Brontide

December soon turned into January, which flew through February and sped into March. The months went by surprisingly fast, though somehow not fast enough for my liking. Fred, George, and Harry were miserable because they couldn’t play Quidditch anymore, all because of an incident back in November during the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game. A fight had almost erupted on the Quidditch pitch and Umbridge had banned the three of them from playing permanently, taking their brooms and locking them away. So now, the only things Fred and George had to look forward to were the Dumbledore’s Army meetings.

Umbridge had created an Inquisitorial Squad, comprised of the foulest members of Slytherin House. One of their duties, besides trying to help Umbridge break apart Dumbledore’s Army, was intercepting owls. It was no longer safe to talk to Tonks or anyone from the Order about anything, as Umbridge could find ways to hold it against me. I didn’t even send a letter to my parents because I was afraid it wouldn’t get to them.

Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson started going steady, which was really the only good news I’d heard in a long time. Lee was happy beyond his wits and, on the occasion that he made an appearance, he never seemed in bad spirits, despite everything else that’d been going on. I only wished I could experience his optimism, because living at Hogwarts had lost its luster for me.

Rae and George, on the other hand, were as stubborn and oblivious as ever. I didn’t know what she expected to happen by not telling him how she felt but at least she wasn’t a crying, drunken disaster. I could’ve easily just told him for her, which I’d offered to do on numerous occasions, mind you, but she didn’t want me to, so I respected her wishes.

Dumbledore’s Army meetings were still happening regularly, and anytime I felt that galleon burn in my pocket, telling me when the next meeting would be, I felt a small sense of joy. I had to hand it to Harry, he was a really wonderful teacher and I couldn’t have found a better one if I tried. I got the opportunity to take my frustrations with Umbridge out during the meetings, becoming increasingly better at blowing things up or setting them ablaze. We began working on the Patronus Charm towards the end of March, which was the most difficult spell to date. However, after a week I was able to produce a full-bodied Patronus, which took the form of a porcupine.

It was April, and everyone was in the Room of Requirement for one of Harry’s lessons. A lot of people still hadn’t successfully produced a Patronus yet, but they were trying. Fred and George had; theirs were a raccoon and a fox, which was oddly fitting for the both of them. Rae was one of the people who struggled. She was trying really, really hard but all that kept coming out of her wand was wispy silver stuff.

“Come on, Rae, you can do it,” I encouraged her, trying to help in any way that I could, “don't think of anything else other than that key memory you picked.”

She glanced around at the others who were practicing. Seeing all of their Patronuses soaring around the room was likely a bit discouraging, so she shut her eyes. "You make it sound as though it's easy," she muttered. "Having you lot breathing down my neck isn't helping, either."

"Blimey, you want us to close our eyes and turn around or something? It's not like you're being graded on this," Fred joked.

"Oi, let her concentrate, you turd," I hissed at him, grabbing him and his brother by the elbows and pulling them back a few paces.

George was watching her with great interest, seemingly pondering something. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"What's the face for?"

"What do you think she's remembering?" he asked quietly, not looking away from her. Oh?

Rae's eyes were shut tight, her brows furrowed in concentration, and she took a few deep breaths until she said, loud and clear, “Expecto Patronum!”

Out of her wand, glowing and bright, came a furry little chinchilla. She stared in amazement and moved her wand around the room, laughing as the chinchilla followed where the wand went, hopping all over the place.

“Cassie, I’m doing it!” she said excitedly, trying to keep her focus. I smiled.

“See? I knew you could do it, and your Patronus is so cute,” I grinned. Harry, Fred, and George all came over to her.

“Really well done, Rae,” Harry smiled, nodding approvingly.

“Good job, mate!” Fred cheered.

“Couldn’t have done it better myself,” George grinned.

Rae looked away from her Patronus and lowered her wand, the chinchilla disappearing. She and George suddenly had their gazes locked in a way that felt very personal. I wasn’t sure what was running through her mind, but what I did see was a blazing look in her eyes. In the next moment, she had thrown her arms around George’s neck, pressing her lips to his with such force that it took him, and the rest of us, by complete surprise.

It'd been that memory.

I looked at Harry, who had suddenly reverted to his awkward self. “Right. Well, um, right. You guys get to it, then. I’ll be, um, yes.” And he made a speedy departure.

I then turned my gaze to Fred, who was looking back at me with his thumbs up. I grinned. "I'd say it's about damn time, wouldn't you?"

Rae quickly unlatched herself from George, both of them very red in the face. George’s eyes were still about the size of saucers. I could see some people near us watching the scene with baited breath like Fred and me, wondering what was about to happen. Rae's fingertips went to her lips, her eyes going to her feet uncertainly.

It was then that I heard the door to the Room of Requirement quickly open and close behind me.

Looking around to see who’d entered, I spotted Dobby the house-elf looking completely terrified as he talked to Harry on the other side of the room. Everyone had fallen completely silent, the room much darker now that nobody was producing Patronuses. From what I could hear, Dobby had come to warn Harry because of something to do with Umbridge, and I felt my heart sink into my stomach.

“What about her? Dobby - she hasn’t found out about this - about us - about the D.A.?” Harry asked. Dobby’s face said it all. “Is she coming?” Harry asked quietly.

“Yes, Harry Potter, yes!” Dobby howled.

Harry straightened up and looked around at the silent crowd. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” he bellowed. “RUN!”

There was a mad scramble for the door and it was slammed open. The four of us pushed our way out with everyone else and started running down the corridor, afraid of what would happen to us if we were caught.

One of the members of Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad jumped out at us when we neared a corner, his wand raised but I was quicker. My wand was already out and, pointing it straight at his face, I said, “Stupefy!”

The look of shock stayed on his face as I sent him flying backward, stunned on the floor. I crouched down beside him and was able to do a quick Memory Charm on him so he’d forget I’d attacked him, wasting no time in running to the staircase with everyone else when I heard Umbridge shrieking, “GET THEM!”

I trailed behind the others when we finally got to the Gryffindor common room, tired and out of breath. Someone gave the Fat Lady the password and we climbed through the portrait hole, making sure to shut it right away. Harry seemed to be the only Gryffindor student that hadn’t returned, and with a jolt of my stomach I realized that we were all royally screwed. Harry would probably get expelled, along with anyone else associated with Dumbledore’s Army. Hermione was on one of the sofas having a panic attack, ignoring Ron’s pleas for her to calm down.

“I can’t calm down, Ronald! I forgot the damn list with everyone’s names on it! What if Umbridge gets a hold of it? We’ll all be expelled, and it’ll be entirely my fault!” She sounded on the edge of tears. With a squeak, she hid her face in her knees, afraid to look at anyone.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, inhaling deeply and trying to imagine what my parents would say if I was expelled. “How can you say that you want to join a resistance force when you haven’t even completed school? You got yourself expelled, you’re not responsible enough to partake in something so dangerous.” I could hear it in my head already, and it wasn’t pretty.

Fred had come over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, mate. If we come through this unscathed, George and I have something planned for Umbridge that’ll really make her question ever setting foot inside Hogwarts.”

I looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “What’re you planning?”

“You’ll see,” he said with a sly smile. From the look on his face I could see the gears in his head turning. Whatever it was, I knew it would be something big.

***

By some miracle we didn’t get expelled, but things did get worse from the moment we went down to the Gryffindor common room the next day. Pinned to the notice board was a notice from Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, stating that Umbridge had replaced Dumbledore as Headmaster of Hogwarts. The crowd around the board was bubbling with conversation, despite the day still being young, and I caught bits and pieces of conversations. Dumbledore had taken full responsibility for the whole Dumbledore’s Army ordeal, and instead of going to Azkaban he had overcome two Aurors, the High Inquisitor, the Minister of Magic and his Junior Assistant to escape.

The Slytherins of the Inquisitorial Squad were practically leaping with joy because Umbridge had given them power over pretty much everyone, even Prefects. Graham Montague, a particularly large and hairy Slytherin boy, had tried taking points away from Fred and George for some reason or another, but before he could finish his sentence they forced him headfirst into the Vanishing Cabinet on the first floor. He hadn’t been seen all day, and the twins had no idea where it’d sent him, but it made for a funny story.

Now that Umbridge was Headmistress they really didn’t care about getting in trouble. “We’ve always known where to draw the line,” Fred told me during lunch one day, his mouth half full of a roast beef sandwich.

“Oh really?” I said doubtfully, pushing my peas around on my plate, not feeling very hungry.

“Yes, really,” George insisted.

“We sometimes put a toe across it occasionally,” Fred admitted.

“But we’ve never gone into fully-fledged mayhem,” George said thoughtfully, “we respected Dumbledore too much to do that.”

“But now?” Rae asked cautiously, sitting particularly closer to George than usual.

George shrugged. “Well, now that Dumbledore’s left -"

“- we reckon some carefully planned chaos -" said Fred.

“- is exactly what our new Headmistress deserves,” George finished.

Rae and I stared at the two of them before exchanging glances. “You really don’t care about getting expelled anymore, do you?” I asked, slightly bewildered.

Fred smiled. “George and I feel we’ve…outgrown our education, especially now that Umbridge will be overseeing it. We couldn't care less about expulsion. To be honest, if we weren’t so determined to do our bit for Dumbledore first, we’d walk right out those front doors.”

“And what about us?” Rae asked, a tone of hurt somewhere in her voice, “You two are just planning on leaving us here with that…that…woman?”

George’s face had turned a bit pink. He shifted around in his seat, looking to his brother. “Well…we had originally planned for it to be just us, you know. Our parents are already used to us doing irresponsible things, so what’s one more?”

“What about your parents? Won’t they be right pissed if you just ditched with us?” Fred asked.

Rae was the first to speak. “I don’t think my parents would care much,” she said quietly, her voice a bit cold.

The twins then looked to me expectantly. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly put on the spot, as though they were asking me to jump out of a window with them. “I…I…” I felt my words get lost in my throat. If I left, all the studying I’d done for the N.E.W.T.s, all the years I’d spent at Hogwarts filling my head with knowledge, preparing for graduation, would’ve felt like a waste. My parents would’ve undoubtedly been furious with me, no matter what my reasons for leaving would be, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to risk further tarnishing our relationship. “I don’t know.”

“Well, we’re planning on doing it soon, so you need to make up your mind,” Fred said quietly.

After lunch Fred and George made themselves scarce, and I spent the next few hours during break and in the dungeons for potions class trying to decide what to do. I was having a difficult time focusing on the task of cutting up scarab beetles and more than once Rae had to remind me that there was a knife in my hand.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered to her, averting my eyes from Snape.

She stirred the potion brewing in the cauldron, a strange blue smoke coming out of it that smelled of old shoes. “If you don’t go, I won’t go. I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

I glanced at her briefly, trying to look like I was reading the potions textbook. “I won’t be alone, Lee will still be here,” I said quietly.

“He’ll probably be off with Angelina most of the time,” she pointed out, pausing our conversation as Snape swooped by like an oversized bat. He peered into our cauldron before snarling and continuing on his way.

I let out a sigh, not much closer to making a decision than I was before, when a few distant booms could be heard from upstairs. This persisted on for a minute until the entire class stopped what they were doing, looking to each other in confusion. The booms continued on even louder and Professor Snape strode over to the door, looking at us all with contempt.

“Nobody is to move, I will return shortly,” he said darkly, opening the door. He turned to step into the corridor when he narrowly dodged a whizzing green blur. The class screamed as the firework started going off all over the place, followed by a few more, the dimly lit dungeon glowing in all different colors. Rae and I exchanged looks, knowing fully well that Fred and George had started their plan.

Professor Snape tried vanishing the fireworks it seemed because each one he tried to vanish multiplied by ten. The room was now full of explosions going off left and right, chasing people as they tried to hide under their desks. Fireworks blew up glass vials and a few of them made it to Snape’s storeroom, where glass jars full of dead things were blown up or knocked to the floor.

“Out! All of you, OUT! When I find out who did this, they’ll be out of Hogwarts faster than they can say ‘expulsion’!” Snape seethed, ushering us hurriedly from his classroom.

The rest of the day proceeded with stray fireworks finding their way into classrooms. The initial shock of it all had passed and instead the teachers would summon Umbridge to get rid of them, having her running ragged. By the end of the day a few fireworks were still going off, but the boys, back in the common room, were deemed heroes.

“I thought you two were out of here?” I asked, peering at them over my Charms textbook.

“Not quite yet,” Fred said, waggling his finger at me.

“We used up our entire stock, gotta make more. Besides, the real fun hasn't happened yet,” George grinned.

The Easter break came and went. I’d received some chocolate Easter eggs from Mrs. Weasley, which I wasted no time eating. Fred and George were still working on their big escape, and one night, while we were all sitting around with Harry, Ron and Hermione, they got the final details all sorted out. Harry needed to talk to Sirius about something important, but Umbridge had been monitoring the Hogwarts fires, all except her own. So he would break in, talk to Sirius through the floo network, while Fred and George caused a diversion on the scale of grandeur. What they were planning to do exactly, they wouldn’t say.

“You’re all nuts,” I muttered, peeling the foil off a chocolate Easter egg and biting into it.

“I agree,” Hermione said crossly, folding her arms over her chest, “this could go horribly wrong.”

“What’s the worst she can do? Expel us?” Fred scoffed. “I'd like to see her try.”

After the trio went off to bed I stayed with the three others, unable to fall asleep. I was sprawled out on the sofa in front of the fireplace, my legs stretched across Fred’s lap, while George and Rae shared a squishy armchair.

“Have you decided what you’re gonna do yet?” Fred asked quietly, “Because we’re booking out of here tomorrow.”

I looked up at him, biting on my bottom lip. “I…” I was reminded of all the good times I’d shared with Rae and the twins at Hogwarts, of our late night excursions into the kitchens or Hogsmeade and of the first and only time I set off dung bombs in Filch’s office because it’d gone horribly wrong. I remembered our first night at Hogwarts when Rae set my bed on fire, of all the evenings I’d spent with them chatting on the big rock by the Black Lake, planning out our future, telling each other our secrets and most personal thoughts, even things I didn’t want to know.

George snored louder than anyone else I knew, and Fred and George wished to have Madam Rosmerta in bed for one night. Rae sometimes didn’t wash her socks for a week. I knew that if I left, none of that would change. I’d still have my memories, and I knew I’d still see my friends almost every waking moment. But as much as Hogwarts had changed, as horrible as Umbridge made it, I couldn’t leave, not yet, anyway. I wasn’t ready. “I’m gonna stay.”

Fred and George both looked at me with questioning looks. “Are you sure?” Fred asked.

I nodded my head solemnly. “Positive. I need to finish what I started here, and I won’t let Umbridge or anyone else ruin this for me.”

“If Cassie’s staying, then I’m staying too,” Rae piped up.

George looked at her. “You’re positive, Rae?” he asked.

“Absolutely. Someone needs to stay here and make sure she doesn’t blow up Umbridge’s office,” she grinned.

I smiled, knowing she was too right. “We’ll miss you goons, even though we’ll be seeing you again soon. But we’ll still see you off, just tell us when and where.”

***

The following day, all I could focus on was Fred and George’s looming departure. They kept quiet about it, refusing to tell us any details, so naturally I spent all day trying to figure out what they planned to do rather than write down the review notes Flitwick was putting on the board. The only thing they did tell us was to go to Gregory the Smarmy’s corridor around five o’clock.

I glanced at the clock in the common room after giving up on trying to complete a Transfiguration Essay. It was a few minutes after five. I pulled on my rucksack and called Rae down from the girl’s dormitories, where she’d been taking a nap.

“Rae! Come on, it’s time!” I yelled. After a minute or so she hurried down the stairs and the two of us left the common room.

As we neared closer to the entrance hall, there was a great deal of shouting and bustling around that could be heard from a few floors up. We ran down the marble staircases until we came to the first floor landing, where we could see everything that was going on. A huge crowd of students stood in a circle in the entrance hall, some of them covered in a smelly, Stinksap-like material.

I realized, trying not to laugh, that they must’ve set off one of their Portable Swamps in one of the corridors. Among the crowd were teachers, members of the Inquisitorial Squad, looking quite smug, even some of the school ghosts. Smack in the middle of the crowd stood Fred and George, looking much like two people who’d been cornered.

“So!” A triumphant voice came from the bottom of the staircase. I had overlooked Umbridge. “So…you think it’s amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?”

“Pretty amusing, yeah,” said Fred, looking straight at Umbridge without the smallest sign of fear. I smiled a little.

Filch had elbowed his way through the crowd to get to Umbridge, waving a piece of paper around. “I’ve got the form, Headmistress,” he said happily, ‘I’ve got the form and I’ve got the whips waiting…Oh, let me do it now…”

“Very good, Argus,” she said sharply. “You two,” she continued, looking back at Fred and George, “are about to learn what happens to wrongdoers in my school.”

There was a silence. “You know what?” said Fred. “I don’t think we are.” He turned to his twin. “George,” said Fred, “I think we’ve outgrown full-time education.”

“Yeah, I’ve been feeling that way myself,” George grinned.

“Time to test our talents in the real world, d’you reckon?” asked Fred.

“Definitely,” said George.

Before Umbridge could say anything else, the both of them looked up at Rae and I, their smirking faces full of a sort of exuberance as they said together, “Accio Brooms!”

I heard a loud crash off in the direction of Umbridge’s office and, just getting out of the way, their brooms came shooting down the staircase, one of them trailing a heavy chain and iron peg. They streaked towards the twins, the chain clattering noisily across the floor.

“We won’t be seeing you,” Fred said to Umbridge as he hopped onto his broomstick.

“Yeah, don’t bother to keep in touch,” said George as he got onto his own.

Fred looked around to the waiting crowd, who’d been watching silently the whole time. “If anyone fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three, Diagon Alley – Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes,” he said loudly. “Our new premises!”

“Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they’re going to use our products to get rid of this old bat,” added George, motioning to Umbridge, who looked ready to explode.

“STOP THEM!” Umbridge shrieked, but she was too late. The Inquisitorial Squad tried closing in on them but the twins kicked off from the floor and shot high in the air, the chain dangling below. The twins looked to me and Rae, their faces plastered with grins.

I couldn't help but return with one of my own. They'd really outdone themselves this time. "Fly safe, you two!"

Rae waved to them, her eyes brimming with tears. "We'll see you soon!"

Both of them gave me a thumbs up before heading towards the front door, Fred stopping and looking across the hall. “Give her hell from us, Peeves,” he grinned.

Peeves the poltergeist, who never took orders from anyone, swept the hat from his head and saluted Fred and George. They turned around as we joined the crowd in thunderous applause below, speeding out the front doors and into the horizon.