A/N: This is Beater 2 checking in for Round 8 of the QLFC.

Character: Louis Weasley

Prompts: 5. stubborn, 9. periwinkle, 15. owl

I own nothing. This is all J.K.'s world.


"Victoire, give me back my brush!" Dominique's voice rang through the hall. Louis paused, only three steps outside his bedroom door. It was 7:30 on a muggy July morning for goodness sake! Could they really be going at it already?

"Here!" There was a loud thumping sound against the girls' closed door. "Have it! I wouldn't want your germs anywhere near my head anyways!"

"Germs!?" Dom screeched. "The only thing here with germs is you!"

"Good one," Vic said sarcastically, "but maybe next time maybe you could try to come up with your own insults."

Another thump. Then a shattering sound.

"Oi!" Vic screamed. "Watch it!"

Louis groaned. All he wanted was to go downstairs, eat some mushy apple oatmeal, and return to his room, where a rather expensive Weasley's Wizard Wheezes product was waiting for him to test. Uncle George liked to send him things to try out. He always said Louis was his number one tester, although Louis felt like George was just trying to make him feel included. The products did come under the condition thought: he wasn't allowed to use them on his sisters. Louis was reconsidering this bargain right about now.

Vic and Dom had usually been okay with each other. They got along just fine. They were never these stubborn, obnoxious, and LOUD people who inhabited the room beside his. Ever since they both got back from Hogwarts, they were at each other's throats.

Hogwarts. Louis shook his head. He didn't want to think about that right now.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Louis turned his course back toward his bedroom. It was too early for screaming sisters.

But… Dom had different plans for him. The girls' door flew open, and his middle sister stormed out.

"Louis!" she grabbed his arm, whirling him into her room.

"No," Louis whined. But it was too late. He was inside their room. Vic was at her vanity set, cutting patterns out of a blue dress.

"VICTOIRE!" Dom's voice was right in his ear, like a banshee or a baby mandrake. "Stop it! Stop!"

She released Louis, rushing over to what he assumed was her dress. There were already tears coming out of her eyes. Louis felt his shoulders drop. What had happened during school that these two were doing this to each other?

Last summer, before Dom went off to school, he and his two sisters were close. They did everything together: hiking, biking, swimming. They made a ginormous fort in the den, and they lived out of it for weeks before his mum finally had enough. They had pretended to be jungle children, void of magic and only delving into mischief.

"Mum!" Dom was rushing out the door. "Vic is destroying my periwinkle princess dress!"

"It's purple, Dom!" Vic shouted. "And Dom threw her brush at me and broke my mirror!"

Fleur Weasley stormed into the room, her hair pulled up into a bun, her apron tied neatly around her waist. There was still a spoon in her hand like she had stopped stirring the instant her children needed her.

"What are you doing?" She immediately turned to Vic. The girl stepped to the side, and for the first time Louis saw that her vanity mirror was smashed.

"Are you kidding me?" Fleur yelled. "Bill! Get in here!"

When their tall, red-headed dad arrived, the girls instantly began to blabber on and on. Louis looked behind him. His door was only a few inches away. Maybe he could just slip out while no one was paying attention, and he would be home free.

"I don't care!" Bill was yelling. "This is completely bonkers, ladies."

"Ugh!" Vic threw her scissors onto her bed. "Dom started it."

"Vic had my hairbrush! She started it!"

"And now there's a broken mirror and fabric all over the place," Fleur looked angry enough to kill. Louis wondered, for the billionth time that summer, if he would fare well as an only child.

Tentatively, he took a step back. Instantly his mum turned in his direction. "I don't think so. You stay put."

"But I didn't do any-"

"You were here; that's enough for me!" Her hands flew to her hips.

Louis stared daggers into Dom, who was doing anything to meet his eye. She better feel guilty.

His sisters had always been great people. Vic had the fun ideas, even for being the oldest, and she never mentioned the one thing Louis wouldn't talk about. Dom was great at assembling all the things they needed. Rope and string were her weapons of choice.

Dom was better at not mentioning magic. When she got her Hogwarts letter, she cried and cried. Louis knew she felt guilty, but he couldn't blame her. She showed magical abilities, and he still hadn't.

Louis took the year to get over it. Really. He was getting better every day. Being the only kid at home felt great.

Then the whirlwind that was Vic and Dom came home. Two completely different people. Two very different people.

Fleur was screaming in French now. Louis knew that this would not end well at all. His mum tried very hard not to resort to her native language, because Bill could not keep up with her. She didn't think it was fair to leave him in the dark, though Bill had tried very hard to learn the language.

"I don't know why you are yelling!" Vic screamed.

"Yeah," Dom added. "Just use magic to fix it!"

"That's not the point, girls," Bill said, a short side-glance shot toward Louis.

That was it. That was all it took.

"ARGH!" Louis screamed. "That's it! That's enough! I can't wait till you both go back to school so I don't have to listen to you two ever again! All you do is tear each other down. I can't handle it. You're no fun anymore, and now you want to use magic to solve your petty problems? I just—arghhhhh!"

Suddenly, the large package Uncle George had sent him came whizzing into the room. It bounced around, hitting the beds, the walls, the window, everything! Vic screamed and ducked underneath her vanity. Dom grabbed her broom and started swinging. Fleur ducked as well but realized she still had her spoon and started whacking at the box. Bill pulled out his wand and tried to stun the package. Louis watched in awe. He felt a slight tingle run down his arms and toward his fingers.

The box landed in the middle of the room and burst open. A purple powder surrounded the room, engulfing the Weasley family.

"Tergeo!" Bill called. The powder began to vanish, but everything was left in a haze. "What on earth was that?"

He turned to Louis. "Don't look at me! Uncle George sent it!"

"That brother of yours, I swear, Bill," Fleur mumbled.

"Yes, Uncle George sent it. But how'd it get in here?" He raised an eyebrow. Louis shrugged. Maybe the product knew he wanted to play with it. He had been thinking about it all morning, but Vic and Dom's pettiness had him detained from his prize.

There was a knock at the window. A very fluffy brown owl was waiting to be let in. All the chaos and commotion of the morning was put on hold as Bill let the creature in.

"It's probably our supply lists." Victoire said shyly. The room was extremely tense, and Louis couldn't blame her for trying to break the silence, even if that meant mentioning Hogwarts in front of him.

"It's for… Louis."

Bill handed the letter over to his son. Tentatively, Louis turned over the parchment, where the Hogwarts seal was waiting to be broken. Slowly, Louis lifted the flap. That was when he became painfully aware that his whole family was watching what they all knew was the inevitable: the school telling him he was a Squib.

Louis turned away, his eyes absorbing the information. He read it through three times more before he met his mother's eyes. She looked ready to make any bad news good.

"I got in," he smiled. But no one moved. "No, really, I got in. It was me! I moved the package!"

Bill began laughing, while Fleur ran to him and engulfed him in a purple-stained hug. Dom and Vic hugged as well.

"So about that mirror?" Louis asked. He watched as both his parents' attentions turned back to his sisters. He walked out of the room, smiling. The only thing on his mind was some mushy oatmeal and Hogwarts.