When I crossed the threshold of the Great Hall, breakfast had not yet concluded, guaranteeing a massive influx of students; in fact, the venue housed more people than usual. The commotion had spread like wildfire with the distribution of the morning edition of the Daily Prophet, keeping the student body gathered in tense huddles—a hotbed of murmurs regarding the event. Though, analyzing it in retrospect, the setting had already cast precursor signs of the catastrophe the previous day: Narcissa Malfoy's abrupt and untimely bursting onto the castle grounds to take Draco away without a word or any regard for ordinary protocols now carried a chilling meaning.
Little by little, the students closest to the monumental doors noticed my presence. While I did not deploy the meticulous and heartbreaking performance I had staged in front of my parents, the narrative required me to project an image of dejection and heavyheartedness; hence, my arrival was not preceded by a smile, but by a severely fatigued expression, and my gaze was fixed on the floor tiles.
Silence rippled across the tables, expanding concentrically until the vast hall was plunged into a sepulchral mutism, barely punctuated by fragmented whispers about me. A sort of collective panic toward the figure of the new "killer." I observed petrified glances, gestures of utter disbelief, and hands trembling while holding the parchment of the newspaper... Natural reactions from children who lacked the psychological resources to process how to interact with the classmate who, according to the columns printed in fresh ink, had killed a pure-blood aristocrat. And in such a brutal fashion.
My initial intention was to head toward the location of my girls to initiate damage control and wrap up the formality, but my plans were intercepted. The first ones to step forward were not my dear girlfriends or my friends; it was my own blood. The twins cornered me as a unit, besieging my position without granting the slightest relevance to the scrutiny of the rest of the student body or the tension of the environment.
They practically dragged me out of the Great Hall with a firm shove and, once in the relative privacy of the entrance hall, locked eyes with me with an unprecedented seriousness on their countenances—a prelude to their words:
"Red!"
"What the hell have you done?"
I could sense their emotional states with clarity: there was fear, but not a fear directed toward me, but rather a deep, piercing worry for me. There was doubt, uncertainty, and the pure bewilderment of not figuring out how to process a situation of such magnitude. Although Fred and George possessed a maturity superior to what they let on, at their core, they were still young men facing the dynamics of the real world.
Before I could structure a reply to ease their alerts, two additional figures emerged from the Great Hall. Ron advanced, dragging his feet, doubt etched into his features, as if his mind roundly refused to accept that his own brother was capable of perpetrating such a feat. Following in his wake came Percy; he sported a cadaverous paleness, pronounced dark circles under his eyes that betrayed a sleepless night, and a motor weakness that made every single one of his Prefect steps weigh a ton.
The family clan had assembled in the entrance hall... with the sole exception of Ginny. She had already received some of my [Messages] and was not going to settle for participating in a chaotic sibling deliberation in the corridors; no, she would demand her own private session, possibly with Luna as the sole addition, where she would demand answers from me without constraints. And although the impact of the news had affected her, her composure was superior to that of the rest of my siblings.
Beyond the family core, no one else crossed the threshold. Neither the girls, nor any other member of the student body, nor the faculty. On the part of the student mass, they knew perfectly well that we were stationed just behind the massive doors, and although the acoustics of the oak prevented them from deciphering our words, the notion that a "pure-blood killer" was on the other side operated as an infallible deterrent; they preferred to shield themselves in their seats and wait for us to vacate the area. As for the teachers... well, Dumbledore had already taken care of keeping wands holstered and questions contained.
My brothers craved answers, a need identical to that of the rest of the castle... or perhaps, in a more primary sense, they just sought to process the exact sequence of events. From the moment I unilaterally inaugurated the challenge until this outcome that had ended Lucius Malfoy's existence, they had barely managed to gather peripheral fragments of the crisis; by the time they intended to process it, it was all over.
I, remaining faithful to my characterization, projected the look of a young man severely perturbed by the weight of his own actions... and proceeded to supply them with the truth. At least, the version of the truth that my agenda was willing to tolerate the public domain assimilating, seasoned with certain peripheral nuances to bolster the tale. I broke down the vulnerability Ginny had found herself wrapped in, omitting under a strict filter any allusion to the nature of the cursed diary; that information remained under the Ministry's censorship regime, although the leak was imminent and there were barely a couple of days left before the framework was revealed to the magical community. Right after, I articulated the narrative of the Brazilian wands: I told them how their elemental imprint had contaminated my cognitive processes, exacerbating my impulsivity and plunging me into a state of absolute fixation on revenge during my stay abroad. I recounted my return, my vehement demand for justice for the grievances committed against my sister, the formal start of the duel of honor, and... how the variables spiraled out of control so tragically.
I was a great actor. The millimetric deployment of my auras endowed the speech with such an organic credibility that my brothers' suspicions evaporated, being replaced by a reverent solemnity. In their eyes, the Ministry massacre was reconfigured as a fatality of fate, a tragic accident. It only remained for them to pin their eyes on me and begin to assimilate the new status quo. If there is an intrinsic property in the Weasley lineage, it is their unwavering internal unity; and, in a highly poetic fashion, it was Ron who fractured the freezing, tense lethargy of the entrance hall.
"But... at the end of the day, Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater... wasn't he?" he questioned, formulating a premise heavy with an almost rudimentary innocence, as if his own psyche were desperately searching for a moral justification.
"Exactly! Ron is absolutely right, Lucius was in the ranks of the Death Eater squad."
"Strictly speaking, Red has saved the magical world a severe headache."
The twins' voices chimed in together, essaying a timid return to their habitual playful register, though the underlying perturbation remained latent in their features. With those proclamas, it was evident that they were no longer centering their efforts on digesting the fact that their brother had blood-stained hands; now their absolute priority consisted of lifting my spirits. True to their nature, Fred and George prioritized the imperative of wrenching a smile from their loved ones above all else, not caring in the least about defaming a Malfoy's memory in the main corridors.
Did that constitute the preamble to a formal reconciliation? It wasn't as if we had sustained an explicit rift. Under the twins' leadership, the family easement spread. Ron immediately joined the dynamic, discrediting and cursing Lucius's lineage with an impetus that betrayed that his biological maturity was not yet capable of weighing the ramifications of the crisis—an immaturity typical of his age. Even Percy, with the analytical coldness of a serpent, placed a firm hand on my shoulder, solemnly congratulating me for having followed the right course of action. Nonetheless, he didn't miss the opportunity to inquire about the wands that had corrupted my mental stability; I limited myself to informing him that Dumbledore had confiscated them with the intention of repatriating them to Brazil.
The vibration of the environment experienced such a substantial improvement that the twins hinted at organizing an impromptu celebration—a crude alibi to channel the family stress through playful relief. They were about to request Ginny's location, but I stopped the initiative. I communicated to them the raw reality of my agenda: going to my friends.
Silence dominated once more. My older brothers clearly processed the extreme complexity of the opinion awaiting me. However, their temperament prevented them from standing idly by, so Fred and George proceeded to execute the maneuver they mastered to perfection: causing trouble.
They stepped forward as one, throwing the monumental oak leaves wide open and proclaiming out loud in perfect synchrony:
"Make way for the executioner of Death Eaters!!"/"Give way to the Death Eater killer!!"
The residual murmur that had built up in the Great Hall after our departure was snuffed out instantly. An absolute, dense, and incredulous silence colonized the venue. A large part of the student body observed the scene stripped of the capability to process such a heretical statement; the faculty didn't manifest a better scenario. Professor McGonagall displayed an expression where her eyeballs threatened to overflow their profiles, assuming the posture of a lion about to pounce from her dais with uncontainable fury.
Yes, the maneuver was classified as a public relations disaster of catastrophic proportions. Those simple words placed the twins in a very bad position, drawing a massive bullseye on their backs before the Slytherin faction. But they didn't give a damn about the crossfire; they sensed my position in the castle would be precarious starting that morning, and they had made the resolution to share the enemy harassment under the code of Weasley blood. They had even formally proposed, before crossing the threshold, that I move my belongings to Ron's dormitory, suggesting they employ their classic identity-theft stratagem so my twin could operate as my decoy for a couple of weeks... or for as long as he managed to stay alive.
A subtle, involuntary smile lined my face. At that precise instant, I logged a new task in my mental agenda: I had to secure a shop for my brothers... possibly including a direct subsidiary within the fief's domains.
I advanced down the central aisle, breaking through the tide of uniforms. I deliberately ignored the snakes' table, where glances oscillated between visceral suspicion, panic, and a cocktail of complex emotions, steering my steps toward the Gryffindor sector. There lay the core of my harem, assembled in a tense gathering. Without hesitating, I took a seat right at the epicenter of their formation.
The only way to define the atmosphere in this spot was absolute tension.
The very same girls who used to gloat and dispute over my proximity now showed themselves rigid, prisoners of an emotional paralysis. No one in the castle possessed the arguments to refute the printed headlines: Red Weasley had taken a human life. And although our affective bonds enjoyed unquestionable solidity, on the civil plane, they were still teenagers incapable of digesting that the confidant who shared everyday life with them was the author of a brutal execution.
I logged stares pinned on me, spasmodic tremors, and a manifest difficulty in articulating a single word.
"R... Red..." Hermione stammered, stripped of the emotional compass necessary to hold my gaze. She was my former girlfriend, but the concept of homicide represented a volume far too dense for the logical schemes of her academic mind.
The rest of the formation did not exhibit better stability indices; the rigidity of their backs betrayed a sharp nervousness before the uncertainty of the new panorama.
Of course, paralysis did not rule the entirety of the group. Certain individuals manifested superior control: my sister and Luna scrutinized me with stillness, awaiting my first interaction, implicitly granting me the benefit of the doubt. On an intermediate plane, a small committee of allies seemed to process the crisis with relative fortitude, displaying only surface-level affectation: Penelope, some of the Slytherin girls, Susan, and Lavender. The latter, despite initially figuring among the most dumbfounded by the Prophet's headlines, had regained her composure with astonishing speed.