Safe With Me ~ Fred Weasley

Expecto Patronum

I had made it through classes once again, but after the reveal of Fred's plan yesterday, my head was spinning. I had finally agreed, mostly because he wasn't really offering the choice to say no, but inside I was terrified.

The idea of never going back. Never being back in the home I shared with my brother, leaving the rest of my stuff at home, although most of it was clothing that I only wore in the Muggle world. Most of all, just deciding in under five minutes that I would never see my father again. It had been what I was planning for all along, saving up any money I got my hands on from him, babysitting over the summers, loose coins I had found in the dryer. But I never imagined it like this, although now that I thought about it, this would be the safest way. To never return after Hogwarts. Only, I had imagined it to be so many years from now, after sixth year at least.

After mastering the antidote to most poisons in potions, I nodded goodbye to my friends as they headed back to the common rooms to drop their bags. I didn't know where I was headed, but I couldn't spend anymore time staring into the walls of my dorm room. Every few minutes, it would seem, my heart jumped to my throat at the thought of my father waiting to pick me up from the train station in a few months. How long would he wait? Would he try to get through the barrier? Reduce himself to asking the wizarding families scurrying past with their owls and trunks if they had seen me? Would he file a missing person's report? Write to the school? Would Dumbledore send me back home? And if he did, what punishment would I face there? Neither Tommy nor I had ever done something as severe as running away. And if the school got involved, what would happen to the Weasley family?

Before I realized it, I stood in front of the Gryffindor's new portrait entrance, a knight who nearly everyone knew the name of by now, due to him constantly challenging students to duels.

I paused at the portrait for a moment, allowing Sir Cadogan to spew off his usual sentences while I tried to remember the words Fred had muttered just two days ago when he pulled me through the entrance.

"Oddsbodikins." A voice muttered from behind me and I turned to see Neville Longbottom, a neatly scribbled list in his free hand. "Hi, Cassidy, what are you doing up here?" He gestured into the unsealed portrait hole.

"I don't know, actually... just sort of wound up this way. Thought I'd stop and say hi-"

"Little Miss Cassidy, what do we owe the pleasure?" George shouted, jumping up from his spot near the fire with a s'more in his hand, sticky marshmallow painted his left cheek.

"Are you guys making s'mores?" Neville asked, somehow sounding shocked, as if this was uncommon for the twins.

"Come on, Longbottom, there's plenty." Fred shouted from across the room where he was letting his marshmallow catch on fire before quickly blowing it out and burning the other side.

"I got homework, and I'd catch the room on fire." Neville mumbled, dragging his feet to the staircase Fred and I had gone up the other night.

I looked after him sadly, before George used my arm to pull me over near the fire.

"Here you are, Cass." Fred handed me a long and skinny stick that I didn't even want to know where they had gotten.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" I asked, looking concernedly at Fred's blackened marshmallow.

"Have you never made a s'more?" George whipped his head to me, and I felt my heart sink again. Since I had entered the toasty common room, I hadn't thought of home once. Until now.

I looked to Fred and watched him clear the glare he had shot at George, pulling a new white candy from the bag in between us and sliding it onto my stick.