~Second Year~

A week after the potions incident, Cass had completely resumed her usual schedule. She had gotten back to the common room to realize that she had missed a whole day of classes. Since it was the first day, the teachers seemed to have no pity and did not waste any time giving her mountains of makeup work; many of the teachers at Hogwarts liked to follow Professor Snape's example and overwork their students on the first day of classes. This was the main grip which pulled her back into the haze of school and work. By the end of the week she couldn't have said what day the potions incident had happened. It was on the second week of that year in which she was reminded.

It all started with her alarm. Each year, the NEWT Charms class would enchant different objects to work as Hogwarts alarm clocks. Cass' dorm had been assigned a rather obnoxious clock which woke them every morning with the screaming words of "get out of bed before I crucio your arse" followed by a colourful string of vocabulary which Professor McGonagall would have a heart attack upon hearing.

This morning, Cass thought absolutely nothing of her alarm, and just accepted it as something that would happen every day with or without acknowledgement. Her main concern that tired morning was the unwanted gap in her bed hangings which was letting in obnoxious rays of light and giving her a migraine. "Sod off" she groaned without effect. If anything, the sun seemed to glow brighter than before. Or maybe that was just because she was now staring directly at it. She groaned and turned over, curling her back and digging her face into the overstuffed pillow she cuddled with as she slept.

But now that the sunlight was not an issue, the alarm suddenly was. The steadfast screaming continued, getting louder every second. "Stacey" she whispered urgently. Yelling would probably have been more effective, but on some level, Cass was worried about waking herself up, which would diminish her excuse not to just get up and shower first.

"Cass, you're closer." It was Katie who spoke.

"But Stacey always goes first."

"No, I don't, now go away and let me sleep."

"But-"but speaking had woken Cass up and she no longer had a reason to make her friends get up first. "Fine, but you guys won't have any hot water." She slid off her bed and strutted across the room indignantly... well, as indignantly as possible while she was wearing nothing but her knickers and it was freezing cold.

On her way, she checked Angelina's bed. It was empty as she had expected. She'd probably woken up early to practice before Quittich tryouts. Angelina was obsessed. She was determined to get onto the Gryffindor team, whatever it took. Last year she had even convinced Cass to sneak out to the schools broom shed and steal a couple of brooms to practice with. Cass still regretted this venture, as she still had the scars from falling off and unfortunately landing on a particularly violent tree. Cass hadn't mounted a broom since. Neither had she gone within twenty meters of that tree.

The bathroom connected to their dormitory was decent (especially compared to the ones of certain muggle boarding schools she had visited before she knew she was going to Hogwarts). It contained two sinks, and separate stalls for a shower and a toilet. Everything was perfectly scrubbed thanks to the Hogwarts house elves. The tiles were red, though some held designs of golden lions shaking their manes and baring their teeth. Cass followed the tradition of swiping her finger over a particularly faded lion for luck. She wasn't sure exactly what it was supposed to do, but the prefect their first day had shown them to do it and everyone in their Dormitory had followed this tradition since their first morning at Hogwarts. Don't let me slip and kill myself in the shower, she requested of the lion internally. She half-laughed at herself, though still held some seriousness, as she was a known klutz and wouldn't put it past herself to fall in the shower and land herself in the hospital wing for a month. Cass could imagine Professor Mcgonigal announcing at the beginning of class that all students should be cautious while washing themselves. And worse yet their reaction as everyone realized "so that's why she's in the hospital wing." She could picture herself waking up next to half a toilet seat courtesy of the Weasley twins.

It was because of this that she stepped into the shower stall with extra precaution. She threw her knickers and bra into the basket at the corner of the stall, which promptly disappeared. Cass knew it was going to the laundry, though where the laundry was she had no idea. She turned back to the nozzle, and turned on the water. Then, in a flash, she pulled up the lever which redirected the water to the showerhead and jumped out of the way of its spray, letting it warm up a little before she dared getting wet.

When she got under the shower, she turned the knob until it was almost on full heat. Normally she would have gone with a bit less of a skin burning temperature, but she was insistent on keeping her word to the others, as she had promised them she would use up all the hot water. She stood there for a good ten minutes under she showerhead, doing nothing in particular; still half asleep, before she even acknowledged the row of soaps and shampoos lined up on the ledge to the right of the shower stall. She haphazardly coated her body in her special body wash which was supposed to make your skin extra soft, and by the time she had moved onto her hair, her whole body was the pink it became whenever she was particularly hot. When she rinsed her hair, the redness seemed to overcome her. The combination of the tiles, her skin and the copious layers of steam gave the impression that even the soapy water streaming down her body had turned pink.

The water still burned her skin as the last remnants of shampoo were rinsed from her hair. It was then that she made her second mistake. The mistake of extending her shower even longer to try and waste the last of the hot water by doing the only reasonable thing she could think of. So she scrubbed down the rest of her body with the shampoo too.

It wasn't until she had scrubbed down her whole body that she began to question if Hogwarts showers ever ran out of hot water. She had never experienced it before, and the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the house elves had casted charms to make sure that the warmth was never all the way used up. It was this which convinced her to give up and to bring her shower to an end.

Cass grabbed a towel from the hook on the stall door, quickly rubbing herself down, starting with her feet, then her legs, and all the way up to her dark shoulder length hair which she bunched up inside the towel and shook, just like her parents used to do when she was little at the beach. The mirror was so steamed up after she'd left the shower that when she looked at herself all she could see was a bright pink blob. The pink colour of it was a bit unnatural, though, and she made a mental note not to take many more boiling showers. She ignored her reflection and started lathering vanilla flavoured lotion over her legs and arms, wasting time in hope that the condensation would clear by the time she was done.

It didn't. Meaning it wasn't until she rubbed a patch or the mirror clear that she saw it. "It" being the prank. "The prank" being set by the Weasley twins. This "prank" being a disaster.