Halloween—a relatively quiet Monday night at the castle—came and went, and Ever found herself missing home a bit as she lay in bed that night. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table—Charlie had explained, when she'd asked, that it was a clock that ran on magic somehow, but that was all he knew—and, seeing that it was only just after nine, she jumped up and went down to the common room to find the boys. They sat in their usual spot in front of the fire, munching on...leftover pumpkin pasties?
"How'd you guys get those?" she asked, flopping unceremoniously into her usual chair and taking in the assortment of sweets the three of them had assembled on the table in front of them. Some things—Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans and chocolate frogs—she had seen on the train, but hadn't touched; she had no name for others. Grabbing a chocolate frog, she snapped the package open, only to jump back when the little frog hopped from his platform and straight into the fire.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, staring at the place on the wood where the chocolate was quickly melting away while the boys roared with laughter. Ever glared at the three of them, folding her arms tightly over her chest. "You lot could've told me it was going to move!"
"You didn't ask," the twins said in unison. She growled, flicking her eyes back and forth between both of theirs...and that's when she noticed another difference about the twins. She glanced down at their hands; George was on the right. Both the boys had brown eyes, she'd always known that, but Fred's were a few shades darker when they were in the exact same light. It wouldn't have been noticeable to anyone who wasn't looking very closely, but as close as she'd gotten to the boys over the past two months...
"What?" Fred asked, and when she dragged her gaze away from their hands to look at him he had his eyebrows raised.
"Nothing," Ever sighed, shaking her head. "Just...I suppose I should know that things I'm not expecting to move are going to by now."
"Well, look at the card," said Lee, tearing into another pastie. "I've been looking for Andros the Invincible. You'd think for a guy that was s'posed to have a patronus the size of a giant his card would be easy enough to find, but it's super rare..." Ever wasn't really listening at this point; her attention was directed at the little card at the bottom of the package on the floor. She must have dropped it, she realized as she leaned over to pluck the card out of it. It was shaped like a pentagon, and on the front was a thin, pale woman who looked a bit like Maleficent, with piercing blue eyes and a raven perched on her shoulder. The first-year blinked, turning the card over.
"Ignatia Wildsmith," she read aloud, not entirely sure she was pronouncing her first name right; she said it "ig-nay-shuh", and the boys didn't correct her, so she went on. "Inventor of floo powder. Whatever that is."
"It's this green powder," said Fred, and she started, looking up at him, "and you throw it in your fireplace and you say where you want to go. If there's a floo connection it'll take you there. Like...say you wanted to go to Diagon Alley from our house."
"All you'd have to do," continued George as if his twin had never left off, "is grab a handful of it and throw it in the fire, and say 'Diagon Alley' really clearly, and it would take you to the Leakey Cauldron."
"Oh...well, I guess I'll start collecting them too," Ever murmured, flipping the card back over in her hand. The witch was gone, but she'd grown used to people in portraits moving around by now, and it didn't really surprise her. She sighed and slid the card into the pocket of her sweatpants. "How'd you get this food down here?" The boys grinned at her, leaning forward, and she leaned in with them.
"We found the kitchens," Fred confided, handing her another chocolate frog. She ripped the package open and grabbed the frog, popping it into her mouth before it could squirm away. "You go down to the basement and there's a corridor, and you go down and there's this big painting of a bowl of fruit."
"Yeah," George murmured, leaning in closer to make sure they weren't overheard. "You tickle the pear in the bowl and it opens up, and the place is full of house elves working."
"What are house elves?" Ever asked, propping her chin up in her hand. The boys, now that their secrets were told, leaned back and propped their feet up on the table in front of them.
"They're these little creatures, not even three feet tall," Lee explained, throwing an Every Flavoured Bean in his mouth and wincing at the taste. Fred and George exchanged identical smirks as their friend spat it into a spare bit of parchment and threw it into the fire.
"What was it?"
"Ear wax," he muttered, taking a swig of pumpkin juice—it was only then that Ever noticed that the boys each had a jug at their feet—and swiping his hand on the back of his mouth as the twins cackled madly. "Anyway," he said, a bit louder over the giggles of the two red-heads, "they mostly work for pure-blood families. They get ordered about and wear rags and they can only be set free if their master gives them clothes."
"That's...that's slavery! That's barbaric!" Ever exclaimed, careful to keep her voice down; the Gryffindors may be nice enough about her blood status, but she'd quickly learned that a few of them still held old pure-blood ideals. Lee shrugged apologetically, nibbling at a new bean cautiously before tossing it into his mouth.
"It's just the way it's always been. There's a little group of muggle-borns and half-bloods that are trying to change it, according to my dad, but I don't think they're getting very far." Ever just shook her head, glancing down at the chocolate frog card in her hand as she tossed the wrapper in the fire. Dumbledore...as she read the little paragraph about him, she sighed again.
"I came down here to ask you guys something," she said, lowering her voice again and leaning forward. The three of them followed suit. "I want to write a letter and send it home, tonight, but I know if I go out the prefects will be all over the place...can I borrow the map? Just to get to the Owlery?" Fred and George exchanged a glance that looked more to her like a silent conversation; Fred cocked an eyebrow at his brother, who shrugged and nodded, and they both turned to her.
"I'll go get it," Fred murmured. "You go get the letter."
"I've still got to write it," she admitted, feeling her face heat up the tiniest bit as Fred looked at her. "I'll be back down in twenty minutes or so. Besides, it'd look weird of both of us went up to our common rooms at the same time if Lee and George didn't go with you." The four of them were now so much a part of each other that she knew it had probably looked weird when she'd disappeared for her shower and the five minutes she'd spent lying on her bed afterwards before she'd come downstairs to begin with. Fred seemed to know too, because he thought about it for a moment before nodding.
"Go on then." She smiled her thanks at him and hopped to her feet, hurrying to the common room. Alicia and Angelina weren't there—she'd seen the two of them in the common room when she'd come down—so she flopped to her bed and quickly plucked up a roll of parchment from her trunk and a quill and pot of ink from the drawer in her bedside table.
Dear you, she wrote quickly, and smiled at the familiar little greeting; it's how she and her parents had always written back and forth to each other when they were separated for any period of time, even if it was just a quick pop down the road and they weren't home in time for her arrival back from school.
Hogwarts is amazing, and I'm learning a lot, but it doesn't feel like home yet. Things are so different here, and sometimes I don't quite know what to do with myself, and there are all these strange words and phrases and I don't know how to deal with it all. I miss you tons. Halloween wasn't the same without going trick-or-treating back home, and I don't think it ever will be here, even though they do have a really big feast for the holiday and it's really nice and they have candy here for people that come from families like ours. I've got to head off and send this, my friends are waiting so we can go to the owlery together. I love you loads.
Ever.
She scribbled a little heart at the end of her name, as she always did, and folded it in half, writing her name and address on the front of it—more out of habit than necessity—before heading back down the the common room. The twins and Lee were still in front of the fire, looking for all the world as if they'd never moved, but as she approached and walked past them Fred held up the map and she carefully took it, sticking it in the pocket of her sweats. She climbed out of the portrait hole quickly, purposefully, and didn't look back to see if anyone watched her leave.
As soon as she was down the corridor, which was never guarded—under the guise that the Fat Lady would be more than capable of watching over it and reporting studients out of bed, though the twins and Lee had quickly discovered she didn't care so much about them leaving as she did them waking her up—she withdrew the map.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she muttered, tapping the map carefully, and with the map spread out in front of her, she slowly made her way up to the owlery, avoiding prefects and teachers alike.
The witch was so focused on getting to the owlery, she didn't see who was actually there.