Ch. 17: Family Matters

Song for this Chapter: If I Had A Boat -- James Vincent McMorrow

favorite comment from last chapter (and the first comment too) xonceuponatimex : "WTF WATTPAD DIDN'T NOTIFY MY OF THIS CHAPTER!!!!! I'M GLAD YOU'RE BACK TO WRITING THIS THOUGH! CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE"

(i'm glad i'm back too -- and i'm sad that Wattpad never notified you guys, so... RIP MY SOUL)

ELLE'S POV :

Despite the fact that I wasn't the one wearing the cursed necklace, I could still feel the dark, looming anger in my heart. I had long given up any hope of finding whatever we were looking for. I wasn't even sure if we, ourselves, knew what it was any more.

We had been walking for days, and my leg was throbbing more and more ferociously with every step we took. Hermione had taken it out of the splint today, but once she saw how badly I wobbled without it, she decided it was best to place it back on, with fresh dressings. While Ron's arm had begun to patch up nicely, my leg was another matter.

It's hard to walk when you're missing a chunk of muscle. It was painful and I couldn't stand to do it much longer. I could see the way Harry was beginning to eye me, like I was burden to their search party, weighing them down. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I was making us travel slower than necessary.

I'd stopped talking.

I couldn't think of anything to say that was encouraging, and so I simply stopped speaking altogether. No one seemed to mind. There hadn't been much room for conversation anyhow. In the quiet of the night, sometimes I would share a glance with Ron, a reassuring one. However, he and I both knew that there was nothing certain about anything. Not any more.

The boys were starting to look haggard, their hair becoming out grown and stringy from the long days without a wash. Hermione had taken a pair of wool sheers from a nearby stable and seemed determined to make the best out of an already terrible situation.

"Who would like to go first?" Hermione said, peering at each of our faces with a tight smile, while opening and shutting the rusty sheers. They made a horrendous screech every time she did.

Ron scoffed and rolled over in his cot. I couldn't manage to speak up, so I merely shook my head at the disappointment that was clear on my sister's face.

"Oh, come on, Elle. Your hair is so long and unkept, just let me give you a trim." I saw they way her eyes seemed to scream desperation. I could tell that this was important for her: a way to try and re-gain the kept sanity of having a plan -- or at least pretending to have one.

I shook my head once more and picked up the book of fairytales that Hermione had put down, leafing through the pages absent-mindedly.

Hermione's shoulders slumped forward and she sighed. My eyes locked with Harry's for a brief moment before he cleared his throat and blinked away a bit of fear.

"You can cut my hair, 'Mione." Harry beamed at the smile Hermione flashed him. "I could use a trim."

Hermione grabbed a chair and motioned for Harry to sit, but Ron protested, rolling over to glare at their happy faces. "Could you do that somewhere else? Some of us are trying to sleep."

"Come on, Hermione," Harry sighed, lightly taking her arm as she frowned at the way Ron snapped at her. I tried not to think about her crush on him and how much of an ass he probably seemed to look in Harry's eyes. In my perspective, ... well, in my perspective he was doing nothing wrong.

Everybody should be allowed to sulk when it's called for. He'd be fine once the locket was off of him.

Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the tarp roof in dismay. I was restless.

With a soft groan, I rubbed at my eyes and hoisted myself from the cot I was laying on. Ron watched my movements, but didn't say anything as I grabbed a thick coat and made my way out into the night.

It was a new moon out tonight. It made me think of Fred, and for a moment I wasn't afraid for him -- or for myself. For a brief time, as I dropped down at the base of a tree and gazed up at the twinkling stars, it was a good feeling.

FRED'S POV :

"George." Blake was fuming, her wild curls bouncing around her head as she paced as if they had a will of their own -- I tried not to laugh. George spared me a look that begged for help, but I was busy minding my own business. "How could you expect me to just up and leave."

George, with a suitcase in hand, offered his girlfriend a nonchalant grin. It didn't go so well. "Blake, it's just that the holidays are coming, and Mum wants us all there. You have been invited to come with us, as we are aware of your situation."

I stifled a snicker and continued to listen to them bicker as I skipped to the other room, collecting my papers to my arms. In the other room, Blake said something about having responsibilities at St. Mungo's. Stacking my books and papers into a suitcase, I stopped at the small, green book that held so many memories of the past couple of years.

It was bittersweet.

Sporting a soft smile, I opened to page I had committed to memory. This book of letters that I had never managed to say aloud to Elle, had been a pivotal point in it all. It was strange to think about how far we had come from that time. Our problems seemed so small.

I ran my forefinger down the lines of rebellious, messy, and interesting scrawl that belonged to my fiancée, trying to figure out where her mind had been when she was scribbling this angry, short letter to me.

Dear Fred,

  You want to talk? Let's talk. -E

I missed her.

"Fred!" George stormed into the back office, the wooden door banging against it's frame as Blake followed behind him. "Tell this woman that I merely want her to come into hiding with me because I want her safe."

"Fred!" Blake huffed with a mimicking tone, "tell this man that I merely have a job as a Healer to help protect those against the crap that's going on in this bloody world and I would appreciate it if he understood that."

With a sigh, I snapped the little book shut and placed it into the suitcase. Turning on my heel, I pointed an accusatory finger at both my brother and his girlfriend. "Look, you both are a couple of tossers." George and Blake both waited for me to continue as I snapped the latches on my case. Sporting a raised brow, I grinned and shrugged my shoulders. "That's all I wanted to say."

"Blancora Hall," George lowered his tone, grabbing her attention -- and mine as well, for that matter. Blake scowled at her full name being used, but allowed George to take her hands. "I love you, you know that. And I just want you to know that --"

"-- He would feel a lot better if you were safe," I mentioned, supporting my brother.

"Precisely, Fred. Mum just wants to make sure you are all right. And, you don't even need to 'go into hiding' with us --"

"-- Just for the holidays." I added, earning a thumbs-up from George that I had decided to join his side. As if I had ever left it.

Blake reached out a dark hand and lightly grabbed George's cheek, throwing him and I off due to the grin on her lips. "Awe, Georgie. I know why you wanted me to do this. It's just nice to hear it, Porridgie." George rolled his eyes as she kissed his cheek. "I'll come, but no promises for how long!"

Once she released his face, Blake's eyes lit up and she did an odd little dance -- one where she slid her feet up and down the floor boards while waving her hands in the air -- and cheered. "This is going to be fuuun! I'll go pack."

George and I watched as she bounded up the stairs to the flat, humming a tune under her breath as she did. As soon as the flat door behind her shut tight, George turned to me and shook his head. "Mental."

"You love it."

"That I do, Freddie."

I offered my brother a wry huff, in the guise of a laugh. Changing my mind, I unlatched my suitcase and yanked the little green book out of it, once again snapping the case shut. Tucking the book in my arm, I motioned towards the door. "I'm going to step out for a bit. Get some air. Tell me when she's ready, yeah?"

"Yeah," George agreed.

It was a new moon tonight. That was the first thing I noticed as I stepped out into the night, feeling the cold latch onto my bones. I watched the stars blink down at me, peeking through the clouds, and I thought of the night I had proposed to Elle. I found myself worrying about where she was and what she was doing. It was a pastime of mine.

Looking up at the stars, I felt closer to her than I had in too long.

ELLE'S POV :

"Elizabeth Rose Granger, will you do me the immense honour of being my partner in crime, my colleague, my lover, my friend, and my wife, forever?"

I could practically hear Fred's voice in my mind as I thought back to that night. I thought back to how scared I had been and I considered how much I still lived with certain fears, even now.

I gnawed on a piece of dry skin on my bottom lip as I fiddled with the beautiful ring on my finger. This absence from Fred won't last forever, I knew that. But, it didn't make me any more patient.

I was starting to grow rather cold out in the dark, so I spared the heavens one last, long eye before murmuring 'I love you' to the thought of Fred, and pulling myself up from the ground.

In the tent, Hermione was standing over a wary Harry, her tongue jutting, just a bit, out of her mouth in concentration as her rusty sheers snip snip snipp-ed away at Harry's thick, black mess of hair.

"Oh my God," Hermione proclaimed, dropping the sheers and backing away from her project as if something just occurred to her. Harry jolted from his chair and pat the back of his head, checking for likely bald spots.

"What? What happened, Hermione?" He asked, still worried about the head of hair.

"Here, Harry," I chuckled, "spin around and I'll tell you if something happened."

Harry and Hermione both seemed surprised that I was talking once more, but didn't mention it. Harry stepped closer to me and turned his back, crouching a bit to match my height.

"Oh, no." I faked a gasp of horror. "Oh, God no."

"W-What?! Elle, what's wrong?!"

"Oh, Harry." I clutched at my chest, shaking my head. "It's... it's perfectly fine." Harry's face shifted from horrified to confused to annoyed in record time. "Obviously Hermione meant something else."

"Obviously." He crossed his arms, unhappy with my teasing. I laughed, a real, genuine laugh. It felt great, even if the moment didn't last very long.

"The Sword of Gryffindor," Hermione called us back to her epiphany as she began to leaf through her scattered pages on the desk in the middle of the tent, "it's goblin made."

"Brilliant...?" Harry and I shrugged at each other.

"No, you both don't understand. Dirt and rust have no effect on the blade, because it only takes in what makes it stronger." Hermione pointed at a place in one of the books, showing only Harry.

"Okay?" Harry prodded now, sensing Hermione was on to something. Meanwhile, I got the feeling that I was no longer in the room to them. We were back to our old tricks, it seemed.

Hermione groaned at the fact Harry wasn't catching on, but the light in her eye was enough for me to know that she enjoyed the attention. "Harry, you've already destroyed a horcrux already, right? Tom Riddles diary in the Chamber of Secrets."

"Yes, with a Basilisk fang. If you're telling me you've got one of those in that bloody bag of yours --"

"--okay but, we already assumed this, guys." I spoke up in the background. However, it seemed like neither of them heard me. Or, neither of them cared to anyway.

"Don't you see? In the Camber of Secrets, you stabbed the basilisk with the sword. It's blade is impregnated with basilisk veno--"

"--impregnated, huh?"

Ignored, once more.

"It only takes in that which makes it stronger."

"Exactly!"

With a huff, I crossed my arms across my chest and tossed myself down into an empty chair on the other side of the room. Clearly they were caught up in their own little world.

"You are brilliant, Hermione -- truly."

"You're brilliant, 'Mione," I mimicked under my breath. They ignored me either way, so it didn't make a difference. They were slowly getting to the main problem, which Hermione had already made clear the first day we were gone, so I was calmly waiting in the background. "But there's one problem--"

The calm in my heart quickly vanished when the light in the tent behind me went out, diminishing the atmosphere with it.

It was dark for a few, long moments. I found myself fumbling in the dark for the lantern at my feet, but it was still hot and burned my hand as I touched the side of it.

"Ouch!" I yelped, pulling my hand back and shaking it as the others looked for the source of the darkness.

"It was stolen," Ron's voice can from the dark, shocking Hermione and Harry, but not necessarily me. I mean, he had been playing with the lighter that Dumbledore had given him for weeks now, so it seemed like a good explanation.

I was glad Ron was the one to mention it, as it seemed rather obvious -- and because Harry and Hermione had been ignoring my input.

Ron stalked into the midst of the room and clicked the lever on his lighter once more, allowing some light back into the room. "Yeah, I'm still here. So's Elle, though you seem to have forgotten." I bowed my head. It was nice that Ron was sticking up for me. "But, you two carry on. Don't let us spoil the fun."

With a scoff, Harry snapped the book they had been looking at shut and turned to look at Ron and I. "What's wrong, then?"

"Wrong? Wrong?" Ron shrugged, motioning in the air with his hands. "Nothing's wrong, mate. Not according to you, anyway."

Hermione made eye contact with me, as if hoping I would say something to lighten the mood. However, I wasn't about to. "Ron is right. You both are acting as if everything is just 'going according to the plan', but we aren't doing anything."

"Elle, you can't be serious," Hermione whispered, standing from her spot.

"No, Hermione, it's all right." Harry nodded to Ron, who looked at me with an appreciative hardness to his eyes. "If you've got something to say, don't be shy. Spit it out." There was a bite to Harry's tone.

"All right I'll spit-it-out, but don't expect me to be grateful just because you've got a bit of information on another damned thing we've got to find."

"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for."

"Yeah, I thought I did too."

Harry got up, stalking towards the other side of the tent where Ron and I were, getting heated at the annoyed expression Ron was making. "So what part of it isn't living up to your expectations? Did you think we'd be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you'd be back to Mummy by Christmas?"

"Of course not," Ron scoffed, "I just thought that after all this time we would have actually achieved something."

Harry nodded at me and adjusted his glasses. "And this is how you feel, Elle?"

In that moment, I felt rather picked on as all eyes were on me. Mustering up what I had been thinking over the course of the past few days of solitude, I began speaking before thinking over what I was actually saying. "I mean... We thought you knew what you were doing, Harry."

Ron knew what I was saying and followed up with it. "We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do; we thought you had a real plan!"

Hermione lightly, but quickly made her way to the midst of the room, standing beside me. I could feel her eyes burning on the side of my face, prodding me with questions about why I hadn't stood up for Harry, and why I was sticking with Ron.

"I've told you everything that Dumbledore had told me. And, in case you haven't noticed, guys, we've found a horcux already."

"So what?" I blurted, as Ron interjected:

"Yeah, and we're about as close to finding the rest of them as finding the thing to get rid of them, aren't we?!"

"I'm sorry, 'Mione, Harry," I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "But I don't understand the fucking blind faith you have in the man! How can you seriously think he had a plan? It doesn't look like he did to me!"

"Elle, Ron, please," Hermione protested, eyes wide as she placed a hand on my shoulder. I ducked my eyes and felt my anger subside a bit, but not much. I was more frustrated than anything.

Hermione reached for the locket around Ron's neck, but he pushed her back. Once more she scrabbled for it, pleading with him to remove it. "Please, Ron, please take the horcrux off. You wouldn't be saying any of this if you didn't have it on all day!"

"You don't know why we listen to that radio every night, do you?" Ron accused, grouping me and him together once more. "To make sure that we don't hear Ginny's name. Or Fred, or George, or Mum!"

Harry crumpled up the page of paper that was in his hand, tossing it to the side. "What, YOU THINK I'M NOT LISTENING TOO? You think I don't know how this feels?!"

Hermione squeezed my hand. I squeezed it back.

"NO! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW THIS FEELS! Elle and I? We have people! YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAD; YOU HAVE NO FAMILY!"

I could see the extra pang of hurt that Ron's words sliced through Hermione, as he included me and not her; but, he was right. 'Hermione had no one outside of this group. Ron and I? ...We did.'

I quickly regretted thinking those words. 'That was cruel, why would I think that?'

Harry lunged at Ron and tackled him to the ground. Taken aback, I hobbled with my splint away from the scene, as the boys rolled around the dirt floor, shoving and hitting each other. "Oh, shit!"

"STOP! STOP IT!" Hermione yelled pulling at Harry, fearing for Ron.

"Knock it off, you fucking idiots!" I kicked at the mesh of bodies until they broke up, Ron pushing Harry off of him and them both standing tall and fuming, but separated as Hermione seemed to take a defensive stance in front of Ron.

"YOU WANNA LEAVE?! GO THEN!" Harry shouted, pointing towards the outside of the tent where a steady rain was beginning to fall.

The four of us stared for a moment, just feeling the charge of the room. Ron pulled the locket off from around his neck and threw it to the ground with a clunk. Hermione tagged by his side as he gathered up his few belongings, just a duffle bag and his coat.

Seeing Ron and Harry fight like that put my perspective back in the right place. I had usually been such a neutral person. And, the fact that I had let myself take such a side in this... it disappointed me. I felt like I had wronged Hermione.

"Ron," she murmured, "Ron please."

"And you?" Ron demanded, turning on his heel to peer directly at Hermione, stern faced and waiting. "Are you coming, or are you staying?"

Flabbergasted. Shocked, even. That would be the expression I would label my sister's face as she listened to what Ron was asking of her. Her biggest mistake was turning to look at Harry before answering Ron.

Ron shouldered his rucksack and sneered at Harry, not even stopping to look me in the eye. I'm glad he didn't. I wasn't sure what he would find in my gaze. "Fine. I get it. I saw you two the other night."

I felt really uncomfortable in that moment. Hermione's eyes began to well up as she took a step closer to him, shaking her head in quiet protest. "Ron, that? That was nothing. I swear."

Ron scoffed and fled the tent, Hermione quick on his heels, calling out his name. Without missing a beat, I was outside in the rain as well, watching Hermione chase Ron down. But, before she could grab his hand, he Apparated away.

I wasn't sure if I should have approached my sister in that moment or not. Hermione simply stood there, arms limp at her sides as she stared at the spot Ronald used to be.

Grabbing my wand from my coat pocket, I trudged to the place Ron had been and offered Hermione a reassuring grin, feeling like I was partly to blame for encouraging this. "Don't worry, sis. I'll go convince him about how much of a prick he and I have been... I'll be back with him in no time."

Hermione rubbed at her red nose, as a tear streaked down her cheek. "Elle, I don't think that's a good --"

"-- He'll be groveling for your forgiveness, trust me."

"Elle, really, please don't leave --"

With one last wink, I too was gone.

It's too bad I never actually found Ron. I found someone else instead.

------

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