The Potter Twins and the Order of the Phoenix {5}

3. The Advance Guard

"I've been wasting away, but in a town, with no way out there's not much else to do anyway" ~ Neckdeep, Can't Kick Up the Roots

I flop down on my bed the moment we reach our dark bedroom, feeling both exhausted and furious beyond comprehension. Harry begins furiously writing notes to Hermione, Ron, and Sirius, and I feel a strange surge of irritation when I remember that Hedwig is out hunting. Maybe it's the thought of having to wait before we can contact someone, or perhaps it's the thing that finally breaks the camels back, so to say. Regardlessly, it makes me angrier than it should have. 

My eyes sting and itch with tiredness, and my head is still throbbing; why I'm not entirely sure. Harry paces the bedroom as we wait for Hedwig to return, his fists clenched at his side. 

I desperately try to think of some consolation for him, but what I can say? The threat of his expulsion is still looming over us. The only thing I can manage is, "Is your head okay?"

He gives a half-hearted shrug, still pacing. "Dementors, Mrs Figg, suspension," he mutters angrily, "why is nobody telling us what's going on? And what was that Howler about?"

He makes a noise of frustration. 

"Why are we being left in the dark?"

He kicks his school trunk as he passes it, and curses in pain, beginning to limp around. 

"Nice one."

Sending me a scathing stare, he limps over to the window, just as Hedwig soars through it with a soft rustle of wings like a small ghost. 

"About time!" Harry snarls. "You can put that down, I've got work for you."

Hedwig's large, round, amber eyes gaze at Harry reproachfully over the dead frog clamped in her beak. 

"come here," Harry says, picking up the three small pieces of parchment. "Take these straight to Sirius, Ron and Hermione and don't come back here without good long replies. Keep pecking them until they've written decent-length answers if you've got to. Understand?"

Hedwig gives a muffled hooting noise, her beak still full of the frog. 

"Get going, then," he says. 

She takes off immediately, and the moment she's gone, Harry throws himself down on his own bed, craning his neck to the side to look at me. For a fleeting moment, I can see an eleven-year-old Harry again;  fragile and small. 

"You're not going to be expelled, you know that, right?" I say quietly. "I won't let it happen."

He gives me an unconvinced smile. "Yeah."

*~*

Hedwig doesn't return the next morning, leaving us both entirely disheartened. We spend the day in our bedroom, leaving only to use the bathroom. Aunt Petunia gives us food using the catflap on our door, but other than that, the Dursleys stay far away from us. This goes on for three days. 

Filled with restless energy, I find myself becoming more and more stir crazy, and I result to pacing our bedroom, furious at everyone for leaving us alone in this mess. Harry, however, is filled with such an intense feeling of lethargy that he can lay on his bed for hours at a time, saying nothing, his mind clearly overcome with questions concerning the Ministry hearing. 

What if they rule against him? What of he's expelled and they snap his wand in half? What would we do, where would we go? 

On the fourth night since Hedwig's departure, Harry is laying in one of his apathetic phases, whilst I'm staring almost longingly out the window, bored out of my mind, when our uncle enters the room. I slowly look around at him; he's wearing his best suit and an expression of enormous smugness.