A shorter chapter for this one because the next one is uhhh...a tad longer than usual. I've been on a kick with the writing lately and my chapters have been getting away from me :)
Guest: Thank you for the review! I appreciate them always and I really like that you're already guessing who Tori's family may be. Only time will tell :). Nessa's social anxiety is also something I'm working very hard to maintain realistically, so thank you. It's something I struggle with personally and I figured it would make her more relatable. Again, I appreciate you!
Chapter Fourteen
"Deep breaths, Ginny, you're alright. That's good, that's good. You're okay."
Nessa tightened her hold on a sobbing Ginny Weasley as she attempted to calm the younger girl. The instant she had seen Nessa in a darkened part of the library, the girl had burst promptly into tears and had started babbling about something that Nessa could not understand through the sobbing. Given that Nessa was uncomfortable with emotions with anyone other than her brother and Tori, she had recovered rather quickly when the girl had practically thrown herself into her arms and had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get Ginny to calm down long enough to figure out what was going on.
It was not their normal day to meet in the library, but Nessa was not surprised that the younger girl had managed to find her anyway. Nessa had spent the entire week after the Quidditch match hidden away in the library in an attempt to avoid the twins, who seemed perfectly normal and back to their usual selves, but whom she was nervous to talk to now that she had lost her head in front of them. It was irrational — she was sure of that — but they'd only been friends for such a short period of time, that she wouldn't really blame them if they decided she was insane and never spoke to her again. Regressing back to her old habits was the only way she knew how to cope when she got too far into her head, so, for the time being, she was going to be holed up in here. The alone time was nice, but it made her easy to find apparently.
Not to mention that the last week at Hogwarts had been the most chaotic Nessa had ever experienced and she found the comforts of the library to be much more relaxing than facing what was waiting for her outside of it.
In the week since the game, Colin Creevey had been petrified and the air of the school was thick with rumor and suspicion. The first years had started moving around in tight-knit groups, as if the heir of Slytherin would spare them if they were never alone. Ginny, who sat next to Colin in Charms, had been particularly distraught since, and Nessa wondered if the current sobbing session was due to this upset again, but had no way to ask at the moment.
Fred and George had attempted to cheer her up by covering themselves in fur or boils and jumping out from behind statues, something with which had enraged not only Nessa, but Percy as well. Nessa had told them sharply to knock it off as they were only making things worse, but Percy had gone a step further and threatened to write to Mrs. Weasley and tell her that Ginny was having nightmares. Whether because of Nessa's irritation or the threat of their mother or because they felt bad about scaring Ginny so badly, the twins had stopped trying to cheer up the younger girl and Nessa was grateful for that at least.
Even more ridiculous, were the secret trade of talismans, amulets, and other protective devices sweeping the school. Neville Longbottom had sunk an ungodly amount of money into buying a large, evil-smelling green onion, a pointed purple crystal, and a rotting newt tail, and had no interest in listening to anyone explain to him that he was a pureblood and was, therefore, in no danger. Nessa had also overheard an older Slytherin telling a group of Ravenclaw first-years that they would all die a painful death if they didn't buy a ruby amulet from him for protection. Nessa had gotten herself a detention with Flitwick for hexing the boy in the corridors and telling him to find better things to do with his time than frightening children.
All in all, what Vanessa really needed at this point was a vacation because the stress was beginning to get to her. She focused again on the sobbing first-year in front of her.
"Ginny, sweetheart, what's going on?"
"I — I — I — I just don't f-feel like m-myself a-anymore." she said, words hitching as she attempted to hold her cries in for long enough to speak. Nessa frowned and rubbed her back as she attempted to gain control of herself again. "I w-want t-to go h-home."
"Okay, just breathe for me, okay?" repeated Nessa kindly. She was really no good with the crying thing. Tori was not prone to doing so and if Harry did, he certainly didn't do it in front of her. She assumed it was a guy thing. "Why don't you go home over the holidays? Clear your head a bit?"
Ginny shook her head immediately and sobbed anew. Nessa grimaced. Maybe she should go find Hermione.
"N-no, I c-can't," she cried. "M-Mum and d-dad are going to v-visit B-Bill in Egypt. If I go h-home, they'll know something is w-wrong."
"Ginny, maybe it would be better if you told them how you feel," said Nessa gently. "I'm sure they'll understand and maybe it will help."
"I can't," said Ginny, shaking her head vehemently. "T-They already t-treat me like I'm a c-child. None of the b-boys got this u-upset coming h-here."
Nessa couldn't help but smile, despite the girl's obvious distress. It was so fitting that she did not want to let her parents think she was weaker than her brothers. It was admirable, even though Nessa wished she would admit to someone else that she was having such a difficult time.
"You need to find a way to relax, Ginny," she implored. "You can't keep going on like this. You're going to drive yourself mad."
"I k-know," she said, desperately. "I already feel like I'm going m-mad. I can't r-remember Halloween. And I w-woke up the other day on the b-bathroom floor. I d-don't even know how I g-got there. And the n-nightmares I'm having make it h-hard to sleep."
Nessa frowned. "Have you ever been prone to sleepwalking? I've heard that stress and night terrors can cause that sometimes."
"I u-used to sleepwalk when I was l-little." admitted Ginny. "I g-guess I never thought of that."
Nessa continued rubbing her back until she had finally calmed enough to sit back and wipe her face on her sleeves. Her eyes were a little swollen and red from crying and her cheeks were flushed, but she was at least able to breathe normally again.
"I had Charms today," she said quietly. "I haven't had it since Colin —"
"I'm sorry, Ginny," said Nessa, honestly, when the younger girl stopped talking mid-sentence, and placed a hand over one of hers. "That must have been horrible."
"It wasn't great," she responded, shrugging, as if her eyes weren't watering again. "He was always asking me all kinds of questions about magic. He was so excited to be here and be a wizard."
"He's going to be just fine, Ginny," said Nessa, firmly, lowering her head a little to catch Ginny's eyes. "We've been working with the Mandrakes in the greenhouse. They're becoming very moody and secretive. That's a good sign. Once they've reached adulthood, Colin will be able to ask you all the questions he wants."
Ginny smiled at her weakly and nodded, sniffling.
"I feel bad for getting irritated with him sometimes," she admitted quietly. "Once he got going, he wouldn't shut up."
Nessa laughed and shook her head, thinking of the twins when they talked to her about their joke shop.
"Don't feel bad, Gin," she said, kindly. "I only talked to him for half a second and he was a lot to handle. All the more if you have classes with him every day."
"Do you think they'll find them?" whispered Ginny, sounding frightened. "Whoever is doing this?"
Nessa hesitated, eyeing her friend thoughtfully. She was sure they would eventually figure out what was going on, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out why the thought of that seemed to scare Ginny so much. She'd have thought that the idea would be a relief. It certainly was for Nessa.
"I'm sure they will eventually, yes," she admitted, watching curiously as Ginny blanched. "But that's not something you need to be worrying about, alright? All I want you to worry about is getting all your spunk back."
Ginny nodded, chewing her lip nervously.
"Thank you for listening, Nessa," she said. "I'm sure you've got better things to be doing, what with Harry getting hurt and all."
"Harry is just fine," Nessa replied. "And you can talk to me whenever you need to, Ginny, it's not a burden. You're my friend and I care about you." Ginny's eyes watered again, and her lip trembled a little, but she nodded and smiled brightly at her. Nessa smiled back and then cleared her throat before speaking again and changing the subject to something lighter, "You should come spend some time with us tomorrow night. I think we're just listening to your brothers go on about their shop, but you could use the distraction. And frankly so could I."
"You don't think Fred and George will mind?" said Ginny in hesitation. "Ron hates it when I try to hang out with him and Harry."
Nessa rolled her eyes and tried not to let her face show too much irritation at this. Harry wasn't terribly excited when she wanted to hang out with him and his friends either, especially now when it so rarely happened, but he'd never openly complained when she had.
"I don't really care if they mind, if you want me to be totally honest here. I'm inviting you and they'll have to live with it," she said dismissively. "Besides, Ron's a much bigger prat than Fred and George are."
Ginny giggled but jumped about twelve feet in the air when a voice spoke from behind them.
"Couldn't have said it better myself, love," said George with a wide grin.
"Do you even know what we're talking about?" queried Nessa, partially because she wanted to distract George from how much he'd startled his sister, but also because she wasn't sure how well she'd done at disguising her own surprise at his appearance.
"Don't need to," he said cheerfully, plopping himself next to his sister and ruffling her hair affectionately. Ginny huffed and tried to smooth it out again, sending him a sideways glare. "Ron's a bigger prat no matter the situation."
Nessa would like to have told him that that wasn't the case and that he should be nicer to his siblings, but she wasn't sure he was wrong in this case. Not to mention, it might have been a bit hypocritical of her considering she had just been saying the same thing to his sister not five seconds ago. Ginny stood up and grabbed her unopened bag from the floor, smiling at Nessa weakly again.
"I'll see you tomorrow then," she said hopefully, as if Nessa would have changed her mind about inviting her in the last thirty seconds.
Nessa nodded and opened her mouth to say something when George looked directly at his sister for the first time and straightened, his face hardening immediately.
"What's wrong?" he demanded. "Have you been crying?"
Ginny shrunk back and looked down at her shoes, something that concerned Nessa even more for the girl's welfare. She'd never backed down from a fight with her brothers, especially when they took that tone with her. Nessa kicked George hard under the table to get him to look away from his fidgeting sister. It worked; he jumped and turned to glare at her, opening his mouth to say something and paused when he met her beseeching eyes.
"Sorry, Gin, I just — are you alright?" he said, his tone softening a little, but his face remaining as serious as Vanessa had ever seen it. She had a feeling that if Ginny told him someone had made her cry, he would have moved heaven and Earth to make them pay. That really should not have been such an attractive quality.
"I'm okay," said Ginny, backing further away. "I just need to —"
"Ginny, wait," said George, hurriedly, standing up and crossing the distance between them in a single stride and pulling her into a hug. "I'm sorry if Fred and I were gits before. We were just trying —"
"I know, Georgie," said his sister, softly, squeezing him tighter. "It's okay."
Nessa watched as the two separated and Ginny left the library, waving at them one last time. George did not move from his position, frowning after his sister and crossing his arms across his chest. Nessa would like to have told him not to worry, that his sister was just having a rough day and would be fine by tomorrow, but she really wasn't much a fan of lying. At least not to her friends. And she didn't think that Ginny's behavior was getting any easier to explain away.
"Is she okay?" he said, refusing to move from his spot and still frowning at the place his sister had left. Nessa took a deep breath and leaned back in her seat, biting the inside of her cheek.
"Not really," she said, truthfully. "She wants to go home."
George's head snapped to meet hers in surprise and she met his stare head on and knew his concern was mirrored in her own expression. He looked back at the door, and she thought he might be tempted to go after his sister and demand she talk to him.
"She's just scared, George," said Nessa, quietly. "And Colin was her friend."
George rubbed a hand down his face and took a seat across from her again. Nessa had never seen either of the Weasley twins upset before — happy, mischievous, angry, annoyed — sure, she'd seen all of those. But never upset. She found she did not much like seeing the sadness there. It felt out of place and absurd — like seeing Moaning Myrtle at an April Fools party.
"She talks to you, though," he said as if he were commenting on the weather, but his tone sounded accusing. She smiled kindly at him.
"Sometimes, yes," she admitted. "I wouldn't take that personally, George. She doesn't want to seem weak in front of you. She doesn't even want to tell your parents right now."
He hummed thoughtfully but seemed slightly mollified at this explanation.
"But you'd tell us if it got bad, right?" he queried, eyeing her sharply. "Even if she didn't want you to?"
"Of course, I would," she assured, her tone a little affronted that he thought otherwise, even for a second. "I don't want her hurt any more than you do."
"Okay, then," he said, nodding as if they had just come to some kind of deal. "Why are you hiding in here anyway?"
"I'm not hiding," she lied. Clearly, she only had a problem lying to her friends if it didn't have anything to do with her. "I have a lot of work to do."
George leaned forward and grabbed the textbook in her lap and pulled it toward him. She tried to snatch it back, but she was too late. Her copy of Fahrenheit 451 fell out and onto the table. He raised an eyebrow at her pointedly.
"You happened to have caught me at a slow moment."
"We've really got to work on your lying," he said with an eye roll. "We're never going to get away with pranking Snape if you lie like that."
"We don't need to work on anything because I'm not pranking Snape," she said firmly and refusing to acknowledge his quip.
"You can't avoid us forever, Vanessa," he said, as usual, seeing directly through her in a way that made her uncomfortable. He was much more perceptive than she really gave him credit for.
"I've no idea what you're talking about," she hedged, pulling her novel back toward her and leaning over it so that her hair fell forward to cover her face and her cheek rested on her hand.
He didn't say anything in response to that, but she knew he hadn't left because there was no movement from his end of the table, and she didn't hear him walking away. She could feel him looking at her and had to concentrate harder than usual on the book in front of her to keep herself from fidgeting under his gaze.
After several minutes of reading and re-reading the same paragraph and still having no idea what she was consuming, she looked up at George through her hair with a glare. He had not moved and was staring at her with a smirk, his eyebrows clear into his hairline.
"Can I help you?" she snapped when he said nothing.
"Oh, no, please continue," he said sarcastically. "Continue to prove my point. I've not much planned for today anyway."
"You're very irritating, did you know?"
"I do," he said. "Let's set that aside for now, shall we? I'd like to know what you've been doing holed up in here for the last week."
"George, do we really have to do this right now?" said Nessa in exhaustion. "I'm really not in the mood."
"Yes, well, I'm not in the mood to have one of my friends hide from me in the castle." he said matter-of-factly. "I'd thought we were past the point of you hiding in the library from us."
"I was not hiding," snapped Nessa, shoving her book back into her bag and glaring across the table at him. He didn't flinch. "I was…avoiding you, which really isn't quite the same thing."
"I'd agree with you except this is possibly the darkest, most depressing corner of the library I've ever seen," he quipped, but seemed a little less irritated by her admission. "I think I just saw a bat in the corner."
Nessa shot around and squinted at the dark corner behind her to be sure he was only joking and ignored the soft laughter from behind her. She turned to face him again with an eye roll when she was certain there was going to be no movement from behind her.
"Very funny," she said, sarcastically. "Besides, I wasn't even aware that you knew where the library was. Much less been inside it."
"I've been in here plenty of times, darling. Not doing anything remotely studious, mind you," he said with a raised brow. "Why are you avoiding us?"
Nessa huffed and crossed her arms. The emotional conversations at this point in the day were really beyond her at this point. After dealing with Ginny, she really just wanted to be left alone to sort through her own thoughts without explaining herself to the young man in front of her. She knew she'd have to speak with him at some point before they all met up tomorrow night, but she'd assumed she'd have had more time to steel herself for the conversation.
Admitting you were an anxious lunatic to people wasn't exactly the kind of conversation she enjoyed having with others. Though if she were being honest, admitting it to George was likely the lesser of two evils. He'd been incredibly patient with her admissions previously and she wasn't sure Fred would have shown her the same courtesy. Where the hell was Fred anyway?
"He's outside with Tori," said George, making her realize she'd spoken aloud. "I convinced them to give me twenty minutes to talk some sense into you before they came racing in here to carry you out of here kicking and screaming."
"I hope that's a joke," said Nessa cautiously. He cracked a grin for the first time since his sister had departed.
"No, actually, when I left them they were debating who would have to put the bag over your head."
"For God's sake," she groaned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I thought I said not to do anything illegal?"
"Well, if you tell me what's going on then we won't have to," said George seriously.
Nessa huffed and rested her head on the table and closed her eyes so she didn't have to look at him. She could stall some more and let Fred and Tori come barging in here like lunatics. They would likely upset Pince before they even got anywhere close to kidnapping her with a bag over her head. And if they did manage to kidnap her, she likely could avoid having the conversation altogether by yammering on about how ridiculous they were.
She could also just grab her things and race out of here and find somewhere else to hide to avoid her problems some more. Of course, that plan would likely work better on a group of people who weren't as persistent as the twins and Tori. Because losing all three of them while running down the corridors like a coward would be nearly impossible. Her only other option — besides talking, of course —- was to lie and come up with some lame excuse that he would believe. Which may have worked on Fred, but likely wouldn't get her far with George. He saw through her like she was made of glass and trying to find an acceptable lie that he would buy would take longer than just telling him she was being ridiculous in the first place.
"Can we just skip over the awkward part where you make me tell you what's going on like you don't already know what's going on?" she hedged a little more, feeling the pit in her stomach grow as she prepared herself to talk to him.
"Well, I tried that earlier and you started stalling, so at this point, I'll take whatever is going to get us out of this library," he replied with a cocked brow.
"I'm just in my head, is all," she said, playing with one of her cuticles and refusing to look at him. "I wasn't going to hide in here forever. I just needed to convince myself I was being insane. Of course, then it took longer and longer and got more and more awkward to imagine leaving and now here we are. So, y'know, clearly I have issues."
"Vanessa, if you're going to hide in here every time Fred and I piss you off, you're going to be in here every week," said George, gently.
"It doesn't have anything to do with you two being thick during Quidditch, George," she said with an eye roll and still refusing to look at him. He bit his tongue to keep from laughing so he didn't discourage her from continuing. "I mean, I already figured that was behind us at this point. I just…I really don't like being so upset in front of other people. It's getting back to a place of normalcy afterward that really freaks me out."
"I thought we already determined that you deserved to be upset with us," said George in confusion. "Is that not enough to go back to normal?
"I threatened to break Fred's arm, George," she deadpanned and he couldn't hold in his bark of laughter this time. She rolled her eyes. "That's a little beyond rational and even if you did deserve it, I still feel awkward about it all. I probably overreacted and then I have to admit to myself that I overreacted and feel guilty about the whole thing. Maybe you're just saying it's fine, but you're really thinking that I'm insane and wondering how to get out of telling me so."
"If that were the case, I don't think I'd be sitting back here in this corner alone with you. It'd be really easy for you to murder me back here and have no one be the wiser," he joked. She gave him a pointed look, but her lips twitched anyway. "I think you've got Fred and I confused for someone else, Nessa," he said seriously. "I've spent my entire life being yelled at; it sort of comes with the territory. We don't really take it that personally at this point. And not to be rude or anything, love, but neither of us has any problem telling you you're insane if you're acting that way. We're really more the kind of blokes that do what we want and ask for forgiveness later."
Nessa laughed. "Yeah, I already tried to use that rationalization in my head."
"You're allowed to be upset with people without feeling guilty about it, Vanessa," he said pointedly. She grimaced and looked away from him. "And this is not likely the only time that we're going to upset each other, so let's just come to an understanding now that if we say it's fine, then it really is fine. It'll save us a lot of time in the future."
"Fine. But next time I'd appreciate it if you're the one who overthinks things because it's really starting to feel ridiculous on my end."
"I'll see what I can do," he grinned, standing up and offering a hand to her. "Now I expect we should be leaving soon. Unless you'd prefer to leave here against your will, of course."
"I'm regretting this already," she grumbled with an eye roll, but accepted his hand anyway and let him pull her through the library toward her friends.