*Trigger warning - this chapter has a slightly graphic scene involving a cut on the arm and blood. It's nothing too crazy but I just wanted to throw that disclaimer out there in case anyone is uncomfortable with that kind of thing :)

Chapter 3

Vivian nearly jumped out of her skin as George crashed into the seat next to her in the Great Hall. She had been deep in conversation with Alicia and Angelina about Cedric Diggory, a 5th year Hufflepuff who Vivian had seen in the library surrounded by a hoard of girls from every Hogwarts house, a sight that Vivian didn't need to be told was a rarity at the school. Curious, she had asked her friends when she joined them at the Gryffindor table for dinner, thinking he must be some kind of English wizard celebrity. Much to her surprise, Alicia and Angelina had launched into a lengthy explanation of the man, explaining that he was a student and had been the object of half the school's affections since his second year. Angelina made sure to emphasize his quidditch prowess while Alicia mostly just gushed over his looks.

Looking at him across the Great Hall now, she couldn't help but agree. The guy was an absolute looker, though she had always been weak around a chiseled jawline.

The most entertaining part of the conversation though, by far was Alicia and Angelina's recounting of the multiple Hogwarts students that had thrown themselves at him. According to her friends, it was not uncommon for Cedric to find notes in his bag asking to meet, gifts from secret admirers in the post, and plenty of girls who "just so happened" to be walking in the same direction as him no matter where he was headed.

"He definitely seems to enjoy the attention," Vivian remarked as she watched a 4th year Ravenclaw shove her way into a seat next to Cedric while the girl she'd displaced glared at her.

She had been so caught up in their conversation about Hogwarts' most wanted that she hadn't seen the twins and Lee walk up to join them at the table.

"Jesus," she breathed as her heart beat returned to a normal pace.

"What's with you three?" Angelina asked, noticing the distress on their faces.

"It's horrible," Fred nearly wailed, slamming his head down to the table.

"Probably the worst thing that's ever happened to us," George agreed, looking as stricken as Fred sounded.

"What happened?" Vivian looked at them in concern. In the month she had known Fred and George, she had never seen them so devastated. Upset, sure. Annoyed, definitely. But looking at them now it was clear that something was really wrong.

"Our recipe book was taken," George finally mumbled after a tense moment of silence.

Vivian made a noise of understanding as she looked at the twins with sympathy. They had shown her the book only a week earlier, explaining that it was the master document, the holy bible of every novelty item, every practical joke, every prototype that had ever passed through a Weasley twin's mind. The book was nothing short of Fred and George's life work. Containing not only the instructions and ingredients needed for their invented curiosities but also the twins notes, detailing the research they had done, the experiments tested, and results observed as the twins improved their products and pranks. Vivian knew that this book was nothing short of priceless to the both of them.

"NO!" Alicia cried, sympathetic to the twins' pain.

"What happened?" questioned Angelina as Fred and George groaned again at their situation.

"They were setting up a prank on Snape. He caught them and when he saw the book he confiscated it," Lee said with a frown and halfhearted shrug.

"I shouldn't have even had the bloody thing out," Fred moaned, head still in his hands on the table. "I was just double checking we had the right amount of butterscotch!"

Vivian was immensely curious to know what kind of prank the twins had had planned for the potions professor that not only required butterscotch, but a specific amount of butterscotch. She thought better of asking though, feeling it would only worsen their already dire moods.

"Can't you get it back?" she asked instead. "Sneak into Snape's office or something?"

"That's the problem. We tried that already. It isn't in his office. And every summoning or tracking spell and charm we've tried has come up empty," sighed George as he morosely stabbed at the potatoes on his plate with his fork.

"The god damned bastard must have hidden it someplace warded," said Fred, finally lifting his head up to glare at Snape, who appeared to be having a tense conversation with Professor Lupin at the faculty table.

"And there's no way he's likely to give it up anytime soon," agreed George. "All that work just…gone," his head now in his hands.

Vivian considered this. If they were right that Snape had been keeping the book someplace warded, then no run of the mill tracking spell or summoning charm was going to find it. If they really wanted to locate the book they would probably need something stronger. Something darker.

She grimaced. She knew a spell that would definitely find their book.

Looking at the twins now, she weighed her options. She could either let this be and allow the twins to mourn the loss of their work. They were both smart. Vivian knew that it wouldn't take them long to rebuild. Reverse engineer the notes they had lost. She could choose to just be a good friend to them, in their time of need. Offer to help redo their experiments, maybe even agree to take notes for them as they worked. That would be the kind thing for her to do.

Or… she could help them with this little problem, because really it was a little problem. A simple lost book - how easy is that? And if she had the solution that would completely fix the issue, why wouldn't she at the very least offer her services to the poor boys?

Okay, so she knew why. It may be considered a scary spell. In some circles. A toeing the line of blood magic spell. She had not brought up her stance on the Dark Arts since running away from the conversation with George a few weeks ago and she wasn't sure the reaction the twins would have if she suggested they use it now.

And who was she kidding? She could admit that she didn't want to scare them off. Unenthusiastic though she might have been initially, Vivian really liked Fred and George. She liked the entire friend group and the Gryffindor house. She'd had camaraderie before, her family friends growing up mostly. People with whom she had essentially been born and reared with, who's parents had grown up with her parents, and their parents' parents and so on. But being with the Gryffindors made her feel seen in a way she had never felt before. They understood her sense of humor, her attitude, her. Their friendship warmed her, put her in a better mood than she had been in what felt like years.

The worry that she could lose that feeling so soon after acquiring it gnawed at her mind as she stared at the backs of Fred and George's heads as the group made their way back to the Gryffindor tower after a dismal meal spent mostly in silence.

While Lee, Alicia, and Angelina split from the group once arriving, opting to get a head start on a particularly difficult paper they were assigned in their Magical Theory class, Fred and George told her they were going to bed. This day had been long enough.

The look of defeat on their faces and the gloominess of their voices felt like a punch in the gut. They were some of the sweetest guys she had ever met. And they were talented. She had seen their notes in their recipe book, the absolute care and detail they put into each and every thing they created had struck her. Why do they deserve to lose years of their work? Work they lived for. The years they spent scraping every penny to fund their experiments. Years recovering from various ailments they had inflicted on themselves when a prank went wrong. Oh, hell -

"I think I could help you get your book back," she murmured, almost too quietly for the twins to hear.

They both turned slowly to look at her. Identical blank expressions on their faces.

"Vivian, don't take this the wrong way, Love," began George slowly.

"But we've exhausted every avenue. We've tried spells and charms and we still can't even find where he's keeping it," Fred finished in an exasperated tone.

She rolled her eyes at them.

"Well, like I said you have major holes in your education," she dismissed their brush off with a wave of her hand.

Fred crossed his arms and huffed at her while George just looked at her silently, with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Meet me in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom in 15 minutes," she ordered. "It's late enough and everyone avoids that bathroom anyways so it should be empty," she added when Fred opened his mouth to object to meeting in a girl's lavatory.

Before they could say anything else or argue with her plan, Vivian was rushing through the portrait hole, towards the dungeons.

0-0

Locating the classroom with the stained glass window, she again stepped inside and closed the door behind her, whispering a quiet Lumos with a wave of her hand to ignite the candles on the wall, waiting for the purple strobe light to appear and show her where the button presently lay.

She had been here many times since discovering the secret entrance earlier that month. Through her visits, she'd not only discovered that the classroom door had to be closed and the candles had to be lit for the purple strobe light to appear, but the person casting the spell also had to light the candles wandlessly, a requisite Vivian had only discovered by accident when she had cast the spell with her wand one day without thinking. The strobe light had not appeared, despite the candles being lit, taking Vivian a just slightly embarrassing amount of time to figure out. Once she had connected the dots though, she was thrilled. A spell distinction like that meant it was unlikely that many Hogwarts students (or even faculty) would stumble upon this secret, as attached to their wands as they all were. This place was all hers.

She had also come to find out that the location of the brick she had to press to activate the stairs changed with each visit, a feature that was only inconvenient when the brick was too high on the wall for her to reach. She'd had to cast a levitation charm in those instances, which she found just a bit tedious.

Even so, she had definitely been taking notes for if she ever needed to keep something well hidden. Truly, the craftsmanship of this room impressed her. Someone had clearly gone to great lengths to keep the place a secret.

Now as she descended the stairs that were quickly becoming familiar to her, she couldn't help smiling. She may have been putting herself out there more (getting soft as Lizette would have said), but she still had her secrets. Most presently, the hidden room at the end of the corridor she was currently walking, the stairs having lifted up behind her.

It had only been hers for just under a month, but it already felt like home to her. Quiet and dark, with little furnishings other than a handful of who knows how old cushions surrounding a low granite table, it was the sanctuary she hadn't known she needed. A secluded place to go when the world around her got to be too much.

She suspected this had been some kind of spell room. A place for a wizard to go when they needed to perform an act of magic in private. The scratches on the table and scorch marks on the ceiling, all appearing in various states of age, told her this wasn't just a room to read in.

Walking briskly over to the table, she grabbed her apothecary box and quickly jogged back through the corridor. She told the twins to meet her at Myrtle's in 5 minutes but she had greatly underestimated how long it would take her to retrieve the necessary supplies, and she still had to stop by Snape's office.

Hustling through the halls, she tried to appear normal when passing any prefects or professors. She didn't think it was against the rules for her to have this stuff at school. Well…most of it was probably okay. There were definitely a few ingredients in her collection that some may frown on, but hey, if she's caught she's caught.

Finally making it to Myrtle's bathroom, she burst through the door to see Fred and George already inside. Fred was in the same crossed armed position as he was when she left them in the common room, while George was leaning casually against the sink. Their curiosity was plain on their faces as they watched her set the ginormous box on the floor.

"Okay," she smiled up at them, slightly out of breath from her earlier fast pace.

"We told you we already tried tracking spells, Vivian," Fred admonished seeing the contents of her supplies and not bothering to hide the impatience in his voice.

"This is a different kind of spell. It's ah…well it's - it's - it's sort of a Dark Magic spell I guess," she stuttered before settling on the truth. Best to just rip the bandage off anyway, she supposed. "It'll find your book. Protective warding or not."

The twins stared at her on the floor for a long moment. She was relieved that they didn't look immediately terrified or disgusted. She decided that it was also a good sign that they hadn't stormed out of the bathroom yet

"And this is something you learned to do in school?" asked George finally, the incredulity evident in his tone as he and Fred sat down opposite her in the middle of the room.

She sighed. Right. This question.

"Sort of, not really," she muttered, as she opened her kit, letting the shelves inside fully expand backwards, displaying her vast collection. "I picked it up here and there."

On her knees, she backed away slightly from the twins opposite her to create a wider circle. Choosing an opaque red vial from her apothecary kit, she dabbed out enough of the liquid to coat the ends of her fingertips and began using her hand as a makeshift paintbrush.

"What is that?" Fred recoiled slightly, a nervous tone now in his voice.

"Bat blood," Vivian answered shortly. "For the sight," she looked up, giving him a quick smile before returning to her task, as the twins watched with growing interest.

She was drawing the circle the group was sitting around and dividing it into four parts with two lines. Within each quarter, she drew a different symbol. In the center of the circle, where the two lines met, she placed a large, black ceramic bowl. She sat back on her heels as the twins moved to sit one on each side of her, outside the circle.

"Okay," she said again, as she wiped her hand off on a towel. "Pretty straightforward spell, doesn't require anything too difficult to find," she explained to them as she tied her hair back and began removing various bottles from her kit, which had begun to draw the interest of the twins.

"Merlin Vivian, how much shit do you have in here?" Fred exclaimed as he hovered over her looking at the jars.

"What's this?" George asked, suddenly reaching under her arm into the box to grab the pack of cigarettes she kept in there. "'Natural American Spirits'?" he read aloud from the blue packaging, gasping in mock horror as he flipped the top open

"Cigarettes?! Vivian I am just SO disappointed in you!"

"Tsk tsk tsk, Vivian," Fred scolded, shaking his head in faux dismay. "We thought you were better than that."

She rolled her eyes at them in annoyance.

"They're for the spell," she snapped, snatching the cigarettes from George's hand ignoring the grins they both gave her at her obvious irritation.

She really didn't smoke all that much. A drag here and there when she was stressed. Or angry. Or sad. Or overwhelmed. Or drunk. Okay so they were shame cigarettes, she wasn't too proud to admit that. She was only human. She had flaws for god's sake.

"Uh huh and pray tell, what magical property do cigarettes hold?" George smirked at her, though his eyes remained kind.

"Simple, they keep me from feeling the strong urge to hex the both of you", she retorted, huffing and rolling her eyes at the two.

Retrieving the zippo lighter from her apothecary box, Vivian flipped the top open and lit the cigarette in her mouth in a practiced motion. She closed her eyes and took a long drag, before tilting her head back and exhaling from her mouth and nose, towards the ceiling above her. She definitely needed this.

"Okay," she said a final time as she opened her eyes and looked at the twins. "Let's do this."

0-0

"It really wasn't anything formal like you're imagining. It's not like I sat down and was taught one day. It's all just stuff I've learned," Vivian explained with a shrug to George, who did not seem to be able to let go of the idea of her learning the Dark Arts in school.

"But what does that mean?" he countered. "You had to learn it from somewhere. Who taught you all this?" he asked, gesturing to the painted circle and the bowl that had begun to make an odd fizzling sound as Vivian added the ingredients.

She couldn't help but laugh at the exasperated expression on his face. She liked getting a rise out of him. And if he was going to hound her about her life, she was going to have a little fun with it.

"I don't know George, really. It's just stuff I picked up over the years ," she looked back at the bowl still smiling "I think my brother showed me this one? Or maybe it was my friend Lizette? Point is, it wasn't a memorable moment for me," smiling up at him now.

George was quiet for a minute.

"I didn't know you had a brother," he eventually said, staring at her as he waited for her response.

She looked up sharply from the beetle eyes she had been counting. She hadn't realized she'd even mentioned her brother. Though she wasn't overly surprised at her slip. With his birthday nearing in November, Eli had been on her mind more and more frequently in the past few days.

Being without her parents had been difficult of course, but being without her older brother was a gut wrenchingly, lonely feeling. He had always been there for her - standing up to older kids who picked on her, taking the blame for things she'd done so she wouldn't get in trouble with their parents, comforting her when she woke up scared in the night while they were away. Her parents being gone for months at a time throughout her childhood left Eli as the one and only constant, her rock that had always stood present in her life. Well, until –

"I never mentioned him?" she asked, interrupting her own thoughts before they could spiral too deeply, in a tone that Vivian hoped was convincingly nonchalant.

"You did not. Right Fred?"

"Right."

"Riiiiiiight" she said, dragging the word out and concentrating on stirring the concoction in the bowl to avoid looking at them. "I guess it never came up," she lied, well aware that George had asked her on the second day of classes if she had any siblings after he'd pointed out all the Weasley's at Hogwarts to her. A question she had quickly said no to. In her defense, she did not technically have a brother anymore. A living one anyway.

"I don't think so," said George at the same time that Fred asked "What are you putting in now?"

Vivian, grateful for the excuse to change the subject, latched onto Fred's question.

"Because the tracking spells didn't work, we need to try going at this a different way. We aren't looking for where the book is, we're looking for what Snape did with it."

"Which means?"

"Which means we gotta get inside Snape's mind and into his memories. And to do that, I had to pick up a little bit of Severus to help us get there," she said, dumping the hairs she had collected from the professor's desk chair into the bowl, turning the contents a greenish gray color.

"Perfect," she called in a singsong voice as the brothers stared mesmerized at the bowl.

Digging again through her apothecary box, she located a black magic marker which she used to draw a copy of the circle from the floor onto her mid forearm.

Setting the marker down, she straightened up to look at the twins who were staring back at her expectedly.

"Last thing to do is activate the spell," she said with a nervous smile. They were not going to like this next part. "Hand me the knife?" she said to George, who still held on to the knife she had asked him to wash earlier.

George hesitated, frowning a bit. Vivian had begun to wonder if he could see the worry on her face when he finally turned the handle towards her to take hold of.

Quickly, before either of them could try to stop her, she raised the arm with the circle symbol over the bowl, and with one swift motion cut a deep line across the circle, yelling "Chaza!" as she did so and positioning her arm so that the resulting blood flowed into the bowl.

"Merlin!" Yelled Fred as George screamed "Vivian!"

The two made to step forward, as she quickly tried to reassure them.

"It's okay, it's okay!" she insisted, trying to wave them off with the hand that held the knife. "It just needs a specific amount of blood to work. If it's too little the spell won't be powerful enough and this would be a wash."

"If we had known-!" yelled a still frantic George at the same time Fred said "How do you know when it's enough?" looking at her nervously.

"Trust me you'll know," she murmured as she focused on the bowl in front of her.

"Fred!" interjected George, the distress in his voice reaching a slightly desperate pitch. "We can't just let her - "

He was cut off by a sharp gasp from Vivian as the potion began releasing a strange green smoke into her face which had been leaning over the bowl. Her face tipped upwards towards the ceiling, her eyes rolled back into her head showing only the whites and the knife she had been holding clattered to the ground as she remained eerily still from her seat in front of the spell.

She was flying.

Soaring through the halls of Hogwarts while the spell located Snape, finding him returned to his office to grade papers. Slamming into the professor, she opened her eyes to a dim bedroom, decorated in a drab mix of moss green and black. Snape's quarters, she guessed.

As she watched the memory through Snape's eyes, she saw the professor set an ancient book bag onto the desk in the far corner of the room. From it, he pulled a giant leather bound book, that had scraps of pages stitching out haphazardly on all sides - the twin's recipe book.

Excited, she watched as Snape pulled a massive trunk out from under his bed and placed the book on top of what looked to be a large collection of confiscated goods. Closing the trunk's lid, the potions professor secured the lock with a simple black skeleton key that appeared to have a metal figure of a cardinal as a handle. She watched with bated breath as he slid the key onto a large ring, which he promptly returned to his pocket.

Bingo.

0-0

Pushing past Fred to stand directly next to her, George attempted to heal the still gushing cut on Vivian's arm with his wand, but either through the strength of the magic she was under, or his lack of skill in healing, the wound would not close.

Groaning in frustration and desperation, George quickly pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around her arm as a makeshift bandage and tourniquet pulling as tight as possible to put pressure on the cut.

"What the hell do we do?" he nearly shrieked looking up at Fred who was wide eyed and frozen in place. "Fred, what do we do?"

"I don't know! I don't know!" he said with a gulp, his face mirroring the panic George felt.

Suddenly and without warning, she was back. Shaking her head slightly as her eyes rolled back to their usual position.

"Black trunk under his bed in his quarters. Locked with a skeleton key that he keeps on a ring in his pocket. The key was shaped like a bird at the end, a cardinal I think", she said immediately in a flat voice.

She blinked and looked over to George, who was still holding his shirt in a vice grip around her forearm.

"Why are you shirtless?" she asked, her tone now quizzical. "You have totally ruined that shirt," she chastised, finally looking down at the cloth wrapped around her arm.

George looked at her like she had lost her mind. He didn't give one bloody damn about the stupid shirt.

"Vivian, we need to go to Madam Pomfrey right now. I couldn't heal you and you're still bleeding," his concern not quelled by her uncanny calmness.

"Oh, probably because of the spell," she shrugged, making no moves to follow his insistence. "It'll heal but will just take a little longer than usual."

George had to fight back the aggravation that threatened to bubble up at this. He wondered if she was in shock.

"So let's go then," Fred said firmly, finally breaking his silence.

"Oh. It's really not a big deal you guys. I have bandages and stuff…" she said gesturing to her apothecary box still next to her. "And I know a good healing potion I can make."

"Vivian," George said, grabbing the hand on her uninjured arm to get her to look at him. His other hand had begun to cramp up with the strain of keeping his shirt twisted on her.

"Please. Please let us take you to Madam Pomfrey. It'll make me feel a whole lot better," he pleaded, looking into her eyes.

She blinked at him.

"Okay," she said finally, still holding his eyes with hers. "Let me just put my stuff ba-"

"No!" they both barked at her in unison, halting her movement again towards her kit.

"George is going to take you to Madam Pomfrey and I will bring your supplies back to Gryffindor and take care of…all this" Fred said, gesturing to the floor around them

Nodding gratefully at his twin, George quickly ushered Vivian out the bathroom door with one hand on her back and the other still securely on her wrist.

Speed walking her down the hall towards the hospital wing, George was struggling to get his heartbeat to return to a normal speed.

"I'm really okay," she said sincerely, as if sensing his thoughts. "I've had much worse."

"Vivian, you just scared the absolute hell out of me. I would have never agreed to the spell if I'd known you were going to get hurt," he frowned at her, applying soft pressure with the hand on her back to get her to walk faster.

"Well, yeah that's why I didn't tell you," she grumbled, looking away from him.

His jaw clenched as he kept his eyes forward. She was going to put him in an early grave.

Madam Pomfrey bustled over to them as they entered her hospital wing, shooting an odd glance at George, who was still shirtless.

"Good Merlin, what happened here?" she tsked as she grabbed Vivian's arm to examine, allowing George to finally release his grip on her.

"Fell," she replied simply, earning her another odd look from Madam Pomfrey.

After seating her, Pomfrey quickly applied a healing salve that George thought looked suspiciously like toothpaste to Vivian's wound then wrapped a thick bandage around her arm several times.

As she wrote the two of them a pass to excuse them being out past curfew, she explained that Vivian may have to reapply the salve a few times before the cut was fully gone. George ignored the told you so look Vivian gave him in response to this, choosing instead to ask Madam Pomfrey if she had a shirt he could borrow to avoid walking through the castle half naked a second time.

After taking his pick of the lost and found and tossing his bloodied one in Madam Pomfrey's garbage bin, the pair headed back to Gryffindor Tower, hoping that Fred had managed to get Myrtle's bathroom back in order and was in their dorm waiting for them.

Neither of them said anything for the first few minutes of the walk.

"Sorry," she said quietly.

He looked at her in confusion.

"For scaring you. And not telling you. I should have warned you what the spell was."

He let out a long breath and grabbed her hand to stop her walking.

"It would have been nice to have a heads up. I'm glad you're okay."

She looked away from him guiltily.

"I…" she began, reluctantly.

"Yeah?" he coaxed when she had been silent for a minute.

"I forget sometimes…" she trailed off looking away from him again.

George sighed once more. This was like pulling teeth.

"You forget what, Viv?" he asked gently, moving his head to her line of sight, forcing her to look at him.

Now it was her turn to sigh.

"I forget that not everyone sees things the way I do. I forget what normal means," she chuckled humorlessly.

George stared at her, trying to decode whatever cryptic message this was. He just didn't understand her when she talked like this. But he wanted to. He wanted to understand her so badly it was driving him insane.

Picking up the hand on her injured arm, he ran his thumb over her knuckles.

"I like the way you are," he said softly, making her look up at him in surprise.

"Come on," he brightened, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he began to walk them forward again.

"Besides, I think we sort of glossed over the fact that you found our bloody recipe book," giving her a one arm squeeze as they walked.

She smiled up at him again, with that twinkle in her eyes that made his chest burn.

"All in a day's work," she laughed. "But it'll probably be even harder to actually get it back from him," she added, suddenly serious.

George made a noise of agreement.

"It may be, but we never back down from a challenge," he said with a wink.

"Well then I'm excited to see what the Weasley twins come up with next!" she replied, grinning at him now.

He gulped at the spike his heart rate experienced when she smiled at him like that. If she kept smiling at him like that, with her eyes twinkling in that way…

He was screwed. So bloody screwed.