An Unlikely Coven

*

"Dad! Mom! Planning on opening up the door anytime soon?"

Ron Weasley wearily pulled himself off the couch. Two o' clock in the morning, he thought as he passed by the hall clock. This must be a new record- Bobby waited this long to come inside and get a pillow. "Bobby, honestly, how many times have I told you to get your damned pillow before you go outside to sleep? You do this every time....."

"Three thousand, five hundred and seventy-two, Dad," Bobby said mischievously, running up the stairs to his bedroom. "By the way, did you know that I can make the stars collide?" he yelled down the stairs.

Ron blinked a few times. "You can do what?"

"I can make the stars crash into each other. It's totally awesome. You shoulda seen it." There was the sound of a large pile of clothing being pushed off the bed onto the floor, followed by a grunt of significant effort.

"Keep it down, Bobby, you'll wake up your mother, for God's sake." Ron walked into the kitchen, and started brewing a pot of coffee. I'm never going to get back to sleep after this, why should I bother? he thought. "She'll have a heart attack of she wakes up, and walks into your room to find all of your crap all over the floor."

"I promise, I'll clean it all up tomorrow, Dad. I swear on a stack of Bibles." Bobby came running back down the stairs.

"Bobby, we haven't even gone to church in years. I doubt that your word on the Bible will count for much," Ron said, grabbing Bobby in headlock. "Noogie attack!"

"Aaaugh! Stop!" he said, laughing. "I'm not a little kid anymore, I'm almost as tall as you! All right, I'll be back whenever I wake up, 'kay? Night, Dad," Bobby called, running out the door, back into the Potter's backyard.

"Night, kiddo," Ron called after him.

That kid.....sometimes, I really don't know what to do with him.

He's so much like Fred and George. Those mannerisms.....it's uncanny. Strange to think that he's so much like people that he's never met.

He should meet them. And Percy, and Charlie, and Bill, hell, Mum and Dad, too. God, they don't even know that they have a grandson. Two, in fact. Can you believe that one's a Malfoy? Ginny and Draco.....sometimes, I can hardly believe it myself. Mum would have a heart attack, on the spot. Dad would think that we've all been possessed.

They think that their two youngest children just fell off the face of the Earth.

God. I hate this. I know how much pain they've all gone through. I hate knowing that I'm the cause of their hurt. Yeah, just up and left after graduation, never a word, never dropped a line, never told them a thing. They must think that I'm the absolute lowest lifeform possible. Running off, taking Ginny with me, never even letting her graduate from Hogwarts. Never saying a damn word about anything.

They must hate me. But only, if they knew.....

We did it to save their lives. We all ran to save not only ourselves, but everyone we loved. Love. I may not have seen anyone in my family- with the notable exception of Ginny, of course- for twenty years, but I still love them as much as I did the day I left. Nothing about that has changed, in my perspective. However, I'm sure the exact opposite is true for them.

He pulled the coffee pot out of the stand, and poured a cup.

They probably despise me. Ron, the delinquent son who packed all his bags and ran. Ran from nothing. The Dark Lord had been defeated, if anything, it was the safest period in wizarding history. Ran from a world that was just showing him all its possibilities.

Ran from a family that loved him, his sister. Ran from a mother that, while strict, watched his every move to keep him safe. From a father who worked himself to the bone, every day, to put food on the table for him. From five brothers, five guys to look out for him. Took his baby sister along with him.

Talk about devastation. Death really would have been better, now that I think about it. At least they'd know what happened to us, they'd know that it couldn't be fixed, they could concentrate on getting over it, past it, on with their lives.

But no. They can't get over it. They can't get past it. For all they know, their son and daughter are still out there somewhere, and that hope will keep them looking. They can't get over anything if there is nothing final to get over. As long as there is that chance, they can't stop hoping.

God. Although I hate this new development- the thought of putting Bobby or Joey or Linda in any sort of danger makes me sick- it opens up another door. A door to the past.

A door that leads to my family. If the kids do manage to defeat Nilock, that means that the danger is past. We will have no reason to hide anymore. And Ginny and I can go back to our family. We all can go back to our families, tell them what happened, share stories about what the hell we've all been doing for the last twenty years. It won't be like old times, obviously. There's a lot of emotional damage, a lot of open wounds that need to heal.

But it'll be better than this. Better for everyone.

We'll be a family again. Kind of like we were before all this, before the shit hit the fan.....

"You're kidding me."

"Ron, I'm not joking." Harry Potter groaned. "I know, it sounds unbelievable, but it's true!"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Yeah. You're expecting me to believe that Colin Creevey is basically a human Tupperware container for You-Know-Who? Did you inhale anything today in Potions that you shouldn't have?"

"RON! Would I lie?" Harry stamped the floor of their dorm with his foot.

Ron thought this over for a few moments. "No, Harry, you wouldn't lie. But that doesn't mean that Malfoy wouldn't lie, either."

"You know, Ron, under ordinary circumstances, I'd agree with you," Harry replied. "But this time, it's different. Malfoy would enjoy tripping us up, making us look like fools in front of the whole school, getting points taken from Gryffindor. Petty stuff like that. But this is majorly different. This is serious. This is something that could affect the lives of everyone in the wizarding world, and it's something that Malfoy would obviously know a great deal about. His father being evil and all."

"Malfoy's pretty evil himself," Ron pointed out.

Harry flopped down on his bed. "To a certain extent, yes. He's quasi-evil, really. Typical Slytherin. But I don't think he has the stomach to do something truly horrible, like lie about stuff like this."

Ron drew in a deep breath before responding. "All right, Harry. Since you seem to be so convinced, I'll go along with you. But what are we supposed to do about it?"

"I don't know, Ron, and neither does Malfoy. That's the thing, really." Harry flipped his bangs out of his eyes. "We have to think of something to stop him. If-"

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. "Hello? Is anyone alive in there?"

"Hey, Hermione," said Ron, opening the door. "Don't worry, I was just leaving.....I've got to go talk to Lavender.....you two can be alone," he added, as she walked over and sat down next to Harry.

"Ron!" Both Harry and Hermione blushed thirty different shades of red.

He laughed as he ran out the door, dodging the pillow thrown at him by Hermione.

"You might need this!" he yelled, throwing it back.

*

"God, Joey, what number cup of coffee are you on?" Linda raised her head sleepily.

"Since this morning? I think seven. Can't be too sure," Joey replied, eyes wide. "I really don't understand what you guys see in sleeping, when there's such a great remedy for it at your friendly local Starbucks."

Bobby looked up from that week's issue of Rolling Stone, which he'd brought out for a bit of bedtime reading. "Joey, I swear to God, you have caffeine flowing through your veins rather than blood."

"And since when are you so.....awake?" asked Linda sarcastically.

"Since I slept for a few hours while you and this guy were scrawling graffiti across the sky," responded Bobby, returning to the article on the new movies coming out. "Say, anyone want to go see the re-release of Stand By Me with me this weekend? Thirtieth anniversary, you know....."

"Can't, Bobby. In case you haven't been notified, we have to save the world." Joey took another gulp of coffee. "Somehow, I'm thinking we're all booked up for awhile."

"Give me some of that." Linda plucked the steaming container out of Joey's hands. "Yeah. I don't think we're going to have actual teenage lives for a while yet."

"Linda," said Bobby quietly, "I don't think that we're going to have normal teenage lives ever again."

"We never had normal lives to start with," said Joey, correcting his cousin. "I mean, come on. Look at our parents for a minute. My father's a thirty-six year old PR guy who also happens to be obsessed with Pink Floyd. My mother is a tea-leaf reader in the basement of a bookstore in the city. oh, and we can't forget the fact that they're a witch and a wizard," he added.

"I always did wonder why Aunt Gen- or Aunt Ginny, that'll take some getting used to- 's predictions were always so accurate," interjected Bobby. "My mother is a caterer, and for some reason, she's always getting calls to do bar mitzvahs and brises. So of course, everything has to be kosher! Nothing with milk can mix with anything of meat. No shellfish, no pork. So she's always running around to these little specialty stores, asking for the weirdest food. And my dad.....well, he spends most of his time on the computer, installing all these little gizmos to make it go faster. Spends an awful lot of time talking to himself. Strange guy."

"Bobby, how would you feel if you hadn't seen your family in twenty years? You'd be a little weird yourself," chided Linda. "Not that you aren't weird enough already. Let's see, my mother dresses like a gypsy, and writes these great stories that she never finishes. She gets tired of them and moves on to the next big thing. And as for my father.....he's a humungous hockey freak who takes us all out to dinner every time the Bruins win a game. Or when we win. Remember what happened when our team won the Tri-County Crown?" Bobby and Joey nodded; they played left and right wing, respectively, on their high school's ice hockey team. Linda was, of course, the goalie.

"I didn't think we were going to get home that night," recalled Joey. "All the way to New York City and back, in the middle of the night!"

"Mom almost killed him. She thought that we were all just going for a nice little drive into Boston for dinner. Remember the look on her face when Dad got on the Turnpike and announced, 'Hang on, it's gonna be a long, strange trip!'?" Linda giggled. "I thought she was going to rip the steering wheel out of his hands!"

"By the time we got to exit 9, our mothers had calmed down considerably," Bobby smiled. "Then, he goes and turns onto I-91 Southbound....."

"That was a sight," Joey put in, snickering. "Linda's mom freaking out, my mom freaking out, my aunt freaking out, and our dads having a blast freaking them all out."

"Do you ever get the impression that they're just kids sometimes?" asked Linda thoughtfully. "Like they never really grew up?"

"I guess," Joey hesitated, "that's one way of putting it."

*

"They sure said it." Lavender Brown put down her cup of tea. "I really hope that this doesn't slide off, you know?"

"Relax, Lav," replied her sister-in-law. "This roof was made for teacups to sit on it. Along with people, of course."

"Funny, I always thought that roofs were designed to give people shelter, not a place to sit." Lavender looked at her watch. "Goodness, it's almost two-thirty! Really, the neighbors must think we're freaks."

"Lav, hon, we are the neighbors," responded Ginny. "And we are freaks. Or have you not been listening to our children for the last half-hour?" She grinned. "They do have us pegged awfully well."

"Especially the freak part," Lavender muttered. "Is there any particular reason that we're on the roof of your house at two-thirty in the morning? Other than one of your strange urges?"

"No, not really." Ginny took another sip of her tea. "Well, Draco's being overcontemplative, just staring out the window at the sky, muttering to himself. And, as you know, my dear brother is doing much the same thing, except he's sitting at the kitchen table. And since neither of us is going to get much sleep tonight....."

"Should we call Hermione? Although I don't see her as the type to drink tea on your roof in the middle of the night. Actually, I don't see myself as the type to drink tea on your roof in the middle of the night, either." Lavender sighed.

"I called already." Ginny started playing with one of the shingles. "No one's picking up. I imagine that they're both asleep."

"Or they're just not picking up, as is usually the case with those two," Lavender picked up her teacup once again. "Honestly, it's a wonder that Linney's an only child....."

"Lav!" Ginny scolded.

"Well, it's true," retorted Lavender. "It has been, ever since we were in school."

"The same goes for you and my brother, dearie," Ginny reminded her. "Don't act completely innocent."

Lavender laughed. "You have a point. God, can you imagine what life would have been like if I'd married Seamus Finnigan like my parents wanted me to?"

"Well, you wouldn't be sitting on my roof, drinking tea right now, that's for sure."

*

"Remus, why have you been staring out the window for the last hour?" Minerva McGonagall looked up from The New England Journal of Medicine.

"For some reason, Lavender and Ginny have been sitting on the roof, drinking tea, watching the kids talk to each other," he responded. "That's not something you see every day, you know."

"Believe me, there have been enough weird things transpiring in this neighborhood today. I really don't need to see people on the roof. Neither do you."

"You have a point, Minerva," Remus said, yawning. "It's been a long day. I'm going up to bed. Good-night." He left the room.

I've witnessed enough weird things in my life- all fifty-six years of it- to last me several lifetimes, Minerva thought. After this life, forget it- hello, Nowheresville, Indiana.

Although, I have gotten to experience the two extremes of this world- the intrinsically magical, and the completely mundane. Right now, I'm sitting the fence between both.

I have nothing but faith in the children. They will defeat Nilock. There's no two ways about it. They are strong, and have good intentions. He is only one man, one man who could probably be killed with one flick of Linda's nonexistent wand.

Undoubtedly, the downfall of Nilock will mean that we can come out of hiding. We can return to England, return to Hogwarts, return to our true lives.....

I can only hope that Dumbledore didn't give my post to some idiot. Please, God, tell me that Severus isn't the Deputy Headmaster!

I'll never forget that day.

The day that changed all of our lives, forever.....

"Professor McGonagall! Wait up!"

Minerva stopped, halfway down the Transfigurations corridor. "Yes, Mr. Potter? Miss Granger? What is it?"

The two students sprinted the distance down the rest of the hallway. "Professor," Hermione panted out, "is there.....any way......we could speak to you in private?"

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "Miss Granger, what is so urgent?"

"Professor, please, it's highly important," was the unsolicited response from Harry.

"All right, seeing as you two are so insistent....." McGonagall led the way down to her office, followed by enthusiastic spurts of, "Oh, thank you, Professor!"

She sat down in her armchair, and motioned to two wooden student's chairs in front of the desk. Harry and Hermione quickly sat down. "Now, what is it that you needed to tell me?"

The two students looked at each other, and nodded. "I guess I'll start," said Harry. "Professor, you aren't going to believe this, but.....ah.....there's a slight problem with You-Know-Who, I believe."

"Potter, what in the name of Godric Gryffindor are you talking about?" McGonagall demanded, puzzled.

"Professor, what he means is, You-Know-Who isn't really dead," chirped Hermione. "Uh, well, his body is, but his powers aren't."

"Miss Granger, this isn't a subject to be joked about." McGonagall's face had hardened.

"We're not! We're not! Ask Malfoy! He found out....." Harry hesitated. "He found out from his father."

"What does Lucius Malfoy have to do with this? Is this some sort of elaborate prank?"

"Professor," Hermione gathered her strength, "Draco Malfoy found out, because of his father's involvement with You-Know-Who, that the Dark Lord had a spell performed on him before his death. This spell- I looked it up, it's called the Soul-Jumper- will transfer the powers of a dead man to a live man."

"I have heard of that particular spell, Miss Granger," replied McGonagall. "It is immensely complex. However, I wouldn't doubt that.....who is the person who supposedly holds all the Dark Lord's powers?"

"Uh, this is where it gets a bit tricky," stammered Harry. "This is the really unbelievable part.....Professor, we think it may be Colin Creevey."

"WHAT? Potter, I highly doubt that Creevey has the stomach to be the host of the Dark Lord."

"Professor, we're not kidding. You can ask Draco Malfoy, if you like. I don't know what he'll tell you, though." Hermione was biting her nails.

McGonagall sighed. "Really, you two, I don't know whether to believe this or not. It's not your credibility that I doubt- rather, that of Draco's. However, since you are so adamant about it, I will see Headmaster Dumbledore about this as soon as I get a free moment. Now, I believe that both of you have a class to get to....."

"Thank you," responded Hermione. She and Harry got up and left the room, whispering worriedly.

Professor McGonagall, too, left the room, carrying a stack of papers with her. She had a class of first-year Hufflepuffs, none of whom seemed to be able to change a match into a needle. She had a long hour ahead of her, she thought, as she walked back down the hallway.

"Oof!" Suddenly, she collided with something hard.

"Gosh, I'm awfully sorry, Professor McGonagall," said Colin Creevey. "I was just walking down the hallway, I didn't see you, honest!"

"That's quite all right, Mr. Creevey. Where exactly were you headed to?" McGonagall brushed the dust off her robes.

"Well, ah, you see, I had to talk to Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, and, well, I saw them walk by the Charms room that I was in, and I tried to follow them down here, but I lost them. Peeves dropped a hailstorm of bubble gum on my head," he finished ruefully.

"Why don't you go back to class, Mr. Creevey," she said.

Someone's pulling a prank on Potter and Granger, she thought. That boy can't even change a pair of glasses into a bowtie.

Wait a second.

Isn't the Charms corridor at the other end of the castle?

He was lying. Why would he lie?

Well, maybe if he had something to cover up.....

The pile of papers lay forgotten on the floor as Minerva McGonagall dashed off to the Headmaster's office.

*