I'm sorry, you guys! I'll skip over the excuses — we all know where I'm at, but my boyfriend also lost his job, and that has not made things easier on my end. We are nearly past the holidays though, so the stress will leave with those. It's all about the silver linings. I'm still here though, I swear, and I love you all!
Luna: Thank you so much for sticking with me! I've been working on this chapter for weeks, so I'm sorry! I appreciate you!
Gi-L-Ha: Hi! I'm so sorry for making you wait! I knew that you would hate the ending of the last chapter. Having Nessa and George fight is so hard to write.
LoverGal2024: Ahhhh, but I love having Rita Skeeter cause drama! She's so good at stirring the pot. And I had to make up for the fact that Hermione is getting skipped over in her attacks. Nessa is the new villain in Rita's story.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Vanessa had really underestimated how George's presence tended to override the whispers and pointing. It didn't happen to her quite as much as Harry, but it didn't look over her either. In most situations, she only tended to be exciting whenever Harry was in trouble, and she somehow ended up roped into his wild schemes based on bloodline alone.
In this case, however, Harry didn't have to be a part of the gossip for her to get sucked into it. The entire school was walking around with copies of Witch Weekly, eyeing her and Cedric very closely. Cho's friends seemed to find her quite displeasing, and she could have been imagining things but she was certain her Ravenclaw counterpart had been crying. She felt a bit bad for her, really. She'd gotten roped into some ridiculous drama for no reason.
Course, Rita Skeeter didn't likely care how many people she managed to hurt in the process of taking down a rival, and Nessa found that even more pathetic. About as pathetic as a grown woman being threatened by a sixteen year old girl, but she wasn't about to say so. She'd had enough press coverage to last her a lifetime.
She avoided Cedric on principle for the rest of Friday, and she really wished that she'd have had the willpower to find George, but the thought made her want to throw up.
He'd looked very angry when he'd left. She'd thought she'd seen him angry before, but she must have been mistaken. She really didn't want to know if he was still so upset or if he'd managed to cool off, and she hadn't come up with a way to explain her behavior that wasn't entirely selfish, which likely wouldn't help. Plus Fred had given her a particularly reproachful look the one time she'd seen the twins in the hours that had passed, and she had the distinct impression that Fred was taking the entire thing personally as well.
Not entirely surprising, considering how close the two of them were, but still not what she needed. And there was really only so much hiding that a person could do before someone managed to find her.
How unfortunate that the someone happened to be her brother, Ron, Hermione, and Tori.
She sighed heavily at the sight of them entering the Astronomy Tower. Perhaps she needed to find a new safe place; hers was being infiltrated at every available opportunity now.
"Are you moping up here?"
"Tori, be nice!" Hermione scolded immediately, but Nessa rolled her eyes and looked away from both of them.
"I'm not moping," she said, wiping her face with her coat sleeve and waving her wand over it afterward to remove the puffiness of her eyes before they could see it. She couldn't have said how long she'd been up here — she'd come up after she'd seen the twins and George hadn't even looked like he'd wanted to look at her. Studying had become difficult after that and the whispers in the common room didn't particularly help. For all she knew, that could have been hours ago.
"Could have fooled me," Tori said, crossing her arms across her chest and looking at her disapprovingly. "Will you just go and talk to George?"
"I tried that," she said blankly, resting her forehead on her knees. "He said he needs space."
"What's that mean?" Harry said angrily. "I'll kill him, I really will —"
"Settle down, boy wonder," Tori said with a snort. "Sometimes when grownups are upset, they need to process their emotions. There's no need to get your knickers in a wad."
"I'm not a child," Harry said with an eye roll, shoving Tori away from him. She retaliated by pushing him so hard that he went careening into the wall. Harry winced, rubbing at his shoulder, and muttered, "I should have known better than to do that."
Tori snorted, and looked back at her best friend, who didn't even appear to care that her brother had just been sent flying into stone. She didn't like that at all. Nessa's overprotective nature was a near-constant. One of those qualities that made her want to strangle her outright most times, but was also somehow comforting. She could gauge her best friend's mental state by that one quality alone. Not seeing it now was only mildly unsettling.
Tori sighed heavily and went to sit in front of her, crossing her legs and leaning forward to pull Nessa's arms away from her face.
"I thought you'd told him already," she said softly. Nessa gave her a long suffering look.
"If I had, don't you think I'd have told you that?" she griped. "Or that George would have been sulking?"
"Alright, fair enough," she said after a moment's consideration. "So, why didn't you?"
Nessa let her head hit the stone wall behind her and looked up at the sky above her. The sun hadn't quite gone down so it made her eyes water and throb, but it was a relief somehow. At least she could feel something.
And she didn't have an answer for that question anyway. Because she'd wanted to have more time in which she could be happy and carefree in her relationship. Because she and George were in such a good place, and she'd been afraid to ruin it. Because she was tired of turning around and having something else to fret over, some other obstacle or hurdle to jump. Because she was just tired.
None of those things were good reasons, and she hated that they were the only things she had to explain herself to George. It was a weak reason. Nearly transparent, and definitely selfish, and she was in the wrong no matter what direction she looked at it from.
She hated being in the wrong.
Of course, most people did, so this wasn't entirely surprising, but the entire thing had gotten so much more complicated than she'd really intended at this point.
"Because I'm an idiot," she said instead of saying the rest of it. She didn't particularly feel like getting into the entire thing with her in front of her brother and his friends, who were all listening far too closely to the conversation. "What are the four of you even doing up here to begin with?"
Tori rolled her eyes, and held up a hand in the younger Gryffindors' direction.
"Harry has something to tell you," she said, raising an eyebrow. "But not until you give me a real answer."
Nessa wanted to strangle her some days. Most days. It was of some confusion to her that they got along so well, truthfully. Tori was her opposite in a lot of ways, and her inability to leave well enough alone was her most annoying quality.
"I didn't tell him because I was perfectly content, and didn't want to ruin it," she snapped before looking at her brother expectantly. "What?"
He shared a look with Hermione and Ron that clearly conveyed that he was unsure if he was really allowed to talk yet, but Tori spoke before he could manage it.
"Wallowing up here isn't going to make this better for you," she said, ignoring Nessa's glare for her inability to allow a subject change. "George looks like he might drown himself in the shower, which might be funny except he already gave Diggory a black eye and —"
"What?" Nessa said, her head jerking toward her best friend in horror. "Are you joking?"
"'Course not," Tori snorted. "I don't know why you look so surprised. It's the least that I expected —"
"It's not that serious —"
"Sometimes I don't think you really understand men," Tori said seriously. "They're very sensitive —"
"Oi!" Harry and Ron said indignantly. Tori gave Nessa a pointed look.
"My point," she said, gesturing at the two of them. Hermione giggled, looking away from her best friends' glares in her direction. "Besides, I don't think it's that much of an overreaction on George's part. There's only so many times a bloke can stand watching another man pine after his girlfriend before he has to do something."
"I can handle it myself —"
"The point is that you don't have to handle everything by yourself," Tori said pointedly. "If you weren't trying to handle everything yourself, I don't imagine that you'd be moping up here in the first place."
"I'm not moping," she repeated in irritation. Nevermind the fact that she clearly was. There was no denying that at this point, but she refused to admit it to herself. Or Tori, who looked one step away from suffocating her in irritation. "Can we get back to whatever Harry is supposed to be telling me?"
She could use the distraction for one thing. And for another, it was hard to focus when she was waiting for Harry to tell her that he'd been kidnapped by Hagrid and a Hungarian Horntail. It was slightly amusing to her that Harry hesitated so long, looking at Tori for some sort of direction on whether or not it was safe for him to speak again. Tori rolled her eyes, waving at him in irritation and finally allowing a change in the subject.
"Karkaroff came to talk to Snape during Potions just now," Harry said, looking relieved by Tori's easy acquiescence. "He keeps talking about something getting clearer —"
Nessa rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to calm her irritation. She was sick of talking about Karkaroff. She was sick of talking about Snape. She was sick of just about everything at the moment, and they had no indication of what the man was even talking about, so what was the point of continuously bringing it up? She was no closer to figuring out what Karkaroff's anxiety was about than she was to figuring out a cure for her own.
"We can't keep doing this, Harry," she said in exhaustion. "We have no idea what he's talking about —"
"He's talking about something on his arm," Harry interrupted firmly.
She paused for a moment, blinking at him in confusion.
"I — what?"
"His left arm," Harry clarified. "He went to talk to Snape during class so that he couldn't make an excuse to run away from him, and when Snape asked what he wanted to talk about, he lifted the sleeve on his left arm and showed him his forearm and said it hasn't been that clear since…something. Snape panicked and cut him off."
Nessa wanted to pretend like this wasn't an intriguing bit of information, but she couldn't manage to do so. What could possibly be on his arm that Snape would have any say in? Health concerns would have been taken to Madame Pomfrey, not the Potions master. That left out rashes, boils, dermatitis…Snape knew a great number of things, she knew, but she'd seen him send students to Pomfrey for things he could cure himself with the potions he had in stock. He didn't typically make concessions in that regard unless it required immediate care, and even then he sent them to Pomfrey for further inspection.
It was hard to even begin to imagine what other reason a man would have to show someone his inner forearm.
"You don't know why he would show him that?" Harry said, sounding mildly disappointed.
She gave him an exasperated look.
"I'm not made of knowledge, Harry," she said in frustration. "You'd have better luck asking Hermione what it could be. If she doesn't know then I certainly don't."
Hermione straightened with pride, and Tori snorted, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
"You've spent more time going over dark magic than Hermione —" Harry said.
"Don't say it like that," she said, bristling. "It makes me sound like a lunatic."
Though, truthfully, she wasn't sure that she wasn't a lunatic. Sure, she had motivations for learning about Voldemort and his followers and the magic he'd used to nearly take over Europe the first time, but she also had an odd fascination with the darkness of it all. How a person could justify such behavior, what would motivate someone to use or treat another human being that way, what would even possess someone to think to use a spell in such a way…there were parts of her that just couldn't simply understand the psychology behind the entire thing. She imagined it was like the fascination that people had with true crime or conspiracy theories, but it was still somehow slightly alarming, and she didn't particularly enjoy having it pointed out to her directly.
"That's not what I meant," Harry said with an eye roll. "I just mean that you're better at understanding the motivations of other people, and if we are assuming that he's the one that put my name into the goblet —"
"Which we aren't —"
"Then he'd have to have used some form of dark magic, according to Moody," Harry continued as if she hadn't said a thing. "You've read up on more of that than Hermione has. She nearly cried at a potions book that had pictures of people screaming in it —"
"They were disturbing!" Hermione defended.
Tori snorted, rolling her eyes.
"This isn't quite the same thing," she said. "I told you she wouldn't be able to help with that. I thought you were going to tell her about Snape wanting to force feed you Veritaserum —"
"What?" Nessa said, her head snapping to look at Harry, her eyes sparking with rage. Ron swallowed hard, taking a step back as if he were afraid she might misconstrue his proximity to her brother as an act of aggression. Tori grinned lopsidedly at him, which he deliberately ignored. "What is she talking about?"
Harry huffed and rolled his eyes.
"I knew I shouldn't have told her that," he muttered darkly to himself. "He's pissed off that the twins stole that gillyweed from his office, and assumed it was me, and he assumes that I'm the one that broke in a few months ago too. That's not really my top concern —"
"Well, it's mine!" Nessa said, standing angrily. "That's — you understand what Veritaserum is, don't you?"
"Yes, he explained it to me in great detail before he threatened me with it," Harry said with a snort. "I didn't break into his office anyway. And you didn't say that Crouch took ingredients for Polyjuice potion."
Nessa stared at him for a long moment, trying to determine which of them was being the most ridiculous in this scenario. She hadn't told him that, no, and it had absolutely been intentional. Personally, she was trying to attempt to ignore it herself because she had no idea what she was supposed to do with that knowledge.
"I forgot to mention it," she said blandly. Harry snorted.
"No, you didn't," he said, crossing his arms in impatience. "You just didn't want me to say it could be Snape or Karkaroff again —"
"I'll concede that it could be Karkaroff, but it's not Snape," she said with an eye roll. "I've been in his office hundreds of times since the year started, and there's nothing off about him." She rolled her eyes when the four of them gave her a skeptical look. "Nothing more than usual," she conceded. "And I don't want to get distracted by the absurdity of figuring out who Crouch could be impersonating when you've got another task to worry about. We don't know any of these people well enough to know if their behavior is off, so unless you've got some indication yourself then I'm not interested."
"But she's interested in the Veritaserum," Ron muttered to Harry in confusion.
Nessa pointed at him in warning, and he immediately closed his mouth.
"Veritaserum is not something to take lightly, Ron Weasley," she snapped. "Harry has far too many secrets that could put other people at risk if Snape asks the wrong questions, and if you think for half of a second that he wouldn't take advantage of that knowledge, you're wrong. If he finds out about Sirius, we've got larger problems than a Polyjuice potion, I can assure you of that."
Tori tensed beside her as if she hadn't considered this information when Harry had originally mentioned the Veritaserum. Harry hadn't stolen the gillyweed, and though he knew who had, she, Fred, and George were so comfortable with getting detentions that it wouldn't have mattered if he'd accidentally let slip that they were the ones who had given him the plant. But accidentally spilling that they'd helped her father escape the Dementor's Kiss and that he was on the run, far too close to Hogwarts than she'd have preferred? She didn't even want to consider the repercussions of that. Particularly when the person he'd be telling was a man who hated her father so much that he'd been willing to let him die even knowing that he could be innocent.
Harry caught her sudden tension, and glared at her.
"Are you going to see him?" he said accusingly.
Tori glared back at him.
"Mind your business, Harry," she snapped.
"He's my godfather, it is my business!" he said angrily. "He tells me when you don't write back, you know."
"Well, I'm happy the two of you are getting on so swimmingly," Tori snarled back at him. "That doesn't make it your business, and I certainly don't need your judgment —"
"He's your father! He shouldn't have to work so hard to —"
Nessa had no idea what was happening at the current moment, but Hermione and Ron clearly did because they were making awkward eye contact from behind Harry, and she didn't like that at all. She hadn't heard anything about Sirius in weeks, but Tori swelled like a bullfrog in front of her, clearly prepared to come to blows if she had to.
Nessa opened her mouth to speak before either of them could say something stupid, but Tori was already speaking over her.
"Don't pretend like you have any idea what this feels like," she said to Harry, standing up angrily.
"You're right, I don't," he said angrily. "My parents are dead, so I'll never have the opportunity to get to know either one of them. It must be very difficult for you to have the opportunity —"
"Harry!" Nessa interrupted sharply before he could say something stupid. Though, truthfully, it may have already been too late. She had no idea what the hell either one of them was talking about, but she wasn't entirely sure that Harry's judgmental approach to Tori's reticence was the best approach.
The words caused Tori to flinch, but her glare didn't waver, and Nessa was suddenly afraid that she might swing at her brother for his audacity alone.
"If I didn't like you so much, Harry, I'd hit you," she snarled as if she'd heard Nessa's thoughts. "Not that it's any of your business, but I have been writing him back. Since Christmas. And I don't need your judgment about how I handle my relationship with my father."
It didn't appear to quell Harry's anger at all that she'd written him back, and Nessa tried very hard to keep the surprise at this information off of her face.
"So you aren't going then?" Harry said in frustration.
Tori didn't bother answering him, instead shoving him sideways and making her way toward the exit.
"I suppose you'll just have to find out tomorrow, won't you?"
Nessa jumped when the door to the Astronomy Tower slammed so hard behind her best friend that the portraits on the wall rattled and began grumbling darkly.
It took her a long moment for the shock of their sudden argument to wear off before she could speak again.
"What the hell was that?" she snapped at her brother.
She wasn't sure how to approach Tori in regards to talking about Sirius, but she knew for certain that the approach her brother had taken was not the right one. She hadn't even known that Tori had chosen to write back to her father at all, and though she wasn't clear on the specifics, she was certain the decision had not come easily, and likely wasn't any easier to deal with now than it had been two months before.
"You shouldn't have been so harsh with her, Harry," Hermione said quietly. Harry rolled her eyes.
"You all baby her —"
"We don't," Ron said, sounding angry. Tori and Ron weren't particularly close, but he still considered her family, and he didn't appear to appreciate Harry's cruelty. "She isn't —"
"Hello?" Nessa snapped, waving her hands to get their attention. "Can somebody tell me what the hell that was about before you all start arguing with each other?"
Harry huffed.
"Sirius wants us to meet him in Hogsmeade tomorrow," he said. Nessa blinked at him in surprise. "I assume she isn't going if she didn't bother telling you — where are you going?"
She'd already heard enough to understand the specifics, and she'd already started making her way toward the door before her brother could even get all of the words out.
Nessa didn't bother answering him, pushing her way past the three Gryffindors with barely a look back in their direction.
Her brother was an idiot most days, and though Nessa wasn't entirely sure she completely disagreed with him, she knew for certain that pissing Tori off was not the best approach to this situation. When Tori got pissed off, she got petty. Never mind whether it hurt her in the process or not.
She'd put off seeing Sirius just to spite Harry for his attitude, and that was without whatever complicated emotions she was feeling about the entire thing to begin with, and she'd have to chase her down now to —
She nearly went plowing into Tori when she reached the bottom of the stairwell and only barely managed to catch herself on the banister in surprise. She'd expected to have to chase her down the corridors, but her best friend was merely leaning against the wall of the corridor with her eyes shut as if she'd been breathing through a panic attack.
Her eyes opened with a glare at the sound of her coming down the stairs, but it left her features immediately when she realized it was Nessa and not Harry, and her expression smoothed over into haughty disregard so quickly that Nessa knew she didn't want to talk about it. Which was a real shame for them both.
"If you've come down here to yell at me, I don't care," Tori said, pretending to be unbothered and pushing herself off of the corridor to make her way down the hall. Nessa rolled her eyes, and followed. "Your brother's a prat and —"
"I didn't say he wasn't," Nessa interrupted impatiently. "Are you going to see Sirius or not?"
Tori stopped abruptly and whirled around to face her indignantly.
"He told you that — well, of course he did," she said in irritation. "The two of you have a very unhealthy relationship together, why wouldn't he have?"
"Unhealthy?" Nessa exclaimed before waving it away. "It doesn't matter, I know what you're doing. Answer the question."
"I don't want to answer the question."
"I didn't ask what you wanted, Victoria —"
"I'm not going."
Nessa blinked at the sudden answer, and it took her a great deal of time to answer.
"Why?"
"You know why."
She really didn't. Tori avoided her problems, sure, but she'd been tense since Sirius had come so near to the castle. The opportunity to see and interact with him seemed an opportunity she'd have taken just for the sake of making sure he was safe. Even if she was standoffish and aloof during the entire meeting, which Nessa had no doubt that she would be.
"If you've written back to him, then you can see him in person. You've clearly made a choice —"
"I wrote back because it was Christmas," Tori said, tugging at her hair in frustration and picking up the pace in an attempt to reach the common room quicker. Nessa, short as she was, nearly had to run to keep pace with her. "What kind of person ignores someone's letter on Christmas? And he sent me a gift, you know, so it only felt fair. It doesn't mean that I want a relationship with him."
"Doesn't it?" Nessa snorted. "You've ignored him every other holiday, including his birthday, I don't see how this one is different unless you've made a choice —"
"I'm sick of people telling me how to feel about this —"
Nessa rolled her eyes and made to snap back, but Fred and George and Lee had come around the other corner toward the common room at the same time, and the sight of George caused her to falter. It was at least somewhat relieving that George appeared to pause in his own conversation when his eyes met hers.
They hadn't spoken since the article had come out and he'd walked away from her in the library hours before, but it didn't help to see him now. It was ridiculous, she knew, because they were only arguing, but her heart felt like it had been shattered and she hated fighting with him.
Tori looked between the two of them and snorted.
"This is ridiculous," she said impatiently. "They're a bunch of books, can the two of you stop looking at each other like she killed your puppy?"
"Shut up, Tori," George said, irritation sparking in his gaze before he looked at his best friend and paused. His eyebrows furrowed in concern as he looked her up and down."What's the matter with you?"
"I'm tired," she said dismissively.
The twins gave her a look full of disapproval and Lee snorted derisively.
"We lie better than that, don't we?" Lee said to Fred jokingly.
"No," Nessa and Tori said together in mild irritation, though Nessa was sure it was for entirely different reasons.
Lee looked between the two of them slowly and blew out a breath of air.
"Right, well, this doesn't really seem like the sort of thing that I want to be part of, so I'm just going to leave you four to it."
"We'll go with you," Fred said hastily, clearly understanding that there was something going on between Nessa and his girlfriend and not sure if he wanted to be part of it. Nessa grabbed his arm before he could make his way after Lee and gave him a hard look. Fred huffed, but didn't say anything until Lee had disappeared through the portrait hole. He raised a condescending eyebrow at her, and pulled his arm from her grasp. "Are you under the impression that I'm interested in what you have to say at the moment?"
Nessa pinched the bridge of her nose, and inhaled slowly. Sometimes she despised Fred and George's relationship because it made things entirely too complicated.
"Quit being a child, Fred," she snapped. "I don't have time for your defensiveness of George. Did she tell you that Sirius wanted to meet at the next Hogsmeade visit?"
"What?"
The immediate change in the twins' irritated attitudes might have amused her under other circumstances. As it was, she was only somewhat relieved that her best friend had kept this secret from all of them and not just her.
"It doesn't matter," Tori said impatiently. "I'm not going."
"Why not?" they all demanded at once. Tori blinked at them.
"Don't do that," she said slowly, looking at Nessa seriously. "It's weird enough when Fred and George do it without you chiming in."
"Quit changing the subject," Nessa said, stomping her foot impatiently. "You've been anxious every time Harry has gotten an owl from him. You wrote him back for Christmas —"
"To be nice."
Nessa rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"Tori, I don't mean this to sound rude, but you are not nice," Nessa said pointedly. "Not to people you don't care about anyway. You clearly want a relationship with him —"
"Will you quit saying that?" Tori snapped.
"Will you quit pretending like you don't want to go and see him? You can't run away from every problem you have, Victoria."
"I really don't think you should be the one lecturing me about running away from problems," Tori said with a snort, turning away from them and storming off down the corridor. Nessa snarled under her breath and took off after her, grabbing Fred by the arm and dragging him behind her before he could decide to run off in the other direction. The older man huffed and rolled his eyes, but came willingly, and George followed after with a similar demeanor. Tori screamed in frustration, whirling on the three of them with a glare. "Will you quit following me around?"
Nessa lost patience immediately, releasing Fred only to grab Tori instead and tug her into the nearest classroom and shove her into a chair.
"What are you doing, Tori?" she said, tapping her foot impatiently. Fred and George were looking distinctly like they'd rather have been anywhere else, but they didn't attempt to leave again. "Why aren't you going to see him?"
"Why are you trying to make me go and see him?"
"Tori, for God's sake, I'm not trying to make you go and talk to him," she said, throwing her hands up in the air impatiently. "I'm trying to figure out why you're making this so difficult for yourself. If you wrote him back — and I assume have been writing him back this entire time — then I don't understand what you're hiding from."
"I'm not hiding," she said indignantly. "He wants to talk about whatever Harry has been sending him anyway, and I don't think that really requires my input."
Nessa could have throttled her right there. Perhaps it was really just because she was so sick and tired of feeling like she was putting out fires in every direction, but she was getting less and less patient with the entire thing.
"Right," she said slowly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "So you're just waiting for Harry to go and meet him so that he can tell you everything he said in aching detail and you can pelt him with hundreds of questions about him afterward."
Tori snorted, crossing her arms across her chest and looking away from her haughtily.
"That's not what I was going to do."
Fred snorted from behind her.
"We definitely lie better than that," he muttered to George, who covered his laugh with a cough when Nessa and Tori both turned to glare at them.
Nessa turned to face her best friend when the two of them went obediently silent and glared down at her.
"What's going on here?"
"I don't want to go," Tori said slowly, enunciating every word and making it very difficult for her not to start hurling curses at her. "So I'm not going. It's as simple as that."
"Nothing with you is that simple, Victoria," Nessa deadpanned.
Tori's irritation, already heightened as it was, appeared to have reached its peak at this point. She stood up angrily, nearly knocking the chair she'd been sitting in backwards.
"None of you get it at all," she snapped in frustration. "You have parents," she said to Fred and George, who scowled at her as if she'd said something insulting. "And your parents —"
"Are dead," Nessa deadpanned, crossing her arms across her chest. "My parents are dead, and my aunt and uncle wish that I'd died with them."
The twins flinched behind her and Tori scowled at her, stuck between irritation and wanting to defend her best friend against her horrible relatives. She chose the first one for the sake of avoiding the awkward tension in the room.
"Are you really going to pull the dead parent card too?" Tori said. "Because Harry really covered that."
"If I have to," Nessa said blandly.
"What happened to it was my decision!?"
"It is your decision, Tori," Nessa said with an eye roll. "So explain to me your thought process here, and maybe I'll agree with you."
Tori snorted.
"You don't agree with anyone," she muttered. "You always have to be right."
George snorted derisively from behind her and Nessa bit her tongue to keep from hurling something rude at him. Her relationship issues were currently on hold for the moment, but the sound told her that George was nowhere near prepared to have a conversation with her.
"Tori," she said sharply instead. It was only her name, but the warning appeared clear because Tori laughed without humor, shaking her head angrily.
"What am I supposed to say to him?" She said finally. "What am I supposed to do when he starts acting like my father —?"
"To be fair, he is your father," Fred said unhelpfully. Tori gave him an irritated look.
"Thank you, Fred, that solves everything," she said sarcastically. "I don't know why I didn't think of that myself."
Nessa huffed when Fred opened his mouth to retort, a smirk blossoming across his face.
"Can you two bicker like a married couple later?" She said pointedly. "And you don't know that he would talk like that —"
Tori snorted and gave her an irritated look.
"Yes, I do," she said. "He does it already. It's easier to ignore the endless apologies, and the life advice, and the incessant gifts as if he's trying to make something up to me for being gone for thirteen years when it's all in a letter. And he does that no matter how many times I say that I don't expect him to act like my father —"
"But he is your father," Fred repeated as if he weren't entirely sure she was grasping this fact.
Tori stomped her foot.
"He isn't!" she said angrily. "He isn't my father, alright? He hasn't been here —"
Nessa shared a look with the twins that conveyed her hesitance in saying what she was about to say next, but perhaps if they pissed Tori off enough, she'd say what the actual problem was here.
"That wasn't by choice, Tori," she said softly. "He was wrongfully convicted —"
Tori laughed again, the sound still devoid of humor and she pushed herself further away from them to pace back and forth in front of them.
"Not by choice?" Tori said derisively. "Not by choice? He chose to go to your house that night to check on your parents. He chose to chase Peter down instead of staying home with his own family! He chose to take matters into his own hands instead of letting the Ministry handle it! He chose to say nothing in his defense when they arrested him! He had plenty of choices that night as far as I can tell, and not one of them did he consider what would happen to me! And now I'm supposed to do the same thing for a man who abandoned a life with his family for the sake of revenge?"
She was breathing hard then, a sort of crazed look in her eye that put Nessa on edge a little bit because it was a sure sign that she was near a breakdown. It also put her on edge because it looked so much like the insanity that she'd seen in Sirius' eyes and she wasn't sure that saying so would make Tori's anger any less prominent. Even just thinking it felt wrong.
She cleared her throat anyway, despite her reservations, and quietly said, "Would you have made a different choice, Victoria?"
Tori stopped pacing to stare at her.
"Don't do that," she said, her voice cracking a little on the last word. "Don't even ask me that —"
Nessa spoke over her anyway.
"If it had been me and you — Or you and George — Or you and Fred," she pressed. "Would you have made a different choice than he did? Would you have been able to sit idly by, knowing one of us had betrayed the other and gotten one of us killed? Or would you have done exactly what Sirius did?"
"That's not fair."
"Just because you don't want to consider what it must have been like for him doesn't mean it isn't fair, Victoria," Nessa said gently. "And I'm not justifying his choices that night, but you aren't the only one who lost something that night. He lost a life with you just as much as you lost one with him, and blaming him for what happened isn't going to make you feel any better —"
"Feel any better?" she shrieked angrily. "Nothing about this feels better! You think if I show up there that this is going to be any easier for me? Do you think he's not going to take that as an attempt to mend our…whatever the hell this is? Do you think that he hasn't told me that he wants to be free again so that he can finally be a father? So that he can finally get to know me? I read his letters from last year, Vanessa! He wants me to come and live with him and just — just forget that this entire thing happened. Like I haven't got a life and a family of my own already. At least until they find out I'm snogging Fred, in which case I might be homeless, but —"
"You aren't going to be homeless," the twins said indignantly, puffing up like bullfrogs. "What do you take us for?"
Nessa gave them harsh looks to get them to stop talking. The words themselves might have been ridiculous, but it wasn't the time to point that out. Particularly not in the impatient sort of way that the twins were prone to pointing things out.
Tori was breaking, some of the rough edges that she attempted to hide under her confident, careless facade beginning to peak through. There was a panicked edge to her voice, a trembling in her hands, a twitching of her nose that told Nessa she was only barely managing to withhold the tears brimming in her eyes.
"Do you really think he hadn't asked if I'd want to live with him if he were pardoned?" Tori said as if she hadn't heard the twins at all. "Because he has. And if I show up there tomorrow then I have to — to admit that I care about him one way or the other and I — I can't do that, Vanessa."
Pointing out that she clearly did care about him felt like the sort of thing she shouldn't need to do at this point, but it was really all that she had to say at this point. Tori was opening up, but the denial was stronger than she'd expected after so much time to come to terms with the fact that Sirius was her father, and there were implications that came with that.
"You do care about him, Tori," Nessa said eventually when the silence dragged on. Tori flinched. "You saved him from the dementors, you wrote him back after nearly a year of ignoring him, you panic every time he risks his freedom to see Harry…you can't keep pretending that you don't care simply because it's easier for you to ignore it."
"I can't tell him that —"
"You aren't telling him anything by going," George said. "You aren't agreeing to live with him or giving up anything in your life by making sure he's safe. You aren't agreeing to move in with him just because you met him in Hogsmeade one time."
Tori shook her head as if she weren't entirely convinced that she wasn't admitting some sort of weakness by agreeing to meet the convict, but before Nessa could attempt to convince her, Fred spoke.
"He's still on the run," he said. "You can't live with him, and that's not a choice you have to make right now. And as far as we know, he isn't going to be free any time soon. That's not something you have to be worried about at all, no matter what he wants —"
"And if he asks again?" Tori said, panicking again. "I ignored the question the first time, Fred! That's much easier to do in a letter than it is when he's looking me dead in the eye. How am I supposed to answer that question? What am I supposed to say to him? Or to Molly and Arthur? How am I even supposed to make that kind of decision in the first place?"
"Tori —"
She spoke over Nessa before she could say much of anything.
"No, Nessa, because I am a bitch when I'm put on the spot like that, and don't even try to say that I'm not because we both know that I am," she said, pacing again and tugging at her hair. "And if he asks me again and I say something — something horrible like that sounds like the worst thing in the world or that I hate him or that I never want to get to know him just because I panicked? I can't —"
"Tori!" Nessa said loudly, reaching out to stop her pacing mid-stride. "Will you stop for a second? This isn't something you have to be worried about! He's not going to ask you, and if he does then we'll just change the subject. You don't have to answer anything that you don't want, but you should still go."
"Why?" Tori said brokenly. "What we have now works just fine."
Nessa raised an eyebrow.
"Does it?" she said pointedly. "Because it looks to me like you're having a breakdown in some random classroom."
"Oh Merlin, I'm you," Tori groaned. Fred sniggered when Nessa hit her upside the head for the remark. "Ow! What was that for?"
"Tori, listen to me," Nessa said instead, ignoring her irritation for the sake of the end of the conversation. "You don't have to go if you don't want to, but we all know that you'll regret it. Whether you want to admit it or not, he is your father, and you can't avoid caring about him by pretending he doesn't exist, and you don't have to tell him anything about how you feel right now, but give him a chance. If he says anything that makes you uncomfortable then we'll head him off."
"I thought I was going alone," Tori said, raising an eyebrow.
They all snorted and gave her a long suffering look.
"When have we ever done anything alone?" Nessa said.
"Yeah, last time we tried that, Nessa grabbed us by the arm and dragged us down the corridor to listen to you have a breakdown in an empty classroom," Fred drawled.
Tori gave him a withering look.
"It wasn't a breakdown –"
"It was close enough to a breakdown, I'd reckon."
"I hate you."
"That's not were you saying an hour ago —"
"Alright," George said loudly, waving his arms around. "That's enough. I don't need to know about that."
"Don't be such a prude," Tori snorted with an eye roll. "We have to listen to the two of you wax poetic at each other —"
"Yes, because that's the same as listening to you and Fred talk about snogging," Nessa said sarcastically with an eye roll. "Some things are better left to the imagination —"
"We don't have to imagine, munchkin," Fred said, wiggling his eyebrows at her. He swore viciously when George hit him upside the head. "What are you hitting me for? She's the one imagining it!"
"That's not what I meant!" Nessa said impatiently.
"Then who? Diggory?"
"Can we stop talking about Cedric?"
"Depends," Fred said, raising a haughty eyebrow. "Is he still giving you expensive gifts or was the black eye George gave him a natural deterrent?"
Nessa gave him a dark look.
"I don't see how any of this is your business at all," she said in irritation.
"It's the whole school's business now, isn't it?" George said, his tone layered with irritation and anger.
"That wasn't my fault, George!"
Based on his snort, he didn't appear to care all that much. Not that she blamed him, really. Regardless of how the information had gotten around, the fact of the matter was that she hadn't told him before he had the opportunity to find out from someone else, although Nessa had absolutely zero clue how Rita Skeeter had come by the information at all.
Not for the first time this year, either.
"Okay, well, since this is no longer about me, I'm going to be off," Tori said with a huff behind her. "It smells like dust in here, and I don't care about the stupid books —"
Nessa whirled on her indignantly.
"You're the one that told me not to tell George in the first place!" she said. George whipped his head to look at Tori just as she was scrunching her face at Nessa in distaste.
"I did not!" she said. "I told you to wait to tell him until after the ball. I didn't tell you to wait six months! Can the two of you just snog and make up already?"
"No," George said darkly. Nessa opened her mouth to say something angrily, but Fred interrupted.
"We can always snog and make up," he said to Tori with a wide grin. Tori eyed him in interest.
"We aren't fighting," she said pointedly.
"I can fix that," he said, making Nessa snort and roll her eyes.
"How romantic," she said sarcastically. "But she isn't going anywhere until we figure out if we're meeting Sirius tomorrow."
Tori rolled her eyes, walking toward the door, and grabbing Fred by the arm on her way out. Not that she had to — the man went willingly, grinning widely at her.
"He wants to meet at two at the stile at the end of the road out of Hogsmeade," she said as though she could hardly care at all, which might have been more believable if she hadn't been such an anxious mess only moments before. "We're supposed to bring as much food as we can."
"Food?" Nessa said, her brow furrowing. "Why would he —?"
Tori and Fred were gone before she could even ask about the request, though she supposed she could deduce for herself why he wanted food, even if it seemed an odd request to her. He likely didn't have much to eat unless he broke into wizard homes, which she'd sort of assumed he'd been doing this entire time.
She didn't have much time to consider this however because Tori and Fred's disappearance left her alone with George, who was eyeing her as if he wasn't quite sure that he wanted to be near her. Considering they hadn't spoken at all since hours before, she'd hoped that some of his anger would have dissipated by now.
"George —"
"Don't," he said, raising his palm before she could say anything else. "I've had to listen to Montague all afternoon, I'd rather not talk about it —"
"You won't talk about it, but you'll give Cedric a black eye?" she said indignantly.
George snorted.
"If you're that worried about him then perhaps you should be talking to him instead of me," he said snarkily. She nearly wanted to rip her hair out.
"That's not what I meant," she said in frustration. "I just don't think it's necessary to use violence as a means of communication."
He blinked at her several times.
"Didn't you punch Belby for hexing you before Lockhart's signal in Dueling Club?"
She growled under her breath.
"Why does everyone keep remembering these things?" she said in irritation. "And you don't even like Belby!" He rolled his eyes, though there was some relief in the fact that he looked more amused than annoyed by this assessment. "Can I just —"
"No, Vanessa," he said firmly. "Not today, alright? If you don't trust me enough to tell me about it in the first place, the least you can do is let me figure out what I want to say to you in the first place."
It had nothing at all to do with trust because she trusted no one quite as much as she did George Weasley, except for maybe Tori, but she didn't have the opportunity to say so before he was walking out the door and leaving her alone in the classroom.
No George/Nessa resolution in this one, sorry. We've got a lot coming up, so they'll have to hold their horses. I hope Tori's thought process makes sense here? I have such a hard time putting feelings into words sometimes.
I'll see you soon (fairly certain)!