I'M BACK DID YOU MISS ME? Sorry I haven't updated recently. Life has been crazy. Who am I kidding? I don't have a life.
~PhantomBookworm
Fred picked at his plate of chicken pie and mash, not feeling very hungry. George elbowed him.
"What's the matter, Freddie?" He whispered.
Fred sighed and shrugged. "Nothing." He loaded his fork and took a mouthful, not really tasting his food. Suddenly, he could feel someone watching him. The older Weasley twin glanced up to see Hermione hurriedly looking down at something that she held in her hands. He could also see a ginger tail brush against her arm as she flushed red, and then smiled. The younger witch looked up again, saw him staring at her and then quickly started eating her gammon and mash. She pulled off a piece of rind and gave it to Crookshanks, who leapt of the bench and padded toward the doorway, bottle-brush tail held high.
Fred cut another piece of pie and started to eat. Now, he could taste the flavours of the bacon, the chicken and the spices that the house-elves so masterfully put in all of their dishes. His shoulders felt a lot lighter, even if he still felt confused about what he had seen in the classroom earlier- when he thought he had seen her vanish suddenly.
The heat must have gotten to him.
"You go on ahead."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, Georgie. Go on. I'll catch up."
Fred watched his brother leave the hall with Lee, before turning and watching a head of bushy hair leave through the door that lead to the library stairs. Quickly, Fred followed before Hermione could vanish completely from sight.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he could see Hermione, already half a flight above him, lugging her repaired satchel full of books. She's going to break it again, Fred thought.
Pulling back a tapestry, Fred jumped onto a staircase that immediately started to move, pushing him up the flight of stairs towards the library. He emerged from behind a set of armour just as he saw the sweep of a robe and flash of brown hair disappear through the library door. Catching the heavy door just before it swung shut, the fifth-year snuck through the door and behind the closest bookshelf. He started pulling books off the shelf, avoiding Madam Pince's sharp, curious gaze.
"Can I get these out, please?" A soft voice cut through Fred's silent musings. He turned away from Hermione and the librarian, glancing down at the books he had picked from the shelves. Conjuring Nothing, by Benjamin Heron, and Inanimate Conjuring: a guide, by Elaine Purton. He shrugged- he had McGonagall's homework to do, after all.
Picking up a stool with one hand, the Weasley twin moved his things to the nearest work table, careful to not scrape the brass feet of the stool on the floor- he had gotten a severe ear-lashing when he had last done that, which had ended in him and George being chased from the library by their books. He dumped his bag on the floor next to the table, rummaged for a quill and a length of rumpled parchment, and opened a bottle of ink.
Thud. Thud. Thu-thud.
Fred sat bolt upright, turning to his left. There, her head just visible over the pile of books that she had just placed on the desk, stood Hermione. He flushed pink, and raked a hand through his ginger hair before turning to smile at her.
"Hi, Hermione."
"Hey Fred. Don't usually see you here… without your twin?" She phrased it like a question.
"Without George, yes," he confirmed. Was that so odd? Fred thought. Maybe it was. What was that saying that Lee had picked up from the muggle side of his family? That the Weasley twins were like two halves of a whole idiot. Cheers, Lee. Shrugging off this thought, Fred picked up his quill again and wrote "Inanimatus Conjurus" at the top of his parchment in his characteristic scrawl. Underneath that he wrote his name. Then he put the quill down and sighed. What had he actually learned in that lesson? He didn't have a clue about this stupid spell.
"Fred? Are you okay?"
"Wha- oh, yeah, Hermione. I'm grand. Just don't feel like doing transfiguration tonight." Fred used both hands to ruffle his hair, distracted.
"Oohh, what are you doing?" Hermione asked eagerly, always desperate for knowledge.
"Inanimatus Conjurus."
"Oh, wow, that's really amazing magic, I mean it's supposed to be really difficult, isn't it? I've only read the theory, I haven't tried it yet, how do you do it?"
Fred glanced at her, amused at her enthusiasm. "Well, you have to focus on that one item you want to conjure, and then you have to visualize it in front of you and say the incantation. But I don't understand the theory behind it."
"If you teach me how to do the spell, I could teach you how the theory works? It's not as difficult as the transfiguring of animals, it doesn't violate Gamp's law at all-"
"Of course! Please, else McGonagall will kill me if this doesn't get done. O.W.L year and all that."
As the two teenagers huddled together, discussing the finer points of the spell, Madam Pince stared at them from behind a bookshelf bearing books on Arithmancy. Weasley and Granger? Who would have thought? A troublemaker and a bookworm. The librarian smiled to herself. Maybe it will help both of them. It might calm Mr Weasley down enough to get his grades, but liven up Miss Granger and give her something else to think about rather than just school work. Goodness knows she does too much already.
Humming slightly to herself, pleased with the two teenagers sitting around the desk nearest the door, Madam Pince and her duster moved further along the rows of books, content, until- "YOU! CHEWING GUM. IN THE LIBRARY. OUT, OUT, OUT!"
The library had returned to normal.
A shadow fell over Fred's shoulder just as he dotted the final sentence on his third side of parchment. "The library is closing, Mr Weasley and Miss Granger."
"Oh, but we hadn't got to actually practise the-"
"Miss Granger-"
"It's okay Hermione." Fred smiled and rolled up his essay. "We can practise the spell in the common room. Might be easier there." To Madam Pince, he said, "Don't worry. I'll get her back before curfew."
"Thank you, Mr Weasley. Mr Filch was saying earlier how he thought he saw a student outside the library just after closing time and I was slightly concerned." Irma Pince smiled at her favourite student. "Now, Miss Granger, here is the book you reserved last week- it's just been returned. And-", the librarian glanced at her watch -"if you leave now, you'll be able to reach Gryffindor Tower before Argus starts his rounds."
"Thanks, Madam Pince," Hermione beamed, taking the book and gathering her belongings in her arms.
"Here, Hermione, let me take those. I have less books than you," Fred said, holding out his hand. The girl smiled uncertainly.
"Fred, I'm fine-"
Just then her satchel strap decided to make an ominous creaking sound. The Weasley raised an eyebrow at the sound.
"At least let me take your bag before it breaks again."
"Okay."
The brunette reluctantly relinquished her bag to the redhead, who slung it safely over his shoulder.
"Damn, Hermione, how many books have you got in here?"
"Just a few!" She answered defensively. By now they had left the library and was moving down the corridor-in the opposite direction to where the main stairs were. Fred pulled back a tapestry and started down the narrow passage. "Where are you going?" Hermione asked, confused. "The staircase is that way!"
"I know." Fred glanced over his shoulder. "But this way is quicker. You haven't found it yet? You're in the Library every day, and you haven't found the fastest way back to Gryffindor Tower yet?" He sounded surprised.
"Well, usually when I leave the Library it's almost curfew- I don't have time to keep looking around for secret passageways!"
Fred held up his hands in surrender. "I get your point. But this way is much quicker, and, Filch doesn't know about it. So, if you get caught short in the Library after hours, I suggest you use this passageway."
They had now reached a junction in the corridor. They took a left, then a right, where they reached a small room. Inside was a table, unlit lantern and a bronze statue of a rampart lion, secreted in a niche.
"Woah," Hermione breathed. "I had no idea this was here. And-" She moved closer to the wall. "Books!" She grinned. "What is this place?"
"This is just a room that George and I use from time to time if we need some space. Or if we're planning something. Or-"
Hermione laughed, her eyes alight with the image of Fred and George planning a prank on Filch or another hapless member of staff. "How did you find it? It's incredible!"
Fred flushed. "Well…." He started awkwardly, and then continued in a rush. "It was our first year. And Percy was being a right royal-"
"I can imagine," Hermione smiled with understanding. She and Percy got on okay, but she knew how much he managed to irritate the others.
"Yeah…. So George and I would follow him sometimes without him noticing, and I found the tapestry entrance when we were hiding from him. But we used to put ink pellets in his parchment or his textbooks… sometimes it would spell out random things… and once, we got some awesome stuff from Diagon Alley, that would cover ink so it would look blank-"
"What, like tipex?" Hermione asked, confused.
"Like what?" Fred tilted his head curiously.
"Give me my bag," Hermione asked him. Passing it over, he crouched on the floor next to her, bewildered. She rummaged in a pocket and brought out a small, white bottle and a piece of white parchment. "It's a white liquid that covers text. Look." Leaning the parchment on the floor, she unscrewed the cap of the bottle and dipped in the sponge brush, before drawing it across the surface of the parchment. "The only drawback is that it's white- it doesn't come in 'parchment' colour," she said wryly. "It works well for muggle paper and stuff though."
Fred took the bottle and stared at it curiously. "You could get it to change colour, though," he muttered. "If you could get it to match the colour of the parchment you'd be alright…." There was a spell, he knew, that could change the colour of liquids to mimic the surface they stood against. He shook his head. I'll look it up in the morning.
"You could do that?" Hermione asked, excited. "Changing things with a charm- you know, the spell-check ones and stuff- is okay, but it doesn't always work correctly, and so you end up crossing it out anyway. I bought this-" she indicated the bottle "- in a muggle shop during the summer. I thought maybe it would work for parchment, if I could get it to change colour, obviously. I haven't managed to find the charm for it yet, unfortunately." She shrugged. "I've been busy."
"Yeah, you're taking all the subjects, aren't you? Well, apart from divination. Wonderful walkout there, by the way."
Hermione reddened. "You know about that?" She whispered.
"The whole school knows about it, and everybody has been wanting to congratulate you about it. Not many people have the nerve to stand up to that old fraud." He clapped a hand on her shoulder before offering her his hand. "We should get back to the common room before Filch is out on the prowl."
A/N: just a note. The passageways are completely made up. But I think it would be awesome if Howards had passageways within the walls, like some castles in Wales and England do. You could spend all day in such passages and get completely lost. I got the idea from Beaumaris Castle, in Wales. We ent there on holiday in the rain but it was still amazing. But I digress.
I also figured that Hermione must have brought some muggle stuff to Hogwarts. And probably still used it- She probably has pads of lined paper and lever arch files for each subject, ngl. It's Hermione, after all.