Hunted AIAOY 3

Chapter 1

Harry's summer was boring and filled with tension.  After he had to return to the Dursleys, he had nothing but the clipping Rebecca had sent him through Muggle mail addressed from a correctional facility.

Clever, considering that was the only letter Vernon allowed Harry to have.  

The photo was from the Daily Prophet, the words around it telling how Arthur had won a drawing at the Ministry and had used the proceeds to go to Egypt to see his eldest son, Bill.  Rebecca was between Fred and George, Ron and Ginny directly under them.  The pyramids were behind them and they were all smiling grandly.

Harry had kept the photo under his pillow, there were still a few weeks of summer and he needed to keep it safe.

The Dursleys had a way of taking the things that made him happy.

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"Come, it's time for you to lose."  George sniggered, poking his head into Rebecca and Ginny's room.

"Yes, because I do that so frequently."  Rebecca's voice dripped in sarcasm, the kind that comes as a shock to all parties involved and Fred was the first to dissolve into laughter behind George's dropped-jaw face.

"Coming, Ginny?"  Ron called, bringing a smile to the youngest Weasley, too.  Rebecca set her letter to Harry down, the note inside long completed but no inspiration for what to address it as to ensure he would get it.  

She wasn't even entirely certain he'd gotten the photo from the Prophet at the beginning of summer.

"What's pulling you down?"  Fred asked, falling into step beside Rebecca as the children vacated their rooms for the allure of outside.  "I can see it clear as day, no point in trying to say 'nothing.'"

Rebecca glanced at him, raising an eyebrow.  "I haven't in a while."  To you, was left unsaid.  Fred had lingered by Rebecca's side in the days after Harry had to go to the Dursleys, sometimes pushing her to speak about what she was feeling and sometimes just making sure that she knew she wasn't alone.  And Rebecca hadn't shielded what she was feeling to him as she had before, not since she and Hermione had returned from Petrification.

"Is it something that I can help you with?"  Fred asked, taking their brooms from Ron's outstretched arm.  "George or dad maybe, if I can't?"  It pained Fred to imagine Rebecca wanting something he couldn't provide himself, but for her...Fred would search for an answer to near anything.  

This scared him a little, this feeling he got sometimes about her that left his cheeks burning and the memory of how she had held his hand at the final feast of last term at the very front of his mind.

Rebecca sighed, taking her glasses off and using the bottom of her shirt to polish the filthy lenses.  "I need something horrid, near hurtful.  I used a juvenile facility last time and I don't think it would work twice."

Fred's thoughts, no matter how pleasantly unpleasant, were wiped away entirely as he was filled with questions.  "Wha-Why in Merlin's beard would you need that?"

Rebecca put her glasses back on, holding the door so they could step out into the sunlight of early afternoon.  "I want to get to Harry when we're headed to Diagon Alley, in case he could be there then, too.  The Dursleys aren't going to let a nice letter go through...but something not, maybe."

Fred nodded, hovering on his broom in front of her a moment.  "I'll think on it."  Before he went off to join the shouting George and laughing Ginny already ahead on their way to their homemade pitch, Fred shook his head and grinned at her.  "That's brilliant, by the way."