Friends Kiss Too | F. Weasley

Chapter 42 - Out in the Woods

New Year's had come and gone and after an eventful few days at the Burrow, Milena and the twins were back at the shop, continuing business as usual. With the continued quietness of Diagon Alley and most of their sales being through owls, Milena was often in the office now, bringing orders to George so he could check off the paperwork and Fred could send it out. If she wasn't helping them with the orders, then she was flipping through those textbooks again, now taking to actually practicing them, rather than reading the instructions.

One evening when George was finishing an order, he handed it off to Fred who went to give it to one of their feistier owls which ended in his finger being nipped well enough to bleed.

"AH!" Fred jumped. "Ruddy bird, just send the damn order."

The owl gave a grumpy hoot and finally took the order, flying out the window. Fred turned around holding his finger that was dripping blood.

"Come here," Milena said, pulling her wand from her cardigan's pocket.

Fred came over to her and held out his finger. She swished the wand in the movements she had practiced from the book and in a second, the blood rolled back up his finger and the wound sealed itself and disappeared with no sign of an injury having ever been there. Milena's face grew into a small smile as she took hold of his hand and examined his newly healed finger.

"It worked." She whispered to herself before smiling up at Fred.

"Been practicing, have you?" Fred said, now examining his finger for himself. "Didn't even leave a scar."

"It's a small wound," Milena explained. "Nothing like the one you got a few months ago so it shouldn't scar."

"Remus'll be proud of you though."

Over the last few months since Milena and the twins had joined the Order, she had grown quite close with Remus and Tonks both. Remus had always been one of her favourite professors at Hogwarts and Tonks was just generally a fun person to be around who really knew what she was doing with defensive magic. They had done a few more small missions together for the Order, just checking on reports of Death Eater sightings or clearing more dementors, but over the time, Remus and Tonks had become good friends to her.

Overall, most things they did for the Order at the moment were pretty small. The Death Eaters had grown quiet for a while, but that put no one at ease. Milena's feelings of doom seem to settle over her more often, though nothing ever seemed to happen. It definitely didn't help when Remus told her that Harry suspected Draco Malfoy was up to something at school. She didn't want to believe he was capable of anything truly horrible, but when your family pushes you enough, who knows what you could do?

By the end of January, Milena had finally returned Angelina's textbooks to her, having read them both plenty of times and making plenty of notes for herself, she was starting to feel more confident in her abilities. Every time Fred or George seemed to injure themselves or each other (which happened frequently), she was able to fix them up with more and more accuracy.

Though she found that her sense of dread still never settled, it provided her with some kind of relief knowing that she could at least do something to heal people. The first time she was really tested on these abilities though was when she was sent on another job with just Tonks, all the way out in Hogsmeade.

Hogwarts had fallen under tight security this year and many aurors were sent out to watch and guard the school from Hogsmeade. The Order, however, had their suspicions that Voldemort may have begun to infiltrate the Ministry, so members of the Order were often watching too.

The two had stationed themselves on the outskirts of the village, closest to the school and kept a close eye on any movement. It was a relatively quiet night. Occasionally, some sort of hoot or squawk would echo from the Forbidden Forest, but nothing exciting seemed to happen.