Chapter 55:

The story of Fred and George's flight to freedom was retold so often over the next few days that it was likely to soon become the stuff of Hogwarts legend. Within a week, even those who had been eyewitnesses were half-convinced that they had seen the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms, pelting her with Dungbombs before zooming out of the doors. In the immediate aftermath of their departure there was a great wave of talk about copying them, so that students were frequently saying things like, "Honestly, some days I just feel like jumping on my broom and leaving this place," or else, "One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley…"

Fred and George had made sure that nobody was likely to forget them very soon. For one thing, they had not left instructions on how to remove the swamp that now filled the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing. Umbridge and Filch had been observed trying different means of removing it but without success. Eventually the area was roped off and Filch, gnashing his teeth furiously, was given the task of punting students across it to their classrooms. Teachers like McGonagall or Flitwick could have probably removed the swamp in an instant, but just as in the case of Fred and George's Wildfire Whiz-Bangs, they seemed to prefer to watch Umbridge struggle.

Then there were the two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge's office door, through which Fred and George's Cleansweeps had smashed to rejoin their masters. Filch fitted a new door and removed Harry's Firebolt to the dungeons where, it was rumoured, Umbridge had set an armed security troll to guard it. However, her troubles were far from over.

Inspired by Fred and George's example, a great number of students were now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief. In spite of the new door, somebody managed to slip a hairy-snouted niffler into Umbridge's office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge on her reentrance, and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers. Dungbombs and Stinkpellets were dropped so frequently in the corridors that it became the new fashion for students to perform Bubble-Head Charms on themselves before leaving lessons, which ensured them a supply of fresh clean air, even though it gave them all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on their heads.

Filch prowled the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem was that there were now so many of them that he did not know which way to turn. The Inquisitorial Squad were attempting to help him, but odd things kept happening to its members. Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that made him look as though he had been coated in cornflakes. Pansy Parkinson, to Hermione's delight, missed all her lessons the following day, as she had sprouted antlers.

Meanwhile it became clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts. Umbridge only had to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers, or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration she attempted to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but the students told her stubbornly they were suffering "Umbridge-itis." After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret she was forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating, and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.

But not even the users of the Snackboxes could compete with that master of chaos, Peeves, who seemed to have taken Fred's parting words deeply to heart. Cackling madly, he soared through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, and toppling statues and vases. Twice he shut Mrs. Norris inside suits of armour, from which she was rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker. He smashed lanterns and snuffed out candles, juggled burning torches over the heads of screaming students, caused neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows, flooded the second floor when he pulled off all the taps in the bathrooms, dropped a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast and, whenever he fancied a break, spent hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she spoke.

None of the staff but Filch seemed to be stirring themselves to help her. Indeed, a week after Fred and George's departure Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, "It unscrews the other way."

To cap matters, Montague had still not recovered from his sojourn in the toilet. He remained confused and disorientated and his parents were to be observed one Tuesday morning striding up the front drive, looking extremely angry.

"Should we say something?" said Hermione in a worried voice, pressing her cheek against the Charms window so that she could see Mr. and Mrs. Montague marching inside. "About what happened to him? In case it helps Madam Pomfrey cure him?"

" 'Course not, he'll recover," said Ron indifferently.

"Not like anyone can do anything if he did recover. Fred and George aren't here to be blamed after all." Alicia shrugged

"Anyway, more trouble for Umbridge, isn't it?" said Harry in a satisfied voice.

He and Ron both tapped the teacups they were supposed to be charming with their wands. Harry's spouted four very short legs that would not reach the desk and wriggled pointlessly in midair. Ron's grew four very thin spindly legs that hoisted the cup off the desk with great difficulty, trembled for a few seconds, then folded, causing the cup to crack into two.

"Reparo!" said Hermione quickly, mending Ron's cup with a wave of her wand. "That's all very well, but what if Montague's permanently injured?"

"Who cares?" said Ron irritably, while his teacup stood drunkenly again, trembling violently at the knees. "Montague shouldn't have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor, should he?"

"He got what he deserved for taking advantage. Or trying to." Alicia smirked as she caught her cup by the handle to stop it running off the edge of her desk, on it's perfect sturdy legs.

"If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!" Ron offered

"You?" she said, catching her teacup as it scampered happily away across the desk on four sturdy little willow-patterned legs and replacing it in front of her. "Why should I be worried about you?"

"When Mum's next letter finally gets through Umbridge's screening process," said Ron bitterly, now holding his cup up while its frail legs tried feebly to support its weight, "I'm going to be in deep trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if she's sent a Howler again."

"But —"

"It'll be my fault Fred and George left, you wait," said Ron darkly. "She'll say I should've stopped them leaving, I should've grabbed the ends of their brooms and hung on or something… Yeah, it'll be all my fault…"

"Well, if she does say that it'll be very unfair, you couldn't have done anything! But I'm sure she won't, I mean, if it's really true they've got premises in Diagon Alley now, they must have been planning this for ages.…"

"You can always blame me." Alicia told him

"Yeah, but that's another thing, how did they get premises?" said Ron, hitting his teacup so hard with his wand that its legs collapsed again and it lay twitching before him. "It's a bit dodgy, isn't it? They'll need loads of Galleons to afford the rent on a place in Diagon Alley, she'll want to know what they've been up to, to get their hands on that sort of gold…"

"Well, yes, that occurred to me too," said Hermione, allowing her teacup to jog in neat little circles around Harry's, whose stubby little legs were still unable to touch the desktop. "I've been wondering whether Mundungus has persuaded them to sell stolen goods or something awful…"

"He hasn't." Harry and Alicia chorused.

"How do you know?" said Ron and Hermione together.

"Because —" Harry hesitated, he looked at Alicia and she shrugged. They'd have to tell them eventually. And if the alternative was Fred and George were accused of being criminals… "Because they got the gold from me. I gave them my Triwizard winnings last June."

There was a shocked silence, then Hermione's teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor. Alicia repaired it and summoned it back.

"Oh, Harry, you didn't!" Hermione said.

"Yes, I did," said Harry mutinously. "And I don't regret it either — I didn't need the gold, and they'll be great at a joke shop…"

"Harry didn't want it and wanted to get rid of it so I suggested he gave it to Fred and George just after they'd been complaining about Bagman scamming them." Alicia explained

"I thought it was a good idea." Harry nodded

"But this is excellent!" said Ron, looking thrilled. "It's all your fault, Alicia. You gave Harry the idea and you didn't stop them despite being right next to them — Mum can't blame me at all! Can I tell her?"

"Go for it. She can't get angrier at me than she has been in the past." Alicia believed.

"Yeah, I suppose you'd better," said Harry dully. " 'Specially if she thinks they're receiving stolen cauldrons or something…"

Hermione said nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but her self-restraint was bound to crack before long. Sure enough, once they had left the castle for break and were standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixed Harry with a beady eye and opened her mouth with a determined air.

Harry interrupted her before she had even started.

"It's no good nagging me, it's done," he said firmly. "Fred and George have got the gold — spent a good bit of it too, by the sounds of it — and I can't get it back from them and I don't want to. So save your breath, Hermione."

"I wasn't going to say anything about Fred and George!" she said in an injured voice.

Ron snorted disbelievingly and Hermione threw him a very dirty look.

"No, I wasn't!" she said angrily. "As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harry and Alicia when they're going to go back to Snape and ask for Occlumency lessons again!"

Alicia simply scoffed. "I'm sorry have you seen him, he's taken to ignoring Harry instead of tormenting him. He's not going to teach us anything." Alicia believed.

Harry had told the three about his talk with Sirius mere hours after Fred and George had left. He hadn't told Ron or Hermione about the real reason he wanted to talk and so told them Sirius wanted Harry to continue Occlumency lessons. In which Alicia wasn't surprised. Hermione hadn't let the subject drop since. When he'd had a spare moment however he had pulled Alicia aside and told her everything Sirius and Lupin had said, of which wasn't much different to what they'd said to her or what she'd assumed. It seemed neither had mentioned talking to her either or anything about the mirrors.

"You can't tell me you've stopped having funny dreams," Hermione said now, "because Ron told me last night you were muttering in your sleep again…"

Harry threw Ron a furious look. Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

"You were only muttering a bit," he mumbled apologetically. "Something about 'just a bit farther.' "

"I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch," Harry lied brutally. "I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit farther to grab the Quaffle."

Ron's ears went red. Alicia said nothing, she knew better than anyone that that was a lie. Of course she had managed to be dragged only into one other dream in which the journey through the shelves of spheres had progressed to a shelf number; ninety-seven.

"You are trying to block your mind, aren't you?" said Hermione, looking beadily at Harry. "You are keeping going with your Occlumency?"

"Of course I am," said Harry, trying to sound as though this question was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye.

"And you're not seeing these dreams right Alicia?" she demanded

"Hermione, if Harry's not having them then neither and I. And besides, I'm better and keeping out of Harry's head then he is of keeping out of Voldemort's." she replied. "I have seen a few dreams about exams though…" she mumbled "They're actually a little stressful." Harry sighed as Hermione rolled her eyes and Ron nodded in agreement.

Exams were less than a month away and every free moment was devoted by the fifth years to studying for their O. .

"You know," said Ron, whose ears were still flaming red, "if Montague doesn't recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup."

"Well Hufflepuffs gotten good enough that that's a chance anyway…" Alicia added

"Yeah, I s'pose so," said Harry, glad of a change of subject.

"I mean, we've won one, lost one — if Slytherin lose to Hufflepuff next Saturday —"

"Yeah, that's right," said Harry but Alicia instantly knew he wasn't paying attention as Cho walked past, ignoring him as usual. Hermione and Alicia shared a look but Alicia shook her head when Hermione went to comment.

The final match of the Quidditch season, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, was to take place on the last weekend of May. Although Slytherin had been narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match, Gryffindor was not daring to hope for victory, due mainly (though of course nobody said it to him) to Ron's abysmal goalkeeping record. He, however, seemed to have found a new optimism.

"I mean, I can't get any worse, can I?" he told Harry, Alicia and Hermione grimly over breakfast on the morning of the match. "Nothing to lose now, is there?"

"Of course not. And the best thing about rock bottom, is the only other place to go, is up!" Alicia said, trying to be cheerful in the fact that she was going to play quidditch and ignoring the fact that it could be a crap game.

Of course she liked the Ravenclaw team, though Cho was on it and the girl hadn't even spoken to Alicia since her fight with Harry.

Not that that matters when she's a seeker and I'm not. She can deal with Ginny instead. Alicia smirked at the thought seeing as both had once been into Harry.

Alicia got changed and followed Angelina and the others outside with Ron and Ginny. Lee was commenting as usual, though there wasn't as much hype in his voice since Fred and George had left, and he called out all their names. Alicia mounted her broom and soared into the air as Madam Hooch blew her whistle.

"And they're off!" said Lee. "And Davies takes the Quaffle immediately, Ravenclaw Captain Davies with the Quaffle, he dodges Johnson, he dodges Bell, he dodges Potter as well… He's going straight for goal! He's going to shoot — and — and —" Lee swore very loudly. "And he's scored."

The rest of the Gryffindors all groaned. Predictably, horribly, the Slytherins on the other side of the stands began to sing:

Weasley cannot save a thing,

He cannot block a single ring…

Alicia wasn't going to let that stop her and she took the Quaffle from Ron. She flew through the air and dodged a chaser, dodged a bludger, passed to Katie as Davies shot at her, received it back and pelted with her firebolt straight for the goal. Lee's voice was gone as her concentration skyrocketed and before she could even count to three the Quaffle went through the goalpost. Alicia was determined to keep up with Ron's fails and make every one of his saves — if he managed to make one — count.

Ravenclaw had the Quaffle and Alicia soared after them as Ginny went past her in the opposite direction, looking for the snitch. Brady had the Quaffle and he headed straight from Ron after the three chasers had failed to intercept the Quaffle. Alicia got ready to receive the Quaffle from Ron.

"Ron saved it!" Lee's voice reached her as she'd come to a complete halt in surprise. Ron had the Quaffle in his hands. He'd been watching Brady and suddenly dived to his left and caught the Quaffle.

Alicia couldn't help it she flew forwards and pulled Ron into a hug.

"You did it! I knew you could!" She cheered as Ron looked at the Quaffle surprised. "Gotta make it count now." Alicia grinned and she took the Quaffle from Ron before pelting off down the other end of the pitch with Angelina and Katie who were also beaming, clearly feeling that little bit better.

Katie shot the next Gryffindor goal, putting them in the lead by ten.

Chambers went flying at Ron next and Angelina was right behind to receive the Quaffle.

Ron saved the Quaffle again.

Alicia grinned and she followed after Angelina with Katie to pocket another goal.

The game continued that way. After Ron had saved the first goal he continued to save more, and more and more. Alicia, Katie and Angelina scored over and over again, the Ravenclaw keeper managing to stop a few, but not nearly enough to let them catch up.

Alicia saw the snitch after about half an hour of the game and she caught Ginny's eye with what the Gryffindor's cheered at as a celebratory loop. She nodded her head and Ginny was gone after it.

Cho of course was doing her usual tactic of following the other seeker and followed Ginny as she darted for the snitch. For a second it seemed as though Cho might catch the snitch, but Ginny snatched it right out from under the girl's nose.

The Gryffindors roared in celebration and Lee's voice was drowned out despite his own cheering into the microphone. Angelina came right up to Alicia beaming and pulled her into a hug.

"We won!"

"We what?" Alicia asked shocked

"We won the cup!" Katie screamed before joining the two.

"You mean…" Alicia grasped the concept before she released the two and zoomed towards Ron who was looking confused.

"Ron! We won!" he looked at her as she shook his shoulder "Ron you won us the Quidditch cup!" she beamed at him.

The Gryffindors were running into the stadium and Alicia saw Cho throw down her broom before she'd even landed on the ground, her face was glittering. She'd clearly started crying again.

Alicia and Ron landed and Ron was swarmed by Gryffindors wearing red and gold. Alicia heard the son 'Weasley is our King', only the lyrics had now changed.

Weasley is our King,

Weasley is our King,

He didn't let the Quaffle in,

Weasley is our King…

Weasley can save anything,

He never leaves a single ring

That's why Gryffindors all sing:

Weasley is our King.

Alicia laughed as she let them surround Ron and then lift him up onto their shoulders. McGonagall presented Angelina with the Quidditch Cup and she cheered and held it up for the Gryffindors to shout and cheer at. It was then passed along and given to Ron who held it up again.

Slytherins were all leaving in a huff and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were congratulating Gryffindor as they began to move off. Alicia moved with them. clapping and singing as she glanced around for Harry and Hermione, but she couldn't seem to find them amongst the crowd. It wasn't until Ron shouted their names that she spotted them.

"HARRY! HERMIONE!" yelled Ron, waving the silver Quidditch Cup in the air and looking quite beside himself. "WE DID IT! WE WON!"

The two beamed up at him as he passed them on the Gryffindor's shoulders. There was a scrum at the door of the castle and Ron's head got rather badly bumped on the lintel, but nobody seemed to want to put him down. Still singing, the crowd squeezed itself into the entrance hall and out of sight.

Alicia joined Harry and Hermione ready to talk about how great Ron was and what a good game they'd finally had before she stopped. Harry and Hermione had twigs and leaves all through their hair, their robes were ripped in several places and they had scratches all over their faces and arms. They looked like they'd just trudged through a heap of bracken and brambles.

The two turned to her beaming but stopped when they saw her observing them and raised her eyebrows questionably.

"You get into a fight with a bush?" she asked.

The two shared a look.

"Hagrid came and found us." Harry began, clearly willing to explain despite the fact that, what ever he was going to say, was clearly not going to bring Alicia good news by the paleness of their faces. "Right after Davies goal. And he took us down into the forest." Alicia's eyebrows retreated up further.

"We know where's he getting all those injuries from." Hermione said looking fearful. "Alicia, he brought one of them back with him!" she said still looking shocked.

Alicia stared at her before her mouth dropped open.

"He WHAT?!" she shouted and the two shushed her as a few stragglers looked at her as they passed.

"That's why it took him so long to return." Harry nodded "It didn't want to come with him and he's tied it up to some trees."

"And that'll hold it!?" Alicia demanded

"His names Grawp and he's Hagrid's half brother. He's like sixteen feet tall! And doesn't understand english!" Hermione continued "Hagrid wants us to teach it to him."

"What?!" Alicia asked again.

"If he gets sacked and has to leave he wants us to look after him, just go and talk to him." Harry said

"In the midst of our exams? And we're much more breakable than he is, we wont coming out looking like he does we'll be smushed!" Alicia said her eyes wide.

"He made us promise before we even saw what it was about." Harry admitted. Now Alicia looked at him like he was stupid.

"Are you joking?" she asked and the two looked confused by her sudden tone. "Haven't you learnt not to promise Hagrid anything until after you know what the hell it is he's going on about? You know what he's like!"

The two frowned and shared a look.

"We promised for you too." Harry added.

Alicia looked like she was going to murder him.