RoonieTunes: You know, I don't think I've ever paid a ton of attention to people changing the Ravenclaw colors, but now that you mention it, I think I've seen that a lot too! I don't recall if they messed it up in the movies? Unless maybe people just don't like the blue and bronze combination, but I'm a stickler for keeping the colors the same as they are in the books. Slytherin will always have the silver.
Bookcozy: I also have Gmail, so maybe it's an issue with them. I think this has happened to me before and it eventually fixed itself, so I'm just going to let it do its thing lol. The promised make-up is here! I had to write and rewrite it a couple hundred times. Enjoy!
Chapter Fifteen
As the next day was Saturday, most students would have breakfasted late. Nessa and Tori, however, were not the only ones to rise earlier than they normally would have. When they went down to the entrance hall, they saw about twenty people milling around it, some of them eating toast, all examining the Goblet of Fire. It had been placed in the center of the hall on a stool that normally bore the Sorting Hat. A thin, golden line had been traced on the floor, forming a circle ten feet around it in every direction.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were standing around the goblet themselves, each with a piece of toast in their hands and speaking with a third-year girl. Harry was grinning when the two of them reached them.
"All of Durmstrang have entered their names, but no one from Hogwarts," he said before Tori could ask.
"Could have entered their names last night when we all went to sleep," she said, squinting at the goblet as if trying to understand the mechanisms of it. "I assume Fred and George haven't come down yet?"
Nessa did not need to hear her brother's confirmation to know that they hadn't. No one was talking about anyone trying to enter and being denied and they would have been, she was sure. She was also sure that the entire hall would be buzzing if an underage student had managed to trick the Age Line before they'd come down.
Truly, the two of them were the only reason she'd gotten up so early in the first place. Not that she'd slept well the night before to begin with. The butterflies had not given her a break the majority of the night, eating at her insides slowly and making her feel like she might throw up. She was jittery today, her hands shaking, and wishing for the entire thing to be over and done with so she could know for sure if she needed to be worried or if she could relax for the first time that year.
She was not stupid enough to think that the twins and Lee had not brewed another batch of the potion, or had more stashed somewhere she wouldn't find it, and she hadn't talked to them since she'd given them detention two days before, so they had plenty of opportunity to do it behind her back.
"Are you alright?" Harry asked her quietly, giving her a concerned look.
"Yes, why?" she said, wincing at the breathlessness of her voice.
"Because you're tying and untying your tie," he said, putting a hand over hers before she could untie it again. He pulled them down from her chest and squeezed her wrist before dropping it. "Hermione doesn't think they'll be able to trick the Line either, you know. Neither does Tori. I think the only two who really think this will work are them."
She wanted to laugh because it was true, but the twins were so stubborn and hard-headed that they refused to acknowledge it. But she couldn't find it within her to laugh. Her anxiety caused her to obsess, to fixate so strongly on the one thing that would send her spiraling until the event that triggered it was gone. It was probably the most annoying part of it for her. Rationalizing did not help, even though it was that control she desperately attempted to hold onto under any other circumstance.
And it was horrible to be stuck between wanting the thing that gave her anxiety to just be done and over with, and praying that she wouldn't have to witness it at all. It was exhausting and she was exhausted and emotional, and hearing her brother try to comfort her really just made her want to cry because she couldn't keep herself under control long enough to accept that Dumbledore would have thought of an Ageing Potion. It was an obvious solution and relatively easy to brew. The twins could not be the only two to have thought of it. But instead, here she was, teetering on the edge of sanity, overreacting, at the sound of a laugh behind them.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were hurrying down the staircase, all three of them looking extremely excited.
"Done it," Fred said in a triumphant whisper to the group of them, although he was careful to avoid her gaze. "Just taken it."
"What?" said Ron.
"The Ageing Potion, dung brains," said Fred.
"One drop each," said George, rubbing his hands together with glee. "We only need to be a few months older."
"We're going to split the thousand Galleons between the three of us if one of us wins," said Lee, grinning broadly.
She was going to throw up, she was sure. She could barely hear Hermione telling them again that she didn't think it would work because she was too busy hearing her heart pounding in her ears. She wasn't particularly religious, but at the current moment she wanted to pray that it wouldn't work and she could hate herself for working herself up to this level of anxious overreaction. Harry stepped closer to her on her left side, despite his clear intrigue in seeing if the twins would succeed, and Tori came around the goblet to stand on her other side.
"Breathe, Vanessa," she murmured quietly. "It's not going to work."
Nessa nodded and took in a slow breath, trying to control her racing pulse enough to pay attention to what was happening. She jumped a little when George's hand brushed against hers in comfort as he passed, and the action made her want to cry again. Not because of the tournament this time, but because he was perceptive enough to see her emotional instability and attempt to calm her even if they were arguing.
"Ready?" Fred said to his two friends, quivering with excitement. "C'mon, then — I'll go first —"
Nessa watched, anxious, as Fred pulled a slip of parchment out of his pocket bearing the words Fred Weasley — Hogwarts. She took in a slow, controlled breath through her nose and blew it out of her mouth slowly as he took a step forward until his toes were just touching the age line. He was rocking on his toes like a diver preparing for a fifty-foot drop.
It wouldn't work…it would not work…please, God, let it not work…
Then, with the eyes of every person in the entrance hall upon him, he took a great breath and stepped over the line. For a split second Nessa thought it had worked, and based on Tori tensing beside her and saying "Shite," under her breath, she knew her best friend had too. There was a momentary feeling of horror as the butterflies in her stomach turned to rampaging hippogriffs and threatened to overwhelm her when George let out a yell of triumph and leapt after his brother. But in the next moment, there was a loud sizzling sound, and both twins were hurled out of the golden circle as though they had been thrown by a shot-putter.
They landed painfully, ten feet away on the cold stone floor, and to add insult to injury, there was a loud popping noise, and both of them sprouted identical white beards. There was a moment of shocked silence, and Nessa could feel her entire stomach bottoming out as her anxiety turned to relief, before the entrance hall rang with laughter. Tori was bent over double and clutching onto Lee, who was howling with laughter beside her. Fred and George joined in, once they had gotten to their feet and taken a good look at each other's beards.
"I did warn you," said a deep, amused voice, and everyone turned to see Professor Dumbledore coming out of the Great Hall. He surveyed Fred and George, his eyes twinkling. "I suggest you both go up to Madam Pomfrey. She is already tending to Miss Fawcett, of Ravenclaw, and Mr. Summers, of Hufflepuff, both of whom decided to age themselves up a little too. Though I must say, neither of their beards is anything like as fine as yours."
Fred and George set off for the hospital wing, accompanied by Lee, who was still howling with laughter.
"You alright?" her brother asked her again, chortling himself.
She nodded and grimaced at him a little, still reeling from her sudden change of emotion.
"Yeah, fine," she said weakly.
"Are you coming?" Tori said on her other side, grinning and clearly intent on following the boys to the Hospital Wing.
Nessa hesitated and then shook her head.
"Er — no, I — I'm going to take a minute. I'll see you later."
Tori looked at her for a moment, but seemed to realize that pushing her to talk to the twins wasn't going to get her anywhere, and sighed sadly before nodding.
"Fine," she said. "I'll take pictures for you so we can have them framed."
Nessa snorted and Tori took off up the staircase at a run. Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way into the Great Hall for breakfast, but Nessa didn't bother following them. There was no chance she was going to be able to eat now that she'd worked herself up so much and she needed to work off some of the residual energy that she now had nothing to do with.
She could go back upstairs and do her homework, she supposed, but she didn't think she'd be able to focus for long enough to get anything useful done. Going upstairs was too much temptation for her because she wanted to see Fred and George, but wasn't entirely sure what she should say or how she wanted to say it. And she had a hard time articulating herself when her emotions were so haywire. Going outside would be too cold, and she hadn't brought a cloak, so that was out of the question.
So instead, she took a left and made her way down to the dungeons. It looked ridiculous down here still, too many streamers and ridiculous decorations hanging from the walls, and she had a sudden urge to rip them all down to spare herself the sight. She refrained, however, and opened the door to the empty Potions classroom. It was a little less ridiculous in here, but she still snorted at the sight of the streamers.
It felt even more stupid that they'd been forced to decorate the entire castle when their foreign peers were not even staying inside the castle. She'd seen them all making their way back outdoors after the feast had ended the previous evening.
The silence of the room was helpful, however, and the familiarity of her surroundings eased some of the tension in her shoulders. She was the only one of her peers who loved this classroom more than any of the others and she could have walked the room with her eyes closed. She walked over to the wall that held pewter cauldrons that students could borrow when they ruined their own — it was a common occurrence in Potions, but Nessa was not fond of the school cauldrons. They were horribly unbalanced, which made brewing in them much more difficult.
She worked her way through them until she found one that was relatively flat on its legs and carried it over to one of the tables, filling it with liquid, and setting it above the burner to begin warming. Waiting for the water to boil, she grabbed the key from inside Snape's desk and opened the door to his personal stores. It took her several trips to gather all of the ingredients she needed and group them onto her desk. Another several trips to gather enough vials to fill once she was done.
The water was boiling by the time she was done, so she grabbed a set of brass scales and set to measuring out the powdered moonstone. She'd been using silver scales since Harry had bought her some for Christmas two years before, so she had to be more careful than she might normally have in order to make sure she didn't overdo it. Hers were far more reliable in the grand scheme of things, but she wasn't particularly in the place to complain. When it turned green, she stopped and began stirring.
The Draught of Peace was a long potion to brew — ninety minutes — but she needed something to relax her body, and challenge her racing mind at the same time. The potion was an easy one to do this, and one she wasn't totally familiar with, considering they'd only just started learning about it this year. It would be the best potion to distract her from the thoughts she was trying to pretend she didn't notice.
She had a tendency of letting the thoughts in her head overwhelm her, and, even though the biggest cause of her anxiety was no longer a concern, she still felt a little light-headed, a little nauseous from working herself up so much. She felt ridiculous for allowing herself to work herself up so much, for letting the emotion take over her rationale enough that she'd given her best friends — and her boyfriend — detention. She felt even more ridiculous because she'd done all of those things when nothing had even happened the way her anxiety had convinced her it would, so now all she wanted to think about was how much of a waste of time it had been to put herself through that level of misery. How stupid it was that she'd obsessed for so long, that she'd gotten so angry and uptight and miserable.
It seemed so unfair that someone who thrived under such rational control of her life was plagued with a disorder that was so unbelievably uncontrollable.
So, instead of thinking about it and extending her misery, she busied herself with the task at hand. The work itself was calming — the smells, the sound of the simmering potion, the heat of the potion that contrasted so strongly with the coolness of the dungeons, the specific concentration — but the potion's effects could also be felt through the vapor it released, further soothing her frazzled nerves. When she'd finally gotten the potion to turn turquoise, she set the flame to a low simmer and let the potion go on its own until it turned purple.
She stared at the bubbling potion while she waited for it to change to the color she needed, letting her mind wander a little. So caught up in what she was doing, she didn't notice Professor Snape entering the classroom, looking murderous that someone had dared use his classroom when he was not present.
He paused in the threshold and stared at the red headed young woman looking into a cauldron as if it held every answer she needed.
"Miss Potter," he said in greeting, making his way to the desk at the front of the class.
Nessa jumped and swore viciously when she accidentally dropped too many stewed mandrakes into the potion. She glared at him.
"Did you have to do that?" she said to him in frustration, making her way back to his stores and digging around for the ingredients she needed to fix the disaster of a potion she'd created. "It's going to take me another thirty minutes to fix."
Snape, for his part, did not look like he particularly cared that he'd frightened her. Or that he'd caused her to ruin a potion. His eyes flickered to the worktop she was using to check that she hadn't burned through her cauldron, but he made no other indication that he was overly concerned at all.
"You are the one using my classroom as your personal laboratory," he said silkily, shuffling through the ungraded essays on his desk. "I hardly imagine I am to blame for your ineptitude."
She gave him a derisive look over her cauldron, adding armadillo bile to correct for the additional stewed mandrakes and beginning to stir the potion vigorously in the clockwise direction. The stirring was the real reason she was so irritated with him; her arm was going to be killing her by the time the thirty minutes was up.
"If I were inept, you wouldn't be sitting behind that desk grading essays," she replied, totally unbothered with his snark.
She had always been that way — after she'd gotten over her initial nervousness around him, she'd found his constant remarks to be mildly entertaining. She could have done without the bullying of students, truthfully, but his aloofness didn't particularly bother her. It reminded her a little of herself, personally. Particularly when she was not in the mood to be around other people or was overstimulated.
"Perhaps I'm simply waiting for you to set your hair on fire, so that I can send you to the hospital wing and leave myself in peace," he said, scribbling something on the essay in front of him.
Nessa snorted, but took the hint, muttering a spell under her breath that caused her hair to weave itself into a bun on top of her head. His eyes flicked to her again at the wandless magic, and he looked at her shrewdly for several long moments before returning to the essays in front of him without another word.
She worked in silence for the rest of the time it took her to finish the brew, the sound of his scratching quill and shuffling parchment and the boiling of her cauldron the only sounds in the room. There was a brief moment of pride when the potion turned white and a silver vapor emitted from the liquid within, signaling she'd managed to brew it properly. It was particularly dangerous to drink when prepared incorrectly, sending people into an irreversible sleep from becoming too relaxed.
"Impeccable work," Snape said, standing behind her and looking into the cauldron.
He only ever complimented her when no one else was around. His fondness for her was always shown in other ways — a lack of cruel comments or badgering in classes, a refusal to give her detentions even when she was attacking his own students, allowing her to use his classroom and stores at her leisure. This had not been the only time that she had found herself within the potions classroom in an attempt to avoid her life outside its four walls.
The first time she had come to brew potions outside of her normal classwork, he'd gaped at her as if he didn't quite understand where she'd found the audacity to encroach upon his space. She hardly remembered the conversation that followed, but he'd stood over her the entire time she'd been working as if he were waiting for her to make a mistake so that he could tell her to leave and never bother him outside of class again. He had eventually — reluctantly — allowed her to use the classroom, under the agreement that if he needed her assistance with potion-related work, she would spend her time doing that rather than "wasting his time entirely."
She'd known then it was a guise, but she hadn't bothered mentioning it. She used the classroom to escape her own life, and he allowed her to do so, never forcing her to talk about what she was avoiding. Not that she imagined he spent the majority of his time speaking about personal or emotional matters, but she appreciated it all the same. The least she could do was provide him the same courtesy when he clearly enjoyed her presence more than he would let on outwardly. He was a lonely man, she suspected, even surrounded by students and teachers with whom he could socialize with every day. He was aloof and cold and awkward, and most people appeared to allow him his space because they did not have the patience or strength to break through his armor.
"I apologize if you were hoping for ineptitude, professor," she replied, taking the dropper he was handing her, and brushing off the compliment entirely — both because she was uncomfortable with them in general, and because she knew he was uncomfortable being shown gratitude.
The corners of his mouth twitched, but his face remained impassive as he took up the space on the other side of her cauldron with a stopper of his own. It took another hour for them to fill the vials with the potion. Again, this was completed in silence as they moved around the other with a certain familiarity. When she put the stopper on the last of the vials, she scourgified the cauldron and placed it back on its shelf, following with the scales, ladle, and potions textbook. With a flick of his wand, the vials flew off of the worktop — half went to his desk and the other half lined themselves carefully on one of the shelves in his stores.
"Fred and George Weasley will be here Monday morning to do inventory," she said finally, avoiding the gaze that she could feel burning its way through the back of her head.
"If I wanted my storeroom to be left in shambles and plumes of smoke, Potter, I would have asked them myself."
Nessa rolled her eyes.
"Yes, well, they were —" she hesitated briefly, attempting to figure out how to explain the mess she'd landed herself in. "I gave them detention."
There was a long moment of silence, in which she still refused to meet his eyes, straightening and re-straightening the cauldrons on the shelves in front of her.
"The last time they did inventory of my stores they replaced Stench of the Dead and Acromantula venom with castor oil."
She turned to face him out of curiosity more than her own judgment and was met with his cool stare.
"Stench of the Dead? How did they even — no, nevermind, I don't want to know," she said, shaking her head to dislodge the confusing thoughts.
"No, you most certainly do not," Snape snarled, the memory clearly bringing forth the anger he'd felt when the incident had occurred. "I've no interest in a repeat performance, Potter. Need I remind you how rare both of those ingredients are? How difficult to acquire?"
She rolled her eyes. Of course, he didn't. She'd faced an Acromantula before and she had no desire for a repeat performance under any circumstances. Nevermind meeting Inferi for their own essence. Although, she'd not a clue what Snape needed either ingredient for in a school setting, but she assumed he only wanted to be able to say that he had the best stocked Potions stores in the region. True, albeit arrogant.
"I'll come to supervise them then," she acquiesced. "It'll be faster with three of us anyway, and I already said I could do it, so I suppose I'll just have to bear it."
Snape raised an eyebrow at her, but nodded once after a moment's consideration.
"I'll hold you responsible should a first-year singe off their eyebrows with some ridiculous ingredient."
Nessa wasn't entirely certain what to do with herself when she left the Potions classroom. She was calmer, sure, but her stomach still felt like a block of lead was sitting inside it. She hadn't eaten yet and it was nearing lunch time, but she didn't really feel the urge to eat either — not as the residual effects of her anxiety wore off. Homework felt like just another stressor at this point, and she'd had enough of those for the day, believe it or not.
The brave thing to do would be to just find Fred and George and work the entire, horrible thing out with them. She couldn't keep dragging out the horrible argument and avoiding the conversation entirely. She hated admitting so, but she did have a horrible tendency of running from her own personal life. George had told her so last year when they'd been arguing — he'd said it in the heat of an argument with his twin, but he'd been right regardless.
It was an annoying personal quirk that she didn't entirely understand — she could stand up for others, but not herself? She could support others' emotions, tell them their feelings were valid, without believing the same was true for her?
She was brave enough to fight off Acromantulas and a giant black dog and God knew what else if it meant saving her brother or her friends, but being honest about how she felt made her hands shake and her brain shut down.
It made so little sense to her — outside of knowing that she'd never been allowed to vocalize how she felt for the majority of her life. Her aunt and uncle didn't care how she felt, and bemoaning her own misery only seemed to please them in a sick, abusive way. They fed on her misery like flies to manure, so she'd learned to shut those parts of her away. It was easier to use that energy to keep her brother out of their way instead, which, of course, led to another reason to avoid deeper conversations — her brother came first, her feelings second.
All well and good, except now she was in a predicament that required her to talk about not only how she felt, but how she'd made others feel, and she…didn't know how to do that. Not in an entirely healthy way anyway.
Wandering the halls and trying to think of what she would say beforehand — going into the conversation with a plan, so to speak — had hardly helped. Everything she thought sounded ridiculous or like she was playing the victim somehow and she didn't think that would really help. It wasn't exactly a competition, but she was fairly certain she'd done the majority of the wrong-doing — maybe the twins had been a little rude or juvenile, but she'd been a little…strong-willed, for lack of a better word.
What could she even say that would erase any of it? But avoiding it was hardly doing her any better and it's not like she could predict everything that would be said in the conversation, so planning it all out was ridiculous.
She stopped outside the prefect's lounge and pulled at her hair in frustration. She'd run her hands through it so many times in the last few hours that it was sticking up at all ends and tickled her nose. Huffing in frustration at her own anxiety-induced ridiculousness, she shoved her hair roughly into a ponytail to get it out of her face and then sighed heavily, leaning her head against the wall behind her.
She was losing it. It was really no wonder she had so few friends. She couldn't even have an argument like a normal person without —
"Falling asleep on the job? Perhaps you shouldn't have been made a prefect."
She blamed the embarrassing squeal that escaped her mouth on the anxiety too.
"George," she gasped, a hand over her racing heart. She'd intended for his name to come out as an admonishment, but it sounded more breathless instead. "What in the hell is the — why is your hair gray?"
Her frustration with him and his ability to sneak up on her at every turn turned quickly to surprise when she got a full look at him. He was dressed in his uniform and cloak, holding a cloak and a paper bag in one arm. The beard was gone — thankfully, in her opinion — but his hair was still so gray it was nearly white. It didn't particularly suit the youth in his face.
"I asked Madam Pomfrey to keep it," he said casually. "It suits me, don't you think? Rather dashing, isn't it?"
She could usually tell when he was joking, but she was having a hard time focusing on anything other than his hair and the sudden horror that he might actually not be joking.
"I — no, George, it really isn't," she said honestly before she could think of something nicer to say. She winced when she realized how harsh it had sounded. "I — uh — no, I mean, it — it's fine, really. Uh, interesting, but it — well, it's — tell me you're joking, George."
She was starting to believe he wasn't when he merely raised an eyebrow at her and stared at her for a long moment. She was seriously considering what she was supposed to say when he told her that he wasn't joking and she had to look at him with that hair forever but —
"So it is the red hair that does it for you then?" he said, grinning when she huffed in annoyance. "Relax, love, it fades. Dumbledore has a sense of humor, it seems."
"Are you supposed to be out of the Hospital Wing?" she said, eyeing him shrewdly now.
She'd not worked with Madam Pomfrey for long at this point, but she knew very well that she never let students leave before they were absolutely back to normal. She was very particular about that in their sessions — she said too many a wizard had suffered consequences from being discharged too early. Nessa didn't ask questions in that regard, but it certainly made more sense why she was so particular about her brother staying overnight for minor scrapes and bruises.
But it certainly meant that she wasn't likely to let George Weasley out of her care until the hair had faded back to its normal ginger hue.
"Depends on who you ask," he replied. She opened her mouth to protest, but he waved her away. "It's a Transfiguration spell, love. I'm perfectly fine to leave. Besides, rules are meant to be broken and Pomfrey is a bit of a mother hen. And I assumed you hadn't eaten."
She blinked at the bag he held up in one of his hands.
"Why would you —"
"You never eat after an anxiety attack," he said. "Lucky for you, I didn't eat this morning either. Bit preoccupied with the beard and all. C'mon, we can eat outside."
She hesitated at the cloak — her cloak — that he held out to her before deciding that there were likely far worse things to be doing — spiraling back into planning an apology, likely. Although the thought of food still made her want to be sick, she didn't really have anything else to be doing.
She could have the conversation. Like pulling off a bandaid — quick and painful.
She accepted the cloak and slid it on, following after him in an awkward silence that she sincerely wished he'd fill. She had no idea what to say — starting the conversation always seemed like the biggest hurdle to her, personally.
"You didn't come to watch us wither away in the hospital," he commented drily, shoving his way through the big double doors in the entrance hall and out into the grounds.
It was a sunny day, completely cloudless, but the chill was just another reminder that winter was coming soon. She watched as red and yellow leaves blew past her on the wind, crinkling against the hard ground beneath them.
"I'd hardly call it withering," she said quietly, eyeing the Beauxbatons carriage near the forest's edge — Hagrid waved at them cheerily from where he was raking around the carriage, although Nessa didn't see any leaves in that area at all — and the Durmstrang ship still floating idly at the edge of the lake. "You both seemed fairly amused when you left with Lee and, uh, Tori said she'd get a picture so…"
Christ, she was horribly awkward.
She was really just rambling at this point, but her mind was racing with at least fifty different possibilities for this conversation to end and suddenly none of the conversation starters she'd considered originally made much sense now.
She should have just gone to the library and hid in there. Avoided the entire thing for a little longer. Let the anxious thoughts pester her a little longer.
"She did get a picture," he said casually, as if he didn't notice her nervousness at all. She couldn't really tell if that was better or not. He came to stop at the weeping willow at the edge of the lake. It was her favorite spot on the grounds — she had a fascination with willow trees and liked reading under them and the sound of the water nearby soothed her. And it felt a bit more private under it — it wasn't, of course, but the leaves provided a separation from the rest of the students that she appreciated. "Nessa, stop fidgeting and eat."
She sighed heavily when he stopped the wringing of her hands — he had noticed her nervousness then — and pulled her down to sit next to him. She watched as he pulled an ungodly amount of sandwiches from the bag he held, a couple of oranges, and two very large chocolate chip cookies.
"You don't actually expect me to eat all of that, do you?" she said, scooting further back to rest her back on the tree trunk behind her.
"'Course not, love," he said with a grin. "I'm here, aren't I?"
"Unless your stomach is a bottomless pit —"
"Close," he said, unwrapping one of the sandwiches and handing it to her. She stared at it in her hands as if she didn't recognize it. It was turkey and cheese — her favorite — but she always dreaded eating when she was anxious. It felt more like a chore and her stomach always made the entire thing an ordeal. "The house-elves went a bit overboard," he explained, unwrapping a sandwich of his own. "A bit overexcited, that lot."
She knew it was true. Every time she'd gone to the kitchens with the twins and Tori, they acted as if she'd been starved her entire life. It was hard to get them to stop feeding her without begging them.
"Eat, Vanessa. You can't starve yourself."
She grimaced at the sandwich in front of her. She knew she needed to eat, but she was tired already and totally drained from the day's events and the thought of eating made her stomach feel heavy.
"I'm not going to starve," she said softly. "I'm just not particularly hungry."
George shuffled around until he could lean against the trunk as well, close enough that his shoulder brushed up against hers every time he moved. She looked up at him when he settled, and wasn't entirely surprised to see him already looking at her.
"Try, love. For me?" he said gently. "You'll feel worse if you don't."
She would feel worse — and he so rarely asked her for something so specific — so she just sighed heavily and started tearing the crust off of her sandwich. George reached over for them immediately and ate them himself, an action that was so familiar to her that it loosened some more of the tension in her shoulders.
When she stayed with her relatives, she never took the crust off, despite her distaste for it — she wasn't entirely sure when she would be eating again when she was there, so she forced herself to eat what she had in front of her. She'd done so at Hogwarts too until George had asked her why she was eating her sandwiches with a disgusted look on her face. It had felt ridiculous to say that as a teenager, she couldn't stand the taste of the crust, but she didn't want to waste it either. If he'd thought it ridiculous, he hadn't mentioned it; he'd merely taken the sandwich from her, torn the crust off, and ate them himself, and had any time she'd eaten a sandwich in front of him since.
For a man who spent the majority of his time making his fellow peers and teachers' lives incredibly difficult with his constant jokes and pranks, he was very considerate in even the smallest of ways sometimes. It was only one of the many contradictions she found within his personality.
"What exactly is Hagrid raking over there?"
She swallowed the bite that she'd been chewing for what felt like an hour, and turned to look at the groundskeeper. George was facing in the direction of the Beauxbatons carriage, his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle, and was eating what she assumed had to be his third sandwich by this point.
"Maybe he's digging for something to feed to the Skrewts," Nessa said drily, watching Hagrid continue to rake at the ground below him. He didn't look particularly concentrated on his task either, his eyes constantly darting to the carriage he'd been raking around for the last ten minutes.
"Possible," George said thoughtfully. "Although, I assumed he'd have to feed the fourth-years to them instead, truth be told. Have you seen them lately? They're massive. I was sort of hoping he'd do us all a favor and start with Malfoy. Or maybe Ronnie."
Nessa was forced to re-situate her sitting position in order to slap him on the shoulder in admonishment.
"Be nice to your brother, George," she said. "He's not the one who looks like an eighty year old trapped in a sixteen year old body."
"How rude," he replied, pretending to be affronted. "I am merely graying prematurely. It's the stress of having to behave around a swotty little prefect all the time —"
She snorted and shoved him away from her, re-taking her seat perpendicular to him and tracing the castle's walls and turrets with her eyes idly. She rolled her eyes when George handed her one of the oranges, but didn't bother protesting.
"What have you been doing all day if you didn't eat breakfast?" he queried.
She shrugged, stalling a little by focusing on separating her orange.
"I was in the Potions classroom helping Snape brew some Calming Draught," she said eventually, choosing to leave out the part that included her near miss with an anxiety attack. "I dropped too many stewed mandrakes into the cauldron and it took me ages to fix."
"And you had to tell him about our detention?"
Ripping the band-aid off then. She liked the idea of it less and less now that it was actually happening, but she was a Gryffindor for a reason, right? She could have the horrible conversation and let it be done with.
So instead of doing what her stupid racing heart and stomach were begging her to do, she turned to look at him cautiously in an attempt to get a read on how angry he still was about the entire thing. He was finishing his orange and he looked fairly calm about the entire thing, which was more than she could really have hoped for, considering.
"Yeah, I —" she hesitated suddenly, needing to find the right words to explain the entire thing that didn't make her sound like a crazed, controlling lunatic. "I did tell him, but I didn't — I mean, I went to clear my head a little after — after everything this morning."
He sighed heavily and chucked his orange peel into the paper bag next to him before turning to face her directly. She knew both he and his twin had the capacity to be serious, but it always made her a little uncomfortable to be at the brunt of that seriousness, especially when it was because of her own behavior that they had to have the conversation to begin with.
The fact that it was George should have made the entire thing easier — they'd had a number of similar conversations before and it had always been easier because it was him. He was calm and mostly rational and supportive no matter how irrational her own emotions or thought processes tended to be.
But it was…different now somehow. Their dynamic was different. It wasn't just a friend comforting another, although they were still friends. But there was the underlying aspect of them being a couple — still a thought that she found a little unbelievable given where they'd been a year prior — that tended to overshadow how she was supposed to be handling these sorts of situations. A delicate balance of knowing that if she ruined one side of the relationship, she could end up ruining the other as well.
She was overthinking this.
"Are you okay?"
The gentle question surprised her a little. A lot. She was gaping at him now — borderline goggling at him really.
"I — what? Yes, I'm fine," she stuttered, overwhelmed by the careful consideration in his gaze when he looked at her. She felt like she was the one that was supposed to be asking him that — he'd been in the hospital wing, for one thing, and she hadn't gone to check on him because she was a coward. And she'd given him detention for another, which, logically speaking, wouldn't exactly ruin his life, but still felt like something she should have been asking about, and Tori had been nagging her to do all of the previous evening. "You're asking me if I'm okay? After we — no, after I —"
"Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I don't care about you, Vanessa," he said, his eyebrows raising in confusion. "And you look about six seconds from running away from me."
She cleared her throat roughly and tried to relax her muscles. She didn't even know what she was so tense for, for God's sake. Like she was completely incapable of having a human conversation?
"No, I —" she blew out a breath in an attempt to regain control of her racing thoughts. She had too much that she wanted to say and all of it was getting jumbled in her head now. "I'm fine, George. I just — sometimes everything feels like a catastrophe when it isn't one. It fades. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said. "I quite miss the beard actually. I don't think I've quite given enough thought to growing a beard like Dumbledore's —"
"Yes, well, don't start now," Nessa interrupted hastily before he could seriously consider the idea. "It's hard enough looking at you while your hair looks like that."
It was beginning to fade a little, the edges showing more ginger than gray, but it was still very out of place with her usual image of him. Looking at him now, she sincerely hoped the ginger would show again very soon.
"You wound me, love," he said, sighing morosely.
She bit her lip to keep from laughing at him and rolled her eyes before remembering that they were supposed to be having a far more serious conversation than they currently were.
"So you — you're okay that it didn't work? The potion, I mean."
He shrugged casually.
"Maybe a bit miffed," he said truthfully, leaning back to rest on his palms. "We were planning on using the money for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, so it's a little disappointing. But we always knew there was a chance it wouldn't work anyway, and there's no use wallowing about it now. We'll find the money a different way."
It always surprised her how resilient he was, especially in situations that had such an obvious impact on his future. He adapted so well — and quickly — to every situation that didn't go his way, and his ability to remain optimistic despite this was admirable.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, looking away from him for a moment to avoid him seeing how vulnerable the conversation made her. Despite it probably being very obvious to him anyway.
"For what, love?"
She really didn't know which part of it she was apologizing for — the detention, her previous hostility, the fact that the potion hadn't worked even though she'd been hoping it wouldn't anyway. She felt a little bad for all of it.
"I don't know," she said slowly, trying to gather her thoughts enough that she didn't start rambling. "I guess for the potion not working. I mean, I didn't want it to work, personally, but I know that you wanted to win for more than just the glory of it —"
"Wouldn't have hurt," he said truthfully.
She snorted and rolled her eyes, but continued anyway.
"I guess I just hate that you have to wait longer now."
He stared at her for a moment and she tried very hard not to fidget under the attention. It was hard enough talking about any of it as it was, and she still felt a very strong urge to make some excuse to put the entire thing off some more.
"We'll figure it out," he said eventually. "It's not the first time we've had to come up with another plan for the shop. Besides, it's probably for the best — Mum would have killed us if we'd gotten into the tournament illegally and you would have run yourself into the ground with worry if the last few months are any indication."
She sighed heavily.
"I don't know what to say, George," she admitted helplessly. "I mean, I'm not good at these sorts of conversations. Well, no, that's not really true, I guess — I can handle it when it's someone else's emotions, but I don't know how to process my own and it — I know that it's stupid and I know that they're taking precautions for the Champions or whatever the hell Dumbledore said, but it — the possibility alone of watching you or Fred willingly put yourselves in danger is…overwhelming. I can't help but think of every worst case scenario and I fixate on it and it's…"
She trailed off, struggling to find a word that really encompassed how immense the emotions felt to her.
"Overwhelming," he said again, and she nodded once because she didn't know how else to describe it other than that. It was always so hard for her to put those feelings into words, to explain what it felt like to people who didn't really know themselves. He sighed and pushed himself off of his hands to sit up again. "Vanessa, anyone with two brain cells can understand why you'd be worried about us entering. After everything you've been through with Harry in the last thirteen years, I can think of at least a thousand reasons for you to be worried, and all of those reasons are valid. But it — there's going to be a thousand more things to be worried about in the future and I don't want to end up arguing for two months straight every time that happens and I'm doing something you don't like."
"Are you imagining other potentially deadly tournaments that you can force your way into competing in?" she said drily before she could think of something more helpful to say. She winced as soon as the words left her mouth because they sounded like deflection from the real issue at hand here, but he spoke before she could apologize.
"Not particularly," he said, raising an eyebrow at her. "But it's me and Fred, Nessa — we aren't exactly the kind of blokes that are afraid to take risks, and you're particularly…risk-averse." That was a nice way of saying it, but she could tell he had more to say, so she didn't bother mentioning it. "I've severe doubts that this will be the last time we'll do something that you won't like or agree with."
"And I'm just supposed to be okay with that?" she said indignantly.
"That's not what I'm saying," he said calmly. "I don't want you to pretend to be okay with things that make you uncomfortable, and, of course, I care if I'm doing something that upsets or worries you. And I'm sorry if I haven't been exactly clear about that before now, but I don't — I don't enjoy being the one that overwhelms you. But I don't enjoy being given detention or feeling like I'm being scolded by my mother either."
She winced a little at the reminder of her horrid behavior, and she hadn't particularly given much thought into how he or Fred would perceive them, so overwhelmed with the desperation to keep them from entering the tournament altogether and spare herself the anxiety of watching them hurt themselves.
"All I'm saying, love, is that I'd prefer you talked to me about the things that bother you instead of trying to force my hand," he continued, reaching forward to entwine his fingers with hers. "Much as I appreciate your concern for me, I'd prefer if we could leave the burning of our ideas and vanishing our potions to my mother."
She hadn't particularly considered how…Mrs. Weasley-esque her actions had been before now. She hated everything about him pointing it out now because it was so obviously similar to the way his mother treated him and his brother, and she'd been particularly against it over the summer. Just to end up being the one to treat him the same way.
"I — God, George, I'm sorry, I didn't even —" she said, trying to vocalize exactly how horrible she found the realization. "I wasn't trying to be — I mean, I was trying to stop you from entering, obviously, but I didn't even realize that I was doing the same thing as her. I never meant for it to be — I don't want to treat you like that. And I do believe in you and the shop, but I just — I'd really prefer that you didn't break your neck trying to make it happen."
"Yeah, I got that, believe it or not," he said, smirking at her in amusement. It turned quickly into a laugh when she gave him a hard look. "I could have handled it better myself, you know. I could have talked to you before, but — well, you're not the only stubborn one in this case."
"I was the one who started it," she protested. "You were right about that. I should have said something before, but I — it felt sort of ridiculous to explain aloud. And I didn't really think that you'd stop doing it if I said anything to begin with."
He hesitated a moment before admitting, "We might not have. But I still would have done whatever I could to make you feel better about it. And I would have preferred to be honest with you about what we were doing. You're allowed to disagree, love. You're allowed to be upset or angry or nervous about whatever you want to be. I'm not trying to make you feel badly about that or invalidate the way you feel about anything. I hate fighting with you — it's miserable, really. And I don't want to keep secrets from you either — and not just because you can hear a pin drop from the other side of the castle when you're on rounds at night —"
She shoved him away from her again, and felt her lips twitch at the sound of his laugh.
"Lee stomps," she said. "Hard not to hear him coming from a mile off."
"He's a liability," George agreed, grinning when she hummed her agreement. "And, you know, if you want to give us detention because we're breaking the rules — which, I suppose we were out past curfew, but we can put a pin in that — if you want to give us detention because we're breaking the rules, then I'm okay with that. But I don't particularly want it to be part of our arguments."
"That's…fair," she said before muttering to herself, "Probably healthier too."
He must have heard it anyway because he chuckled, and reached out for her. She went willingly into his side and released a slow breath as she relaxed against him. His hand immediately began twirling the end of her ponytail absently.
"I'm sorry, George," she said again.
"Me too, sweetheart," he replied. "We're okay. No more fighting."
"The girls will all be so disappointed," she replied sarcastically.
She'd heard a number of whispered conversations in the loo of girls praying that their bickering would result in an end to their relationship. She wasn't particularly offended about it — Fred and George were popular among the females of the school, and they'd done the same thing when George had been with Alicia. It did, however, annoy her just a smidge more than she might admit aloud.
George merely snorted above her.
"They'll live," he said, tugging on her ponytail until she was forced to crane her neck to look up at him. He grinned down at her. "Speaking of…you wouldn't happen to know how those sixth-year girls got hold of some Ton-Tongue Toffee, would you?"
She kept her face carefully blank as she looked up at him.
"No idea," she said carefully. "Perhaps they got mixed up with some of their Honeydukes chocolates."
He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, but the corners of his mouth twitched.
"A woman out for my own heart," he said, grinning widely at the blush that immediately stained her cheeks.
"They were gossips," she said stubbornly.
"Well, let's give them something to talk about then, sweetheart," he said, tugging on her ponytail to tilt her head further back and capturing her lips with his.
A tad late, but still on Friday, so I'm counting it as on time. No more fighting! We've made it.
I'm off to write the next chapter, loves, so I'm not entirely certain how much will occur next, but we're definitely selecting the Champions (poor Nessa).
See you soon!