Disclaimer! I own nothing from Harry Potter or Merlin! I make no profits and I'm just doing this for fun! Still? After all these years? Always.
No specific warning just talks of adult subjects, smoking, sex, but nothing wild.
I've got nothing else to say so enjoy the chapter and Happy Birthday to Gred and Forge!
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George
"Merlin's balls! How are they still going? I'm bloody knackered just listening to them." Fred grumbles as he climbs the final step of the astronomy tower. I'm not surprised or disappointed he managed to find me, only that it took longer than I expected.
"You can feel it, too?" I ask for something to say, already knowing he can if he's here.
"I'm surprised you can with Andi's parting words. Kinda seemed like she was cursing you, Georgie." Fred teases as he comes to sit beside me on the ledge of the tower.
"She did but only at her end and apparently not enough to block me out when she's this…distracted." I growl out the last word, refusing to look away from the moon.
"What do you mean only on her end?" Fred asks. He lights a smoke and it's enough to startle me into answering.
"Where did you get those?" I ask instead of answering, holding my hand out for it. Fred takes another drag and holds it out of my reach.
"Wouldn't you like to know, little brother?" He winks at me when I roll my eyes at him.
"Come off it. You know I've been craving one for weeks." Since the worst day of my life. I don't need to say it, he hands me the spliff with a sigh.
"You're not going to like the answer." He waits a minute for that to sink in before he confirms my suspicions. "Black gave them to me. Said we'd need them."
My laughter startles him. He stares at me through narrowed eyes before the realization strikes him. "Older but not wiser, it seems." I can't help but tease him before I take a drag. It's delightfully heavy and goes right to my head, drowning some of the phantom moans echoing through my mind.
"I don't like that we have secrets from each other, Georgie." Fred sighs and motions for me to hand him back the spliff.
I keep it, using it to illustrate his covered up chest, "I don't like that you soulbounded with Andrella and marked her beautiful skin with your ugly ass hyena mark."
"Can we talk about it now? Please?" Fred begs me. Just like he did hours ago when we finally returned to our room after our trek down the mountain and back to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron, and worst of all Snape. I can't stand to look at them. Not when I see the rightful blame. The distinguished hatred, not when I fully deserve it.
"Yeah, suppose we're not getting any sleep with them fucking like rabbits, are we?" I groan, hating the bitter truth to the words. They're sharp enough I feel Fred flinch at them.
"I understand he's a man that's been locked away in prison for over a decade but it's going on six hours now. Surely they'll have to stop soon," Fred laments, clearly shaken by the display of their stamina.
"You don't know what it's like to make love to Andrella." I shake my head, blinking up at the moon as I take another drag. "It's not only addictive, it's empowering. It's like you've ascended to god status in the exact realization she is the reason it is so and therefore your power is hers. All you are is hers. And the only thing you want to do is give it to her. To be allowed to worship her."
"Well if it's all that wonderful then why did you act like a dick instead of groveling for her forgiveness? You were horrible to her!" Fred slaps my arm but I welcome it. I give him the slow burning spliff for his efforts.
"I had to be for it to work." I confess, letting the weight from keeping this secret fall from my body like a shaken off layer of frost. I needed to borrow the ice to do what needed to be done but now I want to feel it. Even if it burns me.
"What do you mean you had to?"
"I had to make her hate me, Freddie." I tell him the truth and when I see he still doesn't understand I press on while I still can. "I needed her to leave with Sirius and not look back at me when she left. I needed to let her go with him. It's the only way she can come back to us, Freddie."
"I don't understand, George. I'm trying to follow but I don't." Fred admits as he hands the spliff back.
I nod my head at him and take a few drags. I owe it to my other half to let him in, to gather myself enough to share it with him. He might not deserve the weight of this knowledge but if he is asking for it, I will always share all I am.
"You mentioned Neviah." I begin carefully. "What do you know about her?"
Fred looks even more confused about the apparent change in topic but instead of questioning it he pauses to think. "Not much. She, well, it's hard to explain but she kind of introduced herself to me after the bonding."
I nod for him to continue, taking another drag of the gifted smoke. Prick, he may be, but Black was right. We needed these for this conversation, even if that wasn't his intention.
"She's an Ismerte spirit soulbound to Andrella, meaning she has a connection to me, and I guess you as well. " I nod again and he continues. "She explained to me that Sirius and Andrella were meant to be together right now, that it was the best and safest option for Andrella and that I had to let her go."
"Her sister, Romona, had a similar chat with me a while ago." I tell him, unable to hide the shiver from the memory, that woman is absolutely ruthless in her protection of Andrella. I have to respect that, even if it terrifies me.
"What did you mean before, George. About her coming back to us?" Fred's smile breaks my heart, but what shatters it to pieces is the absent way his finger trace the pattern of her dragon tattoo over the emerald green wool of the sweater with the giant "G" stitched in gold.
"I'm getting there, Gred, be patient?" I tease him but carry on. "It's my insecurities and jealousy that got us in this mess. I was an idiot, an absolute twat to leave her, Fred. To believe the lies, fall for the trap—that would have been one thing. But I chose to leave without even giving her the chance to tell me the truth. That's my fault, Freddie. Mine."
I am aware of the fact that Fred is holding me in his arms before I am aware I am sobbing. I owe it to him to keep going so I speak through the tears, directly into his sweater but I know he hears me.
"After I saw her in the library, when I misunderstood and I—I left her, I went to the fortress and I begged it to let me in and it did. I found a letter she wrote to me. I felt her—I felt her transform but the fortress wouldn't let me out. I begged and pleaded and reasoned I needed to go get her but it didn't budge. Then a voice came in my mind—Romona's—and told me I couldn't leave until I read the letter and accepted the truth.
"And—and by the time I finished reading and breaking down over the fact I was so fucking wrong about everything, Fred. She—she was gone by the time I left. She was gone. I was too late, Fred. I was too late."
Satisfied I said enough for him to piece it together, I allow myself to sob full on. Like the good brother he is, Fred rubs my back and soothes me through it. He sits there for minutes, hours, days, lifetimes, until I get it all out. When I pull back with snot and tears, he takes his handkerchief and cleans me off before himself. He lights up another spliff and opens his arm for me to join him.
"That's when I found you outside of Dumbledore's office, right?" Fred affirms what he suspects. I nod and he makes the humming noise he makes when the pieces of a puzzle are coming together for him. He finally asks, "What did Romona say to you to make you listen?"
"She didn't say anything, she showed me. Or I don't know really, Fred, it was wild, like going into a pensive but not, it was like I was there." I admit, trying to get the right words to explain to Fred. He waits patiently for me to find them. Puffing on the second spliff, hand absently rubbing my shoulder, Fred is the definition of comfort.
"It was always going to happen this way, because my failure to love her the way she deserves is what pushed her to him. It's what saved her and it's going to save us, too." I say more cheerful than I feel. I reach for the spliff to remedy that situation. "I saw him save her. I thought I was seeing the future, Romona explained I was, but I was also seeing the past."
"That doesn't make sense, Georgie."
"Magic and love rarely do, Freddie."
"You still love her." Fred states. I'm glad it's a statement and not a question.
"I'm glad you can see the truth. But I'm also glad I was able to hide it from you. Maybe I hid it from her, too."
"That's what Romona asked you to do? To make her hate you so she would leave?" Fred pauses a beat before he's answering his own question. "Of course, she did. She knew you'd never let her go unless you knew it was the only way to save her,"
"I hated it, Freddie. Saying those things, pretending I hate her when I love her so much. Pretending I judged her, that I didn't forgive her, when it's me who needs to beg for forgiveness. I don't care if it's punishment or sacrifice. I'll make her hate me to keep her safe." I vow.
"I know, George. I know." Fred assures me, hand pulling me back to his side. "I know why you did it. Thank you for being strong enough to do it. I don't know if I could."
And maybe it's because I'm his twin or maybe it's because I've been desperately hoping and dreading the moment he brought up the topic neither of knew how to face. The fact that I killed two men for Andrella and I wouldn't stop there. I'd kill two dozen before I kill two hundred dozen more if that's what it takes to keep her safe. I have no doubt of that and it's clear that Fred believes it, too.
"I hope you never have to, Freddie, just like I'm glad she has you. I'm jealous as hell, but I'm glad, too." I finally admit, giving him the reassurance he won't ask for. There is nothing unforgivable, not by Fred and not by Andrella.
I feel him sag into the relief of the words before I'm pulled into another tight hug.
"Tell me how we get her back, Georgie."
"For now we endure, we wait. We can't do anything until we come of age. We bide our time until then." I try to give Fred the simple answer, but, of course he's too curious to accept the short of it.
"I'm going to need more than that, Georgie."
"We play our parts and we play them well." I say sternly as I turn to face him. Fred must understand how serious this is. "We carry on as we have been. We don't have to carry out a full hate campaign now that she's…gone…but we keep up the idea that we've cut her out of our lives. No one can know about your bond with her."
"Obviously, but also, why not?" Fred says, not arguing but wondering if it's for a reason he hasn't thought of yet. As beaters, we like to anticipate attacks and weak spots, especially our own.
"We're assuming our enemy ignorant of the true nature of the Ismerte but we must be prepared for that to not be the case. We cannot be tools they use against her." I wait for him to nod his understanding before finishing.
"I'm going to beg for Snape to teach us occlumency. But in the meantime the best way for us to protect Andrella is to pretend we don't care about her at all anymore."
"Occlumency lessons with Snape, huh? That should be fun, or at least informative." Fred is far too amused by this and I am immediately suspicious. I raise my eyebrow at him.
He grins, continuing with a false sincerity, "Well that's how that old bat convinced Andi to go from bullying him behind his back to calling him 'Uncle Sev'".
"Shut up! Don't ever remind me that I heard her call him that! It was vile!" I swat Fred away from me, as if we weren't dangling above imminent death with one false shove.
"You know, if you really wanted to make it seem like you don't care you could always stone two birds at once. Wanna know how?" Fred wiggles his eyebrows at me suggestively.
"I really don't." I try my best to stop him.
"You might not be ready to hear it, but there's one sure fire way to have people think you don't care about Andrella." Fred continues on in a conspiratorial tone.
"Please. Stop." I beg.
Of course, he doesn't stop. By the way he's moving his hands, he's only just getting started.
"You get caught under someone else. Preferably someone sentimental or scandalous. And male. Definitely has to be a gay sex scandal for maximum impact."
"Fred, for the love of pranking, please stop talking."
"And I know better than to suggest you try to outshine Andrella by recreating the front page with the Slytherin Quidditch team." Fred dodges my slap and shoots me a wink. "We both know she's prettier than you'd be on your knees."
He ignores my protest of this insulting himself as much as me but uses it in his next cursed statement.
"Besides I don't want anyone to confuse my face for yours if it's photographed from the wrong angle. No way am I willingly to let anyone believe I'd stoop so low as to kneel for Flint." Fred finishes with a stutter.
"But you'd let me stoop so low?"
"Of course, if I thought it'd work but unfortunately you'd have to go to extremes to sell this story."Fred sighs, patting my cheek as he steals the spliff from my lips and places it between his own.
"I'm afraid to encourage this any further, but go on. I'm curious who's more extreme than half the Slytherin quidditch team? And don't you dare say the entire team or I'll push you off this tower, so help me, Gred."
"I'm afraid you're going to have to shag Snape." Fred sighs and if I didn't know him better than myself I might have believed he was taking the piss.
"Come the fuck off it."
"I'm sorry, Forge, but if you want to get back at both of them you're going to have to take one for the team and shag Snape. And unfortunately I'm going to have to walk in on it."
"Why the sodding hell would you have to walk in on it if all things?" I can't help but question the most glaringly outlandish part of that outrageous lapse of reality or sense.
"So that Andrella can feel my shock and disgust and then tap into my mind so see what's making me feel that way. And then she'll tell Sirius and bam! Petty revenge." Fred explains as if anything he's said makes sense. Even to me, who doesn't even need words to understand him. Usually. This was apparently one of the rare exceptions.
He's so damn serious I can't help but laugh. It's the only option left. Fred is offended by this, scoffing, "Don't laugh! It will work. Neviah is a gossip and spilt the tea that Snape and Sirius used to shag. He's totally into the Gryffindor prankster thing! It could be like a hatefuck thing, it doesn't matter how you fuck just that you fuck and I catch you."
Somehow, through my wheezing laughter, I'm able to ask, "Why?"
"Why what?" Fred huffs, still annoyed I'm laughing at him, even harder now.
"Why would they care?" I wheeze.
Fred snatched the spliff from my fingers before I can drop it and takes a few puffs. He's acting if I'm the ridiculous one and he needs the strength of lessened sobriety to deal with me.
"Because Snape's like the closest thing Andrella has to a father figure and Sirius used to call him Daddy." Fred deadpans. He is completely serious.
I am completely done.
I'm getting up before I even register it. I can't stay here and listen to this for another moment. Fred asks what I'm doing and I tell him that. He cries for me to wait for my favorite brother, I ask him where Charlie is because I don't see him here. He throws the spliff at my head and tackles me before I can reach the stairs.
We wrestle on the ground for a few minutes before we dissolve into a fit of hash induced giggles until we can't remember why we are on the ground. We laugh some more. Fred lights another spliff and we watch the sunrise together.
Fred grabs my hand when I go to pass him the last laugh of the last spliff and he holds me there until I'm looking at him. He smiles and says, "We'll get her back, Georgie. We just have to be strong and patient but we can do it. Together, for her."
He sounds sure enough for the both of us, so I let myself be enough to believe him.
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Fred
It isn't until I'm positively certain George is actually asleep and not just pretending that I allow myself to creep from his bed. One look at the sky tells me it's either late night or early morning depending who you ask. It doesn't matter if you ask me because either way it makes the common room and hallways blissfully empty.
It barely takes me ten minutes before I'm pacing along the seventh floor corridor, glancing at good Old Barnabas the Barmy. On the third pass, a steel submarine door appears in the wood. A splash of silver chrome in the dark hallway that I run to like a moth to flame, like it's land and I'm lost as sea. I ignore my tragic use of cliche and rush foward.
I yank open the door, flinching back at the frozen metal. Thankfully it stopped me from rushing headfirst into a dark, sloping tunnel. No, not a tunnel—a slide! Just like the one to the fortress!
It's this excitement that has me barreling down into the dark unknown, hopeful and thankfully feet first.
I don't know how long I slide in the dark, it's cold and impossibly dark and I could be sliding on a loop for all I can tell the difference. But I know it's not a trap, not a trick, even if I can't make sense of it, I know I am being given what I require just as the room was designed to do—give me a way to Andrella. If only in essence, only in spirit, it would have to be enough.
After an eternity, a small, bright light appears at the end of the tunnel, approaching at an alarming rate. Thankfully I have the foresight to close my eyes and cover them with my arms just in time. The bright light consumes my vision, even with my eyes closed and covered. I continue sliding into the light, warmth coming with it, until suddenly I'm launched onto a soft mound of cushions and blankets or furs. I can't be quite sure at the moment, keeping my eyes closed until I think I can stand the light.
I begin humming the melody stuck in my head, getting bored quickly, I peek between my fingers and get a glimpse of my new surroundings. I close them tightly and shake my head, sure I can't be seeing right at all. My vision must still be affected. Surely there's no way…
But nope. There it is again. A massive grey eye in a wall of bumpy black skin watches me. No matter how many times I open and close my eyes it is still there. I scramble up into a seated position, noticing that I am on a giant couch that is covered in cream and white colored pillows and mounds of polar bear furs. There is nothing else but this couch and a glass table before me and of course the slide that now has transformed to include ridges so I can climb my way back out.
I might think about how terrible a climb that will be but I don't. All I can think about is the eye of the monster watching me and how I am apparently in a glass bubble in the middle of the ocean. I can tell because on the other side of the glass is open ocean, deep, dark, mysterious blue. Other than my voyeuristic friend, I am alone here.
I knew I would be, I knew that the room wouldn't transport me to where she is. Not really. I just needed to feel closer to her. And even though I'm being watched by a whale, I find I do feel closer to her here. The thought makes me smile. And after the last 48 hours I've had, I need it. I let it become a laugh.
I'm not sure if this startles, offends, or reassures my vouyer but it makes it swim away. It's only as it's retreating can I appreciate that there was no ordinary whale, shark, or giant sea creature. It's the biggest of them all, with not black skin as I originally thought but deep, dark blue. It's an electric blue whale!
As if hearing my thoughts, which it totally can, given that's one of its most special powers, the electric blue whale splashes its tail and sends a light show of mystical sparks against the impenetrable magic bubble I'm safely encased in. If I had any doubt left that this was in fact the most rare and magical of all creatures swimming away from me, the sparkling balls of magic crash against the glass and splash images of the past, present, and possible futures.
It's too much too fast for my brain to process any of it so I steady my focus on keeping my eyes open, watching it all. I can find a way to view the memories of it later, now I just had to witness it all. I try to keep my eyes from fully settling on any one image, missing the rest. But it's probably one of the hardest concentration acts I've ever been required to pull off.
I see flashes of myself, of George, of Andrella. Of the rest of my family. Happy moments—holidays and weddings and new redhead babies being born. Tragic moments, too. I see flashes of each of my family members meeting bloody and violent ends. Which I thought would be worse than the one time their demise was a clean, green flash. I look away before I can see the owner of the wand, but I already know. Her laughter is cruel and tainted and horrifying but it's familiar and I blink it away.
Somehow even witnessing my own body being crushed by a stone, lying lifeless in a hall during a battle at Hogwarts, is easier to stomach than the quiet massacre in the Great Hall.
I blink this one away too until my eyes settle on something other than death. It's a face I never expected to see and be filled with comfort, with peace, and even longing. In fact, maybe it's the fact I am not expected to feel this way when I look at them is why I am drawn to them. The longer I look at this face, the stronger the feeling of contentment settles into the places cleaved by fear from the other sparkle visions.
I won't say their name, not even out loud to myself, but I let my eyes linger on their face until the image falls away. I won't waste my energy trying to figure it out. I just let myself feel it. I thank the electric blue whale for its gift. And I see, so far into the horizon line it's almost lost to me, a responding flash of the sparkling blue lights.
Maybe I am here, now, claiming Andrella's safe space as my own so I can have this moment. Maybe I need help with my faith more than I realized. Maybe I needed something new to believe in, something new to peak my interest. Something selfish, some sort of petty revenge of my own.
Here, I don't have to be strong. Not for George and certainly not for myself. That is why I am here. I needed a place to be totally alone so I could fall apart. And now that I have hope I can put myself back together when I'm done, I let myself do just that. I cry, I wail, I scream, and I sob. I thrash and I moan and I bash my fists against the furs and cushions. I carry on until I can't and then I collapse in the heap of beaten up cushions. I shudder and I shake and I release it all until I am still. Until there's no more anger, no more tears, no more crying.
Until there are only questions and answers I need to find before I can move again, until I can act knowing I am stepping forward in the right way.
When my eyes can see again, they notice two items have appeared on the clear top of the glass table. If I had any doubt that Andrella could reach me anywhere, I don't anymore as I register what's on the table before me. A crystal glass filled with a generous measure of firewhiskey and a black journal. I know instinctively that this is Emmaleena's journal—the very one Andrella sacrificed so much of herself to find. Just as instinctively I know that I also will have to sacrifice something of myself to be worthy to read it.
I realize that's what the firewhiskey is for and I laugh. I can't help myself and I don't want to stop anyway. It fills the quiet bubble with joy and I realize the strength it provides. My pursuit of happiness, of joy, and the glory of happiness I claim for myself—that's the weapon I weild. Because my joy is centered around others, my family, and Andrella is a part of that family. Maybe not by blood, but even that can change. The strength and vigor in which I fight to protect my family? That will never change. It cannot even grow stronger, fiercer, for it is already my most defining trait.
It's what makes me reach for the whiskey with one hand and the journal with the other. I down the whiskey and slam the empty glass on the table before I give my full attention to the black bound beauty sitting in my lap. I take a deep breath to steady myself and open the book so it lays flat on my legs I force to stay still. I am already smiling before words begin to sprawl on the blank page in an elegant and unfamiliar script.
My eyes read the words impossibly fast, catching on the most important ones. Resounding and singing in my mind under the full weight of their meaning settle in a way I can understand.
"If you are reading this you must be a current or future friend or ally to my daughter, Andrella Jade. That is the only way…"
"All others who read this will receive a guide on how best to help my daughter to fulfill her destiny and bring Albion's return…"
"…should you wish to continue reading, I ask you to write your full name on the page below in your own blood…"
"Narcissa Malfoy
Regulus Arcturus Black
Sirius Orion Black
Remus John Lupin
James Fleamont Potter
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Severus Snape
Minerva McGonagall
Andrella Jade Wendling"
It's only once I've read Emmaleena's warning a dozen times, traced the letters of the names written in blood on the page do I react. I prick my finger with my wand and let the tip of it soak in my blood. Then I use it as a quill to add my name below Andrella's.
Fredrick Gideon Weasley
It only takes half a minute for the blood to soak and dry into the page, forever immortalizing my place by Andrella's side. It's only once it dries fully does a new set of words appear on the blank page besides the list of names that now include mine. It's familiar and I choke on the breath it stills in my throat.
"Hello, Freddiekins. Excellent to see you, even though I'm surprised it's so soon. I'm flattered, really, and in quite a good mood right now. So, let's get this adventure started, eh?"
I don't know what to say, how to contain my excitement at communicating with Andrella like this. I know words fail me at the best of times so I let my instincts call me to act. I press my still bleeding finger to the page and I know instantly this is the right thing to do. I am pulled off the cozy couch straight through the binding and pages of the book, straight into a memory.
"Hey, Freddiekins. Glad you could join me. We've got some serious planning to do if we want to pull this one off."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
'Ello lovelies! Happy Birthday to our favorite twins! I hope you enjoyed reading from their perspective because there will be some more of it in the future.
Who do you think Fred's mysterious vision is about? What are Andi and Fred planning?
One thing's for sure, Andi and Sirius are going to have some explaining to do the next chapter to themselves and to each other. And poor, innocent Dobby. (No house elves will be harmed in this story. This, I solemnly swear.) Same vows do not apply to bed frames...
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Ex's & Oh's
Audrey V. Sullivan
