Novus Orbis | Fred Weasley x Insert | ON HIATUS

Chapter 30 - Mazes

Harry comes into the Common Room one evening in a dazed looking mood, and Y/n looks up from where she sits conversing lazily with Ron and Hermione.

"What's happened?" Granger asks as he sits down in a chair across from them.

"Crouch is back," he says, running a hand through his hair. "But it's not good." He proceeds to explain that while he and Krum were discussing matters concerning the third task, the Minister of Magic had come out of the woods towards them looking worse than they had ever seen him. "He was dirty and ragged, and his robes were bloody," the boy describes. "He looked like a tramp if I'd ever seen one. And he wasn't making any sense. He kept talking to a tree like it was Percy"–normally, Y/n might laugh, but she's too invested and the story too serious–"and talking about his wife and his son..."

"Isn't his son in Azkaban, or something?" Y/n asks, remembering a previous conversation with Hermione.

"Yeah, exactly. He was talking about You-Know-Who and saying he had to warn Dumbledore, and that something was his fault...so I went to get Dumbledore, and left him with Krum, and when we came back, Krum was stunned on the ground and Crouch was gone." He shakes his head. "Krum said he attacked him. Crouch did, I mean. We couldn't believe it. And then Hagrid came and Karkaroff and the headmaster sent me back up to the castle. Karkaroff thought it was treachery and–and a setup, that the Minister had attacked his student."

He tells them that Snape nearly stopped him from getting the headmaster, and this irritates them all, including Y/n. Even when she was talking to him about her nightmares and her N.E.W.T. preparation, she felt dislike for the professor as most others did, but only slightly less so. "If Dumbledore hadn't come out of his office himself, I don't know what I would have done."

Y/n would have liked to stay and listen to them talk about the possibilities for what happened, but at that minute, Fred and George come over to get her to come down for dinner. Bidding the younger students goodbye, she links arms with Fred and they head out through the portrait hole.

"What were they on about this time?" Fred asks as they head down the stairs.

"Something's happened with Crouch," she says, "But he's disappeared again. They don't know where he is. Harry and Krum saw him in the forest down outside the Quidditch field. He was talking like he was crazy, about Dumbledore and warning him about something. And about Vol....You-Know-Who. Harry said he was talking to a tree, too, like it was Percy."

The boys don't laugh about this, either, which surprises Y/n just a little bit considering that it's what she was expecting.

"Strange," Fred says.

"You think he's been in the woods this whole time, or something?" George asks.

"With the way Harry was describing him, it sounds like he might have been." Y/n rolls her shoulders in a stretch as they reach the connecting room to the Great Hall. "But we'd better not talk about it much while we're eating."

-

They tuck in relatively early that night, getting up at daybreak the next morning to head to the Owlery so that George and Fred can send another letter to Ludo Bagman. It's the only thing, pretty much, that Y/n doesn't really take a part in, even though the twins put her name (with permission) on the bottom of the paper anyway. She can understand some of their desperation for money–they only have a year left before they graduate, and they're not even halfway where they need to be to purchase the building in Diagon Alley. To be quite frank, she doesn't even know that they're going to be able to purchase the shop right after they graduate. Or what if someone else gets to it first? The possibilities seem endless and overwhelming sometimes. A lot of the time, actually.