FORTY-ONE

NO MORE WORDS. WE KNOW THEM ALL,
ALL THE WORDS THAT MUST BE SAID.
TERRY PRATCHETT, NATION

THE YEAR lay out for Aspen as an immense canvas, splattered with vivid possibility. After such a successful beginning, it felt positively immoral to expect anything less than splendid to follow in the upcoming three hundred or so days, and so she approached the prospect of a new year with rose-tinted glasses.

Three days had passed since, and still riding a momentous high, Aspen had invited the twins around for Alessia's final evening at home before returning to Hogwarts. It was a temporary blip in the brightness that was to become of nineteen-ninety-eight, and Aspen was trying terribly hard not to think about the possibilities of her sister returning to a school ran by torturous Death Eaters. Instead, they were distracting themselves with takeout and The Beatles, losing themselves in mindless chatter rather than vicious thought.

The evening itself was cool out with the possible threat of snow, and in a moment of sheer cheek, the girls had somehow convinced the Weasley boys to be the ones trekking out to the nearest Chinese takeaway. They'd relented easily, but perhaps only because of the gloriously adolescent gaze Alessia had sent, more dangerous than the begging of a puppy.

"I can't believe you're off again tomorrow," Aspen said, sighing thickly at the notion itself as they lounged back across their couch.

"Yeah," Alessia retorted, although she sounded more distanced than usual, her habitual reckless bravery ceasing to peek through. "Me too."

Aspen straightened, sensing the difference, the subtle change. Her sister noticed it too, looking guilty as she twisted to face the record player, watching it spin despondently against its needle.

"What's wrong?" Aspen asked, words rushing out in a flurry. "Don't you want to go back?"

"S'not that I don't," Alessia said softly, succumbing to the bubbling boiling point of her worried emotions. "I'm just not sure I should."

"But you have to. It's obligatory now," Aspen said, and then nudging the rule-following logic aside, pressed on. "Never-mind that. Why can't you? What's happened?"

Alessia's eyes scanned across her sister's face, front teeth nibbling anxiously at the soft skin of bottom lip. Her fingernails, painted deep burgundy and chipping, dug into her palm, clawing at the skin as if she could bury an escape hole through the thin flesh there.

"There's been a rumour," Alessia said quietly, mapping out her story ever so carefully ahead of her. "It's fine, I promise," she reassured, dark eyes flitting up to bore into her sister's. "It's just... they think I'm a Muggle-born."

Aspen could hardly make out the reassuring spiel that followed through the pounding rush of blood that circled her ears. What a fucking mess. She knew how this went, how Dean Thomas had been forced to go on the run under similar circumstances. This could not be happening, and wistfully, she prayed she was playing witness to some sick dream she'd conjured up inside of her brain, or even a vicious prank that Alessia had taken too far this time.

"What're we going to do?" Aspen interjected, jaw slack as she raced through possibilities that all seemed as fruitless as the next. "You can't go back, not now—"

"I have to," Alessia hissed, quieter, as if someone could be listening just past the front door. "It's compulsory for every student to attend, no matter what."

Aspen couldn't fault that, really. She knew what was happening to Ted Tonks, the only true father figure she'd ever known being hunted like prey on the run, and the thought of that happening to Alessia — to herself — was nausea-inducing.

"I won't let you go. You know what they'll do to you... to us," she said, swallowing back the protruding lump in her throat that accompanied the bile rising in her throat. "Who started the rumour? Who was it?"

"'m not sure," Alessia said, shrugging vehemently. "It only really sprung up at the end of last term, but we think it was one of those pricks that used to be in that pathetic Inquisitorial Squad," and then, at the sight of her sister's confused expression, "Slytherins."

"Of course," Aspen huffed, features darkening terribly at the thought of the smug little bastards. "Al, we have to think of something. Sending you back would be a death sentence and—"

The front door swung open, and the cheery voices of two boys weighed down with food penetrated the tension they'd only just submitted to. Fred was swinging two plastic bags filled to the brim with takeout boxes from his fingertips, and behind him, George was struggling under the vast number of beverage bottles they'd collected on their way home.

"We're home!" they called in unison, as if their noisy entrance had not been glaringly obvious from the front door's visible position in the living room.

"We'll discuss this later," Aspen murmured from the corner of her mouth, and then stood from the couch, trudging towards the kitchen to help unpack as if nothing had happened at all. She craved the distraction, taking her mind off of the impending disaster that was Alessia Andrews' fate.

Somehow, the twins had already turned the kitchen into the victim of mass destruction despite having entered it only moments prior. Takeout cartons and dishes littered every possible surface, and miraculously, they'd managed to launch half a portion of chow mein onto the fridge, letting it slither down onto the tile flooring with a satisfying slop.

"How the fuck've you managed this?" Aspen groaned, waving her wand lazily to lift the messy pile from the floor and into the awaiting bin.

"Sorry," George apologised, although once she'd turned to face him, it was evident he was anything but, as he was still grinning broadly and tossing carton lids across the room like arrows from a bow and missing the bin miserably each time.

"Oh, will you just let me sort it? Useless, the pair of you!" Aspen complained, realising she sounded awfully like their mother as she pointed her wand at the saucy stains upon the tiles and murmured, "Tergeo!"

The twins seemed pleased to be relieved of their duties all the same, and quickly exited the room, letting Aspen adopt her usual role of caregiver as she loaded their takeout onto plates and levitated them back through to the couch. It was a necessary distraction after all, and she found a comfort in forgetting the worry that was slithering, snakelike, in the pit of her stomach.

Aspen was thankful, as ever, for the presence of the twins, for they were a constant reminder of the joy that fizzled upon the surface of world destruction. For the rest of the evening, they joked and acted up like two professional comedians, lifting the spirits that had previously drooped down to dangerously low levels.

It wasn't until Alessia had slipped away to her bed uncharacteristically early that Aspen let the pale, uncertain terror grip her again, digging its nails into her skin until scarlet blood pooled at the wound's hole and miserably dripped down into her lap. Even as the boys wound down, unfathomably gleeful in their sleepy trances, Aspen was alert, senses sharper than Sinatra's in the other room as she listened for any painstaking sounds of impending disaster.

"You alright, Pen?" George spoke up as he tore his eyes away from the muggle television set, upon which repeats of a trashy soap had been playing all evening.

"Hm? Oh, yeah," she said, slipping back into a semblance of sentience as she nodded vigorously in his direction. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Dunno. You've been a bit off all night, s'all," George said, and although he granted her a wary look, he turned back to the TV, deciding that picking at her emotions was not perhaps the grandest idea.

"S'nothing," she said, and then, thinking better of the bare-faced lie, continued, scraping absentminded lines against her palm with her thumbnail. "Sort of. Well actually, it's quite a big something. I don't know what to do."

Both boys turned to her, and Fred reached for the remote instinctively, pressing down the mute button until the room fell uncomfortably silent. Aspen could feel it eating away at her, nibbling like maggots to rotting fruit, and the needling feeling of two pairs of eyes stabbing into her was enough to make her want to scream until her lungs gave out.

"Love?" Fred said, unsettled, as he reached across the couch for Aspen's hand. "What's wrong?"

She wore the grave expression like a mask, feeling less like herself than she ever had as the premature grief of it all embraced her like an old friend. There was no easy way to tell them what she knew was inevitable, and seeing their hopeful, expectant faces was a grim torture twisting like a blunt knife to the stomach.

"Alessia," she said softly, staring at her lap.

Fred's grip on her fingers tightened, and she could feel the gentle circles his thumb was tracing across the back of her hand. It was an attempt at reassurance, but it did little to fill the hollow void in her chest.

"They all think she's a Muggle-born at school. Y'know, since our parents are dead," Aspen continued bluntly. "I can't send her back to Hogwarts. It's a death sentence. But..."

"But she can't not go," George finished her sentence for her, and when she looked at him, his jaw was locked tightly, muscles working as he bit back the anger simmering in his belly.

"Right."

In Aspen's case, the twins somehow had the innate capacity of always knowing what to say. Whether it was comfort or comedy, they had a knack of choosing exactly the words that would ease her troubles, or at the very least, insist that they subsided for the time being. And yet, on that cold, grim evening in early nineteen-ninety-eight, the two Weasley boys had been struck with a peculiar silence that unsettled Aspen all the more.

"I don't know what to do," she confided, glancing behind her over the couch's back towards the door of Alessia' bedroom, as if she'd be able to hear them in her sleep. "They'll come for us if she's not on that train at eleven tomorrow."

She was rambling, really, making up noise to fill the space, because in fact, she had already made her decision. There was no conceivable way to send Alessia back to school, and yet Aspen was not so much mourning that fact at all. Indeed, she had began the process of quiet grief that came when abandoning your friends — your family — was an inevitability.

All the same, the twins nodded along solemnly, as if brewing over their own plans desperately in their silence. Aspen could almost see the cogs working behind their freckled foreheads, and she nibbled subconsciously at her bottom lip as she wondered how she would go about bursting their bubble.

"We'll get Dad to come round and put up defensive spells on the house. Bill too," Fred insisted, his grip on Aspen's hand tightening until his knuckles were ice-white and she feared the blood flow had cut off at her wrist. "They're really good at them and—"

"Fred," she cut him off, although he didn't look surprised, and George fidgeted uncomfortably in his spot across the room. "You know that's not a possibility. We have to go." Then, feeling like her heart might snap with the weight of it, she spoke again, choosing to latch onto the younger twin for she felt it might hurt less. "I'll have to resign. I'm sorry."

"Don't be ridiculous, Pen," George said, shaking his head so quickly he looked oddly like a spinning top, twisting round and round in circles. "You'll have your job no matter what."

If her heart could jump out of her chest, it would have, and she felt the tears prick at her eyes until she blinked them away, determined to make it through without dissolving into a sobbing mess as usual.

"I wish it were that simple," she said, shaking her head until long, black hair shielded her face from the desperation in their eyes that was eating her alive, "but you can't have a connection to me like that. To us," and she glanced back at Alessia's door half-heartedly.

Fred's face hardened, as if he were monstrously angry, but the soft gaze in his eyes told Aspen he was mere moments from falling apart. Not in the sobbing, emotional way that was normally applied to herself, but in that submissive, silent sense that buried him alive, leaving him shaken and ghostlike for a few hours, or days at most.

"Aspen," he said coarsely, and when she let his eyes sink into her, she could feel the heartbreak. "What exactly are you saying?"

She swallowed thickly, and finding her cheeks stiflingly hot and the feeling of horrid attention needling away at her, she wiggled herself free from Fred's hand and scrambled to her feet unsteadily. George looked almost ready to leap up and follow her, but Fred was pressed glumly back against the couch, sinking into the red fabric as if hoping it might devour him whole.

"I'll have to take us into hiding," she said finally, squeezing her eyes shut. Partly, she'd hoped it'd delay the inevitable cascade of tears that threatened to slip free, but almost more so, she was determined to avoid the tragic expression on the twins' faces. "Alessia and I, I mean."

"You can't go," Fred countered, almost a plead, but when she eventually gave in, glancing down at him, he was obviously already resigned to the inescapable.

"I've got to. Not just for you. For her."

And so the decision had been made. Before eleven the following day, the Andrews sisters would be long gone, leaving nothing but their freedom behind.

They all trudged off to bed — George had been intending on going home, but with the evening's dramatics, found he was in no proper mindset to apparate, and settled down onto the couch. Fred and Aspen sloped off to the bedroom down the hall, intending to catch at least a few hours of shut-eye, but it was a false hope, and they spent it cradling one another beneath the thin sheets, making the most of what little time it seemed they had left.

When, at almost three a.m, Fred slipped into a hazy unconsciousness, Aspen was left alone with the tyrannical reign of her own thoughts. It was a terrifying thing, being alone, and yet she supposed with the fate she'd resigned herself to, she would have to become blindingly used to it. There would be no more sidekick cozied up to her beneath the covers, ginger hair nestled against her neck, and she almost wept at that prospect alone, another bitter reminder of how fruitless life would feel without Fred.

And then there was Alessia. She'd seemed compliant earlier, knowing Hogwarts was a terrible idea, but she was temperamental at the best of times, and Aspen feared the conversation they'd have a few hours down the line. In her mind, there'd be a horrible feud, much like the incident following the wedding, and for a moment, none of it seemed worth it.

But of course, it was. She'd promised her mother all those years ago, and her grandmother too, and there was nothing in the world that would make her go back on it. Alessia would remain her top priority, and as heart-wrenching as goodbye was, it was a necessity.

So Aspen relished the final few hours in Fred Weasley's embrace, refusing to sleep a wink as he snored softly beside her. Staring at the ceiling, she imprinted the moment into her brain, storing it away as a best-kept memory. After all, for the foreseeable, that was all it could hope to be.