The Irreplaceable Charlie Weasley

Chapter 4 - A Brotherly Advice

Bill

I was rather surprised to see Pip knocking on my window to what seemed to be quite early on Sunday morning. I let him in at once and read the letter he held in his beak. If Nova sent a letter this early, something had to be wrong.

Bill,

Please come to the Owlery as soon as Pip wakes you up with this message.

Nova

I dressed as quickly as possible as I couldn't help to shake the feeling something was wrong. As I was walking to the Owlery, I tried to think about what that could be. It was true that I haven't seen Nova yesterday at all. Charlie told me that she had the Quidditch tryouts but she wasn't at dinner and apparently, nobody saw her after the tryouts as neither Charlie nor Tonks knew if she got on the team or not.

Which reminded me that I also have to speak with Penny. I had a feeling she was avoiding me for some reason and I don't want her to be mad at me even though I can't seem to recall what I did wrong.

I ran up the stairs and heard Nova talking to Pip.

"Oh, will you stop tickling me!" I heard her laugh.

"Nova, good morning." I tried to sound as normal as possible. She was sitting on the floor with Pip nibbling on her ear.

"Bill, thank you for coming." Her expression quickly changed.

"What has happened to you? Where were you yesterday?" I stopped hiding the fact that I was worried.

I liked Nova and I considered her a good friend, but we usually didn't spend any time alone – there were always others around or at least Charlie was. I couldn't imagine why he wasn't sitting next to her right now instead of me.

"Hiding." She replied and bowed her head.

"Hiding? From who?" I sat next to her, Pip slowly making his way to my shoulder.

"Your brother." She was still looking at the floor.

"What did he do?" I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, it's not anything he did. You see it's about my Quidditch tryouts." She looked at me then quickly looked away.

"Yeah, we were wondering what happened to that. I didn't have time to have lunch with the group but at dinner, Charlie and Tonks looked rather worried as neither has seen you."

"Then I did a good job hiding and I have to thank Tulip for not ratting me out." She made a mental note for that.

"But why are you hiding from Charlie? Did you make the team or did it go wrong and you weren't picked?" I was puzzled. Whatever happened on that Quidditch pitch, I was sure Charlie would understand. They were best friends after all.

There was a moment of silence. I didn't know what else to ask as I didn't have a clue what was going on and Nova seemed to reminisce on yesterday's events.

"Well, I did make the team." Her lips curled slightly.

"That's great news, Nova! Congratulations!" I grinned at her and put my arm around her shoulder in a half hug. "That doesn't explain why you're hiding from Charlie."

As her expression turned into a sad one again she told me the whole story. She told me how nervous she was and that this girl on her team, Skye, was intimidating and didn't let the Captain speak half of the time. She did great in the first half of her tryout but then started to feel more nervous and the looks that girl gave her didn't do her any good either. Neither did the commentator as he talked almost nonstop reminding Nova of every mistake she made.