"THAT RUDDY OWL!"
The locks undid faster than Hope had time to get out of the window, so Ron had to pull her bodily through the window at the second Vernon had grabbed her ankle.
"Let me go!" Hope yelled, kicking him in the face with her shoe.
"Step on it, Fred!" Ron yelled, keeping a firm grip on Hope's waist as her leg was finally pulled free and Vernon tumbled out of the window to land heavily on the ground.
Hope made a rude hand gesture out the window as they sped off into the night, and it was only when Privet Drive was completely out of view that Hope buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
"Hey, its okay," Ron said, patting her shoulder awkwardly, not really knowing what to do.
"I've just been—" Hope cut herself off, holding back another wave of tears. "I'm sorry for being—" A mess, a hassle, a blubbering—
"Hey," George turned around to give her a look. "It's okay. Really. We're not gonna think any less of you for getting upset…did that uncle of yours give you that bruise?"
"Not uncle," Hope and Ron corrected as one, as Hope had never called him uncle in her entire life. The phone in her pocket gave a sharp buzz. "Hang on…Nath?"
The three brothers politely pretended to not be listening as she held the phone to her ear.
"You realize I haven't heard from you in three days," came his dry voice on the other end.
Hope rubbed at her eyes, looking at the clock on the dashboard. "And you realize that its three in the morning right now."
"Late shift," Nath replied, unconcerned, "tell me what's wrong. I can hear it in your voice."
Hope bit her lip, running a hand through her hair. "I've been locked in my room for three days, Nath…I don't think I moved hardly at all that entire time…I've been…everything's such a mess, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, its just very time I tell you when they do something it gets buried and I'm just so miserable, Nath." Her voice broke and in the front seat Fred and George shared a dark look while Ron scowled out the window.
"That man," Nath muttered furiously on the other end. "Abusing someone for having magic should be illegal, I don't know why it isn't."
Hope was so surprised that she dropped her mobile and had to scramble to pick it up again. "Magic?" she squeaked. "You-you knew? The whole time?"
"Well, not the whole time," Nath conceded. "But you are rather transparent—"
"I am not transparent!" Hope fired back sourly.
George's mouth twitched in the front.
"Are you magic or—"
"No, not me," Nath's voice grew pained and Hope heaved a sigh.
"Adel was," she realized.
He cleared his throat on the other end. "What happened?"
Hope swallowed thickly. "Some house-elf was nicking my letters, saying something about keeping me from going back to school, it dropped some pudding on Vernon and Petunia's guests and the Ministry's blaming me for it and Vernon was really pissed and he punched me and then locked me in my room, put bars on my window, but its fine, I'm out—"
"Nothing's fine," Nath replied stoutly, "but I'll handle the Ministry…are you still there?"
"No, the Weasleys broke me out," Hope looked out the window. "Nath, they've got a flying car."
There were a few snorts at that.
"Dearest, switch me to speaker, would you?"
Hope complied.
"Who's flying the car?" Nath's voice echoed loudly and all three boys jumped; muggle technology was still strange to them.
"Fred is," Hope said.
"And where is Fred driving you?"
"Uh, the Burrow, our place in Ottery St. Catchpole," Fred said loudly from the front.
Nath hummed. "I pray you're a good driver."
Hope snorted. "Not much to run into up here, except maybe birds."
There was a long-stilted silence. "All right, you boys look after my girl, or I will be most displeased." It was an ominous sort of threat, but his voice lightened. "Call me, dearest, for anything."
"I will, I promise," Hope said, ending the call and stuffing it back into her pocket.
"So, a house-elf was nicking your mail?" Ron asked finally.
Hope shrugged helplessly. "I spent the whole summer thinking you lot had forgotten about me."
"What?"
"That's ridiculous!"
"Come off it!"
She was startled and pleased by their vehemence. "Well, he said there's something happening at Hogwarts this term, like dealing with the Dursleys is better than dealing with something bad at Hogwarts." Hope was regaining a bit of her spark the longer she was with them.
"Very fishy," Fred said after a pregnant pause.
"Definitely dodgy," George agreed, swiveling in his seat so that he could look her in the eye, pleased to note that the black hair had faded to a light brown. "And he wouldn't even tell you who's supposed to be behind it?"
Hope screwed up her face, wincing slightly, trying to recall all that the house-elf had said. "No, he just said that it wasn't Voldemort—"
Ron gave a small whimper at the name, but Fred and George were largely unfazed.
"Oh, calm down, Ron! It's just a name for Hades' sake!" She turned back to George before Ron could come up with a response. "Do you think he was lying, then?"
"Could be," Fred answered her instead, "I mean, house-elves are pretty powerful by themselves, but they usually can't use their magic without their master's permission. Maybe sending him out to you was someone's idea of joke."
"I could only think of one person arrogant enough," Hope said in annoyance, sharing a glance with Ron as they both said, "Draco Malfoy."
"Wasn't that the kid you were always complaining about?" George asked her, frowning slightly. "The one that kept trying to get you in trouble?"
"The very same," Hope agreed, leaning back in her seat tiredly.
"He isn't Lucius Malfoy's son, is he?" Fred asked, glancing up at the rear-view mirror to look at her.
"Could be, why?"
"Dad talks about him –hates him really– he was a big supporter of You-Know-Who," George told her.
At this, Fred turned around to look at her and Hope was impressed that the car didn't swerve at all, making her wonder how much he'd actually driven it to be that skilled, "And when You-Know-Who disappeared Lucius Malfoy came back saying he'd never meant any of it—"
"If that isn't a load of dung, I don't know what is," Hope drawled out.
Fred grinned. "That's what Dad says, too."
Hope looked out the window, watching Hedwig soaring beside the car, evidently let out by Ron while she'd been on the phone with Nath. "So, is the car your dad's, then?"
"Yup!" Ron responded cheerfully. "He has a bad habit of buying up muggle items, taking them apart and enchanting them, and then putting it back together."
"But wouldn't that damage the muggle stuff?" Hope asked confused. "Isn't that why muggle stuff goes haywire around magic?" (Completely forgetting that she'd been using a mobile in Hogwarts for a year with little issue.)
Ron grinned. "You'll have to take that up with Dad; he'll be thrilled."
"That'll be fun," Hope muttered.
"Anyways," Ron said, squeezing her hand briefly, "I'm glad we came to get you. I thought it might have been Errol's fault—"
"Who's Errol?" Hope asked blankly.
"Our owl," Ron said morosely, "he's positively ancient. It wouldn't be the first time he's collapsed on a delivery."
Hope winced. "That's not good."
"Nope."
"Does your dad know you've got the car?" Hope asked, poking her head out of the window to look down, a smile spreading across her lips as she looked down at the world so far below.
"Er, no, not really," Ron said nervously, "he had to work tonight."
Hope appraised him with a faint grin. "Oh, my bad habits are rubbing off on you, Ronald."
He grinned. "Shut up, you." The grin slipped. "How's your face?"
"Aching," Hope said. "But it'll be fine, it's not like my leg." All three boys shared dubious looks that she pretended not to see.
The sun was beginning to peak over the trees, suddenly dawning on Hope that they'd been driving through the night. Fred dropped the car lower and lower, driving overhead the road, landing with a slight jolt, coming to a stop on the lawn before what must have been Ron's home, the Burrow.
It was as far from Vernon and Petunia's house as one house could get. Disorder and mayhem, just the way Hope liked it. The structure of the house was far from straight, crooked to the point that it just had to be held up by magic, with six chimneys perched on its warped roof.
A far cry from what Potter Manor had looked like, but that was what Hope liked about it immediately; how rough and misshapen it was, everything out of place. She'd never seen a house like that before.
She stumbled a little to get out of the car, still looking around with wonder.
"Okay," said Fred, "here's the plan—"
However, Hope never quite learned what exactly the plan was, because Fred stopped dead in his tracks and Ron had turned a sickly green color. Hope peeked around George in the direction the three Weasley brothers were gazing in horror.
It was Mrs. Weasley, and she looked furious.
Hope was already feeling quite light-headed and Mrs. Weasley was looking a lot like Vernon when he was going to hit her. She held tight to the back of George's shirt, and he reached a hand back, allowing her to squeeze it tightly.
"Ah," Fred said weakly.
"Oh, dear," George choked out.
"So," Mrs. Weasley said, low and dangerous.
"Morning Mum," George said, in what he clearly thought was an innocent tone of voice, and Hope was starting to feel sick to her stomach.
The explosion that followed was one that had Hope jumping terribly and she really needed to sit down—
"Oh, Hope dear—" Mrs. Weasley had stepped around George to see why her sons had been out into the early morning, only to start in surprise when the girl crumpled into a faint.
"What—?" George twisted around quickly when Ron, recognizing the signs, had seen fit to hook her under the arms to keep her from colliding painfully against the gravel.
"She does that sometimes," Ron sighed. "When she forgets to eat for a long time, and she said she was locked up in that room for three days…"
Fred muttered something unsavory under his breath, which his mother whipped out her wand to clear up the blossoming bruise on her face. She made a clucking sound with her tongue. "Well, best get her inside either way, George, would you—"
George lifted Hope was ease, more startled about how light she was, lighter even than Ginny, which was always a bit concerning.
But at least she was away from the muggles, he couldn't help but reason.
Hope, Mrs. Weasley learned, was a very uneasy twelve-year-old witch, and seemed to regard an adult with a general suspicion. When she awoke a few moments later, she'd uncomfortably touched at the side of her face where the bruise had been, not very pleased at it being gone, which Mrs. Weasley couldn't understand because surely it being gone was better than it being present? Mrs. Weasley sent her up for a phenomenally short shower before she was back with the boys, looking tired and pale beside Ron, but smiling all the same, eating little by little.
"Oh, I threw myself at you?" Hope asked incredulously, lifting her gaze from her sausages to stare disbelieving at George. "If I recall correctly –and I do–, it was dark and I tripped…you ate mud, remember?"
Ron roared with laughter, but George just waved his hand carelessly. "Details, Hope, details."
"Right," she drawled out.
"And you want to know what else, Hope?" Fred asked with a bright grin, making his eyes twinkle like sapphires. "He nearly fainted when you kissed his cheek after he caught you in that first match!"
"I did not!" George turned red, looking at his twin in betrayal, like he hadn't almost fallen over when Oliver had clapped him on the shoulder for a job well done.
Hope couldn't help but laugh with Ron while George attempted to get Fred in a headlock, only to be interrupted by a small squeal echoing in the kitchen and a pair of light footsteps abruptly heading up the stairs once more.
"What was that?" Hope asked blankly.
"Ginny," Ron whispered, so his mother wouldn't hear, "my sister. She's been talking about you all summer."
"Oh…" Whatever Hope was planning to say was cut off by the sound of the door opening.
"Morning Weasleys!" called a male voice and she looked up. Mr. Weasley had red hair like his wife and all of his children, but his was sparse, his head balding, and an askew pair of glasses was perched on the bridge of his nose, through which Hope could see eyes the same rich blue that the twins and Ron shared.
"Morning Dad!"
Hope was waiting for him to notice her, which he didn't until he was halfway through his breakfast. "Oh! Hello!"
She smiled slightly. "Hello, Mr. Weasley, I'm Hope."
"Ah!" The man smiled congenially. "Yes, Ron's told us so much about you, so have Fred and George."
Hope eyed them all speculatively. "I hope nothing too terrible…"
Fred and George gave her mock salutes before everyone jumped at the sound of something running headlong into the window.
"Oh, dear…"
Mrs. Weasley rushed over to the windowsill as the owl righted itself and fluttered inside with a mournful hoot.
"I'm going to guess that's Errol?" Hope asked in bemusement, directing her question to Ron.
"Yup." He swallowed some eggs thickly. "And you wonder why we thought it was all his fault you weren't answering our letters."
Hope grunted in agreement as Mrs. Weasley handed them all their Hogwarts letters.
"Even me?" Hope asked in surprise.
"Even you, dear," she smiled kindly, "and it looks like you've got one more, a letter from the Improper Use of Magic Office."
"Again?" Hope complained, taking it all the same, ripping it open to read the contents within with a scowl.
"Are they getting on you again?" Fred asked with a frown.
"No," Hope said, deeply surprised, "they've recanted…something about magic in the area being attributed to me rather than who actually cast the spell…its been removed from my record, apparently." She didn't know what exactly Nath had done, but she very much doubted it was legal.
She shook her head fondly, turning her attention instead to her list of books for the term. Most of them were what you would expect for someone who was going into their second year at Hogwarts, but—
"Do we have seven books for Defense Against the Dark Arts?" she asked Ron incredulously. "What's the point of that?"
"Must be a fan of Lockhart's," Fred said around a mouthful of toast, earning a glare from his mother. "Probably a witch." George choked on his drink.
"But seven?" Hope demanded. "That's just overkill!"
Fred shrugged. "That's Hogwarts for you."
She snorted humorlessly.
And when Hope went to bed later that night, she found a small box tucked into her trunk with her name scrawled across it in Nath's hand, a pair of earrings within, red and shaped like teardrops. that glittered even in the darkness. Hope wondered how he'd even managed to get the present to her in the first place, but she still smiled to herself as she secured them in her ears, not caring if they clashed with her hair.
Trying to talk to Ginny was like pulling teeth, really, and Hope was very close to just grabbing the girl and rattling her senseless. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with her, not at all, well, other than how unbelievably painfully shy she was. The problem was that she couldn't seem to stand being in the same room as Hope for long, which made sleeping in the same room a bit awkward.
It was easy to forget about Ginny when she made herself practically nonexistent during the day and when Hope was usually off doing other things with her brothers.
"I feel kind of bad," she admitted to Mrs. Weasley as she helped her with dinner one night, quartering potatoes. She wasn't really appreciating being forced to help out with dinner because she was the only other girl in the house apart from Ginny, while the boys got to run around, but she wasn't about to say that to Mrs. Weasley. "I mean, we share a room, and it's her room and all I do is go off with her brothers."
Mrs. Weasley smiled in understanding as she sliced the fat from the meat they were going to cook for dinner. "She's not usually like this, dear, she's just…star struck."
"Star struck?" Hope asked with a furrowed eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"How do you think every Wizarding child knows the name 'Hope Potter'?" Mrs. Weasley asked rhetorically. "Hearing stories about how you vanquished You-Know-Who when you were a baby…it's just hard to equate that into someone like you."
"Someone like me?" Hope asked, quirking an eyebrow, not really liking how she'd said it. "You make it out like I'm something bad."
"Oh, not at all," Mrs. Weasley assured her. "You're just…very normal."
Hope frowned.
"What I mean," she tried to explain, "is that she is more used to you as an icon, not as a person. I don't think it's really dawned on her that you are just like other witches, just like her."
"That's…" Hope struggled to find an appropriate word for the situation, before settling on, "odd."
"Perhaps," Mrs. Weasley hummed in agreement, taking the bowl of cut potatoes from her companion, "but it is the life we live."
"It's a very judgmental life," Hope said with a sigh as she pulled the meat towards her, cutting very harsh slices as a way to vent her feelings.
"Call the boys in, would you?" she requested as she carried the food to the table. "They're probably—"
"OI!" came the roar from the door. "DINNER'S READY, YOU TOSSPOTS!"
Mrs. Weasley blinked and stared at Hope as if she had never quite seen her properly.
"They're coming," Hope said, a bit pointlessly, Mrs. Weasley thought, as probably everyone in a ten-mile radius heard her voice. That girl had a pair of lungs on her!
"You're still calling us that?" a voice complained over her shoulder and the girl turned to be faced with a very sweaty George Weasley. Her tongue froze for a moment, before it started working again.
"Yes, I'm afraid it's quite the loveliest name to refer to you all by, don't you think?" Hope prompted.
"No," said three voices, making her pout.
"You lot ruin all my fun!" She complained, marching away with her nose in the air, ignoring their snorts of amusement.
This was turning into a very fun summer.
In retrospect, Hope would have preferred flashing to any other form of teleportation or a variation of it. But then, hardly anyone even knew what flashing was, let alone enough for her to use it. And it is because of that mistrust that Hope got into her first predicament (or misadventure, depending on which Weasley sibling you talked to) of that summer. She should have just stuck to flashing; it would have saved her a lot of trouble.
What was the cause of this incident, one might wonder?
A flower pot.
That's right, a simple flower pot, but this flower pot resided in a wizard's home, so it wasn't just any flower pot. It was a flower pot filled with Floo powder.
And it was being held out to Hope who looked completely bemused, staring at it with varying degrees of skepticism. It looked relatively harmless…just a simple faded orange pot with gray powder inside it, though one had to wonder why someone else would put powder of all things in a flower pot.
"Er…what is that, and what am I supposed to be doing with it?" she asked, stabbing a cautious finger at it.
"Oh, yeah!" Ron almost kicked himself for forgetting. "Hope's never travelled by Floo powder. Sorry, mate."
"And what exactly is Floo powder?" Hope asked, honestly befuddled, her suspicious eyes locked on the pot as if waiting for it to spring legs and do a dance. That would be impressive. "Is it dangerous?"
"Not remotely," Mrs. Weasley said, glaring at Fred and George who were nodding feverishly with devilish grins on their faces. "But how did get to Diagon Alley last year to buy all your things?"
"Oh, Hagrid took me on the Underground and then I took a ca—" Hope started to say, but she was interrupted by Mr. Weasley.
"Really?" He said, his voice and face tinged with excitement. "Were there escapators? How exactly—"
"Not now, Arthur," Mrs. Weasley cut across her husband using the same tone she used to admonish her children. "Floo powder's a lot quicker, dear, but goodness me, if you've never used it before—"
"She'll be fine, Mum," Fred disagreed. "Hope, watch us first."
And so, Hope did, watching carefully as Fred scooped up a bit of powder, tossing it into the fireplace, making the flames turn a bright acid green that rose to the top of the fireplace. Fred stepped right into the fames, and he didn't seem to be burned at all! How very strange…upon the shout of "Diagon Alley!" he promptly vanished!
Hope goggled even as George did the same. "What the—?"
"Cool, huh?" Ron asked with a grin, bumping his shoulder with hers.
She gaped at the grate empty grate. "But flashing's still better."
"You would say that," Ron complained. "You always say that!"
"You can go after Arthur," Mrs. Weasley was saying as her husband disappeared into flame. "Now when you get in the fire, say where you're going."
"And keep your elbows tucked in," Ron added as she took a pinch of powder.
"And your eyes shut," Mrs. Weasley said, "the soot—"
"Don't fidget. Or you might well fall out of the wrong fireplace—"
"But don't panic and get out too early; wait until you see Fred and George."
The advice the two of them were giving her was echoing loudly in her ears giving her the distinct feeling that she was lightheaded. She was beginning to feel very overwhelmed. She dropped the powder into the grate and winced as the rose and burned emerald. Stepping into the fire was much like one would expect; it was hot. The smoke was making her eyes water as she opened her mouth, choking on ash particles as she did so.
"D-Dia-gon Alley!" she choked out as she was sucked through the fireplace, not unlike the way a toilet was flushed. She was spinning, spinning faster than she would have liked. It was quite an uncomfortable experience that Hope wasn't planning on repeating anytime soon. And then she was propelled forward and out of the fireplace, landing in a heap on someone's floor.
She sat up feeling stiff and bruised, blinking several times to clear her vision. The first thing she noticed was that she had no idea where she was, and the second thing she noticed was the shop was very…dark. She stood, glancing around for any sign of the owner. She could either hide, or she could explain her situation to him. She really wanted to go with hide.
There was a withered hand on a cushion with a card proclaiming 'Hand of Glory- Gives Light to Only the Beholder', and beside it was a pack bloodstained cards that seemed to be a likely murder weapon in a homicide and a glass eye that seemed to stare straight at her, unnerving her. That was by no means the mildest of the objects, because Hope could see an assortment of rusty weapons hanging from the ceiling, as well as a number of human bones on the counter and a lot of creepy masks on the wall.
The place gave her a made feeling, but she had to move fast as the front door opened and Hope hid inside the nearest available hiding place, a closet.
She had never met Draco Malfoy's father, but now she could see Malfoy bore a remarkable resemblance to him, in fact, he looked as much like a carbon copy of his father as Hope was of her mother.
Hope glanced between the crack in the door to watch with open curiosity, smirking at how Malfoy was complaining like a child, "I thought you were going to buy me a present."
"I said I would buy you a racing broom," the man who must have been Lucius Malfoy as he awaited the man who owned the shop.
"What's the good of that if I don't make the house team?" Hope had never seen Malfoy act so…childish. "Hope Potter got a Nimbus Two-Thousand last year. Special permission from Dumbledore so she could play for Gryffindor. She's not even that good, it's just because she's famous…famous for having a stupid scar on her forehead…"
Hope glared at him from her hiding place, feeling a spike of anger, as she always did when dealing with Malfoy.
"…everyone thinks she's so smart, wonderful Potter with her scar and her broomstick—"
Hope stuck out her tongue at that comment, almost wishing that her enemy could see her doing it. Clearly, this wasn't the first time that Lucius Malfoy had heard the spiel, if his unimpressed response was anything to go by. But she was far more interested in the father than the son, particularly of what he was speaking of. Apparently, Malfoy Senior had some unsavory items locked away in his manor, which, somehow, didn't surprise Hope in the slightest.
It took a very long time for the Malfoys to leave, at least, long in Hope's mind. Draco came very close to discovering her, but he was called away before Hope could come up with a proper disguise.
It was only when Mr. Borgin, the man who owned the lovely little shop went into the back room that Hope left the safety of her cabinet.
The street beyond the store was darker, much darker than Diagon Alley. It seemed almost as though shadows themselves lived there -which, as a general rule, didn't bother Hope that much, but not this time-, where it seemed only Dark Arts existed in this section of street. A glance at a moldy wooden sign told her that it was called 'Knockturn Alley', which seemed like a very suitable name. The sheer accumulation of bones was astonishing, making Hope's skin crawl, and Hope had read up on Ancient Magicks.
Hope turned up her hood, so she wouldn't be recognized by any of the strange characters that meandered through the street looking for this or that. Hope could see a number of what looked like voodoo dolls, as well as a few jars of what looked like human blood. As she passed through the street she saw a number of poisoned candles and gigantic caged spiders at least the spread of two palms width.
She was feeling a bit more overwhelmed when she finally saw someone she recognized.
"Hagrid!"
Hope tried her hardest not to look too relieved to see the giant-sized man, but that was hard to do when you went one grate too far in the Floo Network. Hope threw back her hood as he looked in the direction that she had spoken from, running and throwing her arms around him, cane and all.
"Hope!" Hagrid grunted in surprise, lifting her by the scruff of her neck so that she was standing properly, making the back of her neck hurt a little at the grip. "What're yeh doing down here?"
"There was an accident, Floo powder," Hope said regretfully. "I got a bit lost."
"Well, come on, then," the Gamekeeper said, "Knockturn Alley's no place for Hogwarts students."
"Sorry!" Hope couldn't help but say as she followed his long strides back into the light and busy streets of Diagon Alley.
"Hope!"
A mess of frizzy brown curls hit her face as the owner of said curls collided bodily with Hope who grunted with surprise, but somehow had managed to stay vertical only by the use of her cane.
"Hermione!" Hope hugged her friend tightly. "At last! Someone who's not ginger!"
Hermione laughed as she released her. "You're ginger, Hope!"
Hope screwed up her eyes, making her hair shorten to a short and spiky bubblegum pink. "Who's ginger now?"
Hermione giggled.
"I've missed you so much!" Hermione spoke fervently. "We knew something was wrong when you wouldn't answer any of our letters!"
"Yeah, a barmy house-elf was nicking my post," Hope said.
"A what?" Hermione gasped, but Hope shook her head, mouthing "Later." "Never mind. Are you going to Gringotts?"
"As soon as I find the Weasleys," Hope said, glancing around for the family of red-heads that stood out anywhere. She chuckled nervously. "You'd think they'd be easy to find with that bright hair of theirs…"
"Oh, there they are!" Hermione was pointing to where a small group was sprinting up the street, consisting of Ron, Fred, George, Percy, and Mr. Weasley, all of them looking quite relieved at her reappearance.
"Hope!" Mr. Weasley said in obvious relief. "We'd hoped you'd only gone one grate too far…Molly's frantic with worry –she's coming now."
"How'd you get in the wrong grate?" Percy couldn't help but ask.
"I swallowed some ash," Hope said, becoming flustered, red splotches appearing on her cheekbones.
"Where'd you come out?" Ron asked, curiosity piqued.
"A place called Knockturn Alley," Hope said with a distasteful expression on her face, but the three youngest Weasley boys were impressed.
"Wicked!" Fred and George said identically, ducking their heads around in an effort to see down the road Hope had just come from, but the view was hidden in shadow.
"We've never been allowed in," Ron bemoaned, envy coloring his voice. "What was it like?"
"Very creepy," Hope supplied with a grimace. "There were lots of bones and buckets of blood and enough poison and deadly weapons to make one consider a more peaceful way of living."
"You'd want a peaceful life?" Hermione asked incredulously.
"No, of course not," Hope disagreed, "what on earth gave you that idea?"
Hermione giggled and Ron shared a secret smile.
The last place that Hope would ever want to be was at Flourish and Blotts. It was a great bookshop, don't get her wrong, she'd gotten loads of books from there, but she had never been there during a book signing. She could sense that it was going to be a horrible experience. Hermione was quite excited about the whole matter, but Ron shared Hope's sentiment; it was too troublesome for words to express.
"What is the point of having seven books?" Hope bemoaned yet again as they entered the shop, with Hope's free arm looped around the crook of Ron's arm so she wouldn't trip or fall in the crowd. "I mean, Quirrel-Voldy was a bad teacher, but his book was amazing! So why in god's name do we need seven?"
Hermione gave her a sharp glare. "Hope, he's done a lot of amazing things—!"
"Doubtful," Hope said morbidly, "with terrible titles like these "Year with the Yeti", "Voyages with Vampires"…oh Hades, "Magical Me"?! The vanity…I thought it was bad when I read about Narcissus!"
"Who's Narcissus?" Ron asked in confusion as they were jostled to the side.
"Greek prince," Hope said, leaning back so they wouldn't be mauled by some overexcited witches, "he fell in love with his own reflection and withered away staring at it."
Ron blinked. "How is it that you know so much about Greek myths?"
"Childhood obsession," Hope admitted with a grin, but then she and Ron both swore, though not very loudly, as a short man with an annoyed expression on his face and a large camera clutched in his hands stepped on their feet in his haste to get a photo.
"Out of the way, there," he snapped to the pair of them, "this is for the Daily Prophet!"
"Big deal," said Ron, rubbing his toes, trying to get the feeling back into them.
"Who cares?" Hope said at the same time, earning her a glare.
Gilderoy Lockhart was not a very impressive man, and Hope thought she was quite right about his vanity. The way his hat was positioned made it so that his blonde hair was accented nicely and the blue of his robes matched his eyes. That blue wasn't quite the right shade, wasn't quite the real shade that Hope preferred. She wanted to gag at his appearance which was so obviously fake.
He had looked up suddenly at the two comments they'd made and his eyes automatically went to her forehead, annoying Hope greatly. His next words horrified her.
"It can't be Hope Potter?"
Before Hope had any time to react (and by react, she meant run), Lockhart had grabbed her tightly by the arm and had hauled her onto the stage. She was more stunned than anything else and was quickly losing feeling in her fingers as the man instructed her to smile at the camera (which she didn't). Each time she tugged on it, for him to release her, his grip tightened.
She was further horrified to learn that he was going to be teaching at Hogwarts, and it was only after then that he finally released her, upon doing so, she slammed the end of her cane into his toe with great pleasure.
"Arsehole," she grumbled with annoyance and embarrassment at being singled out as she lumbered back to the Weasleys, giving her books over to Ginny, as she had no use for them. She was still bullied into buying them later on, but told Mrs. Weasley she and Ron could share, earning a fond pat on the cheek. "Think I could sue him for assault?"
Ron sniggered.
"Bet you loved that didn't you?" a cold, drawling voice that could only belong to one person interrupted them. "Famous Hope Potter can't even go into a bookshop without making the front page."
"Oh, shove off, you twitchy git," Hope snarled, the expression on her face cold as ice. "Just because you have a need for attention doesn't mean that we all do."
There was a palpable tension between the two of them, and Malfoy's cheeks burned a pale pink. He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment Mr. Weasley and the twins had finally made their way over to where Hope, Ron, and Hermione stood.
"Ron! What're you doing? It's too crowded in here, let's go outside." The balding wizard tried to gesture his brood out the doors when he too was interrupted.
"Well, well, well – Arthur Weasley."
Now, Lucius Malfoy was an impressive figure, though Hope loath to admit it. Power and prestige practically oozed off him, if his fine silk robes and immaculate blonde hair was anything to go by. However, he was also the sort of person that Hope distrusted immediately…there was a shadow that glimmered behind his eye that put her on edge.
"Lucius," Mr. Weasley said, his voice as frigid as Hope's had been when speaking to Malfoy Senior's son.
"Busy time at the Ministry, I hear," Mr. Malfoy said in an unfeeling voice that automatically made Hope hate him. "All those raids…I hope they're paying you overtime." Which they weren't.
As he said this, he reached into Ginny's cauldron to withdraw a worn down and reused transfiguration textbook.
"Obviously not," he said, his lips curling into an obvious sneer. "Dear me, what's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you well for it?"
"That's uncalled for, don't you think?"
His cold grey eyes swept over Hope. Her face was pale with anger, her eyes dark and glowing with heat. Her knuckles were white, clenched tight over the handle of her cane.
She canted her head to the side, well aware that all the attention was on her, and that she was using her "dangerous" voice, as Fred had aptly named it, when she became so dark and cold that it made people want to veer out of her way. "Your opinion of Muggles is abysmal at best, Mr. Malfoy, but I can assure you, that opinion is not shared, and as for sorry excuses of wizards…at least Mr. Weasley didn't switch sides as soon as the going got tough."
His eyes narrowed slightly at her blatant insult, but he could find no suitable words to respond to such a speech, and instead swept out of the shop with his son right behind him, glaring venomously at Hope's insolence.
The Weasleys, on the other hand, gave Hope a standing ovation, applauding her loudly and hooting with enthusiasm.
The smile Mr. Weasley gave her made her face brighten. Hermione looked faintly disapproving but smiled once she saw the relieved and amused expressions on her parents' faces. Percy was the only one who seemed to remain disapproving, because even Mrs. Weasley was smiling. Ron, on the other hand, was roaring with laughter, while Fred and George bowed to his best mate saying "We are not worthy!"
Hope had never felt so embarrassed and amused in all her life.
Sleep did not come easy to Hope the night before their departure to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. It was strange to be nervous about going back to Hogwarts, because she loved it there, and it was practically her home. But after spending this summer with the Weasleys, it almost felt as though she had a second home as well. She'd never had something like that before.
She pursed her lips lightly in annoyance, shifting onto her side, in irritated sigh left her lips as she did so.
"Are you still awake?" she said, speaking to the silent room, it seemed. A sharp intake of breath was all the answer she needed, telling her that her roommate was indeed awake.
"Nervous?" she continued, as if she often spoke to the mute red-haired girl that had hardly spoken two words to her all summer. She waited patiently for an answer, when, finally Ginny whispered, "Yes."
"I was nervous, too," Hope admitted, making Ginny turn her head on her pillow to look over at her. "I didn't really have anyone to tell me how to do anything…I was a bit lost. My relatives just dropped me off at the station and left me."
"Your family left you there?" Ginny asked, stringing a sentence together for the first time in front of Hope all summer.
"Yup." Hope snorted, though mentally cheering at the accomplishment. "The Dursleys and I aren't really compatible…in fact, we hate each other's guts."
"Ron said," Ginny said slowly, gaining her confidence little by little, though she still had a deep flush gracing her cheeks, "that as soon as you're legal, you're going to move out." She hadn't been there to see Hope's massive bruise, but she'd heard her brothers -particularly George- complaining about it.
"Yup," Hope said, "why torture myself further when I can be independent?"
When Hope heard the rather miniscule giggle, she knew there was hope.
Hope groaned, arching her back into the mattress. "What is with this bed? There's no nice spot at all!"
Then she sat up suddenly in bed, her expression clearing. "You know what we should do?"
"What?" Ginny asked fuzzily, rubbing at her eyes, wishing sleep would come sooner rather than later.
Green eyes met hers and the owner of said eyes grinned brightly. "We should go star-gazing."
"Star-gazing?" Ginny asked flummoxed.
Hope nodded her head, a movement Ginny could barely see in the dark. "Come on, it'll be fun!"
Ginny wasn't so sure; she couldn't see the appeal of staring up at stars for hours on end, but it was better than lying around trying to force herself to sleep.
"All right," she sighed, throwing her legs over the bed and standing up. Hope grabbed her arm and, in less time than it took her to blink, they were outside and Ginny was staring about owlishly.
However, Hope was far too busy gazing up at the stars with her head tilted back. Ginny could see why she liked to stare at them so much…there was a sort of calm beauty of the night sky that nothing could possibly compare to.
"That one's my favorite," she said, pointing up to the brightest star in the sky, "Sirius, the dog star."
"Why?" Ginny asked, her eyes following her hand and pinpointing the star with ease, as none of the other stars shone as brightly as it did.
"I don't really know," Hope said, slightly amused, "but it always struck me as ironic."
"Why?" she asked again.
"No idea," Hope said with a shrug of her shoulders, a wide grin plastered onto her face as she flashed it to Ginny who flushed darkly again, embarrassed at making eye contact. "Maybe one day I'll figure it out."
The name Sirius Black was long forgotten to Hope, the letter in which he had been named lost in the depths of her trunk, and she would not realize the connection between herself and the mass murderer until the next year had come round.
Chaotic was one word to describe the next morning at the Burrow. Later Hope would question how they got to the station before the train left, even if it was only by five minutes. The Weasleys apparently had a terrible organization problem, because as soon as they left the first time, George had to go back for his Filibuster Fireworks, and then they had to go back for Fred's broom, and then for Ginny's diary.
So, by the time the Weasleys plus Hope wheeled their carts into the train station, they were running very behind and tempers were high.
"I'll take Ginny, you two come right after us," Mrs. Weasley told Ron and Hope as she rushed through the barrier with her daughter in hand.
Hope shrugged her shoulders as they disappeared. "Shall we?"
Ron nodded. "Together, then?"
And they wheeled their carts towards the junction between platforms Nine and Ten. Of the single thing Hope had predicted to occur, what truly did was an entirely different matter. The second their carts connected with the pillar—
CRASH!
The trolleys hit the pillar and bounced back, to Ron and Hope's complete and utter surprise. Trolley, students, and baggage went head over teakettle from the force of the recoil that ended up with Hope trapped under her heavy trunk and Hedwig squawking angrily in her cage, drawing attention to them.
"What the blazes d'you think you're doing?" a guard yelled over to them as Ron picked up Hedwig and rushed to pull Hope out from under her luggage.
His yell made Hope's temper flare. "Lost control of the trolley, what're you doing?" she snapped back, helping Ron get their things back onto their carts, ignoring the purpling color of the man's face at her comment.
Ron pressed his hands into the brick pillar. "It's completely solid!" He glanced at the clock. "Oh no! The train's leaving!"
The clock had struck eleven while they had been righting themselves.
"How are we going to get to Hogwarts now?" Ron bemoaned.
Hope pinched the bridge of nose…this could hardly be a coincidence. It had to be Dobby. She gritted her teeth in annoyance. What was it that he'd said to her? "Hope Potter must not go to Hogwarts." Well, it seemed he had succeeded, one way or another.
"Flashing!"
Hope blinked, looking at her friend, feeling as though she was completely missing something. "Sorry?"
Clearly, whatever it was, it obviously excited him. "You can flash us to Hogwarts!" he said, his eyes and smile bright.
"What?" Hope said weakly. "Ron, I've never flashed that far before! What if something goes wrong?"
"Then what about the train?" he asked. "That's closer, right?"
Getting farther away by the minute, but it was still nothing compared to the distance the castle was…and if they did some maneuvering, they could probably land inside the large compartment that housed all the student belongings…
"Come on, Hope! Give it a go!"
Hope opened her mouth when she glanced around quickly, taking note of the stares they were receiving. "Come on, we'd better get outside."
She still thought it was a very bad idea, but unfortunately, it was also the best one, considering the only other option was to flash directly to Hogwarts, and there was no way in hell she was doing that. So, she and Ron wheeled their trolleys into an abandoned alley close to the station. At Ron's questioning look, she explained, "How do you think Muggles would react if they saw two kids disappear into thin air?"
Ron had to concede to that.
Hope moved the carts so that they were side by side, her fingers linking them together. "Okay, put your hands on mine, and don't let go."
No sooner than Ron had done so, the two of them had vanished, luggage, and all.
Hermione had already seen several Weasleys, but none were Ron and Hope was nowhere to be found and they'd already left the station, and Hermione was trying not to get worried, but…she was worried.
Worried up until the compartment door slid open to admit a red-faced Ron and Hope with tissues stuffed up her nose.
"What happened?" Hermione balked in surprise.
"We got stuck on the platform, we couldn't get through," Ron opted to explain while Hope curled herself up on the opposite side of the compartment, giving off the air that she was going to ignore them both. "We ended up flashing into the trunk compartment and Hope got a bloody nose."
"Flashing onto moving vehicles is much harder than originally thought," Hope's voice came out rather nasally. "If I don't end up vomiting, it'll be a miracle."
Hermione winced.
Hope, as it turned out, did end up vomiting and was largely out of it until they made it up to the castle, with Hermione and Ron detouring to drop her off to Madam Pomfrey's tender mercies, who righted her in an instant -a fever with a stomach bug brought on from magic use that had her unimpressed- but decided that she'd better stay overnight just to be on the safe side. So Hope had waved them off to have dinner without her, telling them she'd see them in the morning.
Which she did.
At breakfast Hope looked a little tired, but not as much as she had last year when she had to make up all that work from when she was in the hospital. And she seemed to be taking the whispers and stares rather well, considering.
"I can't believe you flashed onto the train!" Hermione was positively raving, now that Hope was completely with it to hear it. "Couldn't you have done something more sensible?"
"This is us you're talking about, right?" Hope inquired, quirking an eyebrow as she spread jam on her toast. "Not someone else?"
Ron sniggered into his bacon.
"Oh, shut up," Hermione said, her cheeks pinking. "Are you feeling better?"
"Much," Hope admitted, "at least I wasn't flashing to Hogwarts…I'm not sure that would've ended so well…"
Hermione and Ron grimaced as one.
"Hey there, Mystery-girl!"
"Wizard-boy," Hope replied, unimpressed, "you must stop flirting with me; people will begin to talk…"
Both of the twins laughed at that.
Ron gagged. "Come on! Do you two have to do that when I'm eating?"
"Yes," Hope and George said with matching grins.
"Have you got Lockhart today?" Fred asked conversationally.
"This afternoon," Hope bemoaned. "I know I'm going to hate that class, I just know it! I'm going to die!"
"Better you than us," the twins chirped, ducking as bits of egg were tossed their way as they ran from the hall.
"Gits," Hope muttered, dismembering her sausages and sticking them in her mouth.
"We'd better get going," Hermione said, checking her watch, "we've got Herbology in ten minutes with the Hufflepuffs."
Herbology went surprisingly well, in Hope's opinion. She'd never really minded the care and identification of magical plants, but the Mandrakes were a whole different matter. They were really weird, looking a great deal like fat little earth babies with a cry that could kill you. Even muffled, the sound was pretty bad. In this particular greenhouse, they were all paired in groups of four, in charge of repotting the Mandrakes, something Hope hoped she never had to do again. Hope, Ron, and Hermione were paired with a Hufflepuff boy by the name of Justin Finch-Fletchley; he was a chatter box, even with the earmuffs.
Herbology was a brief respite for the hellish lesson that was to come, and after lunch Hope, Ron, and Hermione found themselves in the stone courtyard, talking about their summers, family, and about nothing in particular, waiting for the bell to ring, signaling that they should begin heading to class.
Hope could tell the Hermione was a little upset that Ron had seen the most of her in the past few weeks, so she was trying to speak more to her than to Ron.
"I was in a terrible mood!" she laughed with Hermione, spreading out her hands as she spoke. "How else was I supposed to react to someone who's a complete and utter arse?"
"Maybe more tactfully," Hermione offered with a smile.
"But I don't think they know what that is!" Hope said with amusement. Hermione couldn't stop a laugh at that.
The hairs on the back of Hope's neck tingled, as if someone was watching her, and once she looked up she knew why. The person who was watching her must have been a new student. He was wearing the Gryffindor crest and had a bit of a mousy face and clutched in his hands was a camera. Cameras were quickly becoming a hated thing for Hope, not including the one that was shared between every member of Gryffindor House.
"Can I help you?" she asked mildly.
The fact that she was talking to him seemed to embarrass him greatly, because his face turned a bright red.
"H-Hi!" he breathed in excitement. "I'm –I'm Colin Creevey. I'm in Gryffindor too. D'you think –would it be alright if– can I have a picture?" he asked breathlessly.
"A picture?" Hope arched an eyebrow. "No. Why?"
His face fell and Hope felt a little bad, but she wasn't very much into being a subject of a photo that wasn't for her or her friends. "So, I can prove that I've met you. I know all about you, everyone's told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you and how he disappeared and everything and how you've still got a lightning bolt scar on your forehead and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures'll move." The excitement had returned to his voice and face. "It's amazing here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either. So, I'm taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it'd be really good if I had one of you, and then, could you sign it?"
He seemed to have distinctly forgotten that Hope had quite fervently said "No." Her irritation about the whole matter grew in leaps and bounds once she heard a very familiar cold voice. "Signed photos? You're giving out signed photos, Potter?"
"You know, I rather think you would benefit from a trip to the hospital wing, Malfoy," Hope said, maintaining her surprisingly mild voice. "If she can't cure you of your delusions of superiority, then at least she can cure your deafness."
A multitude of snorts echoed through the courtyard and Malfoy opened his mouth angrily, but Hope waved whatever he was going to say off. "You might want to think about what you say next, Malfoy, because I'm sure you don't have the brains for it."
She was so going to get in trouble for this later, but at the moment, Hope was far too annoyed; restraint was something she would practice at a later date.
"Did someone mention signed photos?"
"Oh, gods!" Hope muttered as Gilderoy Lockhart flounced into the courtyard, wearing turquoise robes that brought attention to his eyes. Hope gagged, in front of him, and he didn't even notice. Was he purposefully blind to the fact that she really didn't like him?
He gave a beaming smile at the sight of her. "Shouldn't have asked! We meet again, Hope!"
Horror-struck, Hope found herself glued to his side and a subject of a photo that she hadn't wanted in the first place, and then she found herself being steered to her next class which was unfortunately his.
"A word to the wise, Hope," Lockhart was saying. "I covered up for you back there with young Creevey –if he was photographing me too, your schoolmates won't think you're setting yourself up so much…"
"And we wouldn't want that," Hope said with biting sarcasm, still attempting to wrestle herself from his grip, but it wasn't working so much in her favor. She could see a number of students laughing silently at her predicament; she glared at them. Gits.
"Let me just say that handing out signed photos at this stage in your career isn't sensible – looks a tad bigheaded, Hope, to be frank. There may well come a time when, like me, you'll need a stack handy wherever you go, but I don't think you're quite there yet."
Hope was so angry, embarrassed, and irritated that she couldn't come up with the proper words to voice how she felt, so instead, like in Flourish and Blotts, she slammed the end of her cane into his foot, and then swept it harshly between his legs, relishing in the squeak he made.
"Yeah," she snarled, "great advice, tosspot."
"I will kill him," Hope threatened, her fork carving a chip out of her plate that night at dinner, practically seething. "Unbelievable! How can someone be so arrogant and unintelligent at the same time? How has stayed alive for so long?"
"Sheer dumb luck," Ron offered.
Hermione gave the pair of them glares. "I think you two are being too harsh on him; he's a professor!"
"And what's he taught us?" Hope retorted. "How to successfully run out of a classroom? How to not give a wand to a pixie? Or maybe how to not unleash pixies on unsuspecting students?" She rubbed her eyes with a tired hand as the Laughing Gas plus their ladies came to sit beside her.
"So," Lee said without preamble, "how bad was Lockhart?"
Hope groaned loudly and the upperclassmen laughed.
"I have never met someone so…ooh!" Hope complained, flexing her fingers inwards every few seconds like claws. In fact, she looked vaguely feral-like all around, whether by intention or not. "I'm not going to last the year with him as a teacher…which is why he is going to find himself subjected to a prank in five minutes."
"A girl after my own heart," George said solemnly, pressing a hand to his chest directly over his heart, acting touched.
Hope rolled her eyes, now rubbing at her jaw where a bruise was forming from one of the pixie's attacks. "Don't make me hit you, Weasley, you know I will."
George laughed; the laughter soon joined by a majority of the hall as Gilderoy Lockhart expanded to the size of a small car.
"There," Hope said, sounding pleased, "now he's the proper size for his ego…or at least closer to the proper size…"
"You are amazing!" Angelina said fondly, making the red-haired girl flush with pleasure at the praise.
"I do try," she admitted. "It wasn't much."
But Hermione looked horrified. "You blew up a teacher!"
"Yup!" Hope said, unconcerned. "Come on, Hermione! Don't be that way! You saw how terrible he was today!"
"Hands on experience!" Hermione cried in their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's defense, ignoring the other professors who were attempting –half-heartedly– to pull down the bloated egotistical man and reverse Hope's expansion charm.
"Of course," Hope said dryly, rolling her eyes.
But to Hermione's dismay, everyone seemed to appreciate the prank in the common room late that night, applauding Hope who had turned five shades of red that she hadn't been sure existed. This was a sort of fame that Hope would gladly revel in, she knew, because it wasn't for something she didn't remember, or something that her parents had done, so she couldn't help but spare a fond smile to her friend as she excused herself from the crowd to make her way up to the dorm room for the second year girls of Gryffindor House.
Parvati Patil was already there, putting her clothes into the dresser by her bed, as she apparently hadn't the night before, sparing her a quick smile before going back to her diligent work. Hope's gaze landed on the green leather-bound journal that lay on her bedside table, patterned with a serpent.
That was the journal that contained the personal thoughts of her grandfather. It had been among the books that Hope had removed from her vaults before the beginning of first year, but she had never begun to read it in earnest until that Christmas, after she'd met the man and bid him farewell at the same time. She had judged him harshly, she knew, but his opinion of those born Muggles or from Muggles with magic was even worse than Mr. Malfoy's. And at the same time, his past was so heartbreaking sad, especially concerning his wife.
It was into those pages that Hope had stuffed a sketch that had fallen out of Nath's pocket, and she'd almost given it back…but it was a sketch of her mother.
Her mother in dated clothing, but Hope had compared it to her pictures of her and they were identical. She hadn't had the opportunity to ask him why he had it, with everything that had gone on and it had become something that hung in the air between them.
And there was no easy way to ask the man that saved your life if he'd had an affair with her mother.
Parvati cast her a grin as she got ready for bed. "That prank of yours was brilliant, by the way."
"Thank you," Hope preened, "but you should seen him when I gave him the cane to his bits."
And then the dormitory was filled with peals of laughter.
Hope had received a lot of strange things, even so, Hope was very surprised to find a letter addressed to her one morning, without a name to indicate who it was from.
You might want to read up on the Hogwarts regulations for Quidditch, I get the feeling tomorrow that you'll need it.
Though she was a bit curious of the message, Hope did as she asked, and the morning after, she was glad she did.
"Hope!" a voice hissed. "Wake up, sleepy-head!"
"Mmah?" Hope mumbled, throwing up an arm to shield her eyes as Angelina Johnson opened the curtains that surrounded her bed. "Wazzgoingon?"
"Quidditch practice," Angelina said duly. "Get dressed."
Hope moaned as she buried her face into her pillow, but she got up at Angelina's insistence.
If they had gone right into flying, maybe Hope would have been able to stay awake, but, as it was, Hope was deathly tired and the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, adding to her belief that they really shouldn't have even been up.
She fell asleep about half-way through Oliver's second board.
"So, is that clear? Any questions?" Oliver said, his voice jerking Hope suddenly awake.
"I've got a question, Oliver," George said, yawning widely and appearing as though he too had fallen asleep, which was highly likely, knowing him like she did, "why couldn't you have told us all this yesterday when we were awake?"
Hope coughed to hide a laugh.
That question didn't impress Oliver much, who glared at them all.
"Now listen here, you lot," he hissed, "we were lucky to even win the Cup last year, so this year we're going to train harder, now let's put these theories to practice!"
Hope couldn't mirror his enthusiasm. As they trudged out onto the field, Hope caught sight of Ron and Hermione sitting in the stands, waiting for her to finish.
"Done yet?" Ron called as she jogged over to meet them, gratefully taking the napkin filled with grapes from Hermione, one of the only food items that Hope wouldn't be able to spill or end up covered in grease by the end of it.
"Haven't even started," Hope complained around her mouthful of grapes, earning a stern stare from Hermione. "And I fell asleep in the middle of Oliver's theories so I have no idea what we're supposed to be doing."
"Bad luck," Ron said.
She rolled her eyes, kicking off of the ground and flying over to where the rest were hovering in the air.
"Fancy a race, Potter?" George asked with a grin.
"Get ready to lose, Weasley!"
And then the three of them were speeding through the air, doing complicated spins and turns that Hope hadn't been able to do in months.
Everything was wonderful until she heard that clicking noise that was more often than not accompanied with a camera. She groaned; really, what was with this kid? He took stalking to a whole different level.
"What's that?" Fred asked, swerving his broom as he looked around for the source of the noise. "Where's that noise coming from?"
"First year Gryffindor," Hope said in annoyance, "one who's got an obsession with taking photos."
Fred snorted, glancing back. That was an understatement.
"Look this way, Hope, this way!"
"How much trouble do you think I'd get in for killing him?" Hope asked him mutinously, her expression going downright scary.
"Maybe life in Azkaban," Fred contemplated thoughtfully.
"What's—"
"What's going on?" Oliver had skimmed the air until he hung in the air close to the three of them. "Why's that first year taking pictures? I don't like it. He could be a Slytherin spy, trying to find out about our new training program."
"He's a Gryffindor, Oliver," Hope said curtly, rolling her eyes again.
"Besides, the Slytherins don't need a spy," George added.
"What makes you say that?" Oliver asked in annoyance.
"Because they're here in person." The whole team followed his finger, where it pointed off into the distance, where a small group of green-clad boys were approaching the field.
"Unbelievable!" Oliver growled. "I booked the field today! We'll see about this!"
All the Gryffindors dismounted, with varying degrees of irritation and anger.
"Flint!" Oliver roared, stomping up to the burly and bulky Slytherin Captain, Marcus Flint, who seemed to be amused by the anger present on Oliver's face. "This is our practice time! We got up specially! You can clear off now!"
Unfortunately, that didn't deter the bigger team captain, who smirked. "Plenty of room for all of us, Wood."
Hope snorted. "Yeah, like that would happen. There is a point to having teams practice separately, you know."
Flint sneered at her. "What would you know of it, you lame—"
"Hey!" barked the whole team as one, and George pushed Hope behind him, much to her annoyance. "You shut up about her."
"Oh, were you talking to me?" Hope asked from around George. "I thought you were talking to yourself, because I quite agree with you."
So much sass could not be contained inside of Hope it seemed, because she was starting to sound an awful lot like she did when she was talking to Quirrell-Voldy.
"But I booked the field!" Oliver snapped, his cheeks bright red, bringing the two teams back to the task at hand. "I booked it!"
"Ah, but I've got a specially signed note here from Professor Snape. 'I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permission to practice today on the Quidditch field owing to the need to train their new Seeker.'"
This news distracted Oliver briefly. "New Seeker? You've got a new Seeker? Who?"
Her stomach reeled as Draco Malfoy came out from behind the taller, more impressive boys of the Slytherin team, his smirk earning him an incredulous look. "Malfoy?"
"Aren't you Lucius Malfoy's son?" Fred and George were gazing at the younger boy with increasing dislike.
"Funny you should mention Draco's father. Let me show you the generous gift he's made to the Slytherin team."
Each member of the team was holding a brand-new broom that was sleek and black with not a twig in disarray. Nimbus Two Thousand and One was inscribed on the handles of each one.
"You got your father to bribe the team to take you on?" Hope snorted. "You've got to be kidding me…"
Draco's lips curled into a sneer as Ron and Hermione made their way over to the group.
"What's going on?"
"I'm the new Seeker, Weasley. Everyone's just been admiring the brooms my father's bought for our team," Malfoy said with a superior smirk.
"Well, at least none of the Gryffindor players had to buy their way onto the team," Hermione said, feeling much braver than usual, channeling a bit of Hope. "They got in on pure talent."
Malfoy's expression darkened significantly at her words, and he snarled out, "No one asked for your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood."
Hope didn't know what that word meant, but it must have been bad, because the Gryffindors exploded in an angry gusto of the likes that she had never seen before. Fred and George in particular looked ready to rip out Malfoy's eyes and the girls were shrieking profanities at the boy. Everything came to a rather sudden stop at the sound similar to a cannon being fired, and everyone turned to see Hope holding her wand.
Like that time in the lower chamber with Quirrell-Voldy, she only came up with pure emotion, though this time, it was annoyance and anger.
"Now that I have your attention," Hope said dryly, crossing her arms in irritation, "how about this, one player from each team goes and gets their Head of House and have them work out this issue, alright?"
Surprisingly, they all agreed, opting not to press the issue.
"What d'you thinks they're talking about?" George muttered to Hope from where she sat next him on the front row of the stands, her fist pressed into her face, looking very bored…and hungry.
"Probably trying to make a compromise about when each team gets to use the pitch," Hope said in a monotonous voice. "It's in the school rules that teams have to sign up for whichever days they want to practice, and no signature from a teacher is going to change that."
She looked up and around to find everyone staring at her. "What?"
"Nothing," they all said quickly.
She glared at them all. "A fellow student gave me a tip-off that this was going to happen today."
"A student gave you a tip-off?" Oliver said astounded, repeating her words.
"Yeah," she said in a voice that implied an 'and so?'. "Oh, look, they're done."
"Mr. Wood," Professor McGonagall said in a firm voice, "you and your teammates have the pitch until lunchtime comes around, and then it belongs to the Slytherins."
"Fine," Oliver said with a despairing sigh. "Come on, team, let's warm up."
Hope squeezed Hermione's shoulder reassuringly as her eyes were a little red before loping gracelessly towards the rest of her team, her bright hair flying out behind her like a crimson banner behind her.
It was only later that day when Hope was getting her weekly checkup with Madam Pomfrey that she asked what that word Malfoy had said earlier meant.
"Madam Pomfrey, do you know what the word 'Mudblood' means?"
Madam Pomfrey dropped a vial of potion that she was putting away, whirling around to snap at Hope. "Don't ever say that word! You hear me? Ever!"
Surprised by her vehemence, Hope recoiled slightly and stared. "Why? What does it mean?"
The Matron of Hogwarts sighed tiredly. It wasn't really Hope's fault, it was clear she didn't know the connotations of the word. "Hope, you know how some people view Muggle-borns, don't you?"
"Yeah…" Hope said slowly. "Why?"
"Mudblood is a…derogatory name for someone who was born to non-magical parent," Madam Pomfrey said slowly. "Pure-bloods think of them as if they have dirty blood, the opposite of Pure-bloods."
Hope's face was strangely blank of emotion, before her eyes sparked with anger, turning an angry black, her hair changing to match. "That's horrible."
"It is," Madam Pomfrey agreed. "But some people simply think like that…I take it that someone insulted Miss Granger today?"
"Don't worry, the whole team cheered her up before we started practicing," Hope said.
"Good," Madam Pomfrey replied. "Now you come straight back here if you start feeling strained or feverish. Are you listening to me, Miss Potter?"
"Yeah, I heard you," Hope said in irritation, unrolling her sleeve and reaching forward to take back her cane when Madam Pomfrey grabbed it and moved it out of reach.
"I want you to start using your leg fully, Hope," the woman said seriously. "That's the only way it's going to heal completely, and you said you stopped having pain over the summer."
"Yeah," Hope admitted, her eyes dropping to her leg, as if she was capable of seeing through the fabric to where the scars marred her skin. "I'm just…"
"I know," Madam Pomfrey said gently, "but it's your leg, you need to get used to using it."
"I suppose," Hope muttered through a sigh. She stood up slowly, experimentally putting her weight on the leg. It didn't give her a flare of pain as a warning, so that was good. She took a few tentative steps; same response.
She let out the breath she hadn't realized that she had been holding. "Okay, but if this doesn't work, I'll be back here before you know it."
"Oh, I know," Madam Pomfrey said with a slight grin, "now get going; there's a plate in the Great Hall waiting for you."
"Oh, I know," Hope said, repeating her words. "See you later, Poppy!"
"That's Madam Pomfrey to you, Miss Potter!"
Hope laughed lightly as she limped through the doors, making her way slowly down the stairs. It was remarkably quiet without all the students rushing about. Deadly quiet. Hope's own footsteps echoed in the silence, in an almost creepy way, she had to admit. The flickering flames of the torches that hung on the wall cast an odd glow, an odd shadow on the stone that made up the structure of the entire castle. Sometimes those shadows could be quite freaky.
She would have gladly continued on, oblivious to the monster that lay beneath the floors, that is, she would have, had she not heard something, something that was low and guttural, dangerous and cold. A voice that chilled her to the bone and froze her in her tracks.
"Come…come to me…Let me rip you…Let me tear you…Let me kill you…"
A murderous voice that echoed in her ears, making her heart stutter frantically as she whirled around, searching for the owner of the voice.
"Hello?" she called out faintly. "Is anyone there?"
But no one answered her.
"I know you're there!" she said, her voice stronger this time. "I can hear you!"
But still, there was only silence as an answer to her words. Hope frowned; she couldn't have imagined that voice, could she? She was pretty sure that she wasn't much into killing. Could the voice be coming from within—
"Hope!"
She spun around to see her two friends running towards her, and she quickly removed her hand from the wall.
"I thought you two were still at dinner," Hope said in surprise.
"We finished and came looking for you," Ron gasped out, winded from the short run.
"We thought you might still be in the hospital wing," Hermione said logically, "but when we went to check, Madam Pomfrey said you'd already gone, so we figured that you would have taken the straightest route."
"Ah," Hope said helpfully, scratching her cheek, "am I that predictable?"
"Sometimes," they said at the same time, making them blush and Hope smirk with hidden amusement.
"You're really pale," Hermione noticed, "are you sure that you don't need to go back to Madam Pomfrey again?"
"Oh, no," Hope said, "I'm fine." She was still looking down the hall for something that couldn't be seen, though.
"What is it?" Ron asked, looking in that direction too, but seeing nothing.
"I thought…" Hope's voice faded away, her lips set in a confused frown. "It's nothing, forget about it."
"What is it?" Hermione prodded. "Come on, something's got you…befuddled."
Hope rolled her eyes at her. "It's just that…before you two turned up, I thought I heard a voice, only there's no one around."
She missed the worried looks that were exchanged behind her as she turned to look around once more. "It had to be real," she murmured to herself.
"Well," said Ron, chuckling nervously, "it can't have been someone invisible, because even they can make sounds."
"I know," Hope said annoyed, looking back at them. "Do you reckon I should tell someone? McGonagall or someone else?"
"No!" Hermione said quickly, "even hearing voices in the Wizarding world is a bad sign."
"You think I made it up?"
"No, but if what that house-elf told you is true," Hermione said slowly, sharing glances with both of them, "then maybe it has something to do with that plot that it was so scared of occurring."
"Maybe," Hope murmured, glancing back at the wall with growing suspicion.
The flames flickered in the fireplace, burning brands into the wood and releasing smoke and heat. It was late into the night by now, but Hope couldn't sleep, not with all the things that were on her mind, not with that voice plaguing her thoughts.
"…Let me kill…"
"Hope?"
She jumped violently and swore loudly at the sudden voice.
"By the gods!" she gasped, clutching at her chest, within which her heart was racing, looking up into George's blue eyes. His eyes were crinkled up in the corners at her response, and she blushed, hard.
"Oh, shut up," she muttered, casting her eyes from him. "Anyone would react like that if you snuck up on them."
Truthfully, he hadn't really snuck up on her, but she must have been so lost in thought that it didn't matter anyways. "Sure," he said with a smirk, before looking her over, "what are you doing down here? Can't sleep already?"
"I guess," Hope shrugged helplessly, her lips upturning slightly. "What're you doing up?"
"I'm mentally devising new pranks," George said in a snobbish tone, sticking up his nose like he was arrogant. "I'm brilliant, as you know."
"Do I know?" Hope asked mildly. "I'm afraid I wasn't too aware of your acclaimed brilliance, are you sure you have it?"
"Oh, absolutely," George grinned.
Hope turned her gaze back to the fire.
"I'm starting to think you have an obsession with fire," George mentioned as he sat down beside her. "You spend an awful lot of time looking at it."
"I just think fire's fascinating," Hope said dismissively. "Muggles have learned how to change its color, you know? Just like wizards can, only I think it involved something to do with salt…" She frowned for a moment, trying to recall what exactly had to be done for the color change to occur, but then she just shook her head and gave up. "I thought that was the most insane thing I'd ever heard as a kid. Imagine a fire being green, or blue, or even purple!" Her eyes changed to every color she named. "It must seem strange to you, but you grew up with fires turning different colors I guess…"
"Sometimes," George admitted, "though Mum and Dad weren't too keen on changing the color of the fire, they were afraid we'd stick our pudgy hands into it."
Hope laughed lightly. "Well, I don't think they'd be wrong in that aspect, but I think seeing it a couple times would be cool."
George wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just sat quietly beside her, watching the fire in the fireplace.
"George, can I ask you something?" Hope said suddenly.
"Sure," he said in response.
"That day in the Surrey Zoo," she said, looking at him in the eyes, "why did you go and talk to me?"
He stared at her. What a strange question to ask to him, and not one that he'd been anticipating. And she was looking at him so imploringly that he couldn't help but open his mouth and speak once more.
"People think I'm softer than Fred, you know," he said instead and Hope furrowed her brow in confusion. "I mean, I think I am, just a tiny bit, but I've always had him to snarl at people when they think I'm a bit…different. Fred protects me, and, if he needs it, I protect Fred…but no one protects you."
Hope looked away quickly, blinking a few times.
"I thought you looked like someone who needed a bit of kindness," George said earnestly. "If you're asking if I regret stopping to talk to you in the zoo, the answer is no."
Hope peeked at him out of the side of her eye, turning pink at his words, his honesty, and his smile.
"Really?" she asked weakly.
"Really," he promised, squeezing her fingers. "Good night, Hope." And then he stood to make his way back up the stairs to the dormitories.
"Night," she called after him, "and if you tell Fred about this…I'll kill you."
George had to smother his laughter so that he wouldn't awaken anyone with it, and once he'd gone, Hope flopped deep in the chair with a muttered, "Fuck, that's not even fair."
It was a full moon tonight. Hope leaned her elbows on the stone railing that overlooked Hogwarts' vast land, staring up at bright star-filled sky. The stars always seemed to shine brighter when the full moon was out, but it was far easier to star-gaze when the moon wasn't out. She sighed longingly, flexing her stiff elbows from staying still for too long.
Her leg tingled slightly as she twitched it, but like the whole day, she felt no pain, and that, all by itself, was liberating. The leg still had tremors every so often, but Hope had been assured that that was a passing thing.
And sleep was not coming easily to her this night, so she had opted to wander around in the night, knowing the patrols like she did, because she couldn't very well wander around Hogwarts at night without knowing the patrols, she managed to evade the prowling upper classmen. It was not uncommon for her to do so, as wandering about at night or at day was something Hope Potter was becoming renowned for; earning the respect of the Weasley Twins who considered anything that involved breaking rules to be a plus.
The patrols were something wandering students always had to be on the lookout for, but Hope had once actually mapped out a timetable for when each patrol passed a certain sector, taking into account the possibility for being ahead of time or being behind. Single patrols were always teachers and double patrols were always prefects or the Head Boy and Girl. The next one wasn't due to pass by her for another ten minutes, so she was a little surprised when she heard the sound of patient footsteps. Patient single footsteps. This was remarkably strange as the next patrol that was due to pass was one that was made of students, not of teachers.
She didn't even have time to hide when the owner of the footsteps stepped into the corridor, and Hope couldn't help but be surprised by who they belonged to.
It was just a girl.
Her eyes were closed and her blonde straggly hair swung back and forth with every movement she made. Hope had thought that her gait was rather strange, but that was until she realized the girl was sleepwalking.
"Hey…" she nudged the girl, but she didn't respond until Hope gave her a sharp jab in the cheek, and then a pair of silvery-blue eyes fluttered open.
"Oh, hello," the girl said dreamily.
"Hello," Hope said, a little nonplussed. "You were sleepwalking."
"Was I?" she asked in bemusement. "I do that quite a lot. It's why I wear my shoes to bed, you see."
Hope looked down as the girl wiggled her toes in her bright red converses.
"Okay…" Hope looked at her oddly. "Do you need some help getting back to your common room?"
"Oh, yes, please," she said in a vague voice, "that would be lovely."
"What's your house?" Hope asked, her eyes taking in the bottle-cap necklace she was wearing over her dressing gown with curiosity.
"Ravenclaw."
"That's only a floor up," Hope mused, looking off into the distance. "The next patrol up there doesn't start for another fifteen minutes, so come on."
Luna Lovegood recognized Hope Potter as all did upon seeing the scar that marred her brow. She was surprised that the older girl was out late, but then, she apparently had a reputation for bending the rules. She walked with a slight limp, she noticed, and her housemates had said it was from a muggle automobile accident that had required her to use a cane for assistance in walking until this year.
"What's your name?" the Gryffindor called back to her as they ascended a tight spiral staircase.
"Luna Lovegood," Luna said airily.
"Hope." She didn't mention her last name, Luna noticed.
Luna tilted her head, gazing at her. "Did you like my little warning?"
Hope's footsteps stuttered at her question and she glanced back to the blonde. "So, it was you."
"Yes," Luna said dreamily. "I overheard some Slytherins talking about it and thought you might like to know."
"That's…" Hope struggled to find the right word before settling on "nice."
"It is, isn't it?" Luna said with a beaming smile as they came onto the landing before the Ravenclaw common room. "How do you know where the Ravenclaw common room is?" Most Houses hardly interacted with one another.
A smile twitched her lips slightly. "I know a few guys that are all about knowing shortcuts."
"Ah!" Luna said brightly, coming to a stop before the bronze knocker that was shaped like an eagle.
Upon their arrival, its mouth opened and it spouted a riddle, much to Hope's amusement and surprise.
"At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?"
Luna thought hard for a few moments, but this one stumped her. "I don't know."
"The stars," Hope intoned dully beside her to her surprise.
"Well said," the knocker agreed, swinging open to reveal the common room.
"See you, Luna," Hope called lightly as she disappeared down the stairs.
Luna watched her until she had vanished completely in the shadows, before she skipped back into her common room once more.
Luna Lovegood was a strange one, Hope thought as she ducked behind a suit of armor so that the passing Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater wouldn't see her. She seemed to have a permanent expression of surprise on her face, accentuated by high arching eyebrows and wide eyes. Her company wasn't unpleasant, though, despite how short and to the point it was. It was refreshing for Hope to be around someone who wasn't like her friends from Gryffindor.
Still, Luna had her respect for that little stunt she pulled with the warning, whether it was needed or not.
The next few weeks passed slowly for Hope, much to her eternal annoyance. Lockhart was making her completely miserable, and had somehow managed to forget that she'd knocked him in the family jewels not too long ago. Hope had never been so close to killing anyone ever, not even Snape, until this year.
Gilderoy Lockhart was a very trying individual, that was the least she could say about him. The most she could say was: trying, egotistical, self-centered, arrogant, narcissistic cock, and even that wasn't close to everything that he was. Hope had taken to ducking into spare rooms, whether they were in use or not, just to hide from him. She had once popped into Professor McGonagall's fourth year class, surprisingly not being given detention or a loss of points afterwards, mostly because Professor McGonagall was much too humored to give her a punishment for "looking out for your own well-being."
Lockhart wasn't the only thing that was making her miserable. She'd over-strained her leg again, making it ache with every step, and had ended up with a fever to boot.
"Ow!"
Hope clapped her hands to her head, wincing in pain and eyeing Madam Pomfrey as though she was the enemy. "Do you have to jab so hard?"
"Perhaps I wouldn't if you had come in here the second you felt any pain," Madam Pomfrey in a surprisingly mild voice as a soft blue mist escaped the tip of her wand, surrounding Hope in a cloud.
"Is she alright?" Hermione asked, heavily concerned for her friend, who sneezed loudly from within the cloud.
"Hope has an abnormally high pain tolerance," Madam Pomfrey admitted, "but I can assure you, she'll be fine in a few moments."
The cloud cleared in a snap, leaving a very disgruntled Hope Potter behind in its wake. She crossed her arms in annoyance, her cheeks a faint pink in embarrassment.
"How did she get sick?" Ron asked curiously, ignoring how his friend huffed at them for talking about her right in front of as if she wasn't there.
"It's just what comes up over-straining that leg," Madam Pomfrey assured them, "she ended up sick from it last term too."
They both remembered that day close to the Christmas holidays when she'd been forced to hop around on her good leg, because putting too much weight on her bad leg had been agony.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Ron demanded.
Hope gave him a sour look. "If I told you lot every time I was mildly inconvenienced, I'd still need a cane to walk."
"Be nice," Madam Pomfrey chided as she held out a thin bottle filled with a purple liquid that earned her an apprehensive look from her patient. "I want you to stay up here while the inflammation goes down with your fever.
Hope glowered at the potion and Madam Pomfrey gave her a look. "It's no different than an anti-inflammatory that muggles have, and I can promise you that."
Hope huffed and took her potion.
"I can send for some food to be sent up here if you like," Madam Pomfrey continued.
"But its Halloween!" Ron complained, however, Hermione's attention was on Hope's face which looked strangely closed off. Not that Hermione had never seen that expression on her face before, because she certainly had seen it before; the resignation at being alone.
"Can we eat up here with Hope?" she asked suddenly, drawing three pairs of eyes to her instantly and she could feel the heat rising in her cheeks.
Ron looked like he was going to protest one minute, but then he changed his mind. "Yeah, Madam Pomfrey, can we?"
Madam Pomfrey looked between the three of their faces, taking in the pleading eyes of Hermione and Ron and the dumbfounded ones of Hope. She sighed, honestly, the things she did for this troublesome group of second years.
"Only, and only, if Hope stays on that bed and the three of you try not to make much of a mess." She gave them a severe look that Hope had sometimes been on the receiving end of by Professor McGonagall. "All right?"
"Yes!" the three second years promised quickly, and within minutes, they were tucking into a rather lavish dinner in the hospital wing. It was nice for them to be on their own for once, without everyone else making noise around them…sometimes some peace and quiet was very much desired.
The food, of course, was delicious as always, and their plates kept refilling themselves once they were cleaned. Hope hadn't eaten so much in days, due to her painfully throbbing head and leg, but now she was happy to eat to her heart's content.
Hope and Hermione didn't have too much difficulty following Madam Pomfrey's instructions, but Ron had always been a little bit of a messy eater, so that caused a few problems, though not very many. A mild cleaning charm erased the small mess from existence once they had all finished and Madam Pomfrey had checked over Hope again to make sure the potion was working, which it was, and then she sent them all on their way.
"That was a nice of her, to let us eat up there with you," Hermione said as they descended the staircase.
Hope shrugged her shoulders. "That's Poppy for you." Her grin widened at the uncomfortable cough Hermione gave at her use of the woman's first name. Hope ran a finger over the wall as they walked; tracing over the rough ridges and gorges of the stone, and it was then that she heard the voice that had long plagued her thoughts.
"…rip…tear…kill…"
Her feet firmly glued to the ground where she stood, quite unable to move. She pressed her hand more firmly into the wall, as if she would be able to feel the vibrations of the voice, and then she pressed her ear to the wall.
"Hope?" Ron was eyeing her curiously. "What're you—?"
"Shut up, Ron," she hissed, straining her ears so she might listen more closely, "the voice, I can hear it again, it's back."
Hermione and Ron exchanged looks that Hope couldn't see, but they clearly thought something was amiss, because they couldn't hear anything.
"…so hungry…for so long…"
Her ear was going to bruise by how hard she was pushing it into the wall, listening intently.
"…kill…time to kill…"
The voice was growing fainter with every word…heading up the stairs. Hope rushed after it, running through the Entrance Hall and then up to the First Floor, following it as fast as her weak legs could carry her.
"Hope, where are we going?" Hermione yelled from behind her as she and Ron raced after their friend.
Hope only made a shushing motion at them.
"…I smell blood…I SMELL BLOOD!"
The voice was quite loud now and was echoing in her ears, making her stomach roil as the soles of her shoes slapped against the floor. She didn't stop running until they'd reached a deserted corridor that Hope didn't recognize and then she froze up completely.
What was that…hanging from the torch bracket?
"What was that all about?" Ron complained between pants for breath, bracing his hands against his knees. "I can't believe you can run that fast…" He didn't seem to have noticed how strangely quiet Hope was being, until Hermione gasped beside him, pointing up at the wall.
"Look…oh my—"
The shining letters were illuminated by the ominous glow of the torchlight.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.
ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
"What's that…is that Mrs. Norris?" Ron balked, gazing in horror at the cat that was hanging beneath the message like an immovable shadow. It was indeed Mrs. Norris, and she was staring ahead with unblinking, glazed eyes.
Hope could feel the bile rising in her throat as she stepped away, the water soaking through her shoes. She could feel Ron's hand on her elbow, keeping her upright as she stumbled over her own feet.
"Let's get out of here," Ron said tersely, glancing down the corridor but seeing no one.
"Why?" Hope asked blankly. "Shouldn't we do something?"
"No," Ron said seriously, "trust me; we don't want to be found here. We should leave."
But it was too late for that, the distant sounds of the rest of the school leaving the Great Hall could be heard echoing through the hall. If only Hope could have used her flashing…but then reality rained on her parade. The noise, however, abruptly faded at the sight of Hope, Ron, and Hermione standing in the middle of the hall and the sight of Mrs. Norris and the words she was lying under.
And then there was a shout, a shout that stirred anger within Hope. "Enemies of the heir, beware! You'll be next Mudbloods!"
Draco Malfoy seemed to take great pleasure at the sight of Mrs. Norris' body. Ron tightened his hand around her elbow in case she felt the need to sock the arrogant Pure-blood in the face, which, she had to admit, she was nursing the desire to do.
"I'm going to kill him," she hissed under her breath so that only Ron and Hermione could hear her.
"Not where there are witnesses."
Hope blinked and stared at Hermione as if she'd never quite seen her properly, and the girl gave her a very firm look that told Hope if it had been any other insult, she wouldn't have responded in such a way.
Filch's voice could be heard coming through the crowd, and Hope gave a mental wince. Everyone in Hogwarts, absolutely everyone knew of Filch's deep affection for his cat, and Hope knew he wouldn't take her condition well.
"My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" he screeched upon catching sight of Hope standing the nearest to the feline. "You! You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll—"
Hope opened her mouth, an affronted expression plastered onto her face, but she didn't have enough time to defend herself before a voice interrupted her.
"Argus!"
It was Dumbledore, arriving with the rest of the staff, eyes raking over them, the cat hanging from the brazier, and the words on the wall. In a matter of seconds, he had removed the cat.
Hope's heart beat against her ribs when Dumbledore spoke again. "Come with me, Argus. You too Miss Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."
He couldn't possibly think that she was one that killed Mrs. Norris, did he? She, Ron, and Hermione were just in the wrong place at the wrong time! But when had that ever mattered to adults? It had never really mattered if Hope wasn't even around, she'd still gotten the brunt of punishments by the Dursleys; it was more of the fact that she existed that they found to be a personal slight to them.
So, she and her friends followed the headmaster and several of their teachers into Lockhart's room -his being the closest and him being so eager to accommodate-, feeling as though all the eyes were on her as they moved through the crowd.
Hope sank into the nearest seat and Ron and Hermione followed suit. Hope tugged subconsciously on her earlobe as if believing that would cause the voice to leave her mind, but it hadn't. She sighed tiredly, switching to rubbing a few fingers against her left temple.
Dumbledore was inspecting the cat closely, his face bent so close that his crooked nose was probably being tickled by the long hairs of Mrs. Norris' fur. Hope couldn't help but wonder how a closer look was going to make a difference; Mrs. Norris was still going to be dead.
Filch was inconsolable, and Lockhart wasn't making it any better with his comments. "It was definitely a curse that killed her –probably the Transmogrifian Torture– I've seen it used I've seen it used many times, so unlucky that I wasn't there, I know the very counter-curse that would have saved her…"
A stifled snort came from Hope's general direction, but instead of being told off by Professor McGonagall, which was likely, Hope noticed that her Head of House's mouth just faintly twitched; she must've liked him even less than Hope.
What Hope really wanted was for Lockhart to shut up, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen any time soon. He really had no understanding of other people, did he? His orders were only making Filch sob worse and even as much as she didn't like him, it reminded her too much of the gut-wrenching sobs of a father of a child in the muggle hospital that had passed away suddenly in the next room over.
It was a painful sound.
"…I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogao, a series of attacks, the full story's in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once…"
Hope rolled her eyes at Ron who was staring at their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor like he was out of the world, and not in a good way.
"She's not dead Argus," Dumbledore said finally straightening up from his examination.
"Not dead?" Filch's voice was high and shaking from his tears. "But why's she all –all stiff and frozen?"
"She has been petrified," said Dumbledore, making Hope frown. Petrification was rare, it had been more common in the sixteenth century than any other century of magical history, not counting the instances in Ancient Egypt and Greece that were only partially recorded, and Hope had only found that whilst flipping through pages in one of the many books in her trunk. There were very few creatures that could petrify, as it was a "natural talent" and the closest anyone had ever gotten to replicating it with a spell was with the Petrificus Totalus spell. "But how, I cannot say…"
"Ask her!"
Hope blinked owlishly as all the attention was turned on her. She balked in incredulity.
"No second year could have done this," Dumbledore said with certainty, his eyes drifting over to where Hope sat. Her body was rigid and her eyes icy cold and completely black, his fists balled tight once and relaxed. And she had never looked less like her parents.
"She did it! She did it! You saw what she wrote on that wall!" Filch shrieked, jabbing a finger at Hope who stood up angrily.
"I never go down that corridor and I'm not even close to being tall enough to write that message!" Hope snapped heatedly.
"If I might speak, Headmaster," Snape spoke with his silky voice, making Hope's eyebrow twitch in annoyance. "Potter and her friends may have may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was she in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't she at the Halloween feast?"
Hope's mouth snapped shut and a distinctly pissed off expression clouded her eyes. Hope was very private about her visits to the hospital wing; most times she didn't even tell Ron and Hermione when she was dropping by. Snape would have to rip out her tongue first before she admitted to being in the hospital wing.
Her fingers curled into balled up fists.
"Well?" he prompted with sneer.
Before Hope had the opportunity to advise him on a perfect place to shove his wand, Hermione and Ron had slapped their hands over her mouth, smothering the words.
"I suggest, Headmaster," Snape said slowly, taking in the hateful glare Hope was throwing his way, "that Potter is not being entirely truthful. It might be a good idea if she were deprived of certain privileges until she is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel she should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until she is ready to be honest."
"Ooo ud!" Hope said behind the two hands over her mouth.
"Really, Severus," Professor McGonagall interrupted swiftly, her eyebrows drawn together in irritation, "I see no reason to stop the girl from playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong."
"And there won't be any," Hope added, finally wrestling Ron and Hermione's hands from her face. "Because I didn't do anything!"
"Innocent until proven guilty," Dumbledore said with a slight nod to McGonagall.
That didn't seem to please Snape or Filch, but there was little that could be done. Hope and her friends hadn't done anything wrong, and so Hope, Ron, and Hermione found themselves being escorted back to the common room by their Head of House. Ron and Hermione were quite silent about the whole thing and Hope was very tight-lipped. So, Professor McGonagall held her back as the others entered the common room.
"Miss Potter, next time you are questioned, perhaps it would be best to just say you were in the hospital wing," Professor McGonagall said dryly.
Hope scoffed lightly, digging her hands into her pockets, looking particularly incensed. "It's none of anyone's business what I do in my spare time."
And she clamored through the portrait hole without a look back.
The Chamber of Secrets was on everyone's mind for the weeks that followed the "Mrs. Norris Incident," as it had been dubbed, even Hope's, though she was more worried about it than anyone else, even if she didn't show it. The Chamber of Secrets was something Salazar Slytherin had made himself, a chamber that supposedly held a terrible monster, it was a rumor that Salazar had encouraged, though he never mentioned if there was any truth to it, not physically or even in that little journal of his. Heir of Slytherin could easily refer to her, honestly, even though she hadn't petrified anyone or written on any walls.
She'd never felt like informing anyone about that specific relation, and now she wanted to do it even less with how a lot of students were beginning to regard her with increased suspicion…which was ridiculous as it was infuriating. Dumbledore had singled out Ron and Hermione, too…but it was always Hope that it fell to. And it was hard not to feel disheartened.
Either way, she was stressed and anxious and beginning to feel like she did when she was in the hospital.
"Miss Potter? A moment of your time?"
Hope paused before exiting the Charms classroom, waving her hand at Ron and Hermione, telling them not to wait up as she turned to face Professor Flitwick.
The short-statured man was easily one of her most favorite teachers, right up there with Professor McGonagall. He seemed to find her sarcasm quite humorous and enjoyed explaining the theory behind certain spells when Hope was having a hard time.
"Yes, Professor?" Hope said politely, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder.
"Hope." She blinked at the use of her first name. "No one truly thinks you had anything to do with Mrs. Norris' attack, you needn't be so worried."
"I'm not worried, Professor," Hope said, her tongue tipped with annoyance. "I know I didn't have anything to do with it, and that's what matters." Even aloud it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
Professor Flitwick gave her an almost sad smile that Hope didn't really care for. "Look after yourself, Miss Potter."
Hope tipped an invisible hat to him. "Will do."
"What was that about?" Hermione asked as soon as she'd caught up to the two of them.
"Professor Flitwick just wanted to say that he knew I didn't have anything to do with Mrs. Norris," Hope said with a careless wave of her hand.
"Nice of him," Ron grunted, noticing several students around them becoming skittish at the sight of his best mate. He glared at them. It might not have been as impressive as Hope's but it fit the bill quite well.
If Hope noticed them, she didn't comment, but then Hope was always able to brush off things like that, or, at the very least, appear to brush them off.
"I don't suppose we're going to properly see you for a complete day?" Hope called out after Hermione who was racing ahead of them in the direction of the library.
"No!" Hermione called back to them, giving them a brief wave as she jumped up the stairs two steps at a time.
"Do you think she's going to tell us what she's looking up in the library?" Ron asked her.
"Doubtful," Hope drawled.
"Do people always assume you're the bad guy?"
Hope glanced at him, surprised by the line of questioning, and then she smirked. "Usually, yeah," she admitted, "I've got the face of a troublemaker, didn't you know?" Her words came out a bit too dry and bitter to make the sarcasm work, though.
Ron considered her out of the corner of his eye, noticing her hair had steadily lost the red she preferred throughout the day. It wasn't quite black yet, but it was getting there. "By the way, why aren't you and George talking anymore?" Ron asked curiously. "Did you two have a fight or something?" As ludicrous as it sounded, Hope and George fighting, there wasn't really a reason for why they'd ceased talking.
Her smirk froze on her face and then she was streaking in the opposite direction as soon as Ron's elder twin brothers rounded the corner. Ron cast a glance towards them before following his best mate's speeding away steps.
"Alright, spill it."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," George said in a vague voice, barely glancing at his twin, which was a first for him. Fred arched an eyebrow at George's inability to meet his eye.
"I'm talking about that." Fred was pointing a finger into the distance where Hope could be seen, nearly flying as she moved in her haste to get away from George. It was strange that she was actually averse to the Weasley twin; Fred would have never thought it possible, until he saw it today. "I've never seen her avoid you before!"
Angelina was glaring at George as well. "You did something," she accused.
George opened his mouth, floundering. George would have never thought that he would've found himself in this position with Hope. She was avoiding him, actually avoiding him! Every time he came even remotely close to approaching her, she went tearing in the opposite direction, and he didn't even know why.
"I don't even know what I said!" he complained, burrowing his hands into his hair.
But that wasn't completely true. He knew exactly what he'd said because the way she'd looked at him had been so startled, so offended and so very disappointed. And that stung more.
George stared after her with sullen look, watching as his little brother raced after his friend.
"Hey, Hope!" When he finally caught up with her, she was sitting on a stone rail of the viaduct, a favorite haunt of hers, he'd come to find out, with a deep frown settled on her face.
"Never thought I'd see the day where you and George ever fought," Ron said in a light voice that told Hope he was trying hard to make the conversation not quite so awkward, which was very hard to do, considering he was talking about his best mate and his brother. "What'd he do wrong?"
Ron never seemed to assume that it was Hope that had done anything wrong, that always meant a great deal to Hope, even when she often felt that she didn't deserve it.
"Nobody thinks that you're the great-great-granddaughter of Salazar Slytherin."
Hope's eyes narrowed into angry slits. "He just…" She sighed, raking a hand through her already wind-blown hair, making her locks look even wilder than before. "He said something that made me mad." The way he'd said it made it sound like she couldn't possibly be related to Slytherin, and that was what really got her fired up.
"What kind of something?" Ron prompted, canting his head at her.
Hope shook her head. "Don't worry about it, its not that big of a deal."
"It is to you," Ron replied stoutly and Hope spared him a smile, jumping off the rail and stumbled as her feet came into contact with the floor. "We should get going; we've still got that Medieval Assembly of European Wizards to write."
Ron smacked a hand against his face, having completely forgotten about the essay, it was due in about an hour! "Why did you run out here in the completely opposite direction of the library?!"
Hope cracked a smile, her mask of calm broke, which had been Ron's intent, and he was pleased that it had succeeded. Hope looped her arm around the crook of his elbow with a grin. "Lead on, shining knight."
Ron's ears turned a bright red, and she couldn't help but release a swift laugh that echoed in the silence as they made their way slowly back to the castle, up a large number of stairs, before finally reaching the library at long last.
However, finding the proper book from which to write the essay was increasingly difficult, as a large number of students were in the library writing the very same essay. At least, it was a difficult hunt for the proper book, until a thick tome was slid Hope's way.
She barely looked up in time to catch sight of a ponytail of blonde hair whip around the corner. The scrap of parchment inside the cover said: For last year. We're even.
So, it must have been Daphne Greengrass, then. It was true that they weren't friends and that they hardly spoke to each other, but it seemed Daphne knew a little about debts, even small ones, such as being offered a book. Hope wouldn't have counted it as a debt, more of a favor, really, but she wasn't going to press the issue.
Hermione seemed to have vanished, which was pretty impressive because you couldn't really vanish from inside a library. Hope had already finished her essay and was looking around for her when Ron began to mutter furiously under his breath.
"This essay's impossible!" he grumbled. "Hermione's already finished hers, and its four feet and seven inches!" He cast her a look. "And you know how small her handwriting is."
Hope's lips lifted into a smirk before she pulled his essay towards her, tracing a finger over the lines of Ron's scrawl, her eyes moving back and forth as she read it over. "Well, you listed everyone involved in the assembly, but you've forgotten to include the reason for the assembly in the first place."
"Ah!" Ron pulled his essay towards him and the book they had been sharing as well, rifling through the pages until he found what he was looking for. "Perfect! I bet this'll make it to three feet!"
It was at this time that Hermione finally reappeared.
Hope arched an eyebrow at the irritated expression splashed across her face. "What's up? You look like someone stole your favorite book when you weren't looking."
Ron hid his snort with a hacking cough that earned him a glare from Hermione and Madam Pince.
"Oh, shut up." Hermione pulled back the chair next to Hope and sat down hard, giving Ron the opportunity to turn half of his attention to his essay. "All the copies of Hogwarts, A History have been taken out and it'll be another two weeks before one is free. I wish I hadn't left mine at home, but there was no way I could fit it in my trunk with all the Lockhart books."
Hope cocked an eyebrow, giving off the appearance of confusion while in the worry set in and she swallowed nervously.
"And why do you want it?" she asked, keeping her tone deceivingly light.
"The same reason everyone else does," Hermione said in a "duh!" voice, "to read up on the Chamber of Secrets."
"Do you even know if the Chamber of Secrets is even mentioned in Hogwarts, A History?" Hope inquired, nervously tapping her fingers against the wood of the table.
"I must have read in there at some time," Hermione muttered to herself, for the most part ignoring Hope and Ron.
"Done!" Ron set down his quill in relief, leaning back in his chair before checking his watch. "And with ten minutes to spare! Excellent!"
Hermione glared at him again. "You should have finished last week like I did!"
"Why aren't you yelling at Hope, then?" Ron demanded as they left the library not too long after, heading towards their History of Magic class with Binns. "She didn't finish hers until a few minutes before me!"
"Hope's been sick," Hermione said with an airy wave of her hand, "what's your excuse?"
It was almost funny how they could talk about Hope like she wasn't there, and sometimes it annoyed Hope, but right now it didn't. She worried about the knowledge of the Chamber, she worried that people would find out of her relation to its creator, and that was a connection she hoped none would make, because she had no love for the Founder of Slytherin House; he had done far too much bad to outweigh the good.
She gave a silent sigh of relief when they finally made it to History of Magic, settling down into a boring lecture. Hope generally tuned Binns out -he wasn't much of a teacher, preferring always to drone on about goblin rebellions and neglecting other crucial parts of history, some of which Hope found very interesting-, and today was no different. She pulled out her quill and began taking her own notes on the bits of the passages that would most likely appear on the test of the chapter.
However, she like the rest of the Gryffindors turned and stared when Hermione's arm shot up into the air, waving around impatiently.
Hope wasn't sure if anyone had ever interrupted the ghostly professor before, they must not have, going off of how Binns paused and stared at Hermione in surprise.
"Miss-er—?" Binns had always had a bit of an issue with getting anyone's names right, though she had to wonder how he ever passed back papers without knowing their names.
"Granger, Professor," Hermione said, a little out of breath, "I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets."
Hope's heart stuttered in her chest, and she glanced up and caught Binns meeting her eye nervously…did all the ghosts know of her relation to Salazar Slytherin? She remembered that the previous year, the Grey Lady had known instantly of her connection to the man, but could the same be said for all ghosts? Her heart fell into her stomach. It seemed so.
"My subject is History of Magic. I deal with facts, Miss Granger, not myths and legends," the apparition professor corrected in his croaky voice as he returned to the text, "Now, in September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers—"
But Hermione's hand had shot up again, interrupting him for a second time.
"Miss Grant?" And he'd forgotten her name again.
"Please, sir," Hermione said imploringly, "don't legends always have a basis in fact?"
Hope pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation. Why on earth couldn't she just leave it alone?
"Well, yes," Binns admitted, "one could argue that, I suppose. However, the legend of which you speak is such a very sensational, even ludicrous tale—" He didn't seem remotely keen about telling them until he looked out at all the eager faces watching him and listening to every word he said.
"Oh, very well," he conceded. "Let me see…the Chamber of Secrets…
"You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago –the precise date is uncertain— by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built the castle together far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."
Ah, yes, the famed Witch Trials. The Muggles had barely caught any real witches or wizards, but it was enough to make them hide their magic when in public.
"For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted into Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school."
Hope frowned slightly. Godric and Salazar had started off as fairly good friends, she knew from his journal, but after that argument, they never reconciled and Salazar died alone, bitter with resentment. It was kind of sad how south his life went.
"Reliable historical sources tell us this much. But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing. Slytherin, according to the legend," he added, "sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all those who were unworthy to study magic."
"The whole thing is arrant nonsense, of course," he said, as the rest of the class waited for him to tell them more, but it was clear that he had nothing more to say. "Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist. A tale told to frighten the gullible." And by gullible, it was clear that he meant all of them.
"Sir –" Hermione interrupted again, "what exactly do you mean by the 'horror within' the Chamber?"
"That is believed to be some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control," Binns said coolly.
In the wake of his words, many theories began to crop up, forcing the ghostly professor to stall his lecture in order to calm them down, and even that didn't occur until the bell rang signaling the end of class.
"You two go on ahead," Hope said to Ron and Hermione, "there's something I want to talk to Binns about."
They didn't question her, for which Hope was eternally grateful as they turned on their heels and exited the classroom, leaving her alone with the slightly transparent bluish ghost.
"I thought you might want a word," Binns grumbled, more to himself than to her.
"You know about me, don't you?" Hope guessed. "You know about…you know."
Binns surveyed her in an almost tired fashion, his opaque eyes fastening on hers, as much as they could in his transparent state. "Yes."
"Do all the ghosts know?" Hope asked weakly.
"Only a few," Binns conceded, "others are not quite so adept to seeing…his blood flows within you, to those skilled enough, we can recognize the signs."
"Great," Hope mumbled under her breath, "this is exactly what I need today."
"We'll keep our silence, as we have with your father and grandfather before you," he continued. "The ghosts of Hogwarts are not dishonorable beings."
Hope's lips twitched upwards into the barest of smiles. "Thanks."
He gave a slight inclination of the head before collecting all the scrolls of parchment that was their homework and floating through the wall, leaving Hope alone in the room trying to slow her erratic heart rate.
In the coming days, Hope began to notice increased watchful eyes towards her, earning the watchers a pair of stony eyes staring at them unnervingly until they looked away. It was obvious that everyone thought she was the Heir of Slytherin, which was only half true.
Yes, she was descended from him, but it wasn't as though she shared his beliefs.
She was getting so sick of all the whispers that now followed her everywhere she went, as if waiting for her to slip up and announce "Yeah, I really am the Heir or Slytherin and I like to send out monsters after cats and Muggle-borns in my spare time," which was never going to happen.
Hope had become quite irate in the presence of the stares and whispers, something all of her professors were all quick to note. Professors McGonagall and Flitwick were pretty understanding, given the situation, while Professor Sprout tried to be as calm as she could when dealing with Hope's sarcastic tongue, but Snape and Lockhart were the worst.
She was going to die in Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, she just knew it.
Snape was, of course, as insufferable as he'd always been, so that wasn't surprising, but Lockhart had taken to reading out passages from his books instead of actually teaching them anything (the only thing Hope was learning was "How to spot a fraud") and most times he brought Hope to the front of the class to act out parts with him. Hope's face was so murderous that it was quickly becoming the most humorous class for the Gryffindor second years.
She was becoming so angry and miserable, that one day, late at night, Michael the suit of armor found her sitting with her legs dangling in the free air at the top of the Astronomy Tower, asking him quite solemnly if Salazar Slytherin was really as bad as everyone said.
"I suppose that depends on your point of view," Michael conceded ambiguously and Hope gave him an annoyed look, turning her eyes beyond the endless night, to the stars in the clear sky. "There's two sides to every coin, Milady, and Salazar Slytherin was no different."
Hope turned to look at him in surprise as the armor settled down beside her, the metal creaking and groaning. "Salazar Slytherin killed many, wizard and not, he didn't discriminate against those who attacked him…but he wasn't a senseless murderer, not the way history portrays him. It's a hard lesson that you will have to learn."
She looked away, thinking about Quirrell burning at her touch. "You sound pretty certain I'll have to," she muttered glumly.
Michael shrugged. "You have an air of destiny about you."
It was a strange thing to say, but there was no hint of doubt in his voice, and it made Hope look away quickly.
"As to why Salazar Slytherin was the way that he was," Michael continued on, "I suppose someone can only take so much tragedy before it hardens their heart completely…you know, of course, that Lord Salazar was born into an ancient and noble magical family, but that several years after his birth, his parents and younger brother were killed by muggles who burned them at the stake for witchcraft, and he only survived because he had been out playing in the field at the time and had hidden in the tall grass when they took them away."
It wasn't really a question, but Hope nodded all the same.
"He grew up, shaded with disdain for the beings that killed his family, but it was Lady Morea who taught him to let go of all that pain and anger and loss and start to live."
Hope chewed on the inside of her cheek. "So, he was happy?"
"Exceedingly happy." She could practically hear his smile. "Morea Marinos brought out the best in him. She gave him a daughter who, even without a drop of magic in her veins, became a revered and renowned pirate captain—"
Hope balked at that. A powerful wizard like that…having a squib for a daughter and not throwing her out? From what Ron had said about squibs, that was usually how they were treated.
"And then she gave him a son who was so very like him…a son that delved too deep and too dark, leaving death and darkness in his wake."
Hope swallowed thickly. "What'd he do?"
"He killed his mother, his sister, and his sister's husband, leaving Salazar's only grandson unscathed," Michael explained quietly.
Horror twisted in her stomach.
"He was horrified once he'd realized what he'd done, but he couldn't take it back," Michael's voice had gentled. "The only way to fix it, he thought, was to rip the magic out of him…an act that cost him his life, which perhaps might've been his goal all along."
Hope sat there, processing his words with lead in her stomach. Thinking how uncomfortable she felt when magic was used on her, like worms writhing under her skin, how she wanted to duck when a wand was pointed her way…and Salazar's son had ripped it out of himself, not considering if he lived or died…that was so very…Hope.
"What about Salazar?" she asked thickly.
"He descended into madness and grief, emerging as a much more solemn man when he met Godric Gryffindor for a second time. He conceded to assist him in his endeavor to craft a school for those of magic where they could learn in peace and quiet and have no fear of prosecution. At the time, it was a revolutionary idea, and one that reaped benefits, because up until that point, young witches and wizards were taught in the solitude of their home…but, as you know, Salazar Slytherin refused to teach those with 'impure' blood running through their veins, because he held a deep mistrust and disgust towards Muggles and those borne of them, due to the tragedy of his family. Some prejudice can come from terrible experiences, but that's no excuse. Those beliefs have shaped centuries of hatred for Muggle-borns, and if he were still alive, he would be horrified of how his image was twisted."
Michael's armored fingers dropped to Hope's shoulder. "You do not bear the weight of his sins, Milady, do not try. But there are still dangers within these walls, more than you might think possible."
Hope frowned. "You mean the Chamber? And the person that opened it?"
"More even than that," Michael pressed. "The spell that keeps my soul bound to this armor is failing and I fear…you are on your own from here on out."
Hope had been on her own since she was a child, and while Michael had been a comforting and steady presence…he was very old and Hope didn't want to be the reason to keep him chained to one life like Salazar Slytherin had.
"I'll be all right," she assured him carefully before inclining her head politely. "Thank you, Sir Michael Richmond, for your dedication to my family."
The helmet bowed more deeply. "Milady, it has been the honor of my life."
And, as usual, Hope was left with infinitely more questions than answers, her throat aching to scream.
"I can't believe you're fighting with him!"
"Can we please not talk about this right now?" Hope griped through gritted teeth. "And we are not fighting, we're just not talking; there's a difference."
"Not much," Hermione muttered as they walked past the writing on the wall, pausing to look at the glistening words.
"Are those…scorch marks?" Hope asked suddenly, drawing their attention away from the wall and towards the floor at where there were indeed black marks etched into the stone. "Here…and here. Where did they come from?"
"No idea," Ron frowned, kneeling on the floor to scratch at the blackened area. "You ever read about something that could make scorch marks?"
Hope frowned. "I don't read up much on magical animals…but I don't think I've ever heard of anything like that."
"Hey, you guys," Hermione called over to them, "look at this. This is funny…"
She was standing over by the window which had been cracked open slightly, though which a rapid line of spiders was crawling out of, as if eager to get away from the castle.
"That's strange," Hope said, leaning her head in close, "have you ever seen spiders act like that?"
"Not at all," Hermione agreed, "what about you, Ron? Ron?"
Both girls turned to see their other friend as far from them as possible to be still in earshot, though his body was tensed as if ready to dash off in the opposite direction as soon as he possibly could.
"What's wrong with you?" Hope asked in bemusement.
"I-don't-like-spiders," Ron said in a disjointed manner that made Hope and Hermione exchange surprised looks.
"I never knew that," Hermione said, "you've used them in potions loads of times—"
"Yeah, well, I don't mind them dead," Ron snapped, avoiding looking at the little black arachnids crawling out of the window. "I just don't like the way they move."
Hermione couldn't stifle a giggle and Ron's ears burned an angry red and he opened his mouth—
"All right," Hope said quickly, interjecting before a full-on war could start right in front of her, over spiders, no less, "ignoring Ron's arachnophobia…guys, wasn't there a lot of water on the floor?"
Hermione blinked, glancing towards the ground. "Yeah, didn't you slip in it?"
Hope nodded. "Where did it all come from?"
"It was level with this door," Ron said, eager to be off the subject of spiders, "but…that's a girl's toilet, we can't go in there."
Hope couldn't hide the snort. "Well, Ron, Hermione and I have to use the loo somehow, that would be quite difficult without using a girl's toilet."
Ron blushed bright red, amusing the girls further. "Oh, you know what I mean!"
"Let's go have a look around," Hope said, wrenching the door open, "oh, come on, Ron! It's just Moaning Myrtle's place!"
"Who's—?"
Hope had only been into this toilet once during school, and that was because she had really needed to use the loo, or else she wouldn't have bothered even coming into the bathroom in the first place. It was one bathroom that you wouldn't want to do your business in because it was by far the gloomiest, dampest, dreariest bathroom Hope had ever seen, and once you factored in the overly emotional ghost that haunted it, it was practically unapproachable.
The ghost in question was hanging in midair as if sitting on a floating, invisible seat, which was highly plausible, now that Hope thought about it.
"Hello, Myrtle," Hope said calmly; Myrtle didn't react very well to cheery tones.
"Hello," she said sullenly, her eyes falling on Ron's. "This is a girls' bathroom. He's not a girl."
"No," Hope agreed, speaking before Hermione could, because Hermione could be a little obtuse sometimes about others feelings and Hope knew better how to deal with the ghost. "He's here with me and Hermione. We wanted to ask you if you noticed anything on the night of Halloween. Did you?"
Myrtle took in a deep shaking breath and Hope waited for the waterworks, but surprisingly, they didn't come, instead Myrtle began to speak with a dramatic air. "I wasn't paying attention. Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm – that I'm—"
"Already dead?" Ron finished for her, jumping when she gave a keening wail and dived into the OUT OF ORDER toilet, spraying water everywhere.
"You don't need to point it out," Hermione admonished, "she's very sensitive."
"She's always like that?" Ron asked aghast.
"Typically, she's a lot worse," Hope said with an airy wave of her hand as they exited the room, "and that is why no one uses the bathroom."
"RON!"
All three of them jumped wildly at the loud yell, swiveling around to see Percy Weasley gaping at them.
"That's a girls' bathroom! What were you—?" he gasped, his voice raising an octave.
"Just having a look around," Ron said quickly, seeing where his older brother's mind was going, "for clues, you know—"
Percy swelled in a manner that looked remarkably like a blowfish -Hope watching in fascination to see if he would expand any more- as he strode over to them, ushering them away from the bathroom door. "Get-away-from-there- Don't you care what this looks like? Coming back here while everyone's at dinner—"
Hope's face had gone completely white with anger and she pushed herself away from the prefect and stalked away from him and down the very stairs that he had just come up.
"Great going, Percy," Ron snapped, "now she's in one of her moods again."
Percy opened his mouth to defend himself, when Hermione said in disappointment, "I can't believe you just said that to her! Everyone's been saying that about her, but I never would have expected it from a Gryffindor, especially one who knows how she acts and doesn't act."
"We have to go find our innocent friend, Percy," Ron added, "and apologize for what you just said, so goodbye."
And then the two headed after her, leaving Percy gaping and feeling a twinge of remorse.
Calming Hope down was relatively easy when you knew her as well as Ron and Hermione did, but finding her first was an entirely different matter. She wasn't at the viaduct bridge like she usually was, or the Astronomy Tower, it was only by trudging up to the Owlery that they actually managed to find her.
She was leaning against one of the walls, tracing her fingers lightly over Hedwig's feathers, humming softly.
"Hope?" Hermione asked cautiously. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," she muttered, "absolutely bloody perfect, that's what I am."
She cast a glare towards Hermione, who, to her credit, did not flinch, despite how dark they were burning.
"Ignore Percy," Ron added, "he's always been a bit obsessed about appearances."
"You think he's the only one?" Hope snorted. "Please." The Dursleys were a great example, but she was also talking about probably about four-fifths of Hogwarts as well. "I'm starting to really hate this year."
"You and me both," Hermione mumbled. "Come on, you don't you come back down to the Great Hall with us?"
"I'm not hungry."
"You can still walk down with us, can't you?" Ron prodded with a slight smile. "Come on…"
Hope tried in vain to keep that frown on her face, but one end of her lips twitched upwards and she finally agreed to leave her vigil by Hedwig's side and to make herself go down the steps.
"Anyways," Ron said, issuing a long exhalation of breath that turned to fog in the cool air, "I was saying that Malfoy could be the Heir of Slytherin."
Hope bit the inside of her mouth.
"And Hermione says she might have a way to prove it."
Hope arched an eyebrow at the brunette whose cheeks dusted pink. "Might have a way," she agreed. "Of course, it would be difficult, and dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect—"
Hope frowned thoughtfully. "Are you thinking about what I think you're thinking about?"
"Quite possibly," Hermione agreed.
"Sometime this year would be nice, you two," Ron drawled out in annoyance.
"What Hermione is suggesting is a way to transform ourselves into Slytherins and interrogate Malfoy without him knowing it's us," Hope explained in a dry tone, knowing that it was entirely pointless, there was no way in hell that Malfoy could possibly be related to her through that line; if he was, she'd eat her own shoe.
"But that's impossible," Ron complained.
"Not entirely," Hermione disagreed, "if we had a bit of Polyjuice Potion we could do it."
"What's that?" Ron asked flummoxed.
"It's a potion that can transform you into someone else," Hope explained. "Malfoy wouldn't know it was us if we were disguised as three Slytherins."
"But what happens if it goes wrong and we're stuck looking like a couple of Slytherins forever?"
"It wears off after a while," Hermione said calmly. "But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions, and it's bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library."
"Oh, you won't need to worry about that," Hope said suddenly, "I own it."
Ron and Hermione turned to stare at her. Hermione was gaping at her. "Where did you get that book?"
Hope crossed her arms uncomfortably. "It was in the pile of books that I grabbed from my vault and that has been sitting in the library in my trunk for the past year or so." They were still staring at her as they rounded up the stairs to the common room. "Hang on, I'll run off and grab it."
"Do you ever wonder why she has the strangest books?" Ron asked Hermione, still staring after the Potter as she ascended the stairs to the girls' dormitory.
"Honestly, I've given up wondering about Hope," Hermione said, rubbing a hand over her forehead, "it's best just to go with it."
That, Ron could agree on.
Hope descended the stairs not several seconds later, clutching in her hands a large weighty tome that looked as though it had mold growing on it.
"Ghastly."
"Shut up." Hope ran a finger down the index, finding the page in question that she was looking for and flipping to it slowly so as not to damage the other pages. "Here it is, the Polyjuice Potion…Hermione's right, it's incredibly difficult."
"I thought you knew all about it?" Ron asked in surprise, earning him an eye roll.
"I wasn't looking at the ingredients or the directions, genius," she said with the barest of humor. "I was more interested in the effects of the potion."
"Lacewing flies, leeches," Hermione was muttering, looking over the list of ingredients required, "fluxweed, and knotgrass. Well, they're easy enough, we can get them from the student's store-cupboard, but…powdered horn or a bicorn, shredded skin of a boomslang…and we'll have to cook it somewhere where it can't be seen."
Hope stood up suddenly. "I've got the best place. Come on, follow me!"
Ron and Hermione were doing an awful lot of chasing Hope around today. They leapt up stairs and raced down corridors until Hope finally came to a stop in an area of the castle they had never been to before.
"Where are we?"
"The fourth floor, Michael told me about this place a while ago, but I've only been up once or twice," Hope said, smoothing her foot over the stone floor, speaking clearly and saying, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth."
"You've read the Iliad?" Hermione asked, surprise coloring her voice, her eyes widening.
"It was actually my grandmother who came up with the password," Hope said generously, "these are her private quarters…well, they would've been, really its more of an honorary thing, I think."
"What—?"
But then the stones of the wall had slid outward as if they were steps intended to be trodden on.
"Up we go," Hope said, placing one foot on it and then the next, pressing a hand against the trapdoor on the ceiling and opening it, hoisting herself into the hidden room. "Come on, you two!"
It took them a little bit of time to finally clamor up and onto the new landing.
"Whoa!" Ron said in bafflement, staring around in surprise and awe. The area was wide and spacious with only the edge closest to the window having a carpet thrown down over the hard stone floor, upon which a couch and two chairs had been placed on top of. With the roaring fire in the fireplace, it looked a little like the Gryffindor common room, including the stairway leading up to what could only be assumed was a dormitory of sorts, but with very obvious differences. The rest of the room had a multitude of items, such as a bookshelf stacked to the ceiling with old tomes that looked as though they hadn't been read in centuries, and there was a shelf filled with rare potion ingredients.
"It looks like a potion's lab!" Hermione said, moving around a bit to gaze at it all. "Michael told you about this?"
Hope bobbed her head. The suit of armor that once housed his spirit was empty and quiet, but that was all right. Her eyes flicked towards the lowest shelf of the bookshelf, where she had wedged Salazar Slytherin's journal not a few days prior. It had seemed as safe a place as any to put that old journal. She wasn't even sure if Salazar had stepped foot inside it after constructing the hidden quarters. "Great, isn't it?"
"Fantastic!" Hermione breathed.
"All the potion ingredients have permanent Everlasting Charms on them," Hope added, nodding to the shelf with all the bottles, big and small, "shall we see if there are any that we need?"
"Yeah," Hermione said, barely able to speak with her excitement vibrating through her.
Ron stood back as Hope and Hermione glanced over the list of ingredients and then the labels of the bottles, smiling fondly. He was often made fun of for being close friends with two girls, but no one else got Hope like he did, or even Hermione, even though they fought like cats and dogs some days. Hope made life fun, even if it was a little dangerous, but he'd take that life any day over a boring one.
"Stop worrying, Oliver," Hope admonished as the team sat down for their pep talk on Saturday before the match against Slytherin. "We'll be fine."
He didn't look so convinced, but then he steeled himself, no doubt putting on a brave face. "Alright, team. Slytherin has better brooms than us, there's no point in denying it. But we've got better people on our brooms. We've trained harder than they have, we've been flying in all weathers, and they're going to rue the day they let that bit of slime, Malfoy, buy his way onto their team."
"Hear, hear!" Hope called out, earning a few mild chuckles.
"Get that Snitch before Malfoy, or die trying, Hope," Oliver said seriously to the youngest member of his team, trying his hardest not to comment on how she and one of his Beaters weren't saying two words to each other, "because we've got to win today, we've got to."
Hope gave a two fingered salute.
Fred winked at her. "But no pressure, Hope."
He got the one fingered salute.
The tension hung over the group like a cloud on a bright day, and George looked as though he was fighting the desire to pull Hope around to face him so that she would look him completely in the eye. Oliver coughed uncomfortably before leading them out and onto the pitch.
Adrenaline was pumping through Hope's veins as she positioned her broom under her, waiting for the kick-off whistle, which greeted her after the captains had shaken each other's hands, looking more like they were trying to break the other's fingers than having a show of camaraderie.
She kicked off of the ground faster than her teammates, whipping her head around searching for that little golden ball. Seeking was easily the hardest part of Quidditch, and anyone who said different was full of shit. The idea that Malfoy could even come close to Hope without that broom of his was ludicrous, but the fact remained that his broom could give him an edge over Hope's experience, as much as she loathed to admit it.
"Alright there, Scarhead?"
Malfoy had to come up with some better insults, because the ones towards the scar on her forehead were getting old, even though they gave her a twinge of annoyance every time she heard them used.
She opened her mouth to retort with a nice swearword, but she had to duck suddenly when a black Bludger came pelting towards her head in the vain hope that she would be spared of a braining.
"Close one!"
George sped past her in the air, speaking almost subconsciously, because Fred and George typically talked to their teammates during games that to not do so would be regarded as strange, even though they weren't speaking to each other. He raised his bat to the Bludger, giving it a powerful strike that should have caused it to pelt towards Slytherin Chaser Adrian Pucey, but it only maintained that course for a few seconds before rocketing towards Hope's head again.
This time Hope really did swear, diving quickly and doing several evasive maneuvers that would have unseated anyone who hadn't practiced them for so long, but the Bludger followed her as if it had some sort of magnetic attraction to her. She shot towards Fred who was raising his bat, which she ducked neatly under.
A loud crack told her that the bat had made contact with the Bludger and she could hear the happy yell of "Gotcha!" but unfortunately, the Bludger was only stalled in its pursuit of Hope which it continued to do so, much to the laughter and cheers of the Slytherin section of the stands.
The presence of the Bludger was really putting Hope off her game, and the Weasley twins were shadowing her at every turn, trying to keep the enchanted ball from breaking the head of the most valuable player of the team. On the plus side, Hope had yet to score a broken bone, on the downside, Slytherin was in the lead, the Gryffindor Chasers needed the coverage of the Beaters, and Hope couldn't look for the Snitch with them hovering around her as if she was the sun and they were orbiting planets.
And it had started to rain; perfect.
With difficulty, George had managed to call for a time-out and the group of soaking Gryffindors huddled together on the ground looking worse for wear.
"What's going on?" Oliver demanded of the twins. "Fred, George, where were you when that Bludger stopped Angelina from scoring?"
"We were twenty feet above her," George bit out angrily, his knuckles going white around his bat, "stopping the other Bludger from murdering Hope, Oliver. Someone's fixed it, and it won't leave her alone, she's been the only person it's gone after all game!"
"But the Bludgers have been locked in Madam Hooch's office since our last practice," Oliver said, his brow furrowed, "and there was nothing wrong with them then…"
Madam Hooch was beginning to walk towards them, so Hope blurted out, "Let me handle the Bludger."
"You're mental!" Fred snapped. "It'll take your head off!"
Hope glared at him, her green irises turning a dark color. "Look, there's no way that I'm going to be able to see the Snitch with you two flying around me. Oliver, tell them to let me handle the rogue Bludger." She turned to gaze imploringly at their captain.
"Don't be thick!" George exclaimed. "You'll be out there undefended—"
"I don't need some protector!" Hope snapped out, giving him a furious glare, and he reeled back, both remembering his words several weeks ago to her.
"Oliver, this is insane," Alicia stepped in, "you can't let her deal with that Bludger all on her own! It'll knock her off her broom!"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Hope interjected.
"Let's ask for an inquiry," Angelina added, ignoring Hope as Madam Hooch came closer.
"If we do that, we'll have to forfeit!" Hope complained. "Come on, Oliver; tell them to let me handle it!"
"This is all your fault," George said angrily to the Keeper, "'Get the Snitch or die trying' what a stupid thing to tell her—"
"Ready to resume?"
Madam Hooch had finally come to stand just outside their little circle.
"Oliver." Hope's face was quite determined, how could he say no?
"Alright," he found himself saying, "Fred, George, you heard her, let her handle it."
None of the members of the Gryffindor team seemed pleased with that decision, but there was little else they could do, and there was no way that Hope was going to change her mind concerning it.
Hope and the others rocketed into the air, Hope dodging every few seconds looking for that small glimmer of gold that would signify the movement of the Snitch, but that was rather difficult in the rain, even if Hope was up for the challenge.
"Training for the ballet, Potter?" Malfoy asked, roaring with laughter.
Hope glanced towards him, gritting her teeth, and it was then that she saw it.
The Golden Snitch.
It was flapping its silver wings too fast to be seen, bobbing in the air beside Malfoy's head, and he hadn't even noticed it yet!
CRACK!
Hope cried out as the Bludger slammed into her arm, feeling the bone break under her skin. The pain was numbing, but Hope had a car rip through her leg once before, and this, by comparison, was much more manageable. She turned her broom in the direction of Malfoy who ducked out of her way, not realizing that she was heading for the Snitch.
She pointed her broom downwards, going into a low dive, leaning close to the handle to give her an increase in speed as she came alongside the Snitch, her fingers closing around it as the Bludger came around to deal a blow to her back, sending her forward headfirst off of the broom.
Thankfully, the ground was remarkably close, even if it still jarred her broken arm.
"Hope!"
She could faintly see the outlines of Ron and Hermione racing in front of a cloud of red and gold that must have been the Gryffindor supporters.
"Hey," she said weakly as they knelt beside her, "we won."
"You're an idiot," Hermione said fervently.
"There have never been truer words," Hope agreed, closing her eyes and opening them again, straining her eyes when she saw something white and glittering to her right. "Oh, not you," she complained, "go away!"
"Doesn't know what she's saying," Lockhart assured the crowd of Gryffindors who didn't believe him for a second. "Not to worry, Hope, I'm going to fix your arm."
"I'd prefer it broken over whatever you could do with a wand," Hope snapped, attempting to sit up with the assistance of her friends, earning her a few chuckles from her House-mates. "I'll take my chances at the hospital wing, thanks."
"She really should, Professor." Hope blinked, having not recognized Oliver until he had spoken, completely covered in mud as he was. How on earth had he managed that? "Great capture, Hope, probably your best yet—"
"Thanks," she muttered, realizing a second too late that Lockhart had taken that opportunity to aim his wand at her arm and say an incantation. "Oi!"
She looked at her arm, and the sight made her faint; it didn't look remotely like an arm, being far too jiggly and rubbery.
When she awoke again, she was in the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey was on the verge of an apoplectic fit.
"You should have brought her straight here!" she said angrily to Hermione and Ron who looked a little ashamed, even though it hadn't been their fault.
"You'll be able to, won't you?" Hope asked, making them jump, surprised that she was awake. "I'd hate to do everything one-armed for the rest of my life."
Madam Pomfrey gave her a smile, but it was more of a grimace. "I will, but it will be painful and you'll have to stay the night."
Hope groaned, but she conceded; there was no point in arguing with the Matron.
"Now, the both of you, out!" Madam Pomfrey ordered. "This girl has thirty-three bones to regrow!"
So, they left Hope alone and she flopped back onto the bed, completely and utterly frustrated.
Usually, George didn't have much of an issue with sleeping, but tonight was a different issue. Hope was usually the one to find wide awake in the early hours of the morning, Hope and Dean. George had lost count of the number of times he'd found them sleeping propped up on each other's shoulders; it was always amusing to tell them that they were almost late for class and watch them trip over each other in their haste to rush up to their dormitories, only to find out they had another two hours. The shocked and outraged expressions were as identical as they were hilarious.
But this time when he woke up and grabbed the Marauder's Map, no one was waiting in the common room.
It was almost disheartening to not see Hope sleeping restlessly, sideways in an armchair with a book open in her lap.
He checked the map, making sure no one would be patrolling in his way before heading off in the direction of the hospital wing, creaking the door quietly open and peering inside.
Hope was a small, curled lump, curved away from him, twitching far too much to be asleep. She lifted her head to look towards him at the sound of the door before huffing and looking away from him.
"Uh, hi," George whispered quietly, settling silently into the chair beside her hospital bed. "How are you?"
"A step up from how I was in the hospital at ten," Hope groused out and George noticed she was clutching her arm tightly, the one that had been boneless just hours ago. George had wanted to check on her after seeing her pale and limp in the mud, but he hadn't thought she'd appreciate it.
The moonlight casting through the windows was making her hair seem almost silver and George offered two hands. "May I?"
She stared at him, flummoxed for the longest moment before sitting up in bed and offering him her arm.
His fingers moved lightly, pressing down and smoothing along her skin in a manner that she wouldn't've thought was soothing, but was.
"I'm sorry," he said after the longest moment, "I shouldn't've said what I did…I was trying to cheer you up, but…I went about it the wrong way…if I'd known, I wouldn't—"
Hope sighed heavily. "Its not your fault. I don't really talk about it, being related to him." Just as she didn't talk about knowing when people were going to die; there were some things better kept unsaid.
George's eyes flicked towards her, but hers were too cloudy to ascertain what she was really thinking. "Still, I'm sorry…"
"Well, I'm sorry for what I said on the pitch," Hope said, breathing out as the prickling pain eased. "What you said was really sweet but…I'm just having a rough time, that's all."
"I noticed." Her hair hadn't been red in ages and he couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen her smile.
"Dean things I should come home with him for Christmas," Hope added tiredly, "he says its his mum that's worried, but I think he's worried too…"
The Weasleys were staying for Christmas, he knew that. "It might be good to get away for a bit," George admitted, "get away from all this."
"Yeah," Hope admitted, "and then I can ask Nath if he's actually my dad, yay."
"Er, what?" George asked suddenly, thrown off.
"He had this picture of her, and—well," Hope shrugged helplessly, miserably, "no one ever says I'm like my dad…just my mum, and Nath tells his coworkers I'm his goddaughter, which makes sense, I guess, but they're always saying how like him I am…"
"That'll be an awkward conversation," George muttered and Hope grimaced.
"Maybe I won't start with 'Nath, did you fuck my mum?'."
George choked. "Yeah, maybe not."
Hope's mouth twisted faintly. "You know you didn't have to sneak out to apologize to me, right?"
George shrugged. "Seemed like as good a time as any, it's not like I could sleep anyways."
The look she gave him was so utterly fond that his ears reddened. "Is your arm feeling better?"
"Yeah," Hope realized with numbed clarity, looking down at her arm where he was still holding her. "Um, thanks."
"Uh, no problem," George said quickly, suddenly looking very flustered. "I guess, I'll, um, see you in the morning?"
It was pretty redundant to point out that it was technically already morning, so Hope gave a small nod, feeling warm where his hands had left her, watching as he ducked hastily out of the wing, leaving Hope to relax against the mattress, feeling her heart fluttering inside her ribs, only to jerk at a suddenly loud crack.
Hope awoke the next morning to find her arm a little stiff, but filled with thirty-three new bones, and she'd take that stiffness any day if it meant she had have all her bones in her arm. She cast a glance to the bed in the corner with the curtains drawn around it, hiding Colin Creevey's stilled body from view.
Once she'd left the hospital wing, she almost collided with another body and had to step back suddenly so she wouldn't.
"Did she finally let you go, then?"
Hope blinked. "Oh, it's you."
George grinned in a roguish manner. "You weren't expecting some other dashing ginger-haired Gryffindor, were you?"
"I didn't know you were dashing," Hope said with a slight smirk, "do tell."
"Ah, Milady," he said solemnly, sounding a bit like Michael, which Hope found didn't hurt nearly as much as she thought it did, "it is a rather lengthy tale that involves the outsmarting of pompous students and arrogant teachers."
"That's always fun," Hope said after a short laugh had erupted from her lips as he extended the crook of his arm to her, and she looped her arm around his and they descended the stairs together. "Ravenclaws and Lockhart?" she guessed.
"Oh, yes," George agreed. "Some Ravenclaws can be…"
"I can imagine," Hope said humored as they stepped through the doorway and into the Great Hall. Ron and Hermione were nowhere to be seen, something that confused and disappointed Hope a bit. She would have thought they would be the first to come and find her…she wanted to talk to them about Dobby, who had visited her in the night shortly before Colin's body had been brought in by Dumbledore and McGonagall.
She had barely managed to get a bite of toast when Angelina drew her attention from the food.
"So, you two aren't fighting anymore?" Angelina asked hopefully.
Hope tugged on the end of her dark ponytail, looking a little awkward. She glanced at George, but he was smiling at her. Her cheeks flooded with heat. "Erm, yes," she muttered, "we've worked everything out."
"That's great!" Alicia said in relief. "Because your boy here was wallowing in self-pity."
"I was not wallowing—"
"He's not my—"
Angelina smiled sweetly, but there was something sly lurking in those dark brown depths. "You two are so adorable when you try to defend yourselves."
George mouthed wordlessly at the girl whom his twin had just begun to date, while Hope gave her friend a shrewd glare.
"Angelina," she said, her voice filled with warning.
"All right, all right," the dark-skinned girl conceded, drawing in her claws temporarily. "But, really, it's good that you two aren't fighting anymore…it's really weird when you don't talk."
Hope stuck out her tongue before taking a long swig of pumpkin juice.
"Hey, Hope!"
Hope bemoaned the theft of her pumpkin juice, scowling at Dean as he drained it in one gulp, handing it back to her.
"You're a monster," she informed him emphatically and he grinned widely. "We must be related."
Laughter bloomed around her and Dean spared her a grin.
"Mum says you're coming home with me for the holiday, no arguments," he said. "She specifically said 'that girl needs a firm removal from that toxic environment you want to call a school'."
"Yeah, that sounds like her," Hope snorted. Diane Thomas was something else. "Are you sure that won't be a bother? I mean, I barely sleep and—"
"She's raised me, she's used to that," Dean waved her off. "You'll get roped into helping with dinner and biscuits, I feel like she'll put in more of an effort if you're there."
Hope stifled her sniggers, remembering the leftovers she'd had at his place over the summer. "Okay…wait, I haven't gotten you a gift!" She realized horrified.
"Oh, you don't have to," Dean said quickly.
"No, of course I have to!" Hope shut him down furiously. "But I've got a month, that's plenty of time…and you're running out of room in your sketchbook…I'll get you a new one! A bigger one!"
Hope's eyes were impossibly bright and Dean scratched his cheek, coughing, feeling very grateful when she twisted around, looking for her best friends. Fred and George sniggered at his embarrassment and he threw a scowl their way. "Anyone seen Ron or Hermione?"
"Nope," was the consensus of the small group, leaving Hope frowning slightly.
"I'll catch you later?" she asked, "I'm going to find them."
She was cheerfully waved goodbye, exiting the Great Hall in search of her elusive friends, almost running into Percy in the process. Honestly, she was going to have to watch where she was going, if she kept almost running into people like this.
"Oh, hello, Hope," Percy said brightly, a beaming smile plastered to his lips…and was that a hint of lipstick? Hope smothered her grin. "Excellent flying yesterday, really excellent. Gryffindor has just taken the lead for the House Cup –you earned fifty points!"
"Thanks," she said, surprised by how excited about that he was. "You haven't seen Ron and Hermione around, have you? I thought they'd be at breakfast, but I guess not."
"No, I haven't. I hope Ron's not in another girls' toilet…"
Hope laughed lightly at Percy's words, but they gave her a different idea. And not five minutes later she could be found rushing along the fourth floor corridor, barking out a choice phrase and ascending the staircase that led to her grandmother's secret quarters.
They were both on edge as she hoisted herself through the trapdoor, only relaxing once they'd recognized her.
"Hope!" Hermione gasped out loud, raising a hand to her chest as if its presence would calm her frantically beating heart. "Don't do that!"
Hope rolled her eyes at her.
"How's your arm?" Ron added from where he was leaning on his elbows on the table upon which a pewter cauldron had been set up with a pale blue fire flickering underneath.
"A little stiff," Hope said with a shrug, "but Madam Pomfrey says that'll fade soon enough. Trust me, I'm fine," Hope added when they gave her dubious looks. "Seriously…Are you starting the potion, then?"
Hope leaned forward on the table so she could look within the black cauldron, wrinkling her nose at the putrid smell, and frowning at the beige color it had turned. "Is it supposed to look like that?"
"We decided to start this morning," Hermione agreed, answering her friend's first question first, "after Professor McGonagall told us about Colin."
Hope frowned slightly, recalling how she'd first thought him to be a statue when Dumbledore and McGonagall had heaved him into an empty bed, just like Mrs. Norris had been.
"It should look like this until we add the bicorn horn," Hermione added, answering Hope's question.
"Looks disgusting," Hope said for good measure, earning her a sharp whack to the back of her head. "Dobby came to visit me last night," she told them.
Ron and Hermione looked up at her in surprise. "What? Why?"
Hope wrinkled her nose in irritation. "Apparently, he was the one that charmed that bloody Bludger, hoping that I would be so grievously injured that I would have to be sent home."
Ron's eyebrows creased together in a frown. "But that doesn't make any sense," he said, confusion obvious, "I mean, even last year when you got his with that Bludger, you just went to St. Mungo's and then came right back here when you were all healed up. Even if Dobby had gotten you seriously injured, you wouldn't be sent home. That never happens, especially with Muggle families."
"What do you mean 'especially with Muggle families'?" Hermione said, sounding a little insulted.
Ron backpedaled fast. "I don't mean it like that, I just mean that if they sent you home, for instance, then you'd be living with people who wouldn't know how to deal with a magical injury, that's all."
Hermione's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she didn't say much else on the matter, much to Ron's relief.
Hope's day went downhill the second she uttered that word to the snake that Malfoy had conjured out of thin air.
That word was "Stop" but no one else heard it the way she did.
She could see the fear and the anger that flitted across their faces, as if she was the enemy, the abomination that should have never existed on the physical plane. Like she was a disease. Ron and Hermione had to drag her away from the converged group so they could speak without prying ears.
"You're a Parselmouth!" Ron exclaimed as soon as they were out of earshot. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"Parselmouth?" Hope said flummoxed. She had never heard of such a word before. "What's a Parselmouth?"
"Someone who can speak snake language," Ron said. "Didn't you know you were saying it? It's no wonder Justin freaked out; for all we know you could have been egging it on, or something…"
This revelation of Ron's stung Hope, who would have never thought that her own friend would believe her to be capable of setting a snake on a fellow student. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists into tight shaking balls.
"The last known Parselmouth was Salazar Slytherin," Hermione added.
"And now the whole school's going to think you're his great-great-great-great-granddaughter or something—"
"So what?"
Ron and Hermione both blanched. Hope's voice had grown dangerous and cold; distant and frosty like a snowstorm was about to hit. She lifted her head and they saw that her green eyes had morphed to a midnight black, like dark, angry onyx spheres had been grafted into her eye sockets. Her voice trembled but it was hard to tell from what.
"So what if I'm Salazar's granddaughter," she snapped out like the crack of a whip, "so what? I'm not the one sending people into the hospital wing; I'm not the one in control of some sort of beast—!"
"We're not saying that!" Hermione said, frantically trying to calm her down because she had once seen Hope's temper crack stone.
"Then what?" Hope seethed. "Maybe I'll murder my whole family like his son did. Oh, wait, I don't need to they're already dead!" You knew it was bad when Hope brought up the death of her parents.
"We know you're not behind anything," Ron said, sounding a lot calmer than normal. "Hope." He put as much emphasis as he could on her name, hoping that would snap her a little out of her anger.
The girl deflated a bit but still looked as though steam should have been pouring from her ears. Her clenched fists loosened and she released a heavy sigh, but much to Hermione's relief, the tension and anger seemed to have melted off of her.
That night, Hope went to bed early, feeling legitimately a little sick to her stomach. She hadn't meant to blow up like that towards Ron and Hermione, she knew very well of how…unfavorable Salazar was, but, like his brother, Ron had brought up her possible relation to the founder, and not in a good way.
The next few days afterwards were remarkably tense, mostly because Hermione and Ron were trying to tread very cautiously around their friend, but also because the whispers about Hope had begun again and not in a good way. And Hope was even more miserable than before, her hair remaining the black that had initially begun to lighten to auburn, eyes black as coal, and Hermione and Ron could see the light bruising under her eyes from many sleepless nights. After the fourth night had passed, the tension between the three had finally eased past and they had all forgiven each other, like all children do, and the next day, Hope was feeling more like herself, enough to head to the library by herself in search of a good book.
Honestly, Hope was looking for a bit more instruction on Blood Magick, but it didn't look like the school had anything on the subject, so Hope was pretty much out of luck there. Instead, she found herself perusing the Invisibility Section. She skimmed her fingers over the titles in search of one that might explain how something could roam the castle unseen…Invisibility for the Cowardly: A Guide to Hiding From Your Enemies…Travelling Unseen…that one looked intriguing. She lifted the book from the shelf, pausing when she heard low voices speaking close-by.
"So anyways," the voice of a young boy said, "I told Justin to hide up in our dormitory. I mean to say, if Potter's marked him down as her next victim, it's best if he keeps a low profile for a while. Of course, Justin's been waiting for something like this to happen ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggle-born. Justin actually told her he'd been down for Eton. That's not the kind of thing you bandy about with Slytherin's heir on the loose, is it?"
Hope's hands clenched around her book and she turned on her heel, stalking up to Madam Pince to check the book out, pausing once again as she found herself close to the small group that must have been made entirely of Hufflepuffs.
"She always seems so nice, though," and Hope knew that was Hannah Abbott, anxious ball that she always appeared to be, "and, well, she's the one who made You-Know-Who disappear, so she can't be all bad, can she?"
Ernie MacMillan, she realized was the first boy, and his next words drove an ice pick through Hope's heart. "No one knows how she survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, she was only a baby when it happened. She should have been blasted to smithereens (Oh please, Hope thought angrily, the Killing Curse doesn't blow you up, it just kills you where you stand!). Only a really powerful Dark witch or wizard could have survived a curse like that. That's probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill her in the first place. Didn't want a Dark witch competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter's been hiding?"
"Do you just talk to hear yourself talk?" a new voice asked in irritation. "Because the last time I checked, surviving a killing curse doesn't automatically make you evil."
Hope glanced past the bookshelf to see George glaring at the small group.
"How would you know?" the first boy demanded, though Hope could hear the slight tremor of his voice; Fred and George could look very impressive when they wanted to, especially when they were irked or angry. Fred, in particular, could turn very nasty. "You and her haven't talked for weeks, probably because—"
"Because I said something stupid," George said, cutting across him, "I insulted her by accident and she took personally, which she should. We made up about a week ago, which you would have known if you weren't hiding away in your common room like frightened little rats."
But Hope was done with listening, and she took her book, striding past, keeping her face hidden from view until long after the library was out of view, her feet taking her all the way down to the first floor and she only paused when a voice called out her name.
"Miss Potter," Professor Sprout smiled faintly with a smudge of dirt on her cheek. "How would you feel about helping me in Greenhouse Seven?"
Hope blinked in surprise, as she'd never possessed much of an interest in Herbology, it was all right, and she did fairly well in it, but gardening wasn't something Hope had been allowed to do at the Dursleys…and she'd never been in Greenhouse Seven.
So, she followed the stout witch into the farthest greenhouse, the one that was supposedly strictly for potion-making ingredients. She left her book by the door, looping her cloak on a hook and began rolling up her sleeves and tucking her tie between buttons of her shirt.
"I hope you don't mind getting your hands dirty, Miss Potter?
"I don't mind," Hope assured her before glancing around the greenhouse with a bit of curiosity, "but, er, what exactly did you need my help with?"
Professor Sprout never quite struck Hope as the type of person to ask for help with her subject; she was a Master Herbologist.
"Repotting some plants for the most part," Professor Sprout said kindly. "We'll stick with plants least likely to attack you."
She cast a knowing glance towards Hope and Hope couldn't help but feel like her professor had picked up on her distaste towards the more dangerous plants, before setting her up in front of a pot of coarse earth with a trowel to break it up.
She dug her trowel in, twisting and adding a bit of water to moisten and soften it further.
"Do you do much gardening at home?" Professor Sprout asked, more to make conversation than anything else.
"No," Hope admitted. "Petunia likes everything to be a particular way, and she only plants roses." It was always funny when they refused to bloom, despite her tender love and affection.
"Don't like roses?" Professor Sprout guessed.
"Irises are more my flower of choice," Hope conceded, "but I think I'd like to plant something that I could use, like herbs and spices and potion ingredients, not that they'd ever let me do that." Her words came to a quiet mumble, and she dug her trowel in deeper.
For the most part, they worked in silence, and honestly Hope didn't have a problem with that. She didn't even realize how long they'd been going before Professor Sprout began to show her proper repotting.
"Now you don't want to have too many plants in a pot of this size," Professor Sprout warned her, "or the plants' roots won't have enough room to spread."
Hope nodded her head in understanding. "Can these plants only grow in greenhouses?" she asked.
"Oh, no!" Professor Sprout laughed. "You can grow them indoors or outdoors just as long as you remember that some plants can't handle anything less than a controlled environment."
"Which is why you keep them in a greenhouse," Hope presumed and Professor Sprout clucked her tongue in agreement.
"Now, dear, why don't you tell me what's bothering you?" she asked lightly as Hope patted the dirt down around a cowbane plant. "Because it seems to me that you have been suffering silently to the point of breaking."
Hope dug into the next pot with a bit of irritation. "Well, no one really cares if I'm suffering, do they?" she muttered. "Oh, Hope's the Girl-Who-Lived? Guess we'll treat her terribly in the hope that she doesn't want to associate with the wizarding world unless when we want her to."
It was hard not to be bitter, so Hope didn't even bother pretending that she wasn't. She was bitter and miserable and she just wanted to leave, leave and never come back.
The Hufflepuffs would certainly be happy about that.
"I can't help that I was born the way I was," Hope said finally, lifting her eyes to meet Professor Sprout. "Everyone treats me like I asked for Voldemort to kill my parents, like I want Dark powers, like speaking to snakes is automatically bad, but…but I'm just trying to survive in a bad situation and pass my classes like everyone else," she finished miserably.
"Oh, dear," Professor Sprout said heavily. "Having a bad time?"
Hope bobbed her head.
Professor Sprout tutted as she came around to Hope's side, taking her hands. "Some beliefs are hard to give up, and I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but things will get better."
But when Hope left, she couldn't help but huff to herself, muttering "Easy for her to say, its not like she's dealing with this." She rubbed angrily at her face as she took the stairs, turning down an empty corridor, only to trip over something on the floor that she'd missed, sending her crumpling to the ground, knocking her knees painfully.
Hope muttered a complaint to herself as she leaned back to see what had tripped over and her blood turned to ice in her veins.
It was Justin Finch-Fletchley and he was as still as Colin Creevey had been, looking so uncommonly like a corpse that she had to scramble quickly away, horrified. And then she saw what was next to him. Nearly Headless Nick, not nearly as transparent as he had been, instead, he was smoke-black and as unmoving as Justin.
Hope couldn't even think as she got to her feet, she just knew that she had to get away, get as far away as possible.
And she blinked, and the next thing she knew, she was in her bed, shaking and trying to regulate her breathing.
Rumors spread like wildfire, and in a matter of hours, the entire castle knew that Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been attacked and that Hope Potter had been conveniently missing.
And the people that knew Hope knew that she'd been in her bed after spending a good amount of time in the bathroom, vomiting what precious little remained in her stomach, but that didn't stop several people from trying to trip her on the last day of class, upending a jug of pumpkin juice on her head, and being downright unsavory.
Fred and George were deeply unimpressed and offered some downright mean-spirited pranks in return, but Hope was quite over it emotionally, and she was quite happy to tell Professor McGonagall she was staying with a friend over the holiday and leaving the Polyjuice Potion to Ron and Hermione.
"You look terrible," Seamus had said when she entered the compartment she was sharing with him and Dean on the way back to London.
"Thanks," she said dryly, "I can feel it."
Dean frowned. "Did you get any sleep last night?"
"Someone cursed the stairs so it wouldn't let me get up to the dormitory," Hope said flatly.
Seamus gave a dubious look in Dean's direction and Dean himself looked pretty thunderous. "You should tell McGonagall." The irony of Seamus Finnegan telling her to tell an adult when she was having issues.
"Yeah," Hope scoffed, "I've tried that before, didn't really work out…nobody really believes me even when I tell the truth, so why bother?"
And then she curled up and went right to sleep, dreaming about a soft mattress and a gentle hand running through her hair and calling her 'dear heart'.
Diane Thomas knew a thing or two about being in a situation where you had no power, and Hope was someone she looked at and saw herself in. So, she was incredibly concerned when she came down the stairs to see Hope using a knife to cut into her wrist.
But it wasn't deep and it was in a shape she didn't recognize.
"Heal," Hope whispered, pressing her hand to her head and Diane watched the symbol glow brightly on her skin, blood trickling down her arm, only for her to grumble. "Nothing…why won't you fix me?"
It was heartbreaking.
Diane stepped into the kitchen and Hope jumped, eyes wild, but she walked to a cupboard to pull out the first aid kit and press a thick piece of gauze to Hope's arm.
"Darling," Diane said gently, "I know you're looking for an easy fix, but there isn't one."
Hope had never looked so incredibly disheartened.
"Depression is a mental disorder, your body isn't producing enough serotonin, its not something that a spell can fix because there's nothing physically wrong with you."
"I don't want to feel like this," Hope whispered.
"I know," Diane said, understanding more than she could possibly convey. "That's why I got you something that will actually help."
Hope balked slightly when she slid a pill bottle towards her. She lifted it with her good hand. "Sertraline?"
"Its an antidepressant, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get it for you, since I'm not your guardian," Diane admitted, "and you don't have to stay on it forever…but give it six months and see if it helps."
Hope held it, feeling distant. "When I was still going to therapy, my therapist wanted me to be on antidepressants, but the Dursleys always said no." She didn't know what they'd said to Jeanna, but it had resulted in Jeanna writing a report that was undoubtedly lost like all the others.
"Idiots," Diane muttered, taping the gauze in place. "You're perfectly normal, and if you can't produce your own serotonin, or you need a little help to kickstart it, that's hardly your fault. Don't let anyone tell you how to live your life, because sometimes the person that thinks they know best are digging you into a hole on purpose. Okay?"
Hope rubbed at her eyes. "Okay."
"Darling, you're a fighter, I know you are, so, you want to fight back? fight back, and fuck the consequences."
Hope let out a small, throaty laugh. "I don't think that's going to help me much at school; they all think I'm the enemy."
"If they're dumb enough to think you're the enemy, they deserve to get beaten by the enemy. You are not some weak, simple girl. You're a witch," Diane stressed. "You're a twelve year old with a sharp tongue and fists and magic for when you fall short. Don't take shit from anyone. These people don't deserve you. You are fire and rage, you are a storm at sea, let them fear you, let them know they started this fight and that you finished it."
"I feel like that's counterproductive, telling me to get into fights," Hope said, regaining a bit of light in her eyes, but Diane merely arched an eyebrow.
"I know you got into fights at that school you went to before Hogwarts," she retorted, unimpressed, "what's stopping you from doing that now?"
Hope looked at Diane, really looked at her. At the dreadlocks pulled back by a bandana, at the dark twinkling eyes, at the sharp cheekbones and the firm jaw. Diane Thomas had to fight tooth and nail to get to where she was and had fought tooth and nail to keep it. She had carved a life for herself and Dean; she was a warrior, an ex-military soldier who didn't give a damn what people said about her as a young woman with a son and no father in sight.
She was the kind of woman that Hope used to dream about as a mother.
"So, when you go back to school…what're you gonna do?" Diane asked archly. "Are you going to take that abuse lying down?"
"No."
"What was that?"
"No!" Hope said a little louder, regaining the fire she'd lost in the past few months. "I'm gonna kick their asses!"
"Atta girl," Diane nodded approvingly, searching for her cigarettes before huffing when she couldn't find them. "Stick it to the pricks…now, are you going to carve anything else into your skin tonight?"
Hope looked at her gauze covered wrist. "Not tonight."
"Good…are you staying up, darling?" Diane stood with a yawn. "Because I think I'll turn in."
"Yeah, I think I want to do some more reading," Hope said, grabbing her book of Blood Magick while Diane put away the kit.
"All right, try to get some sleep, though, won't you?" Diane added, tipping Hope's chin up.
"I'll try," Hope promised, smiling for the first time in a long time, and Diane dropped a kiss to the top of her head like Nath always did.
And it was only after she'd gone that Hope settled in the sitting room with a blanket curled around her, opening her book again.
She'd moved the drawing of her mother from Salazar Slytherin's journal to her book on Blood Magick. And Hope was determined to get an answer from the man himself.
"Are you working right now?" she asked when he answered the phone. "Because I can call back."
"I'm between shifts at the moment," Nath hummed on the other end. "Why, is something going on?"
"No, its just…" Hope looked down at the sketch in her hands. "You dropped this picture a few months back of my mother and I just wanted to know why you had it."
"Of your—? Oh…oh, no," Nath said quickly and emphatically. "Dearest, that wasn't of your mother, that's Adel."
His old girlfriend who'd died that tragic death, the one he could never get over losing. Hope looked at the picture dubiously. "But she looks just like my mum."
"Yeah, crazy how that happens sometimes." She could've sworn Nath was annoyed and bitter. "But I can assure you, its Adel and she died before your mother was even born."
Hope opened her mouth and paused, startled. Because Nath looked particularly ageless. "Exactly how old are you?"
"Don't you know its rude to ask a lady her age?"
Hope rolled her eyes. "Hysterical, Nath."
He laughed on the other end. "Are you doing better?"
"I'm gonna pick a few fights when I go back to school," Hope replied conversationally.
"Well, I suppose that's one way to do it," Nath mused.
"Miss Diane also gave me some antidepressants."
"That also helps," Nath admitted. "Just don't kill anyone. But if you do, call me and I'll come to Scotland to help you hide the body."
Hope laughed, bright and warm. "Have a good shift, Nath."
"I will. Sleep well, dearest." So, Hope shut the phone to pull her book towards her, tracing over the shapes of the runes for 'protect' and 'attack' and 'burn' and the next thing she knew, she was waking up with a blanket wrapped around her and Diane's voice calling from the kitchen, "Dean Morgan Thomas, if you don't stop singing Christmas carols, so help me—!"
Hope couldn't help but smile.
(And maybe Diane scowled a bit fiercely when Hope unwrapped Nath's gift later, to find it was an abalone folding pocket knife, but she said nothing while Hope oohed and Dean wondered if it was any good to throw it.
"Not inside my house," was all that she'd said about it.)
Hope went back to school with two weeks' worth of antidepressants in her system and with a fire that Diane Thomas had ignited and the first thing she'd done was rig a prank on all of Hufflepuff House, dumping a jug of pumpkin juice on every head and roaring "Maybe you assholes should stop spreading rumors about people you don't know!"
And then decided to punch two more students in the face.
She got two weeks of detention, but it had been worth it to wipe the look off Ernie MacMillan's face. George had had to completely lift her off the ground to keep her from going back for seconds, while Fred howled beside him, roaring "Let her at him! Merlin, this is the most fun I've had in months!"
It made up for the fact that Ron and Hermione hadn't found anything out from Malfoy about the Heir of Slytherin, other than the fact that is was not him, which didn't really help them all that much, but it wasn't like there were anyone else more likely than Hope to be the Heir of Slytherin.
"Have I mentioned how much I hate homework?" Ron asked his friends as they lay in front of the fire one day in February. He had an old book open and was working diligently on an essay for Charms, while Hermione read through a book on Arithmancy and Hope skimmed through her book on Blood Magick.
(Neither had noticed the new scar she had on her wrist because she'd hidden it under a thick leather bracelet)
"Maybe once or twice," Hope said dryly, flipping through the pages with disinterest. "But you've been doing homework for a month now."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it," he grumbled mutinously, jutting out his chin in defiance.
"No one likes homework," Hope said in a dry sort of voice, "well, maybe Hermione does," she amended.
"Hey!"
The other two sniggered lightly at the glare their brunette friend tossed their way.
It was a Saturday morning and most of the students were down in the Great Hall for an early lunch, but Hope and Hermione were up in the common room, waiting for Ron to finish so they could head down; the promise of food was a surprisingly good incentive for Ron to finish his paper, and soon, if that obvious stomach-growl was any indicator.
"Are you sure you don't know of any Slytherin relatives?" Hermione asked again, for what felt like the hundredth time to Hope.
Hope's eyes rolled up to the ceiling and stayed there. "Yes, Hermione, I've checked a hundred times; there are no heirs to Slytherin attending Hogwarts, apart from me."
"I was so sure that it was Malfoy," Ron complained, not for the first time, as he slid the book shut and rolled up his parchment and headed out the portrait hole with Hope and Hermione by his side. "I guess that means we're back to square one."
"Not entirely," Hermione corrected. "We've still got the information that he gave us, and that's very helpful."
"But that's not much!" Ron complained. "All we know is that the attacks started about fifty years ago! Even if we could look at the student records from back then, we wouldn't have any idea where to start!"
"But the attacks stopped, didn't they?" Hope asked suddenly, having drifted off in thought momentarily.
"So?" Ron asked looking confused.
Hope snapped her fingers under his nose. "Think about it, Ron! Why would the attacks stop?"
Ron's ginger eyebrows creased together as he thought hard and then his eyes widened in realization. "You think the culprit was found, don't you?"
"And if the culprit was caught," Hermione continued on that line of thought, a beaming smile spreading across her face, "then the one who caught him was probably given an award to the school!"
Hope looked at them with fond eyes. "It's like we could be triplets."
Ron snorted and Hermione gave a small giggle, though both had to admit, they were pleased how she was acting now versus before break; she'd done a complete one-eighty.
"Oh, shi—"
Hope danced back suddenly, because at that moment, she had walked straight into a puddle of water. A puddle of water inside of Hogwarts…she hoped that didn't occur often. All three looked up, noticing that they'd accidentally made it down into the corridor where Mrs. Norris had been petrified, and the whole floor had been flooded.
"Moaning Myrtle," they all said as one.
Hope lifted up one dripped shoe, swearing under her breath. "I really liked these shoes…"
"What d'you suppose's upset her this time?" Ron asked, wincing at the frequency of the ghost's wails which were made worse by the tiles that caused the noise to echo and amplify.
"No idea." Hermione peeked her head inside of Myrtle's bathroom, motioning for the other two to follow her in, which they did, despite Hope's complaints about her shoes.
"Myrtle?" Hermione said gently, not wanting to freak out the quite obviously emotional ghost too much; no good ever came from that. "Are you alright?"
"Who's that?" she hiccupped between tremulous sobs that resounded loudly in the silence. "Come to throw something else at me?"
This time Hope frowned. "Someone threw something at you?" she asked. "Why?"
"DON'T ASK ME!" Myrtle bellowed, making the trio grip their ears quickly. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me!"
Ron's lips twitched slightly and he opened his mouth, no doubt to say something that could be construed as insensitive, but Hermione and Hope both elbowed him in the side, effectively silencing the boy.
"Who threw it at you?" Hermione asked, still using that gentle voice of hers.
"I don't know!" Myrtle sobbed morosely, looking far more piteous than Hope had ever seen her thus far. "I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head." Her transparent lower lip wobbled dangerously as she pointed off to the side. "It's over there, it got washed out."
Ron grabbed both of their arms before either of the girls could reach down to grab it. "Don't touch it! What if it's dangerous?"
But Hope couldn't see how a little black book could be dangerous at all; look at it! It wasn't as though a bunch of knives were going to shoot out of it and stab the person that happened to open it. She lifted it up, feeling almost as though it was alive…for a second she felt as if it was hers and that she had merely forgotten it or lost it, but that was impossible, Hope didn't own a diary, let alone one that dull and drab.
"It was bought fifty years ago," she noticed, tapping the inscription on the inside of the cover, "…by a T.M. Riddle…reckon he's worth checking out?"
"Probably," Hermione reasoned, "it means something if someone was trying to flush it…is there anything in it?"
Hope flipped through the wet pages. "If there was, the toilet water's washed it away."
"Let me try something."
Hope handed over the small book to Hermione who pulled out her wand and tapped a random page with her wand, saying very clearly, "Aparecium!"
But nothing happened.
"It's probably just an empty diary," Ron said to Hermione, "we'd probably have better luck looking him up in the Trophy Room and see if he's the bloke we're looking for."
There was no point in refuting that fact, and the trio went and ate a hasty breakfast before making their way towards the Trophy Room.
Hope had never been inside this room, apart from the brief time the previous year when Malfoy had challenged her to a midnight duel that she hadn't been very keen on to start with, but she had never had the opportunity to admire it fully. It wasn't very impressive, she now realized in retrospect; it was almost as if a majority of the school forgot that there was a Trophy Room.
There were a large number of glass cases, all practically completely filled with awards, trophies, cups, plates, shields, statues, and an assortment of medals.
"So…" Hope said, goggling slightly at the sheer number of trophies, "divide and conquer?"
So they split up to cover more ground and Hope found herself wandering around aimlessly, until—
"Found him!" Hermione said suddenly, waving them over to where she stood. "He's right here!"
"Medal for Magical Merit," Ron read aloud, "doesn't say what he got it for, though…"
"The headmaster probably didn't want anyone to draw attention to the incidents of that year," Hermione theorized, "it would be embarrassing to admit that the students under your protection had come under attack and you weren't able to do a thing about it."
Hope wondered if she was talking about the old headmaster or the present one.
"Valentine's Day?!" Hope seethed on the morning of the Fourteenth of February, already in a bit of a bad mood. "What kind of moron came up with Valentine's Day?!"
"Well—" Hermione opened her mouth to say which moron had indeed come up with it, but then she apparently changed her mind.
"Oh, it's sickening!"
"Oh, there's nothing wrong with Valentine's Day," Angelina said dismissively, sliding into the seat next to Hermione, "it's what Lockhart's done that's really awful."
"I think it's cute!" Hermione said affronted as Alicia and Lee joined them, hand-in-hand.
"Everyone else thinks its revolting," Angelina added, "or at least a majority of the people here think that."
She wasn't wrong. A large number of people had frowns on their faces towards their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, who seemed to be basking in the glow of the pink atmosphere. Hope scowled furiously, bemoaning of what she'd done to deserve this life. The poor Great Hall had been decorated so extravagantly, and, understandably, it would have annoyed any decent person. Up and down the walls could be seen a large number of obnoxious bright and dark pink flowers, and there were confetti, shaped like hearts, falling from the ceiling! And all the confetti were getting in the food…that would explain why Ron wasn't too happy. Imagine not being able to eat properly without accidentally chewing up paper as they did so.
"This has to be some sort of nightmare!" Hope said horrified as Hermione burst into giggles, gazing imploringly at Angelina. "Angie! Tell me this isn't real!"
"I'd like to say it wasn't," Angelina said, blowing the confetti from her plate before loading it with eggs and sausages, "but..." She shrugged. "There's only one thing to do in this kind of situation."
"And what's that?" Hope said glumly, poking at her confetti-encrusted bacon.
"Soldier on."
"I was hoping for something less…I don't know, proverbial," Ron said, resting his cheek on a fist, looking equally glum.
"Oh, cheer up!" Alicia giggled slightly; her cheeks still bright red from where Lee had kissed her not a minute ago. "It's only twenty-four hours! Then it'll be back to normal."
It took Hope about three more seconds of consideration before she gathered up her things once Ernie MacMillan entered the hall.
"Nope, sorry, can't do it," she said, "I'll see you lot in class."
Lee watched her go, frowning slightly. "What's up her knickers?"
"LEE!"
"What?" he said defensively. "It's an honest question!"
"We ran into Ernie MacMillan on the way here," Ron said thickly, swallowing a bit of confetti and gagging at the taste, "he wasn't too pleased to see Hope."
"Is he that Hufflepuff numpty George was complaining about?" Angelina asked with a frown. "The one that thought Hope was the next Dark Lady? The one that she punched in the face?"
"Which time?" Hermione and Ron asked as one, Ron snorting while Hermione was exasperated.
"But yeah," Ron agreed, "that's him. He makes these little snide comments every time he sees her, and Hope doesn't really respond to them well, its why she keeps ending up in detention."
"I can imagine."
Over at the Hufflepuff table, Ernie MacMillan felt his ears burning.
Hope sat down in her seat in the empty charms classroom, waiting for the class to begin, even though it wouldn't for another good ten minutes or so. She pulled out a book and began to read.
"Doesn't it get a bit boring?"
Hope jumped slightly at the sudden voice, looking up and into George's glittering eyes.
"Sometimes the quiet is calming," she said with a smile, "maybe you should try it sometime."
"Nah," George said, jumping slightly to situate himself on top of the desk table in front of Hope who raised an eyebrow. "That would be too boring."
"And heaven forbid being boring," Hope said with a grin, leaning back slightly, "it's not the worst fate in the world."
"Oh, I don't know," George said with a grin equal to hers, "sounds pretty bad."
She couldn't help the laughter that bubbled from her lips.
"Here," he added, "I got you something."
He was holding out a blue iris. Blue irises -well, irises in general- weren't shaped like flowers normally were, its petals drooping in some places and raised upwards in others, with lighter blue speckles patterning its deep blue color with yellow at its center.
The blue iris was her favorite flower, but she'd never told anyone that. She'd always liked them because of the transfigured burn on her shoulder, but it helped that it wasn't a typical flower, not like roses or lilies or tulips. It was just a bit different, like Hope.
"How did you know?" she said, completely stunned, taking the delicate looking flower from him in surprise. "How did you know this was my favorite flower?"
"Is it?" George asked, his voice lilting in a mixture of amusement and surprise. "I'll remember that next time."
Hope could feel her cheeks heating up slightly, and covered quickly by inhaling the flower. So, there was going to be a next time...
"When you were in St. Mungo's I went to visit you—"
"I know," Hope said quickly, "I saw the Hobbit next to my bedside. I figured only you would read that to me while I was out of it."
"Only for you," George said with a smile edging faintly towards a smirk, "anyways, I saw a bit of blue on your shoulder, and one of the Healers said that you had a transfigured burn of sorts, into a blue iris...it means hope, did you know that?"
Hope's eyes glowed with mirth. "Yes, I did. I know an awful lot about my name, you know."
"That's always good," George said agreeably, "though I have to wonder how many times your name's been used as a pun."
"Oh, I stopped counting after awhile," Hope said with a wink. "It gets rather repetitive, you know."
"Don't worry," George said with a grin that worried her, "it could be worse."
"What's worse than having 'hope' or 'hoping' for the best or being 'hopeless'?"
He sniggered. "Okay, that's pretty bad...but at least your name isn't 'Dick'."
There was a brief moment of silence and then Hope was roaring with laughter, her laughter echoing loudly in the silence.
"You are a horrible human being," she gasped out as the laughs subsided. "How does your mother deal with you and Fred? I'll never understand!"
"You don't need to understand," George said with a grin, "just sympathize. She raised two of the greatest pranksters in the history of Hogwarts."
"A bit cocky, aren't you?" she asked in amusement, bending the stalk of the iris so it wasn't quite so long and tucking it into her ponytail, the blue contrasting with the red.
"Better to be cocky than to lose your nerve," George said wisely, "being cocky has led to some of the greatest pranks in Hogwarts history."
"Uh-huh," Hope said arching an incredulous eyebrow. "That's just the cocky talking, I'd wager."
"Possibly." He leaned down suddenly and faster than she had time to think, blink, or even speak, he had pressed a light kiss to the hollow of her cheek and had jumped off the desk, leaving her dumbfounded as he called behind him, "See you around, Potter!"
One day, she swore, one day she was going to kill him, and she was going to enjoy it.
Hope would get no peace of mind once class had ended that very same day and she was getting ready for bed with the other three girls with whom she shared a dorm. Parvati and Lavender had been badgering her relentlessly and it was beginning to try on her nerves.
"That's so sweet!" Parvati and Lavender gushed as Hope finally relented told her dorm mates where the flower she had been wearing all day had come from.
"I wish a boy did that for me," Lavender moaned with longing, pulling her blankets up around her, "and the Weasley twins are so cute, too!"
That kind of talk miffed Hope, like it always had whenever the girls at her muggle school had talked about how cute boys were. George had a nice smile, she could make constellations out of his freckles, and if the sun hit him just right, his hair looked like it was on fire. But wasn't it better to be a steady hand helping her up a step, or an amused laugh when she pranked someone, or respectful of the boundaries Hope had built up over the years?
She didn't understand Fred and Angie's flirts until Ron had pointed out that George did that to her sometimes and she'd had to sit down for five minutes, too startled…because George didn't try nearly as hard as Fred did and when he sometimes sat next to Hope, he didn't throw an arm around her shoulder, leaning into her space like Fred did with Angie.
"I reckon you and George are cut from the same cloth," Ron had said to that. "Just a bit different to other people, its probably why you get along so well."
Hope still didn't know what that meant, and she couldn't help but scowl at Lavender and Parvati. Hermione hid a smile behind her book at the expression on Hope's face and couldn't help but add, "He gave you a kiss, didn't he, Hope? Right on the cheek?"
Hope glared darkly at her friend for her betrayal, her cheeks inflaming, making the two other girls burst into giggles once more and Hope had to draw her curtains around her bed in an effort to save herself from embarrassment, but it didn't work to well.
"Oh, go to bed, you idiots," she snapped from behind the curtains in a sniffy sort of voice. "And stop theorizing about my love life," she added, raising her voice slightly in annoyance. Or lack thereof.
She could still hear the giggling, but she chose to ignore them. She lay there, awake and in bed for quite some time, ever after the other three had dropped off to sleep. Hope just couldn't fall asleep; it wasn't an unusual feeling, though, as irritated as she was about it.
She gave a sigh of frustration after another ten minutes of wakefulness before finally throwing the blankets from her legs and thrusting open the curtains from her bed. Luckily, the movement didn't awaken her friends. She rubbed furiously at her face, annoyance tingeing her face.
It wasn't George, though he had been giving her butterflies in her stomach all term, and it wasn't the Blood-Soaked Tree. That particular nightmare hadn't plagued her in a few weeks, which meant she was sleeping a lot more than usual, an equally strange occurrence, as Dean was sleeping less.
Hope squashed a groan, rubbing at her eyes some more, her eyes falling on the little black book that belonged to T.M. Riddle. Her eyebrows creased together into an obvious frown. Sometimes she could swear she could hear a voice coming from within its pages, but that couldn't be, it was just a book.
Or was it?
She wrinkled her nose, finally making up her mind, grabbing it from the bedside table and making her way downstairs.
The common room had been empty for at least an hour by now. Books had been strewn carelessly about in the haste of last-minute studying. The fire still burned in the fireplace, the embers glowing softly in the dark, tossing a dappled glow upon the little diary where Hope held it in her hand. It looked slightly malevolent, but when Hope blinked, it had gone and she was left wondering what exactly she had even seen. She glared at it suspiciously, as if it was playing some sort of mind game with her, but it was just a book…wasn't it?
Hope grabbed the quill and ink from a nearby table, taking it back to where she settled onto the floor before the fire, propping open the diary, poising her quill tip over the page, a single drop falling onto the page as Hope considered what she should write, because, she felt she should write at least something (she wasn't sure why, though), but then something decidedly strange happened.
The drop that fell onto the page was instantly absorbed into the page, as if the page was a sponge. She flipped the page back and forth, but the absorbed ink hadn't gone through the page, it had gone into the book! But it couldn't have!
Hope creased the spine, searching for the ink that had disappeared, but there was no trace of it.
So, at long last, Hope touched the tip of her quill to the paper and began to write. My name is Hope Potter and I don't know why I'm writing in this diary.
Those words disappeared as well, but then something happened that Hope did not anticipate; words began to appear on the page in someone else's scrawl directed towards her.
Hello, Hope Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?
You know you're in trouble when you start writing in a book that writes back to you. Maybe this was something that magical diaries could do? She frowned; she'd never heard of diaries doing that.
She eyed it suspiciously once more, but she couldn't resist writing a response.
Someone chucked it into a toilet, must've been a terrible diary.
She had meant for the dairy to take offense, but it was a diary, what was it going do? Slam shut? However, much to her ire, the diary seemed to skate right over her biting response.
Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. Hope frowned…recording memories? Was that something that could be done? But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.
And Hope felt an increase of suspicion at that comment. Something about this diary was very…off. Even touching it gave her an uncomfortable feeling…like it was dangerous and powerful -something deep inside her hissed to keep away, that it was unnatural-, but she couldn't really stop herself from asking.
Why? Hope's quill twitched between her fingers.
I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Hope froze her quill where it was, unbridled shock completely encompassing her face. What were the chances of this? What were the chances of finding something that could possibly tell her just what she needed to know? This little diary might be able to tell her just what happened the first time the Chamber of Secrets opened! Excitement bubbled in her veins as she scrawled the next few words.
That sounds exactly like what's going on right now. Were you there the first time the Chamber of Secrets was open?
Of course I was, the diary responded, and Hope thought it sounded a trifle bit smug. I was the one who caught the person who'd opened the Chamber but not until a student had been killed by the creature. I was warned against speaking the truth of that night and was given a nice medal for my silence, but the creature lived on.
Do you know who opened the Chamber last time? Hope wrote, feverish with the desire for the truth.
Yes.
Hope was now giddy with excitement. Can you tell me?
No.
Irritated, Hope cast a frown at the pages as she would have done so if it had been a real person she had disagreed with, but then five words appeared that made her change her mind about it.
But I can show you.
What happened next, Hope couldn't quite recall even minutes later, she just knew that she had felt was a feeling much like falling and then she had opened her eyes to find herself not in the Gryffindor common room at all, but what must've been the headmaster's office, though she herself had never been inside.
She gazed around in a bit of wonderment, staring up at all the portraits when she tripped and fell backwards…right through the headmaster's desk.
Her eyes grew to the size of dinner plates as she sat up, struggling to her feet before pressing a hand against the hard wood of the desk, but it was no good; her hand sank right through!
"What the—?" Hope goggled slightly as she removed her hand and repeated the process over and over again, in a bit of shock.
And the man sitting at the desk, reading a letter by candlelight was most certainly not Dumbledore. "What the—?" Could it be a memory, then? Riddle's memories inside a diary?
Hope knew it sounded ludicrous, but day just got stranger when there was a knock at the door, so Hope settled in for the ride.
"Professor Flitwick?"
The aged Charms professor lifted his gaze from the parchments on his deck to give his full attention to possibly one of the most inquisitive students he had ever had the joy to teach. The same could be said for her two friends, only with varying degrees and with looks not quite as intense as Hope's.
"Yes, Miss Potter?" he asked kindly.
"I was wondering," she said carefully, in a tone like she was hoping he'd settle an argument between her and her friends, "if it was possible to implant memories into an object…say a diary?"
It was a curious question, Professor Flitwick had to admit, and he had to wonder what had inspired the question in the first place, but he conceded to answer it anyways.
"The only thing that is capable of holding memories, Miss Potter, is a Pensieve," he said, "a simple book does not have the magical capabilities of holding the magic of memory."
"And a Pensieve is…" Hope asked, canting her head slightly to the side, unfamiliar with the term.
"They are shallow stone basins," he said, "very few in number and always carved with runes to keep the memories intact and to preserve them whilst they are in the basin."
Hope screwed up her face slightly (he doubted that she noticed her hair had lightened to a soft orange) but then she grinned. "Thanks, Professor!"
Professor Flitwick watched bemused as Hope raced back to her friends with barely a limp.
"So?" Hermione pressed as Hope caught up with them. "What did he say?"
"He says that a diary shouldn't be capable of holding memories," Hope said stoutly as they leapt up the stairs, making for the left-hand staircase that would take them down to the Herbology Greenhouses. "So, I want to know how it could."
"Could it be…you know," Ron glanced around to check if anyone was listening in on their conversation, "Dark magic?"
Both girls wore identical frowns at that, both considering the possibility.
"Well…" Hermione said, half-contemplative, half-nervous, "I suppose, there is a possibility…"
"I'm not quite sure," Hope said, even if it made her uncomfortable, it hadn't actually done anything to her. "I mean, it's not like it tried to kill me or anything—"
"They don't have to kill you," Ron said, sounding surprisingly grim, "they only have to have you completely obsessed with them and you're as good as gone."
All three fell silent at that comment; Ron would know more about the subject, no doubt his father had dealt with countless items enchanted by Dark magic.
"Well," Hermione said once more, "how could a memory be bad?"
"Depends on whose memory it is," Hope mused before raising her voice slightly, "Oi! What're you two up to?"
She was of course speaking to Fred and George who could be seen huddled closely together, whispering feverishly back and forth. Hope was instantly suspicious, as she always was with them.
"Nothing!" the twins sang in unison, with identical innocent smiles on their faces that weren't actually innocent at all.
"Run along, underlings!" Fred added with a wink.
"I'd stay away from the pudding at dinner," George added with a wink as well and Hope narrowed her eyes.
"They're impossible!" Hermione bemoaned.
Hope gave a small shrug, an amused smile on her face as always with George. "I think they're brilliant."
"You would," Ron said glumly, resigned to his fate.
"Besides," Hope continued, ignoring Ron as she did so, "you can't really think that Hagrid's actually a killer?"
"No," Ron and Hermione said quickly, with Ron adding, "but you have to admit that he does have a fascination with dangerous creatures. It wouldn't be hard to imagine him having a creature like that under his wing."
"Yeah," Hermione couldn't help but agree, "but we're talking about a creature that killed someone, Ron! You can't think that Hagrid would keep something like that!"
"Er…maybe we should talk about something else?" Hope suggested a little meekly, attempting to keep another fight from breaking out between the two. "Like…what classes are you two wanting to take for next year?"
The change of subject evaporated the tension that had appeared between the ginger and brunette.
"Oh, I don't know!" Hermione cried. "They all look so interesting that I can't make up my mind on any two of them!"
Hope gave her a sheepish smile and a half shrug that told Hermione that she was in the same boat. "I can only settle on four. Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination." Obviously, Ancient Runes was at the top of her list, being one of the subjects that was quite a bit like the hieroglyphics she'd read about, but Divination and Care of Magical Creatures both sounded very interesting. Arithmancy sounded a lot like math, which Hope hadn't been all that bad at, and it sounded like it was used in spell creation, which was very interesting. And Muggle Studies sounded quite boring, especially to those who had grown up in the Muggle world, except for a select few, who, like Hermione, wanted to see the Wizarding point of view of Muggles.
"Just Care of Magical Creatures and Divination for me," Ron piped up as they rounded the corner.
"You only want to take those ones because they're blow-off classes," Hermione grumbled in disapproval as she pushed open the door to the greenhouse, putting her things in her cubby hole by the wall next to where Ron and Hope's things were designated to go.
Herbology classes were quickly becoming one of Hope's least favorite classes. They would have been your least favorite class if the other half of it were intent on avoiding you, insulting you, and glaring at you like you were some sort of villain who had killed the hero of the story. And they really didn't appreciate Hope getting into fights with their fellows, but even if Hope spent the rest of term in detention, she didn't care.
So, Hope opted to shred her Fluxweed in silence, pretending like none of them were there.
"Miss Potter? Class has ended."
Hope blinked, looking up startled and into the earthy brown eyes of Professor Sprout. "Huh?"
"The class, Miss Potter," the stout woman said gently, peeling the silver knife from Hope's grip as if she thought she might use it as some sort of weapon, "it has ended."
"Oh," Hope said, a bit on the quiet side, "sorry…guess I got lost in my thoughts."
Hope glanced past her shoulder to see where the Mandrakes were rummaging about in their dirt-filled pots. "How long until they're ready?"
Professor Sprout followed her gaze and smiled. "The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll know they're fully mature," she said brightly. "Then we'll be able to revive those poor people in the hospital wing." She patted her shoulder gently. "Don't you worry about a thing. Now run along."
"Yes, ma'am."
"You're starting to get really spacey," Ron said when she rejoined them for the second time that day, "you're starting to over-think things."
"Heaven forbid," Hope sniped back, a frown creasing her forehead as Lavender raced up to her, out of breath, her golden-brown curls swinging with every movement.
"Hope!" she gasped once she had regained her breath. "You'd better come—the dorm—we don't know how it happened—"
"What are you talking about?" Hermione and Hope said as one, completely flummoxed.
"The dorm!" Lavender said, stabbing a finger in the direction of the Gryffindor dorms. "It's been ransacked!"
"What?!"
Ransacked was a surprisingly mild term to describe how utterly demolished the dorm was when Lavender, Hope, and Hermione finally raced up the stairs to meet a slightly shocked Parvati. Mattresses had been overturned, books thrown everywhere, clothes tossed from their dressers. Everyone's things were thrown about, but Hope's had taken the brunt of the ruin, and it took them a good while for the four of them to get the room into order once more.
"Who would do this?" Parvati asked as she held out a stack of Hope's rare books as she replaced them gingerly in the section of her trunk for the books.
"No idea," Hope said, keeping her head down as she mentally listed off everything she owned and everything she'd found. There was only one thing that remained missing.
"What is it?" Hermione whispered once Lavender and Parvati had gone.
"It's Tom Riddle's diary," she hissed back, "that's what they were looking for, and they found it."
Worry lined Hermione's face. "But," she said faintly, "it couldn't have been someone outside of Gryffindor, no one else knows our password."
Hope bit her lip, avoiding saying what she knew that they were both thinking about. It was time to entertain the possibility that the person who had caused the chaos was from Gryffindor House.
"Are you still awake?"
"Yeah."
Hope leaned over the couch that she was sprawled on (having won the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that allowed her to sleep on it) to look at Hermione. The four of them had reported the incident to Professor McGonagall, who had had the dorm thoroughly searched and checked for spells, but she had come up empty. Still, she had asked the girls to kip in the common room for the night just to be sure.
"Can't sleep?" Hermione murmured lightly so as not to awaken their companions.
"Something like that," Hope mumbled lightly. "Tomorrow's the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff game, you know."
"Yeah, I know." Only everyone knew that. Oliver Wood had been positively raving about for the past month or so. Obviously, he was very excited about it. "Pre-game jitters?"
Hope's thoughts dwelled on Dean's tight grip on her arm, his worried eyes, the crescents carved beneath them from so many sleepless nights. "I saw you die," he'd hissed in a dark corner beyond the Transfiguration room and Hope had balked. "Worse than the Blood-Soaked Tree. I watched you die. Please, please be careful."
Hope had been so startled, but the Blood-Soaked Tree wasn't even real. It was a nightmare of epic proportions and Hope couldn't quite convey. Dean was the only one who really got it, and Dean was the one who'd looked like he was breaking apart instead.
So Hope said she would, even if she didn't quite believe it.
"Just a little bit," Hope muttered. "I mean, the Hufflepuffs have been giving me problems for months."
Hermione sighed lightly. "You know, one day you and the MacMillan boy are going to have to make up."
Hope hadn't punched him recently, but there was always the hope that he'd try to pick another fight and give her the excuse. "I have a long memory," she replied stoutly, rolling away from Hermione, the material of her sleep shirt pulled tight across her back, a pale blue outline bleeding through her shirt, illuminated by the firelight. Hermione frowned slightly at it; it wasn't a tattoo, was it?
"Go to sleep, Hermione," Hope proclaimed in a tired, muffled voice. "You've got a worse attitude than me when you don't sleep well the night before."
Hermione's cheeks attained a healthy bit of color at that comment and she opened her mouth affronted to whisper heatedly, "I do not!"
The low chuckle she got in return was enough for her to know that she was forgiven for asking such a personal question, if she had even taken offense in the first place.
And that night, Hope dreamed about a castle bathed in darkness in a world devoid of life and seven locks on the massive double doors, and she awoke with a scream echoing in her ears.
Hermione and Ron decided to walk out with Hope to the pitch, both looking a bit concerned.
"Will you be alright today?" Ron asked as they made their way down the staircase. "I mean, you are playing Hufflepuff…they aren't really a fan of you right now."
"Big surprise," Hope grunted. "Just because they're acting like a bunch of—" She called them something that made Ron snigger and Hermione look scandalized "—doesn't mean that I'm going to throw the match just to make them happ…" She words trailed off as she came to a stop, a blissfully blank expression on her face.
"What is it?" Hermione asked in confusion only to be shushed frantically as Hope listened intently to that murderous voice that had been silent for so long, finally speaking for the first time that she had heard it in months.
"Kill this time…let me rip…tear…"
The voice still sent shivers down her spine as it had the first time she'd heard it.
"There it is!" she said. "The voice! Its back! Can't you hear it?"
But like the other times, Hermione and Ron were oblivious to it. Hope wasn't sure who was in a better position; her for hearing it or them being free to not.
And then a look of realization dawned on Hermione, her epiphany making her whole face seem brighter. "Hope! I think I know! I've got to go to the library! I'll meet you at the pitch!" She gave her friend a firm hug and raced up the stairs faster than Hope or Ron could say "Wait!"
Hope could've sworn she'd seen Dean cast a look her way before following Hermione, but she couldn't be sure at that distance.
"One day," Ron grumbled, "she's going to have to tell us everything upfront."
Hope gave a light snort. "Yeah, like that'll happen." When pigs fly, as the saying went. "What's she hoping to find in the library?"
"No idea," Ron said with a deep sigh. "But you know Hermione."
Hope hummed in agreement, balancing her broom on her shoulder as they finally made their way out onto the field with Ron branching off to save him and Hermione a good seat and Hope heading towards the Gryffindor changing rooms.
"Ready to kick some yellow-and-black butt?" Alicia asked with a grin as she entered, using her teeth to tighten the arm guards onto her arms as a substitute for her other hand.
Hope raised an eyebrow. "I suppose…do you need any help with that, Leesh?"
"I got this," the older girl said around the leather string used to tie the guard to her arm. "No worries-been doing this for years."
"Uh-huh…"
Hope pulled her red and gold robes over her body, tying the assortment of ties, doing a much better job than Alicia, if the huff of annoyance was anything to go by. But all the girls made it out onto the field in record time, only to be met with Professor McGonagall's voice blaring out across the pitch.
"This match has been cancelled!"
"Can you cancel Quidditch matches?" Hope muttered to the other three.
"I don't think it's ever been done before," Katie admitted, "but there's a first time for everything, I suppose."
"All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!" Though it seemed that Professor McGonagall had tried to keep her voice calm, the last few of her words were slightly higher than the rest, betraying her worry.
"Potter, I think you'd better come with me," she said to the girl whose hands tightened over her broom, as if the feel of the smoothly carved wood under her palm could comfort her.
"I didn't do it!" she hissed angrily, the red of her hair turning absolutely fiery. "Whatever you think I did, it wasn't me!"
"What's going on?" Ron demanded as he came to a halt before the rest of the team and the professor.
"Where's Hermione?" were the first words out of Hope's mouth. Surely their brunette friend would have joined him by now? She hadn't been intending to take long, Hope knew that; she should have been back by now.
Professor McGonagall seemed to be a bit at a loss. "The pair of you better come with me."
"What? Why?" Hope's eyes were becoming frantic, glancing feverishly beyond McGonagall as if hoping to see her there. "Where is she? Where's Hermione?!"
"She's not—?" Ron asked, his voice choking slightly, his face pale. "She couldn't be…"
"Weasley, Potter," Professor McGonagall said firmly, "please come with me."
Hope and Ron followed her numbly, leaving behind her teammates in a flurry of worry. The trek up the stairs to the hospital wing felt much longer than it should have and Hope and Ron rushed ahead of the Transfiguration professor, skidding on the stone as she halted suddenly. "I'm afraid there's been a triple attack."
Hope's heart turned to stone in her chest.
There was an unknown girl in the first bed, but in the next two—
"Dean," Hope whimpered, "Hermione."
They were just as stiff and frozen, Dean reaching a hand out as if to stall someone or something, while Hermione's was curled slightly like she was holding something when she'd been petrified. Hope stood there, swaying as Ron rushed to Hermione's side, staring into Dean's blank and empty eyes, and Hope could hardly bear to look at them.
She didn't even realize she was crying until she felt a wetness trailing down her cheeks.
"Follow the spiders? Tell me you're not thinking about doing this?!" Ron squeaked, his voice pitching a bit higher than he intended and fading out completely.
"Look," Hope snapped, tucking her cloak away in the corner by the fireplace, lifting the heavy wrought-iron lantern with one hand, "we need answers and now that Hagrid's gone, our best bet is following what he said. So yeah, following the spiders sounds like a great plan." Without Hagrid to explain, they needed to get their answers from somewhere and Hope refused to sit around waiting for another attack.
Ron whimpered softly, gripping his now Spell-o-Taped wand (as he'd lost his temper trying to work on his Transfiguration homework not several hours earlier and had slammed the wand down too hard, resulting in the tip breaking off and Ron's subsequent horror). "But-"
"Hermione saw something we missed," Hope bit out, "it's our job to figure out the last pieces of the puzzle. Now, are you going to help me or not?"
Ron glanced mournfully back towards the castle and safety itself, but his loyalty to his friends was something else, Hope had to admit as she watched him gather himself and nod resolutely. There was no point in going against Hope, either way; she was too headstrong to back down from whatever she put her mind to.
"Hold this." She thrust the lantern at him and withdrew her own wand, holding it aloft, training her eyes to the ground, finding what she was looking for in a matter of seconds. "There they are!"
The small spiders were scurrying towards the forest in a hurry, much like the ones that they had seen exiting the castle through the window by Moaning Myrtle's bathroom all those months ago. She could hear Ron's whimper at the sight of them, but she ignored that too, striding into the forest without looking back. The forest was as fearsome and terrifying as it had been the last time she had been in it, and she had hoped to not have a repeat of those events; however desperate times called for desperate measures.
The roots were as twisted as the trees, protruding from the earth as though they were diseased. The air was damp, much like the earth itself and Hope could feel her shoes sinking into the ground with every step, but a little mud wasn't going to stop her from her from finding out the truth.
The number of spiders was growing, all converging into a small tunnel that was just tall enough that Hope and Ron could make their way through it without having to bend down. Ron was now holding her hand painfully tight, but it wasn't like she was going to be able to shake him off.
Hope felt uncomfortably like she'd stepped over some invisible boundary into someone else's territory; a shiver ran down her spine and she could practically feel the temperature dropping. Hope and Ron stepped out from the tunnel and into a clearing that would have been mistaken for being empty, if the scuttling sounds weren't quite so obvious.
"We're in so much trouble!" Ron gasped, but Hope shushed him, listening intently for the things that were making the noises. Hope cupped Ron's elbow, forcing him to lift the lantern higher, to spread out a fan of light over the forest floor, and that was when they saw it.
The spiders they had originally followed had been small in size, but these ones…she gulped. These ones were much bigger. Some were the size of small dogs, but some were larger, much larger. Ron was mouthing wordlessly by her side, his face a mask of horror.
"Aragog!" the spiders cried, clicking their pincers so the words sounded a bit like an applause, only much, much creepier. "Aragog!"
It must have been a name, and the next second, Hope and Ron stumbled backwards because out of the darkness a spider had appeared, dwarfing the largest spiders they'd seen yet by a great deal. Even Hope, who didn't have a fear of spiders, felt a bit of fear at its massive size.
"What is it?" the massive spider that must have been Aragog called to the spider that had spoken. It was then that Hope noticed his eyes. They were a milky white, gazing around unseeing. Hope had to fight a gasp when they landed on her before moving away once more.
She could understand now why Ron was so scared of them. Hope was impressed with her ability to not piss her pants at the sight of them.
"Men," the spider hissed.
"Is it Hagrid?" Aragog rumbled.
"Strangers," a different spider hissed, making Ron jump and clutch Hope like a life line. At this point, she wasn't going to have any feeling left in the left side of her body.
"Kill them," Aragog said in a voice that made Hope wonder just how many times the spider had said those same words before. "I was sleeping…"
"Wait!" she yelled, attempting to get his attention and moving away from the other spiders at the same time. "Wait! We're friends of Hagrid's! He's the one who sent us in here to find you!"
This new information made the spider temporarily freeze in its tracks.
"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said, his voice slow and ancient and Hope had to bite down the urge to correct him of her gender.
"Yeah, well, Hagrid didn't really have any other choice, now did he?" Hope said with a touch of sarcasm, unable to help herself.
A few of the closest spiders hissed at her lack of respect.
"What do you mean?" the spider queried.
"Hagrid's been taken away," she said, gaining confidence knowing that he was going to listen to her now, "they think that he's the one behind these attacks that have been happening at the school. They've taken him to a place called As-Azkaban."
This seemed to anger every spider in the clearing, including Aragog who clicked his pincers malevolently.
"But that was years ago," Aragog said, his tone now regretful, as though he knew what it was that they were looking for. "Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."
So, that meant he was out as the possible creature within the chamber…he would have had a hell of a time getting into the castle unseen with that large body of his, not to mention the blindness.
"The monster," she said slowly, "did you ever see it?"
"No." Was it just Hope, or did it sound like Aragog had a tremor in his voice? "It is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others."
Ron was beginning to tug frantically on her arm, as if fighting the desire to run towards the exit. The spiders rustled around them, making Hope grip her wand so tightly that she was almost sure that the wood would break under her hand. Could spiders eat humans? Hope didn't really want to find out.
"Er, well, thank you," Hope said a bit more meekly than she intended, "so, er, we'll be leaving now…" She gulped slightly as they closed in slightly around them. "We'll just go and give this information to our headmaster…and he'll try to get Hagrid released." They didn't need to know that Dumbledore wasn't around right now.
And before Aragog could say anything else, Hope had yanked Ron back and through the thicket of trees, barely stopping once they'd reached Hagrid's hut to grab her invisibility cloak, before racing back to the castle with hardly a word being spoken, only stopping once they'd reached the common room and had become fairly out of breath.
"They were going to eat us!" Ron squeaked in between pants. "Hagrid sent us to be eaten, that's what he did!"
Hope rolled her eyes, her heart beating against her chest. "Oh, don't be dramatic, Ron, we got what we wanted, we know Hagrid's innocent."
"Innocent!" Ron scoffed. "Yeah, because someone who was innocent would send us to our deaths!"
Way to be overdramatic.
"I think I'm going to go and pass out in my bed," Ron said in a weak sort of voice as he stood shakily, "and if I see another spider again, it'll be too soon."
Hope gave him the barest of smiles. "Imagine if I hadn't thought up some sort of excuse for us to live."
Ron shivered. "Don't even get me started on that," he bemoaned, "I don't even want to think about it."
A smirk wormed its way onto Hope's lips. "Goodnight, Ron, don't let the spiders bite."
The glare he tossed her lacked any real fire, but she got the message well enough. "All right, all right."
She waved him off, curling her body up by the fire, swathing her body in the blankets that were thrown over the couch.
"Do you ever sleep?"
Hope jumped strongly at the sudden new voice, twisting her head around so fast that she was sure her hair had given her whiplash.
"George!" she complained, placing a hand over her frantically beating heart. "Do you have to do that?"
"It brings me great joy to freak you out," the Weasley twin said dryly as he plopped down onto the seat beside her. "But seriously, how are you doing?"
She and Ron had been remarkably quiet since Hermione and Dean had been petrified, but George thought the loss of Dean had done more to Hope. Even if they weren't together all the time, they were remarkably alike and they'd spent the holiday together…it would've been like if Ron had gotten petrified.
The flames cast a soft glow onto her face, making her fatigue more obvious. "I'm fine," she said tiredly. "I don't know why everyone keeps asking me—"
"Because we've barely heard you speak at all since Hermione and…" George trailed off suddenly at the glare she gave him.
"They're my friends," Hope snapped, "of course I'm upset! Wouldn't you be?"
"Hope." The way he said her name sent a tingle down her spine and her hand felt warm where he reached over to squeeze it. She could feel a steady thrum in her stomach that had nothing to do with being sick. "It's all right."
Hope frowned, looking away from him and heaving a sigh. "I just keep thinking about how pissed his mum's gonna be when she finds out what happened…and Hermione's going to be pulling out her hair when she realizes how much school she's missed…"
George cracked a smile at that comment. "Yeah, a bit mad about school, that one."
A small chuckle escaped her. "She'll kill me if I don't take proper notes."
"Don't worry," George consoled with a slight grin, "I'll save you." He faltered slightly. "I mean, um, if you feel like you need me to."
Hope's mouth twitched faintly. "I'll keep it in mind."
When Madam Pomfrey strode into the hospital wing one morning, she had to give a small cry of alarm because she now had six students in the wing instead of four.
Hope Potter had dragged one of the hospital chairs so that it was between Dean and Hermione's beds, her arms around her knees and her hair a pitch-black curtain hiding her face from view. Ron Weasley had commandeered a chair as well, only on Hermione's opposite side. His face was clear to see with his shoulders slumped slightly and his cheek resting on his hand, his lips barely ajar enough for a rather audible snore to sneak through. Madam Pomfrey's eyes softened slightly as she looked at the three of them.
It was like looking through a mirror and into the past. Hope had picked up a few friends that mirrored the relationship that her father had had when he was growing up.
Obviously, Hope was James, the ring leader with his clever tongue that could sometimes get her out of trouble, given the right circumstances, though rarely these days. Then there was Hermione, who was the Remus Lupin of the trio, mad about studying and always getting after her friends to do the same. And then there was Ron, who was (unfortunately) the Sirius Black of the crew, the one Hope was hardly seen without, the one who was lazy but loyal (at least, it had seemed he had been loyal…at the time). It put a frown on her face to know that there was no Peter Pettigrew, for she was certain she would prefer a squirrely friend in the place of one whom could possibly betray the others.
But she was getting too ahead of herself, and as Hope said, she was not her parents. She could understand why she got so irritated with everyone else for bringing it up; it must be aggravating.
Ron Weasley wasn't Sirius Black.
Hermione Granger wasn't Remus Lupin.
Hope Potter wasn't James Potter.
Hope was Hope. Hermione was Hermione. Ron was Ron. Madam Pomfrey couldn't help but admonish herself for looking for parallels when there were none. That was Professor Dumbledore's job.
Hope's black waterfall of ink colored hair shifted slightly and Madam Pomfrey heard the tell-tale signs of someone breathing in rather deeply.
"Miss Potter?"
Hope's head jerked up suddenly, glaring blearily at the person who had said her name. "Wha?" she said muzzily, rubbing at the side of her eye with the flared hem of her sleeve. "S'meone say m'name?"
Madam Pomfrey gave her a small but relieved smile. "It's just me, Hope," the Matron said in a comforting voice. "Perhaps you want to tell me what you and Mr. Weasley are doing here?"
Hope's eyebrow twitched as she gave her an expression that said, "You already know why, so why are you asking?"
But Madam Pomfrey wouldn't budge, so Hope finally sighed and said, "We came to visit Hermione, happy?"
"Immensely," Madam Pomfrey said dryly, "now wake up Mr. Weasley so I can get you back to your common room before Minerva comes to take you all to breakfast.
Hope tossed her a look of surprise; she had honestly been expected to be turned in, but, she supposed wryly, that Madam Pomfrey had a soft spot for her most frequent patient.
Ron complained a bit when he awoke, but Hope informed him that if he didn't want to wake up so early, then he shouldn't have snuck out with her in the first place, earning a glare.
Madam Pomfrey looked away when they both gripped Hermione's hands tightly, whispering words that she couldn't hear but could garner the general message: "Wake up soon." And then Hope gave Dean's frozen body a quick hug, leaning back to rub at her eyes in a way that had nothing to do with sleep, following after Madam Pomfrey as she led the way out.
The tension was still thick in the air at breakfast that day and Hope and Ron ate in silence, much like the rest of the hall. The only sounds that could be heard were the scraping of plates and utensils and the quiet thrum of whispers. The whispers weren't that loud separately, but when you put together just how many people were whispering, it came off as rather loud, but none of the presiding professors mentioned it.
"Hope."
Hope raised her head slightly to indicate that she was listening, twisting her spoon back and forth in her porridge as Ron whispered to her across from the table.
"Do you think there are going to be any more attacks?"
Hope's lips curved downwards into a frown. "Without Dumbledore around? Probably. The teachers are worried, just look at them."
"And no one else knows anything about the Chamber of Secrets," Ron grumbled under his breath, before giving Hope his full attention, because her eyes had shifted to the wood of the table, her eyebrows creased together in deep thought. "What is it?"
"All right, we know that the attacks first started and stopped about fifty years back," Hope said, reviewing all that they had learned, "that the attacks were caused by some sort of monster that can't be seen and causes spiders to fear, and we know that the monster killed a girl fifty years ago."
"Yeah?" Ron said, not quite following.
"What if she became a ghost after her death?" Hope asked, pushing her half-eaten food aside. "Because she died here? What if she was still young when she died?"
"You have got to be kidding me?" Ron breathed. "Moaning Myrtle? No way."
"But just talking to her would be a pain," Hope muttered to herself, "we need to find which beast it was that Hermione was looking for…she was in the Magical Beasts section of the library but that doesn't really narrow it down much…"
"Why am I sensing that we're going to have another midnight adventure to the library?" Ron asked dryly.
"Do you have a better plan?" Hope retorted, but, unfortunately, he did not, and so, after everyone had gone to sleep, Hope pulled out her invisibility cloak for the second time that week and they snuck out of the common room once more. The number of patrols had increased since Dumbledore's removal and since Hermione, Dean, and Penelope Clearwater's (the girl who had been petrified along with their friend, one of the prefects of Ravenclaw) attack, and dodging around a number of professors proved to be quite difficult. Ron almost tripped in front of Professor Flitwick and Hope skidded slightly on the floor in front of the stern-faced Professor Vector, the Professor of Arithmancy. Luckily, the noise they made was only a small amount, so they went unnoticed for the time being.
Hope opened the first book she could find which dealt with creatures of the water, including: Merpeople, Kelpies, Ramora, River Trolls, and Kappas. However, none of the creatures matched any of the information that they had.
"Maybe we should stick to creatures that can walk on land," Ron hissed to her, his voice echoing slightly in the silence. "It can't be something that would die without water."
Hope hummed in agreement, handing over the lit tip of her want to Ron once more as she replaced the book and grabbed another one. Serpentine Critters…
"A snake?" Ron asked in surprise, "…wait that would make a lot of sense—"
"Shit!" Hope swore, glancing out of the window. The sun was beginning to peak over the horizon, painting a sliver of orange across the sky. "We're running out of time…" She feverishly flipped through the pages, but it was no use, the professors would be coming to get each of the houses soon. "We'll just have to slip away later."
Later just happened to be after Defense Against the Dark Arts had concluded. Lockhart had been growing increasingly arrogant as the lesson had worn on, and had been so for the past few days since Hagrid's arrest and Dumbledore's dismissal. Ron found his attitude draining and Hope found the man to be entirely too irritating; she was restraining herself from throttling him but not very well. But, luckily, the man was an idiot, so Hope and Ron used that to their advantage, making sure that they were the last ones to leave the class, moving at a much slower rate and slipping away once all of the other students and professor had their attention focused entirely forwards.
Unfortunately, this was where Hope and Ron's plan went south. Though Hope had taken to carrying her invisibility cloak around, she hadn't had enough time to pull it out when they happened upon Professor McGonagall.
"Potter! Weasley!" she snapped, her voice sounding much more strained than usual, no doubt to the enormous amount of pressure that had been placed on her as Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts. "What are you doing?"
Ron stammered, but Professor McGonagall's eyes had gone to Hope, as she was every bit the leader of the group as her father had been with his group of friends. Both Hope's and Ron's eyes were red, whether it be from crying or lack of sleep, she did not know (she had no way of knowing that the pair hadn't slept in more than a day), giving them the most affected profile she'd seen of the friends of the students who had been petrified.
"We were—"
"—going to see Hermione and Dean," Hope blurted out, saying the first thing that had come to mind, her thoughts happening to rest on the morning the day before yesterday when they had spent the night in the hospital wing. Hermione and Dean were one of the few things on her mind these days, and it just fueled her determination towards finding out what had rendered them to such a state.
Ron's face would give away the lie if Hope didn't talk fast, so she steeled herself, trying to make her sound as convincing as possible.
"It's just," she started, "we wanted to give them the good news, tell them the Mandrakes were ready and everything…Hermione hates not knowing about things, so…" she waved her hands helplessly by her sides. It wasn't really a lie, now that Hope thought about it; she did have a habit of talking to people when they weren't listening, and that helped it sound more believable.
Professor McGonagall's eyes shone, suppressed tears glinting there, surprising Hope slightly, but then she'd always thought the tough-but-fair woman had a soft spot for the three of them, just like she did with Fred and George (because, let's face it, no one else would be so lenient with their pranks).
"Of course," she choked out. "Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been…" She had to collect herself momentarily before speaking once more. "I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."
By the time they sat down beside Hermione and Dean once more, Hope was regretting using her friends as their excuse. Just looking at how stiff and rigid their bodies was, how glassy their eyes were…it brewed a dark anger inside of her. And then there was the fact that they wouldn't be able to make it to the library unseen, even with Hope's invisibility cloak folded under her robes. And make no mistake, Madam Pomfrey would notice their absence.
"Maybe the monster's dead," Ron said hopefully across from her, "maybe the attacks have stopped because it did?"
"No…" Hope frowned slightly, "it's much too clever, think about it; the only attacks have occurred in places that are almost always unoccupied—"
"The library's unoccupied?" Ron asked skeptically.
"During a Quidditch match?" Hope asked rhetorically. "You bet. It targeted places that had two or less students in the vicinity…" Her eyes drifted slightly. "Or maybe that was just a coincidence? Maybe the monster didn't know that those places would be next to deserted?"
"Maybe," Ron shrugged, "but I guess we'll never know, will we?"
Hope sighed again. "At least the Mandrake Draught will be administered soon…tomorrow, was it?"
"Yeah." Ron yawned widely, barely making an attempt to cover it with his fist. "Hard to believe we've been awake for two straight days."
"Yeah," Hope agreed, "but then, remember when I was obsessed with that mirror? I was awake for longer."
Ron and Hope grimaced identically. That mirror was more trouble than it was worth; as expected of a creation of Salazar Slytherin himself.
Hope exhaled audibly as she squeezed her hand tightly around Hermione's clenched one, and that was when she noticed it. Something flimsy and crumpled had brushed against her hand. She bent her head close to see what it was that Hermione had been holding when she was attacked.
"What is it?" Ron whispered, noticing the curiosity on her face.
"I think Hermione found something," Hope said lowly, mindful of Madam Pomfrey in her office, "let me try for a second…"
It would have been easier had Hermione not been gripping the paper quite so tightly, but it was also good that she hadn't dropped it before now. Hope leaned in much closer, peeling the parchment as gently as she could from Hermione's stone-like hand, unfolding it just as gingerly.
"What's it say?" Ron whispered lowly watching as Hope's mouth dropped open, betraying her shock. A Basilisk! Of course! A green serpent that could be fifty feet long once mature with venomous fangs and a stare that could kill you from looking it straight in the eye. Everything fit, except for…
Hermione's tidy scrawl clearly said Pipes.
"Pipes!" Ron said faintly. "No wonder you thought it could move through walls! It was using the plumbing!"
"And what if—" Hope continued. "What if the pipes started at-"
"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," they both said.
"Now can we go find McGonagall?" Ron questioned.
Ron's face was pale in the firelight, and Hope couldn't bring herself to go over to him and make an attempt to comfort him.
Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever…no one ever wanted to hear that about their little sister.
"What should I do?" she asked aloud, not even sure who she was directing her question to when a hand squeezed hers. She didn't have to look up to know that it was George, but she did anyways. His eyes were red, much like Ron's were, only Ron's red was closer to bloodshot than anything else.
He shook his head, looking far too miserable to be George Weasley, but Hope could offer no words just as he could not. She wanted to say something, something that could make him and his brothers feel better, but even those would be laced with shards of glass.
She couldn't give him hope when she didn't know the truth. Ginny could still be alive, but there was no certainty.
Ron's eyes met hers and Hope read what he was thinking in a matter of seconds. Tonight.
And so, Hope and Ron waited until each and every Gryffindor had slowly filtered out of the common room, finally leaving only Ron and Hope alone.
"Do you—" Ron's voice extinguished quickly before coming back a little strained, "could she be alive?"
"Ron…"
"Just tell me!" Ron snarled.
"I don't know," Hope said quietly, calm despite how angry Ron was, "I don't know everything, Ron, and if Hermione was here, she'd say the same."
Ron's face fell slightly and he had the decency to look ashamed, but then his eyes sharpened.
"Then we should go talk to Lockhart," he said resolutely.
"Huh?" Hope said blankly, confused as to why he wanted to talk to someone who couldn't have possibly have done what his books said he had. "Why?"
"He's going to try and get into the Chamber, remember?" Ron asked, referring to the earlier conversation that they had overheard between the professors. "We can tell him where we think it is and tell him there's a basilisk in there."
Hope opened her mouth to disagree, but Ron was already moving towards the portrait hole and she had no choice but to follow him. She had yet to see Lockhart do a spell that was remotely useful, but he was going to go down into the Chamber…she sighed, closely following her friend; this was turning into a truly terrible day.
Ron threw open the door of Lockhart's office with an echoing bang.
Lockhart seemed to be in a bit of a hurry. His walls were bare of portraits of himself, his illustrious books were being thrown haphazardly into his trunk, and his ostentatious robes were being shoved into a spare trunk.
"And where do you think you're going, Professor?" Hope said in a dark and cold voice. He was packing to leave when he said that he was going to go down and fight the basilisk…that didn't really paint a good picture.
Her voice seemed to startle him if how whirled around, his eyes wild. "Miss Potter – Mr. Weasley—"
Both Ron and Hope had their wands out and pointing at him in a matter of seconds.
"You're running away!" Ron said in startling realization, giving him an angry glower. "You coward! After all that stuff you did in your books!"
"Books can be misleading," Lockhart said in almost a squeak, quailing slightly before Ron's righteous anger.
"'Books can be misleading'?" Hope quoted with a snarl. "You wrote them, didn't you! Or have I been right about thinking you were a fraud all this time?"
She would have to go with the latter, going off of how Lockhart's face had grown pitiful. "My dear girl," he said in a condescending voice that rubbed Hope the wrong way, "do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things—"
"You make me sick," Hope said with a growl. "Stealing other people's work for profit! You're worse than I thought you were!"
And then Lockhart whipped out his wand and pointed it at them. Ron took a step back, surprised that a teacher was actually going to curse them, but Hope's eyes narrowed.
"Terribly sorry," Lockhart said coolly, "but I'm going to have to put a Memory Charm on you now. Can't have you—"
"Expelliarmus!" Hope snapped, her anger spilling over so that Lockhart was actually thrown backwards, slamming into the wall and causing one of the bookshelves to collapse, dumping books over his head, even as Hope hauled him to his feet, keeping her wand and Ron keeping his trained on the professor.
"Now," she seethed, "we're going into the Chamber to find Ginny, and you're coming with us."
Lockhart could only glance between each of the angry faces glaring at him before he was forced out of the office and down to the first floor.
"Myrtle?" Hope called as they entered the lavatory, her wand still pointed at Lockhart's neck. "Are you here?"
"What do you want?" came Myrtle's sullen voice, her ghostly form shimmering on top of one of the stalls for the out-of-order toilets.
"I want to know about the day you died," Hope said bluntly.
The ghost goggled at her as though no one had ever asked her such a question which seemed highly likely, given her attitude. And then she looked so impossibly pleased.
"Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said, her voice filling with zest and a smile splitting her face, "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall." She patted the stall on which she was hovering above. "I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard someone come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been." Myrtle had to reassert herself, going a bit off-topic. "Anyways, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So, I unlocked the door to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then—" Myrtle swelled with pride, her smile beaming. "I died."
"Did you see anything?" Hope asked. "Like some sort of creature?"
"No," Myrtle said, sounding a bit lost in thought for a moment before her attention returned, "but I did see a pair of great, big yellow eyes."
"Where?"
"Over there," Myrtle said in a vague manner, gesturing to the sink. Hope had Ron take over guarding the fraud as she investigated the sink. Far away, it looked just like the other sinks, but this one was different, she could just feel it.
"Find anything?" Ron demanded.
"Hang on," Hope called back, crouching close to inspect the taps of the sink. Someone had scratched a hasty drawing of a snake into the side. "Yep, found it. It's got a snake on it."
"So that's the opening to the Chamber of Secrets?" Ron demanded.
"Possibly," Hope said, rubbing a thumb over the carving, twisting the tap, but it didn't work. "But how do we get in?"
"Parseltongue!" Ron blurted out, making Hope turn back to look at him. "Try Parseltongue, that's got to work."
"Maybe," she said agreeably, kneeling once more. "I've never really tried talking Parseltongue when there wasn't a snake around."
"Have a go," Ron said, adding, "please."
"I'll try," she said, "no promises."
Her green eyes were level with the tap, but then her silver ring caught the light, giving it the illusion that the thin silver snake wrapped around her ring finger was moving. "Open," she hissed in that tongue that no one else could understand, a tongue that was low and guttural and sounding much like a resounding hiss.
Instantly, a low clicking sound could be heard as the sink sank lower and lower until it had disappeared completely, a metal grate sliding over the top of it. Hope stepped forward slightly, without the sink, now a large pipe could be seen, big enough even for Hagrid to slide down.
She turned, aiming her wand at Lockhart. "You're going first, Fraud."
"I don't think –Think about this!" Lockhart tried to reason with them as Ron shoved him towards the opening. "What good will it do?"
"What good—?!" Ron took an angry step forward, but Hope held him at bay.
"There's an eleven-year-old girl down there," she said shortly, "she could be dying, so we think it'll do a lot of good, yeah." Then they pushed him, his body clanking against the pipe as he fell.
Ron held out a hand to Hope. "Together?"
"Always," Hope said with a wry smile, gripping his fingers as she jumped with him.
The pipe was dark and dark and slick and seemed to go on forever. The only thing she could be certain of was Ron's hand tightly clasped in hers, a comfort in the darkness. It felt like minutes, or even hours before the pipe leveled out, but she couldn't be sure before she and Ron tumbled head over tea kettle onto the wet floor.
"We must be under the lake," Ron said, attempting to brush the grime that had accumulated on his robes on the way down –in vain– and glancing around them at the same time, taking note of the damp surroundings. He swallowed nervously.
"All right, Ron?" Hope prodded, stumbling to her feet with a small cut on one of her legs that had ripped through the thick black material that she always wore over them.
"Yeah," he said with a grimace, "let's go."
She nodded as well. "Lumos!" The light emanating from the tip of her wand spread out, encompassing a large area. "Try to avoid the bones," she added, making Lockhart squeak like a mouse and Ron recoil slightly, but neither made any other comment.
Walking through the tunnel with nothing but silence made Hope very tense because she felt as though someone was watching her, even though no one else was around.
"Hope," Ron's voice directed her in the direction of where he was pointing, "look at that!"
Hope's heart stopped beating momentarily when she saw the acidic green scales…was this the basilisk? She held a finger to her lips, silently telling Ron to be silent as she approached slowly. And then she breathed again.
"It's all right," she called close to where the head should have been, "it's just the snake skin; the basilisk isn't here."
Ron sighed in relief, but Lockhart crumpled to the ground.
"What's wrong with him?" Hope demanded, picking up a few green scales and pocketing them for later.
"Dunno, I think he fainted," Ron said, kicking him slightly. "Oi! Wake up!"
"Look out!" Hope yelled, noticing what he was planning a split second too late as Lockhart lunged at Ron, wrestling his wand from his grip.
"Sadly," Lockhart said with wild eyes, "the adventure ends here. I shall take this bit of skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. Now, say goodbye to your memories!"
He raised Ron's damaged wand. "Obliviate!"
Hope lurched away as the wand gave a loud explosion that rocked the tunnel and had her falling to the ground and keeping her arms protectively over her head as if they were a helmet. That didn't stop a heavy rock from jarring into her back hard enough to leave a bruise.
It was only when the tunnel had stopped shaking and the debris stopped falling that Hope finally sat up.
"My name is Hope Lily Potter," she reminded herself before grinning, "ha-ha! Still got my memories intact!" And then her face fell as she looked behind her. "Oh, shit." A wall of jagged stone cut her off from Ron.
"Ron!" she yelled. "Ron, are you there?!"
For one terrifying second, she thought Lockhart had succeeded in wiping his memories, but then a cough followed by a muffled voice. "I'm here," Ron called through the wall, "I'm fine, but the git isn't –the wand blasted him."
Hope winced at the pitch of the shriek and assumed Ron had expended some of his anger towards the man.
"What do we do now?" Ron complained. "It'll take too long to move the rocks, and Ginny—!" His words were cut off by his anguish.
"I'll-I'll go on ahead!" Hope said, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she thought it did. "Why don't you just shift those rocks and come when you can, all right?"
"All right," Ron said quickly, his voice strained slightly, "see you soon."
"Right."
And then, gripping her wand, she turned away from the wall and towards danger, loping with difficulty around the massive snake-skin. The tunnel was longer than she thought at first glance and she considering moving faster, but with how uneven the ground was, she doubted that would end well for her. It wouldn't matter anymore, though, because the tunnel had finally ended.
She found herself standing before a circular door on which several carved snakes were positioned in curves, the onyx of their eyes glinting as Hope spoke that same Parseltongue word that she had uttered earlier, and a metal snake slithered out of the wall, forcing of the heads of the other snakes backwards until it disappeared into a hole in the wall at the top as the door swung open, admitting Hope.
She climbed down the short ladder before placing her feet on the ground once more.
It was a second chamber, only this one was lit with green flames held in serpentine torch brackets, illuminating the snake-like columns and the massive statue at the end of the chamber. He didn't look anything like the young albeit arrogant man that she had met at Christmas the previous year, but this must have been when he had grown bitter and angry from all of the horrors that had occurred in his life.
And there…close to the statue was—
"Ginny!" Hope yelled, skidding across the ground as she ran to the body lying before the statue. "Ginny?"
She cupped the younger girl's pale cheeks, feeling how ice-cold her skin was. How long had she been lying down here? Hope elevated Ginny's head slightly, slapping her cheeks lightly. "Come on, Ginny," she whispered, "wake up!" but she didn't seem to even be aware of Hope's presence.
"She won't wake."
Hope twisted her head fast enough that it gave an audible crack as she turned to survey the person who had tried to convince her of Hagrid's guilt. Tom Riddle. His dark eyes were fastened to hers, as if her face was an interesting piece of art.
"You!" she snarled. "What did you do?!"
Riddle smiled in a way that set Hope on edge. "She's alive," he said in a voice that could have been taken as assuring, but Hope saw through it, "but only just."
Hope's eyes narrowed as she gently placed Ginny's head back on the ground and stood before him. "What are you?" she demanded. "You can't be a ghost; you don't have that blue aura that they do."
"I am a memory," he said in that quiet voice of his, "preserved in a diary for fifty years."
Hope's eyes narrowed further. She'd already asked Professor Flitwick and he'd told her that preserving a memory inside of an object that wasn't a Pensieve was impossible, so what exactly was he?
And he was holding a wand, a wand that looked strangely familiar... Her eyes widened comically as she checked her person.
"Give me my wand!" she said, her temper flaring. "I need that!"
"Oh, you won't," he said.
"Won't be—? What the ruddy hell are you talking about?!" Hope demanded.
He smiled at her, but there was something off about it; some malice was hidden underneath it. "I've waited a long time for this, Hope Potter. For the chance to see you. To meet you."
Why would he want to talk to her? Hope dropped a hand to feel for Ginny's pulse at her wrist, sighing at hear the slow but steady thrum of her heart.
"Did you do this?" she asked quietly, her fury growing icy.
"You will find that young Ginny Weasley did this to herself."
Her head shot up to stare incredulously. "What do you mean she did this to herself?"
"I suppose it's because Ginny Weasley opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger," Riddle said, taking in her thunderstruck expression. "Because, you see, little Ginny's been writing in my diary for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes –how her brothers tease her, how she had come to school with second-hand robes and books, and how—" his eyes had now attained a malevolent gleam that seemed more sinister in the lighting of the Chamber "—how she didn't think famous, good, great Hope Potter would ever like her."
Hope's scowl darkened as he continued to talk, his voice droning on and on, grating at her nerves and giving her the firm desire to bury her fist in his face. The longer he spoke, the angrier she got until her hands were balled up into shaking fists at her side, exercising as much control as she could to not strike him, not that it would matter, seeing as any attack she made would probably go straight through him.
"…For many months now, my new target has been you."
Hope's frown intensified.
"Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me and not you," he said in a mild voice. "She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who had been strangling roosters? So, the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery –particularly if one of your best friends was attacked."
Hope could feel herself filling with white-hot rage. He had targeted Hermione...how dare he!
"And Ginny told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue…" His eyes seemed eager now, happy at how angry he was making her. "So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there wasn't much life left in her…She put too much into the diary, and into me."
"You piece of scum!" she seethed. "You're talking about her like she's some kind of tool!"
"I suppose she was," he said carelessly. "She's little more than a corpse now, but I have so many questions for you."
Hope glared furiously, but he was not deterred. "How is it that you –a skinny, weak, girl with no extraordinary magical talent– managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"
"What's it matter?" Hope asked, more than slightly irritated when he slighted her for being female, but it wasn't anything knew. "Voldemort—"
"Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Hope Potter."
Hope felt an awful sense of foreboding when, using her wand, he wrote out his full name in fiery letters that rearranged themselves into "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT."
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
This arrogant, cruel boy was Voldemort? And then she laughed as he said "I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"
"What," he said coolly, "is so funny?"
"Oh, it's nothing," Hope said in between guffaws, "but how on earth can you claim to be the greatest wizard in the world when you're so bloody terrified of Dumbledore!" She probably would have bent at the waist in her laughter if her back didn't throb lightly with every movement. "You're scared stiff when it comes to going against him!"
A low growl left his lips at her insults and he opened his mouth to speak when the sound of music penetrated Hope's eardrums and a red-and-golden bird streaked through the air, dropping something old and ratty into her arms.
This time it was Riddle that laughed, his laugh high and cold and chilling to the bone. "So, this is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old hat!"
And then Riddle turned away from Hope, speaking directly to the stone face of Slytherin.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!" The words came out as a hiss, but Hope understood them. And her grip tightened over the hat as Slytherin's mouth dropped down and down until an obvious hole was left and Hope took a step back not feeling brave at all when she caught a glimpse of the king of serpents within the hole, but then she shut her eyes quickly, fearing petrification if she did look upon him.
As soon as she heard Riddle's next words she was racing backwards: "Kill her."
But the tile floor was too slippery with slime and water and she tripped, tumbling to the ground ungracefully and giving herself a long scrape along her jaw as she did so. And then she heard it cry in pain, so she couldn't resist turning around opening her eyes to see the brilliantly-feathered bird using its golden talons to slice up the poisonous eyes of the basilisk, blinding it.
"NO!" Hope didn't have to glance back to Riddle to see the pure fury on his face, because it was laced in his voice. "LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE GIRL IS BEHIND YOU! YOU CAN STILL SMELL HER! KILL HER!"
Hope huffed lightly in annoyance. Talk about having an obsession.
She lifted the Sorting Hat carefully, only to blink in surprise, because the hat had gained a bit of weight since her fall. She looked into it and was surprised to see the hilt of a sword shimmering within the fabric.
She drew it and without thinking at all of the repercussions, drove the blade into the belly of the serpent.
As expected, the basilisk threw back its mighty head and screamed in a tongue that was universal; pain. Hope withdrew the sword from the snake and poised to strike again when the basilisk aimed its head downwards, aiming for her. Hope had barely a second to twist the sword upwards and into the roof of its mouth.
And then the pain exploded around her and she screamed and venom like fire coursed through her veins.
Ron kicked savagely at the wall, anger and worry adding to his crazy bundle of emotions that he was currently feeling and doing him no good. He glanced viciously back at where Lockhart lay, knocked out. Yes, he would admit that it was him, using a rock. It was all his fault anyways. He deserved a good few knock to the head.
He stopped cold when he heard the pain-filled scream that echoed through the chamber, toppling rocks as it shook the whole chamber, and it was only then he broke a hole large enough to slip through and he raced down the tunnel in the direction Hope must have gone, coming to a stop before the door.
He wrenched and pried at the metal snakes since there was no handle, but the door wouldn't budge.
"Come on!" he complained, kicking at it with an already aching foot. "Open up!"
He screwed his eyes shut and focused on trying to remember what Hope had said up at the top of the pipe, that word in Parseltongue. He gave it a shot, allowing a strangled hiss to leave his lips, sounding much like it had when Hope had said it. Still, he was a bit surprised when the door swung open and he almost vaulted through it.
"Hope!"
Everything was hazy and fuzzy to Hope, the pain spreading outwards from her arm, the poison filtering through her body, strangling her from the inside out as she stumbled towards that blur of red and black that was Ginny.
"Hope!"
"Ron?" She mumbled, her eyesight blurring as her friend came beside her, helping to guide her towards his sister, and once she was close enough, she collapsed onto the ground next to her, fumbling blindly for the little diary.
Ron was scowling at the boy who was standing next to his sister –who was still alive, he'd checked–, becoming more solid as the time wore on. And he was holding Hope's wand.
Hope gave a low hacking cough. It was getting harder to breathe; was the air getting heavier, or was it just her? Her fingertips made contact with the flimsy leather cover and she gripped it.
"You're dead, Hope Potter," Riddle said with relish. "Dead. And I'm going to sit here and watch you die, and watch how your friend reacts." He smirked. "Take your time. I'm in no hurry."
Hope flipped the book open, ignoring him, pulling out the fang from her arm, crying out and making Ron pale. Was she really going to die? "Hope," he whispered, "you're not going to die."
She looked up and gave him a bright smile even though the color was fading from her cheeks and the light from her eyes. "Ronald Weasley," she said fondly, "I'm glad I met you." And then she raised the fang and punctured it into the open pages of the book.
"NO!" Riddle screamed as ink spilled from the puncture mark, and, stunned, Ron stared as the boy twisted in on himself before exploding into a flash of light, letting Hope's wand clatter to the ground.
"Good," Hope hissed through clenched teeth. "Now I can die in peace."
"Shut up!" Ron said furiously. "You're not dying!"
"You know I hate stating the obvious," Hope slurred, "but I feel like I would know."
She closed her eyes tiredly and there was a soft hand in her hair, and when she opened them, her sight was clear and Mirror Lady was there, smiling down on her.
"Hi," Hope whispered with difficulty, "is it time to go?"
"Not yet," Mirror Lady promised, her cloak of raven feathers brushing against Hope's skin. "You have everything you need to fix yourself, dear heart."
"What?" Hope asked fuzzily, the venom coursing through her making it difficult to think.
"Dear heart, if we left the saving to the adults, where would all the great stories come from?" Mirror Lady asked, leaning down to grasp Hope's wrist. "Fix yourself, Hope."
And then Hope opened her eyes and whispered "Heal" and Ron watched thin veins of green spread from where the fang had gone through, burning away to red before fading with the mark, leaving a circular mark against her forearm. And all Ron could think about was Hope saying "If magic solved all my problems, then what would be the point?"
Hope coughed and groaned. "Does that count as dying? I think that should count as a death, because I'm starting to think I should be keeping a tally," she wheezed.
"I'm seriously going to kill you," Ron threatened, his panic easing as she sat up slowly, Ginny beginning to stir beside her.
"Seal the deal, Weasley, let's go," Hope groaned. "And while we're at it, can we take a really long nap after this?"
Ron gave a noise that was somewhere between laughing and crying. "You can sleep all you like, I promise."
"Good."
Ginny gave a similar groan as she finally awoke.
"Ginny!" Ron cried in relief as his little sister sat up, and he couldn't resist pulling her into his arms. Seeing her brother and having him hold her was enough to break the dam and a flood of tears and wails left her as she threw her arms around him.
Hope couldn't help but watch the pair in amusement, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to rid them of sleep, instead she stood up slowly to meander to where the basilisk had fallen, getting a good look at the teeth, finding a particularly straight one and yanking it out.
"What in Merlin's name are you doing?" Ron demanded and Hope twisted around carefully with a wild grin.
"I'm gonna make this into a badass knife," she replied and he pressed a hand to his face. "All right, Ginny?" she asked in between a yawn as the girl's tears died down to sniffles. Ginny nodded sorrowfully.
"I'm going to be e-expelled!" she bemoaned.
"No," Hope said firmly, "somehow I think that's going to be the last thing that's going to happen. No one can blame you for all this, you didn't do this of your own will, and Professor McGonagall will understand."
Ginny didn't look like she agreed, the tears still streaming down her face with no sign of stopping.
"I suppose we should go find Lockhart and get out of here," Hope mused aloud.
These past two days had been too exhausting in Hope's honest opinion. Retelling everything that they'd done over the past year, excluding the Polyjuice, of course, to Dumbledore (who had returned from his dismissal by the governors) had been incredibly draining. Hope had been a bit reluctant to hand over Godric Gryffindor's sword, but what could you do? Ron and Hope had received awards to the school, but the two of them had insisted on Hermione receiving one as well, after all, if she hadn't been petrified, they would have figured out just what had caused the attacks weeks ago. The issue of Ginny's involvement had been resolved and Hope had managed to free Dobby the House-elf from his servitude to the Malfoy family.
All in a day's work.
"Can you ever not get into trouble?"
Hope froze before shifting her eyes to the left where George Weasley was leaning against the wall in his pajamas. Hope's cheeks filled with heat as she realized that she was covered in dirt, grime, slime, and blood.
"I'm kind of attracted to trouble," she said cheekily, flouncing over to stand by his side, "it's why we're friends…or did you not get that memo?"
"Oi, cheeky," George said with a grin that lit up his face, "I may have to prank you for that."
"Oh, you wouldn't dare," Hope disagreed with an even brighter smile. Now that the basilisk was dead, everything seemed so much brighter and happier and funnier. It was funny to think of it like that, but it was absolutely true. "You've met your match, George Weasley."
He arched an eyebrow towards the girl, cheeks turning the faintest pink. "My match? You really think so?"
Hope gave a light laugh bouncing onto the balls of her feet and the tips of her toes. "Oh, absolutely," she said cheerfully, swinging herself in a circle, closing her eyes before skipping off in the direction of the Great Hall.
George stood still for a few seconds, his mouth gaping slightly as he stared after her. "Oi, wait!" he yelled, racing after her until he caught up with her just outside the Great Hall. "Merlin, woman, you can run!" he said in surprise as they walked in together, Hope earning a loud raucous applause from a good three-fourths of the room making Hope turn absolutely scarlet, ducking her head and moving to a free spot at the table and burying her face in her arms even as she received many thumps on her back. And then Ron entered and he received the same sort of welcome, and he handled it much like Hope had, turning the exact shade of cherries, but beaming as he came to sit at Gryffindor table.
Hope recovered enough to lift her face from the table, but she looked rather like she had a bad sunburn.
The party in the Great Hall lasted all night so Hope and Ron virtually forgot that they'd been awake for over two days and simply enjoyed the festivities.
"Hope!" George called from the opposite side of the table, grinning again and nodding towards the front of the hall. "Look who's here!"
Hope and Ron twisted to see a familiar head of bushy hair.
Hermione Granger beamed as her two friends stood up suddenly from the Gryffindor table to stare, and then she was running down the aisle, yelling in exuberance, "You solved it! You solved it!"
She threw her arms around Hope as the two laughed and cried, embracing each other firmly before dragging Ron into the mix, much to his embarrassment. And then a number of congratulations went around to Hermione.
It seemed to be a day of red faces.
"Next time," Hope said, wiping at her grimy face, "next time tell us what you're thinking when there's a monster on the loose, alright?"
"I promise," Hermione laughed, only startling when Hope and Seamus shouted as one, rushing to hug Dean as he came through the doors, beaming, and yelping as their enthusiasm knocked him to the ground, though he laughed all the same, allowing them to drag him to the table for a seat.
Hope fell asleep halfway through desert after Hagrid's release from Azkaban and return to Hogwarts, despite all the excitement, only to wake up a day and a half later tucked safely into her bed.
So, of course, the first thing Hope did was run off for the viaduct bridge, looking down into the chasm it crossed, wondering what it would be like to climb up the side.
"You look like you're going to do something reckless," George said, coming to settle beside her. "Not planning on jumping, are you?"
"Hm," Hope hummed, "debating on the merits of climbing…you lot got any plans for the summer?"
"Not yet," George admitted with a grin. "But I'm sure Fred and I can cook up some trouble."
Hope laughed.
"What about you? Got anyplace you're planning to run off to?" It sucked that she couldn't get out of living with the Dursleys, because every time George thought about that massive bruise at her eye, he wanted to hit something.
"I'm thinking Wales, again," Hope replied, eyes in the distance. "I've got a map to Salazar Slytherin's ancestral home and I want to do some exploring…maybe find some more knives."
She pulled the one Nath had given her out of her pocket, flicking it open, and looking to George, who had to look away quickly, a flush on his cheeks, pulling a little uncomfortably at his collar. Hope thought it best not to comment. "Here."
She handed him what looked like a small compact mirror. "What's this for?"
"Angie enchanted it, its connected to mine and hers," Hope offered helpfully. "I think she wanted it to talk to Fred but thinks he's more likely to lose it and I think Ron's the same way, so, here you are…quicker than a letter."
"I don't mind your letters, they've got bits of you in them," George shrugged and Hope turned pink, running a hand through her hair. "You'll tell us if you find anything cool?"
"Oh, yeah, for sure," Hope coughed to cover her embarrassment. "Personally, I'm hoping for a pirate ship."
George laughed bright and clear and Hope felt lighter than she had in a long time, unaware of the eyes watching her from a distance.
AN: I feel like Hope's going to end up collecting a bunch of knives. There were a lot of things tweaked this book compared to Looking Beyond, but its to go with Stand Tall once we finally reach the end. Diane Thomas is a very interesting character and writing her interactions with Molly are going to be hysterical. More hints of otherworldly-ness to come. Hope is officially on anti-depressants, which she sorely needs. My sister was only one them for a few months, but Hope strikes me as the type to need them for a few years.
