Wallflower

About a month had passed since I came home from the hospital. Things between Fred and myself were awkward as ever, but we were steadily growing closer. I was close with George too, but not quite in the same way. I usually stayed in my room, Molly would bring me food after everyone else had eaten and we would talk a bit, my uncle would come visit me and we would just sit in the company of one another. Ginny and I never really got on too well, so she didn’t visit much, and Ron stopped visiting last week when Hermione got here. Arthur never visited much as he was always at work, and gradually the visits of everyone but the twins diminished as activity in the Order picked up. None of the Order members ever came to visit me, and everyone was told that the second door on the third floor was off limits.

I didn’t have the sling on my arm anymore, but the cast and bandages remained, I’d learned to work around it for the most part. My shoulder was better which was why the sling was able to be off, as was my ankle so I was much less dependent on others. One could still tell how much this was effecting me though, as even though I could, I refused to leave my room. A bout of depression would wave over me when I tried to do something that I couldn’t, that was when it was hardest.

I stood from bed and grabbed my cauldron from the shelf. I balanced it between myself and the wall as I put what all I would need inside for the wolfsbane potion. I knew that the full moon was coming up, and I felt so bad having to get someone else to make it for Remus last month. I sighed as I realized that I couldn’t reach one of the ingredients, even standing on my tip toes. The pop of apparition sounded behind me and my mood lightened a bit. “Fred, I need you to grab the monks blood from the top shelf, please.” I asked before grabbing my full caldron and sitting down in the middle of the floor. “Oh, and the burner as well if you don’t mind.” I added as an afterthought.

“You know Woman, some people might consider you a slave driver.” He joked.

“I said please.” I replied, my tone not faltering. I heard Fred chuckle before he did as I asked and brought me the items.

“What are we making today?” he asked, taking a seat beside me. Since I needed help brewing potions, and he really needed help in the subject I’d taken to tutoring him.

“Wolfsbane Potion.” I said sliding the mortar and pestle to him. “Crush six measures of these.” I could do some things still, like the measuring and the brewing but I couldn’t prepare the ingredients yet. We worked silently alongside one another, me telling him what to do and he joking around. We finished putting it all together and left it to brew for the hour and a half it needed. It was a rather quick potion to make, but it was hard, and disastrous if you got any part of it wrong. I put a small egg-timer on and set it beside the cauldron.

“So where’s George today?” I asked. Most times George would visit me with Fred, but he never visited me alone.

“He’s helping Mum with something or other.”

“How come you never offer to help your mother out?”

“Because,” he started putting his arm around me as we sat on the floor, backs against my bed, “I’d much rather be up here with you.” He smiled.

I smiled back up at him, every time we were like this I was absolutely ecstatic and a part of me wished that I’d known Fred much longer than I had.

“So listen, I’ve talked to George and we have a bit of a proposition for you.” He said nervously.

“And what might that be?” I asked apprehensively. Knowing him he could be asking me to be a test subject for their next prank item.

“We wanted to know if you’d help us out with making prank items.” He said quietly. “And also, if you’d like to try this candy.” He added on, holding out a magenta candy to me. A smirk was present on his face, and a devious aura emanated from him.

“No.” I denied. For a moment he looked crestfallen, but I knew that was simply because his plans hadn’t gone as he’d expected. “But if you can promise that it will go as anonymous I will teach you what you need to know. I’d much rather teach you to be self-sufficient, than coddle you and have you grow used to depending on me.” I looked away from him, a stoney look on my face. “There may, after all, come a day where I’m not here to do the work for you. And in that case, I want you to have the skills to move forward without my aid.” I was well aware of what the meetings downstairs were for. Though no one would ever tell me, you come to know some things over time. It was an army, they were revolting against the rein of Voldemort; The Order of the Phoenix. Though he was not in direct power now, it was clear that he had to be stopped before he became the downfall of the magical world. When I was of age, or sooner, I was prepared to join and was well aware that not everyone would make it out of this war alive. I didn’t want to be among the fallen, if that meant a survivor not being able to go on.

Fred, trying to be the ever happy person he was shrugged off my bout of depression and turned my face to him. “There’s nothing out there that’s gonna take you away. If no one knows who you are, no one can target you! In a way, you’ve got it better than anyone else!” He joked, but we both knew that this wasn’t the case. The impending doom was in its early stages of setting in, and people were just now beginning to realize what the bad aura meant to the fate of our lives.

The rest of the wait for the potion was silent. Instruction was minimal, and as soon as Fred finished helping me he spared me a hurt look, before walking out the door; an act he only did when the mood was simply too heavy for dissapartation. Before he shut the door behind himself, he whispered to me, “But this war will be won, and I will see to it personally that no one I know will die if I have anything to say about it. That is my promise to you.”