Chapter Fifteen
Return of the Weasley Twins
Hermione enjoyed the rest of the afternoon immensely. Harry felt horrible about putting her through the whole ordeal; not only did he refrain from asking a single thing about Oliver, the tattoo, or Snape (which was due to both guilt and Ron's presence), but he kept doing little things for her and being a complete sweetheart. Ron was also being extra nice, partially because he'd just patched up his friendship with Harry, and partially because he was feeling a tad guilty himself, mostly for letting her deal with Malfoy on her own. Oliver stayed only shortly, acting awkward for the most part before, at Hermione's assurance that she was fine, rushing off to deal with the desk.
Coolest of all, however, was that, after removing half the wall to get him into the room and then repairing the wall with very cool magic all around, Malfoy had been tied to a hospital cot and ordered not to speak while Madam Pomfrey tried to find a cure.
"If he'd blown up all of you, this would be a snap," Madam Pomfrey said wearily, "but I'm not quite sure how to deflate just the head… the antidote would shrink all of you, not just your head… hmm…"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at each other and burst out laughing, all of them thinking of a mini-Draco with a normal-sized head. Draco glowered but didn't speak, not wanting to interrupt Madam Pomfrey's search for a cure.
Madam Pomfrey finally found the cure shortly before dinner. She came out of her office, held up a large, thick book on wizarding medicine and exclaimed triumphantly, "All we have to do is cover his head in the antidote potion and sprinkle on some cinnamon!"
"WHAT?" Draco yelped.
So, in addition to her friends' attitudes and Draco being ordered to be quiet, Hermione got to watch him seethe while his entire head was covered in a bright pink potion.
Oliver walked wearily back towards his office, his muddy, beaten-up, once-beautiful desk floating along behind him. He had loved that desk. A lot. And now, it was going to need a heck of a lot to restore it.
As if the desk wasn't enough, he also had to deal with the fact that once Harry's guilt wore off, Harry would certainly want to know just how Oliver knew about that tattoo, and it didn't take a genius to realize that neither Harry nor Ron would be too happy with the details. Oliver really didn't want to upset Harry; he owed Harry a lot. If Harry had never won the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor, Oliver's team never would have gotten any recognition in the professional Quidditch world and getting onto Puddlemere would have been that much harder. Besides which, he counted Harry as a friend—Harry, Ron, and Hermione, really, even though Hermione had been really awkward around him ever since he'd started teaching. He'd been looking forward to seeing Hermione again—and had been thoroughly disappointed that about her dating Ron, but had done his best to get over it. Now, if Harry and Ron found out just what Oliver and Hermione had done in the past, chances were Harry and Ron were going to have major issues, and Oliver didn't want that, for him or for Hermione.
He was so lost in thought that it took him a second to realize someone was talking to him—two someones, actually: Fred and George Weasley.
"Oliver? What are you doing?" Fred asked, looking from Oliver to the floating desk curiously.
"Oh—nothing," Oliver said quickly. "What are you guys doing here?"
"Heard about all the interesting stuff going on," George said promptly.
"Well, technically, we thought we would come check on Pig and get a free breakfast—" Fred admitted.
"But then we ran into Ron down by Hagrid's hut—"
"And he told us all about what's been going on," Fred continued. "You know, the prank war—Snape, Hermione, Malfoy, and now this chain thing—"
"He told you everything? Even about the tattoo?" Oliver exclaimed, his jaw dropping.
"What tattoo?" George said, frowning. "I don't recall anything about a tattoo, do you, Fred?" Fred shook his head and the twins turned to look at Oliver expectantly.
"Heh," Oliver said, gulping. He wanted to kick himself; of course Ron wouldn't have mentioned the tattoo. Ron didn't even know about it. "Well, darn… I… I don't know what they were talking about, either! I was hoping you guys could fill me in."
The twins did their simultaneous-skeptical-eyebrow-raise, which was really rather creepy. Oliver felt a sudden urge to back away slowly, round the nearest corner, and run like he'd never run before. Oliver gave them his best innocent smile, and they simultaneously crossed their arms over their chests. Oliver knew instantly what was coming. The twins were preparing to drag Oliver's deepest, darkest secrets from him if Oliver didn't either crack and explain or crack and make a break for it.
"Well, I have to get my desk back to my office," Oliver said hastily, and quickly turned tail, heading in the opposite direction as fast as he could without running.
Fred grabbed his arm before Oliver could get far, however. "Your office is the other way, Oliver," he said firmly.
"Yes, why don't we walk you to it, so you don't get lost?" George said, grabbing Oliver's other arm.
Oliver sighed and allowed himself to be led back to his office by his old friends, admitting defeat, knowing he was as beaten as his pitiful desk. Note to self, he thought wearily, I need to develop my ability to make a good exit.
Madam Pomfrey kicked Harry and Ron out of the hospital wing shortly before the seventh years' curfew, and they both promised to come back early in the morning. Hermione spent a couple of hours studying for her exams (Harry had offered to bring her up some books), which started Monday, and then settled in to get some sleep, smiling at Draco's gigantic pink face and hair before closing her eyes.
Her eyes flew open two seconds later, however, as she heard a cry of "MIONE!" before something large and heavy landed on her stomach.
"OOF!" she groaned, and looked up to see Fred Weasley lying on her. "Fred, what—?"
"MIONE!"
"NO! OOF!" George jumped on the bed too, the twins grinning at her exasperated look. "What are you doing here?" Hermione demanded.
"Came to collect—you asked me to have sex with you in the library, remember?" Fred said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. Hermione glared at him and Draco let out a snort of laughter.
Fred and George turned to see where the laugh came from—and both recoiled at the sight of an enormous pink floating ball in the shape of Draco's head watching them. "AAAHHHH!" George yelped, having instinctively backed away and fallen right off the bed.
"What the hell is that?" Fred demanded, putting Hermione in between him and Draco, just in case.
"That would be Draco Malfoy," Hermione said, her lips twitching in amusement at the look on Draco's face—which looked even funnier from the angle she was being held in as Fred used her as a human shield.
"Jesus Christ, Hermione, what did you do to him?" George asked curiously, standing up and looking at Draco warily.
"You've got to teach us how to do that," Fred said eagerly, no doubt looking for joke shop merchandise.
"I didn't do it," Hermione said with a giggle. "It was Harry and Madam Pomfrey."
"Madam Pomfrey is in on the prank war? Wicked!"
"Hogwarts really has changed! First Snape, now Pomfrey?"
Hermione laughed at the startled-yet-pleased looks on their faces and began to explain, having too good a day to be annoyed by their comments and jokes, and found the twins to be quite good company—especially as Draco shot glare after glare at them, probably having his sleep disrupted and not liking the subject matter (which was pretty much all about the ways she, Harry, and Ron had tortured him, including the recent floating head incident).
"If there's one thing Malfoy didn't need, it was his head inflated anymore than it was," George joked, shifting slightly on Hermione's bed. The twins and Hermione were all sitting cross-legged on her cot, chatting away.
"Tell me about it," Hermione said, smirking a little.
"Still, the only bad thing about it was that Ron left in the middle of our conversation with him," George said. "He was venting all about the prank war, but just when he was getting to the good part—why he was so angry at Harry, namely—we heard someone scream—"
"Which apparently was you, when Harry and Oliver let go of the chain," Fred interrupted.
"—and Ron went flying off to the rescue," George finished.
"It was this whole cheesy hero scene," Fred added. "The scream of a damsel in distress, the look of determination settling on ickle Ronniekin's face, and then whoosh! He goes soaring off on his broomstick."
Hermione giggled, picturing the scene as if viewing it in some old-fashioned Muggle film. Then she frowned. "Wait… neither of you seems shocked about me being chained to Malfoy."
"We already knew," Fred said with a shrug.
"Who told you?" Hermione demanded, but neither twin noticed her sharp tone.
"Oliver, of course."
"Oliver?" I'll kill him! Hermione thought furiously.
"Yeah, strangest thing—we talked to him earlier today, and said that Ron had told us everything—" George began mischievously.
"And Oliver just sort of blurted out, 'even about the tattoo?'"
"So of course we had to know more…"
"And when Oliver tried to run for it, we dragged him back to his office and beat the story out of him," Fred finished cheerfully, as though this was a perfectly natural thing to do. "Told us what Dumbledore said about the fight in the office, and then told us a bit about trying to haul you through the window… and, with a little, um, encouragement, he told us that apparently Harry was so pissed off about you keeping secrets that he accidentally inflated Malfoy." Fred leaned closer to her eagerly. "One of which has something to do with you having a tattoo. Oliver wouldn't say much—"
"Like how he knows about it—" George added.
"But we can guess that, naturally—"
"So we figured the important thing was why you of all people have a tattoo—"
"And came up here to get the story out of you," Fred finished with a gleam in his eye.
"There is no tattoo!" Hermione insisted, folding her arms over her chest and glowering over at Draco, who smirked back at her (though the effect was rather diminished by the pink potion).
"No?" Fred said, narrowing his eyes at her. "Tell me, are your knees still ticklish?"
"And your feet?" George added, grinning.
"And your stomach?"
"And the back of your neck?"
Hermione stared at them in horror. She had spent a lot of time with the twins over the years—especially while cooped up in Grimmauld Place for the past few summers, when Harry was still on Privet Drive, as Ginny spent a lot of time with Bill, her favorite brother, and Hermione and Ron spent a lot of time arguing, which often ended in one of them storming off in a huff. The twins were often fun to hang out with; she usually needed a laugh during the dark times with Voldemort, and often hung out with them even when Ginny was available and Ron hadn't gotten Hermione angry. The five of them spent a lot of time together, also, being the only teenagers in the house. The twins were part of the reason Oliver had gotten closer to Harry, Ron and Hermione once Oliver had joined the war effort. The twins had discovered quite a bit more about her than they should—like the fact that she was one of the most ticklish people on the planet.
"You wouldn't dare," she said uncertainly.
"Want to try us?" Fred said pleasantly.
Hermione looked from Fred to George nervously. Before she could come up with a good response, the twins launched themselves at her. Fred got her ribs, George got her knees, and Hermione started shrieking with laughter.
"Oh… haha! Stop! I'll… hahaha! Quit it!"
"Gonna talk?"
"No! HAHAHA! Knock it off!"
"How about now?"
"No! Oh… hey! O-okay, I'll talk! HAHA! Stop! I'll talk! STOP!"
After about seven minutes of Hermione promising to tell them everything, the twins finally let up. Hermione, having laughed too much to give them a proper glare, told them the whole story, much more than she'd told Harry—and found it wasn't as upsetting as telling anyone else would have been. The twins thought the story was just as shocking-in-a-funny-way as Ginny had found it, only they seemed to… well, respect her for it. That Hermione would do anything as rebellious as get a tattoo—even if she wouldn't have gotten it under normal circumstances—was a thing of awe, and something that deserved a pat on the back as much as it deserved teasing.
"So… it's a sword with a rose wrapped around it?" George said as Hermione ended her tale. "Why'd you choose that?"
Hermione shrugged. "It looked really pretty—and don't you dare ask if you can see it!" she added, seeing both twins open their mouths with eager, evil sort of expressions on their faces. Apparently she'd guessed their intentions correctly, as both promptly shut their mouths and glanced at each other with mischievous grins. "I don't know… I was sort of… high on the rebellion just then. My friends were all about teenage stupidity, and I'd just thrown the entire world for a loop… and we wanted something pretty, but something that showed our friendship was strong—something tough. I was actually the one who suggested it. I just… seemed to fit me. The dagger seemed to symbolize being a fighter, and the rose seemed to soften it, make it look pretty and poetic and sort of… thoughtful."
"Like you," Fred said, his face too straight to be serious. Then he smiled broadly. "So, only one question remains, then—what, exactly, happened that Oliver saw it?"
Hermione blushed furiously. "I'm not telling. Not even if you tickle me until I'm forty. I will never, ever tell anyone, understand?"
The twins looked at each other, shrugged, gave Hermione enough time to think they were going to let it lie, and then dove at her, tickling her mercilessly once again.
Before Hermione could give up and spill the story, Madam Pomfrey emerged from her private quarters just off the hospital wing. "What are you doing in he—oh, no!" she moaned at the sight of the Weasley twins, who had not only put plenty of people in the hospital wing during their years at Hogwarts, but had been a real handful whenever they became her patients.
"Hi, Madam Pomfrey! Did you miss us?" George said cheerfully as he and Fred sat up.
"What are you doing here?" she whined, sounding a lot like an unhappy student.
"We're having a pajama party, can't you tell?" Fred said, casting an illusion on his clothes to make them look like incredibly silly pink-and-white bunny pajamas, complete with floppy-eared, fuzzy bunny slippers. George followed suit. "Came by for a visit, and Dumbledore said we could stay."
Madam Pomfrey shook her head. "Just… Just keep it down and get some sleep, will you?" she muttered, turning on her heel and retreating to her room.
The twins grinned and turned back to tickle Hermione some more—but their absence had given her time to draw her wand, and both of them knew better than to try anything.
"Oh, fine then," Fred said sulkily. "But there are other, more effective ways of making you talk!"
"Yes, and we'll use them just as soon as we figure out what they are!" George agreed.
Hermione laughed. "Go get some sleep, you two. I'm tired. Where are you staying, in one of the guest rooms?"
"To tell you the truth, we hadn't planned on it, no," George said. "That was a line for Pomfrey, actually, so she wouldn't kick us out. We were just going to drop by, visit a few people, eat a decent meal—"
"Told you we should have taken the time to learn to cook before moving out of Mum's house," Fred muttered.
"—and then head home, but we may as well stay, yeah," George continued. He glanced around. "Mind if we stay in the hospital wing with you, though? We'd have to wake Dumbledore up to get a password for a spare room… besides, I never get tired of looking at that." He jerked his head at Draco's pink head, which was shrinking but still pretty large.
"Unless you want to give us the password to your room and we can crash in there," Fred said with a grin.
"The day I give you two my password is the day I install bear traps around all the entrances," Hermione said dryly. "Go ahead and stay here, I don't mind. It's actually kind of nice to not be alone with Malfoy attached to my wrist."
"While we're on the subject of nice things, want to have sex in the hospital wing, since you never followed through on the library?" Fred asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
"Oh, shut up, Fred," Hermione laughed, pushing him off of her bed.