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It was almost February, and Fred and Alicia hadn't fixed what was wrong with their friendship yet. Of course, they had talked and even shared some laughs eventually, but then they would remember the conflicts they had shared and immediately cease whatever good moment they were sharing and fall in awkward silence. Those were the moments George would have to intervene and try to say something funny to make the tension go away. "Good these chocolate frogs taste nothing like the real ones, right guys" He said once during one of the quiet battles, which didn't help at all, just made the girls feel disgusted, and Fred kind of embarrassed for the bad joke. The only one who seemed to have liked the joke was Lee Jordan, their new friend who seemed to have a new kind of interest in Angelina and Alicia that Fred and George couldn't kind of understand yet. I mean, what could girls offer him that boys couldn't? Not frog jokes, that's for sure.
Now Fred and George were the only ones awake in their dorm they shared with Lee. A slow year for Gryffindor boys, only three male students were sorted into Gryffindor that year, but it was better like this, 'cause the twins would have more control of what happened in their dorm, since Lee didn't seem to care a lot, with the only condition of not catching fire in his sleep.
"Try to poke it again!" Fred said with a slight irritation in his voice.
"Mate, we've tried poking a million times! We tried poking it, hitting it, getting it wet, asking please…" George answered
"Please?" Fred said, looking at the parchment paper as if it could actually work this time
"I'm starting to think this is a prank! Yeah, Filtch pranked us! He knew we would find it so he hid this stupid paper thing to keep us busy so we would leave him and his stupid cat alone. Can't believe we fell for a prank from Filch! Our career is OVER!"
"No, it can't be" George was now whispering, as if he was more talking to himself than with his brother "How would he even know we would be there that night? No, it's not a prank. If only we knew more magic to try with it… Maybe, just maybe, we don't have to if you don't want to, we could ask for help?"
He said the last part with all caution he could gather. Fred knew who he was thinking of asking for help, and he wasn't happy with the idea, but what other option did they have? Asking Charlie? Sure, a head boy would be really happy with the idea of his brothers asking for help with a forbidden item. Could they ask a teacher? Obviously not! Could they write to Bill about it? Well, they could try, but 50% chance Bill would obsess about it "what if it's cursed? What if it's dark magic? What if it hurts you?" He used to be cool but got totally paranoid after he got that job in Egypt. Their only option was way more accessible, it was sleeping in the girl's first-year dorm and had blond hair, violet eyes, and a worrying but admirable taste for the danger.
Fred was looking at his brother as he was ready to punch him.
"Hum… asking for help, that's a great idea!" he said with fake enthusiasm "And who can we go for help? Oh I know, your girlfriend"
"I told you a million times already, ALICIA IS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND"
"Oh yeah? And how many friends do you see out there holding hands and talking SO CLOSE THEY COULD KISS?"
"GUYS" a third voice started, the brothers turned to see that Lee Jordan sat on his bed, looking rather sleepy "I think you all are yelling a little too loud, soon everyone will start knocking. Hey, what do you have there?" He said making his way to the floor and joining the twins, suddenly looking awake.
George quickly hid the parchment paper behind his back, but Fred said
"Nooo, weren't you the one who suggested we find help? So, is there better help than our good, old friend Lee here?" He said while patting Lee on his back a little too strongly.
"I wouldn't say old" Lee started saying, with a proud look on his face "but good, for sure, I would even say th-"
Before he could continue George put the mysterious parchment against Lee's chest with the same strength and intensity Fred patted his back
"Oh, please enlighten us then Lee, our good, old friend! Can you decode this impossible mysterious item?"
Lee noticed that the twins were addressing his name, but looking at each other's eye while talking. He wouldn't dare to say a thing about it though, he was just happy he was being addressed at all.
"Wow, where did you find this? What is it supposed to do? Is it safe?"
"Fitch's office, we don't know, and we don't know. We think you could try to figure it out." Fred said, ignoring George's angry stare.
"Well, if there is any magic in this maybe it can manifest if we just…" Lee went to the side of his bed and got his wand and positioned it with the tip touching the paper "aparecium" he said, and letters started to appear on the parchment.
"Wow" both twins said at the same time
"Haven't you guys tried it? Seriously you should start paying attention to charms class, I mean this is one the simple ones and if you don-"
Once again Lee was interrupted, now not by anything they said, but by their looks
"Who would know that the one we were looking for was sleeping only two feet away." George said, looking at Lee with admiration
"Great, now we have a substitute for your girlfriend!" Fred teased.
Before George could retaliate, Lee spoke
"Look, the letters are moving!"
When the three friends looked at the paper, there seemed that it was in fact listening to what they were saying:
PADFOOT: KNOCK KNOCK
WORMTAIL: WHO'S THERE?
PRONGS: THREE STUPID IDIOTS TRYING TO READ THE MAP!
"It's a map!" Fred said cheerfully
MOONY: FOR MERLIN, THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT WAS A MAP
PADFOOT: INCREDIBLY STUPID IDIOTS, MOONY, FOR SURE
"Does it do anything else than insulting us?" Asked George
PRONGS: I'M SORRY BURNING MATCH HAIRED BOY, IS JUST THAT YOU ARE VERY INSULTIBLE.
WORMTAIL: HA! VERY FUNNY PRONGS!
MOONY: SO, YOU THINK YOU DESERVE THE SECRETS TO THE MARAUDERS' MAP?
"Hell yeah!"
PADFOOT: THEN TELL ME, CORNROWS HAIRED BOY
"I think that would be me" Lee said, pointing to his dreadlocks
PADFOOT: WILL YOU USE IT FOR EVIL?
"No! No! Of course not, we would never do such a thing!" Lee said, winking his eyes towards the twins.
PRONGS: SORRY, WE CAN'T HELP YOU
WORMTAIL: YEAH, YOU DON'T SOUND LIKE SOMEONE WHO WOULD BE OUR FRIEND
MOONY: AND WE ARE TIRED OF ENEMIES ALREADY
PADFOOT: WITH THAT SAID. GOODNIGHT.
And just like that, the map went back to be a boring blank piece of parchment paper again.
"NOOO! Lee, do that thing again!"
"Aparecium" Lee said, and they waited
"APARECIUM APARECIUM APARECIUM" George said repeatedly after taking Lee's wand from his hand
MOONY: WHAT PART OF GOODNIGHT CAN'T YOU DUNG HEADS UNDERSTAND?
WORMTAIL: MOONY, WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO EXPLODE THEM?
PADFOOT: NO WORMTAIL, NOT RIGHT NOW, MAYBE NEXT TIME
PRONGS: BOOM!
"What do we do?" George said, hints of desperation in his voice "should we try again?"
"No, it said it would explode us! Can it do it?" Lee asked
"I don't know, but I'm ready to find out!" Fred said, getting his wand and pointing at the map "Aparecium!"
This time, instead of appearing the usual black letters, there was a red bold handwriting on it, that said "NO REDHEADED OR CORN ROLLS HAIRED BOYS ALLOWED"
The boys tried the revealing spell a few more times, but it didn't work, after a while not even the red warning was showing up anymore, the map was just a blank piece of paper again.
"Oh no, oh no. We screwed this up!" Fred said with his hands on his head "Now the map will never reveal itself to us!"
"Well, it might not reveal to us" George said "But it might reveal itself to someone else… like, I don't know, someone smart, that we trust, like..."
"Your girlfriend!" Lee said as if he had figured a riddle out.
Fred started laughing hysterically and George threw a pillow at Lee's face, before crawling to bed and closing the blinders angrily. Fred did the same but still laughing. They left Lee sitting on the same spot without understanding exactly what just happened.
Next morning the boys woke up extra early. They went to the common room to wait for Angelina and Alicia. The plan was that Lee would distract Angelina while the twins would drag Alicia to a corner to update her with everything.
"If the plan is asking for someone who isn't us, why don't we just ask Angelina?" Fred asked, with a frown on his face
"mate, I can't believe you're doing this" George started, trying to keep his cool but letting the hints of irritation appear in his voice "It's Ali we are talking about, the one who taught us how to tease the garden goblins so they would fight, the one who taught us we can steal mom's wand and do magic with it without getting caught by the ministry, the one who taught us how to-"
"To what? To kiss? I think she only taught YOU that part"
"What's the matter Freddy? Are you jealous of dear Alicia" Lee said, mimicking a couple kissing.
"ME? Jealous of that stinky, weird girl?" Fred yelled "Ha! I'd rather kiss a slug before kissing her, in fact George, I'd take more care if I was you, you may be turned into an ogre with you keep kissing her!"
After he said that, they heard giggles coming from behind them, from the stairs. When they looked around, they saw about of 11 girls from different years of Gryffindor laughing smoothly, trying to hide their amusement, while a small, blond, and bright red faced Alicia stood on the corner with an wide eyed Angelina beside her, looking from Alicia, to the boys, as if she was waiting for something to happen.
For the first time in her life, though, Alicia didn't feel like punching whoever was getting on her nerves, she just felt like running away as fast as she could. She tried, but she couldn't. It was like she was stuck to the floor and couldn't move. What was that she was feeling? A mix of anger, shame and hurt that she couldn't decide which one was the worse. If there was a way of sinking into the floor and disappearing into the darkness, she would definitely do this right now.
As if sent by an angel, her sister went down the stairs talking cheerfully to her friends, when she saw Alicia, her cheerfulness stopped and she could imagine what had happened. Charlie told her what happened on the train when they were coming back from the winter recess, and she couldn't stop but feeling a little responsible for what happened, she had been eleven not too long ago, and she remembered how easily impressed she could be at such a tender age. Of course Alicia would mimic her actions towards Charlie, she looked up to her, and if Fi had been just a little more discreet while interacting with Charlie, she maybe could have avoided the embarrassement for the kids.
Fi got Alicia's hand and guided her to the 7th year girl's dorm, distributing bad looks to everyone who seemed to find the scene slightly amusing. Once they got to the dorm, she closed the door and sat on her bed, while Alicia would just stood up and stared at her feet.
"Ali, what happened there?" she asked softly, but the girl remained quiet. "Look, I got this for your birthday last time I went to hogsmeade, I was going to wait to give it to you on the right date, but I think you could use something to cheer you up"
Then, she handed the girl a crystal ball, about the size of a quaffle, that would shimmer all the colors of the rainbow inside, like a fog.
"You will need this if you ever want to take divinations class, but a crystal ball isn't only a study tool, you know, you can use it for a lot of important things, such as asking for advice, taking important decisions, knowing when someone is thinking of you... and more importantly, discovering things about yourself that are too occult for you to see alone, how do you feel in troubled times, for example."
Alicia looked up from the magical object into her sister's eyes.
"How can a crystal ball know how I feel if don't even I know it?" the younger one asked
"Humans are complicated beings" Fi said, taking the ball from her sister's hand and examining it "but Crystals, aren't. They are mirrors for our soul. They don't think or feel, they just reflect our own feelings and thoughts, so we can analyse them from the outside, and can you, for example, know how you're looking like today, without looking at a mirror?"
"Not really"
"Yeah, not really."
Alicia was really happy and intrigued with by gift, at the same time she had a feeling that it wasn't such a happy gift as Fi was trying to show it was. When she touched the Crystal ball and stared at the swirling colorful smoke, she knew, it was a goodbye gift.
"Where are you going?" She asked, trying to fight the spite of crying
"I got a job, for the prophet" Fi said, with a smile on her face, but quickly the smile disappeared. "I'll be a junior international affairs correspondent. I will be traveling around with a group of journalists, this time next year, I'll be anywhere in the globe."
Alicia tried to be happy for her sister, but she couldn't help but feel like an alone little girl, just like Ginny did at the beginning of the school year, and suddenly she felt like writing a letter to her, even though she couldn't read it yet, maybe she could just draw a cute picture, so she wouldn't feel so alone. Suddenly her thoughts went back to the conversation that was taking place in the present.
"Does Charlie know?" She asked
"No" Fi sighted "That's why you can't tell anyone! Not even Angelina, not even Fred and George! Merlin, especially Fred and George!
"You don't have to worry of me telling Fred and George anything anymore" Alicia said in an upsetting tone "Haven't you heard it? They think I'm a stinky ogre"
Fi had to keep herself from laughing at it, calling Alicia a stinky ogre was so ironically amusing. Alicia, their mother's little perfect princess, a stinky ogre.
"Ali, they are boys, and boys are stupid!" Fi said, making the girl giggle a little "Fred is jealous because he thinks George likes you better than him, and George is embarrassed because Fred keeps teasing him about you being his girlfriend" seeing the defensive look on her sister's face she quickly added "which you're not!" when the girl's face eased, she continued "What I'm saying Ali, is not that you should ignore the stupid things they do, but educate them into not doing them anymore. They are your friends, and they like you, they will listen to you if you got something to say"
"Do you think so? Is it like this between you and Charlie?"
"Yeah! But Charlie and I have a whole other dynamics going on, you can't base your friendship with the twins on mine and Charlie's relationship"
Alicia fell into the quiet contemplating state she would sometimes, Fi felt like she could even see the thoughts clouds forming on top of the girl's head.
"Let's go now! Go put your birthday present in a safe place and let's head down to breakfast. You can sit with us if you want to"
"Thanks" Alicia started. "But I think I'll sit with my friends, maybe I can try to talk to Fred and George. This has been going on for too long"
Ali went through the door and Fi couldn't stop herself from feeling proud of her pep talk. Alicia would for sure be fine while she was away, but she still had a Weasleys to deal with, and Weasley were known to be complicated.
That's it everyone, PLEASE REVIEW I BEG YOU