The Potion Princess

Headquarters

"We could have handled it!" George bellowed, and the scurrying and stamping that was the celebration downstairs fell silent. "You didn't need to leave us behind, you had no right to do that without asking us if we thought we could take it."

"I had to!"

"You could have told us the truth!" Fred bellows back.

They shouted at each other for a while, bringing up things that made Audra's heart ache- the letters they wrote and that she burned right after reading, phrases that echoed in her head when she couldn't sleep, the one she sent back in return asking them to leave her alone. The day they saw her in Diagon Alley with Emmeline and she wouldn't talk to them, just laughed, laughed and made jokes about them that everyone could hear and she knew would hurt. About the night where Fred risked his life sneaking onto the manor grounds and threw pebbles out her window like something out of a fairy tale, and wouldn't leave until she sent Artemis after him. (She came back with her beak and claws stained with blood, and Audra had cried, cried all night and almost ran after him but couldn't.)

"I'm sorry!" She cries out finally, yelling over them. It's desperate and heart felt and not enough.

"That doesn't make it better!" George spits back, and he has that look on her face, the one that came with the acid and the beetles in pillows and jokes that burned when you heard them.

"I didn't have a choice!"

The twins turned to go, shaking their heads, leaving her in this cold, quiet room. Fred hesitated long enough to send one sad glance over his shoulder. "You always have a choice."

She lays in bed for a while, still in her clothes. Finally, after she's had enough of staring at the mold covered ceiling, she made her way down the stairs and slipped into the kitchen, only to find Ron already there. He was making his way through a plate of left overs and staring down at Hermione, who had fallen asleep at the table. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Not really." Audra jumped up on the counter. "I'm guessing you guys heard all that?"

"Kind of hard not to." He gives her a sheepish sort of shrug. "If it makes you feel better, Mum screamed at them for an hour after they left. Something about how dare you yell at that poor girl after all she's been through." He changed his voice into a high falsetto that must have been meant to be Mrs. Weasley, and then decided that it wasn't working and ate more food instead.

"They know I didn't mean it, right?" She said desperately. "They have to know I only did it to keep everyone safe."

"They know that. Doesn't make it hurt any less." Hermione stirred, murmuring in her sleep, and he froze. When he spoke again, it was in a much quieter voice. "Listen, don't worry about the two of them. They couldn't stay mad at you. Especially Fred."

"Let's hope."

Hermione wakes up soon after, and Ron finally convinces her to go up to bed (come on Mione, you have all summer for that essay, get some sleep). Audra leans back against the cabinets, wondering if its better to sit alone in a dark kitchen than in a dark bedroom. It feels just as lonely.

"What are you doing down here?" Audra jerks awake, squinting over at the doorway where Fred stood.

"I was sleeping." She stretches, then moved over to make room for him. "My bedroom freaked me out."

She moves over to make room for him on the counter, and he takes it, thankfully. They sit in silence, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist. "You know I hated every minute of this summer without you, right? I wanted to be with you. I was scared, and there wasn't a day that went by where I didn't want to find Dumbledore and tell him I changed my mind, but sometimes we don't have choices."

"Yeah, we do." His voice is hard, but even in the dark she can see the smile on his face. "And you made the right one."

That's all it takes for everything to snap back into place. He flicks on the lights and makes her French toast and fills her in on the important things- where Sirius keeps his liquor, the fact that Bill has a mysterious new girlfriend he won't talk about, the joke shop, if Ron and Hermione had finally admitted they're in love, why Harry isn't here. They each eat a whole pile while she tells him about the equally important moments of her summer- the falcon, the bottles she shot out of the sky and the way the garden grew wild when left alone, the body on the floor and Weird Sister's concert she'll take Ginny to, the Dark Lord's hand on her cheek.

Fred drags her to bed just as the sun comes up, steering her towards his bedroom because Fred and George were supposed to clean hers ages ago and didn't. She lets him shove her towards the bed and crawls under the covers. It smells like him, like gunpowder and cinnamon. "Hey," she catches at his hand as he turns to go, and their fingers tangle together. "I missed you."