Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, nor am I ever likely to be JK Rowling. I believe that space is currently being filled by a rather talented woman who created the characters (bar one) used in this story. All I do is take them out of the box and play with them a bit. I promise to put them back when I'm done. Enjoy!
Siblings and Sneezes
Whatever Fudge was doing to hush up the news of the breakout it seemed to be working, because for as long as they poured over the Prophet for the next week there was no mention of it. Hermione struggled with her banishment from the Library, but she had already borrowed so many books that, as Ron pointed out, she had half of its contents in her dormitory anyway so it didn't really matter. This earned him a murderous scowl.
For her part Alice tried to blank out the events of the outside world by throwing herself into her classes. Mad Eye Moody's was just as unpredictable and downright mental as he had been all term, insisting on attempting to perform basic curses on them to teach them how to block. Alice wasn't sure how orthodox this approach was as she watched Seamus stagger around the classroom one afternoon having failed to block a jelly-legs curse correctly as Ron's robes smouldered gently having been set on fire by their teacher earlier. She did however pay attention to every single thing he said and worked her hardest in every class. With things the way they were you never knew when they might come in handy. When Moody informed her one particular counter-curse wasn't half bad and she might make a decent witch yet she took it as a definite compliment.
In Transfiguration drawn looking McGonagall was teaching them about Animagi, something which Alice already knew quite a lot about, partly because she was Alice, and partly because of her quizzing Sirius about it the previous summer. Paying avid attention to the professor during the lesson she noticed that she looked slightly more ruffled than usual and occasionally darted concerned glances in Harry and Alice's direction.
"Professor?" She stopped by McGonagall's desk at the end of the lesson. "I..." She couldn't think of the right thing to say and fumbled for her half thought out sentence uselessly for a few moments. In the end she gave up and opted for a simple question. "When a person becomes an Animagus, what decides the animal they become?"
Professor McGonagall smiled kindly at her knowing full well that hadn't been what she wanted to say. "It is a combination of many things Miss Evans, usually determined by the individual's personality, traits they may have which are similar to the animal they become and so on. Each of us has within us a certain magical essence which dictates the strength of our magic and our particular aptitudes. In your case Transfiguration and from what I hear Charms, in Mr Potter's," she raised her voice as Harry walked past the desk, "trouble. These things all come together to form our Animagus, rather in the same way as they form a person's Patronus."
Alice nodded, still trying to say what she actually wanted which was that McGonagall shouldn't worry about them and to ask if there was anything that they should really be worrying about. In the end she mumbled a thank you and went to hurry out of the room.
"Miss Evans."
She stopped in the doorway and looked back at the Professor.
"Keep your chin up."
The rest of the term seemed to speed and crawl past at intervals. With several days seeming to rush past in a tangled jumble whilst a single week could take forever. Eventually however, the Easter holidays arrived. Given everything that had happened, most parents seemed to have decided that they wanted their children where they could see them. What with the fact that Alice and her friends knew even more than everyone else they thought a visit to their families probably wasn't a bad idea either. From things he had said in his letters Alice suspected that Sirius had a considerable fight on his hands to get Dumbledore to agree to Harry's removal from the castle, but in the end they were allowed provided they received an escort to Hogsmeade from where they were to Floo directly to the cottage.
"There you are!" Sirius sprang up from a chair next to the fire where he had evidently been waiting for them as they both came tumbling through. "Here, let me take that," he scooped the rucksack from Alice's shoulders before she had a chance to protest.
"How are things? Has there been any news?" Harry asked, the minute he had dusted the soot from himself. "You didn't say much in your letters and I don't think Ron's parents wanted to worry us so they wouldn't -"
His godfather interrupted him with a raised hand. "Enough of that, there will be plenty of time for that later. For now, let's have something to eat."
Alice caught sight of a pan sitting on the countertop. "Sirius, you haven't been... cooking, have you?" She gave him a nervous look.
"As a matter of fact I have, and there's no need to look so sceptical," he grinned. "Remus taught me a few basics so that when he moves out I can fend for myself. On tonight's menu we have..." he mimed a drum roll, "boiled potatoes and beef stew."
"Did you make this all by yourself?" she asked, mildly impressed despite herself, when she went to take a look. Harry crept up behind her and gave the pot an experimental sniff to check for burning.
"Well, Remus added all the ingredients," he admitted, "but I supervised the cooking process."
"What did I do?" Lupin entered the kitchen from the tiny study, a book in hand.
Alice smiled at him in greeting; he looked healthier than she had ever seen him despite the shadows beneath his eyes and the old scars which still crisscrossed his face. The clothes he was wearing were new or barely patched and he had put on a little more weight.
"You made dinner for us all, thank you."
"Not at all," he came across and shook hands with them both, "call it my way of welcoming you home. It's good to see you both. Besides," he added belatedly, "I've sworn an oath to the effect that it was all Sirius' cooking."
"Of course it was," Harry smirked at his godfather.
The four of them settled down to dinner and once Alice was as full of potatoes, stew, apple pie and custard, as she ever thought she could get they went to sit by the fire in the sitting room.
"So," she didn't understand how Harry could have eaten so much and still want to get down to business immediately, "what's been happening?"
Lupin and Sirius looked across at each other for a moment before the Professor, Alice still couldn't think of him in any other way, shrugged and their godfather scratched his ear as he thought. "Not much yet," he admitted eventually. "A few rumblings and rumours, but they seem to have gone to ground since the breakout. The Ministry are covering it up because they don't want to look like fools and cause a panic, not after the year they've had, so we're on our own in terms of collecting information."
Despite the fact she had already mentioned it in her letters Alice related what Malfoy had said to them in the Library again. "What does he know?" She asked looking levelly up at Sirius from where she was curled on the floor. "He obviously knows more about the breakouts than he's letting on, was his father involved?"
"Lucius is so slippery I doubt you could ever get anything to stick to him," Sirius grunted.
"But you think he was?" Harry persisted looking between the two adults.
"More than likely."
"Especially given some of the people who escaped," Lupin added. "Dolohov, he was a mentor of sorts to Lucius, Augustus Rookwood, the two of them used to work at the Ministry together as You Know Who's Spies, the Lestranges, well, Bellatrix Lestrange is his sister-in-law." The names were vaguely familiar to Alice, though it was a subject she had made a conscious decision not to research too thoroughly so as not to make Harry uncomfortable. Perhaps, she made a mental note, it was time to change this. Lupin's last statement though came as something of a shock.
"Wait - Malfoy's aunt is a Death Eater too?" She wasn't sure why this information was quite so surprising, after all they had all but confirmed that his father was one. Still it was one thing to know that he had one unpleasant family member, but to know that the whole lot were evil to the bone... well, it was no wonder he had turned out as he did. He was positively bottled sunshine in comparison.
"She's his wife Narcissa's sister, she, her husband and his brother Rabastan were all locked up at the same time. And now they're all out."
"Narcissa?!" Harry had latched onto the same piece of information she had, they both swivelled to look at Sirius. "Narcissa Malfoy?"
Sirius almost looked abashed for a moment, he certainly squirmed uncomfortably before his expression switched to something bordering on defiant. "I told you my family were an unpleasant lot. There's a reason I ran away when I was sixteen."
"How many escaped altogether?" Harry asked, changing the subject.
Sirius let out a long sigh. "We can't know for certain, but we think at least ten of them got out. They blew a filthy great hole in the walls to do it as well. Apparently the Dementors are seething."
Alice shuddered at the thought of an enraged Dementor and there was silence for a minute as they digested this information. As no one spoke she alternated between staring at the charred specks and tatty weave of the old, Persian rug Sirius had picked up from somewhere, and exchanging worried, confused glances with her brother. She could tell he was thinking the same as her; if a few, former, opportunistic Death Eaters who had spent the last thirteen years living comfy lives had managed to wreak havoc so far, what would ten rabid, Azkaban escapees do?
She quirked her eyebrow at Harry in question. What were they going to do now?
Ask. His head inclined towards their godfather.
She frowned slightly. Harry should ask.
He gave a slight twitch of the head. She should.
"Will one of you please just spit it out?" There was a chuckle in Sirius' voice and Alice became aware that they had been conducting a silent pantomime.
"Sorry," Alice blushed at their rudeness.
"Don't apologise," Sirius ruffled her hair, "I haven't seen the two of you do that since you were babies, it was good to see. James used to swear the two of you were psychic. You could always seem to tell what the other was thinking, even before you could say any words."
She blushed again, more from the surge of emotion she suddenly experienced than anything else and turned a beaming smile on her brother and godfather, she sometimes forgot that Sirius had known them before she had any memory of him. It was nice to hear stories of a time when they had been a proper family, untouched by tragedy.
"So," Sirius intruded on her moment, "what were you two miming about down on the floor there?"
"What do we do now?" Harry asked. "I mean, we're not just going to sit here and wait for something to happen are we?"
From the expression on his face Alice could tell Sirius was considering his answer carefully, his gaze kept flickering towards Lupin as though they too were having some sort of silent deliberation and from the corner of her eye Alice could see the werewolf shake his head slightly. A slight frown flickered across Sirius' face for a second before he looked back at his godchildren. "Of course we're doing something. You didn't think Dumbledore was just going to sit around and wait for Fudge to come to his senses did you?"
"What?" Harry asked, leaning forward eagerly.
"We're organising," was his response. Alice heard rather than saw Lupin groan slightly and slump in his seat. She was going to assume they weren't meant to be told anything. Still, if anyone deserved to know it was Harry. "Before, during the last war, a group of us fought back. Dumbledore's been trying to regroup, those of us who are left, and have us keep our eyes and ears open. Ever since the attack on St Mungo's it's been clear that this isn't going to go away by itself. We still have contacts inside the Ministry who are able to let us know what's going on there too."
"Has there been any fighting?"
"Not yet," Lupin finally contributed to the conversation, "and certainly none that should involve you two. Dumbledore has issued express instructions that you're to be kept well away from it all."
If the situation hadn't been so grave Alice would have laughed at the pout this produced in Harry. He muttered something incomprehensible about their headmaster, which she was fairly sure was far from complimentary.
"Right," Sirius finally seemed to accept the hinting glares Lupin was throwing in his direction. "I think it might be best if we all headed for bed, or we'll all end up exhausted tomorrow and we won't have time for any Quidditch." It was a pathetic attempt at distraction, but the twins couldn't help but take the bait.
"What do you suppose is really going on?" Harry, his face illuminated by wandlight, asked her later as they sat on his bedroom floor. She had crept in after all the lights were turned out to continue their conversation.
"Well," she considered, tracing the flickering pattern of her pyjamas with one finger, "they might not be doing any fighting now, but it certainly sounds as though they plan too. I mean we know this group probably did some fighting last time and if it came to it I can't see Sirius, or even Dumbledore for that matter sitting idly by instead of fighting back. They do say Dumbledore was the only one Voldemort ever feared." Two sets of eyes, dark in the gloom, met worriedly.
"Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" He asked.
Alice nodded reluctantly and gave his hand a squeeze. They sat like that for a moment before she slowly got to her feet and padded across the thick carpet, the weave muffling the sound of her footsteps. "Alright, that's enough doom and gloom for one night. Go and get some sleep, idiot."
"Goodnight yourself, idiot."
She grinned. "G'night."
Sirius clearly aimed to keep them distracted for the duration of their holidays, organising small games of Quidditch, awkward when there were only four of them to play, playing wizards chess with them and somehow persuading them to try to teach him to cook - again. For Alice it was a week of pure bliss, augmented by the joyous expression she caught frequently on Harry's face as he experienced his first real, memorable week of a happy home life. And if Sirius made them swear not to go beyond the walls separating the cottage from the surrounding fields and she suspected powerful protective enchantments had been put in place, well she tried not to dwell on it.
The end of the week came all too soon and the two of them soon found themselves bidding their godfather a reluctant fair well and taking the Floo back to Hogsmeade. Whether by coincidence or design they found Ron and Hermione waiting for them there and the four of them trekked through the snow towards the castle with the rest of the students thronging the road from the railway station.
"I mean," Ron was complaining about his brothers almost from the minute he stepped into the Entrance Hall, "you should have seen them; it was enough to drive anybody loopy. Just because they can do magic outside of school now they do it all the time. Levitating their breakfast into the bowl - you should have seen the mess that made, apparating every ten feet, drying their clothes with heating charms - George set his socks on fire, Mum was furious. I didn't notice before the end of term because we were still at school, but the summer holidays are going to be a nightmare! Can you just imagine…" He continued in this vein as Harry, Alice and Hermione grinned at each other. It was nice to know some things never changed.
"Neville!" Alice spotted her friend halfway up the stairs and rushed over. "How were your holidays? How is your Gran?"
"Hi, Alice," Neville smiled, looking slightly less strained than he had before the holidays. His Gran had obviously seen fit to give him a haircut too and had cropped it sharply just above his ears making them seem to stick out all the more. "Well, thank you and the holidays were good, Gran was a bit… overprotective with everything that's been going on, but that's, well that's normal, but she says she won't let that stop her. We went…" he glanced at the others who were still walking up the stairs towards them and lowered his voice. "We went to visit my parents and they're ok, after everything that happened."
"That's great, Neville! That's really great." She gave him a hug meaning every word she said.
"Oi, Evans!" Two mocking voices called from the top of the stairs. "Where's our hug?"
"You don't deserve one, you pair of miscreants," she informed Fred and George as they finished climbing the stairs towards them and were joined by the rest of the Gryffindor fourth years, "not if you've been giving your poor mother grey hairs all holidays as someone has been informing me."
"Us?" George pretended to look offended. "We were the model of good behaviour all week. Besides it makes a change from red."
"And we were only practicing our spells, Midget. Aren't you always telling us we should study more? You wouldn't want us to fail our O.W.L.'s now, would you?"
Alice looked from their grinning faces, to Harry and Neville who looked amused, but quickly tried to hide it, even Hermione had a smile playing about her lips, to Ron who gave a disgruntled mutter and wandered off towards the common room. "I give up," she finally announced. "You two are just a lost cause." She turned to follow Ron.
"But you love us for it really!" They yelled after her.
Alice rolled her eyes and climbed towards the common room where her trunk was waiting to be unpacked.
"So what did Sirius say?" It was the first thing Hermione said to her when they were alone in the dormitory.
Alice chuckled wryly. "I had a great holiday, Hermione, thanks for asking. How was yours?"
Her best friend ducked her head shamefacedly. "It was lovely, thank you. I had a really nice time with my parents and it was nice just to... forget everything - that sounds terrible when I say it like that."
"Don't be daft," Alice told her, she knew her friend was keeping the gravity of affairs in the wizarding world from her family so as not to alarm them. "I'm sure we'd all like to get a break from it."
"So, what did Sirius say then?" Her friend asked again.
Alice relayed what her godfather had told her over the week as the two girls unpacked their things. They were still discussing the revelations regarding theMalfoy family, the Lestranges and their connection to Sirius when the other girls blundered into the room squealing excitedly about something. Apparently Sally Anne had acquired a puffskein during the break. Alice wondered how long it would last with Crookshanks on the loose.
Despite the welcome respite the holidays had provided for many, the school remained on edge. Every morning the Prophet was awaited with baited breath despite its continued lack of any information and Alice would often see teachers whispering together in the corridors only to break off sharply when they saw a student approaching. Still, there was the Third Task to focus on and in Hermione's case at least, exams, and lots of them.
"You do realise, of course," she kept informing them, "that next year it'll be our O.W.L.'s we have to study for? It's no laughing matter - Ron, stop that," she chastised him as he attempted to levitate a paper aeroplane to land on Eloise Midgeon's head. "Pay attention." She waved the study timetable, the one she made every year and the boys never followed, in his face. "This is serious."
"Sorry, Hermione."
Alice caught his eye and grinned. Secretly she was still amazed that Hermione was managing to keep up with all her extra classes and revision. True she did still have enormous, dark smudges beneath her eyes and nodded off occasionally at breakfast, but she was still, by and large, a functioning human being. And if she did sometimes get snappy with Harry and Ron then they usually deserved it.
As the weather got warmer it became more difficult to study inside, but unfortunately they usually required a small library's worth of books and hauling them all outside was impractical. So Alice was confined to the castle and reduced to gazing forlornly out of the window during her short study breaks, watching an enormous hedge take over her Quidditch pitch and wondering what in Merlin's name it had to do with the final task. She assumed it could only be related to that. The alternative was that Hagrid had taken up horticulture.
By May the weather had become hot and sultry and the heat was making the fourth years tired and irritable.
"Morning, Alice, o-light-of-our-lives," George winked exaggeratedly at her as she sat down at the table for breakfast one morning. She replied with a wide yawn.
"Sociable in the morning isn't she, Fred?"
"Very," his twin agreed.
"Always," Alice mumbled reaching for a steaming batch of toast which had just materialised onto a platter near her.
"Has Alicia forgiven you for setting that double-ended newt loose and letting it escape into her trunk?" Ginny asked conversationally.
"Thanks, Gin," Fred sent a glower towards his sister who beamed cheerfully at him. "It's nice to know we can rely on you to remind us of our finer moments." Alicia had nearly shrieked down Gryffindor Tower before turning her wrath upon the twins for a good thirty minutes the other night. Apparently the newt had ruined most of her belongings in its attempt to escape.
"Ignore her, Evans," Fred told her, "our youngest sibling has little or no value to add to the conversation."
"S'not much of a conversation to begin with," Alice muttered at him as she focused all her energy on buttering the bread and waking her brain up.
"Here," George handed her a goblet. "Have some pumpkin juice; it'll help."
Without thinking Alice accepted the goblet and took a sip, it was only once she had done so that she realised who had handed it to her and the fact that they were now wearing a pair of identical grins and watching her avidly.
Groaning inwardly she set the juice back on the table. "What have you d- Achooo!" She sneezed explosively. "Wh- Aaachooooo!" Another one burst out of her, then another; by now all of her friends were staring and she felt her face flush with embarrassment and annoyance at the two.
"What have you done to her?" Harry asked the question she had been trying to get out, with more curiosity than she would have injected into the sentence.
"It's just something we've been working on. Take one drop of the potion we slipped into the pumpkin juice and you should sneeze for up to an hour, enough to get you out of a class if you don't want to go."
"That's awful," Hermione exclaimed as Ron said, "That's amazing." Alice sneezed and couldn't say anything. The glower she was directing towards Fred and George did the talking for her.
"Here you are," Fred handed her an orange capsule as she sneezed three times in quick succession. "Take it," he insisted as she continued to look askance at it and her eyes streamed. "It'll stop the sneezing, I promise."
Trying not to think about what horrible thing might be inflicted upon her if he was lying, Alice snatched the object, which looked rather like a small, boiled sweet and swallowed it. Then she waited. And waited.
The sneezing seemed to have stopped. She glanced suspiciously back up at Fred.
"Told you so."
"What was that for?" She snapped.
Identical grins beamed back at her. "Well we'd tested them on ourselves -"
"- naturally, but we needed a neutral subject. Someone who wouldn't object -"
"- and had a nose for pranks themselves. And we thought -"
"- given how naturally generous you are -"
"- that you wouldn't mind volunteering."
Alice was torn between eating the now cold toast on her plate and shoving it up Fred's nose. She was saved from such a taxing decision when Hermione's next exclamation drew her attention.
"Look at this," she pointed at the Prophet, spread open on the table before her.
Alice rolled her eyes, glad she didn't have to come to a decision. "You're not still reading that rag, are you, Hermione?" It was a stupid question really. If words were put before her, Hermione would read them.
"This is important though."
Harry leaned over his girlfriend's shoulder. "What is it?"
Hermione pointed again at a tiny article shoved roughly in at the bottom of a column. "Mr Crouch is dead."
"Dead? What do you mean dead?"
"As in deceased, Ronald," Hermione frowned disapprovingly at him. "He's no longer of this world. He is one who has kicked the bucket. Dead."
"I'm not an idiot, Hermione, I know what dead means."
She snorted. "You could have fooled me."
Ron opened his mouth to argue, but Alice forestalled another spat between the two with a question of her own. "When?"
"Dunno," Ginny had appeared at Hermione's shoulder and was now frowning over the paper too, "it doesn't say. Percy is going to be distraught. He really liked Mr Crouch."
"Percy didn't like Crouch," Ron interjected, "he was in love with him. You should have heard him when he got the job. Totally obsessed. It wasn't healthy."
"So what does it say then?" Alice ignored Ron.
"Just that he was found dead in his home," Hermione read. "That it was very sad and sudden and that he will be fondly remembered by his colleagues in the Ministry."
They all went back to eating their breakfast in silence for a moment, or in Ron's case with slightly less enthusiastic chewing, as they mulled things over.
"Do you reckon they'll replace him in the Tournament?" Neville thought aloud. "I mean, there's only one task left, do they need a Ministry official at it?"
Ron and Harry shrugged, Alice considered it, but Hermione, as ever, had an immediate answer. "Of course, they will. The Ministry can't risk not having someone inside Hogwarts. Especially with everything going on at the moment." It was a sobering prospect, and one which they all took a moment to consider. "Come on," Hermione said eventually glancing at her watch. "We'd better get a move on or we'll be late for class."
Alice was tempted to ask her which of her many classes she was referring to, but she refrained and followed obediently.
A/N: Apologies for anyone who feels that all our intrepid Gryffindors have done for the last few chapters is eat dinner and read the paper. I've been giving them a break and letting them stock up on energy before everything kicks off! As ever please R&R, I do love you all for it!