บท 282: Dinner with the Weasleys
"If you touch a single one of my things," Ginny told Kreacher with a scary-looking smile, "I will find the most mundane of Muggle objects, and I will seal you inside of it. "A rice cooker, perhaps, in which you will cook for the rest of your miserable little life—"
"That won't be necessary!" said Astoria quickly. "Kreacher, you won't touch Ginny's things, right? And thank you for the juice; you may return to your work."
"As my lady wills," said Kreacher, bowing low before disappearing with a pop.
There was a slight look of envy on Hermione's face as she compared how differently Kreacher treated her, a Muggle-Born, and Astoria, a pure-blooded girl. Her dearest wish was to free all House-Elves from slavery, which was easier said than done when the slaves themselves did not want freeing.
Suddenly, two more pops made themselves heard, as Fred and George Apparated onto Ginny's bed.
"Dinner's—" Fred began.
"—ready!" George finished.
"Would you give it a rest?" said Ginny irritably. "The door's right there."
The Weasley twins had come of age, so that they weren't restricted in their usage of magic outside of school any more. Notice that the Trace had never stopped Ginny from using her magic whenever it pleased her; Tom Riddle had found a way to mute the Trace's signal in order to avoid taking the blame when he'd went to kill his Muggle family members with his uncle Morfin's wand fifty years ago. He'd even managed to pin the murders on him…
"Doors are for boring people," said Fred with a smirk.
"Besides, like you're one to talk," added George. "You should count yourself lucky we haven't told mum you've been Disapparating out of here all the time."
"Even though you haven't got your licence!"
"Where are you going all the time, anyway?"
Hermione looked at Ginny in horror. Astoria remained impassive; she already knew all about Ginny's magical feats in Nidavellir from her older sisters' stories.
"That's why I couldn't find you all those times we were supposed to clean together?" she said, aghast. "Don't you know how dangerous it is to Apparate? What if you left bits of yourself behind you? What if you got caught? You could be expelled!"
The phenomenon of leaving body parts behind after Disapparating was called Splinching; and it happened more often than one might think. Apparition was an advanced branch of Space-Time magic, after all; lose focus one moment, and you might forget to teleport your legs along with the rest of you.
"Surely you're not telling me that you actually believe what Fred and George are saying, are you?" said Ginny, winking discreetly at Astoria. "To return, I'd either need to walk back in through the front door, or Apparate back. In the first case, mum or Sirius would have needed to open the door for me, and in any case, the Trace would have detected I'd used magic."
Ginny had not received any letters from the ministry, unlike Harry when he'd produced a Patronus to defend himself in his hometown, so Astoria had rightfully guessed that Ginny must have found a way to defeat the Trace. And evidently, Fred and George thought the same.
"I'll have you tell us how you do it one day," Fred said glumly, thinking about all the mischief he could have got up to if the Trace hadn't stopped him from using magic outside of school while he'd been underage.
Hermione, however, seemed to think the Ministry's magic was infallible, so she accepted Ginny's explanation without question.
With that settled, they all went down the stairs, and Astoria tried her best not to brush against the chopped off heads of Kreacher's ancestors that decorated the staircase. Right before she entered the dining room, Fred and George pulled her aside.
"Your sisters wouldn't have happened to have taught you some tricks with runic magic, would they?" Fred asked her. "We're having a bit of trouble making our charmed items stay charmed—"
"It's a bit of a bother, really," said George, "and we haven't managed to replicate what your sisters can do, so we were wondering..."
Astoria shook her head.
"They never taught me anything about runes," she said sadly.
"That's curious," said Fred.
"Why not?" added George.
But Astoria didn't know the reason either. Perhaps they'd been too busy?
Dinnertime with the Weasleys and the members of the Order of the Phoenix was quite a busy affair. Ordinarily, Mrs. Weasley would cook by herself for her entire family, but with the added members of the Order, she had learned to delegate.
And thus, Astoria had been selected as a volunteer to lend a hand chopping onions for the fresh salad entrée, since she wasn't utterly incompetent with her hands, unlike certain others. For instance, Tonks, the Metamorphmagus whose hair just couldn't make up its mind about which colour it wanted to be, was hopelessly clumsy, despite being a trained Auror.
"Have I told you about the time I ran into your sister at the hospital?" Tonks babbled at Astoria's side while she worked. "She surprised old Mad-Eye so much she nearly got herself Stunned!"
She noticed a tear running down Astoria's cheek.
"Er… don't cry— I'm sorry if I brought back bad memories," Tonks said contritely. "I thought maybe you'd like to hear stories about the good old times…"
"It's just the onions," Astoria sniffled, before slamming down a little bit too hard with her knife and splitting her chopping board in half.
Eating with the Weasleys would prove to be just as noisy as the cooking part, though Astoria had got used to it by now; after landing herself in Gryffindor, due to her envying her sisters' adventurous spirits, she had had plenty of time to interact with many Weasleys.
Most of the discussion topics around the dinner table revolved around the subject of Harry; Percy, who had just had a big fight with his family, was a taboo subject. Off to Astoria's side, Mrs. Weasley was telling Sirius about how there might be a Boggart trapped in a desk upstairs, as well as a Doxy infestation.
Even though Astoria was a guest, she'd also needed to do her part to make the place liveable. Nobody had lived in Number 12, Grimmauld Place in over a decade, as Sirius's family had died out and he'd been in Azkaban. In any case, the house was extremely dirty, and in dire need of a spring cleaning. Or two.
As she ate, Astoria looked around the dinner table, catching Professor Lupin's eye in the process. He smiled at her; he had been her Defense Against of the Dark Arts teacher in her first year at Hogwarts, though she'd often been unable to participate due to her illness.
Thankfully, she was now cured of her blood malediction, but unlike her, he was still afflicted with Lycanthropy…
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