I don't know what to say other than thank you to everyone who is reading this story and to everyone who is commenting. It means the world to me to have this support in a project I am working so hard on.
Chapter 8: Harsh Landings
The four girls were in deep conversation about different ways you can do your hair and how Hermione could style it to work with the curls instead of against them when they heard a rather nasal voice yell, "Arthur! It's about time."
"Sorry, Amos. Some of us got a bit of a sleepy start." He looked back at Ron, who chose that moment to let out a rather large yawn, and then Kat who put a hand to her chest and looked behind her as if he couldn't be talking about her.
Boston rolled her eyes but smiled. Kat gave her hand a quick squeeze.
"This is Amos Diggory, everyone. Works with me at the Ministry," Arthur informed them.
Suddenly a shape dropped out of the tree they had all walked to. It stood up to reveal it's full height.
"And this strapping young lad must be Cedric, am I right?" Arthur reached out to shake the boy's hand. Kat recognized him, of course, not just because he was the Hufflepuff seeker and very good looking, but because of Boston.
Kat looked over at her stoic dark-haired friend to see her entire face had gone a sunburn shade of red, and she was trying very hard to look at no one.
Kat nudged her with her elbow and wiggled her eyebrows.
Boston just shot her a glare, but the red did not fade.
"Are these all yours, then Arthur?" Amos asked, looking at the brood trailing behind.
"Oh, no. No, just the red-haired ones. Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny." He pointed to each of them as he called their names. "These are their friends from school. Boston, Kat, Hermione, and Harry."
Amos did a double-take at the last name. Kat noticed Harry looked, well he looked tired as the older man marveled at the scar on his head. "Merlin's beard." The older man started. "Harry Potter."
Boston looked over at the dark-haired boy and bit her lip. Kat caught her eye for a moment and gave her a tight-lipped smile.
Kat looked to Cedric, who was looking as if he would rather clean cauldrons for Professor Severus Snape than have his dad talk to Harry. From what the man said, she understood why.
"Ced has told me about you, of course. Told me about the Quidditch game, yeah." Kat heard Fred and George grumble under their breath. "My boy, winning against Harry Potter. That will be something to tell your kids, you know, you beating Harry Potter."
"Dad, I told you it wasn't like that," Cedric tried. Kat thought the boy was nice, a little too nice for her taste but could see Boston finding him quite perfect.
"Oh, come now. You're just being modest. He fell off his broom and you stayed on yours. It seems to me that the person who stays on their broom is the better flyer, wouldn't you say Harry?"
Boston shot Amos a soul withering glare.
"Uh, well," Harry started.
"Hey, Dad, where are we going?" Ginny asked, suddenly directing attention away from the boy in the glasses.
"Well, we have to look for the portkey. It must be somewhere around here."
"It's at the top of the hill," Cedric offered.
"Ah, wonderful," Arthur declared, clapping his hands together.
They all started to walk up the surprisingly steep hill that Kat was silently cursing, though, being a witch, she might have wanted to rethink that.
"Woah!" Fred and George yelled at the grass beneath them had turned into a sludge that was slippery enough to knock them off their feet and onto their faces.
"Keep up, boys," Arthur yelled, not even looking.
Kat and Boston, of course, were laughing so hard their sides starting getting painful cramps.
"Watch your back Warner," they warned Kat.
"So scared," Kat breathed sarcastically.
"Warner?" Amos asked.
"Present," Kat called, raising her hand.
"As in Barton Warner?"
Kat nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm comprised of half his gene pool."
Amos' smile faltered. "Well, I am sure he is very busy working for the Wizengamot and managing that company of his, but if you have time, let him know I say hi."
Boston grabbed Kat's hand to stop her from the smartass comment that she was about to spit at the man.
"Yeah, of course," the young girl smiled.
Amos turned around, and they all continued their horrid ascent to the top of the hill. Kat wanted this day to be about the Weasleys and Boston, not her father, not the strange way people treated her. She looked over at Harry and felt a pang of empathy. It wasn't like their situations were the same in any way, but she might have understood him a little bit better then.
When they finally made it to the top, Amos called everyone over to a beat-up old boot with rotting laces. "Are we the only ones then?" Arthur asked.
"Oh yes, the Lovegoods have already been camped out for a week and the Fawcetts aren't able to make it this year." Amos said the last part as if it were an issue that the Fawcetts weren't coming.
Everyone circled the boot, and then everyone laid themselves on the grass around the boot, extending their arms to reach for the dirty thing.
"Alright, 3, 2,-" Amos counted down.
"Harry!" Arthur yelled, and the boy grabbed the boot quickly as Amos got to one.
Then they were going. Kat always hated traveling by portkey. It was like someone had driven one of the hook things from the muggle films, the ones that help you scale buildings. It was like someone had driven one of those through her sides and was pulling her forward so fast she was sure the hook was going to rip her in two.
"Son of a Bowtruckle!" Kat cursed as she landed hard on her stomach onto something that wasn't the soft grass they had just been on.
There was a slight groan from under Kat, and as her eyes adjusted to the new light, she saw the scruffy ginger hair of Fred. "Get. Off." He breathed, sounding strangled.
Kat rolled off of him and just lay on her back for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She looked over at Boston, who was fixing her sleek ponytail and looking flustered as Cedric helped her to her feet. Kat looked back at Fred, who was also still on his back.
"Sorry, Freddie." She was still trying to catch her breath. "Guess I'm getting into a habit of falling."
"Three times," Fred gritted, his voice having an edge to it.
"What?" She asked, confused.
"You have fallen three times in as many days. Two of them could have killed you!"
Kat sighed and sat up, letting her head adjust to the new angle as it got fuzzy. "Are we on this again?"
"I'm just saying, I won't always be there to catch you," Fred huffed, getting to his feet and offering his hand to Kat.
She looked at it suspiciously, then chose not to take it and stand on her own. "Oh dear Fredward," she sighed, patting his stomach as she pasted, "you love me too much to let me fall."
Fred scoffed as he trailed behind her, making their way to the hill everyone was stopped on. He looked out at what seemed to catch everyone else's attention and saw it then, the Quidditch World Cup, well, the campsite at least.
It was jam-packed with all sorts of tents of varying sizes and enchantments. The ones supporting the Irish had charmed four-leaf clovers to canopy their tents, while the wizards supporting Bulgaria were enchanting the grass to be red and black and sound like beating drums when you walked on it.
"Ah yes, we never can help showing off when we all get together," Arthur commented to no one particular, but perhaps it was aimed at Harry, who was looking around in complete astonishment.
Kat and Boston walked hand in hand between the tents and the excitement, Boston pointing at things she found fascinating or enchanting or just downright funny. Kat loved seeing that kind of joy on her friend's face, as it was so often set with disdain.
"Keep up, girls," Arthur called from somewhere far ahead. Kat looked around wizards dressed as blind muggles apparently with the clothes they decided to pair. She saw a group of orange and moved towards it, Boston still holding her hand.
They all finally stopped at an empty plot squished between a large green tent with a chimney coming out the top and a medium-sized red tent that seemed to shimmer.
"Alright, Amos, this is us," Arthur said, addressing the only other adult of the group.
"We'll see you at the match!" Amos called as he and Cedric moved through the tents again.
"See you later," Cedric called.
"See ya," Fred called back.
"Later, Ced," George picked up the rest of the sentence.
Boston gave him a small smile as red crept slowly from her chest to her neck.
Kat gave a little chuckle and squeezed Boston's hand once, raising one eyebrow.
Boston sighed dramatically, no sound audible. She tried to school her face into trained nonchalance, but her eyes kept staring back at the Hufflepuffs retreating frame.
"You do have a thing for tall older boys, don't you?" It wasn't a question because the answer was clear.
Unlike Kat, Boston did not find this amusing and released Kat's hand only to swing it at the elbow, her hand smacking into Kat's chest.
"Ow! Bint!" Kat yelled.
Boston looked stricken, but her face quickly went feral. She waved her hand in the general direction of Kat, moving up and down as if to say she was one to talk.
"You hit me!" Kat yelled again.
Boston crossed her arms and shrugged, jutting her chin out at the smaller girl.
"Merlin's beard! It was a bloody joke." Kat threw her hands in the air.
"What's going on now?" Arthur asked, worried as he noticed them arguing while he unpacked the tent.
"Nothing," Fred sighed, crossing his arms.
"I thought they were friendly."
"They are," George answered. "They're best mates, sisters, really."
"Then why are they-" Arthur didn't finish his sentence.
Kat raised her hands in surrender. "Fine. Whatever. Bloody sensitive is what you are," Kat said.
Boston swung her hand and it connected with the back of Kat's head.
"Oi!"
Boston stuck her tongue out at Kat.
Arthur looked like he was about to step in, but both girls started laughing before he could.
Arthur looked to the twins and asked, "What just happened?"
George smiled at them both. "That's how they fight."
"They just yell, well Kitty yells, and then they laugh about it," Fred said.
"Right," Arthur said, clapping his hands together, "we should get our tent set up, yes?" He went back to the tent that he had pulled out and was asking Harry and Hermione how to erect it.
Boston touched her friend's arm and nodded her head towards them.
"You know I have no idea how to do that," Kat said.
Boston rolled her eyes and went over to the hopeless trio to show them how to put up a tent without magic.
"What was that about?" Fred asked, coming up behind Kat and standing to her left.
Kat crossed her arms. "You know I would never give away her secrets."
"Yet you tell her ours," Fred grumbled.
Kat looked up at the boy and squinted. "No." She shook her head. "I don't tell anyone your secrets. You must know that, Freddie."
He shrugged. He set his mouth in a hard line, looking at a bruise that was forming near her hairline on her forehead. Fred smoothed his thumb over it without really meaning to. Kat sucked in a quick breath and he removed his hand. "When did that happen?"
Kat shrugged in a way that told Fred that she didn't actually care. "Who knows. Maybe it was when I fell on you."
"Hmm."
"Something wrong, is there?" Kat looked up with those dark eyes with purple creeping from the corner under her eyes.
"Just don't like the idea of hurting you." Fred looked at his brother, who was standing a few paces back, his hands in his pockets. "Don't like hurting anyone."
Kat huffed a laugh. "Sure you don't, Fredward. That's why you pull all those harmless pranks."
George finally got the nerve to come and join their little conversation. "What's this now?" He had a broad smile on his face as he approached.
"Fred is trying to get me to give up trade secrets. Can you believe that, Georgie?"
George rolled his eyes at his strange little friend. "Yeah, darling, it's pretty easy to believe." He raked a hand through his long hair the way Kat had seen his father do so many times.
"Looks like they're about done with the tent, yeah." Fred pointed behind Kat to a small gray A-frame tent held up by spikes that Kat had no idea how they hammered into the ground.
The three of them trotted over to the tent and went inside as Arthur said, "Muggles have such an interesting way of doing things, don't they."
The inside of the tent was far bigger than the outside, probably the size of the first floor on The Burrow, but it was hard to tell without a staircase clogging up the middle. There were great swaths of fabric covering the tent's ceiling, giving it an almost Moroccan feel. There was a smell of smoke from the fireplace and a cat. Kat looked at the table in the back as Fred and George pushed their way towards it, claiming two out of the four seats. They swung their feet up onto the table and looked rather relaxed. Kat noticed a kitchen next to a curtained off alcove on the right side that must have been a sleeping room. Boston nudged Kat with her shoulder and handed her the bag she must have dropped at some point. Boston nodded her head towards the curtained off bunk beds on the left side.
Just as she did, Arthur called, "Girls, choose a bunk and unpack." Ginny and Hermione were giggling as they all made their way to the little alcove that held two sets of bunk beds. Ginny and Hermione looked at each other and half-heartedly fought for the top bunk. Ginny had scrambled up first, claiming it for herself, to no one's surprise. Boston sat on the bottom bunk of the opposite bed. Kat threw the bag up to the top and considered that unpacked.
Kat heard Arthur yell, "Get out of the kitchen, Ron, we're all hungry."
"Yeah, get out of the kitchen, Ron," the coursing voices of Fred and George echoed. Kat shook her head and peaked out of the alcove at them.
"Feet of the table!" Arthur called to them.
They lifted their legs as if to do as he said, but Arthur was still on the move, so they lowered them back down to the table as they echoed again, "Feet of the table!"
At the mention of food, Kat realized she had never eaten lunch or grabbed food from the boys. She placed a hand on her stomach just as Boston came up beside her and held out a muffin to her.
Kat gasped. "You do love me, don't you!" Kat hugged the quiet girl around the neck.
Boston stiffened at the sudden contact but relaxed and wrapped her free arm around Kat's back. Kat felt the pain bloom in her back from the contact but refused to let go yet. Unfortunately, Kat's stomach decided it was going to start making loud, rumbling whale noises. Boston pulled back and held the muffin out to her friend.
Kat didn't even grab it before she leaned in and took a huge bite off the top. Boston's eyes widened and she dropped the muffin into Kat's hands.
Kat giggled around the food. "I am not eating it wrong, just different."
Boston just shook her head but smiled as Kat took another bite, causing her cheeks to puff out.
George was watching the girls and remembered that they were supposed to grab her breakfast. He leaned closer to Fred.
Fred just nodded. "Yeah, I forgot too." They shared a grimace.
"She's going to kill us."
"Or eat us instead," Fred commented. George couldn't help where his mind went, and a goofy smile spread across his face. Fred looked over and laughed. "Get your mind out the gutter, Georgie." He saw George lean back and cross his arms. He just shook his head as Fred laughed again, seeing a twitch at the corner of George's mouth that looked like it might have been a smile.
"Oi!" They heard the booming voice of Kat call out to them. They swivel their heads to see her, well George did, Fred just flopped his head back and saw her upside down. "Where's my breakfast?"
"Uhhh," the boys started. Much to their relief Arthur cut in.
"Alright, kids, we need water and firewood." Arthur clapped his hands together. He pointed at Harry, Ron, and Hermione. "Why don't you three go get water, yeah."
"I think I saw a tap over by where we came in," Hermione called, glad she could be helpful.
"Great," Arthur said, beaming and handed Harry and Ron two rather large buckets. They came up to the boys' mid-shin and were twice as wide as their legs. They were probably going to have a little trouble getting them back here full.
Boston must have been thinking the same thing because she slipped her wand out of the pocket of her jeans, though Kat had a difficult time believing that it had been in there. She couldn't hide a sickle in those jeans. She aimed it at the buckets in front of the younger boys and they rattled slightly, but it seemed like no one noticed.
"What did you just do?" George whispered between Boston and Kat. Boston jumped slightly then glared at him.
Kat waved him off. "She just charmed them so they won't get heavy, didn't she."
"Never ceases to impress," Fred commented from Kat's other side.
"Which part?"
Fred smiled at Kat, then looked to Boston, who had an eyebrow arched and her jaw clicked to the side. "All of it. The wordless magic, the wordless communication. All of it."
Boston bared her teeth at him.
"Everyone adapts differently, Fredward. Boston's special even without everything that impresses you." Kat tried to smooth it over, knowing a fight between Fred and Boston would end in the World Cup field in cinders.
"I didn't mean it like that," Fred defended.
"It's just interesting to watch, that's all," George helped.
Kat looked to Boston who just set her face into a bored glare, and shrugged.
Arthur cut the small tension that spread between them as the three 4th years had gone out of the tent. "Now, Ginny, can you help me get this tent ready for three other people?" Ginny nodded at her father. "Brilliant. Fred, George, take the girls and go get firewood so we can have a real muggle campfire."
Kat got a rather wide smile on her face and she whipped her head towards Boston, who was giving the evil version of that smile. It unnerved Fred and George.
"We're on it, dad," George choked out, and the four of them scurried out of the tent.
Kat turned on the boys as they all escaped into the world. "We should split up, cover more ground." Everyone looked at her as if she was unaware that someone had cast a bat bogie hex on her. "What?"
Boston scoffed in her way, and George laughed. "Darling, we all know that you'll just sneak off to look at all the people."
"Then you'll get lost," Fred added.
"We'll have to look for you-"
"Boston will worry-"
"Do you want Boston to worry?" George sounded very concerned, and Boston wore a mock look of despair.
Kat pointed at the three of them. "You all are ganging up on me."
Boston nodded as the boys shrugged in unison.
"This will not do, will it. I do not like this at all."
The three laughed, and Boston nodded towards the forest just up ahead, behind Kat.
"Fine," Kat sulked.
Kat was grumbling at the backs of the other three the whole way to the forest, something about them not letting her have any fun and an unholy alliance.
