Summary: It's the end of the second year and no one likes the news going around.
A/N: I started writing the following two chapters and the characters did that thing again where they completely diverted me from my original path and that meant I had to work on the family tree some more and figure out shit because it got moved up from when it was initially planned. Also, since this is my first chapter update since over a year ago, I had my twins last October and they're both very healthy and getting into everything. If having twins wasn't enough we also sold our townhouse and are using the funds to fix up my mom's house which my husband and I are buying from her. Her and my sister are living with us and the house is currently undergoing major renovations. They just finished our Mater bathroom and out bedroom is about done, but then they need to rip out all the rest of the plumbing in the main bathroom and that runs through the living room and out the front of the house.
Got a comment which I appreciated, but wanted to explain that even if I go a long stretch, the story isn't dead. I literally have a google doc of the timeline and chapter breakdowns for all seven years and it takes up 15+ pages. If at any point I do actually abandon this fic, I'll post the timeline so you all can know where I intended to take it. I'm almost done writing the next chapter because I had a lot of muse for it and I've been writing a paragraph here and there after the boys go to bed at night.
Everyone had abandoned their robes and vests and were laying sprawled under one of the trees closer to the lake. Finals hadn't felt nearly as brutal as the year before in Tom's opinion, but he felt it was because he had a better idea of what to expect going in, unlike the year prior where he'd been absolutely mental trying to make sure he read and remembered everything.
This year that title had belonged to Delaney who had been brought to tears the night before their Defense final and spent over a half hour crying over her study notes in the Slytherin Common room, with Sable patting her back and Tom trying to help her with last minute studying. It didn't help Tom that his snake carvings had been quietly whispering advice to him, as if snakes suddenly knew how to study. The Hufflepuff from the year prior and the beginning of the year, Roswell, had also shown up a few times and silently traded essays with Mia and Sable and reviewed some of their notes before disappearing as quickly as he'd appeared.
The other end of that spectrum was Chadwick who had stood up from the library table two days before their first final and exclaimed that he'd learned everything he could possibly learn and now he just needed sleep. Tom had stared in horror as the Gryffindor proceeded to sleep that entire weekend, but he was the only second-year who looked vaguely well-rested when their finals began, so maybe he'd been onto something.
Mia and Tammy hadn't quite been in tears but he'd accompanied them both to the kitchens a couple of times when they had missed a meal from studying and used it as their downtime, forcing them to unwind as they picked at what the house elves presented them.
Once the last final had let out, Tom had found his feet leading him to the library out of habit, but Chadwick had grabbed him and steered him towards the entrance hall and out to the grounds, where several students were milling about, enjoying their newfound freedom. Tammy, Mia, and even Lyall found them quickly enough and that was how Tom came to be laying on the grass in front of the lake, his sleeves rolled up and one arm over his eyes as his mind drifted in and out of a hazy nap. At some point, the Bates twins had also found them, but no one seemed to feel the need to talk, instead either falling asleep on the grass or staring up at the sky. Lyall was the only one moving about, collecting rocks and skipping them on the smooth surface of the lake, having taken off his shoes to wade into the shallow edge.
Another difference between this year and the year prior was that Tom found himself feeling more and more calm as the summer drifted closer, instead of the panic and stress he'd felt at returning to Wool's- and that was in spite of what he was hearing about the war. He would be able to see Jack again and make sure he was alright- something he was constantly worried about and only had a brief moment of ease when a letter would arrive, and he was certain Chadwick would make time for him as well, which might keep him out of Wool's and able to do some of his homework that had been assigned. He even thought he might chance to ask Mrs Chadwick if he and her son could practice some spells when they got their third-year texts, getting a jump on the rest of their class, though Tom was fairly certain Chadwick wouldn't be too pleased with that idea on the whole.
Tammy made a noise from nearby and Tom let his eyes open and he lifted his arm from his face. Kelly had found them and was on her lap, kneading her legs, meowing indignantly when Tammy tried to shoo the cat off. Tom reached out his hand and ran it over Kelly's flank. He'd developed a better friendship with the feline after her assistance with leading the Hufflepuffs to the broom cupboard and was far more tolerant of the white fur she shed all over his robes and the pin-prick holes she'd leave in his trousers when she kneaded them ever so slightly. Especially since Mia had shown him a spell to mend them.
A shadow fell over them and Tom looked away from Kelly to Sable and Delaney who had finally joined them and were standing over Tom at the edge of the group.
"I have good news, great news, and very bad news," Sable said, pulling a rolled-up newspaper from her bag. "Which would you like first?" She did look a bit grim, which put Tom on edge and around him everyone sat up. Lyall looked over, close enough to hear the proclamation, but clearly worried about what the "very bad news" would be.
"Bad," Chadwick said decisively, wiping some dirt from his nose, "Always bad first."
Sable grimaced and unfurled the paper. It wasn't the Daily Prophet but looked to be a foreign paper. Being closest Tom could see the phrase, "Le Ministère des Affaires Magiques de France est tombé!"
Tom couldn't say he knew much French at all, but the picture underneath the headline clearly displayed a group of wizards torching what appeared to be a French flag followed by them sending several signs of the swastika into the air from their wands. The carefree feeling in his stomach hardened into a large boulder and he couldn't bring himself to look away as the scene replayed several times, missing as Sable began to read from the paper in French.
She lowered the paper after a moment- Lyall, Delany and Mia all looked equally horrified by whatever Sable had read, but Tammy shot a hand up in question. "Can you say it again in the King's English? I'm pants at French."
Chadwick nodded his head, for which Tom was grateful, and neither of the twins seemed to have understood either, so Sable gave a heavy sigh and looked back to the paper before clearing her throat;
"It is with sad news we announce that the Ministry of Magical Affairs of France has fallen to the hands of the German Ministry of Magic. Correspondents were on the scene after a group of German wizards sent several swastikas into the sky over Rue de Furstenberg. Former French Prime Minister Jules Aubert's body was seen being taken from the rubble as Colonel Lieutenant Meyer addressed those who were captured and what remained of the gathered crowd."
Sable rolled up the newspaper and Lyall held his hand out. She gave him a look, though Tom didn't know if it was annoyance or something else, but handed him the paper, which he began silently reading over.
"Beauxbatons has officially closed," Delany said quickly, "I heard Slughorn talking to Professor Beery. Until further notice, those in France are required to attend Durmstrang. Minister Spencer-Moon offered sanctuary to any wizarding families who are fleeing from Germany to allow their students to attend Hogwarts."
"Okay, you said there was good news and great news," Chadwick said, lying back down, looking utterly too calm for the news that was just given. "Out with it."
"Good news is Slytherin's in the lead to win the House Cup-" all non-Slytherins present immediately groaned loudly, but Sable continued on, "Great news is that Slughorn was openly bragging to Dumbledore that Tom is second in our class and Nott overheard and now he looks like he sucked on an entire lemon."
"With any luck, he'll choke on it," Tammy said, her cheery tone sounding forced as she watched the loop of the pictures on the front of the paper Lyall and Mia were pouring over.
There was a lapse of silence, no one seeming to know what to say or do. All of the solace of the end of finals and the start of summer was gone and only a pit of anxiety and dread was left remaining.
"It says here that the evacuation order is still in place in London," Lyall cut in suddenly, "And that anyone fleeing France should find shelter in the countryside."
Tom felt his heart skip a beat- he'd heard about the evacuation orders from Jack in his letters and the newspaper clippings he'd sent, but it hadn't affected Jack, who was working and in that in-between age between child and man. He'd described that most of the younger children of Wool's had been sent to stay with families in the country, but that the elder ones were still about. Tom wondered if this changed anything if he even still had a place to go back to in London. He nervously looked over to Chadwick, but the boy wasn't looking at any of them, lost in thought, chewing on his bottom lip.
"They've begun bombing Holland and Belgium," Lyall continued quietly, sounding rightfully horrified. Tom wished he'd stop reading the paper, but at the same time, he couldn't shut the other boy out. "They're calling it 'Blitzkrieg'."
"What's that mean?" Tammy asked, picking at her nails, her leg bouncing with stress.
"Lighting war," Lyall said, finally closing the paper. Mia took it and continued to flip through it, but everyone else seemed like they had had their fill of bad news.
"The good news and great news was really quite shit, Sable," Chadwick said, looking over at the Slytherin. "Next time find something better than that to weigh out the news that Germany is trying to take over the world again."
"Sorry, I didn't really have a million galleons laying around to hand out," Sable shot back with annoyance.
"The least you could have done is killed Nott," Chadwick continued to complain, "That might have helped some- 'Oye, yeah there's a war on and they killed the French Minister but at least Nott's dead too. Right on for the Germans!'"
Lyall grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, his face red and Chadwick swore and stood up, moving to follow the other Gryffindor, "Shit- mate, you know I didn't mean it like that-" Tom leaned back as Chadwick grabbed his bag and hurried after Lyall, who refused to look at any of them. Tom still hadn't tried to talk to the other second year about whatever his family was going through, mostly because Tom knew he didn't really have a way to relate- he didn't have any family, up until what little he'd found out that year, and certainly didn't have any family on the other side of a war. Mia looked like she was debating going after the two Gryffindors to offer whatever aid she could, but Tammy shook her head, patting the spot on the grass next to her.
"His grandparents still haven't been able to leave?" Delaney asked, looking from Lyall and Chadwick back to Tom, Mia, and Tammy.
"More like he hasn't heard anything in several months," Mia said, still flipping through the French paper. "He doesn't bring it up but he was pretty close with them."
"A bit weird, though," Tammy said, reaching out and grabbing the paper from Mia, "I thought this was going to be a muggle war, and here we've got the German Ministry directly attacking the French Ministry- in broad daylight-" She folded the paper to show a picture on the second page of a man in a crisp uniform speaking in front of a podium, "Rue de Furstenberg is in the middle of Paris- who knows how many muggles they had to obliviate after this."
"Or they just didn't care," Sable said, shrugging her shoulders.
"What do you mean?" Tammy asked, "That's totally against the statute of wizarding secrecy."
"Well that's what it's all about isn't it?" Sable said, raising an eyebrow and at the clueless look Tammy and Mia gave, she sighed. "It's part of the whole thing that Grindlewald keeps peddling- Wizards shouldn't have to hide from muggles and the like."
"What?" Tammy demanded, looking confused, which was just a bit surprising to Tom given her status as a pureblood. Maybe Hufflepuffs didn't spend hours discussing politics and current events in their common rooms, but even Tom had spent the last four months hearing nothing except his housemates ramble on about the intricacies that had led up to the current conflict.
"Honestly do you even read?" Sable demanded, "There's the muggle war that's going on, but it's largely based in an idea that Germans are superior- anyone else is just bad and should be subjugated. But then there's Grindelwald and his "For the Greater Good" movement he's been running for decades now trying to use the muggles and their war to push their views on the other wizarding communities by force outside of Germany."
"It's not like we get muggle papers delivered here," Tammy snapped back, "How did you even find out about all that?"
"It's literally in the paper!" Sable said, gesturing frantically at the paper in Tammy's hands. "Wizards don't always just write about wizard stuff, and it's possible to get plenty of muggle papers if your parents send them."
"Can we stop fighting," Mia said quietly and Delaney nodded her head in agreement. "It's bad enough all this is happening, we don't need to yell at each other about it."
"You know about all this stuff with the muggle war and Grindlewald then?" Tammy asked, looking floored.
Mia took a deep breath and then nodded her head, "Justin's been giving me the highlights as he's gotten the paper and news from other students. I just don't feel the need to spend my free time in between classes worrying about it when I can't do anything about it."
"Fair enough," Sable cut in, nodding her head. "No reason to work yourself up if you can't immediately do something about it."
"This is BOLLOCKS," Tammy snapped, throwing the paper, which just flopped dramatically to the ground. Tom raised his eyebrows, but the other girls seemed unbothered. "This war is bollocks and Grindelwald is bollocks and all of these adults are BOLLOCKS."
"To bollocks," Marla gave an unimpressed whoop, still looking mostly up at the sky.
"Do you think that they'll still let us have Hogsmeade trips next year?" Tammy demanded, looking even more furious, "They didn't want us going home for Christmas- what if they don't allow them?"
"They didn't want students going home for Christmas because we take the train to King's Cross, which is in London," Carter said, still sitting up and watching the exchange. "If a German wizard wanted to do something then planning to strike when everyone would be congregated would be the most deadly."
There was another pause, as the implication hung in the air, but Carter must have realized how horrifying it sounded because he continued on, "We're in the middle of the Scottish Highlands and the school has an insane amount of magic protecting it- unless someone knew and told the Germans about every Hogsmeade trip in advance, they wouldn't know what days to try attacking Hogsmeade, so it would be a bad idea overall."
"Well aren't you just a little strategist," Sable said, looking vaguely impressed. She leaned forward to grab her paper before standing back up. "So there's hope for Hogsmeade then, at least. As nice as this has been, it's bloody hot, so I'm heading inside. Sorry to disturb you all, but figured you'd want to know."
"Hoo-ray!" Tammy yelled, mimicking Chadwick."To bollocks and muggle wars and Nott choking on a lemon!"
"Hoo-ray," Mia said unenthusiastically, earning a small smile from Tom.