Fred was abruptly woken up by George flopping down on his bed and promptly digging his elbow straight into Fred's ribs. He wasn't quite awake all the way yet, so his response was to wave his hand in the direction of the pain to try to make it go away. It didn't work and George's digging only got more insistent.
He couldn't take it anymore and demanded in a sleepy slur to know what the big emergency was. Fred could say that he couldn't be more surprised by the answer.
"It's about Hermione," was George's response. At first, Fred thought it was about a crush George had developed on her - they always shared that kind of stuff. Usually not quite so late, though.
"Can it wait until morning?" Fred grumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face, trying to wake himself up because George seemed a bit shaken, and like this talk would not take the expected route of confessing a crush but go somewhere altogether different.
George grimly shook his head. The twins stared at each other in silence until Fred tilted his head as if to say well go on then, what is it?
The talk about Hermione did not go into the predicted 'she's so beautiful' speech that Fred was expecting at that point but instead delved into an entirely different matter. Hermione Granger, bookworm extraordinaire was not just that. George unloaded on Fred about her smoking and drinking and being friends with Sirius, and Fred was shocked. He wouldn't have expected her to be a juvenile delinquent type considering the many, many lectures she had given them about the importance of the rules and all that rot, but George had to be overreacting to it. It didn't seem like that big of a deal.
Fred conveyed this in a raised eyebrow and a shrug - so? This didn't affect them except maybe the next time Hermione went off at them about something, they could tease her a little. A little rule-breaking here and there was nothing new to them, why did it matter that Hermione did too? He couldn't think of anyone in Hogwarts who hadn't broken one rule at least once.
Until George told Fred to think about what Ron and Harry and Hermione had been up to in the four years that they had been at Hogwarts, and it dawned on Fred that those daring and surely exaggerated stories that flew through Hogwarts were maybe not so exaggerated. Even considering their first year, the three had broken into a forbidden corridor that promised certain death and then stumbled their way through obstacles until Harry had faced Voldemort and somehow gained possession of the Philosopher's Stone, ending with the three of them in the hospital wing.
While it wasn't new information for Fred or anyone who had been at Hogwarts then, it was clear that Harry was firmly the star of the story, with Hermione and Ron being brushed off to the side as barely involved. Knowing Hermione, though, he doubted that she was just passively present throughout the whole situation.
The twins shared a wide-eyed look across the room from their beds that they were now sitting cross-legged on, facing each other. George realised that his bed was against a window that looked out onto the back garden and glanced outside, sure he would see Hermione and Sirius still outside. He couldn't quite see anything in the dark except two burning red circles which would move or flicker occasionally. He beckoned Fred over to look, sure that this would imprint the scale of just what Hermione was doing.
It worked. Fred turned pale when he saw the pair of lit cigarettes and then looked to George and squeaked out, "did Hermione break Sirius out of Hogwarts when she was in third year?"
George couldn't do anything except nod. The twins weren't known for being academic but that was because they weren't all that interested in everything Hogwarts had to offer. They knew what their dream was and what steps they had to take to accomplish it, so why bother with everything else? One of the things that they had studied, though, was wizarding law. It was important to know what the rules were if they were going to break them, or if they weren't planning on breaking them, bending them to their limits.
So the twins were aware of what Hermione had done from a legal standpoint and were aware of the trouble she could get in for it. She could be sent to Azkaban for helping Sirius, and she wouldn't even be able to claim that she hadn't knowingly helped him because after being plastered on the front of the Daily Prophet and posters of him everywhere, no one could claim that they didn't know it was Sirius Black.
They were in awe at the younger girls actions, not sure that they would have done the same as she did, knowing the consequences if she got caught. This was more than risking detention for being out after curfew or for pulling a prank. It was a miracle that she had never been caught - the pair of them didn't think that she'd ever had detention but she seemed to have done more to deserve one in her Hogwarts years than they had in theirs.
The twins were drawn out of their introspection on Hermione when they heard the back door close and a glimpse out the window confirmed that the unlikely friends had come back inside. Although they knew that neither of the pair were their mother, and wouldn't come to check if they were in bed, they still decided to go to bed. It must be getting late and no doubt their mother would be waking them up bright and early with a list of chores to do. Any further discussion would have to wait until tomorrow.
Due to their late night, the twins were the last people down for breakfast in the morning. The Weasley boys had always liked sleeping in but the lure of Molly's cooking was usually enough to summon them to the table when the smell of food had travelled far enough to wake them. Hermione was already downstairs when they sat at the table and had pushed her plate away to make room for a book on the table.
Fred gave George a bit of a glare, remembering the talk they'd had. Did George really think that Hermione Granger had broken multiple laws and school rules but still read books at the table and huffed when Ron talked with his mouth full? It seemed a bit ludicrous in the light of day and was much more believable in the haze of being half asleep. George's response was to raise his eyebrows and nod towards Hermione as if he was seeing something that Fred wasn't.
It didn't make any sense to Fred - Hermione looked the same as she always did. There was nothing different about her, nothing obvious anyway. Fred began to study her and hoped he was being subtle about it. Behind him, Sirius leaned against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and saw that the twins had clearly had some sort of conversation about Hermione the previous night. Hermione wasn't paying attention to them, or anything really outside of her pounding head and how loud the Weasley's could be.
A new noise made Hermione's head jerk up and she glared at Sirius as he cleared his throat loudly, smirking at her. They'd had maybe a few more drinks than they should have the night before and she was paying for it now. Sirius jerked his head at the ginger boys sat in front of him, who were, in typical Weasley fashion, eating. They weren't quite concentrating fully on their food though but were stealing glances at Hermione between bites.
She rolled her eyes and looked back at Sirius who was now making kissy faces and pointing at George and then her and then back to George. She blushed and Mrs Weasley saw the change on her face, who she was looking at and put two and two together. Unfortunately, she ended up with five, but she tried. Mrs Weasley looked at Sirius who had stopped making faces at Hermione but hadn't stopped smirking at her with mischief in his eyes.
It was enough to convince her that he was up to no good, and dragging poor Hermione into it. She was such a lovely girl, didn't deserve that old man to be dragging her into trouble. Hermione had caught on to Mrs Weasley's suspicions and had to stop herself from laughing - she had unknowingly just dropped Sirius right onto Mrs Weasley's shit list and she wouldn't be surprised if he was the recipient of a very loud lecture about whatever thing she thought he'd done.
Sirius and the twins had noticed Hermione's smug grin and it looked a lot like the faces the twins wore when they'd set one of their siblings up for a lecture from their mum. Sirius came to the conclusion and mumbled, "Oh, shit."
Hermione and Sirius had come to develop a deep enjoyment of getting the other in shit with whichever authority figure was closest. Hermione preferred to use Professor Lupin as the authority figure for Sirius to get lectured by, and Sirius just struggled to find someone who believed that Hermione could have possibly done anything wrong in her life.
Hermione's favourite time of getting Sirius in shit was what started the challenge between them. They'd just come in from the garden, shivering and smelling of smoke. Sirius had promised that he'd be back in a moment, he was just going to get something that would warm them up and that he'd meet her in the kitchen. He'd said it with a leer about warming up together, an unspoken implication in his voice. Professor Lupin had been walking down the corridor as Sirius was saying and was appalled when he wandered into the kitchen, driven by his curiosity. When Sirius had come into the kitchen with a bottle of firewhiskey in his hand, Remus had hissed that Hermione was underage and far too young to be drinking. Too young to be doing anything, he'd insisted, standing between the two of them like a barrier.
Sirius and Hermione had looked at each other and couldn't help laughing. Remus looked between them, perplexed, not fully believing when they told him that they were friends. He definitely didn't believe Hermione when she said she'd drank before and that the firewhiskey wasn't a big deal. She was nonchalant when she told him she was only having a bit in her tea.
For the next few days, Remus had been eyeing Hermione with an expression that his whole worldview had just been rearranged. Hermione Granger, drinking? Was it really so unbelievable? The Weasley twins had the same look on their faces too, so maybe it was.
