The Eighth Weasley

The Eighth Weasley - Chapter Nineteen

LIKE MINDS

Notes: I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen in this chapter, since it isn't one of the more important ones, so I think it's just going to develop as we go along, so I apologise for the rambling nature that it will doubtless have.

Also, I've put together a Harry potter crossover list, if anyone is interested in joining - its muy quiet at the moment, but it'll be where all future HP crossovers are aired in my case: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hpcrossover

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"Willow, you decent?"

Before the youngest Weasley managed to get a reply out, the door opened and what looked like an enormous pile of books staggered in the door. Willow sat up on her bed, where she had been lying, reading, staring at the books.

"If you're a book-demon, I know how to destroy you," she threatened, then grinned as Hermione managed to negotiate the pile onto the floor without dropping any of the enormous volumes.

"Just thought you might want to catch up on some light reading," the brown-haired witch puffed, her face flushed. Like Willow, she was wearing a casual pair of jeans and a shirt, the sleeves of which she had rolled up.

Willow slid off the bed, kneeling down beside the pile of books that was easily as tall as she was. "Couldn't you just have magicked them up the stairs?" she suggested, as Hermione sat down heavily beside her.

"Willow," the Muggle Studies Professor stated, still drawing deep breaths. "When someone has just lugged a pile of books up the stairs, you don't tell them what they should have done, okay?"

"Same as it was in Sunnydale, then?" Picking up the topmost book, she studied the cover, smiling a little. "Dark Arts..." Opening the thick cover, the smell of old leather rising from it, she studied the text. "Vampires, werewolves, incubus, succubus..." Her finger ran down the index. "Know, in love with, avoided, met..."

"So we can skip the dark arts for now?"

"Unless you know something about werewolves that I don't?" Willow challenged.

Hermione's nose wrinkled as she considered this. "They turn into wolves on three consecutive nights of the lunar cycle?"

"Having babysat a wolf for those nights, I know it."

"Er...werewolves don't classify as true wolves."

"And why is that?" Willow's eyes were dancing.

"Because," Warming to her subject, Hermione motioned to the book. "They still have a somewhat human form, therefore it is usually identified as a creature of dark origins, because the first was caused by a dark spell gone wrong?"

Willow looked impressed. "I didn't know the first came from a spell. I always thought it was a demon."

"I think it could have been a little of both, if my research proves correct," Moving to sit a little closer to Willow, she opened the pages to the werewolf chapter. "There's something in here about the demon aspect, but there are other books that refer to a man who was trying to bind a demon by dark magic. Only, it ended up being bound to him on the nights of the full moon and the condition was passed when the demon bit other humans."

"Oz, my boyfriend, was bitten by his nephew, and I don't think his nephew could do any dark magic."

Looking at her, Hermione inquired, "Why?"

"He was teething at the time."

"A baby was a werewolf?"

"Yeah. We still don't know how it happened, but Oz took me to his uncle's one summer and I got to see him, when they both turned into wolves." She sighed. "They were so cute, when wolfy Oz looked after the baby wolf."

"I've heard werewolves called a lot of things, but I don't think cute is one of them."

Willow grinned. "Its kind of like having an oversized puppy," Hermione gaped at her. "All right, an overgrown puppy who could tear you limb from limb, but still a big, fuzzy puppy."

"So...uh...you won't need any advice about werewolves, then?" Laughing, Willow shook her head. "Okay...vampires?"

"Staked a lot of them."

"Succubus and Incubus? Grindylows? Kappas?"

"Know repellent charms for those kind of things, I think."

Hermione scratched her chin. "All right, we'll leave dark arts just now...how about potions? Can you make them?" A worried look crossed the red head's face. "Want to try out some of the simple ones?"

"Sure!" With a wave of her hand, Willow summoned her cauldron and conjured a ball of flame beneath it. "So, do you have ingredients and things? I haven't got any of mine yet."

Withdrawing her wand from her pocket, Hermione waved it in the direction of the door. "Accio bag!"

Maybe what flew through the door was classed as a bag by Hermione, but - to Willow - it looked like the kind of enormous backpack that campers used, with straps and lines everywhere, tying the bulky pockets closed.

"Uh...you...you came prepared, didn't you?"

Digging out her own cauldron, Hermione grinned. "Well, if I'm going to help you get warmed up for Hogwarts, I thought I might as well bring everything I would consider it normal for a person to know and use."

A pile of bottles rolled out onto the floor and Willow picked a few of them up.

"Basilisk venom? Powdered Phoenix talon? Boiled bullfrog eyes?" She raised her eyes to the older witch. "Aren't these only used in more advanced potions?"

Hermione met her gaze levelly, brown eyes twinkling. "Well, if you want to make shrinking potions, instead of something that will definitely stop your twin brothers putting dungbombs in your bed, we can..."

"You know," the red head grinned. "I like the way you think."

The older witch smiled serenely. "I suspected you might."

***

Feminine laughter rang out from the uppermost bedroom in the Burrow.

Molly smiled, as she bustled around the kitchen below, the sound of her daughter a joy to her. However, Ron was sitting at the kitchen table looking distinctly ill-at-ease, his eyes flicking towards the source of the laughter.

"We shouldn't have introduced them, mum."

His mother glanced around at him. He had avoided the upper floors of the house since Hermione had arrived and Molly had noticed - even at the dinner - he had barely spoken to his former girlfriend.

"Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"

Ron studied a knot in the table. "Nothing."

"I'm your mother. I can tell something is wrong."

Her youngest son looked up, his smile a strained one. "I...I didn't need to see her again, this soon after..." he trailed off, his attention wandering back to the table, his fingertips tracing around the black knot.

"This soon after...?"

"After we split up, mum," he sighed. "I know we agreed to it and that we should stay friends, but still, seeing her again, like this..."

Molly pursed her lips. Sitting down opposite her son, she reached over and took his hands between hers. "Ron, listen to me, I know this sounds hard, but you have to get over what you had. Its gone, has been since You-Know-Who was defeated."

"But I loved her, mum."

"Loved, yes," she gazed at him in a way that only a mother can, the way that suggests everything, but reveals nothing. "You have to remember that. You did love her. You loved her. The past tense. I went through the same thing when I was sixteen, going on seventeen."

"You did?"

Molly nodded. "Your father lost his best friend for a long time because of me."

"Dad?" Ron stared at her incredulously. "What? Were they rivals or something?"

The plump witch chuckled. "Rivals and best friends in everything since their first year at Hogwarts," she said. "They started mock-fighting over me in third year. I was incredibly close to Rupert and he was the one who introduced me to your father."

"Rupert? The Slayer's Watcher?" Ron blurted out in shock.

"Yes, Rupert Giles, the watcher," Molly sighed. "Probably the first person I ever fell in love with." A pensive look crossed her face. "Looking back, had Rupert asked me, I would probably have married him...I adored him and he me, but we acted more like friends, much like you and Hermione did during your school terms."

Ron nodded, understanding what that felt like. "Then your father came along, and as a joke, asked me on a date, much to Rupert's amusement and he...he...well, he sort of swept me off my feet," Her eyes wandered to the ring on her ring finger. "Before I knew it, we were secretly seeing one another, whenever we could, despite the fact that I was still seen as Rupert's girl by everyone else. Neither of us could face telling Rupert, we both loved him too dearly to hurt him that way."

"How did he find out?" Ron asked, with rapt fascination. He had always assumed that his oddly-matched parents had been together forever, never imagining that a third party would become involved.

Molly gazed at her hands for a long time before answered slowly. "He was to be taken from the school for Watcher training," She raised her eyes to her son. "He came to Arthur, another friend of their and me first, told us. He asked if he could speak to me alone and then, he told me..." She pressed a hand to her mouth, her vision blurring with tears as she remembered. "He told me that he loved me and wanted to be with me, if I could wait for him."

"And you told him?"

His mother nodded, seemingly unable to form a verbal response. In her mind's eye, she could still clearly see the second that Rupert's heart had shattered, the disbelief and grief in his green eyes as she told him that she loved another.

Ron squeezed his mother's fingers. "But you still got dad and all of us..."

"A whole Quidditch team and then some," she agreed, smiling faintly.

What she didn't say was the expression she saw in Rupert's eyes, the day they had met up with the group from America, in Diagon Alley: He still bore a flame for her, she could tell, and she wished it wasn't so, that he could have found someone to make him as happy as she was.

"Me and Hermione...we weren't proper boyfriend and girlfriend, anyway...I think."

"Oh?"

Ron nodded. "I love her to bits and everything, but she's too smart for me," He gave an amicable shrug. "As long as I don't have to see her for the next ten years, I think I can cope fine with her being friends with Will."

"It will get easier, Ron, I promise."

"Yeah...now, I just need to think about finding someone else."

Molly smiled. "You're not the only one who does."

That seemed to cheer Ron up a little.

"As soon as she gets a boyfriend, that's it!" He slammed his hand down on the table as emphasis. "I'm taking the first good-looking, funny and not-as-smart-as-Hermione girl that comes along."

Molly chuckled, getting back to her feet and returning to the dinner that was cooking in the oven, adding a huge pan of potatoes, as she glanced back at her plotting son.

All her precious, barking-mad little boys, so much like their father in personality.

Ron and Percy were the only ones who were single at present.

They didn't hold out much hope for Percy, considering he worked, ate and slept, with a little breathing here and there. Molly secretly hoped that the new secretary that she and Arthur had planted at the office would distract their third son.

She could even seduce him on top of his desk, while in a meeting with the Minister of magic, for all Molly cared, as long as her little boy didn't work himself into an early grave.

As for Ron...

She smiled slightly.

He was too similar to his father and with that in mind, she knew he would be fine.

***

"Eurgh! What's that stink?" The voices of the older twins rang down the hall, their footsteps clattering up the stairs towards Willow's room. The door was flung open, the twins stalking into the room.

Hermione and Willow were lying on their stomachs, side-by-side on the bed, sharing a huge book. Both of them looked up at Fred and George, who were looking like they were somewhere between yelling and being sick.

"Did you put something in our room?"

The two witches exchanged looks, then turned to the twins and - cupping their chins in their upraised hands - gave the pair matching indignant glares. "We don't know what you're talking about."

"Blimey..." George backed behind his brother. "That's just creepy."

"Did you do it?"

"Do what? Plant stink bombs?" Hermione asked, looking genuinely affronted. "We wouldn't do anything like that! That's a horrible thing to say!"

George waved an accusing finger down at her. "You put some kind of lingering stink bomb in there!"

"It might have been Ron!" Willow looked shocked by the accusation.

Fred and George exchanged looks. "Ron wouldn't have the brains or the nerve to come up with one of those kind of bombs. It takes a steady hand and knowing your potions better than you should."

"Still, I don't see what that's got to do with us. We're just innocent witches, after all. And I'm a teacher and you know teachers wouldn't do anything like that," Hermione said, resting her head on Willow's shoulder, both witches hard-pressed to smother their laughter.

Fred sighed. "There are times I hate smart arses like you two."

"Thanks," Hermione said sourly.

"Sorry," Willow put in apologetically. Her lips were pressed together and she did look sincere. "I just wanted to get you back for all the times you left dungbombs in here and made the place smell bad." She pulled a face. "I really thought about going back to America because it was so gross and I thought it was just the room."

The twins looked somewhat mollified. "Er...thanks, Willow. And sorry about those bombs as well...we meant them in the best possible way."

Willow raised a hand. "By the way, if I were either of you, I wouldn't wear your green sweatpants or your black sneakers in the next three days, if you don't want to sprout claws and a tail."

Hermione started to say something, but Willow nudged her, still smiling.

"I knew there was a reason I hated having a sister." Fred muttered. He faked a smile back at her. "Thank you for ruining our best clothes, Willow. Now, we'll just have to go and change into something less...best."

Both the twenty-two year-olds backed out of the door, shutting it behind them and Hermione immediately turned to Willow. "I thought you said you weren't going to tell them about the booby traps."

Casting an innocent look at her friend, Willow rolled onto her back and grinned at the ceiling. "Whoops..." she said without a trace of guilt. "I got confused. Its the blue pant and blue sneakers they shouldn't wear..."

"You sneaky little witch!" Hermione laughed.

Willow polished her nails on her chest smugly. "Thank you."

Unified yells of pain and surprise rang from the room one floor down and both young women exchanged looks.

Raising herself on her elbow, Willow grinned. "Oops."

***

"George, you are aware that you have a tail?"

"No, mum," Scowling as he sat down, George tried to ignore that his new appendage seemed to have a mind of it's own, as it coiled around the legs of his chair. "I had no clue about it."

Molly glanced down at Willow and Hermione, who were already sitting at the table, smiling innocently across at the twins. "Do you two know anything about this little thing?" she asked.

"Us, mom?" Willow had the innocent-eyes to perfection. "Hermione's been helping me learn stuff for potions, charms and transfiguration today, just the basic stuff, so I know what the Professors are talking about."

"And nothing to do with giving your brother a tail?"

"Or clawed feet," Fred added, clumping loudly into the kitchen. every set of eyes dipped under the table, to see Fred's feet swollen into scaly, lizard-like feet with four-inch-long claws scratching the tiles on the floor.

Ron was sniggering behind his hand.

"Mrs Weasley," Hermione said sincerely, brown eyes large and innocent. "Do you honestly believe I would teach your daughter such horrid things? She needs all the help she can get to catch up." She shot a dirty look at the twins. "They were probably coming up with more of Weasleys Wizard Wheezes."

Fred started to open his mouth, then - just as quickly - clapped it shut.

Their mother knew nothing about them being chief researchers and co-semi-part-managers of Zonko's Joke shop and anything he tried to use in an argument could be manipulated by the fact that everyone else at the table did know.

Molly studied the two girls, who gazed back at her, straight-faced and wide-eyed. It was the overuse of the innocence act which convinced her. Still, it was nice to see someone in her family get one over on the pranksters.

"Well," she sighed. "I'm afraid that since we don't know who did it, we'll just have to wait until it wears off..."

"But mum! We know they did it and they probably have the antidote!"

Molly settled herself at the end of the table. "Like I said, we don't know they did it, so you'll just have to deal with having claws and tails," she paused, then added. "And if you so much as scratch my floor, you won't sit for a week, adult or not."

Mumbling, Fred and George turned their attention to their meals.

As soon as they looked down, their mother glanced over the table, and - meeting Willow and Hermione's eyes - Molly winked with a smile, which was returned by the two witches. She had always known that Hermione would be able to teach her daughter some interesting spells and potions.

It was just amusing that Fred and George were the unfortunate test subject of the very successful experiments.