The Potion Princess

Hogwarts

The ride to Hogwarts doesn't last long enough.

Audra's beginning to find that that's the way things always seem to go, like the more determined you are to make something stay the faster it slips away. She spends it sitting with Lee and the twins, watching the shadows race through the halls through the windows. She's curled into Fred's side, her head on his chest so she can feel the vibrations of his voice rumbling through his lungs when he talks. Just the usual, he says, while comparing his summer with Lee, and Audra has to bury her face in his shoulder to hide a smile. Exploding things, driving mum and dad crazy, you know. Nothing exciting.

"Are you okay?" Fred nudges her with his knee, staring in that openly affectionate way that makes something in her chest ache.

"Just thinking." The carriage hits a bump in the road, jolting her forward. Fred catches her, but doesn't let her go, just pulls her across to sit so close to him she's practically in his lap. It's times like this she thinks of things she'd never paid attention to before- exactly how many freckles cover his nose, about the peculiar color in his eyes, about the chip in his front tooth you can only see when he gives you his brightest smile. "Things are going to be different this year."

Fred nods, and he places her hand in his lap so he can trace the lines of her palms. They had done fake palm reading a few weeks ago, and ever since then he's been looking at them to see if they've changed. Audra isn't any good at divination, so she made up fake forecasts- long lives, many wives, a million cats and ten kids each. The twins however, were brilliant at divination, and told her fortune in a slightly more serious tone- a long life, an everlasting love, wealth and riches, struggle and pain. It hadn't been meant to be real, but Audra had watched them predict other things (quidditch matches, the weather, which of them will get the flu first- with enough accuracy to pay attention.

They bump along the long dirt lane until the castle rises up in front of them, a monster of stone with lights shining out of its windows. Audra hesitates before climbing down from the carriage, staring across at all the people she now must pay attention to and act happy around- Draco and Pansy, Emmeline, Clary, Hermione and Harry and Ron, Angela and Katie. "Hey." Fred tugs on her hand, and she jumps down to him, letting him steady her when the shock of the impact threatens to knock her to the ground. "Stop worrying. It's going to be fine."

"I know." She smiles up at him, and he looks down at her in a way that makes her think that he doesn't quite believe her. "I'm not worried. I'll be with all of you."

"Yeah, well." He rocks back on his heels, and then before she can react, he ducks his head to kiss her cheek. It was one of the gestures of careless affection she's seen other people give each other, where you care about each other so thoughtlessly and effortlessly that they move around each other as easily as breathing. Fred is an expert at this easy exchange, but Audra isn't, so she just squeezes his hand in what she hopes he takes to be a thank you and moves off into the great hall on her own.

Draco has saved a spot for her. Audra's face splits in a smile when she sees him, and he waves a hand in a lazy gesture of greeting to beckon her over to him, as if she could have possibly not been able to find them. Despite everything, she really has grown fond of him, and it's with real love that she wraps him in a hug and shoves him over so she can have more room. They've grown close to each other in a way that she wouldn't have thought possible, over nights spent playing wizard chess while his family talks and parties where they lurk in the same shadows to avoid being noticed, days where they scribbles notes and letters that they exchange constantly. She's never really treated him like family or tried to be anything more than civil, but now that they've spent time together, she wishes she'd been around to help him down the right path while they still had time.