I posted an M rated one-shot with the characters for this story, so I'll answer a question I've been getting about this story to be straightforward. I've debated making this series rated M on several occasions, but I think I've decided that this will remain rated T with no smut — not because I don't enjoy writing smut, but because I started it that way and I don't want to take away from the readers who prefer not to read that sort of thing. So, other than some probably more M-rated jokes (I tried to remember what stupid jokes me and my friends used to make in high school to determine just how M-rated they were, but I can't even remember what I ate yesterday, so that was a waste), this will remain smut-less.
That being said, I do enjoy writing smut (color me not so surprised because I enjoy reading it too), so I probably will write additional M-rated one-shots to go along with this series for George/Nessa. I just adore them. The Fred/Tori story will likely have smut at some point since I started that rated M to begin with.
Bookcozy: I missed you! There is literally no relationship in this story that I love more than Nessa/Remus at this point. He just is the pedestal. Keeping secrets from the kids will be a point of contention later because I also agree it was just stupid to do. I feel like this book was really the last that they ever gave them any sort of idea what could happen and then it just fell off the planet. I have no words to defend Ron, though, because he's so much more annoying in this book than any of the others. Well, maybe as much as he was with Lavender. It's a toss up for me.
Also, you have an uncanny ability to guess what's coming next LOL.
Chapter Twenty One
She couldn't sleep.
She was entirely sure she wasn't going to get any sleep at all until the first task had passed. The day after they'd spoken with Sirius, she hadn't even needed to be woken up by Tori's shuffling to get ready for the day; she'd already been staring at her ceiling all night long, watching it change from black to orange to yellow to white as the sun's rays rose over the horizon.
Dragons. Fucking dragons.
Why couldn't it have been…been bowtruckles or something? Something that might claw his eyes out, but he could crush with his foot.
Dragons were…well, they didn't help her sleep any easier, she knew that much.
By the time she and Tori had gone down to breakfast that Sunday morning, Harry and Hermione were already there, sitting with Ginny. Tori and Ginny were talking brightly, but neither Potter sibling seemed to be able to stomach anything. Personally, Nessa felt like she might be sick, and Harry didn't look much better. He looked green. If Ginny noticed their odd behavior, she didn't comment.
Nessa was running through options in her head — Tori could teach Harry the spell to fight it off, but if he couldn't manage to learn it then what was the alternative? There had to be an alternative. She'd have asked Hermione for ideas, but Ginny was there and letting more people know what the first task would entail only seemed like an invitation to a detention.
The moment Hermione had swallowed her last spoonful of porridge, Harry jumped up and dragged her out of the Great Hall. Nessa and Tori shared a look before making a hasty excuse to Ginny and following the two of them outside to the grounds. They walked three times around the lake, and Harry told her everything that Sirius had said.
"Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," Hermione said desperately when Harry advised her of Sirirus's warning about Karkaroff. "And then we can worry about him."
"Agreed," Nessa said, wringing her hands anxiously. "What's the spell he needs to learn?"
Tori was staring out across the lake thoughtfully, her curls blowing out behind her, but she turned to give Harry a serious look at the question.
"The Conjunctivitis Curse," she said simply. "I'm afraid Sirius might have made it sound more simple than it actually is though. The movement is very precise and your aim has to be perfect. Missing the eye will just piss it off, and every breed responds differently to that sort of thing. Without knowing what breeds they have —"
"There's four," Harry said. "They're all different breeds. Charlie said they were — er, let me think — a Common Welsh Green…a Short-Snout something…a Chinese Fireball…and a Hungarian Horntail. We each get one and all I have to do is get past them, he told Hagrid. All of them are nesting, he said —"
Tori stared at him for a long moment before laughing sarcastically.
"Oh, good," she muttered. "Pissed off dragon mothers — you should have started with that, you know. One step toward their eggs and they'll rip you to shreds —"
"That's not helpful, Tori," Hermione said weakly as Nessa flinched.
Tori pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled a long breath.
"If you have a choice, don't pick the Horntail, alright?" she warned. "They're Charlie's favorite to work with, but they have a nasty temper, and as the name would suggest, fire isn't their only weapon. Charlie is a little crazy, truth be told. I wouldn't be caught dead pal-ing around with one of those things."
Harry snorted, and muttered something under his breath. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on it a little when he reached the ends. Nessa smacked his hand away out of habit, rather than any real concern. She was too busy trying to imagine what in the hell a dragon could do with its tail. Or what it might do to protect its young. Neither scenario led to anything worth dwelling on because she might pass out if she did.
"Right, so good aim, don't piss it off," Harry said sarcastically. "Should be simple enough."
"We need a place to practice," Hermione said worriedly. "Without being caught. We aren't supposed to know about the tasks and —"
"Well, I'm sure Fleur and Krum already know," Harry said, eyeing the Durmstrang ship that was not far from them. "Hagrid invited Maxime as a date —"
"Always a romantic choice," Tori snorted.
"Yes, because you would have said no to a bloke who asked if you wanted to go on a date looking at dragons," Nessa scoffed pointedly.
"We're talking about Hagrid, not me."
Harry rolled his eyes at them, and continued as if they hadn't spoken at all.
" — and I saw Karkaroff going into the woods as I was leaving, so I'm sure he saw them too. I don't imagine that they wouldn't have told them, do you?"
"No, I'm sure they did," Tori agreed. "But Dumbledore isn't going to cheat, even if the other two have no issues with it. I agree with Hermione — somewhere private is best. With a lot of space so we can see what your aim is like. George can probably transfigure something that's as similar in size to a dragon — McGonagall would just love him if he wasn't such a pain in her arse. If we can charm it to breathe fire then that would be even better —"
"Agree to disagree with you there," Harry said bitterly.
Nessa agreed, but she still nodded at Tori's suggestions.
"As close as we can get to the actual scenario without burning the castle down, the better," she said, chewing on her lip. "I'm not sure where we can practice though, other than an empty classroom…"
"The Quidditch pitch?" Harry suggested.
Hermione shook her head.
"Too open," she said immediately. "Anyone could figure out what we're doing. Besides, I don't much fancy angry Quidditch players bombarding us if we light the pitch on fire."
"Definitely not the pitch," Tori and Harry agreed at once, as if the thought of it on fire was some great tragedy.
Nessa met Hermione's eyes and rolled hers to the sky.
"A classroom is probably our best bet, but there's obvious constraints," Hermione continued sagely. "No fire — it might be more realistic, but it's too dangerous in an enclosed building. And I don't think we'll be able to transfigure anything as big as a dragon in there, but we can get it as big as possible. Assuming George can do it, of course —"
"He can do it," Nessa and Tori said with a hard look in the younger girl's direction.
Hermione was particularly hard on the twins because her idea of what intelligence looked like was rather limited. It had been a point of contention between the three girls any time the twins' magical capabilities were brought up, so they typically avoided the topic altogether. Despite the assuredness of Nessa and Tori, Hermione still looked skeptical, but she thought better of arguing.
"Right, well, we'd better get to it then," she said heavily. "We haven't got much time before the task, and we could use as much as we can get."
The four of them stared at each other morosely for a moment before they had no other choice but to head back up to the castle to begin practicing. It had taken some time to find a classroom that was far enough away from any offices or used rooms. Tori didn't think it was necessary to get George for the time being — Harry needed to understand the theory and incantation for the spell before he would be of any use at fighting something so large, and reminding him what he was up against might just make it harder for him to focus.
Truthfully, Vanessa didn't think he was able to concentrate much at all, but that really wasn't her place to say. Tori was setting aside time to keep her brother alive, so she wasn't about to argue with her approach, so long as it kept him alive. She could have kissed her square on the mouth, truth be told.
As far as theory went, the spell was relatively straightforward — it irritated the eyes of the dragon, or, in more severe cases, blinded them entirely. Tori didn't seem fond of the latter option, as there wasn't anything that could reverse the blindness, but she advised Harry that if it were his only option, he should put as much feeling behind the spell as possible, whether it would blind the dragon or not.
"If you do it right, it shouldn't be necessary to use that much power, but if push comes to shove…Don't think twice," she warned seriously. "If it gets too close, and you have nothing else than you put every ounce of your power behind the spell. Any hesitation on your part could cost you more than a limb."
Nessa and Hermione were particularly careful to stand behind Tori and Harry as she showed him the movement and incantation — the last thing either of them needed was to go blind themselves. The movement was…complicated. A bit odd — like if she'd been trying to draw the shape of a fish, but hadn't quite finished the tail. It was round on the sides, sharp at the point, and ended awkwardly. Not made any more helpful by the fact that part of the movement was smooth and graceful, and parts of it were sharp and rapid.
"Oculus Roseus!" Tori said sharply, making the movement so quickly that Nessa had barely blinked.
There was a streak of lilac purple light that shot from her wand across the room. The moment it hit the wall, it disappeared without a trace.
"The darker the color, the more powerful the spell," she said to Harry calmly. "The eyes are particularly sensitive in all animals, so you don't need to put much behind it, but I would go for something a bit darker than that to be safe."
"Do I need to hit both eyes?"
"No," she said. "One eye. The spell will affect both automatically. Although if you don't put enough behind the first one, you might have to cast it again. Once it knows what you're doing, it will sniff you out with or without its eyes. Use the spell, get the hell out of there, understood?"
Harry nodded, frowning seriously. Nessa watched on as her brother attempted the spell over and over again to no avail. His frustration mounted, but Tori remained calmer than Nessa had ever seen her, perfecting his movements down to the way he was standing.
"Focus, Harry," she said seriously.
"I am —"
"You aren't," she said. "If you were, it would be working. The movement is spot on. Whatever you're thinking about, just stop —"
"Hard to do when all I can think about is a huge, giant, fire-breathing monster —" Harry said irritably.
"Wait until I make George transfigure that desk into something massive, and then you can start complaining," Tori snapped over his whining. "You're looking at a wall, Harry, not a dragon. Stop arguing about it and focus."
Harry grumbled under his breath at her, but kept muttering the spell over and over again, his movements becoming sloppy as his frustration mounted. Tori rolled her eyes and sent him and Hermione off to get lunch before she had to snap at him again, and she needed him focused when he came back, she warned him seriously.
Harry disappeared, looking somewhere between sick and irritated, but Nessa could tell he was grateful for the reprieve, even if it meant less time to prepare.
She sighed heavily, sinking into one of the chairs in the room and putting her head in her hands. What was her life coming to?
"He's going to be fine," Tori said from across the room, straightening some of the items she'd knocked over when her spells had hit them.
"Do you really believe that?" Nessa said without looking up. Before Tori could come up with some optimistic lie, she said, "And don't lie, Tori. I'm sick of the three of you lying to me about this."
She heard Tori sigh heavily, but she refused to look at her. Whatever was on her face, she was sure she didn't want to look at it.
"We aren't lying to you, Nessa," she said eventually. "He will be fine —"
"How can you be so sure?" Nessa replied angrily, shooting up from her seat and pacing back and forth. "Do you not see him? You said you could teach him the spell in two days, but we both know that was a lie —"
"You're levitating things, Vanessa," Tori interrupted, her brows raised pointedly and her tone bored.
The random bouts of magic had alarmed her at first, but she'd seen too many episodes at this point to question it anymore. Anytime Nessa worried about Harry, there was the potential for something insane to happen around them. The other day, she'd burst Tori's favorite picture frame when they'd been talking about if he was ready for the tournament or not.
Nessa huffed in irritation and squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. The books around the room fell to the floor with a thud. When she opened her eyes, there was a despair in them that she couldn't quite mask behind her anger.
"You should really learn to control that, you know," Tori said as if she didn't notice. "It's getting out of hand."
"Yes, well, I'm trying," Nessa griped. "I don't even know why it keeps happening to begin with and —"
"Because you're overly emotional," Tori said. Nessa made an indignant noise, but Tori waved her way impatiently. "That's not what I meant, relax. I mean that you're bottling things up. I read somewhere that it makes the magic harder to control, especially in people who have pushed the boundaries of their core as much as you have —"
"You read that somewhere?" Nessa interrupted, her indignation being replaced with disbelief.
Tori gave her a deadpan expression.
"I can read, you know —"
"About Witch Weekly's ten best tips to a better orgasm maybe —" Nessa quipped with a snort.
"Yeah, well you could use one of those," Tori said, raising an eyebrow at her pointedly and giving her a onceover. "If you need to borrow that particular copy, I'll lend it to you."
Nessa huffed and crossed her arms across her chest.
"I'm good, thanks," she said with an eye roll before changing the subject. It was a poor thing to say on her part anyway because Tori had absolutely no tact, and she did not believe in oversharing. "But I'm also good on the therapy session, if that's what you're suggesting is going to help with the magic thing —"
"Please," Tori snorted derisively. "As if I'd ever suggest anything of the sort — we're the queens of pretending we don't have problems, remember? All I'm suggesting is that you should release some of that pent up rage more often. Fling curses around a classroom, hex George for being a prat, hex Fred for being a wanker, that sort of thing. Otherwise you might just blow up someone's head, and that's hardly helpful….although maybe we should give that idea some consideration when Harry faces that dragon. Could be useful."
Nessa stared at her blankly for a long moment.
"You truly give the worst advice of anyone I've ever met," she said seriously.
"Thank you," Tori said, as if this were the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. "Are we eating lunch or —"
"No," Nessa said immediately. "If I eat, I might be sick."
Tori sighed heavily and took the seat next to her without a word.
"I know what you mean," she said morosely. "I don't know how Fred and George can eat so much when everything feels like this."
Nessa snorted.
"It has to be hardwired into the Weasley DNA or something," she said. "I don't think anyone eats as much as them — I watched Ron eat a whole chicken last night —"
"Disgusting," Tori snorted.
There was a long moment of silence between them, both of them staring off into the distance in front of them. Tori interrupted the silence as usual.
"Do you think he got away?"
Nessa turned to look at her. She didn't need to ask who the 'he' she was referring to was.
"Of course," she said assuredly. "He only left because Ron was coming, not because the wizard family had come home. Besides, if he'd been caught, it would have been on the front page of the Prophet this morning."
Tori seemed to relax a little, the rationalization seeming to work past whatever anxiety she'd created in her head. Nessa wished her own anxiety worked the same way —- it would make her life far easier.
She avoided thinking about that in particular because talking with Tori was soothing that rolling feeling in her stomach for the first time in days, and it felt like a stupid thing to do to think about it so much that it came back with a roaring force; she had at least two and a half days of anxiety to come before she could relax again as it was. So instead she looked at her best friend probingly.
"Are you going to write to him, Tori?"
Tori did not appear to like the question much, although Nessa was grateful that she at least did not immediately change the subject or make some ridiculous excuse. Instead, she just stared at the stack of books she'd placed back onto the desk before she'd come to sit next to her, bouncing her knee incessantly. The movement was starting to make her anxiety come back, but she tried not to interrupt whatever Tori's thought process currently was — she'd be lucky if she ever got the opportunity to speak to her about it again; her moods changed quickly and just because she wanted to talk about it now, didn't mean she would later.
"I was going to," Tori admitted quietly. "I wrote the letter and everything, but then I read the letters he sent me —"
Nessa's head snapped to the side to look at her in shock — she hadn't noticed anything different about Tori's demeanor lately, and she'd sort of imagined that when she'd finally read them, there would be some sort of emotional break. Or at the very least that she would have brought it up.
"You did?" she said in surprise.
Tori sighed heavily.
"Yes," she said, her tone very even and monotonous. "A few weeks ago —"
"You never said," Nessa said, so surprised by the development that she wasn't sure what else she was supposed to be saying.
"You've been a bit preoccupied."
Nessa flinched. It hadn't sounded like an accusation — more a statement of fact — but the words themselves were still a reminder of how distant she'd been with everyone lately. It wasn't a welcome reminder coming from her brother, and it certainly wasn't much better coming from her best friend. Particularly when her best friend had a tendency of never admitting when she needed help to begin with.
"I'm sorry —" she began, but Tori waved the words away with a hand.
"I'm not accusing you of anything," she said. "I don't imagine I'd be much better if I were in your shoes. I just didn't want to add to your load, and Fred has been nagging at me to send the letter in your stead anyway, so I might have been hoping to spare myself both of you nagging me at once. It's very annoying."
Nessa snorted, some of her guilt fading to exasperation at the words, but at least someone was trying to get through Tori's nearly indestructible walls. The fact that Fred Weasley was still breathing could only be a good sign.
Another question she should probably be asking because she hadn't talked to Fred about their relationship either. Her list of priorities was piling instead of dwindling at this point.
Her head was starting to hurt.
"Well, what did they say then?" she said when Tori didn't continue talking.
"You know, maybe we should just talk about what we're going to do if Harry —"
"Not a chance," Nessa said, giving her a hard look for attempting to shift the focus to something else. "You've been running from this for long enough, I think."
"I think I could do it for a couple more months at least," Tori said stubbornly, but sighed heavily and rubbed at her temples as if she was getting a headache. "They were just…fatherly."
Nessa waited for an explanation of what that was supposed to mean or why she had expected them to be anything different, but Tori didn't say anything. Her patience was thin at this point, her stress building by the day, and she wasn't really in the mood to pull these things out of her.
"I can't read your mind, you know," she said pointedly.
Tori rolled her eyes.
"It's complicated enough to feel without having to explain it too, Vanessa," she said, frustrated. "He's my…father," — the word came out as if being ripped from her throat despite her best effort to avoid saying it — "but I don't exactly want him to be, do I?" She flinched at the phrasing and shook her head. "No, that's — that came out wrong. I just mean that he isn't my father. Not really. I've lived my entire life under this impression that I didn't have one, and I've made my peace with that. Having him apologize for not being around and tell me stories about when I was younger and how much he loves me is…"
"Overwhelming," Nessa offered with a nod.
"Putting it lightly," Tori snorted. "At any rate, I don't think that's what I want from him, you know."
"Because it isn't what you want or because you're too afraid to let him close?"
"Does it matter?" Tori said with an eye roll. "It's the same thing, regardless. He wants us to be this — to just pick up where everything was left, and I — I mean, I have a life now. And not a bad one either. Having him be in the picture now…complicates everything. The Weasleys — I mean, they may not really be my family, but they're the closest I've ever had, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with not having any real family left. I've made my peace with that. But explaining that to him — when it isn't even his fault that it worked out that way? I don't know how to do that."
It was a mix of emotions that the words elicited for her. Pity for Sirius at the top because it truly wasn't his fault that it had worked out the way that it had, but he'd not be able to be the father he thought he could have been before. Pity for Tori because she was clearly being pulled ten different directions. Irritation with Tori for not admitting that she was afraid to get close to him, even to herself. Irritation with Sirius for thinking that picking up where everything had been left — when Tori had been three — was even feasible at all.
An overwhelming sadness over the entire thing because no matter what option was chosen, someone would end up hurt in the process, and it seemed unfair that Tori was the one who had to be the one to hurt them.
"Fred says I should just send the letter and be done with it, you know," Tori continued as the silence continued. She wasn't typically that uncomfortable with silence, although she preferred noise and activity, but silence when she was talking about this particular topic made her feel claustrophobic, her thoughts pressing in on her from the inside. "He says that I should just tell him that we can have a relationship that isn't…familial for the time being. That I should just lay the rules down and see if he respects them and decide from there if anything changes or if I'm happy with that to begin with."
Nessa tried to keep the surprise off her face because, truthfully, she had never known Fred Weasley to say anything so rational. He was a man of many faces, certainly, and she'd seen him serious on enough occasions to know that he wasn't just a foolhardy prankster, but typically it was George that tended to be the more practical one.
"That's a surprisingly good idea, considering," she said eventually.
"Yes, because telling a man that clearly wants to be my father that I want to be friends is a piece of cake," Tori said sarcastically.
"It's not supposed to be easy, Tori," Nessa said pointedly. "If this were an easy decision for you to make — if it didn't make you feel guilty or sick — then I'd think you were a sociopath."
"Be easier if I were," she muttered in response. "It would be easier if I could talk the whole thing over with Molly and Arthur too, but seeing as we aren't exactly on the best of terms and they still think he's a murderer…"
Another problem of Tori's at the current moment — her inability to forgive people when they tried to protect her. Although, truthfully, the relationship had been better over the summer than it had been the last time Nessa had been with them all. She at least talked to the two people who had raised her now, instead of avoiding them entirely, even if the conversations tended to be more polite than they'd been before.
But Nessa didn't exactly think there was an easy solution to that problem either. Arthur and Molly Weasley had never officially adopted Tori, although they often referred to her as their adopted daughter to anyone who asked. And as Tori had known them from before her mother had died, they were the two adults she had trusted implicitly — it likely would have been easier if she'd forgive them for long enough to explain the entire thing to them and determine what they thought might be best.
But even without the fact their relationship was strained at the moment, she couldn't exactly tell them that her father wasn't actually guilty of murdering thirteen people without giving away that she knew where he was. Let alone whether they'd believe her or think she'd been taken advantage of by a man who clearly wanted to be a more permanent part of her life.
The entire thing made Nessa's head feel like it was being crushed by a boulder. There was a sort of relief in knowing that her parents were actually dead and that the worst she had to deal with was her Aunt Petunia being a loathsome bitch.
"Any decision is going to hurt, Tori," she said eventually. "You can't expect to make this choice without everyone coming out unscathed. And — as much as I can't believe I'm about to say this — I think that Fred is right. Avoiding it all entirely is clearly not working for you, and you'll regret it if you don't give Sirius a chance at a relationship in some capacity. Write him back and set the ground rules, and he can accept them or not. At the very least, it will be one less thing you have to worry about."
Tori was silent for a long moment, still looking particularly undecided, when the door opened again and Fred and George came in with a pile of food. Tori straightened and smoothed her face into something less emotionally fraught, and Nessa was not stupid enough to think that pressing the conversation in front of the twins was going to win her any points.
"I told you they weren't coming down to lunch," George said to Fred, eyeing the two of them disapprovingly and sitting a very precarious stack of sandwiches on the desk she and Tori were occupying.
Fred chucked a bag of crisps at Tori before pulling a chair up to the desk and sitting on it backwards to look at them.
"So what are we talking about then?" he said, stealing a crisp from Tori's hand before it could reach her mouth.
Nessa raised an eyebrow at her best friend, smug that Fred had asked the one question she was certain that Tori wouldn't want to answer.
"Nessa was asking for a copy of my Witch Weekly magazine," Tori said nonchalantly, a smirk blossoming across her face. "10 tips to a better orgasm."
Nessa inhaled a crisp in surprise and immediately started coughing. It truly didn't help her because both of the twins had frozen in surprise, and she was totally unable to defend herself against the suggestion. Made worse by the fact that Fred was the one that recovered from his surprise first.
He gave her a pitying look, as she attempted to gulp down water to clear her airway enough to insist that that was definitely not what they had been talking about in the slightest.
"It's a shame you went for George instead of me, munchkin," he said, as if he were truly sorrowful about her life choices. "I can give him some pointers if you'd like. Unless you'd prefer to run off with me instead —"
Nessa did not see Fred taken by surprise by George on many occasions, but he flailed embarrassingly when George grabbed onto his chair and pulled until it sent him toppling sideways with a clatter. Tori laughed loudly as Fred untangled himself from the mess on the floor.
"I'm plenty capable, thanks," George said, smirking at his twin as he righted himself. "You're the one with complaints —"
"That is not true!" Fred said indignantly, pointing a warning finger at his grinning twin. "Towler made up that story after I put Bulbadox powder in his underwear, which you ruddy well know."
"What story?" Tori queried, leaning forward with interest.
"Absolutely not," Fred said, grabbing a sandwich and stuffing it in George's mouth before he could recount it to her. "It's meaningless. Insignificant. Inconsequential, even."
George chuckled when Tori clearly was not accepting this answer and continued to badger Fred for more details, despite his clear irritation with the subject. Because he couldn't quite talk yet with the sandwich in his mouth, he worked on tearing the crusts off another sandwich before handing it to his girlfriend. She looked at it as if it were a chore she was sincerely dreading, but she thought better of arguing and took it from him with a heavy sigh.
"That's not what we were talking about," she said now that she could speak again. When he merely grinned at her over the rim of his water bottle, she insisted, "It wasn't."
"Of course not, love," he said teasingly, leaning over to kiss her on the temple. "I'm sure you had that copy already. Not that you need it — all you had to do was ask."
She huffed at him, feeling her face heat at the suggestion.
"George —"
He laughed at her awkwardness around the subject, but took pity on her anyway, pulling her forward to kiss her gently.
"Before the two of you get disgusting again, I need you to transfigure something in here into something that resembles a dragon."
George left his hand resting on the back of her neck as he leaned back to look at Tori with an incredulous expression. The reminder of what was coming in the next few days caused her to tense, even as George stroked a thumb soothingly against the side of her neck.
"Flattering as I find your assumption that I could do that to be," George drawled at Tori with a raised eyebrow. "I don't think even McGonagall can do something like that."
Tori gave him a pointed look.
"Then transfigure something large and we can make it larger with a charm," she said, clearly unwilling to let go of the idea. "Nothing that could kill us all, preferably. I need something to motivate Harry to learn this spell. He's about as useless as Ron trying to talk to women."
Fred snorted.
"I doubt that," he said. "Remember when we were in Hogsmeade and Rosmerta asked him if he wanted a refill? He spilled his entire drink down his front."
Tori gave him a long-suffering expression.
"I'm telling you, it's exactly like that," she said.
"Well, what's Plan B then?" George said, unfolding himself from the chair and brushing the crumbs off his hands.
"There is no Plan B," Nessa said forlornly.
It was not a phrase she'd ever used before, and she didn't like it now. She always had a Plan B — but she didn't know enough about this sort of thing, and she'd have to do hours of research in order to come up with one. And she wasn't sure they had that amount of time at this point. Or that her anxiety could handle trying to find something that might work — everything she'd considered so far had been an embarrassing failure on her part.
They didn't learn about dragons until seventh year, and Nessa was entirely sure that if Tori didn't have such an interest in magical creatures that they wouldn't even have gotten this far. Getting past one wasn't an easy feat.
Fred and George shared a look with each other that lasted several seconds, and Nessa did not need to be part of whatever bond they had to know that they did not have high hopes for her brother going forward. The expressions were smoothed over on their faces in the next instant, their typical optimism replacing their clear hesitance.
"Right, well, I'm sure we can figure something out then," George said, clearing his throat and looking around the room. "It might take me a bit to work out the logistics —-"
"Don't worry about it," Tori waved away the concern. "I can try something else in the meantime."
Nessa didn't sleep that night. She didn't even bother trying — the anxiety was all-encompassing now, to the point that nothing worked to soothe her.
The task was tomorrow and Harry had not managed to learn the spell that Tori had been attempting to teach him. Not even with the motivation of George's transfiguration skills — although, to be fair, battling against a stuffed dragon that they'd enlarged to forty times its size was more comical than threatening. Even with them taking turns to make it move in all directions and shoot controlled bursts of fire at her brother.
They'd had to concede for the night around midnight in favor of Harry getting any rest that he could manage, and Tori's hope that he could learn before the task seemed to have been dwindling before their very eyes.
The closest her brother had come to managing the spell had been a set of dark purple sparks. It was a true testament to how poorly the entire thing had been going that he became particularly excited by this, whooping as though he'd managed the spell completely.
"I almost did it that time!" he said excitedly.
Tori, who had been controlling the "dragon" with Fred, had gaped at him for a long moment before forcing her face into a tight smile.
"Okay," she yelled at him in response, clearly at a loss for any other word.
Nessa might have found the sarcastic optimism more amusing if it had been under any other circumstances, but even she was beginning to wonder what the point was of the entire mess. Truly, running away from Hogwarts felt like a more feasible option at this point. She'd almost take living with Petunia for the rest of her life over the misery she was drowning in now.
"He's going to die, isn't he?" Fred had deadpanned when Harry went back to trying to cast the spell, all the while dodging errant fireballs.
"Fred!" Hermione had admonished, her voice weak at the suggestion.
Nessa, lost in her own panic now, had merely laughed maniacally at the suggestion. She'd lived with anxiety her entire life — as far back as she could remember — but she had never in that time span ever thought that she had the capacity to be so anxious that every one of her other emotions was swallowed completely in the process.
All four of them had shared a concerned look with each other when she'd been unable to control the laughter until George had covered her mouth with his hand to stifle the noise.
"I think we should give some real consideration to telling him to just make a run for it," he said seriously, eyeing Harry's failed attempts wearily. "How fast can a dragon really be?"
Tori gave him an exasperated look.
"Faster than him," she said assuredly. "He'd have run toward it first to get past it — I give him a two percent chance of getting past it without being barbequed."
Not even Hermione had had the presence of mind to scold her this time, all of them standing in silence as they watched Harry continue to try to master the spell with an overwhelming dread.
Nessa hadn't even bothered trying to pretend like she was going to sleep, telling them all to leave her be in the classroom and she'd work on cleaning up. George and Tori had argued the longest, but Fred had — by some miracle — convinced them to let her work out what she was feeling alone.
She hadn't left the classroom at all, hiding under one of the desks any time she heard a professor or prefect making their rounds aside the doors.
At first, she'd just stared at that stuffed dragon hopelessly, trying to think of any alternative that they had in this situation. Nothing she knew of would work for this without thinking outside the box, and that wasn't particularly her strong suit. She was more comfortable inside the box, turning over facts and figures in her mind until something came to her that any average person might think of with the same information at their disposal. And she'd really tried to force herself to think outside the box, but she wasn't built that way apparently.
Then she'd taken to feeling sorry for herself, letting the panic flip through every horrible scenario until she'd worked herself to tears. Gasping sobs were not particularly an easy thing to hide when the prefects made their rounds, but she'd managed. She'd had to stop once the tears had run out, leaving her eyes puffy and swollen, and her head with a throbbing headache that she was certain would persist until the first task was over.
Eventually, she'd been forced to admit that she couldn't just sit there wallowing in self-pity. With Tori's earlier words about her emotions impacting her magic in mind, she had turned to wondering if she could focus on releasing some of her anxiety by channeling it into that instead. She hadn't practiced wandlessly in a while — all of her energy had been bouncing between Harry and O.W.L.s, but she had nothing better to be doing at the current moment.
With her cheek resting against the desk still, she raised one of her hands to lay next to her, palm up toward the ceiling. Staring at it absent-mindedly, she whispered, "Ad Ignem."
The ball of orange flames that filled her palm was dimmer than it normally was, her distraction having some impact on its power, but she stared at it for a long while, drawing strength from the heat of it against her face, as if the flames themselves were thawing her insides slowly, batting away the inky blackness that was shrouding her head and her usually rational personality.
There had been several minutes of staring before she'd managed the strength to sit up and eye that ball of flame in her palm with a degree of interest.
She liked fire. Not in the way of being a pyromaniac, but in the way that it tended to cleanse the things around it, destroying the old in order to make way for the new. Something that at the current moment she could particularly use — she could use something to burn away her anxiety and allow her the freedom of mind to consider her options.
Tilting her head to the side, she lifted her other hand to poke at the tip of the flames, testing the heat of them against her fingertips. Likely a stupid thing to do because she burned herself a good number of times, but it was grounding somehow, a reminder that she was alive.
"Finite."
The flames extinguished, plunging the room back into darkness before she muttered the spell again to reignite them. The heat of it was stronger this time, the flames brighter, the power of it somehow strengthening her resolve. She had control of so little in her life at the moment, but this ball of flame was completely confined to her whims, which was somehow relieving.
Your magic is tied to your emotions…
How to test that theory was the biggest question. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, careful to keep the majority of her focus on the flames in her hand — the last thing she needed was to lose control of them somehow and end up burning the palm of her hand to high heaven. Explaining that to Madame Pomfrey would be highly embarrassing.
She considered the emotions she could play on for the moment, trying to paint a picture of something calmer in her mind's eye, something that brought her peace. Christmas at the Burrow, surrounded by laughter and warmth. Her brother laughing with his friends under the big tree by the lake, not a care or concern in the world. Leaving Privet Drive every summer with the knowledge that she wouldn't be back for nine months. Looking up at the stars with George, humoring her and her ridiculous stories about them. The way that the smell and sound of potions grounded her in reality.
Her palms were suddenly cold, and she swore viciously, clearly having extinguished the flames in her attempts to ground herself in an emotion. But when she opened her eyes, the flames hadn't extinguished at all. She stared at them for a long moment as if she didn't quite understand what was happening before she sat forward slowly, careful not to disturb the fire in her hands.
"Interesting," she mumbled to herself, tilting her head to study them. They were blue now, but white at the tips, and there was no heat to them at all. Hesitantly, she poked a finger at them and gaped when nothing happened — not even when she stuck her entire finger into them. They were…warm. In an inviting sort of way, like when she sat around the hearth in the common room or laid under her blankets in bed — the sort of warmth that was relaxing and cozy. The flames were also brighter now, illuminating the entire room and batting back every shadow that had been dominating the room before. "They aren't fading," she said aloud to herself, as if hearing the words aloud would help her make sense of what was happening. "Perhaps it's intention more than emotion that controls it? Maybe the emotion has to be overwhelming before it changes anything."
Remus had always used blue flames, she recalled idly, tipping her hand so that the flames fell into her other palm instead. They remained blue, comfortably warm, and unbelievably bright, no matter how many times she moved them from palm to palm. She'd never asked how he'd managed it and she'd merely learned the spell herself as a means to light her way back to the common room when all of the lanterns had been extinguished for the evening.
Was it emotion or intention or both?
She squinted at them, willing them to turn back to orange. Nothing happened at first, and she was beginning to accept that maybe it was simply emotion, and not her control of the magic itself. She released a slow breath, imagining the well of power inside herself that she'd explained to the twins and Tori the previous year when she'd been attempting to explain the difference between magic without a wand and magic with one; imagining that she was pulling from it like a straw, trying to maintain control over the amount of power she pulled.
It was an exhausting process, truthfully. One that had gotten only slightly easier than it had first been when she'd originally started practicing the skill. It had frustrated her at first — she'd seen Dumbledore exert the same amount of power as she was able to without even breaking a sweat, and she knew that came with time and practice, but she had far less patience for that sort of thing in the beginning until it had become easier. She could cast some spells now without needing to imagine herself pulling from an inner well, without even a thought, but she'd always only used the spells for their original applications. She'd never toyed with the flames before or tried to morph them into something else.
Turn them orange…I want them orange…Turn orange, you annoying piece of —
She startled a little, releasing some of her concentration on holding her magic when the flames turned orange again, the heat returning with them, the brightness dimming so that she could only see a foot in front of her, the shadows returning as if they'd never even left.
Had that been her irritation or her magical control? She couldn't tell.
Despite the heaviness in her bones, she imagined that well again, pulled from it with a straw, and tried to maintain an air of overall nonchalance, of apathy. Squinting at them and trying to maintain that control at the same time, she willed the flames to turn blue again. They didn't, but before she could convince herself to find this irritating again, she took in a deep breath and tried again.
She gaped when the flames turned blue again, lighting the entire room again in a blue glow.
"Okay," she said slowly. "So not always emotion controlled. Although, I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised. If I wasn't so neurotic, I imagine I'd be entirely in control of it to begin with."
She couldn't quite ignore her curiosity about the overall impact emotion had over the entire thing. It seemed to have a more powerful impact than even her intention did — she'd broken that tree trunk in Hogsmeade by accident, her hair had done that floating thing earlier in the year, she'd exploded something on Snape's desk. All without even having the intention to do so. But people experienced emotions all the time without the same result — so she either had an overall very poor amount of control over her emotions as compared to other people or she needed a more consistent outlet.
Because she was too curious not to, she closed her eyes again and focused on another emotion instead. The time Fred and George had left Harry to deal with a rogue Bludger on his own; Harry refusing to admit that he cared more about Quidditch than his life; Cedric's refusal to accept that they were just friends; Fred and George trying to enter the tournament against the rules; Cedric's inability to accept that Harry hadn't entered himself.
"Son of a bitch!" She exclaimed, shooting backward in surprise when the ball of flames in her hand grew as high as the ceiling and the heat burned her palms. "Finite."
There was a certain amount of relief when they disappeared despite the pounding of her heart. She looked down at the palm of her hands and flinched a little at the sight of the burns on them. Anger was certainly a powerful emotion to put behind the magic, and Tori had always told her that she had a horrible temper. She wasn't always quick to anger except in a handful of circumstances, but she couldn't argue that all of her more powerful magical outbursts had come from a spot of anger.
So perhaps it wasn't emotion itself, but one emotion in particular. Arguably, the most destructive emotion, so it shouldn't be all that surprising that it held so much power when combined with her magic.
Maybe she should give some consideration to telling Harry to get really pissed off before he went to fight his dragon.
"Why does it smell like smoke in here?"
Nessa jumped, swearing at the sound of the voice behind her.
"Fred, for God's sake, what are you doing down here so early?" she said, hissing in pain when she grabbed the edge of the desk to stop herself from falling backwards.
Fred was clearly trying not to laugh at her, but it was clear he wasn't all that concerned about her ire because he folded himself into the chair next to her, his eyes immediately locking on the burns on her hand.
"What in the hell are you doing in here?" he said, grabbing her wrists and looking at the burns in the dim light that was shining in from outside. She hadn't even noticed it was morning already.
"I was practicing magic —"
He cut her off with a roll of his eyes, but his eyes snagged on the ceiling. She looked up and grimaced. There was a burn mark on the stone above her.
"I feel like this should go without saying, but burning down the castle isn't going to get Harry out of competing tomorrow," he said, looking at her as if he half expected her to explode.
"I wasn't trying to burn the castle down, you pillock," she said in irritation, ripping her hands away from him and eyeing them carefully. Second degree burns weren't exactly what she was counting on, and it certainly didn't improve her already fragile emotional state. "I was practicing wandless magic."
"Stellar control, munchkin," he replied sarcastically, conjuring a tin of putrid green paste. "Let me see your hands."
"What, why?" she said, eyeing him carefully.
"Don't you trust me?" he said with a grin.
She gave him a serious look.
"No, of course not," she said, as if this should have been entirely obvious. "Whatever that is —"
"It's burn paste —"
"Burn paste is orange. Do you think I'm stupid?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
"I don't imagine you can string enough words together to answer that."
"Will you quit being dramatic and give me your hands?" he said, laughing despite his clear annoyance with her anxious twitching. "We made our own."
"I — I'm sorry, you did what?" she said, momentarily distracted by the implications of that statement.
"We needed to find something that we could use more regularly," he said as if this were self-explanatory. "Not that going to Pomfrey isn't riveting and all, but she asks too many questions, and we test all of our products ourselves. Does that satisfy you?"
"What are you working on that requires burn paste?" she said instead of answering.
Because, no, it did not satisfy her, and she had no intention of letting Fred Weasley put any type of paste he'd concocted in the confines of his dormitory all over her hands. With her luck, it would cause them to rot and fall off. And that was likely the best-case scenario.
"Fireworks," he said, losing patience with her entirely and grabbing onto one of her wrists and tugging it toward him. She swore and attempted to pull her hand away from him, but he was much stronger than her, and her current exhaustion certainly didn't help.
"Fred, you can't just manhandle people —" she began, trying to pry his fingers off one by one, but he clearly wasn't listening, using his other hand to smear paste over the burn. His hands were gentle despite his impatience with her, and this, added with the fact that the paste cooled the burns immediately made some of the tension leave her shoulders. "Does it work?" she queried, unable to stop herself from asking even despite how much better it made her hand feel.
"'Course it works," he snorted, clearly offended by the implication. "Do you have so little faith in us?"
"Don't be dramatic," she said with an eye roll. "Of course I have faith in you. That doesn't mean this won't turn my hands purple —"
"Relax, it turns them yellow," he said with an eye roll. She knew he was joking, but she kicked him in the shin anyway. "You are a ray of sunshine so early in the morning."
"I don't know why I put up with you," she huffed, allowing him to take her other hand without fighting him this time — both because she was too tired to fight anymore, and because her other hand already felt so much better than it had before, and she didn't really care if it did turn her hands yellow at this point.
"As a backup plan for when Georgie disappoints you in the sack?" he offered with a smirk.
She kicked him again, and he locked his leg around hers to keep her from doing it another time.
"I've no backup plan for that, but if I did, it certainly wouldn't be you —"
"Don't lie, munchkin," he said assuredly, pulling away from her hands and twisting the cap back on the tin of green paste. "We all know you're just using George to get close to me. I can spare you the time — I'm available, but only for you, of course."
"Does this usually work with women, or do you simply live to annoy me?" she said, raising an eyebrow at the smug twin in front of her. He winked at her.
"I'm quite proud of my ability to get you all fired up, actually," he drawled. "And I'm feeling particularly safer than I usually do, considering you can't hold your wand without aggravating those burns of yours."
"I don't need a wand," she said pointedly.
"And yet here I am, totally unscathed," he said smugly. "You don't want to hurt this pretty face, do you?"
"It's the least of my concerns about your pretty face, actually —"
"Such harsh words for a woman who stares at me with heart eyes every day," he said casually, linking his hands behind his head.
She gave him an incredulous look that sent him into a fit of laughter.
"I certainly do not," she said indignantly.
"George isn't here, darling, there's no need to lie —"
"You're being ridiculous," she huffed. "You sit next to George all day, it has nothing to do with you —"
"Ah, so you admit that you've been staring at George then, do you?" he said, grinning at her crookedly when her face flushed scarlet.
"I — what, no, that's not — Fred!" she stuttered, suddenly embarrassed. Not that she should be — George was her boyfriend; why couldn't she stare at him?
He chuckled heartily and leaned forward to tweak her on the nose playfully.
"Relax, darling," he said cheerfully. "Your secret is safe with me. I'll just have to keep pining for you from a distance."
He sighed forlornly and she rolled her eyes at him.
"You've got enough people to pine after," she said pointedly.
"Ouch," he said, holding his chest dramatically. "I thought we were friends."
"We were before you came in here manhandling me," she said in annoyance before giving him a serious look. Their banter had a tendency of distracting her from her worries — it required more effort than she imagined in order to meet Fred Weasley in wit, and that usually stilled some of her overactive brain — but she was not stupid enough to think that Fred was up this early for no reason on a Monday morning. Particularly because they didn't run on Mondays. "What's going on with the two of you anyway?"
This appeared to sober him a little, and he sighed heavily.
"That isn't what I came down here for," he said, running a hand through his hair.
"Why did you?"
"Because I had a feeling you were down here worrying yourself sick, and it didn't seem like the sort of thing I should be enabling," he said pointedly. "Although, I must admit I didn't expect it to be so bad that you set the ceiling on fire and burned your hands to a crisp."
"Tori told me I'm too emotional —"
"You are."
"She didn't mean it like that, wanker," she snapped at him. "She meant I'm letting my emotions control my magic."
"To be fair, you're good at both meanings of emotional," he said honestly. "Need I remind you that you were making yourself sick only three weeks ago."
"Thank you," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "If you're quite finished insulting me, I was going to say that I was testing her theory that my magic needed an emotional outlet."
He was momentarily distracted by the implication, looking off into the distance thoughtfully.
"Interesting," he said slowly. "I suppose it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility. You do ignore your own feelings in favor of worrying about everyone else. There's only so long you can do that before it blows up in your face. Then there's the psychopathy, of course —" She lost patience with him completely and chucked the tin of burn paste at his head. He caught it quite easily and raised an eyebrow. "Exactly what I mean."
"You have an odd way of being supportive, did you know that?" she grumbled at him, crossing her arms petulantly.
He snorted.
"I've been told," he said, unconcerned. "But it clearly works because you've stopped bouncing your leg. It makes me mental."
She hadn't even realized she hadn't been doing it — it had become a near constant for her at this point. Even in George's presence she couldn't get it to stop. It was an odd thing, too, because he'd always been the one person that eased the anxiety almost immediately. She was forced to fall back on breathing exercises and an increase in her Calming Draught, which she wasn't particularly all that thrilled about.
But seeing as she saw Madame Pomfrey twice a week, it wasn't as if she could pretend like she was holding it all together. The woman had very little patience for excuses.
"I'm sorry," she sighed heavily. "I don't mean to be so annoying —"
"It's not annoying," Fred said. "It's concerning. You're spreading yourself too thin, Nessa. I already told you that we can help Harry —"
"You are helping him," she said, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. It was beginning to pound again.
"Yes, but the point of doing so was supposed to make it easier for you to relax," he said pointedly. "Which clearly is not happening. You're behind in your O.W.L.s, Harry is no closer to getting past his dragon, and you're following him around as if he might drop dead at any moment. Not to mention that you aren't eating or sleeping."
"I thought this was supposed to be cheering me up," she snapped in irritation. She hardly needed a reminder that she'd been a distraught, emotional wreck. She told herself that on a daily basis without having him point it out to her. "How exactly is this helping?"
He stared at her for a long moment until she looked up to glare at him. He was assessing her, dragging a careful eye over her, and his concern was not lost on her, though she'd managed to ignore it until now.
"You need to let go a little, Nessa," he said seriously. She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a hand to stop her before she could start. "I'm not interested. We all know how important Harry is to you — so let us help him. We can handle that for an hour or two while you sleep. Or eat. Or wallow in self-pity on the Astronomy Tower. The specifics aren't particularly important to me, truthfully, so long as you take a breather. Although, if I'm being honest here, you should probably sleep. You look hideous."
She made an indignant noise in the back of her throat.
"That's very rude," she said, which he merely smirked at her for. "Did Tori send you down here to yell at me?"
"No, I thought of it all by myself, believe it or not," he said dryly. "Can we get out of this classroom, please? I shouldn't be up this early on a Monday. It's criminal."
She huffed.
"So, what?" she said. "I go upstairs and pretend to sleep, and you'll leave me alone?"
"No," he said, unfolding himself from his chair and dragging her out of the classroom by her wrist. "You go upstairs, actually sleep, try to eat something, take a walk around the grounds, read a book. I don't care. But if I see you in this classroom with us before lunch, I will put cockroaches in your bed."
Even despite her numbness and irritation, the thought of it made her skin crawl. She was sure he noticed because he was smirking the entire way back to the common room. She was only just beginning to consider what she could put in his bed that might teach him a lesson when they reached the common room. She stared at the girls' staircase with dread — she'd done this before. It was hard to sleep when her mind was racing, and her exhaustion wouldn't make the process any easier.
"I can stand here all day, you know," Fred said from behind her, his arms crossed impatiently.
"I'm not going up there," she muttered.
"It's not optional," he said seriously.
She huffed, pushing him toward the boys' staircase instead. He was so very annoying; she didn't blame Tori for hexing him all the time. He always thought he was right about everything, always so smug.
"Oh, are you finally caving to your desire for me, munchkin?" he joked, as she shoved him through the doors of his dormitory. "I didn't actually expect you to be so forward."
She ignored him, toeing off her shoes and tiptoeing over to George's bed. There was a momentary hesitation because she'd never simply just shown up in his dormitory and expected to sleep next to him, but she wasn't stupid enough to think that she'd get any sleep on her own.
"Wow, you were using me for George," Fred said sorrowfully as he climbed into his own bed. "I should have known. How will I ever recover from the heartbreak?"
Nessa rolled her eyes to the ceiling and looked over at him impatiently.
"Do you ever shut up?" she said rhetorically, her hands on her hips.
He snorted, burying his face in his pillow and muttering something that she didn't quite catch. She chose not to ask — he'd annoyed her enough for one day as it was. She hesitated only a second longer before lifting up one side of the blanket. George shifted sleepily and she was momentarily distracted by the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt. She'd never seen him without one before, although she'd imagined it, and she'd been right to assume that it would be horribly distracting.
It seemed very unfair to her that someone could be so horribly attractive, although she supposed she should at least be grateful for the fact that he was wearing pajama bottoms.
"Sometime today, Vanessa," Fred muttered into his pillow. "I'd prefer to go back to sleep if you don't mind."
"I hope you suffocate in your sleep," she whispered harshly at him before climbing awkwardly in bed next to George and forcing him to move over slightly.
He grumbled sleepily, shifting to his side so that she could lay next to him. He didn't wake completely until she rolled into him and buried her face in his chest, inhaling slowly. The knot in her stomach loosened a little at the familiarity of him, and it still confused her how he could relax her without even trying.
"Love?" he said, his voice thick with sleep. "What's wrong?"
She hummed, taking in another slow breath to help loosen some more of the tension. She hadn't slept in days, and he was so warm and safe that she couldn't entirely bat away the urge to sleep now, even despite the anxiety still swimming in her mind, fighting desperately for her attention.
"Fred said I need to sleep, or he'll put cockroaches in my bed," she said, shifting closer to him still. "Can't sleep by myself."
He shifted a little, sliding an arm underneath her head, and wrapping the other around her waist. He kissed the top of her head before resting his chin there and sighing contentedly.
"I said sleep, by the way," Fred said from his bed. "So, if the two of you start shagging, I'm still getting the cockroaches."
Nessa was entirely certain that George said something insulting in his twin's direction, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what because she was already falling asleep.
I apologize for not updating Friday. My birthday was yesterday, so I've had quite a lot going on this weekend.
Next chapter will be the first task, I believe. We're barely holding it together here, and I really don't remember JK dragging out the first part of the tournament for so long, but I'm on chapter 21 in the book and chapter 21 in real life, so I guess she did LOL. We're finally making it, and there's so much to come.
Also, I didn't proofread this, so I apologize for any mistakes. I'm too tired at this point.
See you next week!