"FAMILY"

FAMILY: a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit; Lorelei didn't have a family, at least not a traditional one, not the one she knew she deserved, you already know the story — her father left her to chase after a rat...twice, her mother panicked and left her after dropping Lorelei face first on this planet.

Lorelei had grown up being fine with it though, she had her aunt and her uncle and a little pet gremlin also known as Regan Rosier, she was fine.

Still, time to time it hurt to remember that both her parents left her willingly and one didn't even bother writing her a letter when he broke out of Azkaban and instead went after the same person that got him into Azkaban in the first place.

Lorelei had decided that she was too rad to be sad on her birthday, so she did what she does best — blast Queen in full volume with her room shut and laying on her bed with a book, the words were all a blur to her, her mind couldn't register them with the music being played simultaneously, but Lorelei managed — one day her multitasking abilities might come in handy.

She never really liked celebrating her birthday, I mean sure a day full of attention sounds great, but what's the point? Like congrats you lived another year — here's a cake!

Lorelei is a bit bitter this year because her bestfriend, Robin "Birdie" Potter isn't here to celebrate it with her — the dumb bitch decided to get herself into an accident and now has to spend a week at St. Mungo's.

Lorelei hadn't received one single letter, not even a whisper from the two-way-mirror, which makes her think that Birdie is either — A. depressed or B. captured by the creepy ponies from that one muggle show, between you and me? The latter seems much more believable.

A loud banging noise on her bedroom door interrupted Lorelei from the mixture of nothing and procrastination she was busy doing as she opened the door with a frown on her face.

"Can you turn it down?" George asked, his brother at his side avoiding Lorelei's eyes because he knew damn well he wouldn't be able to look into her intimidating ones after breaking her best friend's heart.

"No" Lorelei said in a monotonous voice, "Anything else? No? Bye!" she slammed the bedroom door on the redhead's freckled face and heard a foot stomp from the other side, real mature, Lorelei scoffed.

The banging started again, Lorelei rolled her eyes opening the door and then giving the redhead in front of her look, Fred blinked, immediately walking away and standing behind his brother, "What, Weasley?"

"At least place a silencing charm!" George said exasperated, the brunette had always been pretty stubborn and ever since their third year they'd both been on rocks with each other, avoiding interaction in any way possible, the last two days though...

Even with the fever Lorelei had decided to make George Weasley's life a nightmare in every way possible, whenever he would get annoyed — which was pretty often — and ask her to stop doing something, she would only start doing it more.

Both of them were driving each other insane.

Lorelei would stop, but the redhead was her only source of entertainment in the whole stinking house, besides she loved to see him get all riled up and frustrated over the smallest of things — it was fun.

"No" said Lorelei simply, once again, she could swear she saw George's left eye twitch, she had to stifle her laughter as she gave him a mock salute and shut the door afterwards.

As soon as she made her way to the bed, banging started once again, Lorelei started to get agitated, it's good music! He should be thankful he's getting to listen to Queen, ungrateful brat.

"What is your problem?! Will you just leave me—" Lorelei paused, staring at the confused figure of Hope Lupin, "Hope! Oh my, Merlin!" Lorelei grabbed the tired looking girl into a tight hug, "I was going crazy! I could kiss you right now!"

"Bet" Hope said jokingly, nudging her side with her elbow, "Merlin, that's loud" Hope said wincing, Lorelei immediately made her way to the music player and turned it off.

"How'd the full moon go?" Lorelei asked throwing her clothes off her bed to make space for the girl, Hope jumped on it cocooning herself in a blanket.

"Terrible" Hope groaned, "My dad is great, but it was more fun with my favorite stout and red fox"

"Proud to be your favorite, Lowe" Lorelei smiled at her friend, "Do you want something? Water? Ramen? I have a whole stash, whatever you want, name it"

"Honestly..." Hope thought for a second, "Right now I think all I need is Birdie's cooking, I miss her already"

"Me too" Lorelei said with a sad smile, "I can't wait to squeeze her to death when she comes here"

"Forgetting about me now that you've got your best friend, huh, El?" Lorelei heard the all too familiar voice of Remus Lupin from her bedroom door frame, he stood there with a warm smile on his tired face as always.

"Uncle Moony!" Lorelei chuckled, giving him the biggest hug, she'd practically grown up with that man as her cool uncle, at first you wouldn't think that with the sad and brooding looks he gives everyone but boy, oh boy does he know how to make everything fun.

"How are you, darling?" Remus ruffled Lorelei's hair, "Is pads giving you any trouble"

"Oh, no, none at all" Lorelei shook her head, her tone dripping with sarcasm, "Just him acknowledging me and making small talk to get information about Harry is getting me through my day, really"

"Want me to handle it?" Remus offered.

"Nah, I'm fine" Lorelei passed him a smile.

🫐

"I WAS THINKING WE COULD GO ST. MUNGO'S TOGETHER" said Lorelei as the pair walked up the stairs, Hope hummed in agreement, "You know just to see what paws is up to"

"I agree, she's gone too long without us bothering her" Hope nodded, "Also two days is the longest I haven't talked to her in forever!"

Birdie and Hope kept chatting until they got to the top of the stairs where the Ginny was sitting with her brothers, a bunch of notebooks laid out in front of them. Lorelei frowned, it seemed highly unlikely that George and Fred were helping Ginny with her homework.

They were plotting something.

"What'd you reckon they're doing?" Hope asked, peering over to catch a glimpse of the notebook, but there seemed to be some sort of charm cast on it — making a normal job like reading hard for Hope.

"Probably blowing off a toilet or something else..." Lorelei trailed off, looking at the trio of Weasleys who looked more concentrated than they looked during exams.

"I'm gonna ask them" Hope shrugged.

"No, Hope wait—" Lorelei started but it was too late, Hope had already started talking to them and was now waving her over, Lorelei was tempted to just turn around and walk away but Hope gave her a look which translated from 'bestfriend eyes' to 'get the fuck here'.

"Hey, Ginny" Lorelei said sitting down on the chair, turning to Fred and giving him a glare and ignoring George.

"Hey, El" Ginny greeted the brunette with a look on her face that very clearly meant she knew something Lorelei didn't, Ginny turned to look at George giving him a wink, "You want to join our quest on making the adults' life miserable by eavesdropping and knowing more than we should?"

"Sounds exactly like how I'd wanna spend a sunday" Lorelei said, she leaned forward on the table with an excited glint in her eyes, "So, what are we doing?"

"Uh, let's see..." Fred said, turning through the pages, "So far, we've got..."

"Nothing" George finished, throwing the notebook aside, "Most of the spells we do are going to require fine and precise magic, most of which we're not able to do"

"So, they got me" Ginny shrugged, "I'm not much of a help though, I mean, I'm only a fourth year, I don't really know what they expected from me"

"What if you don't use precise magic though?" Lorelei asked, "What are the most basic hearing spells you can think of?"

"Sonorous" Hope said without missing beat, Hope and Lorelei turned to look at each other both thinking of the same thing.

THAT halloween night.

"Right, but we can't just go in the room and point our wands to their throat" George said, "We need an inanimate medium"

"Obviously" Lorelei scoffed, "What do you think I am? A moron?"

"Wouldn't be that much of a stretch..."

"I will punch you with my rings on" Lorelei passed him a fake sickly sweet smile, "We need something witty"

"I have an idea" Hope raised her hand, quickly putting it down when she got weird looks from everyone, she cleared her throats, "When I was in muggle school we made this thing from cups, it was called string telephone, I think? Well, anyway, we took two cups and between them we put a string"

"Right, that'd be awesome!" Lorelei beamed, the glint in her eyes becoming more visible, "But I was thinking we could do something other than cups"

"What about a fake ear?" Ginny asked, sprinting to her room and coming out with a shit ton of clay, "Don't ask"

"I really want to" Lorelei said watching the girl with amazement as she slapped the clay on the table, "Well, what are you waiting for get to work!"