DOROTHEA {fred weasley}

fifty three

Dorothea managed to keep her head down and spend much of her first week of school alone. Priscilla and Lilith treated her normally, filling her in every evening on whatever gossip they had gained from the day, both particularly interested in Adrian Pucey's rumoured infidelity, and how Leila was reacting to the situation.

She had spoken to Elvira on their first night, explaining everything, and the girl had been upset, but also scared. Dorothea felt guilty, afterwards, imagining how Elvira must feel knowing that she had been in Clementine Rosier's house. She decided afterwards that she ought to stop telling Elvira things, scaring her. To make matters worse for the muggleborn witch, Oliver had told her about Ezra's tattoo, and its meaning. Dorothea admitted to knowing about it, and Elvira had reacted with a cold silence.

 Since then, the witch had started spending all of her time away from the Slytherin common room, coming back only to sleep. Every night, still, Elvira would climb into bed with Dorothea and talk to her until they fell asleep, ensuring that a type of close friendship still existed.

Their distance upset Dorothea, but she understood.

Ezra Nott had also returned to Hogwarts looking exhausted, and utterly stressed. He had spent the first couple of days muttering to his younger brother and Draco Malfoy, and responding to several letters, presumably from his father, hardly even speaking to any of the boys from his own year. 

 On their third day back, Dorothea was paired with him for prefects patrol, and that was the first time they spoke.

It was her who spoke first, surprisingly.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

Ezra's heart fell at that, he felt like he hadn't been asked it in so long.

"Yeah, just really tired," he replied after a few seconds of deliberating a response.

The pair walked alongside each other wordlessly for much of the evening, not bothering to take points from anyone they saw out after curfew, both dazed as they trudged along, each thinking about their own issues. 

Eventually, Ezra looked at Dorothea and felt a pool of guilt in his stomach. He had noticed how unwell she looked as soon as he saw her, the second she walked into Kings Cross, his eyes finding her straight away, as they always had. His father had warned him against approaching her then, and he had watched Molly Weasley confront Clementine after whispering with the twins. Secretly, he was glad that someone was standing up to the witch, as much as he resented that it came following her whispering to Fred Weasley. His own pressure from his father surrounding his task had occupied him for days, and his mind was away from Dorothea. Indeed, his outburst at New Years Eve seemed ridiculously insignificant.

"Did your mum crucio you again?" He asked eventually, towards the end of their patrol, not bothering to tiptoe around the topic.

"Yeah."

The man stopped and sighed, not looking the witch in the eye.

"Why?"

"To see if I can wandlessly heal myself as well as others."

"And?"

Dorothea shook her head, "I can't. My magic is nowhere near as strong as she thinks."

"I'll make sure she doesn't do it again," he said, speaking hesitantly. "I'll speak to her... or to my father... You haven't done anything to deserve it."

"It's fine," she said.

"You don't look well," he observed.

"Nor do you."

"I'm quite stressed," he admitted. "This world is a lot harder than I expected."

"You still working on the same task?"