The Potion Princess

Prefects

Audra spun out of the room, letting the door slam closed behind her and stomping down the steps. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were waiting on the landing, staring unabashedly at her. Ron was blushing furiously.

Audra stopped, taking a deep breath and turning to face them. "Congratulations, Ron." She forced a smile she didn't feel and wrapped him into a hug, one that he returned much easier than he would have normally. "I mean it."

"Yeah," He smiled and scratched at the back of his head, smiling sheepishly. Ron still looks like a little boy to her sometimes, even if she's only two years older and he's taller than her. They all do. "Thanks, Audra."

George finds her in the attic later, when everyone's calmed down and the earlier excitement of this morning has somewhat disappeared. She's poring over old photos of Bellatrix that she found stacked up in an old box. Her mother and Aunt Narcissa are in them, and they look happy, normal, just like sisters that love each other- smiling into the camera, blowing out candles on birthdays, playing in pick up quidditch matches and attending formal parties dressed in elegant dresses. Audra stuffs them under the old couch cushions when she notices George, even if it was too late to hide them. He doesn't comment, just wrinkles his nose, but she knows that he thinks her obsession with everything Bellatrix related is unhealthy. (Once, when they first became friends, they came to visit her as a surprise and found her room papered in old newspaper articles about death eaters and the awful things that Bellatrix had been done. They made her burn them.)

"We've decided you were right." He settles down onto the couch cushions beside her, sweeping an arm so the pictures fall onto the floor in a waterfall of mirrors. It's her aunt's face, she knows, but it looks so much like her.

"Good." Audra lets the last picture flutter to the floor, and it stays there, showing her aunts and mother smiling up at her, arms linked and bending over under the force of their laughter. "I'm sorry I yelled. And that I said that thing about your mother."

"It's not like you were wrong." There is already dust coating his hair, pale yellow and white streaks going through the red. "She's been on us about those OWLs and getting a real job, and every time we show her our products- which is really complicated magic, you know- she just throws it away."

"Not to mention how she's still holding up Perfect Percy's records like it should matter. He abandoned us, and he's still on a pedestal." Fred was sitting in the opening to the attic, staring at both of them with a fond expression on his face. Fred had taken Percy's betrayal harder than any of the others. He had always looked up to his brother, mostly because whatever Fred broke Percy had been able to fix. "I just don't understand why she still wants us to be like him. She cries every time she mentions him, and dad breaks something, but he's still better than us."

Audra does say anything, just traces pictures in the dirt while Fred and George hold one of their telepathic conversations. If she's learned anything, it's that family is a messy and complicated matter, but you can't help but love them anyways. "Who cares about OWLs? You're good wizards, the best at charms I've ever seen, and I know it. Your mother knows it too, and she knows you could have aced every OWL if you had tried." She reaches out to swipe at the picture in the dirt, and then reaches to take both of her hands. They move closer, George on one side and Fred on the other. Audra wishes they could stay up here forever, locked away where no one could find them, no war or Dark Lord or awful brothers. "You're good men, too. Brave, heroic men who always try to do the right thing. And that's more important than anything else."

The dining room was transformed into a party, complete with banners and streamers and a kazoos that the twins had bewitched to periodically spew confetti. The celebration was in honor of the brand new prefects, with Ron smiling with an embarrassed sort of pride and Hermione beaming and blushing under all the congratulations. Mrs. Weasley was in an exceptionally good mood, which makes her cooking even better than normal (Audra didn't even know that was possible). It was a happier night than they're all used too, and everyone had turned out to take part in it.

It's always like this when things get bad, Remus had told her. The little things get bigger and you want to make a big deal out of all of them, because who knows when you're going to get the chance to be happy again. Audra doesn't want to think like that, so she just heaps on the mashed potatoes and goes to sit with the twins and Mundungus, who clear a space for her. Mundungus had been the twin's supplier of all things illegal for a while now.

Ron passed by, giving Audra an awkward smile and ignoring the twins. She tenses, worried about what's going to happen, but then Fred shot out his hand and grabbed onto the back of Ron's shirt, pulling him back. "Hey, little brother." Ron looked like he was bracing himself for a blow. Fred let go of his shirt. "I just wanted to say congratulations."

Ron squinted at him, like he was looking for the joke. "For real?"

George did something that Audra thinks was supposed to have been a fist bump. Audra turns back towards Mundungus to hide the fact that she was having to fight back tears. It was the sort of sentimental thing that happens whenever you're really proud or happy, she knows, but she had thought it was a gesture that only happens to mothers and middle aged women. "For real." Both the twins took turns wrapping in a hug before letting him go. "We're proud of you, even if we never admit it."

"And never will again." Ron grins, and the tension between them evaporated.

"Never." Fred vows, but he wraps an arm around Audra and raises his glass in a sort of toast. For a moment, Audra closes her eyes and thinks that maybe, just maybe, everything's going to be okay.