River(Fred Weasley)

03: RUNNING IN THE DARK

Previously:

"Whatever." I finally threw the egg in the potion, but to my surprise it immediately exploded. The purple sticky liquid went up into the air and splashed on the ceiling, leaving me and Fred covered with a smelly thick mucus. Chills went up and down my body from disgust and the entire room went quiet with me and Fred shockingly looking at the pot.

"You should be very proud of yourself mister Weasley, you've cost your house 100 points in one day! Get out of my face, both of you!"

"I don't understand why are you being such a bitch" I gritted through my teeth. Natalie was being impossible. "You were distant the entire summer, you barely ever wrote back to my letters and that's fine, but I really don't understand why this is a problem for you." She has been in a bad mood for a couple of days and I was patiently waiting for her to burst and today she has finally burst.

"How can you not get why this is a problem for me?!" She said passionately. "You do know who they are, right?" She was angry because she caught me talking to the Weasleys and I was furious because she thought she had the right to control who I talk to and who I see.

"So what, since when are you concerned with status?! I am not your pet dog, I can talk to whoever I want." After the incident with the egg me and Fred had to spent two days with Madam Pomfrey because the mucus was so sticky that it took a lot of work to get it off. Approximately half of that time we spent arguing whose fault it was that the potion blew and who did what wrong and so on. The other half we spent playing tick tack toe, because well, what else was there to do? And besides, it was fun because it was a muggle game and it turned out that Fred knew little about muggle games. I was let go two days ago and Natalie has been doing nothing but scowling at me ever since, and then George stopped me in the hall today to say hay and she freaked out.

Natalie was a typical Slytherin pure blood. When we were younger she cared little about blood but the older she got, the more pretentious she was. She was beautiful and smart and pretty much perfect from every angle, which made her think she had a certain amount of power over people. She wanted to control everything, including me. 

"You're so stupid god, I can't believe I ever became friends with you!" She yelled and I stood up in anger.

"Oh, okay well guess what, neither can I! And I am done talking about this!" I stormed out and slammed the door behind me. I was in a very bad mood because I had a very bad dream that night, something about Sirius Black and a wolf and a big black dog.... I leaned against the wall and started lightly sobbing. I could feel that I was losing Natalie and that was painful because despite everything we have just said, she was still my best friend. I wiped off my tears and sighted. What should I do now? 

I decided to sneak into the kitchen to get some comfort food and started tipi toing through the halls. About 15 minutes later I heard footsteps rapidly approaching me and I went into panic mode. Before I could move away I felt a warm body collide with mine, knocking me over on the floor. 

"Ouch, what the bloody hell?" I immediately recognized the voice and the shape of the boy on top of me.

"Martha?!" Exclaimed Fred in surprise. George was right behind him looking anxiously behind his shoulder. For a moment no one said anything and we just laid there like two goldfish. 

"Yeah, well would you mind getting off?" I finally snapped.

"Oh, yeah, sorry." He quickly got up and offered me his hand for help, which I refused with a roll of my eyes.

"C'mon" said George. "We've got to go, Filch is right behind us!" There was little time for greetings and we quickly started running. I was rubbing my elbow, which still hurt from the fall and trying to keep up with the twins who had much longer legs than I did. The sight was probably very amusing, three redheads trying to outrun the law.

"O shoot, we're about to run right into McGonagall," whispered one of the twins. We suddenly stopped in the middle of the hall and the twins started searching for some kind of a handle.

"Found it" said George. The wall opened and there was very small room looking back at us. We didn't lose any time and quickly hurried inside. The space could hardly be called a room, as it was about the height of a child and the twins almost had to break in half to get in. I went in last and closed the door behind me, completely squashed between the two of them. 

"Ouch. You stepped on my foot."

"Sorry."

"Stop moving you two."

"Ouch, George put your elbow somewhere else!"

"Sorry."

"SHHHH!" I hissed and we all went quiet. I don't know for how long we stayed like that but it was very uncomfortable. One of the twins was pushing his elbow right into my boob and my legs were bent in ways that they shouldn't be. The twins kept looking at a piece of paper in George's right hand and after some time he gave me a thumbs up to open the door again. We stumbled out and gasped for air.

"Well, that was exciting." Said Fred and wiped of the sweat from his forehead. I breathed heavily and scowled at them. We looked at each other and started laughing.

"You two... are idiots" I  finally breathed out heavily.

"Hey, if it weren't for us, Filch would have caught you!"

"If it weren't for you, no one would have caught me! I was quiet as a mouse. Where were you going anyway?"

"Coming back from the kitchen." Said George and and looked at Fred disapprovingly. "But really Fred, how could you have missed him?"

"It's not my fault."

"You were holding the map!"

"It was dark!" I looked at the piece of parchment in George's hand with curiosity. This had to be some kind of a tracker, otherwise they wouldn't be able to know where McGonagall was. They looked at each other in doubt.

"I'm sorry Marty, but we can't really..."

"Oh c'mon guys, that's not fair." George shrugged his shoulders and put the thing away.

"Life isn't fair."

"I bet it's some kind of a map." None of them answered  and I smiled to myself. Bingo. "It's a map isn't it."

"It doesn't matter what it is now does it, really, all that matters is that we got aw..."

"Look what we have here. Students out of bed." A sly voice interrupted us and we turned around only to be faced with Snape, who was coldly looking down at us. In that moment he was absolutely scarier than You-know-who himself.