Toxic Crush

~17~

A month after school had broken up, Clara sat with the Weasley siblings and Hermione on a large table they had magicked into the landing around their doors.

It was their own little living space, and being on the top floor, no one ever came up.

Fred and Clara were having a friendly but heated debate about who was scarier, Moody or Shacklebolt, and the others were participating in lazy conversations.

"But Moody has the eye!" Fred said with finality as if the argument had just been won.

"But Shacklebolt has such an authoritative thing about him." Clara argued.

Fred winked. "Ahh, dominance."

She punched him on the arm and giggled.

"Oi, you two. How about another go with the extendable ears?" Ron yelled across the table at them, interrupting their debate.

"No!" Clara groaned. "We just finished helping your mum with the boggart. I'm done for the day."

"Boring." He complained. "What about you Freddie?"

"Nah. Can we not just relax?"

"Fine." Ron said turning back to Hermione and cutting them off. "You're both boring."

Clara turned back to Fred to continue, but footsteps started making their way up the staircase and they all swiveled in their seats to see who was coming.

The footsteps grew louder and they braced themselves to be told off for being too loud, but instead, a small-ish boy with messy black hair came into view and they all stood up and cheered.

"Harry!" They all yelled, running over to him and creating a large group hug.

He did not reciprocate their excited energy.

"Hi guys." He said, a cool edge to his tone. "Where the hell am I?"

"Headquarters." Hermione replied. "This is the order of the phoenix."

Harry stared at her blankly and she sighed.

"Harry, we're so sorry we didn't wri-"

"No!" Harry interrupted angrily, banging his fists on the table. "I have gone ALL SUMMER without a single letter-"

Ron tried to interrupt. "Liste-"

"NO!" Harry yelled louder. "Not a SINGLE letter. No one telling me they're still alive, no one offering to get me away from the bloody Dursleys', no one even wished me a happy fifteenth birthday."

They all looked anywhere but his eyes and tried to find the words to respond.

Clara pursed her lips and croaked for a second while she chose her sentence. "We were all explicitly told that we could not send you any letters. We did want to, so badly."

Harry huffed as though this was a poor excuse.

Hermione then spoke calmly. "Harry please, it was Dumbledore who told us that we couldn't."

"Oh." Was all Harry managed to answer. "Sorry."

They all jumped on his apology and turned the conversation back to something fun, magicking another chair around their table and starting a game of exploding snap that lasted the entire night.

Clara woke up the next morning and found her body tense. She sighed, deciding it must have been another nightmare.

She had so many these days, and they all consisted of Voldemort killing her, her parents, or Draco.