"You're sure?" Frisk almost didn't believe it. But her friends looked completely serious.
"I am," Ginny said. "Harry came to find me last year because someone, the sister of his best friend, granted, needed help. Now my friend's brother needs me? I don't think I could forgive myself if I didn't at least try."
"But I'm asking you to risk your soul..." Frisk said, meekly.
"It sounds like you're trying to convince us to say no," Luna said, cocking her head slightly.
Frisk looked down at her feet. "That's not it, I want your help, I just want to be sure that, you know, I mean, you're never even met him..."
"Look Frisk," Opal said, "Luna's right. I understand the risks, and I've had the chance to get to know you. You like helping others, so let me ask. Does he deserve our help?"
"Yes," Frisk said emphatically. She'd seen him destroy the barrier so many times. Each time, it was to give hope to the other monsters of the underground, letting go of any hope he had for himself. It was so beautiful, and so horrible. "Yes," she repeated.
"Then we're helping," Ginny told her. Her tone was final.
"Thank you," Frisk said to them, "Thank you all so much."
"But that's only four," Luna said. "You need three more, right? Where will you find them?" she asked.
"I don't know," Frisk said. "I can't ask a teacher, or it might get back to Mom."
"I could ask my brother," Ginny said, thoughtfully. "But I don't know if he'd say yes. I don't know if he'd tell mum, either. If Mum hears about this, well, I don't think she'd like it."
Frisk looked to Luna and Opal, but neither offered any ideas. "Go ahead and ask," said Frisk. "Because I don't think we have any other choices."
The train rolled on into the Scottish Highlands, back to the castle that served as their school.
Frisk was going to ask Hermione about time travel the moment she arrived in the common room. But this had a problem. Hermione wasn't in the common room. She hadn't been on the train either, but Ginny had said she and Ron had stayed at Hogwarts over the break, to keep Harry Potter company. So where was she? Frisk tried to ask Harry this question, but his only reply was an angry glare. An inquiry into what happened only had deepened the glare, so that didn't help.
Frisk wasn't worried, she'd turn up, right? But classes restarted the next day. This pretty much picked up where it had left off for Frisk. She still had trouble focusing in History of Magic, transfiguration was still hard to master, and if she thought Snape was going to forgive her as a Christmas present, she was disappointed. Monday had turned into a draining day to come back to school on.
When she got back to the common room, Hermione was there. Frisk took a second to unload her books at a table near the fire, before taking a deep breath and walking toward the older student. As she got close, Hermione looked up from her parchment and looked at her with a focused stare. Frisk was determined, though. "Hermione, I..." she began.
"What?" Hermione snapped, loudly.
Everyone was staring at her, and Frisk was forced to reconsider. If Hermione did have a time travel device, she had managed to keep it quiet this far into the year. She probably wouldn't have any helpful words for Frisk if her secret was announced to the whole house.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, no less sharply.
"I'll, I'll ask another time," Frisk said, backing off, "When you're in a better mood." The older girl's glare followed her all the way back to the fireplace.
Frisk saw the same glare the next night, so she didn't even try to approach. Ron and Harry were also glowering in her general direction. It was until Wednesday, at lunch, that she got an answer on why any of this was happening from Ginny. "Harry got a firebolt for Christmas."
"What's a firebolt?" Frisk asked, halfway through a sandwich. Ginny stared at her with a dumbfounded expression.
"It's the best, fastest, newest broom on the market," Ginny said breathlessly, and launched into specifics and reviews before Frisk could slow her down. "There was one at Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley, it looked incredible." Frisk could almost see stars in her friend's eyes, "but it's wicked expensive."
"I get it," Frisk said, "It's like an Aston Martin."
This time it was Ginny's turn to look at Frisk blankly. "What's an Aston Martin?"
"Oh, I'm glad Papyrus isn't here to hear you say that," Frisk said, "He'd go on for at least half an hour. It's a very fast, very expensive, car. Anyway, why is Hermione upset that Harry got a firebolt? Is she envious?"
"Because," Ginny said, "Nobody knows who sent it. So Hermione thought it might have been sent as a trap by Sirius Black, and told McGonagall. And our head of house impounded it."
Frisk winced.
"It's even worse. Harry lost his previous broom when the dementors attacked him during the quidditch game, when he fell. So he doesn't have a fallback for his next match. So all three of them are unhappy, and neither Ron or Harry is talking to Hermione, and you saw how she's taking it," Ginny said, glancing up the table at the older Gryffindors.
"Does Hermione have any other friends?" Frisk asked. Hermione was eating with her head down, studying yet another book. She might have been sitting in the middle of other third year students, but she looked isolated.
Ginny followed Frisk's gaze up the table. "I don't really know. I haven't paid attention. But I can't really think of any, not even the girls in her year." Ginny didn't need any magic to tell what Frisk was thinking: that the situation was pretty awful, "Maybe you're right, Frisk," Ginny said. "But how can we help?"
Frisk sighed. "I don't know, and I need to figure that out. Maybe McGonagall will finish with the broom, and they'll all feel better."
With her initial attempts to talk to Hermione failing, Frisk's friends tried to distract her with the Ravenclaw versus Slytherin quidditch match, and although it went vaguely better than the first match (she could actually see the game), she still couldn't really get her head around it. It felt like the seekers were playing a separate game than the rest of them.
"It's not your fault," she told Opal and Ginny, who had been trying to explain it to her. "I have this memory of Mr. Macintosh trying to explain American Football to me. I didn't get that either." They were trudging through the bitter Scottish cold, hoods up to protect against the wind.
"Well," Ginny said, "I don't know how a muggle sport could compare to quidditch..."
"Sports are sports," Opal said. "That's how mum and dad met. They were watching football at a local pub..." she trailed off, realizing Ginny was giving her a shocked look. "Yeah. Dad's a muggle. He knows about magic, though, Mum said he handled it pretty well."
"What does he do?" Ginny asked.
"He's a plumber," Opal told her. "He's actually worked with your dad before, when people pull pranks on their muggle neighbors and do things to their toilets and pipes. Since Dad married a witch, the Statute of Secrecy doesn't apply to him, and they can go to him for advice."
"Is that unusual?" asked Frisk. "Someone without magic marrying someone who has it?"
"It's kind of unusual," Ginny said, "It generally doesn't go over well, learning that, all of a sudden, magic exists, and your wife or husband can use it. Probably equally strange to find out your child can learn magic. Dad says the ministry has a department that takes care of that, so they must have visited Hermione's parents."
Frisk tried several times over the next few weeks, as January turned into February, to catch Hermione in a non-existent good mood. And if Ginny was having any better luck with Ron, Frisk wasn't hearing about it, that, either. If anything, their moods were getting worse over time, as Gryffindor was due to play Ravenclaw themselves in just a few weeks.
In fact, it was the week before the match that Frisk was sitting in the common room, working on an essay for Professor Flitwick, when she happened to look up and spotted Professor McGonagall standing just inside the stairwell, looking about the common room. They made eye contact for a moment, and the Professor mouthed the words, "Harry Potter?" at her.
Frisk, surprised, looked about. While she could see Harry's usual constant companion Ron Weasley, she couldn't see Harry himself. She looked back at the professor and silently shook her head 'No'. Then Frisk's heart leaped as she realized the professor was holding a broom, as she turned in place, and headed back down toward the portrait hole. Ron must have seen her too, because he left whatever he was doing to race after her.
A few minutes later, Harry Potter himself climbed in, acting like some kind of conquering hero with the firebolt as his trophy. Behind him, equally jubilant, was Ronald. Behind them both, looking completely miserable, was Neville. Almost the entire common room rushed over to see the treasure.
While even Frisk wanted to see what was so special about a broom, she wanted to see what had terrified Neville. But he evaded Frisk in the confusion, disappearing into the boys dormitory. Answers from among the crowd were not forthcoming, they were too interested about the broom. A broom that, to Frisk's untrained eye, looked pretty much like other riding broom.
After the excitement had worn down, and Ron had gone upstairs to put the broom away, Frisk returned to her seat, happily noting that Harry was sitting down next to Hermione, and talking, quietly. Maybe in a few days, she could try to get Hermione to open up about...
Frisk heard a scream mixed of anger and terror come down from the Boys dormitory, and Ron raced back into view, dragging a bed sheet down with him. "Scabbers! Look! Scabbers!"
It took Frisk a moment to remember what Scabbers was, Ron's pet rat. But what was... Frisk flashed back to an orange shape chasing a rat under a bookcase. "Blood! He's gone! and you know what was on the floor?"
Frisk couldn't see it, but she knew, absolutely what it had to be. And while Frisk knew her chance to talk to Hermione about time travel had slipped away again, all she could think about was how horrified and pale the older girl had looked after Ron stomped away again.
Frisk's only view of Hermione for the rest of the week was the same double vision before Defense against the Dark Arts that started the wheels turning. She only appeared in the common room to proceed straight to the dormitory, each time giving a look that inspired people to stay out of her way.
A loud procession of noise met Frisk after she woke up on Saturday. After dressing and cleaning up, she headed down to the common room, where it looked like every single boy in Gryffindor had turned out to give the Gryffindor Quidditch team an escort down to breakfast in the great hall.
Not wanting to be part of that, she made a big deal of studying the notice board. She waited around a bit to see if Hermione, or Ginny, would turn up, but when neither did, she headed down to find food herself.
As it turned out, Ginny was already down there, trying to get another look at Harry's new broom. Frisk had already resigned herself to going to the match. She really didn't care for the game itself, but her friends were going, and she was mostly caught up on her homework. So, together with Luna and Opal, they made their way down to the grounds.
The game went about as Frisk expected it. The best part was the play between Professor McGonagall and Lee Jordan. Lee was supposed to be commentating instead of giving blow by blow descriptions of Harry's firebolt. McGonagall's protests, over the loudspeaker, was actually pretty entertaining.
That is, until the dementors showed up. Or rather, the black cloaks showed up. Ginny and Opal both poked Frisk in surprise. But Luna wasn't worried. "What are those?" she asked. "They're not dementors, they're walking on the ground."
"You're right," agreed Frisk, she'd gotten a pretty good look at the Dementors when she'd gone to help Harry when he'd fallen from his broom. She was pretty sure they didn't have feet. These things seemed to.
What even more surprising was the large... something that Gryffindor's seeker conjured from from his wand, twenty feet in the air, that barreled into the three cloaks on the ground, causing them to scatter on the ground like pins met by a bowling ball. Ginny, not paying attention to that all, chose that moment to throw her arms in the air, "Harry caught the snitch! Gryffindor wins!"
Luna and Opal were both applauded politely, as the Gryffindor faithful barreled down the stands to congratulate the team. Frisk was sitting bemused at the excitement over a single game, when Opal tapped her on the shoulder, pointing at the corner of the stands.
Hermione was there, she was holding something in her hands, and she appeared to be staring at the pile of happy Gryffindors. But instead of joining them, she quickly headed down the stairs at the far end of the stands, disappearing from sight.
Then Luna poked her in the other side, pointing at the mess of black cloaks which appeared to be full of people, now struggling against the cloaks entrapping them at McGonagall's feet. "Is that the Slytherin quidditch team?" she asked. "What are they doing there?"
"Trying to sabotage Harry," Frisk said, part of her brain still thinking about Hermione. "They were trying to bring up memories of his fall, I think." Frisk watched them for a bit. "Let's head back up."
"Exploding snap?" offered Opal after they'd had lunch. Frisk played, and they talked, but her mind wasn't in it. She asked Opal and Luna if they'd thought up anyone else who might be able to come underground and help Asriel, but while Opal had thought of a few people, she hadn't really been able to ask them, and Luna had asked people, but nobody had really taken her seriously.
After a few hours, they split up to head back to their common rooms. Frisk was surprised to find there was a celebration still going on. Someone (probably Ginny) handed her an open bottle of foamy, sweet smelling liquid.
But her attention was drawn to the corner, where Hermione had buried herself in a large book. Frisk was about to go to her, to try to talk to her about, well, anything other than time travel, but Harry had gotten to her first. "...and I think you did really well, but I need to read this by Monday." Hermione's voice was shrill and high pitched, and Frisk couldn't help noticing how red her cheeks looked.
"Come on, Hermione, come and have some food," Harry said, he glanced over his shoulder.
"If Scabbers," Frisk heard Ron say from behind her, and she closed her eyes tightly, she didn't want to see what happened next. "hadn't just been eaten..."
She could hear Hermione, large book and all, sobbing and fleeing toward the girls' dormitory before Ron had even finished the sentence. Frisk's world was black from clenched shut eyes, and she could feel her soul trembling in pain. She opened her eyes, turning towards Ron. "Was that necessary?" she asked. Her quiet voice didn't carry further than him.
For a second, she thought Ron was going to snap at her. He didn't, but it was a near thing. "It's been days now," he told her, and there were icicles hanging off his words. "Do you think I got the smallest apology from her? 'I'm sorry my cat ate the pet you've had for years?' No. She can't ever admit she might be wrong, and it got Scabbers killed." Beneath the ice, Frisk could feel the pain in his voice, too. While he certainly was missing his rat, she could tell he was missing his friend, too.
"Ron," Harry said, putting has hand on his friend's shoulder, and they turned away from Frisk.
She stepped backward from the two, right into Ginny. "Oh, sorry, Frisk," apologized Ginny. "Are you alright? You look like you're hurt."
Frisk took a swallow from the bottle she'd been holding this whole time. It was warm and sweet, and it soothed the ache she was feeling, at least somewhat. "I'm okay, but that was painful to hear. I don't think either of them fully understands how much they hurt the other."
"My brother had had that rat for nearly a decade. It went with him everywhere," Ginny said, nodding. "It was even in our family photos with him. He's taking it hard. I can tell."
They talked for a while before going to bed. But it was hard to sleep with the party sounds going on downstairs, and even when that wrapped with a professor mandated order, Frisk didn't sleep long before shouting woke her back up. She tried to roll over, and go back to sleep at first, but when the shouting continued, she slowly made her way back to the common room, dressed in her night shirt emblazoned with the delta rune.
"Ginny?" Frisk asked through sleepy, half lidded eyes, "What's going on?"
"Ron reckons Sirius Black was standing over him with a knife," Ginny said, and while that sounded ridiculous, Ginny seemed to be completely sincere.
"Which person," McGonagall asked, and her voice was barely restraining her rage, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"
Neville Longbottom, with a very Frisk-like squeak, raised his hand in the air.
It was hard not to notice the additional security in Hogwarts. Now, when Frisk overheard someone complaining about "Troll like behavior", she had actual trolls to compare it too. There was the appearance of wooden boards over anything that possibly might be an entrance to the castle, and Flitwick appeared to be having a conversation with the front doors on how to recognize Sirius Black.
But her daily life, at least the first few days, was normal. It was during such a normal mail delivery during Tuesday's breakfast that whispers went up and down the Gryffindor table. Frisk looked up towards the source of the whispers, and saw that Neville had received a large red envelope.
"Oh no," Ginny, who was sitting next to her, said. "That is a howler."
"What's a..." Frisk began, but her question was soon answered, as Neville got up, and broke at a dead run toward the nearest exit of the great hall. She could hear great peals of laughter from the Slytherin table, punctuated with snickers and giggles from the other three groups of students. It was echoed with a woman's voice shrieking about how much of a disgrace Neville was.
Frisk had heard enough, abandoning her cereal, she ran in the direction of the magically enhanced shrieks. She found Neville staring, almost zen-like, at the howler, because it was continuing about how he wasn't worthy of the Longbottom name, what his parents would have thought, and more besides. When it finished, he looked around, and locked eyes with Frisk. "Hey, Neville," she said.
"Hello, Frisk," he said. His voice was very nearly calm, and something about that tone bothered her, it sounded familiar, and she couldn't place why. "You alright?"
"I'm okay," Frisk said, and she sat on the floor next to him. "What about you, are you holding up?"
"Fine. I'm fine." They sat there for several minutes, as the sounds of breakfast ended. A bell rang, a warning that classes would be starting in five minutes. The rest of the other third year Gryffindors passed in front of them, heading out into the cold air. A few of them glanced at Neville in sympathy, or Frisk questioningly, but none of them said anything to either of them.
"Frisk, you're going to be late for class," Neville told her, in that same not quite calm tone. "Go on, go." But a thought had flared in her mind.
Don't leave him.
And then she realized where she'd heard that tone before. On one of the cycles, down in the true labs, she'd gotten Alphys to describe when she'd met Undyne the first time, she'd heard it there. And each, and every, time she tried to spare Dad's life before Flowey executed him. Dad had talked to her with that exact same inflection.
They all had something in common.
"I'm not worried about class," Frisk told Neville. "I'm worried about you, and you are more important than any class."