the order - f.weasley

- c h a p t e r - t w e n t y-t w o -

 Gemma was sicker longer than she or Madam Pomfrey anticipated.

She had been released the day after she had gotten ill, only to be sent back halfway through the day.

And over the next week or so, her friends updated her on everything happening while she was trapped in bed.

And it was a lotttttt.

Quidditch practice was not going well. Fred's exact words to Gemma about it were, "They're going to be slaughtered..."

But George jumped in, correcting his twin from a chair across the bed, "Come on, Ginny's not bad. Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us. . . ."

Hermione, who had brought Gemma's homework and was helping her get through it–even though the Lupin girl was barely alive–said, "She's been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren't looking...Gemma has been too. She's been Ginny's personal trainer for years now..."

Fred and George looked at the pale girl, squinting at the Ancient Rune project before her, her head pounding.

"Cricket, is that true?"

Gemma looked up, and Fred Weasley suddenly realised that his girlfriend had some freckles sprinkled across her cheeks–now that she had almost no colour in her face from being sick.

One on the left side of the bridge of her nose.

Two faint ones by her right eye.

Then there were a couple scattered ones over her cheeks.

But as Fred looked at her, he made a mental note that he hadn't ever noticed them, and now that he did, he was even more in awe of her.

"What did you ask me?" Gemma asked him, pulling him from his thoughts.

"O-oh, yeah," Fred blinked, embarrassed. "Did you help Ginny break into the broom shed?"

Gemma had just giggled and said, "That's classified information, old sport..."

And that was all they needed to know.

"You sneaky git..." George had laughed at her.

But on the other hand, the interview turned out to be better than anyone expected.

Luna's father, Xenophilius Lovegood, printed the interview Rita Skeeter did with Harry in his magazine, The Quibbler, and it blew up. Everyone in the school and the wizarding world had read it and sent Harry letters by the trainful. Not only that, but it has gotten so influential to the students that Umbridge had banned it, and now the issues were charmed to look like textbooks.

On one of her better days, Luna herself had snuck into the hospital wing, bringing the Lupin girl a copy disguised as the monthly issue of the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch Team.

"Dad told me to give this to you...He circled something in it for you..." her light voice hummed as she settled herself next to Gemma, unafraid of whatever virus she had.

The tired girl turned to the page that had been marked with a little homemade bookmark with a weird triangle-circle-line design on it, and she found a small paragraph on a page that had a recipe for apple pie on it.

The paragraph had a little illustration of a fox laying in wolfsbane, and it said: