(OotP) CHAPTER TWENTY: Screw You

Ellie,

I'm writing this letter on behalf of all of us—Mum, Bill, Charlie, Ron (who made it here to St. Mungo's early this morning—or maybe it was late last night; I've sort of lost track of time amidst all this), and Fred.

First of all, we want to say thanks. Dad's going to be alright, and if you hadn't gotten to him—and then him here—as fast as you did, that might not have been the case.

But we're also really worried about you.

How could you possibly have known that you could Apparate out of Hogwarts—and into the Ministry, no less? Have you been practicing since the day you Splinched? If so, are you mad?

Word on the street is that you've started your own little group within the D.A. Sirius, of course, is over the moon that you've decided to call it Black's Army. The part where you're practicing N.E.W.T.-level magic and beyond, though—along with, apparently, Apparating? That, he's a little less enthusiastic about.

We all are.

I know that Fred leaving was hard on you, Ellie. I might even flatter myself enough to think that my leaving was hard on you, too, and I'm sorry for that. But this isn't the way to cope. He left to give you a chance at recovery—at building a life for yourself that was free from the constant guilt of being with him and having that history with Cedric. He didn't leave so that you could spiral and make rash, dangerous decisions.

And I left because we're a team. No matter what.

Please write back. Please promise me you'll start taking it easy and being more careful. I love you, I miss you, and I need you to be safe.

We both do.

Love,

George

George,

I love you, too, but your letter makes me want to scream.

I don't really care what reasons Fred had for leaving me. He left me, which means I get to do what I want, how I want, without being berated by his twin brother who—let's be honest here—was probably just writing down the words he was dictating.

Screw you for that, Fred. I mean that quite sincerely. If you have something you want to say to me, come out and say it. Don't hide behind the best friend you took away from me.

You didn't give me a choice when you left me, so you don't get a say in how I cope with it.

Saw the ad for the grand opening of WWW, by the way. Glad to see you're doing so well.

Ellie

P.S.: I'll be kicking Lee Jordan out of the B.A. tomorrow. Screw him, too.

Until she received that letter from George, Ellie had thought that, in the grand scheme of things, she was doing fairly well. She hadn't spiraled into another boy's arms like she had with Oliver after Fred's rejection of her in her third year; she hadn't fallen apart and written some desperate, embarrassing plea for Fred to take her back; she hadn't even gone to see him when she learned how to Apparate safely.

But now? Knowing that he not only had hidden behind his twin in a letter where he begged her to stop acting recklessly, but also had been using Lee Jordan as an insider in the B.A.—the one thing that brought her any joy anymore—to spy on her?

Now she was pissed.

"Liam," she said. "If I ask you something crazy, will you promise not to freak out?"

It was officially the winter holiday, and not one member of the B.A.—of which Lee Jordan had officially been kicked out—had gone home.

Ellie felt bad for Sirius, who had sent her three letters since Harry and Ron showed up at 12 Grimmauld Place without her, begging her to reconsider.

Fred isn't even here, he had written in his second letter. So I hope that isn't the reason.

It isn't, she had replied, because in truth, it was more complicated than that. I just have to focus on other things right now. I love you, and I hope you'll understand.

He didn't, of course. But hopefully he would eventually.

"You know we've got your back," Liam told her cheerfully. They were all there, of course—in the courtyard, eating their lunch, as they had every day for weeks. "We did all support you kicking out Lee, didn't we?"

Ellie had shared the letter from George with the rest of the B.A.—minus Lee—as soon as she received it. She had told them about her desire to kick Lee out, and they had all supported her—even gone with her to do it.

"Good riddance," Lee had said sourly when they delivered the rejection. "You're all going to get yourselves killed."

Ellie took a deep breath. She knew Liam wasn't going to like her question. None of them would. But she had to ask.

"D'you reckon your brother would meet with me again, now that the band's broken up and it's just me?"

For several seconds, no one said a word. Over the past few weeks, she had slowly given them enough tidbits about the previous meeting with Noel for them to understand the gist of it.

"Are you insane?" Katie finally demanded.

"Even if he did, would you really want him to?" added Neville.

"I know he's a jerk," Ellie told them. "And I'd be careful. It's just… I've been trying to piece together how I can do more—you know, make a real difference. Make people believe me."

"And you think you can accomplish that by becoming a pop princess?" asked Katie dubiously.

"I think it would give me a voice—one that would be harder to silence by people like Umbridge and Fudge."

Revenge, of course, had something to do with it—and a craving to receive attention and praise when she was seriously lacking it—but she didn't dare admit that out loud.

"I can ask him," said Liam, looking apprehensive. "I'd have to insist on being in the room with you, though—for my own mental health, if not yours."

Ellie laughed weakly at that, though if she was being honest with herself, she was relieved to hear it. "I'll take you up on that."

"I've gotta say," Noel told Ellie the following day when she and Liam took a seat across from his desk, "I wasn't expecting to hear from you again."

"Well," Ellie said, keeping her chin high, "a lot has happened since the last time I saw you."

"A lot, indeed," he said, gesturing to a copy of the Daily Prophet on his desk. Ellie had seen it already. It addressed rumours that some of the healers at St. Mungo's had recognized Ellie as Sirius Black's daughter (a frequently recurring patient of theirs). No one had reached out to her for a quote, and she was glad.

"I want to be famous," she said. No point in skirting around it. "Famous enough that people will listen to what I have to say instead of what the Daily Prophet does."

Noel's shockingly blue eyes flashed at that. He was impressed, she could tell. "Well, that's good, because I want you to be famous, too. And thanks to the paper you apparently hate, you're already halfway there."

"It wouldn't be easy for me to get away from Hogwarts," she told him. "I doubt Dumbledore would care, but Umbridge—that's the High Inquisitor, or Undersecretary to the Minister, or whatever you want to call her—she hates me."

Noel looked amused by that. "Doesn't surprise me. I'll have our people talk to her."

Ellie nodded. "As far as the money's concerned, I don't really care about it. Whatever your standard offer is for someone in my position is fine. I do care about creative control, though. I'd get to write my own songs, right?"

"Well, sure—though I think there's some potential in the songs you've already written. Have you considered recording and releasing some of them?"

"No," she said immediately. "They aren't mine. They belong to the band."

Noel looked disappointed by that, though not altogether discouraged. "If your future songs are as good as your past ones, we won't have a problem. I do think we should debut you with a cover, though—something loud and proud, preferably from the Muggle world. Something that will get people's attention."

Ellie hadn't performed a cover since her first year at Hogwarts, and she didn't love the idea of her big musical debut consisting of unoriginal content. But she did want to get people's attention, so she asked, "Is there something you had in mind?"

"Well, I think that depends on the message you want to send." His eyes glinted as he added, "Though I think I already know."

Did he really? Was she so pathetically obvious that even this man who had known her for less than ten minutes—five of which he'd sexually harassed her—knew why she had come crawling back to him?

Without waiting for her response, he lifted his wand from his desk and waved it at a large, magical speaker set. As soon as he did, the song So What? by P!nk blared from it.

At first, Ellie had to fight not to cringe. She couldn't deny that the Muggle singer had a powerful voice, but it was the farthest thing from the type of music that Ellie had ever cared for.

And yet, as the lyrics started to sink in, she realized that it was the message she wanted to send to Fred: Screw you, I'm fine without you, and now I'm a rock star.

It might not be true, but it would hurt him.

And for the first time in Ellie's life, she wanted to hurt Fred Weasley.

Noel and his team moved fast, Ellie learned over the following week. By the time Harry and the others had returned from Grimmauld Place for the start of the new term, she had already received a letter from Noel, signed by both Umbridge and Dumbledore, inviting her back to the studio—to travel by Floo powder, of course, and not by Apparition—the following Saturday. She would spend the day there, then travel to one of the most popular wizarding nightclubs in London, where she would perform So What.

"That's incredible," Harry said when she showed him the letter in the common room the night of his return. "Wonder what they did to convince her."

"Threatened to go public if she didn't allow it, if I had to guess. You know—freedom of speech and all that."

Harry nodded, but there was unmistakable concern in his gaze. "Are you sure about this, Ellie? I mean, don't you have enough on your plate already without the added stress of being a world-famous pop star?"

She laughed wryly at that. "I'm sure, but I really don't want to talk about it. What about you? How was your Christmas?" She glanced carefully around the common room, and, deducing that they were sufficiently out of hearing range of prying ears, added, "How's Dad?"

"Not exactly thrilled to miss out on seeing you. Why didn't you come? Fred was nowhere to be found, you know."

"I'm sure he wasn't," she said through gritted teeth. "Getting ready for the big opening and all. How are you doing?"

"Well…" He hesitated, glancing around the same way she had moments earlier. "There is something I've been meaning to tell you, actually. You know the dream I had—the one about Mr. Weasley?"

"The one that saved his life?" she asked with a weak chuckle. "I think I recall."

"Well, before you came into Dumbledore's office that night, I shared this with him, only in… less simple terms. Thing is, I didn't just dream about him being attacked by a snake; I sort of… was the snake. Have been for months."

Ellie frowned, trying to process the relevance.

"We overheard the Order talking over the break," Harry continued. "They're worried these visions mean Voldemort's been getting into my head—that if I'm not careful, I'm at risk of… possession."

Ellie realized with a pang of fear for her friend that if the snake belonged to Voldemort, he had likely been possessing it the same way he had the potential to possess Harry. If Harry had some sort of link with Voldemort…

"You need to practice Occlumency," she said immediately. "With Snape."

He chuckled grimly at that. "So I've been told—by multiple people. I start lessons soon."

"Good," she said, nodding. "I know he can be a jerk, but it really helped me."

"Yeah," he said with thick sarcasm, "I'm really looking forward to it."

She laughed. "Have you talked to Ginny about this? She knows all about possession by Voldemort, you know."

He nodded. "She's really talked me off the ledge—she's good at that. I just wanted to keep you in the loop, too. Make sure you know not all of us are leaving you in the dark."

His words meant more to her than he could possibly know—and yet, they also saddened her.

She could still hardly believe that the person who had knowingly left her in the dark was the person she loved most in the world.

In the next morning's copy of the Daily Prophet, Ellie saw her face yet again. This time, though, it wasn't in conjunction with a headline calling her a liar or a fraud.

CATCH THE MUSICAL DEBUT OF THE MOST TALKED ABOUT TEEN IN THE WIZARDING WORLD, the advertisement read. THIS SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE SLIPPERY SNITCH.

"You're not the most talked about teen in the wizarding world," Katie teased when Ellie showed the rest of the B.A. the ad. "Harry is."

"That's a pretty picture of you," Liam said, taking the paper from her. "When was that taken?"

Liam's words took Ellie by surprise. Despite how close they had gotten so quickly, he had never really flirted with her. She had assumed it meant he simply wasn't interested, or that he'd been too close to Cedric to go after his girl in good conscience. It wasn't that calling a picture of her "pretty" constituted flirting, exactly, but she wasn't used to being talked to that way.

She found that she rather enjoyed it.

"Umm," she said, trying not to blush. "At the Quidditch World Cup, I think."

"That's right—the night you guys saved those Muggles from the drunken Death Eaters." He shook his head, looking amazed. "So cool."

For a moment, she let that get to her, too. She liked being appreciated—not only for her looks, but also by her bravery. She liked Liam, too—not remotely in the same way she liked Fred, but not in the same way she liked Neville, either.

But then she thought of that night, and of who had been there with her.

Cedric, Fred, and George.

The fact that not one of them was still with her—and that one was gone forever—was enough to make her forget all about whatever faint stirrings of feelings she'd let herself consider for Liam.

She simply wasn't ready.

If you can find a way to put Fred aside for a moment, I'm curious what your thoughts are on Liam, the B.A., and the rest of the world Ellie has started to build for herself. Healthy and sustainable, or unhealthy and unsustainable? I know the music thing is a bit farfetched, but it'll also be a lot of fun if you can find a way to get on board with it! Who doesn't love a good pop star superwitch?