Author's Note: Thank you thank you for reading! This is the final chapter (finally) for now. Stay tuned for possible epilogue / follow-up shorts, etc. Please review if you enjoyed the story and have a spare moment. Hope you enjoyed. :)
AIMEE
Aimee really and truly adored both of her best friends but for the past two days they had been exhausting.
For one thing, Lynn was too busy freaking out about Oliver lying unconscious in the hospital wing and pretending (badly and usually by placing books in front of her face and failing to turn the page for hours at a time) to not be freaking out - and watching this procedure take place on loop had quickly exhausted her limited stores of patience.
Dani had been of no help with the Lynn situation because she was still feeling guilty for thinking Lynn was going along with Madame's plan, and was hiding it because of her own notorious hatred for sentimentality. Another exhausting emotional loop. Aimee had always understood Dani to be a creature born of mistrust. It made sense. And it made Dani make sense. Her out of character sensitivity to a single instance of misunderstanding was throwing Aimee's frame of the universe out of whack and she didn't appreciate it.
As a consequence, Aimee's face was uncharacteristically crumpled by a frown as she descended the steps outside of the Great Hall. On a vague level, she was greatly relieved to be wandering the castle. It was nice to move freely again. She only liked her espionage habits as a choice, not as a necessity.
"Tinkerbell!" said one of her favorite voices.
"You rang, Fred?"
She didn't miss a beat, despite the voice's sudden appearance behind her. He grinned widely at her, and she was struck by how lovely it was that he was always ready to. Not in a romantic way, mind you, but both the twins were that way with her and the world around them. Always eager to dig out a grin, happier still to be the reason for like expressions to appear on the faces around them.
"Feel up to a scrimmage?" the redhead said. "With Oliver out, we need a keeper."
He waved to a figure down the steps as he spoke.
"Obviously," Aimee said, her tone reflecting that she was a little insulted he needed to ask.
"Oi Aimee! Have you seen Seamus?"
The figure was Dean at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the bannister.
Aimee and Fred exchanged glances and laughed without explanation.
"Tapestry?"
Fred shook his head.
"Closet."
"Broom closet!"
"Library."
"Quidditch pitch."
"Showers?"
They stopped and turned to an apprehensive Dean slowly, as though it was they who were twins.
"Have you been to your room today, Dean?" Aimee said with a smile, and he gulped, red-faced.
A whistling sound grew towards them up the stairs and both she and Fred looked just past Dean to a broomstick that was speeding toward them through the open door.
Aimee held an arm out, grinning, and waited for it for fly into her hand, an expression of pure triumph glimmering over her features.
"Scrimmage time?" she said the moment it was in her right hand, cocking her head to look at Fred sideways.
His face was uncomfortably unlike-him expression of shock.
"Did you-did you just summon that? Just now?"
Fred had been really and truly surprised countable times in his entire lifetime and all he could think at that moment was how he was going to convey the moment -properly - to George that the small doe-eyed girl in blue robes had summoned a broomstick from another building without words for the sake of a joke.
She laughed and hooked an arm through his, dragging him toward the Great Hall with a skip in her step. It was filling up for dinner as the last classes of the day ended, and as the day was going splendidly, she fancied a meal with friends before what she was sure would be a messy and delightful Quidditch match.
The hall grew louder as they neared the tables, a few heads popping up curiously at her and her broom but none with too much surprise. A few of the faculty were entering for the meal as well, wandering in pairs. Dumbledore walked with head bowed politely toward Professor Trelawney even as the odd-brained professor stopped mid-sentence to stare at Aimee, who was leading her broom into the hall like either a dog or a very badly behaved child.
Fred continued to stare at her in wonder, though it was fading fast to glee at the thought of what mischief could come of a newfound trick.
"Interesting spot of magic, casting spells without words," Aimee mused with a barely contained smile.
She caught a twinkle in Dumbledore's eye before smiling delightedly at herself and promptly dropping all of her things in front of a large serving bowl of pudding.
DANI
For one of the first times in her life, Dani was breathless. She didn't understand what he was doing to her but he certainly seemed to catch on fast.
The two of them were insatiably tangled in each other. At the moment, Seamus' hands were on her hips as they kissed, feverishly happy to be alone.
Dani wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling herself toward him, groaning.
"Seamus…" she moaned, knowing it would make him smile.
He flashed her a grin that she barely caught before he was kissed her open mouth again...and her neck...and travelling lower.
She sighed contentedly and dug her fingers through his hair. She'd never expected to grow so attached to him, but he was making himself indispensable, to her increasingly spoiled body, at the very least.
"Good job Dean isn't here, eh?" she said, staring at the ceiling, picturing the scene of discovery if his mates were to crash through the dormitory doors to find them there.
"Think he'd be a bit put out," he answered with a grin, returning to her blouse, which was creeping open beneath his quick fingers.
She cocked an eyebrow at him and he stopped what he was doing immediately to kiss her again. It wasn't obedience. She'd mistaken it for that in the beginning, and though she hadn't exactly been unhappy at the thought, she knew was lucky for whatever it was that she'd happened upon instead.
Seamus pulled away briefly, leaning on his arms. She frowned at him and strained upward quickly to kiss the corner of mouth thoughtfully, waiting.
"The way I figure it," Seamus said, "It's all fine when you don't know what you're missing."
She felt herself smiling already, kissing him softly along the crease between his jaw and neck, his shirt bunched in her fingers.
"But to see what you can't have…" he trailed off slyly.
She grinned and shoved him over so she could sit on his waist, holding his face in both hands to kiss him quiet. She felt his hands trail down her sides before settling in a decisive grip on her hips.
She kissed him soundly for several minutes, biting his lower lip and trailing her fingers down to his shirt.
"Do you think we should go find the others soon?" she said, pulling away and watching with delight as he realized his shirt and pants were already half undone.
She leaned down toward him again, trying and failing to keep her smile to herself.
"They'll be worried," she said, her forehead pressed against his, tracing his legs with her feet. He was watching her intently.
She was suddenly desperate to stay in this pocket of opportunity with him for as long as possible. Dani was nothing if not a pessimist, and what she had with this lovable idiot had given her such unexpected joy that her heart quickened with the certainty that it wouldn't last.
And if it couldn't last, as she knew no good things could, she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. And mere men (or wizards, for that matter), were jelly-legged in the face of her determination.
Sure enough, she felt his grip tighten on her hips as he pulled her close again.
"They'll live," he managed, and she fell happily down to him again.
LYNN
Lynn was standing between classes in one of the corridors of the first floor, elbows propped up out of one of the windows into the courtyard. There was the quiet noise of bodies walking through the hallways behind her, but for the most part she was alone to stare out across the courtyard, blinking against the sun and trying to calm her stomach.
"Heard I missed a great match," the voice said behind her.
Everything in her body seemed to jump at once to her throat, and she turned to find Oliver leaning against the wall some ways down from her, hands in her pockets. He wore a familiar bemused expression, softened by the look in his eyes that made her throat go instantly dry. He seemed alright, if eerily calm.
"It figures I'm unconscious for the game I'll most regret missing," he said, smiling.
He'd had a chance to clean up and was wearing a grey jumper under his school robes. Lynn recognized it from the morning they'd first flown together. She was finding it hard to string a sentence together with everything speeding through her senses around her.
The corridor was mostly empty, she reasoned, or it was the light angling in through the old panes that made it seem so. He was doing nothing but looking at her. She had been robbed of her self-control and felt silly and stupid and vulnerable and, at the same time, full of the most unreasonable, unbridled joy to see this man with the kind eyes upright in a hallway near to her again.
"Oh," was what she ended up managing, and then closing the gap to where he waited with two steps, she kissed him as though if she were a moment late, he would vanish.
His arms were instantly firmly wrapped around her, drawing her close as they kissed, protective and secure.
And for the first time it was Lynn and not Dani who ignored the faded calls and yells of their friends and instead stood kissing a boy in a very public school hallway for the entire time it took the school to empty from their classes for the afternoon.
"I was in a cage!" Lynn said at one point - tearing her face away with effort and blurting it out quickly, like a confession, nose still brushing his.
She searched his eyes but without the fear of the person she'd been only months and evil henchmen ago. It was a simple, confused statement, like she'd been meaning to tell him and had only just remembered.
"So I heard," Oliver said, chuckling. "I heard they couldn't keep you there."
Lynn grinned widely, pleased, and kissed him again, smiling against his lips.
"They never can, you know," she murmured funnily before his mouth was on hers again.
Beyond the bubble of insanity she appeared to be occupying (she realized she could hardly feel her face for all of the smiling and snogging), she could now unmistakably hear the voices of their friends in the now-crowded hallway around them.
"Mer. Lin's. Bloody. Mustache. LYNN!? LYNN you're snogging a boy in the middle of school!"
This was undoubtedly Dani.
"I thought you said it was Merlin's beard, though?"
"It's an expression, Aimee - Bloody hell! Oy everyone! FLEUR! Where's Fleur? EVERYONE SHOULD BE HERE!"
Footsteps clicked softly in from a corridor with another familiar voice.
"Hey. Lynn's not in the library, do you know- oh, how romantic, I knew it would happen eventually!"
"Nothing quite as romantic as a good snog, eh?"
"Honestly, Ronald."
"How come it's never romantic when I do it?"
"The effect wears out when you do it constantly, Dani-by the way, where the hell have you been?"
"Oy Aimee, I'm feeling romantic, fancy a snog?"
"FRED!"
"Only joking, Angelina, my beautiful, sweet, lovely girl-"
It was the usual chaos that hid even Lynn and Oliver from their friends' attention for another private moment to laugh with their arms around each other, foreheads touching still, and listen to the insanity of the people they loved around them. A moment of chaotic peace, complete, unspoiled and theirs, despite what the world to come might have to offer.
The End.