Year 7 at Hogwarts

Author's Note: There are grammatical and punctuation errors in the correspondence portions of this chapter that are intentional, dear readers, reflecting the maturity level and mood of the seventeen-year-old pen friends. They are entirely my own fault and not that of the lovely admins here at TPP.

Chapter 19: Year 7 at Hogwarts

1995 – 1996

"Ah, Mr. Weasley. Might I have a word?" a deep voice full of authority called out from behind.

Fred and George both halted and slowly turned around in unison. Their minds scrambled to find a reason for this voice in particular to be addressing them. For this – of all summonses – was definitely the most serious.

"Yes, sir?" they both responded glumly.

"Just a quick word, I assure you. Please accompany me to my office, won't you?"

Both boys took a reluctant step toward him.

"Oh, no.... My apologies, Fred. I only need to speak with George today. Doubtless we'll have our chance to catch up together soon." Professor Dumbledore smiled with a teasing glint in his eyes.

Fred looked at George as if to say, Sorry, mate – you're on your own.

George pursed his lips and followed Dumbledore all the way to his office. Despite their stellar careers in misbehavior, George could count the number of times he had been in Dumbledore's actual office on one hand. He cringed inwardly as he recalled some of the consequences.

"Have a seat, please, George," Dumbledore offered. "I trust you had an interesting summer?"

His tone of voice seems pleasant enough, George reckoned. "Yes, sir," he answered, still confused as to why he was here in the first place. He'd only been back at school for a few hours, for Merlin's sake! Nothing could have been traced to him already, could it? And as far as last year was concerned, surely the statute of limitations had passed over the summer?

"Good, good. I wish to speak to you of a matter of some importance, so please forgive my lack of further polite banter. It has recently come to my attention that you have a correspondent. One of which you have been neglectful during your holidays. Now, I do of course understand the necessity behind your lack of response to these letters. Not only were you unable to respond, summering where you were, you were also most certainly unaware of the persistence of your pen friend."

At this point, Dumbledore removed a small packet of letters tied together with ribbon from his desk and handed them to George. The old professor looked at him expectantly.

Unable to think of any way to avoid doing so in front of him, George untied the ribbon. There were five letters, all of which were addressed to him here at Hogwarts; no return address was to be found. He instantly recognized the handwriting, of course. A wild gush of delight momentarily broke through the heavy blanket of nervous dread that seemed to wrap around him here in Dumbledore's presence. He was careful to keep both emotions from his face, however.

"Thank you, Professor," he said simply, unsure of how to proceed.

"You are most welcome, of course. Someone clearly wishes very much to hear from you, so I'm confident you will respond with all due haste," Dumbledore suggested. He wore a bemused smile, and his hands were clasped together in his lap.

"Yes, sir," George replied tentatively.

Dumbledore stared piercingly at him for several disquieting moments, then spoke once more. "May I also be so bold as to offer that most unwelcome of all gifts, some unsolicited advice?"

Here it comes, thought George. He nodded reluctantly.

"I deduce from the volume of unanswered letters that your correspondent is a very dear friend. In my experience, neither casual acquaintances nor business colleagues will often write five times to the same address without answer. I further conclude that, as your friend addressed your letters here, he or she did not know your whereabouts, but did indeed know that you were not at home. Even more interestingly, this person anticipated your arrival here."

He paused to look carefully at George's face, then continued in a softer voice. "May I also assume that your friend is a Muggle?"

George looked directly at Dumbledore's face for the first time since he entered the office. He narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth, attempting to hide his anxiety and confusion by trying to look indignant about the invasion of his privacy.

How had he guessed it? George's mind scrambled about for a moment, then it hit him like a battering ram: the envelopes. They're paper, not parchment. Oh, shit....

They had kept her a secret for so long now! Was it all about to blow up in their faces? How had he not considered such an obvious detail before now?

Dumbledore smiled again. "Let me reassure you that the last guess is merely that: a guess. I can see that you do not feel comfortable discussing this matter with me at this time. It is none of my business, I agree. You are perfectly within your rights to tell me to go jump into the lake."

After a chuckle, he continued. "I must confess I am impressed by your discretion. It is good to know my trust in you is well-founded. I'm sure I only echo your own thoughts when I say that in times like these, such as they are, we must carefully guard our friendships."

"Are you saying I should or shouldn't answer the letters?" George asked, confused.

"Do whatever you like, dear boy. Though I strongly suspect that even if I forbade you in the most stringent terms to write, I would be flatly disobeyed," Dumbledore said with a chuckle and a wry smile. Then he paused, pressing his fingertips together and bringing them up to his lips for a moment, as if hushing the already silent room. "Do keep in mind, however, that, unthinkable as it may seem, owls can be intercepted by people with, let us say, less than honorable intentions," he explained with quiet seriousness.

"I wish you to simply continue to exercise your careful discretion." Dumbledore's smile was heavily weighted with worry. "You may go now, Mr. Weasley."

George slowly exited Dumbledore's office and began the long walk to Gryffindor Tower. He mulled over everything that had happened, everything Dumbledore had said, until he reached the staircases. At that point, the desire to read the letters began to take control, and he was fairly sprinting up the empty steps and through the empty corridors by the time he reached the portrait.

Once inside, he scanned the common room. It was crowded, just as he expected. He spotted Fred and made right for him.

"What was that all about?" Fred asked him under his breath.

George pointedly looked about him for signs of any eavesdroppers. "I'll tell you later. I need a few minutes alone. Cover for me, all right?" he asked guardedly.

"Right," said Fred with a short nod and no further questions asked.

George casually headed upstairs toward their dormitory, carefully keeping his pace in check, unwilling to convey any sense of hurry. Behind him, he heard Fred begin engaging Lee with their latest plans for fortune and glory with the Snackboxes.

Upstairs, he found their dorm room empty. He pulled the bed curtains closed, likely for the first time in years. The letters rested on his lap, still sorted in order of postmark – he must have left the ribbon in Dumbledore's office. He began to read each one in turn.

He rolled his eyes and snorted often while reading the first one. Annie was apparently developing quite the mother hen streak. The line about her being devastated if anything were to happen to them, while likely an overstatement, did please him, however.

The second letter was more of the same. Was it really terrible of him to feel so glad that she had been miserable without him?

The third letter wiped the smile right off his face. Now it was his turn to worry about her. She sounded horribly depressed. George hoped for Annie's sake that her Gran was all right. He wondered for a moment how difficult it would be to escape this place if the worst were to happen: if her Gran didn't make it. But he'd be damned if he would let her go through that alone.

He almost ripped the fourth letter in a rush to find out what happened next. He was relieved to find out disaster was averted – her Gran would be okay. He couldn't decide by the end if Annie had started to sound better or not.

The final letter sounded much more like the first – more mother hen-ish. He decided to interpret that as a good sign.

The noise level coming from the common room was beginning to rise, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself by being conspicuously absent for much longer. He tucked her letters safely in his trunk with all the others, thought about it for another moment, then locked it. He would write back a little later, sneak out to the owlery after curfew, and send it off tonight.

1 September, 1995

George

He carefully omitted how he had thought of her every day, dreamed of her every night during the past two months. Fred had definitely noticed something was off about him over the summer, but George was equally sure he hadn't figured it out. He would have been verbally flayed alive, if not physically as well, if his brother had fully understood the source of his foul moods.

Annie's answer came with the morning's post four days later. After delivering it in the Great Hall, Errol appeared to have a stroke on the rack of toast. George guessed Annie must have forced him to wait for a response, rather than sent him home to the Burrow to rest. To his relief, he noticed several other students at the table had received letters written on paper rather than parchment that morning – maybe the paper envelopes weren't so obvious a clue after all.

George eagerly opened the letter right there and then. He rationalized that it would have looked more suspicious if he didn't.

3 September (5 a.m.)

Annie

12 October, 1995

George

Annie took a deep breath and read the letter for the third time. It was definitely George's handwriting; of that much she was sure. But nothing else rang true. George Weasley studying? In the middle of a term? Not bloody likely!

She was also sure he was trying to tell her something. What was a High Inquisitor? Why would she care? And someone's owl had been attacked while delivering a letter?

Something was not quite right at Hogwarts, the supposed safe haven of the wizard world: a claim which Annie was beginning to think was complete bollocks. Further, George didn't think it was safe for him to tell her outright in a private letter.

Annie puzzled over George's letter for a week. She was desperate to find a way to communicate with him – especially now, if something worrisome was going on. But she worried that if it wasn't safe for him to write to her, maybe she shouldn't be writing to him, either. She didn't want to get him in trouble. Yet she also knew she would go insane if she had to go without his letters again for any real length of time.

She turned off the truck in front of the house. As she gathered her things and climbed out, the mail slipped out of her arms and spilled all over the ground. Stupid bloody junk post, she grumbled to herself.

And then an idea hit her. Did wizards ever get junk mail?

That evening she made tea for her Gran and took it in to her in her bedroom.

"What's the matter dear? You've been so distracted now for a week," Gran asked her.

"Sorry, just a little worried about a friend," Annie replied.

"Mmm. Anything you want to share? I'm so bored with being cooped up in this house, I could do with a juicy bit of gossip!" she teased, trying to cheer her granddaughter.

Annie smiled at the irony of her Gran's almost literally prescient statement. "Not really. Nothing juicy involved," she lied.

"Oh, well," Gran sighed in an overly disappointed voice that contrasted with her smile. "How was school today?"

"Fine. I met with Mrs. Johns today and filled out the paperwork for early graduation. As long as I don't fail anything and pass the exams, I'll be finished in December."

"Oh, I'm so glad! I'd never forgive myself if I kept you from getting your education. Have you been thinking any more about university?" Gran pressed.

The honest truth was the thought hadn't crossed Annie's mind for a very long time. That was the last thing in the world she wanted to deal with right now. "Plenty of time for that later, once you're back up on your feet," she assured her grandmother.

"Annie, don't throw your future away on my account," Gran counseled her. "If not right now, then soon. Promise me you'll think about it, won't you dear?"

"I promise," she said with a reluctant nod.

Annie cleared away the dishes after her grandmother was finished, then helped settle her in for the night. Back in the kitchen while she did the washing up, she re-lived the summer day eight years ago when she had learned the trick on which all her hopes were now pinned. At the time, she had been so pleased to teach her own bit of magic to the twins. They had thought it great fun to leave secret messages written with lemon juice on paper for each other in the tree fort.

But she didn't know if it would work the same on parchment as it did on paper, and that was the crux of the plan. She finished squeezing the last drop of fluid from the lemon into a teacup. It was time for an experiment.

Annie went to her room and sat at her tiny desk. She took out one of George's previous letters which had been written on parchment, as usual. She dipped a bamboo skewer into the small puddle of lemon juice and scribbled a doodle onto an empty space on the surface. She waited patiently for it to dry, blowing on it gently a few times to help speed the process. She carefully examined it under bright light to make sure no trace remained visible.

Satisfied it was undetectable, she lit the small candle. Carefully, she held the parchment up to the flame – close enough to heat but not to burn. She held her breath.

A few seconds later, the doodle began to reappear. Relieved, the air rushed out of her lungs so forcefully that the candle was extinguished.

She took out a piece of scrap paper and started writing. Usually, she wrote to George on regular paper, but for this letter to be convincing, it had to be on something a real wizard would use. She only had a few partial pieces of real blank parchment scrolls that Fred had nicked for her a long time ago. And she wanted to get the wording just right, so as not to waste any of the suddenly precious stuff.

After half an hour, she figured she was ready. She carefully copied the brief lines onto the top of the parchment with her grandfather's ancient fountain pen, hoping it would look convincingly like a quill had written it. Then, in the empty space below, she wrote another equally brief message with the lemon juice. After it was dry, she cut the rest of the roll off, being careful to make the letter look centered.

She addressed it formally to Mr. George Weasley, at Hogwarts, and added her own return address: A. Jones, Tree Fort. She figured if "The Burrow" was a plausible address, so was this. Owls apparently didn't need very specific directions.

She sat back to examine her work. It looked reasonably authentic to her. She closed her eyes and prayed her plan would work. That he would remember the trick and figure out the clue. If he did, she was confident he was resourceful enough to charm a few lemons from the elves at Hogwarts to respond.

Gran was asleep; Annie could hear her quiet snoring. Silently, she snuck out of the house and took off running into the woods.

When she reached the right tree, with the Burrow in sight and gleaming beneath the intermittent moonlight, she whistled the signal Errol had been taught to respond to. Once. Twice.

Please let that stupid owl be here! she wished desperately.

"Yes!" she whispered aloud triumphantly when she heard his wings flap, then saw his body flop to the ground as he missed landing on the branch. She carefully picked him up and tucked the letter around his leg. She gave him a kiss on the head, then fished out a chicken nugget from her pocket.

Errol greedily ate the morsel, then took off into the night.

So far, so good. Now it was up to George to do the rest.

19 October, 1995

Dear Mr. Weasley,

Thank you very much for your recent order. I regret to inform you that we are completely out of the item you requested. Would you be interested in substituting the lemon scented eau de toilette instead?

Please advise at your convenience.

Regards,

A. Jones, Prop.

Mystical Escentuals

George – if you get this message, you know what to do. Love you more, Annie

George carefully laid the parchment down on the desk next to the candle.

"Brilliant! She is bloody brilliant!" raved Fred. "That's utterly diabolical, that is! I'm gobsmacked... completely gobsmacked."

"You're too bloody loud to be gobsmacked," George replied, hushing his overly-enthusiastic brother.

"It's not magically invisible ink, so a Revealer won't work, I'll bet. Cracking girl, Annie! I think I'm in love!" joked Fred.

"Me, too," agreed George. And if Fred had bothered to look at his brother's face, he might have been shocked at what he saw there.

3 November, 1995

Annie – you are brilliant! Fred wants to propose, he's so impressed. I'll keep this short. A hag (no offense) named Umbridge has taken over Hogwarts and is running it like a prison. Harry thinks she's intercepting the post in and out of school. Then yesterday, Fred, Harry and I got into a spat with some Slytherins during our match. Now we are banned from Quidditch. But we're not going to take this lying down. Promise me you'll stay calm and write back soon. Love, George

9 December, 1995

Dear Mr. Weasley,

I am pleased to hear you enjoy Eau de Centaur. It happens to be one of my favorites as well. Unfortunately, I do not anticipate being able to replenish our stock any time in the future. Our source is no longer in business, you see. Since the lemon scented toilet water is not to your taste, would you care to try Essence of Putrescence? Or perhaps Bundimun Extract?

I eagerly await your selection.

Regards,

A. Jones, Prop.

Mystical Escentuals

George – I promise to stay calm as long as you promise not to do anything stupid. You know I usually support thumbing one's nose at authority, but let's keep a clear head, shall we? You must be depressed without Quidditch to look forward to, poor chap. Any chance you'll be coming home for Christmas this year? Love you more, Annie

16 January, 1996

Annie – Sit down. Don't panic. My dad was attacked just before Christmas. He's recovering now but we're all a bit shaken. We had a wild ride back to school after the holiday on a bus instead of the usual way; remind me to tell you about it someday. More bad news – two days ago there was a massive breakout from Azkaban. Something big is definitely going on, but the teachers aren't allowed to tell us anything about it. I am just about at my limit with the state of things here! Love, George

13 February, 1996

Dear Mr. Weasley,

It is not our policy to issue refunds. Please reconsider sampling one of our many other fine products. Would you like me to send you our latest catalog?

Regards,

A. Jones, Prop.

Mystical Escentuals

George – I'm glad to hear your dad is better. Nothing else you are telling me is very reassuring, however. What do you mean, you're "at your limit?" If you do blow your top just remember to escape in one piece. You promised to show me Apparating this summer, remember? I finished school in December. Gran wants me to go to university, but I can't leave her for more than a few hours at a time. She's still so weak. I started a new job at an office near home. Monumentally boring, but on its worst day, it still beats school. Love you more, Annie

28 February, 1996

Annie – Happy birthday! Fred and I are considering celebrating in your honor with an 18-Dungbomb salute. You'll just have to take our word for it, I guess. Next year, we promise to celebrate with you. Well done you for finishing school early; you are a prat after all. Ron has joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team to the lasting embarrassment of the Weasley family name. This year just keeps getting more and more depressing. Your last letter was definitely opened, by the way. Love, George

15 March, 1996

Mr. Weasley,

Let's not get snippy, shall we? I'm afraid a refund is completely out of the question as corporate funds are insufficient at the moment.

I do happen to have an entire case of Essence of Putrescence with your name on it. Just say the word and I'll send it right off.

Regards,

A. Jones, Prop.

Mystical Escentuals

George – keep a stiff upper lip. Term is almost over. And I presume you and Fred will be finishing officially (it wouldn't hurt to crack a book once in a while, as long as it doesn't become a habit). Then it's off to the beach with your old pal Annie. I deserve a bloody holiday. Love you more, Annie

17 April, 1996

Annie – it won't be long now. We're planning something spectacular. We'll make you proud! Love, George

Annie was perplexed. How was she supposed to answer this one? George didn't really leave her much of an option. She'd have to think about this for a while.