Novus Orbis | Fred Weasley x Insert | ON HIATUS

Chapter 36 - Moins Misérable

The house has long since awoken, as the children and adults begin, one after the other, to leave their rooms and come down for breakfast. Molly, of course, is first, coming into the kitchen to begin cooking for the rest of them. Y/n eyes her warily from where she sits at the table in the kitchen, eating a simple plate of eggs, grits, and toast. Fred sits beside her, George across from her, and they all exchange a look as soon as Mrs. Weasley enters the room. The woman doesn't seem to notice, sparing a glance and a 'good morning, dears,' only before heading to the stove and beginning to flick her wand about.

The three watch as she pulls things out of cabinets and pantry, a lovely blend of smells starting to form and waft towards them. Y/n leans forward into the table, arms out in front of her, resting her chin on them as she gazes unphased at the woman. Fred picks at a loose bit of wood. George leans back in his chair, looking around and bouncing his knee.

"What's got you three up so early?" the woman asks eventually, eyeing them from where she slices a green apple. "Might as well do some helping if you're just going to sit there."

"We were just about to go to the library, actually," Y/n excuses them. "To look at books on Apparition." She pushes her chair back from the table, her gaze locked with Fred's as he looks between her and his mother. "Because I'm seventeen now."

"Yes, of course," the woman says. "You're sure to pass your test," she adds, smiling to herself. She pushes the first sliced fruit aside, waving her wand and stacking them neatly on a plate, which then goes over to the table. "Here, take something to eat." She looks at the boys for a moment, taking a strand of Fred's long hair in her hands and letting it slip through her fingers. "You boys need a trimming soon," she says, more to herself. Fred pays his mother no attention, his hand reaching for the plate instead.

"We don't want to get anything on the books," Y/n says honestly, batting his hand away before he can grab it. "...but thank you. We had some food."

Pulling the boys along, they head out of the kitchen and down the hall to the room at the back of the house. They skirt through the first space, going straight for the couches and plopping right down. Y/n opts to sit between them, sinking back into the cushions and gazing at the stack of books she left previously on a table in the corner. Beneath the surface, she's panicking. If those books were on the table in the middle of the room, the boys would certainly see them, and would certainly want to pick them up and flip through them. And they know that she's the one in here the most, if at all. The other adults haven't been seen entering this room by them, day or night, and their guess would be that they would put them back as a cautionary so the children won't go snooping and figure out anything more about the subject of their meetings.

So I should probably do the same thing, she thinks. The twins are stupid smart–and despite their recklessness, everyone knows it. Which is why there seems to be an air of fear that accompanies the students who talk to them at Hogwarts. They enjoy the pranks on other people, even sometimes on themselves, but never when they've gotten on the bad side of the three. The rumour mill does the work for them, mutterings in the halls often including outlandish stories about how they put a student in the hospital wing with horrible, painful boils, or a disfigured face, or any number of other things. Some of them are definitely true–they did perform some nasty wicked hexes on Draco and his friends. But it's far more entertaining to simply let them wonder which stories are true.

"Are you going to keep staring off into the corner, or are you going to contribute?" George asks her, and as she comes to she sees that they're both looking at her with amused expressions.

"Sorry," she says. "W's just thinking." She sifts through excuses, picking one and letting it roll easily off of her tongue. "We haven't had much time at all to really prank people." She shrugs, resisting the urge to kick her feet up on the glass table and crossing them beneath her instead. "We've been so busy with homework and preparing for the shop, even over the summer. Especially here, because your mum's got us cleaning everything all the time."