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ChapterTwelve; Differences
She gave George one last look before she walked off the street and through the low gate and he followed her up the path to the porch. Alicia walked up the eight steps to the porch but before she walked up to the ninth and last she stopped.
"You okay?" George asked as he stood next to her.
"Yeah, I just..." she answered him. "I just don't think that anyone has been inside since..."
She took a deep breath and walked up to the door. She looked at the handle. On top of the handle was there a small out-sticking plate, just as big as your thumb.
"What are you waiting for?" George asked her.
"Nothing." She answered in a whisper. She felt in her pocket for the small pocket-knife she had found in Percy's room. She took it out and made a small cut in her right thumb.
"What are you doing?"
"The house is locked with blood magic." She simply answered and placed her bleeding thumb at the small place at the handle to the door. She pressed the thumb as hard as she could and waited until they could hear a small click from the door, which showed that it was open. "This is why the house only can be inherited through the family line, the blood line." She explained to him and opened the door.
The first impression that George got when he entered the house, was the coldness. Not that it was cold, but to difference to the Burrow this house was so... empty. Everywhere in the Burrow could you find stuff that made the house look so homey, he looked at Alicia who motioned to him to step inside.
"I know that it's very different from the Burrow, But..." Alicia said and closed the door when the two of them were inside. "This is home for me."
"It's so big; at least it looks like it from the outside." Was George's respond. "A tour, you wanna give me a tour?"
"Perhaps." She smiled, she put down the bag she had carried with her. She flickered with her wand and the lights in the hallway. "Ground floor first?" She looked up at him.
"Of course." He answered.
At the right side of the hallway was there a big staircase and at the bottom of it was there a door, the only closed door that George could see.
"In here." Alicia walked over to that door. "Do we have the study." She opened the door and showed a room where all four walls was completely covered in books.
"Wow." George said to himself, he walked into the middle of the room and stood to face Alicia. "How many books are there in here?" the whole room was two floors high and to reach to upper parts of the books there was a staircase that lead to a second floor that went all around the walls, wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
"I have absolutely no clue." Alicia answered.
Next to the study was the master bedroom, like Alicia called it, and the down floor bathroom. In front of the study was the sitting room. A small and cosy room you had to walk down two steps to get into. With two sofas facing each other and the fireplace.
"When we were kids used Daniel and I take a big blanket and put it over the two sofas and have our own home made tent." Alicia told him. "It was our secret headquarters." She smiled.
"So you and Daniel were really close when you grew up, huh?" He asked.
"Yeah, it was mostly the two of us, and little Petra Petrelli, who lives across the street, she's one year younger than us."
"You mean Petra Petrelli in Ravenclaw?" George asked. "I didn't know that you knew her."
Next to the Sitting room was the dining room, which was combined with the hall since it didn't have a wall toward the hallway. The dining room was pretty much a long and big dining table across the room. Alicia walked over to the distant wall that one of the ends of the table was pointing at and in about the same second that George was about to ask where the kitchen was she pulled away the fake wall and revealed the kitchen.
"This moving wall is the most stupid thing I have ever seen." Alicia told him. "No real door, just a drag wall."
George smiled. "Well, at least you have a wall between the dining table and the kitchen." He said, the more he saw of the house where she had grown up, the more he started to wonder what she had thought of the Burrow. She had grown up in big normal house, and George hadn't, the Burrow might be big, but for a family with seven kids, it got pretty crowded.
"We also have a basement as well." Alicia continued and pointed toward the right side of the kitchen where you could see two starts, one going up, and the next one going down. "Down in the basement we also have the back door, since the ground is going downhill from here." She said and made a gesture to downhill. "There's no need going down there." She added and they continued upstairs.
Upstairs was there a hall, just like the one down stairs, but this one had three doors on the right side of the hall, with one of the doors was after the main staircase. George reckoned that that was the one that lead to the second floor of the study, which so far was the only Library-looking-like-place that had ever impressed him. On the left side was there also three doors.
"This is my room." Alicia said and pointed toward the first door to her right. "And Cathy's old room." She pointed toward the first one to their left. "Next to me do we have empty bedroom filled with mine old stuff and things I can't fit inside my room. And then the second floor of the study. Next to Cathy do we have the guest bedroom, and a third empty bedroom."
"You have a lot of empty bedrooms." George commented.
"Yeah, it's..." Alicia started. "The one in front of the study is also more like a sitting room, there are so much unused space here. That is what I like about the Burrow..."
"After growing up here, you say to me that you still like the Burrow?" George asked her chocked, not believing what she just said.
"You have it so... Family-ish." Alicia said and punched George jokingly on the arm. "Here was it just me, Cathy and dad. Nobody else."
"Well, you have to love the fact that it quiet and calm. Home was it always stuff in motion, never quiet." He said.
"You kinda get sick of the quiet around here." Alicia said, trying to change the subject she turned around. "And here, between mine and Cathy's room do we have the upstairs bathroom." She pointed toward it. "That's it, the whole house. If you don't count in the attic and the basement, you have seen the whole house."
"There's an attic?" He looked at her curiously. "I didn't see a way up to an attic."
"Well, it's kinda tricky to get there." She turned toward the stairs, which lead to the kitchen, and took the thin rope that hung in the centre of the door frame and pulled it. The illusion of the stair case changed. At the same moment as Alicia pulled the rope, the way down was solid wood floor and the staircase lead upstairs, not down stairs.
"Wicked." George muttered to himself impressed.
"I know that it is a lot getting used to..." Alicia started.
"It's nothing, really." George joked. "I have seen cooler places."
"Hahaha." Alicia answered sarcastic. "Are you tired?" She asked.
"Yeah." He said and yawned.
"Good." She answered, put the bleeding part of her thumb in her mouth, to make it stop bleed and opened the door to her own room.
The first impression for George when he saw this room was pure chock. The walls were having a deep-lilac colour and then were it decorated with dark-pink tiger stripes. The floor was covered with same lilac coloured wall-to-wall carpeting. The bed, which was placed by the far wall by the right corner, was having a dark-pink cover. George could easily state to himself that the theme colour for Alicia's room was deep-lilac and dark-pink.
"Are you okay?" She looked at him.
"Yeah, I just..." He was still standing in the door way. "I never thought that you would decorate your room like this."
"Well..." She said with a smile. "I was in a very rebellic state at the time."
George took one step into the room and took a real look around. She just walked past him, opened the door to the balcony at the same side of the head of the bed, right in front of where George stood.
Out on the balcony she walked over to the Flag holder and pulled up the down folded flag with the Gryffindor emblem.
While she did that George noticed that the wall in the left corner wall-to-wall with the bathroom was vertical, and covered with a bookcase. 'How much can you love books?' George thought to himself. When the wall came straight again Alicia had a desk that went all the way to the end of the wall above the desk was there a several photos, hundreds of them, George guessed glued up a little in a mess in a dysfunctional square.
George instantly recognized the pictures. They were wizard photos of them, Fred and George, Oliver, Katie, Angelina, herself and one or two of Lee. The story behind all those photos was that Lee had gotten a camera for his birthday and had decided to play Colin Creevy, bugging all of them by taking photos of everything and every one of them in different situations. Then were there photos of Alicia as a child, with her sister and Daniel and some other children.
One special photo caught George's attention instantly. It was one of those that Lee had taken, one time when all of them had walked back from Quidditch practise had Alicia surprisingly jumped up on Georges back, which Lee obviously had to take a photo of.
He leaned forward and toughed the photo, he could see that Alicia had enlarged the photo, which gave him a smile. He felt his heart warm up when he saw that, he had the same photo in his apartment above their shop.
Another photo that caught his attention was placed down in the left corner among her childhood photos. It was of a woman holding a, probably newborn, baby in her arms for the camera to see, with a big unmistakable smile on her face. By the fact that the woman looked a lot like Alicia, he reckoned that it was Alicia's mum, and the baby was probably Alicia herself.
"You like my little shrine of Good times?" Alicia asked him when she had closed the balcony door.
"Yeah I do." He answered. "We had so much fun when Lee played Colin Creevy." He smiled while remembering to himself.
"You know how hurt he would have gotten if he found out we made fun of him?" She told him.
"Well, Fred and I pranked a lot of people." George said walking over to the bed and sat down. "A lot of people must have gotten hurt, but... It's not like any of us have suffered a consequence of it."
Alicia turned around from him. "Maybe not you and Fred have." She said to herself and her mind came to a certain memory.
Halloween, just that special event was something that students were big on celebrating; it wasn't only the fest in the great hall that made the celebration enough, even after the fest did the students continue the party up in their respective common rooms, the Gryffindor common room party was often these days lead mostly by Fred and George, since they were the "party people" of the Gryffindor house.
"You see..." Daniel said to Alicia at the fest as they and Kenneth and another girl was sitting far away from the others in their class. "We... perfect people." He said, unconsciously slipping on the word prefect. "Have our own special after party. And since you don't wanna be up at the common room party with all the... trouble between you and... Him, evil redhead." He was trying to avoid saying George's name. "And I don't want you to sit up in your dorm and skulk."
"Daniel, I really don't think that she's the typical skulking person." The girl, who was the head girl, Patricia said.
Daniel looked at her for a second or two before turning to Alicia. "Maybe not skulk, but still..." He continued but got interrupted by Kenneth.
"Um, Daniel..." He said casually. "What have you been drinking exactly?"
"Pumpkin juice." He answered and looked down at the table.
"How much is left in the bottle?" Kenneth asked him.
"I just took a little..." he answered, his face expression reminded Alicia of a little boy who had gotten caught with his hand in the biscuit-jar. He knew how much trouble Kenneth had went through to get those three fire-whiskey bottles. Even if people were made prefects and Head persons, they still aren't perfect. Alicia actually got surprised when she found out how un-perfect they were.
"Daniel can't handle alcohol like we normal people can, so all it takes for him is to sniff the smell and he starts to act like he's drunk." Alicia said amused.
"Anyway." Daniel continued. "You should come with us, it could be fun."
But Daniel was probably the only one that thought that it could be fun to take Alicia to the after party. Alicia and the other three came into the room, which was filled with other Head persons and stuck up friends of the head people from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, aka, everybody that Fred and George had ever pranked over and over again.
"I hope that everybody know Alicia, a very good friend of mine." Daniel introduced her and when their eyes turned toward her, Alicia could have sworn that the temperature dropped below zero.
Alicia nervously looked around. "Beth." She said to a person to her right. "How are you?"
"Excellent." She answered coldly. "But maybe you should ask how my head is..." She snapped.
"Oh, right." Alicia said, remembering that Fred and George had made her head in twice its size a year back. "I actually had nothing to do with that..." She added.
"But weren't you the one who gave them the hiccup powder?" Another unknown voice said. Fred and George had once put hiccup powder in the barrel filled with pumpkin juice down in the kitchen. Everybody got a serious hiccup problem after the breakfast.
"Sort of..." Alicia started and once again got interrupted.
"And weren't you laughing with them about the people that fell when they had put the slippery charm on the floor?" Another voice said.
"Sure." Alicia answered and turned toward Daniel. "Daniel, I don't think that I'm really that welcome here..."
"That's right." Beth said, crossing her arms in protest.
"Alli..." Daniel said trying to protest.
"Don't." Alicia said warningly to him. "You stay here and enjoy the party. Don't worry about me." She gave him a fake assurance smile.
"Alli..." Daniel said once again.
"Don't." She repeated. "I'll be fine." And with that she turned around and walked out.
She had never felt this alone, she at right this moment felt so abandoned. The feeling was indescribable, she felt... alone. She had never felt like there was nothing there for her, she had been having small amounts of this feeling ever since the term started, even if there was people around her she felt lonely, unnoticed by the surroundings.
Not really wanting to go back to the common room and knowing that she shouldn't be out walking in the hall because Umbridge would happily take any reason at all to get Alicia into detention. She walked up the hall, and instead of turning left toward the Gryffindor common room she turned right, walked up the stairs and muttered the password to the statue that nodded mechanically and turned to his left and a door appeared to the direction he wasn't facing.
And just like Alicia had hoped for, the room was empty. This room was sort of a relaxing and study room for Prefects, Head people and Quidditch captains, the same as the bathroom at the same floor.
Alicia walked over to the couch in front of the put out fireplace and dropped down on it. Signing to herself she stared into the cold fireplace, putting up her feet at the edge of the table. She didn't know how long she had sat there before she felt someone sitting down next to her; she at first didn't look up, thinking that it was Daniel. But when she did look up she saw probably the last person on earth she would have seen right now.
"What are you doing here Davies??" She asked him.
"I'm actually waiting for the party which is about to start in here any second now." He answered, also putting up his feet at the edge of the table.
"Great." She answered sarcastic. "How did you get in here?"
"Captain, remember?" He said with a smirk. "I saw you going in here on my way to our common room." He said and then after a while. "Are you okay? You seemed lonely."
"I'm perfectly fine, Davies." She answered with a fake smile and put her hand on his knee, squeezing it lightly and looked at him, who didn't seem so convinced.
"Spinnet, the truth..." He said in a loud whisper, but got interrupted by Alicia, who against all of her common sense leaned forward and kissed him. Maybe it was because of the fact that he seemed to care for her, or maybe it was simply because she knew how George would react if he knew that she was kissing Davies, the enemy to the whole Gryffindor team.
Davies was known to the female population of Hogwarts to be a very good kisser, and Alicia couldn't help but agree. It didn't take long before Alicia was sitting straddling on his lap. Letting go of all of her sanity and the voice in her head that was screaming reasons for her not to continued this, that this was a very bad idea, and that there was about a thousand ways that this could go all wrong. But Alicia ignored every one of them.
She knew that Davies wasn't after a relationship, that he was the kind of type that never started a relationship with somebody; he just dated, snogged and groped on the girls that were willing to become one of his victims. Alicia knew well what she was getting into when she had leaned forward and kissed him, and to be fair, she didn't want a relationship. She just didn't want to feel lonely.
But the line for lonely and her wanting with this was about to be passed when Davies moved his hands, which had been placed on her knees, moved up along her legs and in under her skirt and started to trace the lining of her knickers she had to make a stop.
She broke off the kiss and placed her hands on his hands and moved them away. "I..."
"Can't." He finished her sentence. "I get it. I understand, you just had a little trouble in Paradise today."
"Paradise...?" Alicia asked. "What paradise?" She moved away from him and sat in the other end of the sofa.
"You and George, You are dating aren't you?" He asked.
"Um..."Alicia said, she didn't know really how to respond. "I have to go... Paradise you know." She stood up and quickly walked out of the room. She didn't want to tell him that she and George wasn't even dating anymore, talking even less. Having nowhere to go but to the common room she had to go there.
The common room was completely filled with people, music and food from the kitchen that Fred and George had brought up. Alicia had to push herself through the crowd to get over to the stairs to the girls dormitory. The dorm was empty when Alicia came in; she just waltzed over to her own bed, lay down and pulled the curtains around her.
"Alicia?" Katie opened the door to the dorm and walked in. "Where are you?" She was really sure that Alicia was up here since she had seen her passing through the common room.
"Go away Katie." Alicia called out from behind the curtains.
"Oh, please, you'll need more than that to get me away from you." Katie said and walked over to Alicia's bed and pulled away the curtains.
"I don't need you empathy Katie." Alicia answered dryly.
"Alicia..." Katie said seriously. "You aren't as strong as you want everybody to think that you are." She sat down on the bed. "Scoot over." She said and Alicia moved a little to the left to that Katie could lie down next to her. "It's totally okay to show your weakness."
"Well Katie, What if I don't want to." Alicia tilted her head over and looked at her.
"Fine, be stubborn." Katie said. There was a pause of silence; they could hear the loud music from the common room. "I can see that you're lonely, but don't think that you are lonely... You got me."
"You got more friends than me, especially Fred, George, Lee and Angelina friends." Alicia said.
"But they got each other." Katie answered. "You got nobody except from your stuck up head friends."
"Katie, they are not stuck up." Alicia smiled. "As I recall, weren't you the one who had a crush on Daniel?"
"I was in second year!" Katie exclaimed, there was another pause of silence broken by the heavy music from the common room. "So, that have you been up to tonight?"
"I kissed Davies." Alicia confessed. "Just about ten minutes ago."
"Alicia! Shame on you?" Katie said surprised, but then it changed into. "Was he any good?"
"Oh yeah." Alicia answered with a smirk. "I can fairly say that he have improved his kissing ability since second year."
George lay awoke in the bed for a long time, just staring around in the room. Having Alicia sleeping next to him, her head on his chest and one leg swung across him, to make sure that he would run off, he felt no need to run away, he felt completely satisfied.
Where a lamp would normally have hung up on the ceiling, there was a disco ball. Alicia had said that it was from her disco period when she was about nine. But the coolest this in this house was Alicia's wardrobe. The vertical bookcase wall, wasn't only a wall, it was a wall which moved if you pulled out the right book. The closet was round and not actually existing. The small space between the wall and the bathroom had been magically expanded so that it could fit as a walking closet.
Alicia had a lot of clothes, both muggle and Witch robes. George didn't believe Alicia when she said that she had more clothes lying in the next room. During all these years that George had known Alicia he could never have guessed that she had come from an upper-class family. First of all, she had never mentioned it; second, she didn't have that typical accent. On Daniel was it very noticeable that he came from an upper-class family, on Alicia it wasn't. George felt a little betrayed because of the fact that Alicia had never mentioned that she came from here, that she didn't trust him to understand.
Suddenly a small noise disturbed George in his thoughts; it came from the balcony door. It sounded like somebody was throwing small rocks on the glass part. George got a little worried, nobody except from Fred knew that they were there, and Fred didn't know which room was Alicia's, who was throwing the rocks?
"Alicia." George said and shook her a little. "Wake up; somebody knows that we are here."
"Huh?" She woke up and looked at him.
"Listen." He said. "Do you hear that?" The noise continued.
"Well, he never had so much of an imagination." Alicia muttered and took the robe that she had placed at the end of the bed, took it on and walked over to the balcony and opened the door, went out it and to what George heard talked to another person.
After a couple of minutes she came inside again. "D'you wanna have breakfast, he's offering. Or his mum is more likely." She smiled.
"Who were you talking to?" George asked confused.
"Daniel..." Alicia said like he was asking a stupid question. "He's the one who lives next door. That was actually the only reason that I wanted this room, it meant that we had our rooms toward each other, had to swop with Cathy when she started Hogwarts."
"Are you sure it's okay, since... you know." He made a punch gesture.
"Oh he's fine with that." Alicia answered brightly. "His nose may look a little shrewd, but he's over it... I'm just joking, his nose looks just fine." She had noticed the expression on his face when she mentioned that his nose looked different.
"Right..." he said and sat up. "Daniel still lives at home?"
No..." Alicia answered. "He has moved back temporarily since his father died."
"Unnaturally?" George asked.
"No, naturally." Alicia answered and walked out again to tell Daniel that they was accepting.
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