Sunday, 6 February 1994
Great Hall
"So, Longbottom," Draco drawled conversationally, leaning with practiced nonchalance against the edge of the dueling platform where Mary and her group were taking turns creating little moving targets for each other to shoot down with fire, water, or ice. Professor Flitwick was teaching staff basics for those who were interested on the other side of the room, which meant that everyone else had been given a relatively easy exercise for the day, rather than the go-ahead to fight properly. "I hear you're too thick to remember the passwords to that stupid tower of yours. I heard ickle Nevvie-poo was crying in the corridor because he couldn't convince a mad old painting to let him back in – 'P-please, I need to – to get m-my books and things! I'm going to be late!'"
Neville, who was taking his turn at the targets, went very red but pointedly ignored the Slytherin's taunts.
The Little Weasel immediately leapt to his friend's defense. Mary was glad he did, because she rather liked Neville and hated watching anyone be bullied. If he hadn't, she would have been sorely tempted to break the First Rule and "accidentally" hex her House mate. "Bug off, you pointy-faced git!"
"'Pointy-faced git'? Is that really the best you can do? I suppose it's no surprise the two of you are friends – well suited in your general lack of intelligence and creativity, aren't you?"
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Mary interrupted before the furious Weasley could completely lose his cool.
The boy sighed dramatically. "Target practice is so dull, Potter."
The whole week had been rather dull, actually, after Imbolc. It had passed quickly in a blur of classes, Quidditch practice, Patronus lessons, and homework. There had been no arguments with her friends; no tea parties; no illicit duels and subsequent visits to the hospital wing: no intra-Slytherin drama at all, actually. It was eerie. Mary kept thinking that there should be more fall-out from the duel, either from Snape or the rest of the house. Lilian agreed. She had admitted that she suspected Sean and the rest of the prefects were in trouble for letting it all get so out of hand, but as with the Conspiracy, no one seemed to know about any punishments which might be taking place behind closed doors.
The prefects had held a House Meeting on Wednesday, where they announced that they had fully examined the anti-werewolf precautions in place and found them adequate, which meant no one was about to try to get rid of Remus, so even that issue seemed to be mostly resolved. Mary spent most of the meeting trying to determine if any or all of them looked a bit more haggard or exhausted than the rest of the upperclassmen. She couldn't tell, and so, in the end, dismissed the issue, determined to enjoy the relative calm that followed the official House assurance that Remus wasn't going to turn into a wolf and kill everyone come full moon.
It was only a matter of time, Mary was sure, until something happened to send the Snakes into another uproar, but she, unlike Draco, certainly didn't see a bit of breathing room as a good excuse to go picking a fight (or trying to) with someone as nice as Neville.
She missed Weasley's response, distracted by her own musings, but was drawn back into the developing argument by Malfoy's sharp, mocking laugh. "Ooh, well done, Weasel! From git to prat! What's next? Wanker? Pathetic. Here I was hoping for some bloody entertainment, but –"
Just then, Lilian returned from her trip to the refreshment table. "Hey, Draco," she interrupted him. "What's up?"
"Oh, you know, just informing the kittens of the latest gossip. Have you heard about Longbottom and that idiot portrait, Sir Cadogan? The nuns on the fourth floor were having a good laugh over it."
"I said shut up, Malfoy!" Weasley nearly shouted, wand drawn. "Piss off and go bother someone else!"
Malfoy chuckled. "Oi! Longbottom! Going to let your boyfriend fight all your battles for you?"
Neville still didn't respond, except to conjure a particularly vicious fireball. Weasley, perhaps unsurprisingly, hesitated, obviously uncertain how to continue to defend his friend without insinuating that there was more going on between them than mere friendship.
"Are you trying to get hexed?" Mary asked, exasperated.
"Well given the… competition, you have to admit, it's more like looking for an excuse to hex one of them. This is a dueling club, is it not?" her House mate rolled his eyes. "But no, my group was just discussing Hogsmeade. I came over to ask whether Lilian has plans."
The girl in question hummed slightly, looking between the still-red Neville, determinedly sending spell after spell down the length of the platform, and the bored blond before her. "All of us girls are going together," she informed him coolly after a long moment.
"All of –"
"It was Pansy's idea," Lilian said firmly.
"I thought you guys weren't dating," Mary teased her friend.
"We're not!" they chorused irritably.
"Is this because I was baiting Longbottom and the Weasel?" Malfoy asked. His face was a study in offended entitlement.
"Would it matter if it was?" Lilian snapped (which Mary interpreted as a yes) and made a dismissive, shooing motion at him.
The boy turned on his heel and stalked off without even a parting shot. Ernie Macmillan demanded that Weasley take a turn conjuring targets so he could go get a drink, and a few minutes later, Lilian took Neville's place, practicing a nifty little icicle dart spell. The boy joined Mary on the sidelines with a gusty sigh.
"Alright, Neville?" she asked tentatively.
He snorted. "Nothing I've never heard before," he noted in a rather distant tone Mary associated with trying not to let a particularly vicious taunt get to her. There was a touch more bitterness when he added, "Ron's been giving me shit about it since yesterday, anyway – I got the bloody portrait to tell me all the passwords, because he changes them at least twice a day, and then I lost them."
The Slytherin bit her tongue hard, trying not to laugh. She could only imagine her own House mates' reactions if she wrote down the password and lost it. Or worse, Snape's.
"What did Professor McGonagall say when you told her?" she asked, morbidly curious.
The Gryffindor gave her a look that she couldn't quite interpret. "I haven't – I'm not going to. I'd just get in trouble."
"But aren't you worried about someone sneaking in?"
"Well, it's not like I labeled the list Passwords to Gryffindor Tower, is it? Besides, I think it fell out of my pocket in the owlery, so I doubt anyone would want to pick it up. And even if they did, there had to be fifteen or so on the list – they still wouldn't know which one we were on – they only last about eight to twelve hours."
It sounded an awful lot like Neville was trying to justify not telling to himself, but Mary wasn't about to object. It wasn't as if someone couldn't just hide around the corner from the entrance to Gryffindor with a supersensory charm and wait to overhear the password, anyway. Morgana and her boys had done that to mess with the twins' dorm at the beginning of the year. But she couldn't exactly say that, either. She cast about for something relatively neutral. "You mean the portrait itself chooses your passwords?" she finally asked.
The boy nodded miserably. "It's been a nightmare. I'm not the only one that can't keep up – even the prefects don't always know what it is."
"That's… that's just weird. Our prefects choose ours," she informed him.
"I think it was a condition of his agreeing to take on the job – and he was the only one mad enough to volunteer after, you know, Black."
"How did you get him to tell you all of the ones you wrote down?" she asked, genuinely curious.
The Gryffindor rolled his eyes. "I managed to get one, and that proved I was meant to be there, yeah? And then I told him if he gave me three or four in advance, I wouldn't get caught out, and he'd definitely know it was me. I think he was feeling a bit sorry for me, because I'd missed the last three changes – no one tells me anything – and had to keep getting others to let me in. So that was right after the hols. I've been getting about a week's ahead, just to be on the safe side."
That was actually pretty clever, except for the part where he lost the whole week's worth of them at once. She said so, to Neville's slight amusement. She considered it a win that he was at least smiling about the whole thing, now, if not quite laughing at the situation yet.
He sighed. "The worst part is, there's no way he'll give me the passwords again."
"I can't believe the Professor is letting him change the password so often anyway. It sounds obnoxious."
"I'm… not sure she knows," the boy said hesitantly. "I mean, I know she's the Head of Gryffindor, but I don't think I've ever seen her up in the tower except maybe… twice? Mostly it's just the prefects in charge, and if we need to talk to her, we go to her office hours."
Mary gaped at him. "Seriously?"
"Um… yeah?"
"Merlin! I knew she was busy with being the deputy head and all, but – you don't even have like, monthly House Meetings?" It was a little uncomfortable to realize that she probably saw more of her guardian than the Gryffindors did.
Neville shrugged. "Just as well, really. She reminds me a bit of my gran."
The Slytherin rolled her eyes. "She's way nicer than your gran, especially when you get to know her. You should tell her about the passwords being changed so often. That's just… stupid."
He shrugged again, in a way that suggested he had no intention to do so, even though he said, "Maybe."
Mary didn't really have the opportunity to press the issue, as Lisa Turpin tapped her to take over making targets. Quite frankly, she was surprised the Ravenclaw had lasted as long as she did – the targets were little shield-bubbles, which required not only a constant input of power to resist the spells thrown at them, but also constant focus to move them around. If your attention wavered, your target would most likely be destroyed: they had been making three in a row before switching off. Turpin was very good at evasive maneuvers, though, and had managed to draw out her turn for at least twice as long as any of the others. Mary checked the time before she stepped up to the far end of the platform (seven minutes was the time to beat) and put the Gryffindors' password issue out of her mind, focusing on avoiding Lilian's darts and the high-powered jets of water Weasley was producing. It wasn't really any of her business, anyway.
Saturday, 12 February 1994
Ravenclaw Tower
Luna
Out of all the founders of Hogwarts, Rowena, daughter of Raven and Claw, was Luna Xenadora's favorite.
Gryffindor was a hard man who had lived an easy life – not physically – he had been a warrior, after all, but he was the sort of man who had very particular ideas of how things should be, and expected the world to shape itself to his idea of what was right. She could tell by the way his Chamber of Tempering tried to sculpt you relentlessly into his own image of honor and nobility and bravery, and by the shining idealism that lay at the hearts of her Gryffindor peers.
Slytherin was a soft man who had lived a very hard life. No one valued survival and cunning and taking what was needed by any means necessary unless they had lived the kind of life where survival was ever in doubt. She could see his way of never settling, of always turning away whenever anyone tried to pin him down, in the very stones of the school, always shifting, and the hearts and minds of his heirs and his students, who would become whatever they needed to be to do whatever they wanted to do, and thought it no hardship.
Hufflepuff was a teacher – the best sort of teacher. Understanding. Flexible. Like Gryffindor, the evidence was in her Chamber, the Come and Go Room, that gave her students what they needed, whenever they needed it, and in the very existence of Hogwarts itself. Human stories said it was Gryffindor who built it, the one with the idea to found a school at all, but the stones sang of Helga Hufflepuff, the foundation of the Four, and everyone knew that Hufflepuffs were solid, dependable people: the foundation of Magical Britain.
Rowena Raven-Claw had been a lifelong student. A free spirit. An open mind. She had taught because the best way to test one's understanding was to teach, but she never stopped trying to learn new things. The evidence of her character was written in her own hand, translated and copied through the ages, kept safe in the Library at the heart of her tower, chronicling her life from her earliest days with the Druids of Eire to her great Quest for knowledge to the Founding of Hogwarts and the things she had learned from her students. Luna, a true Ravenclaw at heart, had determined early on that she would, some day, live up to the legacy and example her heroine had set.
And Rowena reminded Luna of her mother, a fellow seeker-of-truth, taken by Fate not too soon, for the one who determined the timing of everything couldn't truly be said to be early, but sooner than Luna had wanted to give her up.
Was it any surprise, then, that out of the four, it was Rowena's face the Moon chose to wear, when she visited Luna's dreams?
Come, she whispered.
Come see.
It's important.
Sleeping-Luna wandered through a shadow world, surrounded by whispers made solid, following the light of the moon goddess like a will o' the wisp, trusting it not to lead her astray.
In the distance, there was another glimmer of light, not of the Moon – brighter and more tarnished all at once, like a fallen star, perhaps. The Moon-Rowena led her toward it, bringing her to it, walking into the pile of darkness that had nearly covered it unimpeded. Sleeping-Luna fought to follow, struggling against the mass of creeping, binding black. She was only halfway there when they overtook the last sliver of silver, and the light went out.
The tendrils sublimated away into whispers again, louder than before, but too many all at once to make out their words, their substance. Gelach gave her an expectant look and walked on, saying nothing. It was a rare visitation when the minor goddess had the strength to speak to her directly, even so soon after Imbolc.
Sleeping-Luna followed, as she was bound to do, the child dedicated to the goddess to take her mother's long-abandoned place.
She found a puppy, hurt and broken, and wandering lost in the whispers, but not under attack.
Sleeping-Luna picked him up. He was warm in her arms, and real, as nothing else was, whimpering and shaking in fear, or maybe pain. He hid his face in the crook of her arm and she stroked the soft fur of his neck, humming a comforting song, but it was not enough.
He looked up at her face with almost human understanding. As soon as he did, the whispers closed in, like vines, like tentacles, stealing the puppy away from her, dissolving him into nothingness. The Moon walked away, into the susurrating darkness.
They came upon a young man, blinded by the whispers wrapped tightly around his head, threatening to consume him. It's your fault, they told him, clear enough here to make out the words. You failed them. You failed her. You are weak. There is nothing you can do. The world would be better off without you.
She stepped forward and tried to pull the whispers away from him, but they were rooted deep within him, and she could not remove them. She only cleared them enough to see a single lost and maddened eye before he, like the puppy and the light before him, dissolved into nothingness.
The whispers went with him, leaving only blank darkness in their wake. The light of the Moon and Rowena's face vanished, leaving Luna alone in the void, nowhere, her thinking-space.
As she began to reflect on the things she had seen, a foreign thought fell into her mind, sending ripples throughout her entire being.
Help him!
Luna woke with a start at the unexpected communication, gasping slightly with the urgency she felt to get up, to go somewhere, to do something.
"Luna?" her roommate spoke. "Where are you going?"
"Go back to sleep, Jennifer Marie." She slipped out of their shared space without answering the question. She couldn't. She didn't know. She just knew that she couldn't stay still. She would have to trust that wherever she went, she would find the person and the moment Innocence wished her to find.
And then she had to figure out how to help him.
Being a white witch, she thought tiredly, was often more trouble than it was worth.
She let her feet carry her out of the tower, letting her mind slip into the half-sleeping place of a trance, that the goddess might guide her path, as she had in the dream. She walked toward Gryffindor: down two staircases and across the third floor, then into a secret passage, heading up. The dog literally ran into her as it raced through the same passage, heading down.
It knocked her down the stairs, head over heels, and she lost consciousness for a moment. When she came to, it was a man who stood over her, or rather crouched, still on all fours on the stairs, too-thin, bearded, dirty, and disheveled, with the same maddened, lost eyes as the man in her dream. Sirius Black. He was muttering, "Fuck, fuck, don't be dead, little girl," under his breath.
She laughed, a little, at the thought of the notorious mass murderer begging her not to be dead. A man, a dog, a fallen star – how was she supposed to help him?
Her reaction seemed to reassure him slightly, at least that she wasn't dead. He propped her up against the wall, and made as though to run again, shifting into his animagus form, but he paused when she called, "Wait!"
"I have to run! I'm sorry!" he said, human again, still crouched beside her, tension singing through him, his very body wanting to run, to get away, to be safe, but he waited, because he didn't want to hurt her, didn't want to scare her – and because he wanted just the slightest moment of human contact, the slightest reminder that he was human, and not a monster. She could feel it, his need, pressing against her mind.
To be an empath was not a comfortable gift, no more than any other part of being a servant of her goddess. It was a gift, as it was a gift to serve, to know the Power as she did, but one was as unasked-for as the other.
She reached out a hand to take his wrist and he froze beneath her touch, something like awe on his face (if awe had lost its mind, ripped apart by whispered lies and all the most painful truths).
"The Moon would not have sent me to you if you weren't innocent," she told him, though she could not see where his innocence lay. Perhaps in that, after twelve years of Azkaban, he was still the sort of man to stop and make sure that the child he had flattened on the stairs was not dead. Hope bloomed within him, a tiny golden seed, fighting back against the darkness. In that moment, she understood: truth and hope to burn away lies and despair. "The whispers lied. The world would not be better off without you," she added, feeding it, like a flame.
"Who are you?" he asked, trying to crush it out.
She understood – no one knew better than Pandora's child how terrifying hope could be, how dangerous, a poison to the soul.
But weren't most medicines poison?
She smiled. "Tonight? Truth, and a reminder that your part is not yet done. Even the gods cannot fight Fate. Our lives are the casualties of the grand battle between Order and Chaos, but it is ever-unfolding, in this time and every other." The flame of his hope grew brighter.
"Then there's still time? I can still save her?"
"Who?"
"The Fawn – Mary! I have to keep her safe!"
Oh… well that makes much more sense… Luna thought, at least insofar as the Youthful Power had intervened on his behalf. At least, it made more sense than the Power of Innocence and Honesty ordering her to help an oathbreaker.
"Mary Elizabeth is safe. Her future is no more uncertain than anyone's." Which wasn't saying much, really, since they were all at the mercy of Chaos, who might disturb what little she had seen of the tapestry at any time, but still…
"You don't understand – The Rat! The Bond! Someone's casting dark magic on her – I can't find her!"
Luna didn't know anything about rats or bonds, but she did know about the spell to make Mary Elizabeth un-trackable. "Professor Phobetor hid her from everyone, to keep her away from the other Death Eaters, and those who would cause her harm," she said soothingly.
"But the Rat! Pettigrew! He's a rat! He's alive! He betrayed us! He'll hurt her! He's here, in the castle!"
Luna made a mental note to look into this, though she didn't know how she would go about it. The whole castle was under anti-scrying wards. Instead she made her best attempt at channeling Hermione Jean: Straightforward. Practical. "I'll warn her. We'll keep her safe."
Relief and gratitude welled up, strengthening the flame of hope, beating back the darkness a little further. "Thank you!" he rasped, his mouth still open to say something more, but before he could, they heard the sound of someone opening the door at the top of the passage. He fell into his dog form and bounded away, slipping to the other side of the tapestry covering the bottom of the stair, just before Luna's least-favorite professor bustled into sight.
"Miss Lovegood?" McGonagall asked. "What are you doing here? You should be in your dorm! There's been another attack!"
"I think I should be in the hospital wing, actually," she noted, trying to stand, and feeling dizziness emanating from the lump on the back of her head. "It seems I was sleepwalking, and I must have fallen," she explained, scrupulously honest.
The professor made a sort of irritated chuffing noise, a sharp eye checking her over for more serious injuries. "Well, come on, then," she said shortly. "Can't have you wandering about with him on the loose. I'll take you to Poppy before I continue the search."
"Thank you, Professor," Luna said politely, letting the older witch lead the way toward the hospital wing.
She hoped Sirius Black got away.
Monday, 14 February 1994
Hogwarts Library
"Hey, um… is, uh, I mean… is the offer to hang out with you lot still open?"
Mary, surrounded by Potions notes, textbooks, and a half-written essay which she wasn't really making any progress on, looked up, confused, at the pitiable sight of a very hangdog Neville Longbottom. He had quite obviously been forcibly dragged to their library table by Ginny Weasley. "Um… sure?"
Hermione shrugged. Lilian kicked out the chair across from herself and nodded for him to sit down.
"Thanks, loves," Ginny said, pulling out her own usual chair. "Everyone's been absolutely horrible to him since Saturday. I'm not sure, but I think it might be worse than last year for me. At least I had the twins on my side, you know?"
The trio nodded, as Neville hunched in his chair, obviously trying to avoid as much notice as possible, even here. The whole school knew now that he had misplaced a list of passwords, allowing Black to waltz right into the Tower. Mary bit her lip to avoid saying some variation of 'I told you so.' It had taken all of three hours for the whole school to learn that the portrait guarding the Gryffindors' Tower had been replaced by the Fat Lady again, with a pair of security trolls 'for her protection.' (Security trolls were supposedly a completely different beast from the mountain troll she had seen in her first year, trained basically from birth to obey simple orders from whoever was in charge of them: far less dangerous and more hygienic than their wild cousins, but Mary had no intention of venturing into Lion territory to have a look-see.)
"Is it true Black tried to knife your brother?" Lilian asked the youngest Weasley in a cheerful tone.
Mary groaned. She didn't want to think about Sirius Black anymore. She had spent most of her free time since breakfast (aside from fending off Valentine's Day admirers inviting her to Hogsmeade the following weekend) avoiding as much of the 'Black Broke in Again' gossip as she could, which unfortunately hadn't been nearly all of it.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "It is if you listen to him. 'Nearly ran me through – slashed the bloody curtains to ribbons – wild, mad eyes' bloody over-dramatic idiot. I think he's enjoying the attention. Prat."
Neville shivered. "Everyone's saying I nearly killed him."
Ginny flung an arm around his shoulder. "You didn't almost kill him. Sirius Black almost killed him. Supposedly. I'm sure he would have found some other way in if he hadn't had the passwords. And besides, who's to say it was even your list? You were just the only one brave enough to admit they'd written them down."
"Or stupid enough." Neville let his head fall to the table with a hollow thunk. "Can we talk about something else?" he mumbled.
"Of course," Hermione said, giving him a vaguely concerned smile which he didn't look up to see. "We were just talking about well, something Luna said, actually."
"Oh?" Ginny raised an eyebrow at them.
"'The Fallen Star says that Mary Elizabeth must beware of rats.' The Moon has vouched for this fallen star, apparently, so she thinks we should take this warning seriously," Lilian explained, obviously trying not to laugh.
It was one of the more absurd things she had told them since they had met, but Mary, as the one for whom the warning was meant, couldn't help but think that perhaps she should keep it in mind. After all, Luna had never actually lied to her, and mostly, when she could wrap her head around the younger girl's strange thought patterns, she gave good advice.
"Sounds like a prophecy," Neville said, looking up, obviously interested in spite of himself.
The girls laughed. "Everything Luna says sounds like a prophecy," Hermione complained. "It's rather irritating, actually. But I don't think she's a Seer any more than Trelawney is. She obviously knows what she's saying and remembers it all."
"What is a rat supposed to do to you?" the redhead asked, heading off a rant about the Divination Drunk.
Mary shrugged. "So far we've come up with biting me, being gross in my general vicinity, and/or giving me the Black Plague. We're open to suggestions."
Hermione sighed. "If it helps, apparently the specific star is the Trickster's Light – though of course I have no idea what that means. I've never heard of a star or constellation called that. I think she's being deliberately cryptic."
Ginny grinned. "Luna Xenadora? Deliberately cryptic? Noooo…" the sarcasm practically dripped from her words.
The Ravenclaw sniggered. "Is that really her middle name? Xenadora? Gift of strangeness?"
The second-year shrugged. "It's a mash-up. Her mum was Pandora, and her dad's Xenophilius. But yeah, I suppose it suits, doesn't it?"
Neville was shaking his head. "What about that second part? Who is the Moon? It's not you, is it?" The last question seemed to be directed at Lilian.
"Nope. Nor Sean nor Aerin. She doesn't use last names. Best guess she's referring to herself in the third person."
"Huh." The boy seemed every bit as stumped as the rest of them.
"So what are you going to do?" Ginny asked.
"Um… stay away from rats, I guess. I mean, it shouldn't be too difficult, right?" Mary wasn't sure, but she didn't think there were many rats in the castle.
The others nodded in agreement, and Lilian changed the subject. "So are you allowed to come to Hogsmeade now?" she asked Mary. Ginny rolled her eyes and started rummaging through her bag for something to work on. It wasn't as though she cared about visiting the village since she couldn't go, either.
The younger Slytherin sighed. "No."
"Why not?" Hermione demanded.
Mary gave her a rueful smile. "I think she might have been irritated that I was bothering her with something so unimportant while she was trying to deal with her House getting broken into." She had visited her guardian the day prior, which might, admittedly, have been too soon, given that Gryffindor apparently hadn't got much sleep on Saturday night.
"But doesn't that prove he's not after you?" Ginny asked.
"Yeah," Neville concurred. "Even if he thought you were a Gryffindor, well… he knows you're a girl, right?"
"That's what we said," Lilian informed the Gryffindors. "We don't think he's after Lizzie at all, but apparently McGonagall was all, 'This just proves that he is unstable, unpredictable, and still in the area!'"
"Don't do that, Lili, your accent is horrible," Hermione winced. "Anyway, if she really believes that, I'm surprised anyone is allowed to go to Hogsmeade."
"She mentioned that," Mary volunteered. "Apparently the Headmaster thinks the danger is minimal, because he seems to be focused on the school, and hasn't been spotted in the village at all. They're sending more chaperones than usual, but that's it. She said that since I'm the only student she can outright forbid to go, I'm not going. But she can't stop anyone else."
"Well, we'll stay in groups – I think it should be safe enough," Lilian argued.
Her House mate sniggered. "You sound like a Gryffindor."
Neville snorted. "No, a Gryffindor sounds like, 'I was almost murdered by Sirius Black, come buy me a butterbeer at the Brooms and I'll tell you all about it.'"
"Ooh, bit disenchanted with your fellow Lions, are we, Neville?" Mary teased him.
He flushed badly, but nodded. "Ron, Seamus, and Dean are pretending I don't exist."
"Well, fuck them," Lilian said. "They're a bunch of stupid arseholes."
"Are all your brothers idiots, Ginny?" Hermione asked, probably rhetorically.
The younger girl looked up from the Herbology diagram she was labeling and smirked broadly. "Not all. Bill's brilliant, and Charlie's like… wise, and Percy's just a prat."
"What have the twins done now?" Lilian asked. Mary did a doubletake, not having realized that she knew about Hermione's continued association with the Weasleys. Figures I was the last to know, she thought bitterly.
But she said nothing as Hermione explained: "Well, you know how they want to open a joke shop when they finish school?" Everyone nodded. It wasn't exactly a secret, or a surprise. "Well, they've come up with the idea that if they only do the bare minimum on their OWLs – say, three each – and one NEWT, then Mrs. Weasley won't be able to bully them into a proper line of work, because they simply won't have the qualifications."
"Are – seriously?" Astonishment and then a sort of rueful 'should have expected that' look flitted across Neville's face. "Actually, no, I can see it."
Ginny's jaw literally dropped. "You're kidding," she said faintly. Hermione shook her head. "Mum's going to go spare."
"No worries, Gin," Lilian laughed. "I know that look. Their plan has a fatal flaw you see…"
Mary nodded, failing miserably to suppress a snort of laughter. "Yeah, Maia knows, so now she can just bully them into it. Your mum won't even have to know."
"I might owl her about it anyway," the Ravenclaw muttered. "They're all 'What she doesn't know can't hurt us' and 'It's the perfect plan! She'll have no choice but to let us do what we want!' and 'The qualification doesn't really matter as long as we can do the magic,' and they won't hear a thing about having a bloody back-up plan! What if the joke shop idea doesn't work out? I ask you… Oh, bloody hell! Sorry, Madam Pince…"
The bookworm's volume had risen with her irritation, and even the very sincere-sounding apology wasn't enough to stop the group being kicked out of the library for the day, given that the librarian clearly heard the expletive that preceded it. It was just as well: Mary wasn't getting anything done, and she and Lilian had to go to class, anyway.