CHAPTER THREE
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-: seventh year :-

─ IN WHICH OPHELIA STORMS OFF

. . .

"HERE SHE IS, CROUCH, WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT..." Fred turned around as  "Oh - hey, hey, what's wrong?"

It seemed for the duration of Ophelia's conversation with Sirius and Remus, nobody in the entrance hall had moved despite the fact that she was sure that Mrs Weasley would be running a more than tight ship with her mission of making Grimmauld Place liveable. Evidently not.

If she was going to take any guess, knowing Pureblood types like Sirius Black, then he would not have returned to his ancestral home if he had any choice in the matter. Her grandfather had been like that. That was why she had grown up in the Crouch Manor alone with her father. But with Voldemort's return there came the necessity of the Order returning and... well, there they were.

All of them. Including Fred Weasley, who was still stood accusatorily on the stairs with his mother trying to push a damp cloth and feather duster into his hands.

"Nothing is wrong with me," Ophelia snapped, as she pushed passed them all, "but I'm sure they're going to be something wrong with you if you don't fuck off." Her head was turned stubbornly down, as though she suddenly found the carpet rather interesting. Alternatively, one of her worst fears had been realised in that moment as angry tears bled into the corner of her eyes and she stepped out to find a crowd of people she wanted to do nothing more than present the best of appearances to staring at her.

"I'm presume Lupin told you then, Crouch?" Moody said, pulling himself up to stand taller. His magical eye whizzed around. "It's-"

"I preferred you when my uncle locked you in a trunk." Ophelia spat, dragging herself further up the stairs. "Barty didn't like to make presumptions, and he wouldn't force me to stay in this shithole when I have a perfectly nice, perfectly clean house without any of you there."

"Now, Ophelia," Mrs Weasley stepped forward, finally pushing the duster and cloth into George's hands (who immediately threw them at Fred), "I know the news that Remus just told you must be a shock, but do you understand now that Dumbledore needed to bring you here to keep you safe?"

"No." Ophelia shook her head, took several more steps up. "No. I don't understand." She said, as the kitchen door opened and Sirius and Remus stepped through. "I still don't understand, because nothing had happened! Nothing that would say I was in any danger at all. Nothing."

"Ophelia, you're going to wake up my mother." Sirius drawled, waving a disinterested hand at the velvet-covered frame looming above them.

"And? I couldn't give less of a shit about your mother, I'll wake her up if I want to." Ophelia glanced around, looking for a viable option. Her eyes landed on Lupin. "You were my teacher, for a year. A whole year and you didn't think it pertinent to even mention it. I thought I was crazy, seeing the Grim everywhere, the Dementors disrupting everything... you helped me and you didn't think that maybe you should tell me?" The angry tears were threatening to spill, wanting nothing more to embarrass her.

"I couldn't tell you, Ophelia. Like how I couldn't tell Harry I was friends with his father, how I couldn't tell anyone I knew Sirius." Lupin replied, his voice much quieter than her own. Much calmer. At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable. "There is more at stake now than there was two years ago. Surely you can understand that."

Ophelia stared at him, a cold glare that settled over the room as the truth of the matter came to to be understand by those who had clearly not known before. Ron was whispering something to Ginny, whilst Fred had begun digging his elbow into George's ribs repeatedly, despite the complaints. And she didn't respond, twisting on her heel and storming up the stairs to the second floor, finding the third door and pushing the handle open.

Slamming the door shut behind her made the sound of screeching arise from downstairs, from what she guessed to be Sirius' mother's portrait and there was a flurry of grumbling and movement in response as they tried to get her to shut up. Ophelia tried to feel bad for making it happen, but she just couldn't, as she settled down on the edge of her bed and folded into herself, head buried in her hands.

It was a moment of true loneliness which she hadn't been so lucky to experience for a while. There was nobody who would come knocking on her door for a while, or a house-elf appearing out of nowhere to tell her about some inane need, or one of her friends arriving after taking it upon themselves to decide that after she had gone through not one, but three deaths in such a short space of time.

No letter from her father asking her to cover up his disappearance and subsequent death.

The severity of her situation seemed to tremble above her, not yet sinking in, and she didn't want it to. The weight of her secrets would be something she carried with her now, and wasn't something that she could just let slumber over the summer until she went back to school and she could ignore it and focus on everything else she needed to focus on. Like her exams - she had five N.E.W.T.s she needed to pass, needed to exceed in.

Everything had happened at the beginning of the summer. Her grandfather had been killed by her escapee Uncle and in response he had been executed by the Ministry before she had even boarded the Hogwarts Express back to London. Her father wasn't home when she finally made it there, and his letters had stopped a week earlier, and from then she had been expected to commit a crime so that her father could go and join the Death Eaters and serve Voldemort just like her Uncle had.

And that was the beginning of her summer. The guilt still sat in her stomach, flickered in and out of her conscience every now and again. It hadn't settled, and it wouldn't now, now the lies only built.

Dumbledore coming for a simple conversation whilst Adrien was there, and when he inevitably came back after she didn't Floo him like she said she would. She wouldn't be at the Manor for whenever her friends decide it was a good time to visit to check up on her, or visit the Malfoys when she had been invited by Narcissa for afternoon tea (something she was sure would be to discuss the return of Voldemort). In place of her guilt settling and more information being gently taken in as gifted by each of her Pureblood friends as she saw them.

What was she supposed to do when one of them asked, when they all returned to Hogwarts, about her summer? What was she supposed to tell them? Now that Dumbledore had interfered and dragged her from the peace and quiet in which the gravity of her situation could slowly sink into her being, what was she to do?

Before her secret had been something that her friends would understand should they ever found out about it, and they most likely would do in the coming months as Voldemort became more prominent within their lives as he rose to power.

Now she was living with the covert Order who entirely opposed Voldemort and everything he and the Death Eaters stood for. She was living with Sirius Black, an escaped convict, Remus Lupin, a werewolf and somehow her father and of all the people, the Weasleys. Blood traitors, whose ginger hair and hand-me-down clothes placed disdain in the mouths of her housemates and fellow Slytherins.

How could she manage to keep that a secret when she was living them for the summer as they held their elusive meetings in the same house she lived in?

The despair settled within her, combining with the guilt and was destined to stay there. Her eyes bleary and makeup stained, she heaved in deep breaths as she wiped away the final tears of frustration. If she was going to be staying there, entrusted with all those secrets and forced into keeping them, then there was no chance she was going to be caught moping around by one of the Weasley twins.

She couldn't be moping around to deal with that. It had been difficult enough at Hogwarts, when she could escape to her classes or the Slytherin common room. Here, there was no escape. She was living with them, and it was bound to be hell on Earth. There was no escape, nowhere she could go to hide, nothing she could do to change it.

Until she found the best time to escape and Apparate home and Mad-Eye Moody wasn't around to stop her. There was no chance she was going to spend the entire summer there, but for now, she would settle in.

Of all things he had said to her earlier that day, Dumbledore had made good on his promise of packing up and transporting all her necessary belongings to the house. There were four trunks, including her Hogwarts trunk with all of her uniform, books and other equipment - her Nimbus was leaning against the wardrobe door - and the rest stacked next to it, ready for her to unpack in that bedroom in Grimmauld Place.

It was much like the rest of the house, but unlike the rooms downstairs and whichever room Mrs Weasley was leading in her cleanliness objective and forcing her children to join in, it was relatively free of dust, and there wasn't a cobweb in sight. Indeed, Ophelia found that it was particularly nice, and similar to her room in the Crouch Manor.

Perhaps it was just that many of the Pureblood families who held centuries of dark magic in their homes and their taste in furniture and decoration reflected that entirely. Either way... it made her feel oddly more comfortable, to see the damask wallpaper of a deep purple bare the Black family crest as opposed to the usual ornate pattern, and the furniture made of warped ebony wood with crystal knobs to every drawer.

How she swore the boxes she found in the inset wardrobe were vials of blood and there were crow skulls mounted on the top of the posts of her bed. There were jars of rare herbs and books about magic that should definitely have been confiscated by the Ministry at the end of the first war. It all seemed a lot like home.

But it wasn't. It never would be, it couldn't be. She was just clinging to the remnants of familiarity and anything she could clutch onto now that everything had changed in the past couple of hours.

On the other hand, she could just pretend it never happened. That seemed preferable.

And she sniffed and wiped her eyes and stood up, flicking her wand and watched as the trunks snapped open, tops thudding against the hardwood floor. She wracked her brain for some of the spells she had memorised to make this easier, and for a moment wished that she had a house elf to help her and instead decided it best to do it herself.

Ophelia made her way around the room, pushing the Hogwarts trunk under the four-poster bed, putting her clothes in the wardrobe, setting out her quills and ink on the desk, her makeup on the vanity, her books on the shelves. There was no doubt in her mind that she would be spending majority of her time in there, away from the crazies and the freaks and the insane ordeal that was the Order.

And just as she was rearranging some of the... artefacts that lined the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace, there was a crack.

"Get out." She demanded instantaneously.

"Didn't even have to look up - you're already a pro at this, Crouch." Fred's voice, jarring as it was, came from somewhere behind her as she waved a hand over the surface and the dust disappeared.

"Just that obsessed with us, are you?" George chimed in.

"Devilishly handsome as we are."

"And incredibly charming."

"I have been annoyed by the both of you for six years." Ophelia swallowed, and gently pulled the foot of a small, engraved music box at an angle towards her, before turning. Fred was laid on her bed, with George leaning against the post at the end. "Most unfortunately for me I have become accustomed to your... behaviours and given that the both of you somehow managed to get your Apparation licenses without splinching halfway to Albania, I certainly knew it would be you abusing that ability and not your mother."

"Don't, you'll summon her or something, Crouch." Fred drawled, propping himself up against the pillows.

"Get out." Ophelia repeated. She had absolutely no intention of speaking to either of them anymore.

Clearly, they had other plans.

"Is it true, then?" Fred asked.

"Lupin's your dad?" George added.

"And you managed to convince the Ministry that your Death Eater dad had gone missing and then that he was dead?" Fred continued, eyes wide. "It seems, Crouch, that amongst your beauty and intelligence that you're a particularly talented liar and..." His gaze slid over to George.

"She's never been quiet this long." His twin mused. "Maybe you've finally been stupid enough to shock her into silence."

"Get out." Ophelia repeated. "Get the fuck out of my room." The twins looked up as the door swung open of its own accord. "Get out, the both of you - get out! You annoying, lanky, bastards."

"There it is." Fred grinned, "There's the Ophelia we all know and love." George let out a cough, he was halfway through the door and beckoning for his brother to follow. "Yes, yes, Georgie, I'm on my way. Don't be a stranger, Crouch."

"Insufferable bastards!" She shouted after them, as the door slammed shut.

Ophelia took a moment, composed herself, and promptly began repacking.

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