I never could quite figure out if my owl had poor maneuverability in the air or just loved to fly straight at my face. Either way, Wooster had a habit of hitting me in the head with letters, the thicker the better, and the third day of Angie's visit was no different. She and I sat outside of Florean Fortesque's Ice Cream Parlour, cones in hand, feet slipped out of our shoes so as to avoid embarrassing tan lines, when a thunk to the head sent my nose straight into my butter pecan.

"Really?" I snapped as Wooster landed on the table between us. Angie giggled as I wiped melting ice cream off of my nose, and Wooster used my distraction to pull out a pecan to munch on. "Stop that!" I scolded. "Those are mine."

"He thinks other-wah!" Angie jumped as a similar letter, thick and officially sealed, landed on her lap by an owl that swooped past us and down the lane. "What just happened?"

"Wooster, stop!" I scolded, pulling my cone away as my owl reached for another nut. "I'll get you a treat later, okay?" Wooster hooted and, I swear, scowled at me...if owls can have facial expressions. "Was that your owl?" I asked Angie.

"No," she shook her head. "Looked like one of the post office's."

"Probably busy. Can't dawdle with you. Although, if there were actually berries in that strawberry cone of yours, maybe he would've made an exception." Angie grinned, and I retrieved the letter Wooster attacked me with. "Right, so what's this?" As I began to read the carefully written script addressing the letter to Melbecka Harper, 93 Diagon Alley, Angie let out an odd choked gasp-squeal that made several passerby's look our way.

"N.E.W.T.s."

"What?" I frowned.

"These are our N.E.W.T. results."

"What?"

"These are our-"

"Oh, shut your gob, Angie, I got it!" I snapped. I shoved my ice cream cone at her, which she took solely because she was too stunned by the gesture to do anything else, and I ripped open the letter. "Don't let me fail," I muttered to Rowena Ravenclaw, who was probably much too busy with much more desperate pleas from my fellow former 'Claws to listen closely to me.

"Hey! This tastes good."

"Don't eat my ice cream," I ordered, but it occurred to me faintly that I had completely lost any desire for frozen dairy products as my brain momentarily forgot the English language and saw every letter on the page as something completely foreign. Once all synapses were properly realigned, though, I squealed.

Honestly.

Right there in the middle of Diagon Alley.

Angie wrinkled her nose. "What's the damage?"

"I got an A in Magical Creatures," I moaned. My world had ended. An A. An freaking A. An A? I was a Ravenclaw, curse it! I should do better! Who was the last Ravenclaw to get an Acceptable?

"Dearest, you got shot in the arm by an Erkling's dart. What exactly did you expect?"

"What did you get?"

"I haven't opened mine yet. My hands are a bit full. What'd you get for freezing your administrator?"

"I hate you," I grumbled. "All the brilliant things I did, and all you can remember an O?"

"Go fuck yourself!" Angie swore, sitting straight up in her chair. "You froze your administrator! How the hell did you get an O in Herbology? Professor Sprout winces every time she sees you!"

"No, not in that," I corrected quickly. "I got an E there. I got an O in Potions, Angie!"

"Oh. Shocking." She rolled her eyes and sunk back in her seat, but then she sat bolt upright. "You got 'Exceeds Expectations' for freezing your administrator, but an A for getting shot in the arm with a blooming dart?"

Although her words barely registered in my mind as I poured over my results, I muttered an answer back. "I imagine my written exam pulled the Herbology up. I'm good at the theory, not the practice. I'm shit at all parts of Magical Creatures."

"Fair enough," Angie sighed, taking a bite out of her ice cream. Once she swallowed that, she took a bite out of mine. "I s'pose the rest were O's as well?"

"No," I sighed, sinking back into my chair. "I got an E in Transfiguration. Not exactly my strongest showing."

"Can't be as bad as freezing your examiner and getting shot in the arm by –"

Before she could finish the thought, I waved my hand to cast a silent spell that sent my ice cream into her face. "Oh yeah," I added smugly, "I got an O in Charms. Imagine that." She muttered under her breath. "By the way, you can finish my cone if you want."

"I'll kill you."

"Got an O in Ancient Runes, too."

She wiped ice cream off her face, still muttering death threats, as a trash bin floated by, so I waved our ice cream into the trash to free her hands. She licked the last of my snack off of her hands before opening up her own grades, which she studied carefully.

"Well," she stated finally. "I beat you in Herbology."

We continued comparing scores, which were fairly even actually, until it occurred to us that we could shove our results in the boys' faces since they never took their tests. So, we headed back to 93 Diagon Alley proudly, ready to flaunt our stunning N.E.W.T showing.

It was a bit of a letdown to find only Fred standing around. Or, rather, sitting around. Even though we kept the shop closed on Mondays, since we needed on day a week to restock and Monday was our slowest day for whatever reason, we still expected both boys to be hard at work.

Fred sat on the counter with a large stack of parchment on one side of him. He picked a sheet off of the top, studied it, and either crumpled it up and threw it on the floor or added it to the significantly smaller stack to his other side.

"Going through applicants?" Angie asked. Without looking up, he nodded. Then, he added the latest potential worker to the stack. The next sheet was barely in his hand three seconds before joining countless others on the floor. "That many people want to work here?"

"Mostly admirers from our Hogwarts days," he mumbled, studying the next cv carefully. "Kids with big dreams, little experience, and no spelling skills." He threw this on the floor, too. "I swear, Angie, it'd make everything easier if you'd just stay and do all this."

"All right."

"Cool. Wait…" He looked up and frowned. "What …I didn't mean…wait…What just happened?"

"You just asked her to move in with us," I explained, feeling a grin grow across my face. "And she said yes. MERLIN, ANGIE, YOU SAID YES AND YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE WITH US!"

"I DID!" she yelped back. As all young females are biologically programmed to do, we grabbed hands and jumped up and down excitedly, squealing incoherently at a register that seemed to cause Fred quite a bit of pain.

Fred grabbed the next application off the stack, did not even bother to look at it, balled it up, and chucked it at my face.

Like that could stop our excitement.

No, something else did.

The sky darkened as if a storm suddenly rolled in, which made the three of us stop and turn towards the windows. Fred stood up and made his way towards the glass to see what exactly was going on, but before he could get to the windows, the very ground beneath us gave a great shudder. We all threw our hands out to the side to keep our balance, and thankfully everything seemed to stabilize. But then it was all far too quiet. Diagon Alley was never silent. Not even in the dead of night when everyone was supposed to be asleep, because Diagon Alley never slept. But now, right now in the early afternoon, as we all froze with shock at the Dark Mark in the sky, it was perfectly quiet. If someone were to drop a dragon claw at the far end of the street, everyone would hear. Everyone in town was so quiet, so still, that even the rustling leaves of the trees as a gentle summer breeze blew outside could be heard in our closed shop.

But then, the world gave another sigh, sending jars and phials crashing to the floor, and Diagon Alley erupted in chaos. People started screaming and shouting as everyone scattered for cover. Shop doors flew open and closed as people ran from the small band of Death Eaters making their way down the street. The small group sent a few spells this way and that, hitting buildings and filling the air with the whoosh of flying spells and the unmistakable sound of splintering wood. This was our worst nightmare.

Diagon Alley was under attack.

A year ago, this would have terrified me to the point that I probably would have found a cupboard, curled up in a tight ball, and sobbed uncontrollably until someone dragged me out to either kill me or take me to St. Mungo's for psychiatric care. Not anymore. Now, with my home in danger, I pulled out my wand in case they came through our door and turned towards a very pale Fred.

"Where's George?"

"U-upstairs. He's, erm, he's…asleep?"

"Rowena," I muttered. He literally could sleep through an attack. "Wake him up for me." I needed help, and Fred clearly did not have it together. It should be me losing it right now, but our roles had changed in the past few months. I was the one in the Department of Mysteries. I had seen battle, not the Weasley twins.

After all, I was Melbecka Harper. I knew Death. I recognized its face. The stars spoke of me and all that. This was, apparently, what I did. I apparated up and down the floors in the shop because the spiral staircase of 93 Diagon Alley sometimes gave me nightmares, but facing an attack of Death Eaters hardened me. Maybe it was because I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had done this before.

Fred came back downstairs with a half-awake George, whose hair stuck up on one side. He finished pulling on what was clearly the first shirt he found on the floor, which happened to be mine. Although, I think when Mrs. Johnson bought it for me that she knew in her heart the pastel pink color and the cuddly teddy bear design really suited George much better. Had circumstances been different, I would have laughed. Instead, I ignored the fact that my shirt was probably stretching beyond repair, grabbed George's wand off of the sales counter and shoved it in his hand.

"Why wasn't this on you?"

"Sorry," he mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Grabbed Fred's by mistake."

"Git," Fred supplied, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt. George pointed his wand threateningly at his brother but made his way to the window to survey the chaos.

"What do we do?" he asked me. Me. As if I was the expert.

Although, in this room, I was.

"Fred, take Angelina to Grimmauld and get the Order," I directed. I wanted Fred out of the way; his nerves were getting the best of him today. Fred nodded and held his hand out for her to take, but Angie flinched her hand away.

"Get who?" she demanded.

"Fred, the Floo," George ordered as he grabbed the door. "They're going into Florean's; we have to move now."

"You can't go on your own!" Angie insisted.

"We won't be on our own," I told her, "if you go and get the Order."

"Who the hell is the Order?" she snapped back at me.

Before I could hex my best friend, a move I would surely regret later, Fred grabbed her wrist, threw a fistful of Floo Powder in the fireplace, and dragged her in with him. With them gone, George turned to me. "Are you ready?"

"No," I shook my head. "Let's go."

George followed me, no questions asked. Actually, that is a lie. Just outside the door, George grabbed my arm to ask, "What am I wearing?" I just patted his arm and assured him off-handedly that the color brought out his eyes.

We were too late for Florean Fortesque. By the time George and I got there, hexing a Death Eater in the process and earning myself a singed pant leg, two Death Eaters were dragging out the kindly owner of the ice cream parlour that Angie and I were sitting in front of not even ten minutes ago. I sent a jinx their way and managed to hit one of them, but the other retaliated with a burst of yellow light. George grabbed me and yanked me to the ground, the spell flying over our heads to hit our store and shatter the window with a loud hiss. Florean's store had clearly been ransacked, and the man had been caught unawares so his wand was not with him. By the time George and I scrambled back on our feet, we were no more able to protect him then he was because the Death Eater dragged him into the crowd. The other recovered from my spell and sent a cruciatus at us. I shoved George out of the way; having been hit by a cruciatus curse myself just a couple months ago, the last thing I wanted was for him to go through that. The spell missed us, but it cost us valuable time.

Another group had simultaneously gone into Scribbulus Writing Instruments and ransacked the place, although Soloman Scribbulus was visiting family in Denmark that week and thankfully was not there.

As George and I recovered from dodging the cruciatus curse, Fred, Angie, Remus, Tonks, and Alastor came bursting out of Weasley Wizard Wheezes. But it didn't matter. At that moment, the Death Eaters came out of Ollivander's with the wand maker himself and stacks upon stacks of wands. We all sent spells flying towards them, but they disapparated before our hexes and curses and jinxes were anywhere near them.

At the time, we had no idea where they went. It was only later that we found out they sent the Millennium Bridge into the Thames, killing Muggles in the process. It was a minor skirmish, one that did not even last half an hour, but it was a huge blow. Now, the Death Eaters were armed, a staple of the wizarding world's freedom was destroyed, and innocent Muggles were killed.

We lost.

Thanks to everyone who has read so far, and extra special thanks to nikkixcore for the review! As a heads up, I do use some *ahem* harsh language in this story. Not too much, but some; hence the rating. Also, this is set during book 6 right now, and will progress into book 7. So, the content gets dark. This is wartime. That's how JK wrote it, and that's what I'm trying to follow (although I know I do so loosely). So, posts will probably be like this one – one part light, two parts heavy. I'll do what I can to keep it fun, but there's only so much I can do!