The Potion Princess

Azkaban

It's easier for them to transition from Audra and Fred, best friends often seen with George to Audra and Fred, completely in love and totally happy about it.  It doesn't takes news to travel, first within their inner circle (Audra's still not entirely sure that Ginny didn't send out announcement letters to everyone, but she denies it) and then to the rest of the school.  By the time they make it back to Hogwarts, it seems that everyone knows.  Including McGonagall, who gave her approval through a slightly less pronounced frown than normal.

Dating Fred is a lot like being best friends with Fred, only with more kissing and more time spent without the rest of their friends.  They go knick food from the kitchens together.  They run more errands with Hagrid and then escape out into the forbidden forest for moonlit walks.  They watch the sunrise from the comfort of the astronomy tower, because Fred said that he always thought that when he got a girlfriend, he'd make sure to watch the sunrise with her at least once a month.  And they walk around holding hands no matter how inconvenient it may be for both of them.

The whole thing is pretty much making this the best few weeks of the year, even with the whole Dark Lord rising going on.  It's enough to make her almost forget what had happened over break.  Almost, that is, until Snape holds her back after class and directs her to meets him in Hogsmeade that night instead.

"Everything good?"  Fred is waiting for her outside the classroom, because that's something he does now.  Something he's always done, really, but Audra had always taken it for granted before.

"Yeah."  She tries her best to act casual, and it must have played it off well, because Fred didn't question it.  He'd long stop questioning her fondness for Snape, and wouldn't have found it weird even if she said she was going back in to discuss theories on the best way to get juice out of a beetle.  "He just wanted to talk about my last essay."

"Was it really that bad?" 

Audra bumped her shoulder with his.  "It was that good."

She makes excuses not to meet up with anyone that night, even if they look at her a little funny when the best thing she can come up with is that she's tired.  Audra slips down the hidden passageway and out towards Hogsmeade, using the trees from the forbidden forest to hide her from anyone who might be watching. 

Snape waits for her at the edge of the village, wrapped in a dark traveling cloak and visible in the shadows.  "What's going on?"  Instinctively she knows it is not good for either of them to be found here, and she keeps her voice down.  "Why couldn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"Our presence is needed.  And if I had told you,"  He grips onto her arm, and she prepares herself for that unpleasant sensation of apparition.  "You wouldn't have come."

It becomes clear in a matter of minutes why they were needed.  They stand on a rock in the middle of the ocean, balancing on the slippery surface.  It's a whole group of them huddling together, including her Uncle Lucius and her brother, but that doesn't do much to make it warmer. 

Audra's on the outside of the circle, nearest to the front and so close to the Dark Lord his robes sometimes brushed against her.  The salt spray stings her face and the wind whipped at her hair, but she barely notices, too busy staring out at the scene in front of her.  It's freezing, the kind of cold that makes your joints ache and your skin turn to rubber.  It's not helped by the dementors that circle closer to them.  They're far enough away that Audra and those with her don't feel the effects, but she still shivers at the sight of them.