Mischief Managed || Fred Weasley

15

Walking down the stairs and into the common room, there were a few people by the windows, and Cherry immediately spotted the twins, who were sitting side by side, talking to their best friend Lee Jordan. "Oi! Cherry!" Fred waved her over, and she sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table, next to the fire inside the little fireplace that sat before them.

"Where've you been?" he asked.

"We've been looking around all over for ya!" George chimed in (with a haven't you people ever heard of closing the god damn door).

"I was at Lupin's, I had an extra tutoring thing with him at four," she replied, grabbing the bottle of fire whiskey from Lee Jordan's hand.

"Since when did you drink?" he asked, but didn't protest when Cherry pressed her lips to the bottle.

"Since this month," she muttered, barely audible enough for anyone to hear.

Lee shrugged it off, and returned to talking to the twins, who were going on about their new products for the store they were planning to open, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Cherry thought it was a ridiculous idea, but nonetheless, it still sounded fun and exciting.

But she wasn't thinking about that; she was thinking about what she would do tomorrow night when her father, Mikey Way, someone who she'd never met before, showed up in the Gryffindor common room that night. Cherry had to admit; no matter how dangerous she knew this was, she was still extremely curious as to who her father was, as her mum had never talked about him much.

When she finally returned to her dormitory later that night, her mind flew back to the letter that he had sent her, and she pulled the piece of crumpled parchment out of her pocket, unfolding it and skimming over it again for what seemed like the hundredth time that day.

Cherry wondered what Mikey was like; and more so, who the teacher was that he was talking about in his letter. Maybe it was McGonagall, and that was how he could get into the common room; with the help of the professor. Or maybe it was Lupin; he did seem pretty out of it earlier that day, though she found it hard to imagine some one like Lupin breaking about a dozen school rules to sneak one of his friends in to meet his long lost daughter.

The defense against the dark arts professor had grown to be one of the few teachers she'd trusted in her time at Hogwarts. He'd always offer her chocolate whenever she met him after class with a question, or discuss something she'd been confused about in his lessons. Nonetheless, she'd probably ask her birth father tomorrow night.

And maybe she called him "dad" by accident; so what? She did feel the slightest bit guilty, about her real father, Mikey. But who knew? Maybe he was a terrible person. If only she knew who he really was...

Finishing the small glass of wine that she'd snuck in after the twins and Jordan had left, knowing Fred wouldn't have approved, she cleaned it with a swish of her hand and placed it back into the case. After showering, she'd gone straight to bed, too tired from the long day of thinking.

~~

The next day, early Saturday morning, Cherry had woken up tangled in her sheets, lying in a pool of sweat with a pounding headache. She'd jerked her eyes open, heart still pounding from the unpleasant nightmare she'd just had. Looking around, she caught her breath, and lied back down and stayed just like that for a few moments, staring up at the wooden bunk above her and taking in the morning setting.

Through the glass panes of the window, the silky red curtains moved aside, she could see that the sky was still mostly dark, the sun just peaking just over the horizon, the sound of morning wind whishing past the windows, making the trees out in the distance shake, the turning orange leaves falling slowly and landing onto the grass beneath the castle that was slowly tinting a light yellow, almost like thin honey, a soft blanket of dew spread out over the vast fields. The air was calm, with just a light breeze blowing from the north, the dark blue sky clear and free of clouds.