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.
"Pay attention, little sister." Vance tells her. He had let his hood fall back and was staring at the prison as if it was the most glorious thing he had ever seen. The spray coming off the waves had plastered his hair to his forhead. "Tonight, we witness history in the making."
A moment later, Voldemort makes a sound that must have been a laugh, raising his wand as the stone walls of Azkaban splits down the middle. Chunks of rock crumble down into the sea. Audra can see people walking out to he edge and staring into the ocean, feeling fresh air on their skin for the first time in years. They look like tiny ants, monsters free from their cages at last. One of them jumps.
At the very top, in a window peeking out at the highest point of the prison, Audra can see a figure leaning out of the window, holding onto the sides to keep her balance. She can't hear it, but she can imagine her laughter, crazed and wild, and even though there's no way she could have known, Audra is almost certain that its Bellatrix.
"Come." Voldemort beckons to them all. "Let us welcome them home."
Welcome them home they did, all of them returning back to the Malfoy Manor. It seems that everyone had turned up to witness the reunion. Friends and family being in the same room for the first time in forever, people in love being able to think of each other without hurting. Audra had snuck upstairs to get away from at all. She hadn't liked it- the tearful reunions, the people whose hands shake and jump at the slightest sound, the way everyone's eyes follow her like she's something worthy of being watched. But now, confronted with Bellatrix's figure stretched across the couch, she wished she hadn't. "So you're the little neice, all grown up." She cracked one eye open to stare at her. "Last time I saw you, you were such a little thing."
"I don't remember much of you." Audra hadn't really thought about Bellatrix as an aunt, at least not the kind that might have tried to stop her crying and came to her birthday parties. She had only thought of the murderer, of the newspaper articles, of the whispers in the hallways. Or sometimes, if she's feeling nicer, the pictures she's seen of her from school.
"We'll have to change that, then." It seemed like a promise. Bellatrix smiled and leaned back into the couch. It felt a bit like comradeship, this conversation. Something made even worse by the fact that this was apparently the room that they both went to escape to. "You look an awful lot like me, you know."
"Lucky me." Audra knows she was lucky, at least in the fact that she had inherited her good looks. Bellatrix was beautiful even now, much more so that she had taken a shower and was wearing real clothes. But there was something wrong about her now, like Azkaban had taken away something important.
"Yeah." Bellatrix opened her eyes again and they were dark, dark and haunting. It was the kind of look that made Audra think her aunt knew exactly what their similarities had brought her. "Lucky you."
The news made the next morning's prophet. Audra walked into the Great Hall the next morning and was faced with hundreds of pictures of the people she had freed staring back at her. She tries to be surprised when Ginny races up to her with a copy of the article, tries to seem concerned when Harry and Ron talk to her. Still, it feels better when she makes it to the Slytherin table, where not all of them view this as bad news. For some, it might mean a missing member returning to home.
"So you did it then?" Draco didn't give her time to sit down before the question burst out, eyes shining with excitement. "Father said you would."
"Did what?" Emmeline spoke around a mouthful of toast, and when she finally connected the dots, she almost choked. "No way. You didn't."
"keep your voices down." Audra let her bag fall to the floor and slid between them, and the three continued in hushed whispers, heads bent together. She scoops some eggs onto her plate, trying not to feel the deranged Bellatrix on the paper watching her. "And yea. I did."
She avoids Fred for most of the day, ducking out of classes before he can reach her and weaving through the hallways, disappearing down the short cuts he had taught her and then taking the long way to class so there was no time to talk. It's not until after dinner that she's walking through the halls and hears footsteps behind her, knowing its him before she even turned around.
"We need to talk." It's not a request, but he's still gentle about taking her by the hand and leading her to the room of Requirement, that magical place where the DA meetings take place. It's quiet for a long time, her staring at the floor and Fred scrubbing at his face with his hands. She thinks that they might have stood there forever had a copy of the prophet not appeared in Fred's hands. "This." He slams it onto the table and points at it. "I want you to talk about this."
"I can't."
He nods fiercely, jerking his head so fast that she thinks he might have pulled his neck. "This is why you couldn't do anything last night, isn't it?"
"Fred..." She reaches out to him, and he lets her, even if he makes no move to get closer to her. "I can't always tell you."
She was afraid he might start yelling, or worse, just walk away. But all he did was reach out and tug at the locket, something that had quickly become his unspoken version of we're okay, I love you. "I know."
"You just have to trust me, okay?" She doesn't kiss him. Audra had watched her dad shut up her mom with a kiss too many times to believe that it acts as a fix-all for every bit of trouble that might rise. "I don't want to do these things. And I don't want to lie to you."
"Then don't." He takes in a steady breath like it's physically painful for him to do so. "From now on, just say it's for the order, and I'll shut up about it, I swear."
"I can tell you one thing." She lets it hang, feels herself waver between lying and telling the truth, and then chooses what she had always done when she was around Fred. There was no need to lie with him. "I met my aunt last night."