wolves; year three.
in the middle of the night, when the wolves come out, headed straight for your heart like a bullet in the dark.
january, year three.
DISCLAIMER: The quote and chapter title belong to One Direction (before their demise), the rest that is not plot and OCs is property of JK Rowling's.
She chewed on the tip of her quill impatiently. She was in the library at a table facing the lake, working on arithmancy, and she reached for her textbook, skimming the pages for a clue as the answer to this problem when Amelia came out from the shelves, slamming a book down on and rattling her bottle of ink. Roxanne steadied it, glaring at her best friend who was perfectly oblivious as always. "I have finally done it!" She exclaimed cheerfully as she opened the big, heavy book. "I finally found a way to get our revenge!"
"Revenge?" Roxanne asked tiredly, an eyebrow raised as she eyed the book suspiciously. "Revenge on who?"
"Who else? Caleb Wood and his band of idiots, of course!"
"You mean the James Potter gang he's a lackey of," she corrected and Amelia waved it off.
"Whatever, the whole lot of them are prats," she sniffed before pointing at a page. "But look at this!"
She turned the book and stood it up so Roxanne could see a picture of a complicated potion of a mans hair changing multiple shades per minute and she blinked as Amelia gave it an affectionate glance. "Isn't it perfect?"
Roxanne swallowed a scoff and cleared her throat, "It's, uh, interesting," she tried politely, not seeing much menace in a potion, regardless of how complex it was.
"Oh c'mon, Roxanne, it's perfect and you know it! It'll be brilliant! Imagine their faces if we got them with this of all things."
"As if it would bother them," Roxanne pointed out and Amelia waved her off.
"No, you're looking at this the wrong way," she sighed and took the seat beside her best friend. "Imagine their sodding egos if we, the so-called sticks in the mud of Hogwarts, got them! They'd be fuming!"
Roxanne thought about it, not entirely convinced and Amelia continued eagerly, "And the more they try to charm it, the more it changes! They'll have to go to Madam Pomfrey, so the whole school would see this!" She cackled with delight, nearly doing a victory dance.
Roxanne bit her lip, then smiled. "Let's do it then," she conceded.
:+:
The potion was easy enough once Slughorn allowed them some of the ingredients they didn't have, and in one of the potion's dungeons, the two girls sat and brewed their potion.
Amelia tossed in lacewings, watching it go from a dreary grey to a bright, bubblegum pink as she stirred it counter clockwise with a smile. Roxanne read the potion, eying every detail and crushed a bit of unicorn horn and said, "How're we going to get in the tower, though? Neither of us know the password."
"Uh, hello, you're a Weasley, Roxanne! All but you, your brother, and Lily are in Gryffindor, for Merlin's sake," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but I never visit them there, so it'd be suspicious to just ask for a password. It'd be a dead giveaway that we're up to something."
Amelia frowned, "Shoot… Well, I hadn't thought of that."
With a wrench thrown into their plan, they continued on the potion, before an idea dawned onto Roxanne. "Do lads take showers after quidditch practice?"
Amelia shrugged, scrunching up her face, "Possibly…"
"If we break into the locker room during practice and laced their shampoo…"
Amelia smiled, "Yes, yes, yes!"
The two girls continued on the potions, laughing and making up scenarios of the boys, running wildly, hexing the school in revenge. "Ooh," Amelia cooed as they put it in several vials of potion, "I cannot wait to see their faces! This is going to be sweet!" She smacked her lips loudly, emphasizing the T and Roxanne nodded in agreement, her smile menacing. Just you wait, James Potter, we're coming for you and your little cronies, too!
:+:
"Okay," Amelia chimed, lowering the omnioculars from her eyes with a grin, "I believe that the coast is clear!"
Roxanne peaked from her spot by the rocks where she'd hidden beside Amelia, seeing the ground empty. The two girls crept lowly, using their lack of height as an advantage, though Roxanne would doubt it'd matter from the air if the team spotted them, and headed towards the change rooms. She brushed her braids out of her hair as she tapped her wand to the lock, whispering, "Alohomora," and seizing the handle when the door gave a quiet click.
The seven members of the team were James and Davies Harris: the beaters, Eloise Jones, a chaser who also happened to be the captain, Caleb and Henry Lockwood: her co-chasers, Laurel MacMillan: their seeker. Together, they were nearly unstoppable. Talent ran wild on the team, but Roxanne hardly watched a quidditch game that didn't involve Ravenclaw, and even then it was pure support. Oh, what a disappointment she had been…
They crept around the room looking for Caleb and James' things, holding their breath and prepared to hide if the door so much gave a creak.
"Eureeka!" hissed Amelia, urging Roxanne to come over.
The smaller girl had been over by the showers, crept slowly and lingered over the bag as Amelia unzipped it. "Merlin," the blonde gagged, holding the bag away from her. Roxanne's lips gave a twitch and she loomed over it, holding her breath as best she could, observing the contents inside. "Merlin, does Caleb ever wash his things? This is putrid! It's a health hazard!"
"Keep your voice down," Roxanne scolded quietly, looking over her shoulder incase someone was hiding in the rafters. Holding their breaths, they opened it, looking for something and she grinned when her hand hit a bar of soap and whispered, "The potion works on skin too, right?"
:+:
Several hours later, long after the sun had set and dinner had begun, the two girls watched from a safe hiding spot while eating a celebratory package of biscuits, curtesy of Angelina Johnson-Weasley, as the team trudged down the long, windy path to the change room. James was obnoxiously swinging his bat in a circle as Caleb held his broom around his neck, arm muscles bulging in his scarlet robes.
The girls held their breaths, trying hard not to laugh or squeal in delight as they all vanished into the change rooms for a well-deserved dose of revenge.
Roxanne picked up the omnioculars gleefully, pressing her eyes against the frames before Amelia made a grab at them and they decided each could have an eye. With it filming, ready to be played back many times for years and years to come, they heard two loud shouts of surprise.
Birds flew dramatically from the trees as the shouting continued, and then they heard the uproar of laughter and began to laugh themselves. The two boys came out changing from pastel blue, to pink, to green, to purple, flashing all colors at once, and going back again. The two laughed hysterically, dropping the omnioculars, freezing their laughter in time as it caught them in the fall. "I'm going to wet my trousers," Amelia gasped, wheezing heavily as she tried to control herself, the laughter starting up again. Roxanne was holding a stitch at her side, crying as the two stood there, scanning for the laughter of two familiar girls.
"Oh Merlin, I can't breathe!" Amelia gagged and Roxanne coughed, wiping her eyes as she continued to laugh, "This is too bloody brilliant! 'Melia! You're a bloody genius, and don't you forget it."
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up!" snarled James Potter, who towered over them, Caleb behind him, glaring with less menace than her cousin. The two girls stared up in horror for a moment, shared a look, and began to scream in laughter.
"Nice look, lads," Roxanne said, not even bothering to play coy - she couldn't, even if she had wanted to. Laughter bubbled up uncontrollably, making her look mental as she carried on, holding her side.
"Are you two looking for your heard, the forrest is that way," Amelia thumbed east, causing Roxanne to burst into another mad fit of laughter.
"Why you little -" her cousin snarled, reaching for his wand and Roxanne tutted.
"What's the matter, Jamesie? Can't take a joke?" Roxanne said between giggles, feigning shock. "You wouldn't want to look like a stick in the mud, would you? It's not very Weasleyish."
Caleb's mouth twitched and he pretended to cough into his hand. James glared at him and then back at the two girls. "I'll get you for this," he promised.
"Oh I'm sure you will," Roxanne agreed, Amelia grinning beside her, pulling a camera out of her school bag, "but smile first!"
A flash went off and the two girls sprinted up the hill, the boys at their heels. Both were taller and more athletic, but Roxanne dodged James's hands and Amelia faked a left, nearly falling down the slop, but caught herself, unlike Caleb, who fell and rolled a bit downward.
Roxanne let out a wild laugh as she turned back to see it, her braids flapping behind her as she made a mad dash to the greenhouses. It didn't really matter if they got caught. The two boys would have to walk past the Great Hall to get to the hospital wing, anyways and the Gryffindor quidditch team had seen them and would hardly ever let them forget this.
But Roxanne wanted the school to see that she'd gotten her cousin back, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it to herself. After all these years of underhanded comments and mean jokes, she'd gotten him and Caleb, too, which was a nice bonus!
Amelia turned out to be a better runner than Roxanne thought, but she was also a touch taller. The blonde was almost to the bridge when James made a dash for her, gaining speed quickly. Roxanne cupped her hands over her mouth, not daring to slow down, even though her legs burned and lungs ached. "JAMES IS BEHIND YOU! YOU CAN MAKE IT, MIA!"
A pair of strong arms grabbed her from behind and she saw a flash of pink and said, "How was that for fun?" she all but snarled, not even bothering to look at Caleb.
His arms raised and lowered in a shrug and he said, "In three years of knowing you, that was the first time I've ever heard you laugh."
Her mouth pinched in resentment. "I laugh," she argued.
"Not around me," he pointed out and she scowled.
"Why would I laugh around you or your fellow prats? I laugh when things are actually funny," she sniffed angrily. She wasn't going to let him take this victory from her.
"You laugh like an angry hippogriff," he pointed out casually, moving forward, forcing her to walk, too, to avoid toppling over.
She bit her tongue and then spat out, "And your bag smells like a threstral stall, so what's your point?"
He grinned, "Check and mate, Weasley."
:+:
By the next morning, the whole school was laughing and gossiping about Caleb Wood and James Potter flashing colors. Mysteriously, a copy from a set of ominoculars had gone around the school, making Roxanne Weasley and Amelia Nott go down in infamous Hogwarts pranking history, much to the resentment of one James Sirius Potter, who never quite seemed to live it down.