A/N: While I gratuitously indulge in the Potterverse, canon and non-canon, I've always been amused by the thought of what the heck other students might be getting up to behind the scenes. I rebel against the idea that the interesting stuff only happened to the Golden Trio and their circle of influence.
So this will be drabbles of my OWN little group of OC's (and minor characters from the canon) interacting with the magical world in their own way.
It was three hours past curfew when Hermione Granger, wand in hand, stepped off the staircases onto the second floor of the castle.
Each of the Prefects were responsible for a floor of the castle, with shifts rotating each night. Tonight Ron patrolled the first floor, while she had the second. She nodded in greeting to the waiting Hannah Abbott, who returned the nod wearily before trudging her way off to bed, her shift over.
Normally Hannah and Hermione had more pleasant words to exchange when they encountered each other on their shifts, but an hour before midnight on a Thursday has a power of destroying any desire for conversation.
Hermione hummed to herself quietly as she cast a quick lumos and began walking her round. The second floor of the castle was complicated and expansive, with winding corridors, and rooms far smaller than other levels. Once upon a time the second floor had held the private offices of teachers or students that were studying, or had attained, their Masteries. But over the years and generations the amount of qualified teachers and instructors dwindled as they traveled to other schools and nations, lured by higher prospects, resulting in fewer students studying them, fewer offices being used, and eventually...an almost entirely abandoned floor.
Of all the Hogwarts staff and student body, only Snape with his Potions Mastery, and Flitwick with his Charms Mastery, were entitled to the private study, but both preferred their offices as Heads of their Houses.
It was entirely possible to self-study your Mastery without the assistance of a tutor, and if she still had her timeturner from third year Hermione would have considered doing just that, but with the excessive workload of NEWTS in Seventh Year already it wasn't often considered worth the stress.
Making sure to stick her head into every office and room she passed by, Hermione sighed to herself at the disrepair of the rooms reserved for the most talented academics of Hogwarts, long since left to dust. The offices were notorious couples spots, which at least meant the rooms were still good for something.
Unfortunately, it was an illicit something, this long past curfew.
Testing each door before entering it, Hermione couldn't help but be saddened at the sight of each dusty and disused room; the piles of ratted books, the once ornate desks covered in cobwebs. Each room was unlocked and abandoned, ignored by even the House Elves who rigorously scrubbed most other inches of the castle grounds.
She was knocked from her disillusioned musings by the sound of a low bang, and a gentle rumbling in the floor, almost causing her to drop her wand in alarm.
Blinking to herself and quickly stepping back out into the corridor, she reached into her back pocket as she quickly made her way towards the source of the noise, retrieving the Marauders Map and flicking it open without slowing her pace.
Turning the corner and continuing down the corridor, her eyes picked out the one office door that was closed, her eyebrow raising as she glanced at the map to see what she was walking into.
Recognizing the names, she stopped, and sighed.
Rolling her eyes to the heavens above, she returned the map to her back pocket before approaching the closed office, casting alohamora to unseal the basic locking charm that they had inevitably placed on the lock, and pushing the door open with her foot, her wand falling back to her side.
This office, unlike all the others, was rather well lit, with a gentle blue light bouncing off each of the walls. Two young men and a young woman stood inside.
'Stood'
One of the young men was currently standing on top of the rooms desk, his dark blonde hair anxiously crazy as he aimed his wand at what appeared to have once been a chair, his eyes wide and anxious. The young woman was standing over the remains of said chair, a heavy candlestick in her hand from where she had clearly just finished smashing the chair apart.
The third young man stood leaning against a far wall, nonplussed and amused, shooting a grin at Hermione that would have been charming if the rest of the scene wasn't so relentlessly...present.
Hermione sighed again. "Do I want to know? It's past curfew. Did Hannah know you were in here doing...what are you doing?"
The boy on top of the table relaxed slightly, hopping down, as the girl straightened up and put the candlestick back on the desk. "We were killing a chair, Prefect Granger."
Hermione blinked, raising an eyebrow. "And why were you killing a chair at eleven at night in a second floor office, Crystal?"
Shrugging as if it was of no consequence, fifth year Slytherin Crystal Wasara began brushing sawdust off her robes as her two companions began to sort out the rest of the office. "Because if we'd tried to kill the chair in our common room, Snape would ask us how it was alive in the first place, and what Kirian was doing there."
The second boy kicked himself off from the wall, picking up the small stone that had been charmed to give off the blue light, and held it up like a lantern as he walked over to stand by his friend. "Snape doesn't like when the furniture comes alive."
"Professor Snape, Kylar. He's your Head Of House." Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose gently, waving her wand to reassemble the chair and collect the dregs of sawdust into a neat pile. "And what about you, Kirian? These two being out past curfew and destroying the interior design I don't have to understand in order to be able to accept, but what about you?"
The blonde boy, Kirian, pulled his outer robe from a pile on the floor and pulled it around himself, grinning sheepishly. "I'm the reason it was alive in the first place. Got a bit carried away"
Hermione closed her eyes for a brief moment, and pocketed her wand as she huffed.
The Slytherins Crystal Wasara and Kylar Goroesi, and Ravenclaw Kirian Phase, had been thorns in the sides of the ranks of Prefects since second year.
While the Weasley twins enjoyed the commotion of their pranks, and the spectacle of being utter pains to deal with, the trio she found herself dealing with now weren't so performative. From potions experiments run-amok, to attempts to tamper with the castle wards backfiring spectacularly, the trio had ended up in the hospital wing twice as much as they'd ended up in Dumbledores office, and that was saying something.
To Hermione, they represented one of the only ways that house division was actually useful. Because when Slytherins and Ravenclaws come together, they become utterly terrifying.
Crystal nodded as if in answer to a question not asked, before picking her own outer robe off the floor and pulling it on, the material seeming to clean itself and becoming clear of creases as it fell into place. It was a simple bit of magic, but one often neglected. "Is this the part where you threaten detention if we don't scamper, Prefect Granger?" She pulled the ribbon that had been tying her dark brown hair back, letting it fall free and perfectly into place. Also a simple bit of magic.
Hermione nodded, crossing her arms over her chest and stepping to the side, unblocking the doorway. "If your classwork had the finesse as the charmwork you do on your appearance, Crystal, you'd be the Slytherin Prefect."
Kylar bit back a laugh and turned it into a cough, stepping back from his best friend as she narrowed her eyes and cast a glance of disdain over the bushy-haired girls appearance. "I'm second in Charms and Transfiguration, right on your tail, Granger. Giving you a fair chance. And if you spent half the time on your appearance as you do on your studies, you wouldn't improve a jot."
Stepping past the taller Gryffindor prefect, Crystal smirked up at her, whispering. "Beauty like mine may only be skin deep, but plainness goes right to the bone." Gently blowing Hermione a kiss as she walked past, Crystal added an extra sway to her hips as she strolled in the direction of the Slytherin common room.
Kylar followed slowly, shooting Hermione an apologetic look and spreading his hands helplessly. "Oh what a pair you two could have been, in a better time." He sighed dramatically, before winking and banishing the light from the stone, drowning the corridor in darkness and jogging after his best friend.
Hermione growled quietly to herself, and had almost re-lit her lumos when Kirian beat her to it by a few moments, managing to do it wordlessly. She blinked at the nearly permanently ruffled and bewildered boy, allowing a small smile to come to her lips. "Nice bit of wandwork that, not even I can do illumination magic wordlessly."
He grinned at her praise, stepping out into the corridor. "Thank you, but if I had transfiguration finesse a quarter as good as yours, we wouldn't have had to beat the chair to death."
She flushed only slightly, and nodded at him in thanks for the returned praise, before following him out into the corridor. "I suppose there's no use mentioning that if you three keep getting caught, eventually the punishments will become more severe? Just because we've given up giving you detention doesn't mean the staff won't step in if you keep toeing the line."
"Oh we know, but we haven't found the line yet. If we ever do, I imagine the Prefects will be among the first to know." Kirian grinned, his fascinating grey eyes sparkling in the light of his wand.
Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. She tolerated Kylar and Crystal, but Kirian she would actually call a distant friend, and they often partnered together when they shared a class and Harry and Ron paired off. "What were you attempting with the chair, anyway?"
"Well, you know about muggle wheelchairs, right?"
She blinked and raised her eyebrows yet again, a common reaction when dealing with the trio, before biting her bottom lip in thought. "You were attempting to transfigure a magical equivalent?"
Kirian scrunched his face up slightly and gave a 'sorta kinda' gesture, a grin still on his lips. "A bit of transfiguration, mostly harmonic enchantment."
"Kirian" Hermione gasped, her eyes turning to a glare. "Harmonic enchantment is dangerous!"
"I...know. That's why we had to kill the chair."
"There aren't even any books or scrolls on the subject in the Restricted Section, it's considered too experimental. What is it with you three and going outside the curriculum to the point of stupidity?"
Kirian shrugged. "Heather, that second year Hufflepuff with one leg and the crutches? We heard her mention she has trouble with the stairs, and it's her birthday soon." He raised his hand in a wave before jogging his way down the corridor towards Ravenclaw Tower, casting a disillusionment charm on himself and rippling out of visibility as he went.
Hermione watched where he had been moments ago, looking back to where Kylar and Crystal had wandered in the direction of, lost in thought for a few moments.
'They're attempting alchemical enchantment, because of a second years birthday?'
The next morning at breakfast, Hermione was halfway through preparing her notes for the day when Ron and Harry plopped down next to her, disheveled and groggy. Neither were morning people in the slightest.
"Morning Hermione, how are you always so put together at breakfast?" Harry yawned, stretching his arms and neck before leaning forward to rest his head on the table, even as Ron began to heap food onto his own plate in a zombie-like haze.
She huffed, reaching over with her free hand to pat her friend on his tired head. "Because I get up an hour and a half before breakfast. You really need a better morning routine, Harry. Not sleeping well?"
Harry mumbled his response, pulling his head up and starting his breakfast of toast, toast, and still a bit more toast.
"How was your patrol, Hermione?" Ron managed to ask around a mouthful of eggs and sausage, almost sending a barrage of half-chewed shrapnel over her notes. But five years of breakfast with the unending maw that was Ronald Weasley had taught her well, and a thinly veiled shield bounced the disgusting spray off her notes and clothes. But that didn't stop the others at the table from shooting him both amused and disgusted looks, which he pointedly decided to ignore, or just didn't notice. "Mine was so boring that I ended up napping."
"You napped on your...oh never mind." Hermione sighed, her first sigh of the day and likely the first of far too many. "I had to deal with the Trio Of Trysts again."
"Oh yeah? What were they trying to do this time? Another organic eating potion that keeps growing?" Ron smirked, flicking his eyes over to the Slytherin table where the mentioned trio sat eating, Kirian not receiving any odd looks for being there despite being a Ravenclaw.
Kylar and Kirian were in the process of charming two forks to fight with minimized knives, while Crystal took bets from surrounding third and fourth years. The older years either ignored them entirely, or looked on with amusement.
Harry looked up from his waffles and grinned. "Or another rope that wraps around peoples belongings and then becomes a fixed point in space, impossible to move?"
"Or another ball of fire that kept freezing everything it touched?"
Hermione huffed and spread her hands to silence them. "Yes yes, they're very clever and relentless. But no, they were just trying to make a magical wheelchair and the chair came to life and they had to kill it with a candlestick."
Ron chuckled and returned to his breakfast, losing himself in the food, while Hermione returned to her notes. But Harry kept glancing over at the other trio.
Cunning Kylar, with his charm so potent that it was almost the sole reason they hadn't been expelled.
Brilliant Crystal, second only to Hermione in grades, with her ruthless ambition and determination carrying her through life with grace and poise.
And ingenious Kirian, whose natural instinct for academics would have him second in the year in Crystals place if he wasn't so unconventional in his methods.
Hermione noticed her friend staring and glanced over, frowning. "You okay, Harry?"
He started and sighed, shooting his friend a quick smile before continuing his breakfast. "Yeah! Yeah. Just wondering what it must be like to have the better kind of weird life."
The Slytherin Common Room wasn't as miserable as the other houses wanted to make it out to be. Sure, it was underwater, and a bit more regal than the other houses, but it wasn't damp, it wasn't moldy, and it was actually quite nicely warm.
Once you got used to the darkness of the design palette, it was quite comfortable.
Crystal glanced around the room as she moved her wand methodically over the piece of wood in her hands, shaving off bits and bending other, her lips constantly moving as she whispered and mumbled a constant stream of incantations.
She glanced down at her work and blew away some wood dust, before holding it up to eye level to scrutinize. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to transfigure perfect circles?"
Kylar looked up from the notebook he was scribbling in furiously, writing letters in an alphabet that would have looked like gibberish to anyone passing by. He grinned at the look of incredible concentration on Crystals face, before going back to scribbling. "No, I do not. It's why I let you do it."
"Why can't we just use one of the pre-existing chairs in the castle, like we tried last night?"
He sighed, and flicked back a few pages in the notebook to a page covered in sketched schematics and outlines that hadn't been there earlier in the day. "Because, the furniture in the castle has been here too long. It's practically contaminated with the ambient magic of the place, so harmonic magic will interact with it strangely. We need to make the chair from scratch, make sure each piece is receptive to the enchantments and charms. Or do you want whoever uses the chair to randomly plummet down the very stairs we're trying to save her from, if one part fails and another holds steady and the balance goes insane?"
Crystal scowled, before setting the carved wooden piece in a growing pile next to her, reaching deeper into the bag on the floor at her side than should have been physically possible, and retrieving another plank of wood. "I thought the predatory chair was funny."
Despite the dozen or so other people in the common room, they received very few stares or looks. The looks had stopped around third year. But the Prefects still sighed in exasperation as they walked past sometimes. Kylar grinned, pointing to a scribbled note at the bottom of the page.
"It was hilarious, that's why I recorded how to do it."
"I could kiss you sometimes"
"You do kiss me sometimes."
"Firewhiskey is a hell of a drink."
"And that's always a hell of an excuse."
The entrance to the common room swung open with a low whoosh, and Crystal didn't even bother look up from her spellwork as Draco Malfoy and his posse made their way past. While Draco did nothing more than sneer, raising an eyebrow at the pile of carved wood, Pansy Parkinson gave a loud sigh.
"Oh you're getting wood shavings EVERYWHERE, why do you have to always get our common room dirty?" She scrunched up her nose, brushing wood dust off her robes that wasn't there.
"You should be thanking me, Parkinson. Wood shavings help us de-scent the room from the odorous pustulence you emit from your skirt every time Prefect Ferret does anything more complicated than bitch about Potter." Not even looking away from her work as she snarked, Crystal made a point of blowing some of the wood dust in the other girls direction.
Draco stopped walking even as Kylar groaned and hid his face in his hand, as his free hand discreetly fell to where his wand was sheathed in a holster on his belt. He didn't have to look to hear Draco returning to the table, flanked by his goons, to stand by his arm-candy and betrothed.
"Talking like that to a Prefect, Crystal? What on earth did we do to warrant such disrespect?" The blonde boy sneered, placing his hands on his hips as Pansy curled into his side.
Crystal placed the wood down onto the table and curled her fingers together, resting her chin on them and looking up at the two youngest Slytherin Prefects with a smirk.
"I was merely implying how impressive it is when you manage to do anything more than breathe."
Draco opened his mouth to respond, when a new voice echoed through the common room.
"I'd remove your hands from your wands, Goroesi and Zabini. This is the common room, not Knockturn Alley." The dry and perpetually exasperated voice of Professor Snape cut through the snarky tension like a knife through butter, and Draco and Pansy actually took a step back from the table from his tone alone.
Sweeping his way over to the small confrontation, Snape crossed his arms over his chest and raised a menacing eyebrow. "Prefects Malfoy and Parkinson, I do believe you have a Prefect meeting in 20 minutes to get along to."
Draco and Pansy twitched and, shooting a final glare at the seated duo, backed off, their posse following them. Snape turned his gaze to the two most troublesome of his Slytherins, and his facial expression didn't change a jot as he gazed over the pile of complex and elegantly carved wood. "While I am satisfied with the quality of the spellwork, Miss Wasara, I cannot help but wonder why exactly you have established a carpentry business in the common room."
Crystal had the decency to flush under his stare, and looked away, unable to meet her Head Of Houses gaze. "I needed Kylars assistance, sir. So I couldn't have done it in my dorm, and Madam Pince already threw us out of the library."
"Is this to be, I wonder, another little experiment that will see me summoned before the Headmaster to see you both, and Mister Phase, slapped on the wrist, and points taken from the house I am so fundamentally proud of leading?" Despite the exasperation perpetually in his tone, the glimmer of steel in his eyes translated perfectly.
This is not to be an experiment that loses us more house points, it's the second month of term and you've already lost us seventy. And all three of us know we only catch you a quarter of the time.
Kylar and Crystal nodded to their head of house almost in unison, and stared silently as he swept away through to his office.
Crystal shuddered, sticking her tongue out in disgust, before picking the wood back up and continuing to shape it in accordance to the diagram Kirian had come up with.
"God I hate the way he looks at me. And I hate how he never lets any of us duel in here anymore."
Taking his hand off his wand finally, Kylar nodded mindlessly before properly hearing what she said. "Wait, anymore? He never let us duel in here, he just never caught us before."
Crystal laughed and rolled her eyes, finishing the piece of wood and adding it to the pile. "Oh you're so naive sometimes, dude."
Kylar mulled over that for the better part of a minute, while Crystal hummed quietly to herself as she almost finished the last piece of wood. The metal was going to be far harder, and they'd need Kirians help for it.
Sweeping the now completed wooden parts into her bag, Crystal retrieved a plump cushion from inside, and proceeded to rest her head on the table, Kylar mindlessly stroking her hair affectionately as he scribbled into the book. The silence was only broken once.
"Odorous Pustulence, huh?"
They both erupted into quiet laughter.
(Harmonic Enchantment, the different masteries, alchemical enchantment, and more are all things that will be explained as things go on. I like expanding on the magical world beyond just wand waving.)