Take Time (a Harry Potter fan fiction)

5: Witness

Chapter Five:

Witness

[Al]

The next few days swept past without any remarkable events. Al’s grandmother kept the entire lot of them busy for most of the time, ridding the house of the vermin inside it. The drawing room took nearly three days to clear. The doxies posed a problem, but Molly didn’t let Al near any of them (Al suspected that she still felt responsible for the doxy-biting-him incident). With all of the other problems (e.g. the dead puffskeins, the strangling robes, the evil grandfather clock and music box, the unicorn-hide bag which nearly ate Hermione, the various crystal phials of acid-like poisons which caused several robes, wood Floorboards and even metals to smoulder), however, Al was happy to help.

In the rare occasions that he had spare time, he spent it trying to cheer up and take his mind off things like being stuck in 1995, an extremely difficult feat. One would certainly find difficult to forget a situation like this, after all. If anyone else was in his place, and they were coincidentally (or maybe because of their bad luck like Al, whatever) stuck in the year when one of their parents was the exact same age as they were.

The atmosphere in the house, he had gathered, was nothing like the general cheerful mood the Weasleys bore several decades into the future. Al had correctly assumed that the ‘Voldemort is alive and could ruin our lives in a moment’s notice’ thing was taking a toll on their cheeriness. Even George- and Fred- were halfway serious.

He had been very surprised to learn that Percy wasn’t on good terms with the rest of the family. In turn, the past family was pretty much unsurprised that he didn’t know. He had momentarily amused himself with a picture of Lucy saying, “Well, I suppose you couldn’t really blame Father for acting like that, since you would never know whom to trust in times like those, I’d say that if I were in his place I might have acted the same way.” Molly- Molly the second, that is- would reach over to slap Lucy’s arm and say, “If Al is telling the truth, he has a point, Dad was a prat back then.”

Apparently, Percy wouldn’t be re-joining the rest of the Weasleys until during the Battle of Hogwarts (as it was historically known). Al almost let this slip in a short, awkward conversation with Harry late into Tuesday evening.

(A general background of that particular Tuesday: it had been filled with an action-packed battle involving a community of (admittedly adorable) puffskeins that stubbornly refused to leave its home on top of a shelf which was meant to hold books, which they found nearby, looking thoroughly doxy-chewed, a scandalized Hermione, a length of supposedly unbreakable rope, a pot of pepper, and a doting Li- Ginny.)

Al had been very relieved when Harry didn’t seem to notice what he had nearly let slip. The conversation would had died down quickly, anyway, seeing as nearly immediately after he had (nearly) told Harry that, Molly Weasley knocked at their door and called, “Al, you’re needed downstairs.”

Harry’s scowl told Al quite plainly that he didn’t like this. This sight disturbed Al immensely, and he was grateful for the excuse to leave the room at once.

He was turning to the stairs just as he heard Mrs Weasley say, “Harry, dear, you may want to go to sleep by now, it’s past eight o’clock….” Al smiled at the thought of whatever comebacks Harry might think up at this as he descended the steps.

The drawing room was nearly empty when Al came in. There were a few recognizable faces- Hestia Jones, Elphias Doge (from pictures), Minerva McGonagall, and a pink-haired woman he established to be Teddy’s mother, and Teddy’s dad, Remus Lupin, who was speaking in low, rapid tones to Albus Dumbledore, who beamed when he saw Al. “Ah, here he is.”