The Weasley War
X. Cups
The Wizarding world still called it The Burrow, although it had been quite some time since it had been filled with a flurry of red-headed people who called it home. Now it was empty, not empty in the neglected way, but empty in an open way, ready in a moment’s notice to open its doors and warmth to the child or grandchild who would want to burrow there for a while away from ‘work’, ‘school’, ‘lovers’ or whatever name trouble chose to mask itself with.
It was a quiet place resounding with love and memories. Even the birds in the orchard could feel that. More so did the gnomes, who guarded the garden and the whole property fiercer than trolls would. They only quieted and went back to their subtle marauding ways when the old family or one of theirs was present. Like that great ginger cat. Oh, how they missed that one.
Regular as clockwork, the matriarch could be seen popping into the kitchen to whip up delectable things, or into the drawing room to flick her wand at the least dust that presumed to land on the shelves above the mantel. The shelves were priceless. Certainly, their old wood and gilt inlays were noteworthy, but the contents”well, the matriarch was often misty-eyed just looking at them, as she was doing now.
On the wall, above everything, hung an enlarged old portrait. Three people”a man, a woman, and between them, a girl of about nine, sat on a couch, and surrounding them at the back were six boys, differentiating from height, hair length, grin and freckles.
Below this nostalgic happy picture, on the top shelf, was a framed photograph only slightly smaller than the portrait, of a smiling man, thin and balding. The frame was gold-plated and solid black, matching the wood and gilding of the shelf. The man looked quite smug. The matriarch snorted at him even as she fondly blew him a kiss.
The reason for the smugness might well be the things peopling the shelves below the picture of the man.
Crammed there were more frames, pictures of children, from infants to teens, some of them with red hair, some with black, some with blonde, some with brown. All of them precious and loved, as attested to by the more sombrely placed family pictures below, seven frames in all.
The most impressive display was in the lowermost shelf. Three gleaming, silver cups stood there, each behind a picture. One was of a brown-haired girl, the other, of a black-haired, bespectacled boy, the last, of a red-haired, very freckly boy. All three of them preened and then stuck their tongues out at each other.
The matriarch was just about to pick these frames up when from the garden rose a chorus of high little squeals. If she wasn’t hearing things, she could have sworn those were the gnomes.
“Molly, isn’t the Burrow expecting company?” said the smiling, balding man from the frame. Molly jumped and gave a squeal herself. Running to the window, she clasped her hands to her heart at the happy sight that met her.
The garden was full of people, of children. The gnomes were running in every direction pursued by two orange blurs.
“Hello, Gram! Are we having a party or not?”
The girl who said this had wild brown hair mingling with red, because she had jumped onto a red-headed boy’s back and was now piggy-riding him to the front door.
The matriarch opened it and gathered the rush of children to her bosom. “Having you here is party enough, Weasleys.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Gram, but don’t be melodramatic. It’s catching.”
Molly grabbed the girl’s nose and tweaked it. “Don’t you just have your Aunt Ginny’s cheekiness, Juliet!”
“You’re the only one who can get away calling me that,” Juliet whispered, still atop the red-headed boy, who jiggled her as if she weighed a feather. The other kids had scattered all over the house and the garden.
“Juliet, get off of Tristan and give your grandmother a proper greeting.”
Tristan laughed and earned a thump for it as Juliet slid off his back. “Mum!”
“What?”
The toss of that formidable brown hair and the delicate authoritative snap in the voice seemed to intimidate Juliet Granger-Weasley as nothing else could. “Nothing,” she said cheerily (Mutters were never allowed). She exchanged a sheepish look with Tristan and hugged Molly. And then it was Tristan’s turn. Molly looked him up and down before pulling him close and tight.
“You don’t know how glad I am seeing you here every time, dear boy.”
“Oh, I have some inkling, Grandma.”
“I told you, it’s catching!”
“Juliet!”
Juliet cowered slightly. Tristan laughed. Juliet looked up to see S.J standing there, arms akimbo, in perfect enunciation and imitation of Hermione. Molly bit in her mirth. But she couldn’t hold it in. How could she, when her house was once again filled with all her children and their children? Her bliss threatened to knock her over. For Juliet’s pride’s sake, she turned away to settle her amusement in the kitchen, but not before seeing Juliet jumping Sirius James Potter.
With every step in the hall, she looked back at those three, now laughing at something or other. What a picture they made. Reminded anyone of Harry, Ron and Hermione all over again.
She bumped into a solid, lanky body. “Oh, Percy.” She hugged him. He hugged back, the same way he did all those years ago when he knew he was the favourite son. But that self-satisfaction had completely dimmed now, replaced with...nothing else but love and warmth.
IX. What Matters Most
The applause was deafening. It was a wonder not one of the centaurs charged out and screamed bloody murder at the noise. But of course they wouldn’t, as they were in on this whole scheme. Jules waved her blue hat at the blue expanse in the crowd. They stood up in a wave and cheered. She could even make out her baby sister’s little pink cap among them. She was sure her mother had placed a Silencing Charm on Sylvia’s swaddling.
Professor McGonagall was saying something, probably recounting the points standing, but Jules was chanting the spells she must summon to the front of her mind at a moment’s notice.
“What are you doing? You’re making my pants wriggle.”
Jules snapped her head around and glared at S.J. Tristan on her other side laughed. He, too, seemed to be holding on to his pants through his blood-red robes.
Jules softened at this, because he seldom so much as even smiled before. She turned back to the two identical doors facing her and smirked. “Well, wouldn’t that give me some head start, with you both tripping over your own trousers.”
“That’s mean and that’s cheating, Jules. Wait till I tell your mother.”
“That’s mean, Sirius James Potter. I was only jesting.”
S.J and Tristan laughed again.
“What seemed to have amused you?”
They quieted at once at McGonagall’s voice. The old lady was as crotchety as ever. But perhaps it was only because they had blasted apart one of the greenhouses, which turned out to be her private own. Jules’s eyes gleamed at the memory. Surprisingly, this brought a misty glow to the stern headmistress’s.
“You remind me so much of your mother, Miss Weasley. And you two,” She turned to S.J and Tristan. “You’ll probably tire of hearing this, but the three of you together reminds us all of another trio who walked these same grounds.”
“They’re in the stands, Madame.”
“Yes, yes, well”” McGonagall blinked her sparkles away and Jules was relieved. She didn’t like it when people were emotional. “”To business. When you hear the trumpet, proceed to the doors. As you touch the two knobs, symbols would appear on them that only you could see. You should enter the one bearing the sign of that which you chose in the chest. Every time you come to a door within the forest, you must enter that one door. Sooner or later, you will come upon Firenze the centaur, who, if you’re the first to reach him, will give you a prize in exchange for that thing you hold. Any questions?”
“Is”is it”possible for all three of us to”to reach Firenze”at the”the same time?”
“I’d say, that is unlikely, Mr Weasley, but it is not impossible, no. How speedily you reach Firenze depends on your choices. Make the right ones.”
With that, she ushered them back to their places. The noise was a crescendo that reached ear-splitting volume as all three of them entered one of their twin doors. Jules had chosen the one that bore a crude lump on its knob. Sirius James squinted at the two knobs and entered the one whose symbol didn’t scintillate. After a dignified look at the knobs and a bow to the stands, Tristan turned the knob bearing what appeared to be clay.
***
Jules uttered a French oath and immediately winced and cowered as if her mother was in the room. But no, it wasn’t her mother with her, but a Cerberus, each of its three heads now snarling in her direction.
The room was small, an illusion in the middle of the woods. She could smell the trees and the sour and sweet scent of decomposing underbrush. Nevertheless, the Cerberus held her eyes, it was only a...a puppy. Hideous little puppy, eight feet tall. Jules raised her wand. If she hit it right in the middle of its chest, it would be easily Stunned. Well, what did she expect? It was only the first door, designed to excite and not to exterminate the living daylights out of a champion. Yet.
The spell was at the tip of her tongue when she remembered McGonagall’s words, her mother’s voice, and her father’s easy tone. “Make the right choices. Doing things the right way is the only way, and they’re not always the easy ways out, sweet pea.”
Jules bared her teeth at the Cerberus in a grin. “We’ll get you some lullaby, Fluffy Junior. Evocare Fisarmonica!”
An accordion fitted itself around her neck and between her arms. Jules put her fingers to work on the keys. Fluffy sat on his haunches mesmerised.
***
Tristan’s arms flailed wildly for several seconds until he regained his balance and held on for dear dignity to the doorknobs.
Not three inches past the threshold was a great expanse of...muck. The tips of his patent leather shoes were already coated and he shuddered at the thought of that thick mud clinging to his immaculate robes and scrubbed skin. How could his first door be this disgusting? And just what was waiting for him in the bog?
Keeping one hand clutching the handles behind him, he raised his wand, intending to dry the marsh. Would that be right? Or was he expected to wallow in it to the door at the other end? That would be some journey; the swamp must be hundreds of yards long. He looked around. No brooms. And the wards around the illusory room would prevent him from Summoning his own broom or even boots.
“Incendiere!”
A great tongue of heat erupted two feet from the tip of his wand. Tristan directed it to the mud. After ten seconds, the couple of yards nearest him hardened. He was just about to step on it when it suddenly darkened and returned to being wieldy, sticky and glutinous.
To add insult to the debacle, a house-elf appeared with a POP in front of him, splattering him from the waist down.
“Oh! Dobby is sorry, sir!” The elf Vanished the spots with a flick of his fingers. “Dobby is here to offer Sir the boat.”
“A boat? Indeed? Where is it? Let me see it.”
With another flick of his fingers, Dobby conjured it, a golden canoe.
Tristan stared at it. Then he laughed and shook his head. “But that’s ridiculous. I reckon I’ll just walk.”
Dobby nodded and turned around to disappear, but not before Tristan caught him beaming. That gave Tristan some confidence and comfort. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and stepped onto the marsh.
Three hideous, odious, nightmarish steps later, in which Tristan tried to ignore the sensations on his lower legs as if they were not attached to him, the bog disappeared, to be replaced by a field of heather.
***
One moment, he was opening the door, the next, he was falling onto a little lake. S.J only had time to gasp the Bubble-Head charm on himself before he fell in the water. It was good he did, because any chance of staying in the surface was dashed when the grindylows pounced on him from all directions.
He kept shattering their grips with sparks that spewed boiling jets of water to them from his wand, but there were just too many of them. One grabbed his glasses through the Bubble Charm and clawed the bridge of his nose in the process. Another latched onto his collar, as if intent to disrobe him. The freaks need to trim their talons, he thought wryly, as he felt a sting on his neck that meant the skin had opened and was being washed by grindylow-pissed lake-water.
The thought made his stomach curdle.
The little demons scattered howling at the red scorch marks that rose from their ugly green hands. S.J took the reprieve his magic had given him and paddled to the surface, firing spells randomly. One or two got away from the onslaught of his wand and always, another sting made its way to his brain. The little buggers would pay for that.
He had always beaten his cousins at swimming, but he made it to the surface none too soon. His ankle was clawed nearly skinless by a set of green sharp-taloned fingers. He wrenched his foot free with a curse and scrambled onto the...marble floor.
He was no longer in some little version of the lake, but in the Prefect’s Bath. The grindylows were in the half-filled, pool-sized tub, blissfully unaware of the dozens of hot water jets S.J could pivot and turn even hotter for their doom.
He moved to hobble to the taps and instead caught sight of the glistening red pool gathering around his foot. He raised his wand. Boiling hot water gushed off all the taps, sending a cloud of steam billowing into the room.
After three noisy seconds in which the grindylows splashed in agony, S.J blinked and lowered his wand, flushed not from the heat, but from shame. He pointed his wand at the pool and a mini-iceberg plopped onto the water, hissing.
“Sorry. Shouldn’t have done that.”
The grindylows seemed to have understood him. One of them unconsciously bobbed an ugly head to the left in a slow jerk of relief as it climbed on the ice, and S.J was surprised to see the set of twin doors standing there. He was still in the forest after all. He would still be able to bathe in the Prefect’s without feeling queasy.
He bent at the waist to look at the knobs again. He chose the one inscribed with a clump of clay again.
***
“Come forward, please.”
Firenze was amused. The Potter boy was wet and bleeding around the foot, but aside from that and the mud caked onto the Weasley boy’s legs, and the accordion slung around the Weasley girl’s neck, they all looked like they had gone through just one door. Still perky and almost painfully on their toes as they pushed open and peered around the doors. Certainly, he had not been sitting here half an hour.
The three cousins looked askance at each other. No one ran. They all marched forward sedately. They stood side-by-side before him.
“Well””
The three hands shot out like striking cobras.
“Now wait a moment””
“You chose clay as well?”
“What’s so ugly about diamonds?”
Their kind frowned upon mirth, but Firenze couldn’t help it, he laughed as he had never laughed before.