"Always the first to make amends, trying to find that perfect score" ~ Perfect Score, State Champs
The story of Fred and George's flight to freedom is retold so often over the next few days that I can tell it will become the stuff of Hogwarts legend: within a week, even those who were eyewitnesses swear they saw the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms and pelt her with Dungbombs before zooming out the doors. In the immediate aftermath of their departure, there was a great wave of talk about copying them. I'm frequently hearing students saying things like, 'Honestly, some says I feel jumping on my broom and leaving this place', or, 'One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley'.
Fred and George have made sure that their legacy lives on within the school. For one thing, they've left no instructions on how to remove the swamp that now fills the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing. Umbridge and Filch have been observing different means of removing it but with no success. Eventually, the area is roped off, and Filch, gnashing his teeth together furiously, is given the job of punting students over it to reach their classroom. I'm almost certain that McGonagall or Flitwick could remove the swamp in an instant, but just as the case of the twins' fireworks, they prefer to let Umbridge handle it.
Quite possibly the best reminder is the two broomstick shaped holes in Umbridge's office door. Although Filch was quick to replace it, and, as the rumour goes, Harry's Firebolt was moved to the dungeons where it is now supposedly guarded by a security troll.
Inspired by Fred and George's example, a great number of students are now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief. In spite of the new door, somebody manages to slip a hairy-snouted Niffler into Umbridge's office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge when she entered and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers. Dungbombs and Stink Pellets are dropped so frequently in the corridors that it has become the new fashion to perform Bubble-Head Charms on ourselves before leaving lessons, which ensures us a supply of fresh air, even though it gives us all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on our heads.
Filch prowls the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem is that there are now so many of them he never knows which way to turn. The Inquisitorial Squad are attempting to help him, but odd things keep happening to its members. Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that makes him look as though he has been coated in cornflakes; Pansy Parkinson, to my delight, missed all her lessons the following day as she has sprouted antlers. It's a long-running joke now between Draco and I that he might just sprout a tail at any moment.
Meanwhile, it has become clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts. Umbridge only has to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration, she attempts to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but we all tell her stubbornly that we are suffering from 'Umbridge--itis'. After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret, she is forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.
But not even the users of the Snackboxes can compete with the master of chaos, Peeves, who seems to have taken Fred's parting words deeply to heart. Cackling madly, he soars through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, toppling statues and vases; twice he has shut Mrs Norris inside a suit of armour, from which she is rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker. Peeves smashes lanterns and snuffs out candles, juggles burning torches over the heads of screaming students, causes neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows; floods the second floor when he pulls off all the taps in the bathrooms, drops a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast and, whenever he fancies a break, spends hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she speaks.
None of the staff but Filch seem to be stirring themselves to help her. Indeed, a week after Fred and George's departure, I witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and I swear I heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, 'It unscrews the other way.'
To cap matters, Montague has still not recovered from his sojourn in the toilet; he remains confused and disorientated and his parents were to be observed on Tuesday morning striding up the front drive, looking extremely angry.
"Should we say something?" says Hermione in a worried voice, pressing her cheek against the Charms window so that she can see Mr and Mrs Montague marching inside. "About what happened to him? In case it helps Madam Pomfrey cure him?"
"Course not, he'll recover," says Ron indifferently.
"Take it as revenge for all the times he's almost knocked me off my bloody broom this year," I add begrudgingly.
"Anyway, more trouble for Umbridge, isn't it?'" Harry says in a satisfied voice.
I tap the teacup I'm supposed to be charming with my wand, and it sprouts four, stable legs. The teacup stands up and remains in such a position. Ron and Harry's, however, grow legs that are too short and too long respectfully.
"When did you get good at Charms?" Ron asks, bewildered, as Hermione repairs his broken teacup with the wave of her wand.
"That's all very well, but what if Montague's permanently injured?" she asks.
"Who cares?" says Ron irritably, while his teacup stands up drunkenly again, trembling violently at the knees. "Montague shouldn't have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor, should he? If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!"
"You?" she says, catching her teacup as it scampers happily away across the desk on four sturdy little willow-patterned legs, and replacing it in front of her. "Why should I be worried about you?"
"When Mum's next letter finally gets through Umbridge's screening process," says Ron bitterly, now holding his cup up while its frail legs try feebly to support its weight, "I'm going to be in deep trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if she's sent another Howler."
"That would be funny," I muse, as my teacup runs around gleefully.
"But--""It'll be my fault Fred and George left, you wait," Ron says darkly. "She'll say I should've stopped them leaving, I should've grabbed the ends of their brooms and hung on or something ... yeah, it'll be all my fault."Well, if she doe's say that it'll be very unfair, you couldn't have done anything! But I'm sure she won't, I mean, if it's really true they've got premises in Diagon Alley, they must have been planning this for ages."
"Yeah, but that's another thing, how did they get premises?" says Ron, hitting his teacup so hard with his wand that its legs collapse again and it lay twitching before him. "It's a bit dodgy, isn't it? They'll need loads of Galleons to afford the rent on a place in Diagon Alley. She'll want to know what they've been up to, to get their hands on that sort of gold."
"Well, yes, that occurred to me, too," says Hermione, allowing her teacup to jog in neat little circles around Harry's, whose stubby little legs are still unable to touch the desktop, "I've been wondering whether Mundungus has persuaded them to sell stolen goods or something awful."
"He hasn't," Harry says curtly, sending me a sideways glance.
"How do you know?" says Ron and Hermione together.
It seems the time has finally come to reveal the truth. Being scolded by them, and possibly Mrs Weasley is ultimately better than people believing the twins are involved in criminal activity. "Because Harry and I gave them our Tournament winnings last year," I say breezily.
There is a shocked silence, then Hermione's teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor. My teacup continues running in circles amidst the silence.
"Oh, Haylee, Harry, you didn't!" she says.
"Yes, we did," says Harry mutinously. "And I don't regret it, either. We didn't need the gold and they'll be great at running a joke shop."
"But this is excellent!" says Ron, looking thrilled. "It's all your fault --Mum can't blame me at all! Can I tell her?"
"Yeah, I suppose you'd better," says Harry dully, " 'specially if she thinks they're receiving stolen cauldrons or something."
Hermione says nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but I have a shrewd suspicion that her self-restraint is bound to crack before long. Sure enough, once we've left the castle for a break and are standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixes Harry and me with a beady eye and opens her mouth with a determined air.
Harry interrupts her before she has even started.
"It's no good nagging us, it's done," he says firmly. "Fred and George have got the gold-- spent a good bit of it, too, by the sounds of it--and I can't get it back from them and I don't want to. So save your breath, Hermione."
"I wasn't going to say anything about Fred and George!" she says in an injured voice.
Ron snorts disbelievingly and Hermione throws him a very dirty look.
"No, I wasn't!" she says angrily. "As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harry and Haylee when they're going to go back to Snape and ask for more Occlumency lessons!"
My heart sinks. Harry did solve his issue by speaking to Sirius and Remus, but Sirius had also very heavily advised him to go back to Snape and demand that he continue teaching us.
"You can't tell me you've stopped having funny dreams," Hermione says now, 'because Ron told me you were muttering in your sleep again last night. And I know Haylee's been doing the same."
I frown, remembering that I did, indeed, dream of the Department of Mysteries again last night. I had passed through the circular room, then the room full of clicking and dancing light, until I found myself again inside that cavernous room full of shelves on which are ranged dusty glass spheres.
I had hurried straight towards row number ninety-seven, turned left and run along it ... it had probably been then that I had spoken aloud ... just a bit further ... for he felt my conscious self-struggling to wake ... and before I had reached the end of the row, I had found myself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of my four-poster.
"You are trying to block your minds, aren't you?" says Hermione, looking beadily at us. "You are keeping going with your Occlumency?"
"Of course, we are," says Harry, trying to sound as though this question is insulting. The truth is, both of us want nothing more than to keep having these dreams so we can, at last, uncover the truth of the Department of Mysteries.
The problem is that with just under a month to go until exams and my every free moment spent studying, I usually go to bed either so exhausted that I don't remember my dreams, or I struggle to sleep. The third alternative is that I dream about exams (one of the more terrifying being that I entirely fail in Potions).
"You know," says Ron suddenly, "if Montague doesn't recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup."
"I suppose so," I say, thankful for the change in subject. However, I'm less confident about our chances of success.
"I mean, we've won one, lost one--if Slytherin lose to Hufflepuff next Saturday--"
"Yeah, that's right'"
The final match of the Quidditch season, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, is to take place on the last weekend of May. Although Slytherin was narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match, none of us dares to hope for victory, due mainly (though of course, nobody says it to him) to Ron's abysmal goal-keeping record. He, however, seems to have found a new optimism.
"I mean, I can't get any worse, can I?" he tells Harry, Hermione, and I grimly over breakfast on the morning of the match. "Nothing to lose now, is there?"
"You're not wrong," I muse. Nothing to lose, except our winning streak and our dignity. "Anyway, let's get this over and done with before Tay dies from all the stress."
"It's now or never," Tay says nervously whilst we all stand around her in the change rooms. "I know I can't live up to Wood's pep talks. But - well, this is our final match. There's no way in hell I'm being captain again next year, so it's up to one of you to write the motivational speeches from now one. Let's make this one count, all right?"
"It's a nice day," I tell Ron as we exit the change room. "We couldn't ask for better." Our team prepares to fly out into the stadium, but I catch Ron's arm and hold him back. "You're a better Keeper than you think, all right, and no matter the outcome of this game I don't want to hear any of your 'I'm hopeless' bullshit, okay? I believe in you, now let's go."
Disheartened by the absence of the twins, Lee introduces the Ravenclaw team with less gusto than usual, though he makes an effort for us as we enter, the Gryffindor supporters cheering for us wildly regardless of our chances.
"And they're off!" Lee says as I zoom upwards, hands outstretched, to catch the Quaffle. However, Davies beats me to it and then proceeds to dodge both Tay and me. Lee swears loudly when Ravenclaw scores.
The match carries similarly to the last final we played in. It's a blur of Chasers snatching the Quaffle off of each other and Bludger's flying dangerously close. Renditions of 'Weasley is our King' along with Lee's commentary and cheering rings in my ears. I curse when I hear the all-too-familiar singing; it's never failed to throw Ron off his game.
Only, this time seems to be different. As the Slytherins scream the lyrics, Ron only seems to be saving more goals, his sudden and drastic improvement enough for us to gain a much-needed advantage.
It happens so suddenly that I stop what I'm doing when I hear it; the crowd begins cheering uncontrollably, their excitement growing with every second. I turn my head, and on the opposite side of the field Ginny and Cho are chasing down the Snitch. And Ginny has the lead. Davies zooming towards the goals doesn't phase me anymore, and the concern of Bludgers hitting me whilst I'm stationary doesn't cross my mind because -
"AND SHE'S DONE IT! GRYFFINDOR WINS THE HOUSE CUP!" Lee shouts triumphantly, as Ginny's fist closes over the Snitch.
I reach the ground, still in a state of shock as Tay, Katie, and Riley all scream victoriously. Ron is suddenly here, looking just as confused as I feel.
"We won?" He says questionably, blinking blankly.
I nod my head as the fact finally hits me. "You did it! I told you-you could do it, we won!" I shout.
"We won? WE WON!" He flings his arms around me triumphantly.
Meanwhile, Tay has tears streaming down her face and she goes around and hugs each and every one of us, glowing with pride and relief. "I really didn't think we could do it!" she cries, as she pulls me into a tight, verging on suffocating, hug. "I shouldn't have doubted the team like I did - I - Haylee." She pulls away and grasps my shoulders. "I know I'm dramatic, and I tend to overreact sometimes - "
"Sometimes?" I retort, my eyebrows raised.
"Okay, I overreact a lot," she said sheepishly. "But putting aside all of the drama between us, these have been the best years of my life. And I want you to know that I'm with you 'till the end. No matter what the future holds for you and Harry, whether you have to fight that bastard You-Know-Who with your bare hands, I'm here for you."
It is a truly surreal sensation as Tay and I hug again, tears welling in my eyes from the sincerity of her words. And then, amidst the touching words and euphoric celebration, the Gryffindor supporters begin singing a variation of 'Weasley is Our King' that I quite enjoy.
"Weasley is our King,
Weasley is our King,
He didn't let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King ..."
In a sea of red and gold, Ron is hoisted up onto the shoulders of our supporters as we begin to make our way back towards the castle; celebrations are in order. With Riley and Tay at my side, we belt the new lyrics proudly, watching as Ron finally gets his moment in the sun.
"Weasley can save anything,
He never leaves a single ring,
That's why Gryffindors all sing:
Weasley is our King.
Weasley is our King,
Weasley is our King,
He didn't let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King ..."