Ariella Tonks was confused and skeptical the day she finally got her Hogwarts acceptance letter. After all, magic wasn't real. WRONG. Since her reconnection to once distant family members she had heard many stories about all of the magic, mischief a...
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After lunch Mrs Weasley set us the task of de-gnoming the garden. It was always the same every year - as soon as we get back from the train station, we would find the garden over-run by the pesky creatures. It was like they could sense that the house was vacant for that small period and then they would pounce. We had done it so often now, that we had developed a routine.
We would split up into teams of two, normally Fred and Ginny against George and I - it was the same teams that we played quidditch in. We were a very competitive group of friends.
"Same rules as usual?" I questioned as I pulled on a pair of gnome proof gloves.
"Yeah - thirty minutes to the hill." Ginny said as she grabbed a basket for her and Fred before the pair of them ran off to the right of the house. George and I to the left. We looked for about ten minutes before we found a nest of gnomes and started adding them to our basket.
"Ah! Bloody thing!" George groaned as one of them sank its razor-sharp teeth into his hand as a bid to escape. I just chuckled - George really should know these creature better, any sign that you're distracted, and they would attack.
Twenty minutes later we rushed up the hill behind the house and found Fred and Ginny waiting for us.
"I told you we should have gone for the left - look how many they have." Fred said as he peered into our basket.
"No, you said right." Ginny argued back.
"Same scoring as usual?" I asked, trying to dissolve an argument before it fully started. Fred and Ginny shared the same trait of stubbornness so once they started, they would be arguing for the rest of the day.
"I think we should say one-hundred points for over the mole hill and two-hundred for the rabbit hole instead of fifty and one-hundred - Ariella and I always struggle to get beyond that." Ginny said.
"Seems fair." George agreed as he grabbed a gnome from the basket and prepared to fling it.
"Gosh, for chasers you two seriously have weak arms." Fred joked.
"I'll remember that comment later when I trash you at quidditch. Not all of us seemed to get buff overnight." I replied as I flung a gnome and watched as it landed just beyond the rabbit hole.
"Aww baby you just got yourself front row tickets for the gun show. Pow. Pow." Fred smirked as he flexed his biceps, his t-shirt pulling across his muscles.
"Yeah you're still a prat though." Ginny scoffed as she elbowed him hard, causing him to stop his flexing.
An hour or so later all of the gnomes that we had collected had been dispatched over the hill, with George and I basking in our victory.
"Oh gosh when that one gnome bit Fred and he flung it backwards and it nearly hit mum." Ginny gasped around her laughs. Mrs Weasley's reaction was absolutely priceless - her face was almost the same colour as her hair, I thought that poor Fred would faint.
"Yeah alright." Fred groaned. "Quick drink, change, then quidditch?" He asked as we neared the house.
"Yeah sure, we could probably fit a quick game in before dinner." I said. I guessed it to be around five o'clock and Mrs Weasley always served food at seven thirty.
"Not for me, I said I'd help mum with dinner. I'm sure Ron's not doing anything though." Ginny smirked as Fred groaned.
"I don't need Ron." He said but went to ask his younger brother anyway. It wasn't that Ron was a bad player, he was actually quite a good keeper, the problem was that he only ever played the one position. When you played two on two or three on three, every player had to play in more than one position and, well, Ron just didn't.
After we all got changed and grabbed our brooms, I had received my firebolt as a birthday present from Dora and her parents last September, we headed to the small, make-shift pitch that Mr Weasley had built when their son, Charlie, made the quidditch team as the Gryffindor seeker. Charlie was the best seeker Gryffindor had seen in years, that was until Harry arrived.
The game was very short lived, as predicted, with George and I winning by a landslide, the only thing Ron could do was watch as I sent quaffle after quaffle hurtling past him.
"Who's the one with the weak arm now Freddie?" I shouted as George and I practically skipped back to the house - leaving Ron and Fred to put away the balls. We had an unspoken tradition whereby the losing team packed up the equipment.
"I'm not even surprised." Ginny said as George and I bounded through the front door laughing about Fred's reaction to Ron letting in one of my goals. "You may as well sit down; dinner isn't going to be long now."
After a delicious meal - that Ron practically devoured without chewing, the five of us played a couple rounds of exploding snap before heading up to bed - at Mrs Weasley's request.
All of us climbed up the stairs, Ron at the front followed by Ginny and me and the twins bringing up the rear. When we got to Fred and George's floor, they both hugged Ginny and I, pressing kisses to our cheeks.
"See you in the morning love." George grinned before he went into the room after his twin. Ginny and I continued slowly up to the next floor.
"Night Ron!" I called to his retreating back. He just grumbled a night back to me.
Ginny and I quickly got ready for bed, taking it in turns to use the bathroom across the hall to brush our teeth and wash our face. Once we were all settled, we both pulled out some night-time reading. Ginny reading the latest quidditch magazine and I was reading a muggle book that Hermione had recommended to me.
"Hey Ariella." Ginny said to me in the darkness of her room - we had turned out the lights a few minutes ago. "Wouldn't it be great if you got married to one of my brothers, then we would truly be sisters. I'd like you to be my sister - officially I mean, I already think of you as my sister. Plus you're much nicer than any of my brothers."
"Yeah." I mumbled, my thoughts instantly going to my earlier dream. I didn't dare mention the dream to Ginny as I knew she'd instantly want to analyse it and figure out what it all meant when it didn't mean anything, right?
"Hey Ariella." She said again, and I waited for what she would say next. "Goodnight."
"Night Ginny." I mumbled as sleep took me into its welcoming arms.
