AWOKEN BY A faint rustling of paper, George jolted up behind the curtains of his four-poster, his heart thumping wildly in his chest as the events of the previous day washed over him: Luxanna Black... The rumours... Moody... Ah, fuck... He touched a hand to his forehead to wipe the cold sweat, his head pounding. Judging by the pale ray of sunlight that crept through the gap in his curtain, it couldn't have been more than six o'clock, but he'd been in and out of sleep, haunted by strange dreams all night. Dreams that had summoned Black's half-conscious face into his mind, pestering him even in his sleep.
It happened during the free period yesterday. Fred and George, along with the other few sixth-year Quidditch members had gone to their pitch to kill some time before. After a gruesome two versus two defeat at the hands of Lee and Angelina, the group returned to the castle, with George promising to do a better job of blocking next time. They were on their way towards Gryffindor Tower for a change of clothes when they happened upon the scene in the corridor: some thirty dozen students had crowded in front of the entrance to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, blocking the passage entirely.
"I'm jealous," Fred chimed in. "You and I have never had an audience that large."
"Wonder what happened," said George.
"Probably Moody exercising the Cruciatus Curse on a first year or something," said Lee
Fred turned to the pair of older girls who were fleeing the scene at a quick stride. "I don't suppose you have any idea what all this is about?" he asked them, but they only fastened their pace, ignoring him.
It wasn't long before George found the answer himself. The humid air appeared to shrink into a bubble as they approached, confining him into a sense of unease and trepidation that the group before him seemed to share, with all their subdued mutterings and gasps. Still dripping mud all over the ground, George battled his way through the thick of the crowd until he arrived at the front, where a few students clung to the barrier between classroom and corridor as though there'd been an invisible wall placed there, preventing them from moving any further. Alicia, who had stayed behind at the school while they played, was one of the people among them.
"Hey, what—" he began, but cut himself short by the inward gasp that escaped him as he laid eyes on Black.
She lay sprawled across the classroom floor, back turned towards them, face planted on the ground and knees curled into her chest. The palms which were spread flat upon the parquet were as white as chalk, and he might have thought her dead if not for the strained breaths which emitted from her lungs in a struggle to keep her own consciousness afloat.
"What happened?" he managed to get out in a tone less eager than before.
"She was about to attack Professor Moody, I think—I don't know, I wasn't here, but he, uh, he got her first," Alicia explained, stuttering slightly.
"What?"
"He went to get help, I think. He told us not to touch her, and to stay outside until the Aurors arrive."
"Wh— Aurors?" George rounded on her, tilting his head down. "What? Why?"
She gave him a definitive look that he did not understand, brown eyes wide and inscrutable. "You don't know?" she simply said.
George returned the courtesy with a worried look of his own and a brisk shake of the head.
"Uhm..." Alicia fumbled in her robe's pocket and produced a paper—no, a flyer of sorts—and straightened it out in front of him.
His eyes flitted across the words, taking in the gist of it in a split second.
He blinked and reread, then again, struggling to contend with the facts presented to him.
When the truth dawned on him, it took the form of a creeping shudder that began from the base of his spine and quickly travelled up to his neck. George's mouth formed a word he could not manage to say, and so he shoved the paper back into Alicia's hand.
Across the room, Black gave a harsh gasp and a jolt ran up his spine once more. One hand clutched at the doorway, supporting his weight, while his feet shuffled slowly along the ground, feeling their way towards her. A struggle between reason and instinct raged inside him, between guilt and pride—one that had grown in familiarity over the months so that it had begun to define him like a fingerprint, and George, torn, hesitant, watched from behind his eyes as his feet pushed onwards against reason.
"Hey, don't!" Fred yelled out, seizing him by the shoulder from behind.
George shot him an apologetic look and shrugged out of his grip. A couple of students had turned to stare at him as he crossed the threshold, and his stomach twisted at the thought of them misconstruing his intentions, but the urgency of the situation demanded action and there was no time to dwell on that.
The further he drew near, the more distinct Black's jerky and feverish breathing became. George sank to his knees at her side and reached out to her, hesitating for a moment—his fingers almost touched her before he quickly withdrew them, as if the curse she was suffering might infect him upon contact. He frowned, his palm hovering above her before he, in a split second decision that required no forethought, promptly grabbed her with both hands and turned her around.
It was not a pretty sight. Black's features were contorted into a grotesque grimace, lips pulled back to reveal teeth clenched far too aggressively. Her eyes fluttered at a fast pace, occasionally revealing only the whites of her eyes.
"George, stop it, come on," said Fred, but George chose to ignore him.
The arms which were previously clutched around her stomach now grasped aimlessly at the air between them in search of a target, until they eventually, as slow and jagged as her movements were, found his sleeve and curled around his forearm. Pulling or pushing him away, he wasn't sure. For a brief instant he found himself staring into her eyes—the blue of her irises flashed white as they rolled back into her head, and she let out a hollow breathless cry that ripped through the silence, her nails digging into his forearm. George grimaced in pain as he unlocked each of her clamped fingers and then returned her arm to her side.
"Go and get somebody," he said to Fred, who still lingered on the doorway, his upper body halfway into the room, but feet planted firmly on the threshold.
"Who?"
"I don't know, a teacher or something!"
"I'm not leaving you there alone with her," he argued, and George noticed that his hand was clasped around his wand.
"Alicia?"
"I don't know..." Alicia replied, shuffling on her feet.
"Fine," said George resolutely. He sighed in defeat; he had a very good reason for not wanting Fred, or Alicia for that matter, to see this.
It was just like last time. He knew her weight now. Hooking one elbow underneath Black's knees, and the other below her shoulder blades, George hoisted her body from the ground. She seemed to settle as he carried her across the classroom, arms dangling limply at her sides, face half buried in the folds of his uniform. He didn't know whether that was a good sign or not. The look which Fred gave him was nothing short of scathing; not quite the fiery, explosive anger that he was used to seeing in his twin brother, but worse, because he was not accustomed to that look at all. It caused resentment to build in George's chest, because how could he deny him this one gesture of decency towards Black, after all the damage they had inflicted upon her? How could he hold it against George for being the sensible one, for not leaving her to writhe in agony on the floor, simply because he was so blinded by the ridiculous assumptions about him and Black that were so far removed from the truth they could've very well been residing in an entirely different galaxy?
George had no other way to articulate these thoughts than by shoving past Fred with a forceful bump to the shoulder, and saying, "Move."
"You've lost your mind," Fred said.
"If somebody asks, tell them I'm taking her to Madam Pomfrey," George yelled over his shoulder as he left.
As he rose from his bed, squinting through the pain in his head on that early Saturday morning, George could barely make out the shape of somebody sitting on the floor of the dormitory, and realised where the rustling noise had been coming from. It was Fred, he realised once he'd shifted the curtain slightly, surrounded by about a dozen crumpled pieces of parchment, his hand furiously scribbling at what appeared to be a letter.
Now, George had absolutely no intention of speaking to his brother. They'd had a horrible fight the previous evening, all to do with sounding out George's true motives for coming to Black's aid earlier that day. Fred argued, nonsensically, that this was because he'd grown to care for her, because their 'rivalry' somehow excited George, wanting to suggest that he did what he did out of the same lustful inclination that Fred had assumed motivated him to target her in the first place, and not because it had been the sensible thing to do, the right thing to do. It had been—what George had finally come to realise—what he owed to Black, after having compromised her safety so many times.
Unfortunately for George, he'd had a difficult time explaining any of this, because Fred had both Lee and Alicia backing him (Angelina had opted to keep out of their business) so that the consensus was that George was a massive idiot, wooed only by Black's supposed 'good looks,' who urgently needed to get his priorities right. After some rather uncharitable names being thrown around in the common room, he finally got fed up with being accused of thinking with his prick, and stormed off to bed. And so, George would have gladly gone the entire day without speaking to Fred, had he not seen, in the corner of one of the crumpled bits of parchment, to whom the letter he had been writing was addressed to.
"You're writing to the Ministry, you sly bastard!" exclaimed George, pushing back the curtain to fully confront his brother.
"Well spotted," said Fred dryly.
"You might as well be signing her death certificate!"
Fred nodded. A mocking display of nonchalance. "Mhm..."
"So what, you... you think you'll handle this all on your own? Play the big hero?"
"I'm not on my own," said Fred. "I've got the others backing me. We agreed after you'd gone to bed."
"Oh?" George raised his eyebrows in retort, despite the trepidation that rose in his chest. "And how do you even know it'll work?" he asked, stepping out of bed. "How do you know Dumbledore's not handled it already? How do you even know whether she's still at Hogwarts at this point?"
"I don't care if she's at Hogwarts or not," said Fred curtly. "I'm just seeing to it that everyone finds out."
"We don't even know if it's true— You're just... You're just looking for trouble at this point," argued George frantically, and when he received no response, he added, in a poor attempt at a threat, "Her family aren't going to let this slide, when they find out that you were the one responsible.'
"They'll be too busy being courted away by the Dementors before it comes to that."
George's stomach sank. He knew there was no use arguing without further incriminating himself even more, so he quietly sat down on the trunk opposite his brother. "Fine, then," he said dejectedly. "Do whatever you want. Have it be on your conscience if she comes after you. Just don't expect me to play along, I'm sick of being the voice of reason here."
This sentence had struck a nerve with Fred, evident by the slight twitch in his lip. "That's not going to happen," he replied, getting up from the floor. "You can fight it all you want— And I know you want to," he added before George could respond, "but I wouldn't count on anyone actually listening to you. Especially when they know what a massive liar you are."
"Ah, and how do you reckon that?" asked George obliviously.
"Angelina told me about Christmas Eve."
George froze.
For a moment, he could only stare completely dumbfounded at Fred. No… There's no way that you know... There's no way... He opened his mouth to speak, closing it again without finding any words to say. Angelina? How does Angelina know?
And with that, Fred folded the paper in his hands and walked out of the room.
Coming down into the dormitory some time later, George could see that despite the early hour, there were already a few people present, all gathered around a table in a conspiratorial fashion, and all flaunting the same, scrutinising glares at him. A very strange feeling rose in his stomach, an unfamiliar sort of fear, and he stood there, not knowing whether to move forward or run away. Being the centre of attention was nothing new to George, but this... this was an entirely different situation. Eventually, he found his feet moving towards the scene in front of him, while simultaneously battling against an overpowering urge to run away and curl up under his covers. After reaching the centre of the crowd, he stood awkwardly between Angelina and Alicia, both of whom were avoiding his gaze, and silently observed the proceedings. Harry and Ron were there, too, and Ciara, but no sign of Hermione—he found himself wishing that Hermione were there, to speak some sense into them.
The others took his attendance as a sign of affirmation, and proceeded to break into whispers of hushed agreement. It didn't take him long to work out what they were planning.
"...and we'll put the flyers in there, too, they're the best evidence we've got," Fred was saying.
"I don't like the bit that you wrote here, about her father's reputation. That could be construed as slanderous," Ciara was pointing out.
"Yes, but considering everything else we've done, it should be enough to make it clear that wasn't our intent," said Fred staunchly. "We can add something to clarify that afterwards, if necessary."
George could feel himself becoming increasingly agitated by the conversation, and by the hostility emanating from the rest of the group. But the guilt of being caught in a lie pressed down on him like a boulder, so he swallowed down his nerves and listened. What choice did he really have? She deserves it, he told himself. She deserves to be exposed for what she is.
"Hey, who made these flyers, anyway?" asked Harry suddenly.
A couple of people shrugged.
"We don't know," whispered Alicia. "But I saw a couple of Slytherins distributing them yesterday..."
"It's just that... what if whoever started this maybe... maybe wants all the credit for themselves?" asked Harry.
"Doesn't matter," said Lee, glancing between Fred and Harry, "doubt anyone'll see us come in—we'll be quick, yeah? Just a quick in and out of the Owlery?"
"Yeah," said Harry.
"I don't think Harry should come," declared Angelina, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or Ron, for that matter."
"What?" Harry snapped back, frowning.
"It's just that they're young, and with everything that's been going on, I mean… I know that most of the school is against Black, but let's not pretend that there are not a select few who are almost fanatically defending her. If they catch word of this they'll be all over us, and…"
"That's completely unfair," interjected Harry. "My reasons for doing this are as good as yours, if not better. And I can defend myself."
"I know, it's just…"
"I agree," said Fred. "Harry can decide for himself. And Ron, you alright?"
"Yeah," said Ron. "Yeah, I wanna come with Harry."
"Just... watch your backs, yeah?" suggested Fred slowly. "That goes for everyone."
The group nodded, Angelina sealed the letter, and with that, they moved out of the common room, George trailing slightly behind the rest of them. The morning sun filtered through the windows, its pallid rays illuminating the stone floors and walls and casting ominous shadows across the group's backs as they walked in silence. The collective anxiety which had settled over the school throughout the course of the previous day had become cemented by the morning, a suffocating sense of apprehension that seeped through the corridors like a thick fog, stifling all sound and movement around it. It was the kind of tension that could not be easily ignored—it had seeped into the very pores of Hogwarts and loomed in its corridors, manifesting in a brief exchange of obscenities that exploded over into hot tempers and fights in the hallway; the kind that fuelled rumours of Black's misdeeds and littered them across the castle, on flyers, and in whispers. The kind that created a society of 'us and them,' with an unnatural cohesion between students who would otherwise be at odds. The kind that had inspired Fred and his friends to write a letter to the Ministry, and the kind that had George wishing he could do something to stop it.
Even once they reached the tower, and as George's legs led him, almost automatically, up the narrow flight of stairs, he could not help but feel uneasy. Whatever evil was at work here, whatever fate had brought Luxanna Black's final hours upon herself, he knew that it was going to catch up to him eventually. With each step he took upwards, his apprehension grew stronger, until they reached the top and the owlery door creaked open, revealing before them an unexpected sight.
It was Black. She was standing there, dressed in a dark travelling cloak, a luggage bag in one hand and her wand pointed directly at them in the other.
"Stay back," she instructed, her eyes darting from one person to another, but despite the threatening tone of her voice, the way she clutched the hand that held the luggage bag was slightly defensive, almost unsure of itself. Like an animal cornered by hunters.
"What are you doing here?" asked Fred incredulously.
"She's making an escape—look!" said Angelina, pointing at the broom at Black's feet.
"No, you're not!" yelled Fred immediately. "Expelliarmus!"
"Protego!" countered Black, dispersing Fred's spell in a heartbeat.
For a moment, the tension rose, she and Fred measuring each other up, while everybody else waited with bated breath, wondering which of them would strike again.
To George's surprise, it was Fred who moved in first, aiming for a nasty hex at her legs, which Black had to physically swerve away from—it hit the wall behind her, dispersing into a flurry of sparks and masking Black's next move; as soon as she was able to steady herself, she waved her wand and shot a stream of blinding red light towards the spot where Fred was standing.
"Fred, watch out!" yelled Lee, pulling him away just in time.
George's heart began pounding uncontrollably. There was no way this would end well.
Fred side-stepped, aiming his wand determinately; their spells met halfway, sending lightning bolts flying through the air and ricocheting back and forth between them, neither of them holding back at this point. The scene grew steadily more dynamic, and George found himself stepping backwards involuntarily—torn between the question of his brother's safety and the prospect of Black's fate—while Angelina and Lee stepped in, backing Fred.
Black was dodging left and right, desperately trying to stay clear of any attack, but no sooner than the next attack ceased than another seemed to materialise before her eyes. Each blast from Fred's wand was met with a shielding charm, and most of Angelina and Lee's attacks missed entirely, instead bouncing off the walls and hitting the owl cages behind Black. It was chaos.
"Incendio!" she shrieked, managing to set Harry's robe alight. Harry winced, frantically waving the fabric away from his legs.
George quickly quenched the flames with a quick, "Aguamenti!"
Harry gave a quick nod, him and Ron backing away slightly so as to avoid the further onslaught of approaching fire.
George breathed a sigh of relief, and only then did he realise how tense he'd been. His senses returning to him, he finally understood that it was time to act before Black set them all ablaze. He pushed himself forward with a surge of adrenaline, taking a spot between Fred and Angelina, and carefully aimed a sweeping strike at Black's side, hoping to unbalance her enough for them to take her down. To his disappointment however, he only succeeded in knocking her luggage open, causing it to burst its contents into the air.
They were all cramped within the circular room, and it was getting harder and harder to avoid attacks; Black was holding up quite well for somebody so vastly outnumbered. It appeared that she was setting everything in the vicinity on fire in order to draw them out, and George was starting to wish that Fred had held off for a bit longer, and that nobody had broken in earlier, forcing both of the parties into this precarious position.
As the fight progressed, they were slowly closing in on her, and she had to resort to using only shield charms to hold off the attacks, which did not give her much time to recover. George raised his wand once more, readying his spell—this time, a simple 'Expelliarmus.' When Black saw it coming, she hastily flung up another shield, but the moment her eyes readjusted to the scene she noticed George, and she acknowledged his participation in this battle with a look of contempt on her face.
This diversion caused him to miss the next segment of the fight, and before he could register what was happening, Fred and Angelina were advancing on Black from both sides, preparing to tackle her—George could not stop his eyes widening in shock as he watched the scene unfold before him: Black, her face obscured by the flurry of light that ricocheted around the room, had raised her wand high into the air, then brought it down with a thunderous gust of wind that sent both Fred and Angelina hurtling away in opposite directions, the rest of the group falling back in fright as they shielded their faces from the wind.
George turned just in time to see Fred hit the wall behind him, writhing and clutching at his head.
"Fred!" he shouted, darting to his brother's side. As Fred pulled away his hand, George saw, with a pang of horror, that his fingers were coated with blood. He dropped to his knees beside his brother. "Fred? Are you alright?"
With an air of determination that belied her current state, Black advanced on the group, brandishing her wand and readying herself to strike at the two of them. Propelled by hot, blinding anger, George jumped to his feet and lunged at her, seizing her with a grip to the collar. Together they staggered backwards into the owl cages. "How dare you?! How fucking dare you?!" he shrieked, his face contorted in rage, spit flying as he spoke. "You're gonna regret that, do you hear me?!"
Before he could manage anything however, the door burst open, and in came Snape.
George was still on her, hoisting her up by the cloak's collar and breathing down into her face, and she... she wore this look of grim satisfaction that unnerved him far too much, a hint of a smirk visible only in her eyes, tamed in stoic defiance of his rage, yet nonetheless vaguely accompanied by a faint trace of something else... something that tasted keenly of defeat. But she made no effort to free herself; instead, she allowed herself to hang limp in George's grasp, holding his gaze as if pleading for him to do his worst. George's fingers clenched deeper into a fist, aching.
Then he felt the world tumble beneath him as Snape yanked him away.
"What... is the meaning of this?" he spoke quietly as he took in the scene, but with such vehemence that caused the group to step back. Then he glared at George, his eyes darkening with a sense of righteous fury.
Black raised her chin defiantly: pride, contrasted by sluggish movements brought on by the sheer exertion of the fight and the hand which now caressed her throat where her collar had dug into it. Half of her cloak had been burnt to bits, and her luggage lay wide open with the contents sprawled all around the room.
"She went at us first, Professor!" said Alicia, her tone pleading.
"That's not exactly true," countered Ciara, earning her a pointed glare from Alicia. "What?" she continued, shrugging her shoulders. "He'll believe her over us, anyway."
"We were just trying to send a letter out, and she was here, so we..." Lee began to say, but was promptly interrupted by Snape.
"So you thought you would play Aurors and detain her by yourselves," he said derisively. "How heroic. It ought to earn you the front cover of the Daily Prophet... Give me that!" He seized the envelope from Angelina's hand, practically crushing it in his grip. "Weasley. Are you injured?"
"No," said Fred curtly, the lack of an honorific gone unnoticed by Snape who had already rounded on the rest of them.
"Very well. You lot..." he addressed the Gryffindors with a menacing wave of his hand, "clear out at once! You, Black... Come with me." With the fervour in which he said this, it was unclear whether Black would be facing an expulsion, or an encouraging pat on the back. Nonetheless, she seemed more than glad to follow.
George was back on the ground, cradling his wounded brother. "You shouldn't've..." he began but was quickly interrupted.
"Oh, shut up," Fred muttered, clearly having a guess at what George was about to say. He was wrong, but it did not matter at this moment.
They did what they could to bandage Fred's head before hoisting him up and delivering him to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey said that he was lucky to have not suffered a concussion, and would need several stitches, but apart from some bruises, his head was fine. In truth, the biggest injury here had been the blow dealt to George's relationship with his brother, because for the next few hours as Fred lay there, in the very same bed which Black resided in the day before, he would not so much as acknowledge his presence, let alone speak to him.
The shame which had accumulated throughout the day intruded upon George as he sat with his head in his hands by Fred's side, bringing with it a sense of inadequacy which he had never felt before. The rift that tore between himself and his brother appeared, under the interrogative light, quite unbridgeable, and all of his memories of Black now lay coated in a layer of tarnish that upon inspection bared a blade of malice he hadn't previously known was there. All this time, he'd regarded her as a target of his mischief, somebody to get a reaction out of—and he did enjoy provoking her, that much was true—but now saw clearly the extent of her capacities, which made him reconsider the thought of ever having approached her in the first place, because if the rumours were true—and the evidence of his brother's wounds proved them to be so—she was indeed dangerous.
And to top it all off, he'd been found out as a liar, which, for someone who had always prided himself on his utmost honesty to his brother, was a bitter pill to swallow. A loathsome realisation dawned on him as he revisited the day's events with a certain degree of hindsight: that night of the ball, Black did what she had done simply to embarrass him; she had seen one of his Gryffindor friends approaching, most likely Alicia herself—considering how cheesed off she had been later that evening—and took this opportunity to ruin what she must have assumed was his relationship with a girl. Instead of telling it the way it happened, George had bent over backwards in a conflict of his own making, trying to discern what Black's motives had been, when her sole mission was, and always had been, the prospect of his downfall.
There had also been the incident at the World Cup just before the beginning of the school year, and he could only wonder how it all connected. Could it be true, then, that You Know Who was on the rise? Were the Blacks... were they assisting him somehow? Had they been the ones to cast the snake into the sky that night? Perhaps that was the reason that Black had been so secretive, so conniving. Perhaps she was collaborating with You Know Who's supporters in order to bring people down. And George would have certainly been high up on her list…
His head pounded.
Dumbledore will handle it... he thought to himself, but there was a sliver of doubt there; why hadn't Dumbledore acted yet? Why did he leave them to fend for themselves with a threat on the loose?
What would happen to Black now that she had been found out?
"Still here?" asked Fred hazily. He had been in and out of sleep for the better part of the day, all thanks to the severe calming draught Madam Pomfrey had insisted upon.
"Yeah," muttered George, lifting his head from the hand which he'd been resting it on. "Still angry?"
"Yeah." Fred chuckled, but there was no humour to it.
George took a deep sigh in a fruitless effort to gather his composure. "Look, I'm sorry for... for lying to you." He stammered in the middle of his sentence, feeling that he was guilty of more than just lying.
"I know you are, mate," replied Fred. "It doesn't help."
This reply stung more than Fred could possibly know. It was like a coffin lid sealing itself shut on every attempt at repentance. Still, he had the overwhelming need to explain himself, to try. "It's not what you think it is," he began, but found that words were very hard to come by, "I'm not..." he trailed off, his throat feeling dry.
Fred did not look at him. It took him a moment to reply, but when he did his voice was as cold and unforgiving as ever. "As if you'd ever admit it if you were," he said, causing George to clench his teeth as that familiar irritation settled in the pit of his stomach again.
"As if you would ever believe me if I said I wasn't!" He was on his feet now, his breathing heavy, his hands curled by his sides.
The tension culminated in the brief interchange of words unspoken. The only sound that could be heard in the otherwise silent hospital wing was the steady drip of the tap water coming from one of the faucets. Finally, Fred cleared his throat.
"Well... we can just forget about it. By tomorrow she'll definitely be gone."
George breathed a sigh of relief, allowing his hands to relax slightly. "Yeah," he agreed.
But relief was a short-lived affair, one which he did not find any solace in, for he did not deserve it.