“Well ignite your wand-tip then!” I snap. The Weasley clan falls silent somewhat, looking at me and my Cross Face #8 by the light of Rose, Molly and Louis’ wands. Only those three were clever enough to bring light to this stupid room, apparently.
I sighed and turned to answer the next question that wasn’t James Potter’s stupid comment. Anyone would think he didn’t know it was the middle of the night.
“Well, I have called a Weasley clan meeting today – ok, toNIGHT, Lorcan – because I think our lives need spicing up a little… I propose a Challenge.”
My cousins were all whispering at that, clearly interested. I looked at Al and he grinned beside me.
“Why are we meeting now?” little Lucy asked, yawning accidentally, and illustrating her point pretty well.
“Because we all lead busy lives,” I said shortly. She looked slightly confused, so I decided to hurry on.
“Well, I know that we all have pretty busy lives, but sometimes the work people are getting is what is preventing us having a little fun, or in fact having any sort of social life. Well, the obvious answer to that is pranking, right?” I paused, and looked at some of the dubious, excited and nervous faces around me.
“Well duh. We know that, we’re Weasleys. But why are we discussing this? It’s meant to be different,” Dom said, emerging from the back of the huddle. Most cousins and friends looked awkward at her arrival, but I remained pleasant.
I had invited her to this Weasley Clan Conference for a reason.
“I’m just getting to the point,” I said mildly, inclining my head. “I think that we should have a Pranking Competition!”
Immediately, everyone started whispering again, and I smiled. This was going exactly as it was supposed to.
The question started coming at me – “Are we in teams? How’s it judged? How are we doing it?”
I held up a hand for silence.
“There are rules for this competition, and as long as you stick within them you’ll be fine. Al?”
Albus cleared his throat and ceremoniously unrolled a piece of parchment with the rules on them. It looked impressive, but I would have been more impressed if he had not practiced this particular move about fifty times in the library. It was very boring after a while.
“Rule number one: Teams of two or three only. No singles, no more than that. NO exceptions. Oh, and don’t change teams once you’re in them, ok? It’s so annoying otherwise.
Rule number two: Roxanne and I will not be directly involved in your teams.
Rule number three: Teams remain secret. You organize OUTSIDE of this meeting who you are going with, and you come to us to put you down in a team OUTIDE of this meeting too.
Rule number four: Tell us what, when and how your prank went before the deadline – which will be far off, don’t worry!” Protests had come from older cousins until Al assured them it was all ok.
Rule number five: No specific pranking of other teams.”
“Everything else is up to you,” I cut in. “The team will win based on originality, scale, target, successfulness and punishment. Teams decided by the end of the week, ok?”
Everyone nodded and I beamed – phase 1 (the cover-up) of Plan L was underway.
I sneaked along the side of the corridor, trying to be as silent as possible as I came to the broom cupboard I was looking for. It was just twenty minutes after the end of our impromptu meeting, and I had agreed to meet a certain someone here afterwards so that we could discuss the prank we would play. It was the exact reason I had invited her.
I found the edge of the broom cupboard and edged my way in silently, thanking Merlin I hadn’t tripped over a broom on the way in.
Because I am just the epitome of grace and good balance at all times, you see. Especially when I hurl myself out of windows at cousins.
But that’s besides the point.
I hunched over and rubbed my arms to try to keep warm (because seriously, why had I worn a tank top and tiny shorts? It’s January) until the door slid open and my cousin fell right into my arms.
“Oof!”
“Argh!”
I spat out a mouthful of golden hair and backed into the corner until my back hit the shelves. I managed about half a step.
“Well… hi,” I managed.
“Hi,” Dom said, a little snippishly.
“Erm… well, I just want you to know that I’m not going to discuss our issues in this arrangement. We’re going to put that aside for this… because seriously, who pulls off better pranks than us? We are the official masters,” I said, trying to sound offhand. Truthfully, Dom bloody scares me. I know it wasn’t always like that, though. But now? Nobody does angry like Weasleys.
‘Hell hath no fury like a Weasley woman scorned,’ I believe the saying goes.
She considered this for a moment. “Too true.”
I wanted to grin evilly – because we were going to rock this thing – but tried not to. “So we’ll shake on it?”
She eyed my outstretched hand thoughtfully for a moment. “Why are you participating when you and Al said you’d sit it out?”
“How could I resist? It was my plan all along, to be honest. That’s why I got him to promise.” Well, most of that was true. We actually agreed to not take part because of Project L (Rose and Scorpius deserved our full attention, supposedly).
“Well… ok.”
And just like that, Dom and I were to be (secret) partners in crime for the biggest Weasley prank in the history of all Hogwarts.
We’d probably make it into the next edition of Hogwarts: A History, and be front-page news of The Daily Prophet for weeks. I can see the headlines… “Mad Weasley Girls Take Hogwarts by Storm and… Get Expelled.”
Scratch that plan, then.
“I’ll owl you when we should meet next. In about a week’s time, probably,” Dom said, and walked out of the broom closet, just like that.
I had just formed an alliance with my biggest enemy and who was also my biggest possible asset, who I was fighting with for an unknown reason. I still wanted the answer to that, actually.
Was I scared? Yes. Was I scared, exhilarated, sly, adventure-happy and hyped-up for this shiz? Hell yeah.
I crept slowly up through the corridors, subconsciously avoiding trick stairs and taking passageways, before I had to re-wake the Fat Lady (who was not pleased to be woken up twice within 15 minutes, and we had a bit of an argument before she eventually let me in), and carefully sneak up the creaky staircases to the Fifth Year Girls Dorm.
That still confused me, how far up I had to go.
Wincing, I pushed open the door, and tiptoed across the floor whilst trying to avoid creaks and… YES! I made it to my bed!
I was just easing myself under the covers ever-so-slowly, and trying to grab my hangings in the pitch black, when suddenly, the room was filled with a blinding light.
“Aagh! What the – Ooow… turn them off!” I groaned. I slit my eyes open and peered around the room, to find my friends not quite as asleep as I’d thought them.
Huh. So most of that work was for nothing, then? Great.
Harriet was sitting up in bed, looking all tight-lipped because she probably wanted to tell me off for late-night activities, Edie was propped up and trying not to let her head nod (she wasn’t succeeding) and Isabella was standing at the end of her bed in her ridiculous nightgown with her arms crossed.
She walked slowly towards me, looking more impressive with every step, and I cringed backwards until her face was an inch from mine.
“Spill.” Then she backed away a couple of inches expectantly.
“Uh… I can’t.” At their protests, I carried on hurriedly. “I’d like to! But Albus might kill me! And then where would we be?”
Unfortunately, my logic wasn’t getting to their angry faces.
Except… “Well, that means it’s something to do with her family,” Harriet pointed out, and slid out of bed to stand next to Isabella. Edie jolted upright and started to untangle herself from her sheets slowly, while the other two stared at me calculatingly.
All was silent for several minutes until Isabella said, “She’s got her guilty face on.”
“She does,” Harriet replied.
“So she’s guilty about something to do with her family…”
“No way, really?” I retorted sarcastically. Then I sighed. “Look, I can say that there’s going to be a lot of Weasley-clan-based pranks happening soon, okay? Then with that information you can fill in the gaps!”
Everyone nodded like it was good, so I paused and added, “Can I sleep now? I kind of have a big day tomo - ”
Isabella’s hand came down on my mouth, and I slapped it away. “What?!”
“Yeesh, no need to get so huffy!” she huffed. “I was going to say… now we get to the real goss.”
“Oh yeah?” It’s no wonder I was wary.
Isabella sat down carefully and mischievously grinned. “How do you feel about Dan?”
I groaned while the others giggled. “He’s a great friend! And he’s cute. But that is all.”
“Really?” Isabella sounded disappointed.
“Really really,” I sighed.
The next morning, I stumbled down to breakfast with Isabella dragging me forwards. I hadn’t had much sleep once they’d all got started, and whilst Belly seemed fine with only a few hours’ sleep, it was already taking its toll on me.
Bummer.
On a happier note, my shoes hadn’t burned this morning, so I was in luck at least a little.
When we got down to breakfast, I plonked myself down opposite Al and started to shove copious amounts of toast into my mouth while Isabella walked on down the aisle… and stopped short.
James was sitting with Molly, as per usual, but beside them… was Dom. Needless to say, she was getting plenty of weird looks and the few mad people that weren’t Wotters and were up at this time were staring at her like she was deluded.
Dom never sat at the Gryffindor table.
And normally, even though we had a new Weasley-wide-known Pranking secret, I would have screamed at her. Now, because of our secret, I didn’t.
I realise this wasn’t very consistent with my behaviour towards her, but was kind of fed up of having to meet everyone’s expectations.
Edie dragged herself onto the bench, and watched Isabella restart and walk with her model’s walk down to James. Edie raised an eyebrow, then frowned. “I suppose this new arrangement is to do with the big family secret you basically laid out for us?”
“You told your dorm?!” Rose exclaimed, arriving and sitting opposite Edie.
I sighed. “Not deliberately.”
Edie grinned. “We bugged her until she gave us the clues, confessed some boy stuff, then put all the clues together for us.”
Al rolled his eyes simultaneously with Rose.
“Hey, it’s not my fault!” I protested.
“It really was,” Edie chuckled, spooning scrambled eggs onto her plate and then Rose’s. I huffed in frustration, then turned to Al.
“I’m keeping the list of groups, right?” I didn’t let him answer, but plowed on. “I already have a pair to write up, just so’s you know. You can tell me if you get any more groups before lunch.”
He nodded and sighed, but then Scorpius arrived and slid himself next to Rose with barely a ‘hello’ in our direction.
I smirked. “Hey, Al?”
“Yeah?”
“I think we should put this Plan into action as soon as possible. Can you do?”
He grinned. “Sure. Edie, you want to help?”
She beamed happily. “I have no idea what this is, but yeah!”
Project L eventually happened that weekend. It was February now, and we were waiting until Scorpius and Rose had a good long evening before we put it all into action.
That, and I had had my detentions to complete… and I had made Al finish my Herbology, Defence, and Ancient Runes homeworks with me before we did it. I still had another three assignments for this weekend, but hoped I could get this all done tomorrow.
It was after dinner, and it was a non-Hogsmeade weekend, because of the Valentine’s Day trip and ball in a couple of weekends’ time. We were hoping that this could all be done in time for then, so that Rose and Scorpius could go together.
Edie, Al and I were situated on a hidden balcony above the hallway where they liked to meet (we had discovered this after a load of questioning on Scorp’s behalf from Al, who was very indignant that his cousin should be lost to his best mate this way). Rose and Scorpius were down on the pranking list together – the only other concrete pairing so far, because in order for my secret plan to work, I had avoided all my other cousins as much as possible.
After all, nobody knew my secret plan… that’s why it was secret.
Edie was wriggling with excitement as we heard their voices faintly at the end of the hallway, and Al and I completely stilled ourselves so as to be silent. I hit Edie to make her stop whispering, then listened hard.
“…maybe a bit too harsh?” Scorpius was saying.
“Nah, they’re my family… although it’s meant to be on the school in general…” Rose said.
Scorpius chuckled. “Your family can be pretty harsh, yeah. Roxanne scares me… so does her brother, with his weird disappearance.”
I punched my arm in the air, then realised what he’d said about Fred, and frowned.
“Roxanne’s great! She’s just a bit confused right now. Although she can be a bit of a ruthless schemer.” I felt like kissing Rose.
“She was scary even before she lost her memory. At first, she did crazy things for a reason. Now, she doesn’t know why she does them… oh look, Butterbeer.”
I heard the clinking of the bottles we’d left there, and silently thanked Merlin for Scorpius’s stupidity in taking them. The bait was hooked, right underneath our hiding place as planned.
There was a glugging, then Rose said, “I have to agree with you there. Although I’m glad Al’s not here to tell me off.”
“I’m glad Al’s not here.” Scorpius suddenly sounded a lot more serious. It sounded like the newly-styled ‘butterbeer’ was working.
“Me too… I want to be here just with you right now,” Rose said suddenly, her tone the same as Malfoy’s.
Too bad they weren’t actually alone. But they didn’t need to know that. Nor did they need to know that the ‘butterbeer’ had been spiked with Veritaserum.
“I only ever want to be here with you. I daydream about it.”
“I want to be with you!” Rose said in a rush. She was getting red, but couldn’t stop. “I love you and I wish you’d ask me to the Valentine’s Day ball and Hogsmeade trip.”
Scorpius cut her off. “I want to ask you out really badly but your family scare me and I don’t want my family to cut me off from you. You’re the best thing in my life!”
Woah there, fella. I glanced around uneasily at Edie and Al, both of whom had horribly wide eyes. I realised that all we’d wanted was a proclamation of love and a snog scene which we could swiftly exit, but hadn’t exactly banked on what the love proclamation said.
Crap.
Suddenly Scorp made a horrible confession. I clapped my hands over Al’s ears and screwed my eyes shut, hoping never to hear that kind of confession again.
I won’t repeat it. You can guess.
“I’ve been hoping that my family would pick up hints about us and get us together,” Rose said randomly. “But I didn’t think they’d use Truth Potion on us! I knew you could never be brave enough to ask me out, so I tried to show them all instead.”
“You didn’t think I was brave enough?” Scorpius sounded a lot less intoxicated.
He had only had a couple of glugs. Rose had had more.
“I wanted you to be but you never are. But I love that. It’s only because you have a traitorous Death Eater father who’s good for nothing at all, and Uncle Harry saved his life twice but he’s a coward who kept swapping sides and I hated you at first but then Al was your friend and I was upset at Al for being cowardly enough to get into Slytherin and then I was jealous of you for stealing him and then… Fuck.”
Rose had run out of steam, and her eyes were as horribly wide as Scorpius’s were narrow.
“You think I’m a coward?” he spat. I could feel Al shaking in anger beside me, but Edie put a hand on top of his. It didn’t work; he looked about ready to blow.
“I… I didn’t mean it!” Rose tried to back away, but her feet were stuck. Scorpius took another step closer, about a foot away from her now. “And you tried to get your family involved to get us together?!”
“No! I didn’t want this situation! I just wanted you to have a little pressure on you so you could act on your feelings!” Rose shouted back.
“And now what?”
“Now…” Rose breathed, her eyes as slitted as Voldemort’s, “now, we are stuck under enchanted mistletoe. It’s a Wheezes product. The person you’re closest to, you have to snog. Happy?”
Scorpius’s mouth was open unattractively, and Rose was shaking just as much as Al.
I decided now might be the time to save them from Part 2 of our horrible plan. I performed a quick Blindfold Charm on both of them, causing them to shout out loud and crash into each other, before leaping off the 12-foot-high balcony and, wincing, quickly kissed Scorpius on the lips (ugh, ugh, ugh – I feel like a cradle snatcher) before dragging Rose into a broom closet and locking her in before un-blindfold-ing her. Edie was coming down the back way and Al hadn’t moved, so I shoved Scorpius down the corridor, then from behind the door, I removed his blindfold too.
Then I led Albus away while Edie put on her innocent act and went to remove a screaming Rose from the cupboard.
That really wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
24 hours later, nothing better had happened. Al was fuming at Rose because of what she’d said, and they had had a shouting match even before either of them reached the common room; so neither of them were speaking to the other. Al had been so angry that he hadn’t even bothered trying to cover up that it was he and I who had manoeuvred the whole thing, but he at least didn’t forget to leave Edie out of it. So Rose had rounded on me and shouted at me too, and Al had come to breakfast the next morning glaring at Scorpius from the corner of his eye.
I could assume from this that they’d rowed too.
And mine and Al’s relationship was now strained, because we were upset about what we’d inflicted on Rose and Scorpius, and those two certainly weren’t speaking, and both of them were refusing to even look at us.
So when an owl landed in front of me in the common room with a note that read only ‘Divination ladder tomorrow, 5pm,’ it seemed like a little bright ray of sunshine in this whole stupid storm… and it reminded me of what I had to do.
The Secret Plan needed to be put into action. And for that… well, I needed to target each of the separate groups, didn’t I?
Roxanne’s Memory Book
The groups for the Pranking Competition are as follows:
- Rose and Scorpius (except probably not anymore)
- Dom and Rox
- Lucy and Lorcan
- James and Lily
- Lysander and Louis
- Hugo and Molly (whoa, that’s an odd pairing)
But if I have my way… well, maybe these won’t all stay the same.
*A/N: Hey there! I know, big changes, right? Sorry there’s been zilch info on any of the more freaky stuff. I solemnly swear to include more next chapter.
So this is the chapter I was halfway through when I put the story on hiatus. I hope it’s picked back up again ok – there are a load of loose ends I need to tie up eventually, and plenty of plot points I need to stick to that is proving super-hard. But I think I’m managing ok.
Feel free to point out any mistakes in a review… or anything in a review, really.
~TGK*
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