Brontide

I always had the weirdest dreams. No matter how unusual they were my unconscious mind always seemed to think they were real. One night I dreamt about doing the waltz with the Giant Squid in the Black Lake and woke up, frantically searching for any signs of giant tentacles in the girls’ dormitories. Another time I dreamt that I was a dragon who was an accountant at Gringotts bank. I always was a bit odd, and this dream was no different.

I was on the back of an oversized ostrich, flying around the many towers of Hogwarts in circles. The sky was bright blue and cloudy, the wind against my face and I felt free. Black and white feathers blew behind me as the ostrich picked up speed, soaring higher and higher into the sky. I looked down and my vision was obscured by thick cumulus clouds, Hogwarts only visible from the spaces in between. I threw my hands into the air and laughed, screaming with joy and exhilaration. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, how elated I felt. Everything felt perfect until I looked down again.

The ostrich was gone. I was no longer floating but falling, heading to the ground very quickly. My screams were silenced along with the rest of the world because somewhere distantly my name was being called. The oncoming ground vanished when something hit me in the back of my head and I woke with a start, blinking a few times.

“You were yelling again.” I closed my eyes and sank back into my pillow, pulling the covers up to my nose. The girl’s dormitory was chilly with September air; stone didn’t do much for insulation, let me tell you.

I heard Rae sigh in annoyance. “I’ve been calling your name for the past five minutes. Everyone else is already down at breakfast,” she mumbled, ending her sentence with a yawn. I pulled my blankets tighter around my body and smiled sleepily.

“Mm, that’s nice. You think they’d notice if I skipped breakfast?”

“Probably,” she replied. I heard her changing into fresh clothes to the right of my bed. “That’s not the point. You need to get up and eat or I’ll never hear the end of it later.”

I groaned. “But Raaaeee I’m so tiiirrreedd.” I turned my head to see my short best friend trying to adjust her tie for our school uniform. “Do you want me to be in a foul mood?”

She glared a glare that I’ve come to know far too well. “Get up or I’m dragging you to the Great Hall in your pajamas.”

I mumbled a few unpleasant things and crawled out of bed before she could do just that. She’d done it to me once before. Talk about embarrassment.

I walked downstairs to the Gryffindor common room ten minutes later, finding Rae waiting impatiently by the portrait hole. Her long, light brown pixie cut was sticking up in places. She couldn’t lecture me on oversleeping; she did it nearly twice as much as I did.

We entered the Great Hall with half-lidded eyes. Neither of us got much sleep the previous night because we’d been up doing homework until three in the morning. It was only our second week back and I already longed for it to be summer again. I fondly remembered my younger days, when homework consisted of simple math equations and reading a few pages from a book. Those days were long since replaced with feet of essays and hours of practicing incantations.

We sat with the boys who looked just as out of it as we probably did. Fred and George mumbled their greetings, sipping at their pumpkin juices and being generally word-free. Lee Jordan was resting his head on the table. General consensus: it was just too damn early for conversation.

I leaned my head on Rae’s shoulder as she reached for some toast and jam. Truthfully I wasn’t very hungry, seeing as the need for sleep overpowered the need for sustenance at that particular moment. I had heard that seventh year would be brutal work-wise, the NEWTs coming up and all, but I didn’t think it’d be that bad that soon. I was wrong, very, very wrong.

The post arrived soon afterward, the usual swarm of owls flying in from the windows near the ceiling. It took me a minute to spot Nestor flying towards me, a letter tied to his leg. Next to me Rae was untying the Daily Prophet from one of the Ministry owls. She dropped a knut into the pouch it carried and unrolled the newspaper, the owl flying away.

“Anything new?” I asked, taking the letter from Nestor and feeding him a piece of sausage. Rae’s eyes scanned the paper, the four of us watching her.

“Absolutely nothing,” she sighed after a few minutes, “just the usual shit about Dumbledore and Harry telling lies to everyone about You-Know-Who. You’d think with all these disappearances and killings the Ministry would put two and two together.”

“I’m not all that surprised, actually,” Fred piped up, swallowing his bite of toast and joining in on the conversation. George and I looked at him.

“What do you mean?” I asked, petting Nestor once more before letting him take off.

“Dad seems to think the Ministry doesn’t want to cause an uproar by telling everyone You-Know-Who’s back,” he said in a hushed voice, taking a sip of his pumpkin juice. “With everything else that’s happened with Fudge in office, this would probably be the thing to end his career. With Sirius free and the Triwizard Tournament disaster last year, and then for people to find out the Ministry’s been covering up all these deaths and disappearances, and You-Know-Who is out and about targeting people? It’d be complete chaos. Fudge probably doesn’t want to deal with it.”

I nodded in agreement. He was making perfect sense.

“And now,” George chimed in quietly, all of us leaning closer, “someone from the Ministry is working here.” I looked up at the staff table. Professor Umbridge was sipping at her tea, dressed in pink from head to toe and looking more like a toad than ever. “With her here, Fudge can keep track of what’s been going on at Hogwarts. He’ll want to keep tabs on what Dumbledore and Harry are telling people, especially if it has anything to do with You-Know-Who. He wants to keep them quiet.”

“For once, you’re both making sense,” Lee Jordan said, unable to disagree.

I looked down the table to where Harry Potter sat with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. I felt bad for him, what with all the things the Ministry had been saying. There were Daily Prophet articles published every day, talking about how he and Dumbledore went crazy and should be locked up for the public’s safety. It made me angry, very angry. With everything that boy had been through, I knew he deserved just a little peace and quiet. In all the years I knew him, in all the summers we both spent at The Burrow, I never knew him to be a liar. He had unfortunate luck with a lot of things but he was a great person and an even better wizard with a lot of talent. I only hoped to be as brave as him one day.

I opened the letter Nestor had delivered, feeling a wave of relief wash over me as I saw who’d written it. It was from my mum.

Dear Cassie,

I hope all has been going well since school started. I can’t believe this is your final year! I know you’ll do wonderfully. Tell everyone your father and I say hello. Please don’t get into too much trouble. Fred and George, that goes for you, too!

Your father and I miss you so much. We’re both okay, despite the current living conditions. Although living in hiding isn’t something we planned to do, we know it’s necessary. The Order has put magical protection surrounding our current whereabouts and we’ve been keeping a low profile.

As you know, we can’t tell you where we are in case Nestor gets intercepted, but we do hope to see you once Christmas comes around. Devon is currently visiting the states. We think he’ll be safer there anyway.

We love you, sweetheart. And don’t you worry about us; we’re safe. Just be careful, alright?

Love, Mum and Dad

I smiled and picked up my bag from underneath the table, putting the letter inside.

“Who’s it from?” George asked, poking at his eggs.

“My parents,” I said, “Mum was telling me how they’ve gone into hiding. Thank god they listened to me when I told them about You-Know-Who." Before I left for school I asked the Order if they’d keep my parents protected, and Kingsley said he absolutely would, so I felt a lot better. I looked over at the twins pointedly. “My mum told me to tell you two to stay out of trouble, or at least try to.”

Fred scoffed. “That’ll last maybe five minutes.”

“If we’re lucky,” Rae muttered, tossing aside the newspaper and finishing her breakfast.

I’d spent a good portion of my summer with the Weasleys at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place in London. We weren’t allowed into the meetings, Mrs. Weasley simply wouldn’t have it, but we were able to listen in on a lot of it. They’d talk about more disappearances and murders, Death Eaters who’d escaped from Azkaban, all things the Ministry would never tell the truth about. I wanted to help in whatever way I could, but the Order wouldn’t let us do anything until we were out of Hogwarts, which was frustrating.

Towards the end of the summer, a muggle family a few miles away from my home had been murdered. No one knew why or who did it, they kept saying it’d been some sort of gas leak. It was then that I began to fear for my parents and their safety, because if Death Eaters had come that close to my house, who’s to say they couldn’t come closer? So I asked the Order to take them into hiding, somewhere safe and secluded with lots of protective enchantments. I was more than relieved to find out they’d actually done it.

It was a Monday and first period led us upstairs to Professor Flitwick’s classroom. We took our seats near the back, the usual hum of conversation filling the room until the Charms Master arrived. To say the least, I wasn’t fully awake yet, not nearly enough to understand half of what Flitwick was talking about. Rae nudged me in the side. I glared and looked up toward Flitwick, who was standing in the front of the room on his usual pile of books.

“Now, if you would kindly hand in the essay I assigned you all on Disillusionment Charms last Friday…”

I rummaged through my bag and sent my essay to land on Flitwick’s desk. Rae and Lee did the same, and to my surprise so did Fred and George.

“You actually did your homework for once?” I addressed them. They sat at the table in front of us, acting as nonchalant as ever.

“Damn right we did our homework,” George muttered, leaning back in his chair and tapping his wand against his leg.

“Oi, Cassie, you make it seem like we’re not smart or something,” Fred whispered, acting offended.

“It’s not that you’re not smart, you just choose to put your talents towards other things,” I shrugged.

“Better things, Cass.” I rolled my eyes and settled back into my seat, trying to pay attention as Flitwick reviewed the properties of the Disillusionment Charm. Rae was dozing off next to me, a puddle of drool forming on her parchment. This was typical of her. I focused on my note taking so she’d be able to copy my notes later on, my quill scratching against the parchment at rapid speed and my mouth set in a thin line. All throughout the lesson the twins and Lee were passing notes back and forth. I had no idea what they were discussing but it must’ve been wildly funny, as they kept snickering into their hands like children.

I kicked the back of Fred’s chair and shot him a look when he turned around, mouthing the words “Quit it”. He rolled his eyes and muttered something along the lines about me bearing a close resemblance to his Mum. For his sake he better have hoped I wasn’t Mrs. Weasley, because with his snarkiness she would’ve had him by the ear.

After a tedious amount of note-taking Double Charms took a turn for the interesting. Halfway through the lesson, we had to try to turn ourselves completely invisible, which was easier said than done. Flitwick kept stressing the fact that Disillusionment Charms would definitely be on the NEWTs, which made my stress level multiply by ten. A whole hour went by and the most I did was make my left arm disappear. Rae had a bit more success and made the top half of her body vanish, reappearing a few seconds later. Lee somehow managed to make only his eyebrows invisible.

Fred and George, on the other hand, both accomplished the task before the end of the lesson. Flitwick applauded them. I sighed and stared at the arm I couldn’t see, wondering to myself how they did it. The two of them were brilliant, though they didn’t often put it out on display. Their Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes products were a shining example, though they never really bragged about it much. Charms wasn’t my best subject but the two of them excelled in it, however most of their Charms success resided outside the classroom, as they never usually did their work.

Now that the two tricksters were invisible they took full advantage of it. Two minutes later, I was about to try the spell again when a paper ball hit me in the back of the head. Spinning around, I looked in the direction it’d come from. The closest person was Rae.

“Did you just throw something at me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. She looked slightly confused.

“No, I – hey!” I’d thrown the paper ball back, hitting her on the nose.

We’d both pulled our wands out, daring the other to do something, when a voice whispered “boo!” in my left ear. I yelped, jumping and nearly tripping over my shoelace. The twins appeared between us, laughing and holding onto the nearby desks for support.

“You idiots,” I hissed, smacking them both on the back of their heads. Rae was busy kicking them, which was well deserved. After all this time I still wasn’t used to their endless pranks, and I doubted I ever would be.

Flitwick noticed the ruckus and told us to get back to work. I glared at the two of them, trying to focus on the task at hand. Fred, noticing I was having problems, cautiously made his way over to me.

“How are you and George so good at Charms?” I asked, hating how helpless I sounded. Fred just shrugged and tapped my invisible arm with his wand, making it reappear. I just looked up at him.

“Sorry, it was weird seeing you with a missing body limb,” he said, looking thoughtful for a second. “Well, in order to open a joke shop, one must be skilled in things such as Charms. George and I are actually going to try to do our work this year.” He saw my skeptical look. “We’re going to try, don’t look at me like that!”

“Whatever you say, I believe you,” I mumbled, looking over at Rae. She was hitting her wand against our desk rather violently in frustration. George kept trying to take it away before she hurt herself or set something on fire. “Just don’t expect me to let you lot copy off my homework anymore,” I added.

“Oh, come on,” Fred whined, putting on his infamous pout that was supposed to make people turn to mush. Unfortunately, he learned from a young age that it worked well on me. I looked away with determination.

He tugged on my sleeve like a small child. “Please, Cassie? I’ll buy you all the candy you want from Honeydukes. You know George and I would fail in everything if you didn’t help us.”

Now he was trying to flatter me. I considered his offer; all the candy I wanted? That’d be pretty difficult to say no to. I harbored a love for sweets like no other, and the twins knew that far too well. Seven years teaches you a lot.

“Okay, okay, just stop looking at me like a dying puppy. It reminds me of those commercials on the telly with the animals in those horrible shelters, and they try to guilt you into adopting them. I can’t watch those, they make me cry,” I sighed. Fred looked lost. “Never mind.”

And just at that moment, an unmistakable explosion sounded from the opposite side of the room. Everyone screamed and turned around to find Rae staring around wildly, covered in soot. A pile of ashes sat in front of her, smoking slightly. She’d blown up the desk.

Then the laughing cued. Flitwick gave her a week's worth of detentions.

***

“Absolutely not! Do you want me to die a painful, plant-induced death?” I whispered frantically to Fred, stabbing the Snargaluff pod violently with my spade, casting him a look to get moving and help the others grab the next one. He just rolled his eyes.

“It won’t kill you,” he replied, taking the spade from me and stabbing the grapefruit-sized pod. “We dealt with these things last year, remember? They just need a bit of elbow grease.” His sentence ended with a growl as the pod refused to open, his face screwed up in concentration.

The sounds of Rae and George screaming while the once seemingly-harmless Snargaluff stump tried to throttle them reached my ears. It didn’t comfort me one bit.

“Fine, you try and open the damned thing,” I huffed, storming over to the plant as its vines flailed in every which direction. George’s arm was inside the stump elbow deep, trying to retrieve the next pod. Lee was attempting to tie two of the vines together, while Rae was prying one from around her, trying to stun the bloodthirsty stump at the same time. It seemed to have little to no effect; if anything, it only made the plant angrier.

It was a bright, lovely Tuesday morning, and there we were, risking our lives to retrieve pods from these stupid stumps. Everyone else around the greenhouse was having similar problems. The overall tactic would be to gang up on the Snargaluff plants in small groups. However, it was proving to be annoyingly difficult. On top of that, every once in a while the Venomous Tentacula plant in the corner would try to strangle someone. They would curse and yell, something Professor Sprout said was allowed if it tried doing that.

All in all it was a fairly normal way to start the day.

I decided to jump into the action. I ran at our plant with my eyes shut tight and my arms outstretched, nearly crashing into George as he pulled out another pod. Yanking vines off of my wrists and ankles, I hurried back to Fred, finding he’d successfully opened the first pod. The wooden bowl was filled with small, wriggling green tuber…things. They reminded me horribly of worms. I handed him the next grapefruit-sized pod, turning around when I noticed that the Snargaluff plant had gone back to its deceiving form, which happened to be just a normal tree stump. The five of us exchanged glances, Rae and Lee breathing pretty hard. Contemplating my actions for not more than two seconds, I pushed Fred away from the table and told him it was his turn to man up and face the plant. He promptly told me that he was more of a man than I could ever handle before diving at the plant with everyone else.

We left Herbology covered in sweat, dirt and cuts. I hated Snargaluff plants from the moment that ours picked me up and tried to feed me to the nearby Venomous Tentacula. Not that I didn’t hate it before, but offering up a seventeen-year-old girl as carnage for a ravenous plant beast drew the line for me. I silently vowed that I would get revenge on that fucker that upcoming Friday before lunch.

The five of us trooped back up to the common room, tired and frazzled and wanting showers more than anything. I took my time getting clean, scrubbing and scrubbing to try and rid the feeling of those wretched vines grabbing me wherever they could reach. It was only after I was sure my hair had never been cleaner that I got out and changed into fresh school robes, not bothering with my wet hair. I wasn’t one for making myself look all fancy, especially when I had Double Potions next and I was sure to get some sort of substance on myself anyway.

Two hours later Rae and I emerged from Professor Snape’s dungeon of a classroom. I was agitated and briefly wondered how in the name of Merlin she and I had advanced to NEWT level Potions. We’d been reviewing Befuddlement Draughts and mine had resulted in a pot of grey sludge, Professor Snape not hesitating to make some rude remarks about how ignorant I was and that I should go back to first year Potions. I had to bite my tongue, because I wanted desperately to make a comment about how the mound of flesh on his face that was commonly mistaken for a nose was distracting and prevented me from learning anything from him. To my dismay, we were assigned a twelve-inch essay on Befuddlement Draughts due the next day.

Rae and I linked arms as we went into the Great Hall for lunch. The boys ate for no more than five minutes before going up and down our table, discreetly trying to sell some of their joke products. They were quickly becoming a hit and I couldn’t have been more proud of them if I tried. During the few previous summers they really got things going with their business, and they’d show me anytime they had a new prototype or idea for a product. There were many explosions involved, puking, sores, diarrhea, you name it. Many of these products were tested out on Ron and me, which I greatly resented and sometimes wondered if they were secretly trying to have me offed.

I looked over at my best friend and noticed a rather large scratch across her cheek that I hadn’t seen when we were in the dimly lit dungeons. She noticed me looking and laughed, helping herself to a chicken sandwich and some shepherd’s pie.

“It’s from that Snargaluff plant, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said, taking a bite of her sandwich.

I rolled up my sleeves, revealing the numerous scratches I had along my arms. “It got me too. I want to set the bloody stump on fire,” I mumbled, piling some roast chicken and vegetables onto my plate and pouring pumpkin juice into my goblet. I was so hungry that even the old wooden table was looking edible.

“So,” Rae started, swallowing her mouthful of sandwich, “when is the wedding?”

I put down the chicken leg I was about to eat and looked at her. “What wedding?”

“You and Fred, of course,” she stated, acting as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I spat out my drink at her response, quickly cleaning it up as people were starting to stare. Rae found this to be wildly funny but stopped laughing when she saw the look of horror and disgust on my face.

“Pardon me, but were you dropped on your fucking head? I don’t ever recall informing you of my feelings for him,” I glared, hastily jabbing at my sprouts, ignoring the fact that a few were rolling all over the table.

“No, you didn’t, but I think you just did right now,” she smirked. I had to tell myself not to stab her.

I stabbed at my chicken instead, forcing a laugh. “I did no such thing. I do not like him. I have never liked him, and I never will. Now please never ask me that again because it made me feel very uncomfortable. You know how close I am with him and his brother.” I paused for a moment, sticking a sprout in my mouth. “What made you think that in the first place?”

She just shrugged, checking to make sure the twins or Lee weren’t nearby. “I tend to see these sorts of things before they actually happen, I suppose. My intuition’s pretty good,” she said.

“So you can see you and George together, then?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows at her.

She blushed, turning her attention towards her plate. “Fuck off.”

“I will when you finally get the nerve to tell him,” I mumbled, helping myself to seconds. “Are you looking forward to having his ginger babies?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Cass, he doesn’t like me. Besides, I am not squeezing out any children if I can help it.”

“I think he’s still oblivious,” I continued, “he just doesn’t know he likes you yet.”

It was common knowledge, at least it was for me, that Rae had been pining after George since our fourth year. She was softer spoken and more nervous than I was, I knew she would never tell him on her own. I had originally wanted to tell him for her but she insisted that I just let it be, that she would only fancy him temporarily and that she’d probably move on in a matter of weeks. This happened three years ago; George was still as oblivious as ever, Rae fancied him a whole lot more and all of this was killing me because I just wanted them to be happy together.

She rubbed her face and sighed. “I need comfort food. After dinner can we go pig out on sweets and talk about our feelings when the guys aren’t around?” She looked like she was concentrating on something. “I haven’t done that in awhile, but I think I need to before I blow up another desk.”

“Yeah, I don’t think blowing things up is advisable,” I laughed, “especially with Toad Face around. I’ve heard her detentions are really horrible, something about writing lines with your own blood?” We both cringed.

“We have Umbridge next, right?” Rae asked. I cringed worse this time.