(Eng) Weasleys, Pranks and other Curses

29

"What?" my friend mumbled sleepily and stuck her head out of the pillows. I immediately jumped into bed with her and pressed my hand over her mouth.

"Shh, or he'll hear us!", I hissed as quietly as I could while listening tensely to the sounds in the hallway. My racing heart made it difficult, but after a few minutes I was sure George must have passed.

Exhausted, I lowered my arms.

Maddie cleared her throat. I had almost forgotten again that I owed her an explanation. At first, I hesitated. I had never been able to discuss my problems with anyone but Mistel. And I had so little experience with boys and feelings and -

Maddie flipped back her blanket and patted the empty space beside her. "Come on," she demanded sympathetically. "What did he do?"

"He?"

"Who would you run from like that if not George?"

Caught off guard, I crawled under the covers.

And then my worries just bubbled out of me.

What if George really just wanted my money? At first, I had been just a means to an end. After all, I had really boosted their business, but when it had become clear to him that I had more than enough money - who could say for sure that his plans hadn't changed then?

I told about how the love potion had stopped working sooner than we had thought, and finally I confessed that I had admitted that I liked him. But he had never said anything comparable.

Maddie suddenly ran her hand down the middle of my face. "You really like him, don't you?"

I pulled the blanket up over my nose before nodding once quickly.

"What exactly do you like about him?"

My heart leapt at the thought of all the little things. He was good looking, of course, but that wasn't even it. How motivated they were when it came to their business. The creativity that was behind all their inventions. How they still didn't fail any subject even though they didn't pay attention for a minute in class.

He had lied for me when he had realized that I still blamed my feelings on the love potion. Instead of throwing me under the bus and saying that the feelings were real. He had seen that I had not been ready for it.

I thought about the night he had slept next to me and told me stories about his family to distract me from my nightmares.

"Wow, you've got it bad." Maddie flopped down next to me and curled up in her half of the blanket.

"I got scared when I overheard him and his mom just now. Molly accused him of just coming after me for my money. Kind of. I don't know. Did you know the twins are talking about opening their own store?"

"Really? Did he tell you that?"

"I guess his mom overheard them talking about loans and down payments for a store."

Maddie tried to let out a whistle, but instead just hissed a few times until we both chuckled. "If you just noticed them in passing, you'd never think the twins could be so serious." We stared at the ceiling, both lost in thought, as Maddie stood back up. "Has he ever asked you for anything? I don't mean just money. Anything?"

I had to admit, he hadn't. On the contrary. He had rejected everything I had wanted to do for him out of gratitude.

"Then I wouldn't accuse him of bad intentions for the time being. And if he does beg for money, I'll have my sister show me how to swing a bat and chase him all over Hogwarts like a bludger, okay?"

At the idea, I had to press the blanket over my mouth to keep from waking anyone up with my laughter after all. "Alright."

*

As so often, I was the first to wake up. Sleepily, I rolled out of Maddie's bed and tiptoed into my room. Nothing could be heard from the room next door.

George must still be asleep. Of course he was. Why wouldn't he be? He had been awake for a very long time. Without thinking about it, my feet carried me to the wall that separated our rooms.

I placed first one, then the other hand against it before carefully pressing my ear to the wallpaper. No one had bothered to magically isolate the rooms, since we had never planned to have so many guests. I held my breath, trying to make as little noise myself as possible.

"Camille?"

Caught off guard, I tripped over my own feet and had to cling to the bedpost to keep from staggering further around the room and ending up making more noise.

Mistle blinked her big eyes up at me. "I ran a bath," she said, but the lines in the corner of her eyes betrayed how hard it was for her not to grin broadly from ear to ear.

"You can't tell anyone about this!", I begged her, about to drop to my knees.

She pressed her thin lips together before continuing in a fluting tone. "I don't know what you're talking about. You don't want me to tell anyone that you like to bathe in the morning? There's nothing bad about that. Hygiene is something very exemplary."

"Mistle!"

Plop. With a laugh, she was gone.

I spent an outrageous amount of time in the bathtub before sitting down for breakfast.

Arthur and Molly were already at breakfast in their thick red robes, laughing and joking about something that was in one of the many newspapers.

"Ah, good morning, dear," Molly greeted me effusively. "I haven't had a chance to thank you. This is - all of this is way too much!"

I squeezed her hand, which she held out to me across the table. "Don't. You and your whole family saved my life. Giving them a relaxing holiday is the least I can do, isn't it?"

I had to think of her words again and let go of her hand. For her, this was a foreign world. As warm as she was, she saw this wall between her and them. And I was on the wrong side.

A deep breath and I pushed the feeling away as I ate toast with honey and jam and laughed with Arthur about the new representative in his department. Edgar Evernever. Arthur had found the man in one of the photos my parents had put up. He had been on one of their missions to Switzerland. I had met him and made about the same vomiting noises that Ginny had made at the beginning of the school year whenever the twins had come near us.

Molly admonished us not to talk that way about an important man. After all, she didn't know what I knew. Namely, that Edgar only got into such high positions because he spent his parents' money with both hands.

The breakfast in my stomach suddenly weighed a ton. Oh. Now I understood how Molly Weasley must see me. I was just another kid spending her parents' money in her eyes.