My eyes blinked open from the sleep I was in, and I looked around not even remembering when I had closed them. Fred's arm was laying loosely over my waist and I played with his fingers, trying to convince myself to just stay in bed with him as long as I could.
But I couldn't.
I had spent the last three weeks moping around and only being able to use my brain to rack up different plans. Not only did I have Ron here now, but we also had the notepad and I wouldn't lose the lead I had just gotten.
I carefully lifted his arm off me and onto the sheet, so I could roll quietly out of bed. Instead of settling for the robe, I grabbed a pair of Fred's clothes that looked a little bit on the smaller end and wore those.
Nobody was awake yet, I knew they weren't. The other three actually worked for a living and I knew their schedules as if it were my own. Each day I liked waking up early so that I could stare out at the openness of the grass and dream of what it would be like to reunite with the other three.
It's funny, even though I was being fed and clothed here, I was still just as trapped as when I had been in the metal cage.
I made sure to quietly go down the steps, and carefully twist the knob to the front door so no one else would wake up. At first I almost shouted when I saw someone sitting several feet in front of me, their back towards me. But when I saw the red hair, I had to remind myself that Ron came to us last night.
He seemed to not be surprised of my presence when I sat next to him, both of us enjoying the silence and being reunited with someone who was going through the same thing as them.
"I think you owe me an explanation," I broke the silence and turned my body towards him slightly, "I promise not to judge you until you tell me everything."
He cleared his throat and kept his gaze on the empty space of land in front of us, "I didn't mean to do it. As soon as I left I wanted to go back, but I apparated straight into the grounds of where a group of Snatchers were camping out."
"And you couldn't apparate back to them immediately?" I asked.
"I had no time," he shook his head, "the Snatchers tried to stun me as soon as I got there. So I tried to run—bloody fast those people are. Wouldn't of escaped if I hadn't learn that one jinx from Hermione, you know the tripping one."
"Yeah I do," I nodded and felt my heart sadden at the name of my friend. I wanted so badly to be by her side right now, so that both of our brains could challenge each other like I knew they did.
"Well ever since then i've been running from the Snatchers. I did end up going back to them, but by the time I did they were already gone," he frowned and looked at me this time in my face, "you have to understand that as soon as I left I realized the mistake I made. It was that bloody Horcrux that made me do it—"
"Hold on. Made you?" I interrupted and felt a wave of fear creep over me, "you're saying there's magic in there that can control you?"
"No not at all," he assured me, "it wasn't what it made me do, but how it made me feel. It's got a similar power to dementors, but instead of sucking the life out of you it sucks all of your happiest memories."
"Wow that's awful," I said saddened, "and so that's what it did to you three?"
"Well only to the person who wore the locket," he explained, "Harry didn't want to take a risk of losing the locket over what we went through to find it. So we had to take turns over who wore it since the thing was impossible to destroy."
"I thought just as much," I grimaced, "if it was that easy to destroy I feel like Dumbledore would have done it all himself."
"Yeah exactly. We were just all under so much stress. Not only did we not know what happened to you, but we had just gone through so much to get a Horcrux we couldn't destroy. The locket drove me mad and made me see things—uh like Harry and Hermione," he said with an embarrassed tone.
"Why is that bad? Of course you were seeing them they were with you the whole fucking time—"
"No like see them. You know being together together," he said. I waited a couple seconds before bursting out into laughter. He glared at me and was clearly upset with the way I responded, "screw you then."
"No you idiot!" I laughed, "i'm not laughing over what you saw. I'm laughing over things you don't see, like how Hermione is completely in love with you."
"No she isn't," Ron shut down the idea, " I mean when I asked her to come with me if she said no."
"And thank goodness she did," I scoffed, "why would she leave? So she could let Harry to deal with the Horcruxes on his own? It's already bad enough it's only two of them, I can't imagine just him being able to pull all this off."
"I know I know you're right," he admitted and looked back on the sky in front of us which was lighting up with the rising of the sun.
We didn't speak again, instead spent about the next hour staring up at the sky and feeling the breeze lightly caress our face, the softest touch we were both likely to ever feel once we found the other two again.
•••
"I'm home," Fred announced loudly as he opened the front door to Bill and Fleur's cottage. He was holding a bag of what looked like to be groceries for food, and I silently thanked him since my stomach was grumbling.
"Finally something to eat," Ron sat up from beside me and ran over to Fred.
"Hey hey. Now I paid for these so I decided what goes to who," he joked.
"Of course the best food is going to go to the person you're shagging," Ron said under his breath.
"RON!" I yelled at him and narrowed my eyes for his foul comment.
"What it's true!" He argued but Fred threw him a sandwhich which kept him quiet.
"Here you go love," Fred sat beside me and handed me a turkey sandwich along with a wrapped brownie, "got a little something special for you too."
"Thanks babe," I smiled at him and gave him a short kiss. Even though my stomach was rumbling I looked back at what was in front of me and decided against eating right now, I couldn't afford the time wasted.
"What you're not going to eat?" Ron said grossly with his mouth open and his chewed up food on display for everyone.
"No I—i'm really close to something I can feel it," I shook my head and kept writing inscriptions on a plain piece of parchment.
In front of me was the notepad out of its baggie as well as a piece of paper for me to jot thoughts and symbols down on. Over the last few days I spent every waking moment working on this thing, finally being able to put my brain to use.
Ever since we figured out that ARY stood for a name I started looking at the pad differently. It's possible that it could be more than just an arrangement of words in another languages, but maybe some were code, and maybe some were symbols. The issue was finding out what was what.
There were about two full pages of the small pad, the writing all squished and intertwined into one. I took the time to separate all the writings from each other, and have them individually spaced out.
"You're not going to get anything done if you starve yourself," Fred urged me, "now. Eat." I put my ink down and took a huge bite of the sandwhich keeping eye contact with him the whole time.
"Happy?" I mumbled out through my food.
"Very," he smirked and wiped the mayo that got on my chin, "so what have you been able to figure out with Ron?"
"Nothing," Ron said before me and I shot him a look, "what it's true? We've spent days staring at this notepad and rewriting words but neither of took Ancient Runes."
"I already told you Ron!" I said frustrated, "they aren't runes they're other languages!" I took another angry bite of my sandwhich and tried to keep my emotions to myself. It wasn't anyone's fault but mine that i've had this notepad for years and yet still haven't gotten anything figured out.
The beware Anastasia portion doesn't count since I figured it out after the fact she tried to kill me.
Twice.
Actually...three times.
"Well why don't you put your efforts into something else," Fred suggested, "I mean maybe if you do something and come back to this you'll look at it differently."
"Yeah sure," I nodded and started unwrapping my brownie while Fred and Ron talked.
Besides the radio of Potterwatch, Fred was pretty much our only source of information for the outside world. I learned that Tonk's dad had gone on the run along with a couple of other people, as well as Dean has disappeared, his status unknown.
They continued to talk back and forth between them for the next couple hours while I struggled to keep my burning eyes open. I felt tiredness creep over my shoulder, and engulf me completely.
I woke up the next day not on the couch downstairs, but in the bed I slept in every night. Fred must've moved me when I fell asleep, and I moved my hand to grab his but was met with nothing.
Flipping over, I turned to see that no one was sitting beside me. Waking up alone was an unusual feeling since I was almost always the first one awake so I could have a couple moments by myself outside.
I took the time for myself to go to the shower and try to get my body to relax. While I felt at ease, my brain was racing every second, and all I wanted to do was shut it off.
But I knew I owed it to everyone else including myself to keep working towards the greater good. Although the cages weren't a splendid time, I hardly had to work in there, so that would serve as my break from all this chaos.
Once the water was starting to burn my skin I shut it off and got dressed so that I could go eat something downstairs.
"Good morning," Fleur said sweetly to me and I waved at her before taking my usual spot on the couch.
Instead of jumping straight into it I grabbed a copy of the Daily Prophet to read but found myself bored with the tainted news they were putting out. Flipping the pages, I found a random place where you could play some games like Sudoku and word unscrambling.
I started with the number game and mindlessly wrote stuff in, feeling my attention being pulled elsewhere. The number line I was looking at only had the numbers 1 and 3 on them, which caused my brain to shut off everything else and focus on where the rest would go.
"So you like ze paper?" Fleur asked me when she took the spot beside me and drank her coffee.
"Oh no," I shook my head, "it's tainted news but I was just trying to—I don't know play a puzzle, maybe get my brain flowing differently." She leaned forward slightly to look at what page I was on and smiled.
"My mother alvways loved ze word game, vwhere ze letters are mixed up," she smiled and looked up as if recalling a fond memory, "do you mind if I..."
"Of course," I answered immediately and gave her the newspaper to play the word jumble on her own. My eyes narrowed and I all of a sudden was hit with a sense of clarity.
What if some of the english words are scrambled?
I moved quickly and started scribbling down on my spare piece of parchment as fast as my hands could move. My idea could be impossible but it was an idea nonetheless. At first I worked with the longest word, but seeing as I didn't know if they were two separate words or not I moved onto something shorter
There were seven letters written down, and I wrote down how many vowels there were first.
Two E's
Glancing back at the parchment to the notepad I began to put in every kind of combination I could write down. My first thought was that with all these letters I'd have a crazy amount of option to pick from. Taking all the permutations from p(1,7) to p(7,7) and adding them, yielded almost 50 possibilities.
I knew the two vowels were most likely not next to each other since they were both 'e' so I always put a letter in between the two.
Fleur must've seen I was busy at work and didn't want to interrupt because when I looked up she was gone and I had no idea how much time went by.
Finally I squealed in happiness and set on my final answer for the word.
Skender.
"RON!" I yelled from downstairs and waited for the quick thump of him hopping out of bed and running down.
"What! What!" He came down and had his wand high up in the air as if expecting an intruder.
"Put your wand down idiot and come see this!" I shouted at him at the same time Fred walked in the door.
"I'm home—"
"Shut up and sit down!" I ordered him.
"Well that's one way to welcome a man home," he mumbled out but I ignored his comment.
"I cracked it! Finally I cracked one word on here. Anyone recognize Skender?"
"What like the name?" Ron asked confused.
"The one and only! Don't you guys remember hearing about him in history!"
"Yeah," Fred nodded surprisingly, "isnt he the dude who owned the carnival of magical people and then was overthrown by them or something?"
"It was actually a circus," I corrected him and smiled at them, "i'm thinking that if this was written down in my notepad what if he has information? It could be about Ho—" Ron snapped his head to me before I finished the word Horcrux and I tried to shrug it off.
"It could be about helping the future of the war. I know in my gut we need to find this guy!" I told them and tried to convince them. It didn't take much because they both nodded along with me.
"Alright I'll try to look around town and see if I can find a book on him—"
"What if I go?" I asked and was met with glares from the two boys.
"Like hell you're going," Fred rolled his eyes, "like I said i'll try to get something on him. For now you wait here," he said firmly. I pouted slightly since I wanted to keep the discoveries going but didn't want to push my luck.
"Fine," I frowned and let the boys go back to their usual talk of the outside world.
•••
Over the next couple of weeks Christmas approached quickly and I felt time racing down my throat. Fred had managed to find one book in a magical creatures section the first week, that described the circus Skender had once been in charge of.
We learned a lot about the man, such as he was the cruel and exploitative owner of the Circus Arcanus, a travelling magical circus and freak show, which toured the wizarding world with its wondrous and weird display of magical attractions.
It was during a time that irregularities within wizards and witches were frowned upon, which is why he took it upon himself to except these performers making them feel like this was their only choice as they showcased their abilities.
Essentially he forced people to perform magic in front of the crowd, and would profit off their oddities.
Next week another book was brought into the cottage and Fred handed it to me titled, "Disastrous Magical Histories."
Although the circus was popular and well-known it all came down to a disastrous end.
In 1927 Skender and the Circus Arcanus were set up in the wizarding street of Place Cachée of Paris. After forcing one of his performers to turn in their animagi, Skender was attacked which caused a huge commotion.
This distraction caused the performers to escape and the entire circus was engulfed in fire following the angry release of several caged Firedrakes.
Not much was discovered about the background issues with the circus, and once he was questioned Skender promptly and unhappily fled Paris with his circus and House-elf, after magically packing away and shrinking his entire circus into his suitcase.
Away to somewhere unknown. A place I needed to find.
It was Christmas Day and the five of us huddled around a makeshift tree that we had tried to make up as nice as possibly, it being one of the pine trees in the backyard.
It wasn't much but i'm sure it was a hell of a lot better than The experience most people were having who were currently on the run. None of us had the time or money to exchange gifts but our presence and safety was enough.
"Alright let's say one thing we're grateful for," Bill smiled while we were eating the lovely dinner Fleur had made us. With the limited groceries we had she was still able to make a beautiful feast, my mouth watering at the sight since it was more food than I had seen in once place since their wedding.
"Definitely these potatoes," Ron stated and at the same time his stomach made a rumble of noise. We all laughed at him and then moved on to the next person.
"I am grateful for ze health of my family and friends, as vwell as being able to be married to zis handsome man beside me," Fleur said sweetly and I smiled when I saw her and Bill kiss shortly.
"I guess it's my turn," Bill chuckled, "i'm grateful that our family has been able to stay hidden and concealed from the wrath of Death Eaters. May it stay that way," he smiled at everyone.
Fred was next and I was surprised to see him take a few moments to speak, "what's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" I chuckled.
"No," he shook his head, "I just—I'm grateful for so much like all of us being here. But I can't help and think this is our first Christmas not all together," he frowned.
I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and rubbed gently, "i'm sure that's the case for a lot of families this year."
We all were kind of silent with the glooming mood set over the table. I know Fred didn't mean to, we were all sad with the lack of family we were around so I spoke up.
"How about my turn," I piped in, "alright well I am grateful for a lot. I'm grateful for brownies, as well as hot chocolate, i'm not grateful for butter beer or Ron's snoring—seriously I can hear you through the walls," I told him and could hear Fred chuckle from beside me. I met his gaze with a smile and was happy I was able to bring some kind of grin to replace his frown.
"She's right, enough sappy talk. Were all here and healthy aren't we," Fred said loudly and we all laughed at his switch in behavior, "however there is one thing I disagree with you on."
"And what's that," I turned my cheek to him.
"Butterbeer is one hell of a thing to be grateful for."
We laughed for the rest of the night after dinner, sitting in the living room and exchanging stories about our time at Hogwarts. Even Fleur contributed to the conversation, telling us about the horrendous time a Slytherin tried sneaking in to their Beauxboton carriage.
Before we went to bed I couldn't help but feel my eyes spring with tears and cry a bit in the bathroom, thinking of everyone I was missing. The list started with Ruby and my dad at the top. Next I thought of Ginny who was leading her own resistance, I was sure of it, within Hogwarts.
Last I thought of Hermione and Harry, who were most likely traveling the world and cold in their tent. Did they have enough food for themselves? Did they even know it was Christmas today?
I often thought questions to myself in hope that my brain would give myself an answer that i'd find comfort in.
When I went back to bed Fred was smiling up at me, clearly half asleep since his eyes were squinting.
"Have I ever told you how much I love you," he said softly and cuddled me closer to his bare chest.
"No I don't think you have," I giggled and started circling shapes on his upper chest.
"Well I do," he said kissing my nose and I smiled in response, "it wouldn't hurt to say it back you know."
"I love you too dummy obviously," I shook my head and put my hands up in his hair to play with it, "will you be mad at me? When I have to leave again?" I asked.
He waited a couple seconds before answering, "no. No I won't be mad but of course i'll be scared for you, just like you are for everyone else. Just promise me you'll say some kind of goodbye," he said firmly.
"I promise," I responded and felt something tickle my face from up above us, "what the heck?"
I looked up and saw some kind of plant hanging above us, attached to the headboard. But when I looked closer I saw it was a piece of mistletoe.
"Mistletoe? Really?" I laughed at Fred.
"Can't break tradition," he shrugged with a smile, and gently grabbed my chin to pull my face towards his.
We met in a soft kiss, as our lips molded together and parted against each other. His hand creeped up the baggy shirt I was wearing, making me hum out at his touch.
He moved to hover over me and deepen our kiss, both of us passionately grabbing at each other, attempting to get even closer to each other.
And that's how we finished the night; intertwined like we always had been since the day we met.
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