In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXLII: The Mischief Managers' Guide to Playing Beater

A/N: Hello there, readers! This is just a short note to warn you that there is a bit of language in this chapter. I don't include any of the specifics of what George said to Malfoy (though it's fun to imagine what George cussing him out might have entailed) but I do include a bit of language anyway, so please forgive me! I try to keep this story as clean as possible while still being somewhat realistic. Angry George Weasley, though, means a bit of language.

I hope you've all had fun with these updates today! I look forward to hearing your thoughts, about this chapter especially. Without any further ado, I present to you the third chapter of the day! Fear not, there is hope yet for Gryffindor Quidditch!

GEORGE:

It was late, and I was the only one in my dorm still awake. My mind was racing. I let it race. I was burning. Alicia had worried I was sick with how flushed my face had been for the hours after the match, but it was just the white-hot fury still coursing through my veins.

Obviously, nothing about today was fair.

Really, the unfairness had started a long time ago. What happened that day was really just a culmination of unfair moments, building and building and building until I just couldn't take it anymore. Trying to get to the root of it all was giving me a headache.

The stab at Harry's mum was unfair. So was the stab at my mum, and Dad. Not to mention all of the stabs at Ron, because, yeah, Fred and I teased him relentlessly, but we loved him and (almost) always stopped before it went too far and actually hurt his feelings. Draco had no such reservations, and, as such, went way, way, way too far.

But really, the unfairness of the ferret boy started sooner than that. It was unfair that he was allowed to have so much power over everything and everyone, prick that he was. His father too, for that matter, I realized with a rush, recalling that day in the bookstore all those years ago where Dad and Lucius Malfoy got into a scuffle not unlike the one I'd gotten into just hours ago.

Harry, too. I'd always liked the kid, but there was something about the way we charged him down together, beat him to a pulp together, that bonded us. Neither of us would soon forget that moment, for a lot of reasons. I wished Fred had been allowed to jump in, too, but Fred was Fred. He'd find a chance one day and seize it around the neck. And by "it," I meant Malfoy.

Everything had happened so fast, yet I remembered a lot of details fairly clearly. I had seen Harry snap. I had seen the fire in his eyes as he dropped my arm and hurtled toward Malfoy. I had been angry, furious even, but Harry was a force. I was cussing Malfoy out more so than I was throwing punches, as if I were trying to compensate for Fred since he was generally the mouthier of the two of us, but Harry was silent, and his silence was probably even more terrifying for Malfoy. Harry was a force, his rage somehow both calculated and feral, cold and fierce. The unfairness of that day didn't start that day. I wasn't sure where the unfairness at the hands of Draco Malfoy had started for Harry, but I knew it was far from over. I made a mental note to remind him in the morning to watch his back when Malfoy was around.

With Umbridge and Snape both in his pocket, Malfoy could get away with just about anything, I reckon.

Umbridge. Umbitch. The Pink Venomous Tentacula. It was something of an honor to have become tangled within her thorns at last, despite the obvious wound of having Quidditch stripped away from me so violently, so permanently, so suddenly. That would leave a scar, but that's really where I found the honor. I had always found a sort of honor in scars right along with the pain they carried, a solemn tribute to the battles survived, a nod to the life lived anyway. Harry's scar, for instance, was a big deal, it always had been and always would be, both to him and to the world as we knew it. Lucy's scars, too, from the small one beneath her eye from the caves over summer to the scars from that night in the Forbidden Forest four years ago to the scar I knew must exist somewhere from the night she was bitten. In a sense, there was even something to be said for the matching scars on their hands. While they were horrible, obviously, and should never have existed in the first place, that night was when Lucy finally told Harry everything.