"George take my bag," I hissed before chucking it over to him, "We have less than a half hour for the portkey to go off, we need to get out of here."
"Right Al's let's get this over with as quickly as possible." He nodded and with that all three off us flew over the railing of the balcony and dismounted our brooms, instantly causing a blaring alarm to go off, we all froze. This definitely wasn't part of the plan.
Oh hippogriff shit.
….OoOoOoOoOoOoO….
My heart beat rapidly against my ribs as I stared in frozen terror at the building in front of us.
This was definitely not part of the plan.
At the train station on the last day of school Julia and I had met up to go over the final details on her home and how to reach her. Even though I had Belle she was still worried after all, her mother was a dreadful woman from what I had gathered of her stories. She had told me not to bother to come and get her; that she would be fine and would respond to my letters.
I couldn't believe that I had been so gullible. I never really was known for my smarts, and this was just the cherry that highlighted the bowl of ice cream, the thing that made everything far more appealing or desirable. I had never in my life wished to be more intelligent.
Of course she hadn't come out and said that her mother had the most advanced, magical, security spell there was to offer, her cousins were looming in the background the whole entire time and I had been too ruddy daft to notice!
I cursed under my breath; my eyes flickering between the three brooms leaned against the balcony fence and the twin's nervous eyes.
"What do you think we should do?" I hissed frantically as a feeling of nausea began to fill my stomach, "should we retreat and come back another day?"
Fred and George's dark eyes shifted into an almost black shade as they hurriedly attempted to think over their options, it surprised me that George was actually the first to speak, "We came to get Julia, so we're going to get her; we can't exactly back out now Allison."
My heart pounded, filling my ears, why hadn't I thought this over more acutely? I was so foolish, why hadn't I seen the consequences until I had already gotten here? Julia's mother was loaded, she could take me to court for trespassing, and my aunt could lose her job! Another pang hit me in the gut, and the Weasley's… oh no, what had we done?
Then everything was still. The only sound was the furious pumping of my own heart, oh Merlin I was having a panic attack…. My hands began to shake furiously, and I felt a reassuring hand touch my shoulder, "Allison?" Fred whispered, "Allison, look up… Julia is-"
It was the sleepy voice that pulled me out of my blank daze instead of Fred's, and I had never been more relieved to see that a perfectly healthy, although frazzled and pajama clad Julia standing before me with huge bags under her eyes, "Alison, what are you doing at my house at three in the morning?" she yawned squeezing her pillow closer to her chest with a hopelessly grumpy look on her face.
I had completely forgotten how oblivious she could be to her surroundings when she was tired, didn't she notice the broomsticks and bags that we had brought with us?
"The alarm is loud…." She groaned again before plopping down on the floor and cuddling the silk covered pillow as if she was attempting to both strangle and use it for warmth against the steady breeze that was ruffling past us and into her bedroom, "You could have at least", Yawn, "… come in the morning?"
"Julia we have to get out of here now, your mother could come barging in here at any moment…." I tried again but Julia just shrugged it off as she redirected her gaze to Fred.
"Morning George," she laughed tiredly, "how did you get here?"
Who would've thought that she'd be more social when she was half awake?
"Erm… Julia, I'm Fred not Geor-"
Julia apparently wasn't listening because she just laughed again before refocusing on the real George and asking, "How did you sleep Fred? I want to go to sleep you know… my bed is sooooo comfortable!"
"What was that supposed to mean?" I asked myself under my breath causing the twins to laugh awkwardly as they watched the quiet Ravenclaw curl herself up on the stone balcony. I rolled my eyes before coming back to terms with our reality, the alarm that had just gone off more than likely woke her mother up, so we didn't have much time to act before she came running down the hall to check on her daughter.
"She's a deep sleeper though," Julia's words from one of my many stays in her dormitory echoed through my mind and I allowed myself to relax, the only question was how deeply did she sleep? I remembered the one tale that Julia had recounted from when she was younger, when she had tried to sneak out to get some extra cookies because her mother had denied her of them because of Julia's simple act of defiance. Apparently she had caused a whole entire row of shelves to come crashing down when she had climbed on top in an attempt to reach it. Her mother didn't even stir and never knew of the incident because Julia had fixed the damage with a simple 'Repairo'.
Even though that had happened two floors below her, that was still a loud enough sound to wake her up if she wasn't such a deep sleeper.
"We should be fine," I mutter to myself as I drag Julia's extremely expensive looking trunk from her closet and began to chuck the most important things into the bag that weren't already packed. It seemed that she had already done some of the most necessary packing on her own, she really had thought ahead.
With a wry smirk I tossed in a photo album and a few clothes that I thought she would wear, nothing to fancy, but comfortable looking and of good quality, the amount was dwarfed by the other fancier clothes. After a few minutes I had her whole entire matched suitcases laid out across the bed, but there was one problem: there was no way in hell that we'd be able to bring them all with us. Not even the smallest one.
"Allison, we have fifteen minutes left," George mumbled from across the room and I glanced up at the clock, it looked like it was engrained with diamonds, again, why in the name of-
"Allie, stop staring at the clock and look at the suitcases!" Fred snapped as he appeared next to me with a worried look on his face, his face contorted with effort as he tried to close the largest one, I really shouldn't have tossed the clothes in, in a pile.
How on earth we're we going to accomplish this? We were lucky in the first place that we didn't get caught, but now…?
"That's it," I muttered as I grabbed the dazed Julia by the hand and pulled her out onto the balcony, "George, hand me the horn." I said and he winced, "Allison, why do you –"
"Her curtains and decorations are blue." I muttered as he passed the horn into my hands, "and she can shut off the alarm with a wave of her wand, she can do magic…."
"But Allie, the horn is so loud and-" Fred tried to say but I talked over him
"Do you see a bathroom nearby? It's not like we can drench her face in water."
"We sort of…"George tried to continue but I did the same to him
"It would be rude to slap her to, besides, it just a horn, what's the worst that can happ-"
"!,"The whole entire room erupted into noise, causing an unstoppable shaking in the ground around us, that spread from the now cracking balcony into the room, and by the unusually terrified looks on into the house as well.
"ALLISON!" Julia screamed, quite uncharacteristically as she jumped up into the air in terror, "WHAT DID YOU DO!"
My hand released the button, but it did not bounce back, instead it stayed jammed.
"FRED! GEORGE! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY HORN!" I screamed as the next verse the horn shouted began to go off in my insanely altered voice , to the point that it sounded like an enraged Dumbledore screaming out "! YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU GREEEEEEEEEASY ! WHHHHY DON'T YOOOOOOOOU MAAAAAKE YOOOOOOOURSEEEELLLLF SOOOOME SHAAAAAAMMMMPOOOOOOO!"
"WE MADE SOME MINOR CHANGES!," George snapped as the balcony began to shake at an unnatural rate, and I threw the horn off the side of the building just before the piece of stone that we had been standing on moments before fell to the ground with a loud crash.
"MINOR?" I snapped before noticing the crushed pieces of wood that were beginning to show in the clearing pile of dust below. "The brooms…" I whimpered as Julia shrunk the suitcases down and threw them into the bag like Fred had instructed her to do.
"We got them Al's," George said quickly just as a loud explosion went off below, sending pieces of rubble flying through the windows, "And that would be the horn…."
I noticed the three worn sticks in his hands and breathed a sigh of relief, completely disregarding that they had destroyed the make-up birthday present that I had given to them, but it was short lived, because just moments later the door began to shake, and the only thing we heard was the screaming on the other side of the door.
Julia paled considerably as I grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards the window, snatching the largest broom from George in the process, "Get on!" I snapped throwing my leg over the bar, but she just trembled, staring at it in horror.
"I-I can't…" she whimpered as Fred and George took off and hovered just outside the window.
"Come on Julia, we don't have all day!" George pleaded and her eyes flickered between all of us.
"I can't-"
A large screw from the door hit me in the back of my head, "We don't have any time!"
"Allison, I'm afraid I-"
The door slammed open, to reveal an extremely furious looking young witch, who couldn't be any older then her mid- 30's, although the green cream around her face made it rather hard to tell. Her hair was a darker brown then her daughters and was pinned up and braided intricately around her head, helping to exaggerate her beautiful, hate filled, dark blue, eyes.
Her aristocratic eyebrows narrowed dangerously, but it was only when she raised her wand a moment later that Julia happily jumped onto the broomstick, and kicked off from the floor, propelling us shakily into the air.
"ABOUT DAMN TIME!" Fred snapped as we began to race over the gardens and away from the manor, "You really need to toughen u-"
A flash of blue light streamed past his nose, and it took all of the Gryffindor in me not to freeze, she was attacking us and we were completely unarmed.
"ALLISON DUCK!" Julia cried and I dove down just in time to avoid a stream of red.
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?" I roared, as I dodged a rather ferocious looking statue that I had almost crashed into in my unplanned action, "JULIA! YOUR MUM'S INSANE!"
"I KNOW!" she replied quickly," GEORGE ON YOUR LEFT!" There was another flash of light, we were so close to the gate, but why was a layer of silvery light rising from the ground?
"WHATS GOING ON?" Fred yelled as he readjusted his broom to fly higher, and George did the same.
"SHE'S PUTTING UP THE GATE!" Julia explained quickly as I tried to mimic their actions, but it was much more of a challenge with an extra person on the broom.
"ALLISON, COME ON! FLY HIGHER!" George pleaded as I tried to pull up on the handle, and began to gage the distance we all had until Julia and I collided against the shield.
Six hundred feet, we barely inched up.
Five hundred feet, we were halfway to the twin's level.
Four hundred feet, it looked like we were growing to crash, there was no way that we would be able to clear that wall.
Three hundred feet, I better slow down.
Two hundred.
One hundred, I was beginning to pull back.
Ninety… eighty… seventy…sixty…. My aunt was going to kill me…. Fifty, forty, thirty…. This was about to get dirty… heh. I laughed wryly; I was a poet and didn't even know it! Not like that would matter in another moment….
"ALLISON! PLEASE DON'T JUMP OFF THE BROOM!" Julia commanded in my ear, just before my stomach jumped up into my throat as we went skyrocketing into the air at such an insane speed that it made my whole entire body tense up in fright as I gripped the handle of the broom, as tightly as humanly possible.
I was fairly sure that I was screaming my lungs out, if they hadn't already escaped through my mouth in the first place. This was insane, absolutely insane, I was going to die, and there was nothing behind Julia or myself to even slow us down. We would fall the ground and splatter everywhere, like my failed attempts at pancake flipping. It took all of my will power to tilt it forward and escape into the night sky, but landing was very different story. The spell that Julia cast on the broom apparently had its set backs, because it stopped as soon as it had started.
Julia crashed into me at the unexpected stop, the force propelling me roughly off the front of the broom and into the air, as free fell forward into the trees below, naturally, screaming my head off.
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLINS BLOODY SOCKS DID YOU DO JULIA?" I screamed in the woods as and George set the timed, worn looking, quill on the ground in front of us. We had two minutes left to get going, and to say the very least I was NOT looking forward to another painful experience so soon after the last one. We were all very lucky to have escaped, but in my glorified visions it did not entail freefalling off a broom, after nearly vomiting out your insides, only to end up crashing onto your boyfriend, ten feet before you hit the ground. Neither of us was in very good condition, and Julia looked terrified. The luckiest had to be George….. At least his back wasn't aching….
"I- I just… I hadn't expected the spell to turn off as soon as we got over the gate, it must have had something to do with my homeschooling, I…" Julia muttered weakly as I cursed and sat down next to the quill moodily. My whole entire body was aching, and we were almost killed by the insane mother of one of my best friends, who was more than likely facing decapitation or some other horrible punishment if my aunt found out what we had done and turned her back in, why had we allowed any of our faces to show? At least Fred and George were somewhat out of the way, but their hair was so obnoxious anyway that it probably wouldn't even have mattered. Their family as extremely well known throughout pureblooded society, and I was sure that they had been named by Julia's cousins if her mother had asked the names, it could probably explain why she had been locked up in the room so long as well.
"It's fine Julia…." I muttered placing my hand on the feather, "let's just get back to my place before anything else happens... wouldn't want your mother catching us out here."
"I doubt that she'd bother, but I'll be hearing from her in the morning…." She sighed doing the same, and moments later we all felt the similar sensation of having our navels pulling us back before we vanished from the woods, and after a few moments of painful twisting landed in the middle of my living room, only to be met by my very severe looking aunt.
So a week or so late, and definitely not my best work, but I've been busy, it is Christmas on Sunday and I am cursed with a birthday this week. Yep, I turned sixteen on Tuesday! :D YAY! It was a great birthday, we went to a Chinese restaurant and watched baby seals being devoured by Killer whales… ah gotta love the Discovery Channel…. Anyways I wish you all a Happy Chrismuhanakwanza! See you next week-ish!
Disclaimer: I am now SIXTEEN and still don't have a lawyer, probably because my family isn't made of money, which means I'm not JK Rowling, because she has money.