Chapter Two
"Didn't we tell you to stay behind, Victoria?"
Mr. Weasley was rubbing at the bridge of his nose in frustration, but Tori didn't seem to notice — or care.
"Yes, well, clearly, I didn't listen," she said flippantly, looking around the ruined living room before her in distaste. "Did you let Fred and George blow something up again?"
These words seemed to cause Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia a great deal of alarm, and they shrank back even further against the wall behind them. Nessa had still not removed her hand from her mouth and had a hard time keeping a straight face as Tori made eye contact with her. Tori was a master at ignoring the awkwardness around her and grinned widely at her from across the room. Despite the invisible demarcation line that had been drawn between the Weasleys and the Dursleys, Tori walked across the room as confidently as if she owned the place and wrapped her in a hug.
Uncle Vernon seemed to take this as confirmation of his worst fears, and looked Tori up and down with such distaste that Fred glared at him harshly.
"You don't look like a Weasley," he said distastefully, as if her presence were of a great deal of irritation for him.
Tori did not look at all like the Weasleys.
The Weasleys had always been easily recognizable by the characteristic red hair and freckles. Tori had neither of these things. Her face was blemish free, her hair a curly black that traveled mid-way down her back. She was tall, only a head shorter than Fred and George, and her gray eyes were heavy-lidded. She had a look about her that most men liked — curvy, soft, and confident in herself and her beauty. She was stunningly beautiful in a way most women would have killed to be.
It was no surprise that Uncle Vernon had recognized the difference immediately.
Tori pulled back from Nessa with a cold smile that immediately put Nessa on edge. Turning to face her relatives, she looked Uncle Vernon up and down in the same way he had her and then did the same to Aunt Petunia. Fred and George coughed to hide their laughs as Uncle Vernon's face purpled and Aunt Petunia straightened indignantly.
Tori merely raised a haughty brow.
"That's because I'm not a Weasley," she said smoothly.
"This is Tori," said Mr. Weasley kindly, his earlier frustration seeming forgotten in the awkwardness that was permeating. Nessa marveled at how good he was at pretending not to notice it. "I'm sure you've heard a great deal about her from Nessa. We adopted her after —"
"After my father murdered thirteen people," Tori cut in smoothly, an evil grin blossoming on her beautiful face as the Dursleys paled. It was only half-truth. Her mother had died far after her father had been convicted of murder and she'd moved in with the Weasleys at that point. Mr. Weasley gave her a warning look, but Tori ignored it and looked at Nessa thoughtfully. "Do you think being a mass murderer is hereditary?"
Nessa pressed her lips together and closed her eyes to keep from laughing at how horrified her relatives looked at the realization that they had a murderer's daughter within their home. Harry was grinning widely, and had to look hastily away from Ron before they could start laughing.
"Your trunks?" Mr. Weasley said pointedly to Nessa and Harry, clearly trying to maintain relative peace.
"Upstairs," Nessa choked out, shoving the laugh that was bubbling up back down her throat.
"We'll get them," Tori said at once, meeting the twins' eyes and tilting her head in the direction of the hallway. The twins obeyed with wide grins, winking at Harry as they passed him. Tori smiled coldly at the Dursleys again and followed the twins, grabbing Nessa's wrist to pull her along behind them. Tori did not speak until they were on the stairs, where she ran a lazy finger along the banister as they ascended and pulled her finger away to look at it once they'd reached the top. Her face furrowed in distaste when there was not a single speck of dust to be found. "It's like a museum, this place."
The disgust was very clear in her voice, even if her face wasn't already a clear indication of how much this displeased her. Nessa snorted and raised an eyebrow at her.
"They cleaned when they realized you were coming," she said, as if this weren't obvious. Nessa could have eaten off the floor with how immaculate the carpet was. "Why do we need all four of us to get our trunks anyway?"
Tori ignored this question entirely, entering their bedroom after the twins, who did not look at all like they planned on grabbing their trunks any time soon.
"They make you clean with a toothbrush, Vanessa," said Tori, leaning against the doorframe behind her and looking casually down the hallway. "Is that Dudley's room?"
Nessa eyed her suspiciously.
"No, that's Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's bedroom," she said, her voice dripping with questions.
"Where is dear Dudley then, love?"
Nessa turned to look at George, who was grinning at her, leaning casually against the wall across from her, crossing his feet at the ankles. It was a very confident, lazy stance and it suited everything about him. It was a herculean effort to keep her eyes trained on his face. He tilted his head slightly as if he could see this on her face somehow.
"I don't know," she said, looking between him, his evil looking twin leaning in the same way directly next to him, and a forcibly casual Tori in the doorway. "Bullying nursery school kids and kicking puppies, I suspect."
Fred snorted.
"You wouldn't be avoiding the question, now would you, munchkin?"
She looked at the three of them seriously.
"No, but I don't understand this sudden interest you have in my cousin," she lied. She had a very bad feeling she knew exactly why the three of them would find an interest in Dudley and it likely wasn't anything good. "What are the three of you planning on doing?"
They each gave her innocent looks that she was entirely certain had convinced no one. They were almost laughable, considering all she knew about the three of them.
"We're just interested in meeting him, love," George said in what she assumed was supposed to be a soothing voice.
She gave him a hard look.
"Do you think I'm stupid, George?"
"Course, he doesn't," said Fred. "We were just hoping that his natural charm might distract you from asking too many questions."
She slid her gaze to Fred, fighting against the blush that threatened when George winked at her at these words, and gave him a deadpan look.
"I've been around you three minutes, Fred, and already you are annoying me."
Tori snorted from the doorway, pushing herself off the frame.
"He has that gift with women," she said casually and Fred smirked at her. Nessa was not too distracted to notice the way that smirk made Tori look hastily away from him. "We'll just have to lure him out some other way, I suppose," she directed at the twins. "But let's go before your dad comes looking for us. We're relying on the element of surprise here."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Nessa snapped in irritation. She hated being left in the dark. "Element of surprise for what?"
She growled lowly when neither Fred or Tori answered her, instead grabbing each side of Vanessa's trunk and making their way out of the room. She huffed and whirled on George to ask him what the hell was going on, but she gasped sharply when she noticed he was directly behind her and she had no time to react before his mouth was on hers.
She tensed and then relaxed in the span of a second, stretching up to her toes to ease some of the difference in their heights and fighting every urge she had to pull him closer to her by his shirt. That familiar searing feeling ran down her spine, making her fight the urge to vocalize her pleasure when he tilted her chin further up with his finger and slanted his mouth over hers again and again in the same slow and deep way he had done the other two times he'd kissed her. It drove her mad.
"Oi, lovebirds, let's get it moving," Fred griped from somewhere down the hallway, causing Nessa to gasp and attempt to shoot backwards away from George, but he had a hand still wrapped in her hair — when it had gotten there, she had not a clue — and didn't let her stray very far. "We haven't got all day."
"Sod off, Fred," said George with a laugh. He applied a gentle pressure at the base of her skull to get her to rise to meet him again, and brushed another kiss to her lips. This one was chaste and sweet in a way that made her stomach clench. "C'mon, love," he said softly, running a thumb across her lips once and grinning at the shuddering breath she released in response. "We can continue this later."
She had not a word to say in response to this as they each grabbed a handle of Harry's trunk and heaved it out into the hallway. Tori and Fred were standing on the landing of the stairs, each leaning opposite each other with Nessa's trunk on the floor between them. Fred was smirking when they emerged and Tori rolled her eyes before looking at Nessa in interest.
"Is there anything terribly valuable in here?" she queried, tapping the trunk between her and Fred with her foot.
"No, why —"
Nessa gasped sharply when Tori put a foot on the edge of the trunk and pushed hard. It went flying down the stairs, hitting each step with a loud thunk. Tori's head had tilted toward the direction of the hallway downstairs and she grinned, despite the glare her best friend was shooting at her in reproach.
"Dudley just came out of the kitchen," she said happily, skipping down the steps. Fred grinned and shook his head at her, a fond sparkle in his eyes as he followed after her.
"My answer to that question would have been much different if I'd known you were going to do that, Victoria," Nessa snapped as the four of them walked down the hallway toward the living room.
By the time they'd returned to the living room, Dudley had, in fact, reappeared. He was squished against the wall, his hands still covering his bottom, and he was eyeing Mr. Weasley with terrified eyes. He was clearly trying to hide behind his mother and father, but not even Uncle Vernon was large enough to cover all that was Dudley. Nessa would have snorted, except the twins and Tori glanced around immediately when they reentered the room. The twins' faces cracked into identical evil grins when they spotted Dudley and she tensed, glaring at them in warning.
Tori sat down her end of Nessa's trunk and gave Dudley a dazzling grin. Dudley gaped at her — he might have been afraid of magic, but Tori knew very well the effect she had on men, and Dudley's fear of her did not appear to make him immune.
"This must be Dudley," she said, sending a questioning look at Nessa, as if this were not already obvious. "Where have you been hiding all this time?"
That fear was back in his eyes at the question, clearly sensing the threat she'd veiled beneath the low purr of her voice. Before she could say anything else, Mr. Weasley clapped his hands once to signal their imminent departure.
"All right," he said. "Better get cracking then."
He pushed up the sleeves of his robes and took out his wand. Nessa saw the Dursleys all draw back against the wall as one.
"Incendio!" said Mr. Weasley, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him.
Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. Mr. Weasley took a small drawstring bag from his pocket, untied it, took a pinch of the powder inside, and threw it onto the flames, which turned emerald green and roared higher than ever.
"Off you go then, Fred," said Mr. Weasley.
"Coming," said Fred. "Oh no!"
Nessa watched in wide-eyed confusion as Tori stuck a foot out so that Fred went tumbling onto the floor on his way to the fireplace. A bag of sweets had spilled out of Fred's pocket and the contents were now rolling in every direction — big, fat toffees in brightly colored wrappers.
Fred scrambled around, cramming them back into his pocket. The others were too distracted by him trying to gather all of the candies to notice when Dudley hustled forward greedily to grab some of the candies he'd dropped. Nessa already had a bad feeling about this, but the feeling increased when Tori crouched down to grab one of the candies herself and offered a hand out to her cousin, giving him a conspiratorial wink that caused Dudley's entire face to redden.
All in the span of a single second and none of them seemed to notice other than she and George. Nessa opened her mouth to warn her cousin not to eat whatever had just "fallen" out of Fred's pocket, but George ran a finger soothingly against the inside of her wrist and her breath hitched, her gaze shooting up to his. He winked at her, as Fred gave the Dursleys a cheery wave, stepped forward with Nessa's trunk, and walked right into the fire, saying "the Burrow!" Aunt Petunia gave a little shuddering gasp. There was a whooshing noise, and Fred vanished.
"Right then, George," said Mr. Weasley.
George obliged, following after his twin with another whoosh, and vanishing into the flames.
"Nessa, you next," said Mr. Weasley gently. "Molly has a potion for you if you have a hard time."
Nessa tried not to blush at the reminder of her first experience with Floo powder. The nausea had been intense and had lingered for the entire day. She had no desire to repeat the experience and wished futilely that she could Apparate. She stepped forward and grabbed a handful of the powder in Mr. Weasley's hand and threw it into the flames. She was about to step into the flames when Mr. Weasley's firm, but gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder.
"You aren't going to see your niece until next summer," said Mr. Weasley indignantly to the Dursleys. Nessa tensed. "Surely you're going to say goodbye?"
Nessa looked at her cowering relatives and raised an eyebrow. They'd never said goodbye to either her or Harry. She didn't care. She didn't wish them well on most occasions and they couldn't stand the sight of either of them, especially her. Her Aunt Petunia eyed Mr. Weasley's wand nervously and then met Nessa's gaze. Her eyes turned cold the moment she looked into her emerald ones, her gaze sweeping over her niece in a cold, cruel sort of mockery.
"Careful," Tori purred dangerously, her gaze locked on Aunt Petunia. "I have a very explosive temper, Petunia."
Fire flared in her aunt's eyes at the use of her first name by someone who was so young, but also did not know her well enough to call her that. Tori had an uncanny ability to figure out exactly what would make someone bristle. If it weren't for her fear, Nessa was entirely certain her aunt would have said something cruel to her in that moment or refused to say goodbye at all. But she was afraid.
"Goodbye."
The words were cold and cruel and they made Nessa's rage flicker. She had no idea what her aunt's problem with her was — had always assumed it was because of her uncanny resemblance to her mother, although she had no confirmation. To Nessa, it felt like jealousy, but she couldn't figure out what the hell her aunt had to be jealous of. Her looks had to be part of it, considering how harshly she insulted them, but the rest of it…made no sense.
Nessa had no capacity to say anything kind in the face of that coldness and the rage it sparked within her. So she smiled back just as coldly, and shook off Mr. Weasley's hold on her shoulder. She let the rage lick at her in the same way she knew the green flames behind her would in the next several seconds.
"I'll see you in hell, Aunt Petunia," she said in response, watching the surprise flicker across Harry and Mr. Weasley's face — and the anger that simmered in her aunt and uncle's — before she stepped into the green flames and shouted, "The Burrow!"
The last thing she saw of the living room was Tori throwing her head back to laugh in delight before it was swallowed up in green flames. The rush of being pulled into some weird spinning tube hit her immediately and she tucked her elbows in tightly to her sides. Fireplaces blurred beside her and she had to close her eyes immediately. Perhaps she should have been grateful to her aunt for trying to starve her all summer — it left very little for her to vomit up if she couldn't control the nausea. At last, just when the nausea was reaching a crescendo and the hot air began to push down on her lungs and make her feel claustrophobic, she could feel herself slowing and she threw out her arms to stop herself from falling face forward onto the Weasleys' kitchen floor.
She needn't have bothered — arms reached out to steady her before she was even fully out of the fireplace and she swayed, breathing in slowly through her nose to control the nausea.
"Alright, love?"
She swallowed thickly and nodded, stepping hastily out of the way when the flames behind her turned green and Tori stepped out. She shook her head when the twins looked at her expectantly.
"He didn't eat it before I left," she said, moving over to the kitchen counter and grabbing a vial of purple liquid and mixing it in with a cup of milk. She handed the glass to Nessa without a word and leaned against the kitchen table, crossing her arms across her chest. "Although, they were all a bit distracted because Nessa practically told Petunia to go to hell."
Nessa grimaced, hiding her expression behind the concoction Tori had given her as the others turned to look at her in surprise. The nausea was abating slowly the more she drank and her head felt more normal.
"Stop looking at me," Nessa snapped at them all when they continued staring. "She deserved it."
"She did," Tori confirmed with a scowl on her face that was so ferocious that even Nessa flinched. "I knew she told you you were ugly and fat and whatever other nonsense she spouts at you, but I'd have sooner ripped out her eyes if she'd looked at me like that."
George tensed at her side and Fred made a low, angry noise in the back of his throat, his eyes sparking dangerously. She did not need to look at his twin to know that that anger would be reelected in his eyes as well. If not worse, considering how easily George was set off when someone insulted her.
"What?" he spat from beside her.
Nessa waved a hand lazily and watched as the flames turned green again and out stepped a cheerful looking Ron. He took a seat at the scrubbed wooden table and smiled at Nessa in greeting.
"I could care less what she says of me," Nessa said sharply. "What did you three give Dudley?"
Tori allowed the subject change, despite the fact that the twins did not appear to want to drop it. She jumped onto the table and leaned back onto her hands with a casual grin. There was a reason she was Nessa's best friend, and her ability to understand when a topic was too sensitive for Nessa to talk about was one of them. She'd have given her friend a grateful look if it wouldn't have been suspicious.
"Ton-Tongue Toffee," she said.
Nessa looked at both of the twins, who looked somewhere between proud that they'd perfected their product and angry at the vitriol she endured from her aunt. She glared at them in warning, so they dropped the subject of her aunt entirely. Someone snorted from behind her and she looked immediately. There were two people at the table she'd never seen before in her life and she cleared her throat awkwardly at not having noticed them before.
George made a soothing motion against her lower back, and Nessa watched one of the older men track the movement with a raised eyebrow, before giving the man across from him a wide grin and a raised eyebrow. Before either one of them could make some horribly awkward comment, the flames turned green again, and her brother came tumbling out and onto the floor before anyone could catch him.
Tori sat up eagerly as Fred rushed forward to help him up.
"Did he eat it?" said Fred excitedly.
"Yeah," said Harry, straightening up. "What was it?"
"Ton-Tongue Toffee," said Fred brightly. "George and I invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer…"
The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter. Nessa had several other questions, including what in the hell a Ton-Tongue Toffee was and if their father would know how to correct it, but Harry was already looking curiously at the two older men sitting at the scrubbed wooden table before them. They were clearly Weasleys, given their red hair and freckles, so Nessa assumed it was Bill and Charlie, although she could not for the life of her tell which was which. Noticing her brother's attention, the nearer of the two, grinned and held out a large hand to her brother.
"How're you doing, Harry?" He shook her brother's hand firmly before grinning at her. She tried not to flush under the new attention, and reached forward to shake his hand as well. "Nessa, I presume."
She nodded shyly, her hand being completely dwarfed in his much larger one. She could feel calluses and blisters under his fingers, and made the assumption that this was Charlie. He was built like the twins, tall, but still shorter and stockier than Ron and Percy, who were both long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned; his arms were muscular, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it.
"We've heard a great deal about you, Nessa," said the other man — Bill — with a wide, sly grin. "Haven't we, Charlie?"
Harry rolled his eyes to the ceiling and scowled at George, taking a seat near Ron at the table. George raised an eyebrow at his brothers, as Nessa lost the battle against the heat in her cheeks.
"Indeed, we have, Bill," Charlie grinned, sitting again and crossing his arms across his broad chest. He grinned at his little brother, but George merely grinned back at him, although there was a dangerous glimmer in his eye as if he were considering exactly what prank he could pull to get him back for embarrassing her. "Georgie seems particularly fond of you."
Nessa shifted awkwardly, looking pleadingly at Fred and Tori, who were grinning at her already and were clearly in no hurry to help her. Bill took pity on her and got to his feet, smiling, and shook hers and Harry's hand.
Nessa was surprised by his appearance, personally. She'd heard a great deal about Bill from the twins, who seemed to idolize him for taking the most stand against their mother, although not in the same sense as the two of them. Nessa could clearly see what they meant, however. He was tall and lanky himself, with long hair that he had tied back into a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked to be a fang dangling from it. Bill's clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except his boots were made of dragon hide, rather than leather.
Before any of them could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr. Weasley appeared out of thin air at George's shoulder. Nessa shrieked in surprise, sending the room into another round of laughter again. Mr. Weasley looked angrier than she had ever seen him, but neither the twins nor Tori looked at all alarmed.
"That wasn't funny, Fred!" he shouted. "What on Earth did you give that Muggle boy?"
"I didn't give him anything," said Fred with another evil grin. "I just dropped it…It was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to."
"You dropped it on purpose!" roared Mr. Weasley. "You knew he'd eat it, you knew he was on a diet —"
"How big did his tongue get?" George asked eagerly.
Nessa elbowed him in the side and gave him a hard look, which he deliberately ignored.
"It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!"
Harry, Tori, and the Weasleys roared with laughter again. Nessa had to squeeze her own lips together to keep herself from laughing in the face of Mr. Weasley's obvious upset. Her cousin was a jerk on the best of days, so she didn't really feel sorry for him, but she wasn't about to say so to Mr. Weasley. And the twins' pranks were mostly harmless in the grand scheme of things, so Dudley wouldn't have been hurt, she was sure.
"It isn't funny!" Mr. Weasley shouted. "That sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard-Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons —"
"We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!" Fred said indignantly.
"No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git," said George. "Isn't he?"
George was looking at her and Harry now. Nessa rolled her eyes at him, but nodded at Mr. Weasley in confirmation.
"Yeah, he is, Mr. Weasley," said Harry earnestly.
"That's not the point!" raged Mr. Weasley. "You wait until I tell your mother —"
"Tell me what?" said a voice behind them.
Mrs. Weasley had just entered the kitchen. Nessa tensed, grimacing at Tori and the twins in sympathy. Mrs. Weasley had a very kind face, but she had sharp eyes, and they were already narrowed suspiciously at her husband. Ginny stood next to her looking between her mother and father in interest and Hermione stood beside her. Both of them grinned at her and Harry, who grinned back, causing Ginny to turn scarlet. Nessa's half-hearted wave was cut off by her sniggering at this response. Ginny glared at her in reproach.
"Oh, hello, dears," she said, spotting the two Potter siblings and smiling kindly. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. "Tell me what, Arthur?"
Mr. Weasley hesitated and Nessa shifted uncomfortably. She could tell that, however angry he was with the twins and Tori, he hadn't really intended to tell Mrs. Weasley what had happened. There was a silence, while Mr. Weasley eyed his wife nervously.
"Tell me what, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley repeated, in a dangerous sort of voice.
Nessa cleared her throat awkwardly and took a large step away from George. Tori snorted at this, looking at her nails with a bored expression, as if she had nothing in the world to be concerned about at the moment. Nessa could not tell if she was intentionally trying to enrage Mrs. Weasley or if she really just did not care; their relationship had been a bit rocky since she'd discovered the secrets the Weasley parents had kept from her last year.
"It's nothing, Molly," mumbled Mr. Weasley, "Fred and George and Tori just — but I've had words with them —"
"What have they done this time?" said Mrs. Weasley. "If it's got anything to do with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes —"
"Why don't you show Harry where he's sleeping, Ron?" said Hermione from the doorway.
Nessa blew out a breath of relief and decided she was making a run for it with them, her friends be damned. She'd no intention of listening to Mrs. Weasley's impending explosion.
"He knows where he's sleeping," said Ron stupidly. "In my room, he slept there last —"
Nessa rolled her eyes to the ceiling and grabbed the youngest Weasley brother by the back of his shirt, hauling him to his feet and gave him a pointed stare. Bill and Charlie sniggered as Ron flushed red.
"Oh," said Ron, cottoning on. "Right."
"Yeah, we'll come too," said George.
"You stay where you are!" snarled Mrs. Weasley.
Nessa grimaced at the three trouble-makers, who were glaring at her for abandoning them to their mother, and disappeared hastily after her brother and his friends. She caught up to them on the stairs and grinned widely at Ginny, looping her arm with hers.
"I've missed you," she said happily as they trudged up to Ron's room.
Ginny gave her a sly look.
"I missed you two, but I'm glad you're back because I'm sick of hearing George go on about you all the time."
Harry snorted and Nessa smacked him on the back of the head in reproach. Hermione smiled kindly at her.
"I think the two of you make a lovely couple," she said.
Ron stopped abruptly, shooting Nessa an alarmed look.
"You're dating?" he said.
"Honestly, Ron, have you had your head up a toilet?" Ginny said with an eye roll. "He's been talking about her all summer."
Ron was staring at her still and Nessa was incredibly uncomfortable with the attention, looking at Ginny in confusion. Ginny was only smirking at her. Nessa truly did not like when any of the Weasleys looked at her like that — it reminded her way too much of Fred and George before they started blowing up toilet seats.
"Yeah, but he always does that," Ron said defensively. "He never said — he never even told Mum and Dad that he — that they — that you were —"
Nessa didn't know why hearing those words bothered her as much as they did. They'd never really discussed if they were dating or not, and it wasn't like it had been that long anyway, but she'd sort of assumed that they were. She didn't really have anyone to tell aside from Harry, but she'd told him before anything even happened with them, so him not telling his own family…
She had enough anxiety about the entire thing, truthfully, without wondering what the hell that meant.
"Why do you care, anyway?" said Harry, shoving Ron forward so that they could put more distance between themselves and the kitchen.
Nessa could not see Ron's face, but she watched in confusion as the back of Ron's neck and ears went scarlet. Ginny was snickering, but said nothing.
"I don't care," he said far too casually. "I just — it's weird he didn't say anything, isn't it?"
Nessa gave Ginny an imploring look and she took pity on her.
"Anyway, we'll have to camp out in Ron's room for a bit," she said, changing the subject back so smoothly that Nessa relaxed immediately. "She's not too happy about Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes —"
"What's Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" said Harry as they started climbing again.
Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione didn't. Nessa tried not to bristle at the look of admonishment on Hermione's face.
"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's room," said Ron quietly. "Great long price lists for stuff they've invented. Joke stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I never knew they'd been inventing all that…"
"We've been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things," said Ginny. "We thought they just liked the noise."
Nessa snorted at this.
"Only, most of the stuff — well, all of it, really — was a bit dangerous," said Ron. "and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren't allowed to make any more of it, and burned all of the order forms —"
"What?" Nessa said angrily. They all stopped on the stairs again in surprise to look at her. "They've worked ages on those!"
"She's furious at them anyway. They didn't get as many O.W.L.s as she she expected —"
"Because they don't need them!"
Hermione stared at her as if she'd said something insane.
"So you agree with this?"
"Agree with — what does that even mean?" Nessa snapped at her. "They're doing what makes them happy. What difference do O.W.L.s make if they aren't ever going to use them for anything?"
Ginny spoke hastily before Hermione could interrupt her and Ron started walking up the stairs again.
"Well, anyway, there was a big row because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop."
Nessa opened her mouth again, but just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression. At this rate, they'd never make it upstairs.
"Hi, Percy," said Harry.
"Oh, hell, Harry, Nessa," said Percy. Nessa merely nodded at him. "I was wondering who was making all the noise. I'm trying to work in here, you know — I've got a report to finish for the office — and it's rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs."
Nessa rolled her eyes; they'd barely been making any noise at all.
"We're not thundering," said Ron irritably. "We're walking. Sorry if we've disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic."
Harry, ever the pacifist, said, "What are you working on?"
"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," said Percy smugly. Nessa met Ginny's eye and had to look away hastily before she started laughing. "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin — leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year —"
"That'll change the world, that report will," said Ron. "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."
Nessa snorted this time, and Percy went slightly pink.
"You might sneer, Ron," he said heatedly. "But unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products that seriously endanger —"
"Yeah, yeah, all right," said Ron, starting up the stairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As they followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them. It sounded as though Mr. Weasley had told Mrs. Weasley about the toffees.
Nessa sighed heavily as they entered Ron's room. It looked the same as it always had — slanted roof, posters of the Chudley Cannons, a fish tank on the window that had a large frog in it. The only difference was that there was now a tiny gray owl in a small cage, twittering madly, and no sign of his old rat, Scabbers.
"Shut up, Pig," said Ron, edging his way between two of four beds that had been squeezed into the room. "Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill and Charlie are in their room," he told Harry. "Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he's got to work."
"Er — why are you calling that owl Pig?" Harry asked Ron.
"Because he's being stupid," said Ginny, taking a seat next to Nessa on George's bed. "Its proper name is Pigwidgeon."
"Yeah, and that's not a stupid name at all," said Ron sarcastically. "Ginny named him," he explained to Harry. "She reckons it's sweet. And I tried to change it, but it was too late, he won't answer to anything else. So now he's Pig. I've got to keep him up here because he annoys Errol and Hermes. He annoys me too, come to that."
Nessa was reminded every time she was with Harry and his friends why she didn't particularly enjoy it anymore. Fred, George, and Tori were always in such good moods — well Fred and George were; saying Tori was might be a stretch. But Ron moaned about everything under the sun. She had no idea how her brother tolerated it.
She tuned them out and turned instead to speak casually to Ginny until the yelling stopped downstairs and the five of them felt comfortable enough to make another attempt at joining back into the group. Mrs. Weasley was alone in the kitchen when they made it back downstairs, looking extremely bad-tempered. She told them they were eating out in the garden as there was not enough room for all of them in the kitchen, and asked each of them to take something outside. Nessa did as she was asked as Mrs. Weasley was pointing her wand a little too vigorously than was necessary — a pile of potatoes in the sink shot out of their skins so fast that they ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," she snapped, now directing her wand at a dust-pan, which hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes. "Those two!" she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard. Nessa knew she meant Fred and George and she tried not to tense as she counted out napkins for the table. "I don't know what's going to happen to them, I really don't. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can…and they're going to drag Tori with them…"
Nessa opened her mouth angrily, but Ginny, who had been helping Hermione grab plates, ran into her on purpose, shoving her out the door with a hard look.
"It's not worth it," she said firmly as they approached the group outside. "Mum won't listen. Fred and George can handle themselves."
Nessa knew they could, but it didn't mean she appreciated their mother's sentiments any more. The twins would open the shop no matter what she thought, but she'd seen the way they looked when she tore them down for doing what they loved. She hated the hurt look in their eyes.
Nessa might have said so, except Peanut came bounding out of the house and nearly tripped her in her haste to join Crookshanks in the garden. She swore in surprise and had to grab onto Ginny to steady herself. Gnomes were giggling madly as they passed as the two cats chased them through the brush on either side of them, and there was a loud crashing noise coming from the other side of the house. When they rounded the corner, the source of the commotion was revealed. Bill and Charlie both had their wands out, and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other's out of the air.
Ginny began laughing immediately and set her plates down on the grass, joining the twins and Tori in their huddle off to the side. Nessa sighed, setting the napkins on top of the plates and went to join them. Fred and George were cheering, looking like they hadn't been spending the last ten minutes being screamed at by their mother, and Tori was leaning back on her hands, grinning widely. Nessa plopped next to her best friend.
"Hello, traitor," Tori said happily.
Nessa snorted.
"Don't start," she said with an eye roll. "I didn't have anything to do with that prank. It's not my fault you three don't know how to control yourselves."
"What's the fun in that, munchkin?" said Fred, stopping his cheering long enough to wink at her.
"What'd she say?" Nessa inquired.
The twins looked away from her hastily to hide their irritation and hurt at the reminder of their conversation with their mother, but Tori sighed heavily.
"The usual," she said, lowering her voice so the twins couldn't hear as easily. "For me, it wasn't so bad. Just a reminder that she expects me to get more than three O.W.L.s this year because Fred and George clearly don't know how to set an example." Nessa gaped at her and Tori grimaced. "It's been worse than I thought it would be this summer. The three of them have been going at each other since she found those order forms two weeks in."
"What difference does it make if they open a joke shop?" Nessa said quietly, watching her brother and Ron make their way from the house.
"Molly just thinks it's too risky," Tori said with a shrug. "She thinks this is just some phase the two of them are in and they need to think more realistically about life or something like that —"
"She was saying they have no ambition when we came down," Nessa said derisively.
Tori sighed, shooting the still cheering twins a cautious look.
"Look, don't bring it up with Fred and George if you can help it," she warned quietly. "They've been pretending like it doesn't bother them all that much, but she's burned or thrown away every single one of the products she gets her hands on and it bothers them more than they let on. They haven't exactly got the funds to keep making everything until they start selling to a wider market at Hogwarts."
Nessa frowned at her, but nodded her agreement to say nothing to the twins. They'd started selling to select few people last year, and Nessa was sure that was where they got the majority of the funds they'd used to continue developing whatever they could while they were home for the summer, but if they were intending to sell to a wider audience, she had no doubt that they'd need to produce more than they had been the previous year. Which, unfortunately, meant needing more materials, more time, more money. And the Weasleys didn't have much money to begin with.
Nessa jumped when Bill's table caught Charlie's with a huge bang and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy's head poking out of a window on the second floor.
"Will you keep it down?" he bellowed.
"Sorry, Perce," said Bill, grinning. "How're the cauldron bottoms coming on?"
"Very badly," said Percy peevishly, and he slammed the window shut. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg and conjured tablecloths from nowhere. Charlie flicked his own and the items the five of them had brought out with them settled themselves on the table.
"Let's all just agree not to say a word to Percy about cauldron bottoms," Tori said seriously, her voice returning to normal. "I can't stand another dinner listening to that nonsense."
By seven o'clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Mrs. Weasley's excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, two Potters, Tori, and Hermione were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky. To somebody who had been living on meals of increasingly stale cake all summer, this was paradise. Nessa spent the first several minutes not talking as she piled her plate with chicken and ham pie, boiled potatoes, and salad. Her hunger was not lost on her friends and they scowled at her, but said nothing as she continued eating until she was no longer too hungry to think straight.
"Whatever the three of you are planning, don't," she said to her three friends as they continued frowning at the food on her plate.
"You shouldn't have to stay with those Muggles," Fred said angrily. "It's disgusting the way they starve the two of you —"
"Not the two of them," Tori said sharply. "Just Nessa. Harry was still eating."
"Not much," said Nessa defensively. "I'd hardly call cottage cheese and shaved celery eating."
Tori gave her a hard look.
"Neither would I, but it's more than they give you," she snapped. "Petunia is a real cow for —"
"She's a cow for a great many things," Nessa interrupted firmly. "It doesn't matter. Nothing you do will change anything." George opened his mouth to argue, but she glared at him. "Leave it."
The three of them shared a look, but didn't bring it up again, and Nessa began listening to the conversations around her instead of talking to three of them further. Percy was sitting down the table deep in conversation about his report on cauldron bottoms with Mr. Weasley.
"I've told Mr. Crouch that I'll have it ready by Tuesday," Percy was saying pompously. "That's a bit sooner than he expected it, but I like to keep on top of things. I think he'll be grateful I've done it in good time, I mean, it's extremely busy in our department just now, what with all the arrangements for the World Cup. We're just not getting the support we need from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Ludo Bagman —"
"I like Ludo," said Mr. Weasley mildly. "He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favor: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble — a lawnmower with unnatural powers — I smoothed the whole thing over."
"Oh, Bagman's likable enough, of course," said Percy dismissively, "but how he ever got to be Head of Department…when I compare him to Mr. Crouch! I can't see Mr. Crouch losing a member of our department and not trying to find out what's happened to them. You realize Bertha Jorkins has been missing over a month now? Went on holiday to Albania and never came back?"
Nessa tensed at these words and listened more closely to what they were saying.
Odd, that someone would go missing in the last place Voldemort was known to be. He could have moved on, of course, but after the dream Harry had had over the summer, and the prophecy he'd been told last year, she'd been more and more prone to turning over every bit of information she heard.
"Yes, I was talking to Ludo about that," said Mr. Weasley, frowning. "He says Bertha's gotten lost plenty of times before now — though I must say, if it was someone in my department, I'd be worried…"
"Oh, Bertha's hopeless, all right," said Percy. "I hear she's been shunted from department to department for years, much more trouble than she's worth…but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her. Mr. Crouch has been taking a personal interest, she worked in our department one time, you know, and I think Mr. Crouch was quite fond of her — but Bagman just keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead of Albania. However" — Percy heaved an impressive sigh and took a deep swig of elderflower wine — "we've got quite enough on our plates at the Department of International Cooperation without trying to find members of other departments too. As you know, we've got another big event to organize right after the World Cup."
Percy cleared his throat significantly and looked down toward the end of the table where the four of them, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting. "You know the one I'm talking about, Father." He raised his voice slightly. "The top-secret one."
Nessa turned a questioning gaze at Tori, who was in the middle of arguing about who would win the World Cup. She kicked her under the table to get her attention. She turned with a glare.
"What's this top-secret event Percy is talking about?"
Tori rolled her eyes and snorted.
"No idea," she said dismissively. "He's been trying to get us to ask about it since he started work. I haven't had the nerve to ask; the last time I asked him about work to be polite, I got trapped in an hour-long lecture about the importance of setting standards for trade regulations with Bulgaria. Serves me right for trying to be nice."
In the middle of the table, Mrs. Weasley was arguing with Bill about his earring, which seemed to be a recent acquisition.
"...with a horrible great fang on it. Really, Bill, what do they say at the bank?"
"Mum, no one at the bank gives a damn how I dress as long as I bring home plenty of treasure," said Bill patiently.
"And your hair's getting silly, dear," said Mrs. Weasley, fingering her wand lovingly. "I wish you'd let me give it a trim…"
"I like it," said Ginny, who was sitting next to Bill. "You're so old-fashioned, Mum. Anyway, it's nowhere near as long as Professor Dumbledore's…"
Nessa grinned and sighed, relaxing back into her seat, and focusing on the conversation that her friends were having with Charlie about the World Cup. George rested an arm across the back of her chair almost immediately without breaking his concentration on the conversation in front of him.
"It's got to be Ireland," said Charlie thickly, through a mouthful of potato. "They flattened Peru in the semifinals."
"Bulgaria has got Viktor Krum, though," said Fred.
"Krum's one decent player," Tori said. "Ireland has got seven."
"I wish England had got through. That was embarrassing, that was."
"What happened?" said Harry eagerly.
"Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten," said Charlie gloomily. "Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg."
Nessa didn't bother inserting herself into the conversation as the four of them continued discussing Quidditch. She couldn't fly worth a damn and she didn't pay much attention to Quidditch outside of the games she watched at Hogwarts.
Mr. Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their homemade strawberry ice cream, and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Nessa was feeling extremely well-fed and at peace, as she listened to the others continue to talk idly around her. The warm night air settled heavily on her and made her want to fall asleep.
"Alright, love?"
She startled slightly, her gaze whipping up to look at George next to her. It was the first time that the twins did not sit on either side of her at the table. Instead, Fred and Tori sat next to each other, across from her and George. She had several questions about what was going on with the two of them, but she'd yet to get Fred alone since they'd gotten back.
"Fine," she said softly. "Just tired."
He looked at her for a long moment before throwing his napkin onto his empty plate and excusing himself from the conversation he'd been having and standing from the table. He held out a hand to her.
"Let's take a walk, love," he said, grinning at her when she looked at him in bewilderment. "I could use a break from Percy's obsession with Mr. Crouch."
She snorted when Percy heard and glared at the two of them as she took George's hand and followed him back toward the garden.