🃏
TWO
——BIRD SET FREE
A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE EFFIE ARRIVED BACK IN BRITAIN, AND HAD BEEN RESIDING IN GRIMMAULD FOR THE TIMEBEING. One of the spare rooms had been converted into a boxing gym (if you could call containing lots of punching bags a punching gym) for Effie because she tended to be worked up about her nightmares.
The nightmares were so bad—she wasn't allowed amphetamines, or sleeping draughts, or sleeping pills, much to her chagrin—that every other night, she would wake up screaming. And her dad would come running as if he'd been guarding her door this entire time to wake her up.
Pansy couldn't get in contact yet because she was in the Malfoy Manor, and Effie had a sneaking suspicion that Voldemort was taking refuge there—or somewhere with close contact to his Death Eaters.
As for the Order, Eleazar tells her everything. . . well, they had a deal. She wouldn't join the Order, and he would tell her everything so she could have something to set her mind on. Besides, Effie's sleuthing mind, as well as Ginny's help, was a great assistance for the Order.
"When're they going to bring Harry in?" Ginny asked Effie, who was in between performing roundhouse kicks and beating up the bag with her fists.
"Dad told me they were thinking of picking him up about five weeks before start of school," Effie informed her, grunting as she landed a solid roundhouse to the bag. She takes the momentum, spinning around and elbowing it as if it was a face.
Usually, it'd be Voldemort's face and it was stress-relieving imagining his nose disappearing with every punch she lands.
Ginny shakes her head. "I don't understand why Dumbledore would want to keep him with his horrid relatives for so long—like, I do understand it's for protection, but come on! Wouldn't he be safer in a house full able-bodied witches and wizards?"
"I don't think Potter would've wanted to be safe," Effie said back, a loud ha escaping her lips when she nailed a kick high enough to be considered a face again. "You know he'd rather run headfirst to danger like an idiot than to make a plan on the spot."
"He's smart but he's a dumbass," Ginny agreed, laughing a bit. "If he was on a muggle plane he'd probably jump without a parachute and latch on somebody who has one on the way down."
Effie smirks slightly, pausing to stabilize her breathing. She's been working on it all over summer because she hated the sight of inhalers now. "Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down," She quoted.
"Was that Winston Churchill?"
"I think it was Ray Bradbury."
"Girls, any of you might have an idea where Mulciber and Avery might end up?" Fred suddenly appeared with a crack. They were used to it, of course. When the twins found out Effie was the girl they booed back at First Year, and she confronted them how stupid it made her feel, they apologized even if it was already water under the bridge. Now they got along like a house on fire.
George appears next to him with a pop, "They tried to apparate in the Stark estate last night—they didn't make it inside. Rather, said to have ended up somewhere else."
Ginny chuckled, "They deserved that."
"I suspect in the middle of nowhere," Effie stated, amused as she leaned against the punching bag.
"Only surrounded by thousand miles of nothing but water," Ginny humored, sharing a grin with Effie.
Effie chuckled, "Ostensibly enough, I supposed they've been shanghaied."
". . . Right, now if you could please stop cueing the cliche love monologue right now and let us in on the joke," Fred raised an eyebrow.
"Point Nemo, you babbling buffoon," Ginny says with a roll of her eyes. "They're probably somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, right now. If they're lucky, muggle ships may pass them—"
"Far cry, though," Effie says smugly. "It's the least biologically active region of the world ocean. Russian, European, and Japanese space agencies normally use it now as a dumping ground. Chances are, they're least likely to be rescued. It's the point of this planet with fewest human inhabitants and the quietest shipping routes."
Fred and George stared between the two girls for a moment (it was no use trying to ask what muggle things they were talking about), before breaking into large grins. "Wicked!" They said, before disapparating with a pop.
When they went down—fresh and showered (Effie was, but Ginny had to change out of her sleepwear), Eleazar greets Effie with a forehead kiss as Ginny went on to kiss her mum on the cheek.
"On a scale of one to ten, how likely are Mulciber and Avery unable to return on mainland?" Kingsley asked them.
Effie pursed her lips to suppress the smirk beginning on her lips. "A twelve?" She says innocently. Silence. She raised an eyebrow, "Well, they're not exactly renowned for their genius, aren't they?"
Sirius barked out a laugh, as Ginny looked at Effie again with a fond look. "Adorable when she's casually angry, isn't she?"
"Adorable?" Tonks repeats, then scoffs and laughed. "Well then I rue the day she will be the cutest when she's mad."
"It's an all-women household, Tonks," Eleazar shared with a slight smirk. "You learn to understand a bit about women—one; they run on determination, two; you learn to go with it."
The next time Effie was in the boxing room, she was alone. It was 2AM by now, she woke up in cold sweat an hour ago but Effie was fucking frustrated. Back then she had amphetamines to keep her awake, keep her busy—
But now. . . now all she had was pent up frustration, anger, pain and onslaught of other emotions she can't explain that had to make an effort not to combust.
Must be the withdrawal talking, she thinks bitterly. When you're having a withdrawal all you could think of was relieving the pain—the pounding in her head, the restless dilemma, the cold sweat, and delirious states—everything be damned. Can't stop until the pain was satisfied.
It's not long before faces started appearing, all of whom Effie punched angrily. Crouch Jr., Voldemort, Fudge, Wormtail—and the most unexpected, Cedric. Effie's fist faltered, and she forgets to breathe.
Nothing could have ever prepared her for the first time she would hallucinate him—I should've died, he shouldn't have saved me—
Effie wheezed, backing away with soft sob. To her horror, Cedric's apparition advanced with every step she took backwards. There's this malicious look in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. . . he was always kind, and welcoming, and smiling.
"You don't deserve kindness," He growled at her. "You killed me!" When he lurched forward, Effie let out a small cry of I'm sorry, flinching into the wall and falling to her knees out of balance. "YOU KILLED ME!"
"PHEMY!" A familiar voice yelled, warm hands grabbing her arms as she sobbed and repeated I'm sorry like a mantra. "Phemy, come on. Breathe with me, hon, just like we practiced. . . "
Effie shut her eyes, remembering Ginny's voice in her head. Smell the roses, blow the candles. Smell the roses, blow the candles. Smell the roses, blow the candles—
It went on like that until Effie's chest loosened, but her hands were still shaking. Eleazar looked at her sadly, "Phemy. . . "
"I'm not okay. I'm not okay, is that what you want to hear? And I—I was waiting for someone to figure it out, read between the lines, but they don't. . . they don't!" Effie burst out for no particular reason. This kind of anger wasn't present whenever she talked to Remus—but when she was alone, it shows.
"Dad, the Ministry is perfectly alright with me keeping my mouth shut—but I still have to listen to myself even when I'm not speaking—Dad, I want it to stop!" She ranted. "And. . . And for awhile, the amphetamines were doing a good job but I. . . is it—is it really worth it? Because—Because bloody hell, I can't even have the option of sleeping draught or pills in fear I'd die in my sleep. Dad, I'm—I'm so tired. Even if I voice my opinion out like they wanted, who in their right minds would believe me?"
Effie ran a hand through her hair. "I'm just a champion with performance issues and brain damage caused by an impostor."
"Sweetheart," Eleazar began, grabbing her shoulders gently. "You don't have to prove anything—at least, not as loud. You never worked well with the noise, didn't you? You worked better with silence and someone with a decent pair of ears."
She felt like she didn't deserve her dad at all. Here he was, still so supportive of her even if she said some harsh words to push people away because she clung to her word—she didn't need a hero, but all it took was poison and an impostor, to dismantle that.
If there was anything Effie hated more, it was being outsmarted, even if she never expressed it. Her calm persona was crumbling at the seams—the seemingly harmless, gentle demeanor was blending with the person behind that red door.
A dangerous thing it was—to be a mix of a trickster and the calm before the storm.
She hated how she was acting but she couldn't just stop. Effie didn't deserve her dad's unwavering support or Ginny's persistence to help her through the trauma. She didn't deserve when they willingly gave up their inhibitions just to listen to her mad theories, or some—some obsolete literary facts, even some facts that had more to do with muggles.
I'm a ticking time bomb, she thought to herself. The dormant volcano had awoken. And she was a damn trickster, a manipulator, a liar, a cruel genius, and quite the mastermind.
"You should get some rest," Eleazar gave her a crooked smile. "I assume you'll have another talk with Remus tomorrow morning."
When morning did come, Effie was numbed out. More especially after another session with Remus—the talk ended quickly, but that was probably because Effie was in no mood to talk, not wanting to remember and not wanting to care about it for a time.
"Dad," She spoke, popping her head through the doorway after two quick knocks. Everyone jumped, and stopped talking, turning to her. "Would mum still have her things in her room?"
"They might be dusty," Eleazar informed her. "And I couldn't open them no matter how hard I tried. Do be careful, though. Is that the reason you intruded or. . . ?"
Effie waved him off, "Molly, is it alright if I take Ginny with me?"
"Do be careful," Mrs. Weasley smiled at her tenderly as Bill spat out his water. "And be back soon. I'll have chicken stew waiting, or should it be avocado tuna melt? William, could you be more inelegant?"
"Either is fine," Effie said casually. "But Ginny prefers the latter. . . I think. Bye now."
"Since when were you on first name basis with my mother?" Bill called, spluttering. Sirius faintly let out a bark-like laugh and Mrs. Weasley scolded her eldest son again.
"She agreed?" Ginny asks with wide eyes when Effie got back upstairs where she had been waiting outside Ronald's room.
Effie nodded with a small smirk, "Seems to adore me too."
Ronald suddenly peeked at them, "Agreed to what?"
Ginny scowls at him. "Out of our business, Ron, or I'll burn your nose for you."
An hour later, Ginny and Effie appeared back in the room Effie, Ginny, and Granger were staying in Grimmauld Place, holding two large boxes. "These is heavy," Ginny commented. "What on earth are in here?"
"If it were boulders, I'm positive mum would've displayed them in her garden instead," Effie said, hauling one across the floor and onto her bed. "Dad said he couldn't open it magically, got too frustrated and left it alone. So I'm hoping we could open it the muggle way, and pray that it works."
"Then you'll have more to add on your murder board," Ginny says, amused. She took out a pair of scissors, keeping the letter opener to herself. Surprisingly enough, the muggle way did work, much to their surprise.
"I just need to know her past with Vol—" Effie noticed Ginny's expression, and reiterated herself. "—Riddle, and why she left. He seemed adamant for a trickster on his side, all it took was a few choice words on my end and bam, he had me in his ranks."
"Whatever it was couldn't have been good," Ginny said, opening up the box in her possession. "Let's go with this first. I can't imagine why they would choose You-Know-Who to side with."
"Gellert Grindelwald was naturally more enigmatic and used charisma to his arsenal. They're like two sides of the same coin, you know," Effie enlightened her, beginning to dig through the knickknacks. Most of it were clothes, which neither interested in. "Grindelwald turned out to be the beautiful side, playing a snake. You-Know-Who took being a Slytherin on the literal side, and ruled with fear."
"But they're the same," Effie continued, and said with a dark look. "Just like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin. . . in the muggle history, respectively, they were the heads of fascism, Nazism, and communism."
"Fear makes people do the unimaginable," Ginny concludes. While it unnerves her how Effie seemed to know just about everything, she didn't care. Ginny would always listen, because while Effie's mind worked in a way that was terrifying enough, the knowledge was useful. "How do you even manage to know everything?"
Effie snorts, carefully picking up a stack of fragile-looking letters. "Ginny, never tell anyone, but I simply act like I know everything. It makes people more likely to tell me what I want because they assume I know what they're hiding."
Ginny's brows raise in surprise and awe, "So you've been tricking people to find out what you want?"
"I'm a trickster, remember?" Effie reminded with a smirk. And a liar, her subconscious adds.
Someone knocked on the doorframe, which turned out to be Sirius. He looked puzzled at the clutter surrounding them, but shrugged because his room was the same way. "Effie, a letter came for you."
He extends his hand, holding out a folded parchment, the crest still intact. Sirius crossed his arms after she received it, "You know we wouldn't snoop in on it? We simply made sure it's not cursed or anything."
"Thank you," Effie smiled at him, which he returns before sauntering away.
Ginny leaned over her shoulder, "What does it say?"
🃏