| Inked | (George Weasley)

Chapter Twenty-One

After that night in the Astronomy Tower with Fred and George, Olive Lark was very different.

Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration to those who didn't know the girl.

Ollie kept more and more to herself, speaking only if called on in class or to get into the Ravenclaw common room. Sure, she still hung out with her friends at meals and sat with them in classes, but didn't speak a word. She nodded her head if Natalie asked her if she was okay, or smiled if Cedric told her a funny joke... but truth be told, Olive was still shaken up from that day when Ingrid bullied her.

Whenever she saw the towering, smirking Slytherin in the hall, she tucked her patched up notebook into her robes and kept her head down. Sometimes Ingrid and her friends would purposefully bump into Olive- or whisper mean names like 'Mute' or 'Freak' in her ears as they passed, all of which made the poor Ravenclaw pale with uneasiness. It seemed that George's threat to the bullies was empty, and her friends' promise to keep her safe faded away, broken.

Recently the Ravenclaw discovered that she was alone, despite being surrounded by people she thought were her closest friends. Nat and Cho still constantly tried to cheer her up, even bringing Fred and George into the mix to try. Cedric would invite her to Hufflepuff Quidditch practices, or walk her to class- wanting her cousin to say something to him, or at least give him a genuine smile. However, Olive continued to stay silent, the only solution to her constant worries, the only way she could try to stop or drown out the bullies.

And she was too scared to do that. Even as the cat.

It seemed as if her life was falling apart at the seams. She hadn't heard a word from Missy or Sirius- which made her wonder if they were even okay. Her small acquaintanceship with the twins was fading, and the relationship Olive had with her friends wasn't as strong as before. She could tell there were secrets Cho and Nat kept from her that they once would have shared... Ollie only wondered what had changed to make it so.

All of the silent chaos that Olive had observed happening around her led the Ravenclaw to wander alone. She would write in her notebook more frequently than she used to. At night, she'd sneak around the castle as the black cat, something she'd only do if there wasn't a prank to stop.

Which leads Olive Lark's story to now.

She was sitting in the Astronomy Tower on a Friday evening, bundled up in her thick cloak and Ravenclaw scarf. Her hand, though numb with cold, worked quickly as she vigorously wrote a tear-jerking ending to her latest story, involving a goodbye so broken it might as well had been death. Olive wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked over the last few sentences once more before closing the cap on her pen.

Lately Olive had been writing a lot of stories that would leave in shock, tears, or without closure. Why? She didn't know.. Ollie was just a writer with a fire that could fuel a thousand suns at the rate she was going.

Slowly, she closed her notebook, tucking it into her backpack and slid her pen into her pocket. It was well into the night, and Olive had put a silencing charm and cloaking spell around herself so she wouldn't be caught and given detention- because detention would only make things worse with Ollie, given it would be served with Ingrid or the Weasley twins (they were almost always in detention)- people she didn't want to see at the moment.

Olive tiptoed down the Astronomy Tower, her flats not making a sound as she walked through the dark. She new Filch usually checked on the outside ground briefly this time of night- she had seen him wandering the courtyard with Mrs. Norris, muttering profanities about today's youth.