With the deep blues and purples on the horizon, she knew for sure it must be some ungodly hour. Seeing them again was bothersome and welcome at the same time, firstly because she was awake when she could be getting more of her precious sleep and secondly because she was reminded of the night she finished Judy Blume's Forever.
Despite the lovely view out the window and the soft hum of insects in the night, the serenity did not last as it was interrupted by clanging metal and a hushed string of expletives.
Quiet as a mouse, quick as a fox, she crept across the creaking wood floors to the bedroom door. Her sister still laid sleeping in her bed across the room. With a cricket bat in hand, she checked the rooms of the house's first floor for intruders. The clock on the wall gave no indication that one of her brother's had made a surprise trip home, so she kept looking.
Finding no one in the house out of place, she opened the front door and saw the flash of light from the tip of a want through the garage window. Muffled arguing followed as the light was extinguished and she took a deep breath before working up the courage to face the magic using trespassers.
Baning her fist against the door once, twice, and a third time for good measure, she shouted, "Come out! Or I'll bludgeon you!"
The words were supposed to be confident and intimidating, but the attempt was a failure. Instead of a real response, familiar laughter echoed from the garage interior where three familiar redheads stood.
"Ella-!" George was nearly choking on her name as he desperately tried to contain himself, "Put the bat down!"
Her brother held his hand out and she let the bat fall face first into his waiting hand.
"Merlin- you scare the crap out of me!" she let out a sigh of relief, "I thought some muggle was breaking in, then I saw your light spell! You could get in trouble with the ministry for that! What will you do if they expel you! Or throw you in Azkaban?!"
"Oh, it's fine, no one actually saw it except us!" Ron argued.
"Yeah, El, don't worry so much," Fred teased, "They won't throw us in Azkaban for an infraction that small!"
Ella rubbed at her eyes and temples in disbelief at what she was hearing. She hoped being woken in the middle of the night was messing with her comprehension of their remarks, that they were not so ignorant as they were leading her to believe.
She shook her head and let it go, she was too tired to be dealing with their nonsense.
"Fine, whatever, just tell me. What are you doing out here at-" she looked off at the dusty old clock hanging on the garage wall, unsure if the hands were even still moving, "three in the morning?"
"Rescue mission!" ron said and she motioned for him to elaborate, "Mione and I haven't heard back from him all summer and after what he said about his uncle last year, Mione-well, both of us are worried. I promised her I'd go get him. She thinks his uncle might try to stop him from returning to school."
"We offered to help." Fred said.
"Because I can't drive," Ron added.
"Can't even reach the pedals!" George poked fun at Ron and his ribs while Ron's face contorted until he couldn't hold the scowl any longer and wound up laughing.
"Well, be quiet about it!" Their sister demanded. With a huff, she spun on her heel and headed back towards the house before dropping a bomb on them, "Unless, of course, you want to wake mummy dearest."
The collective gulp was nearly audible, an unfitting part of the night's ambience. An addition that Ella enjoys just a bit too much.
"Sorry, El," Ron said with a nervous chuckle, "We're trying, but the damn thing won't start."
Reluctantly, she turned around and got to work on the car. She had spent months learning about the muggle car with her father and figuring out what kind of illegal magic modifications they could be making to it. She knew that car inside and out.
"George, give me a light. Fred, sit in the driver's seat and turn the key when I say so. Ron, hold the hood for me, it fell on dad and he nearly broke his back, that thing could cut me clean in half."
"On it!"
They got to work, then all of a sudden Ella sat back and pressed a greasy black hand to her chin, "Okay, I think I figured it out. Fred, turn the key and watch the dash."
An ugly mess of grinding noise errupterd from the car.
"Stop! Stop!" Ella waved her hands to get his attention in case he did not hear her over the noise, "Did the dash light up?"
"No!" he called out of the open car window.
"Battery's dead."she told the boys matter-of-factly, "Ron grab the extra battery off the bench behind you, I'll grab the jumper cables."
Once all the batteries were properly attached, they left the car alone.
Twenty minutes later, they tried again. George turned the key this time and the car started without any further issue. Ella was glad that something was finally drowning out Ron's snores from the back seat of the car where he'd laid down for a nap.
Ella disconnected the cables and put the battery away before hopping to grab the edge of the hood and slamming it down.
"Have fun!" she told the boys and headed back towards their home and her nice warm bed once again.
"You aren't coming with, El?" George asked.
"No!" she yelled over her shoulder, "I'm bloody tired! Next time don't bother me! Just wake Dad up!"
"Yes ma'am!" the twin boys threw their left hands up to their foreheads in a mock salute.
"Buzz off!" Ellla was sure she'd go cross eyes from how hard she rolled her eyes.
"Theans El!" Ron called as she nearly slammed the front door behind her.
A similarly slim and redheaded girl was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
"What were you doing?" Ginny asked her twin as she marched by and flopped face down into her bed.
"Aiding the chaos." Ella did not elaborate and Ginny did not care enough to ask for an explanation. She was sure the shenanigans would be revealed in the morning, Ginny just hoped it wasn't another cold water prank.
"Whatever that means," Ginny mumbled as she pulled the covers up over her sister and fell into her own bed, "Good night, El."
"Good night, Gin."
She was Still exhausted in the morning, spending several minutes flipping over in an attempt to ignore the sun shining on her face through the shared bedroom window.
Ella had nearly forgotten about the night's events, but then she saw Harry freaking Potter sitting at her family's breakfast table. If not for his dark hair, she might have overlooked him, he almost looked like he belonged there next to Ron.
It all began to click into place as she sank down into her usual death. After she'd fixed the car last night, her stupid brothers had flown the damn thing from Devon to Surrey and back, effectively kidnapping the boy who lived. His owl and stack of belongings at the foot of the stairs suggested he'd been a willing participant in the escape though.
As she watched the boy fumbling around on the other side of the table, unsure of what to eat first, Ella decided she'd been wrong. Harry didn't look like he belonged at their breakfast table, but this trial by fire would quickly make a real Weasley out of him.
She piled her plate high with eggs, beans, and toast, only realizing she'd been famished when the wonderful smell of her mother's cooking filled her nose. At the sight of a single blueberry muffin left, Ella grabbed it and set it on the plate beside hers. Ginny's favorite is blueberry and once it's on a plate, you can't steal it unless you want to go hungry the next day. It was one of the rules Molly had developed to combat Charlie's constant theft of Yorkshire pudding from everyone else's plate.
When Ginny took her place beside Ella and started popping broken off chunks of muffin in her mouth, Ron decided he should probably introduce his best friend to his sisters.
"Harry, these are my sisters, Ginerva and Cedrella."
"Don't call me that!" The girls snapped at Ron.
"BLoody hell, sorry!" their brother shrank in on himself as he kept speaking, "They're twins like Fred and George. They'll be first years this year."
"Nice to meet you," the boy smiled at them, "I'm Harry, Harry Potter."
Ella's glance fell to her unusually quiet older sister. A soft red haze had overtaken Ginny's ears. It was a subtle change most people would not notice, but Ella always knew. Ginny likes Harry. How cute.
"I'm Ell," she greeted him in return, "And this is Ginny. Probably important you remember who's who."
"You can tell by the mark," Ron motioned to his sister's face, "El's got this perpetual blemish under her left eye."
"It's called a beauty mark, you absolute toad! No wonder you've got all those warts-"
"Woah!" Their father cut in as he finished his descent on the stairs and entered the kitchen, "Arguing already?!"
As the voices quieted and apologies were reluctantly thrown across the table in place of fists, Arthur Weasley began his mental headcount. It all started some years ago when the oldest child, Bill, had gone off for his first year at Hogwarts. Empty seats at the table had always been a bleak reminder that his children would not stay young and innocent forever.
Ella hoped her father would not be too sad this year when she and Ginny went off to Hogwarts and their parents essentially became empty nesters.
"Seven, dad." Ella eventually told him after he'd spent many minutes scanning the faces around the table, desperately trying to figure out where the count of his children was going wrong.
"Seven?" he seemed to doubt her.
"Harry's here, dear," Molly Weasley, the children's mother, chimed in and motioned to the boy beside her husband, the dark haired boy who was obviously not one of their children. The only child at the table with glasses. None of their children wore glasses!
"Ah, yes!" Arthur perked up and greeted the boy, "Good morning, Harry, welcome! We've been expecting you!"
"No we haven't!" Molly called from the kitchen as she left thelast of the pans in the sink to wash.
"We weren't?" her husband was genuinely confused by this.
"Fred, George, and Ron took the car to fetch him last night." Ella explained, "He needed a right to school."
The boys exchanged looks when they heard Ella lie for them and Ron gave Harry a look, silently telling him to stay quiet.
"Good men!" Arthur called out proudly, as his wife shook her head, "Helping out a friend!"
"Will you be staying with us until school starts, dear?" Molly asked Harry as she patted his shoulder before sinking down in the seat on the other side of her husband.
Harry seemed uneasy and unsure about responding. To Ella, Harry looked to be one of those 'don't want to put you out' types, especially with all the stories Ron had told and written home about in the last year. With the two eldest Weasley boys gone, there was definitely space for Harry to stay at the Burrow if he so pleased.
Ron was quick to chime in on Harry's behalf, "Of course he will!"
There was an understanding reached between Ron and Harry with the looks they were exchanging. Ron's words seemed to offer enough comfort for Harry that his shoulder relaxed from their tense state as he accepted the subtle invitation.
"If you don't mind me," Harry said, "I'll be quiet, like I'm not even here."
A silence seemed to fall over the Weasley family as Harry started to panic and rattled off a list of everything he could do to help around the house. He explained that his aunt had him cleaning for most of his life.
"You'll do none of that here." Molly told him.
A smile began to form on Ella's face. As far as she knew, Harry had it rough thus far in his life. She knew her mother would never put him to work like that. She had never been able to bring herself to do it to her own children either.
Breakfast slowly wound down. Ginny and her twin brothers had gone outside to pass around the Quaffle. Percy was writing letters to Penelope Clearwater… again, and Ella gave Ron and Harry a hand in carrying Harry's things to her brother Bill's room.
In the room, she set his pretty white own down on top of the empty wooden bureau and leaned his broomstick up in the corner against the wall.
"Thank you, Cedrella."
The girl snorted as she laughed at her name, "No one calls me that except for Great Aunt Tessie," she could barely contain her laughter as she continued, "And sometimes my brothers when they're actively trying to get on my nerves. You can just call me, Ella."
"Sure, sorry, got it!" Harry assured her.
"No worries." she waved off his bashful apologies, "I just hope you'll heed my warning and never call Ginny, Ginerva. If you hadn't been there this morning, she might have jumped over the table and tackled Ron."
"Really?!" Harry didn't seem to believe that 'innocent little Ginny' could do something like that. He had not witnessed her sister's temper yet.
"Oh, yeah, it's happened before," Ella crossed the room and pulled back the curtains on the mildly dusty window, "You can see the ocean from here on clear days. Bill's room has always had the best view. He got first pick because he's the oldest. Now it's yours! Welcome to the house, Harry!"
To Ella, Harry seemed ready to move to give her this coveted room. Harry seemed much too kind, too much of a push over, to be the chosen one. Especially with all the shit he had to put up with from others, he is much too nice. He is less than graceful when accepting others' kindness as well. Ella was pleasantly surprised to find him so lovely since he'd lived a rather undesirable life.
"I hope you'll like it here, Harry!" she told him as she headed out the door, "Settle in and take a walk outside! Home is a great place to be!"
"Home…" The boy seemed to wonder aloud. Had he ever felt at home with his aunt and uncle before? Or would this place, the Burrow, come to feel like home? Maybe he had already found that feeling elsewhere.
She closed the door and opened it once again.
"Harry, do be kind to Ginny, I think she's got a bit of a crush on you."
Instantly, a dark crimson color started to overtake Harry's face and neck. She bit back a laugh.
"Don't tell her I told you, okay?" Ella let out a sheepish laugh and nearly closed the door again when she remembered something else to tell him, "Oh! And make sure to join the boys outside later! They'll be de-gnoming the garden! That's always an adventure with them!"
"Okay… I will, thanks, Ella." Harry was still flushed a bright tomato red as she closed the door one final time.
