Arthur Weasley had a particular fondness for rubber ducks. Lily Potter had a particular fondness for duct tape.

It was Lily's go to object when it came to fixing problems. People's protests that it was messy and excessive in comparison to magic fell on deaf ears. Mostly because the sound that duct tape makes when you pull a strip off the roll was really loud.

But as was the usual, where there was a muggle object, and Lily Potter, there was the ability to take things too far.

That was how the entire Gryffindor Common Room found themselves participating in a Fly On the Wall challenge. Lily had come across the concept during the summer when she had been talking to one of the muggle neighbours on her street. She'd listened with rapt attention as her friend had gone on and on about the various events that had happened at her school throughout the year.

The basic idea of Fly on the Wall, as it had been explained to Lily, was for people to split up into groups of four or five, and tape one member of the team to the wall with duct tape. Whoever managed to keep their human taped to the wall for the longest period of time, won.

This was how Rose found the Gryffindor Common Room when she was summoned by McGonagall one evening. There were more students stuck to the walls of the Gryffindor Common Room than the original founders had probably anticipated. Of course, the most enthusiastic group out of everyone's present was Lily herself.

McGonagall had her back to the portrait hole when Rose stepped through, hands clasped behind her as she surveyed the room around her.

"Miss Weasley, would you care to explain what exactly is going in this common room?" McGonagall asked as she turned to Rose. Although Rose was a member of the staff and no longer a student at Hogwarts, that didn't stop her from feeling as if she was about to receive the scolding of her life, followed by a detention.

"Er … well, it seems that the students are using duct tape to stick each other to the wall," Rose said, eyebrows furrowing with uncertainty. She looked around the room to make sure that that was in fact what was happening.

"The question is, why, Miss Weasley?" McGonagall asked. Rose could feel her body temperature rising with each question, as if she was writing a quiz that she had none of the answers to.

"I … um … to be quite honest with you, I'm not entirely sure," Rose replied after a moment of silence. There wasn't really any good reason to stick people to a wall, then again, there wasn't a good reason to build a grappling hook and go swinging outside of her window in the middle of the night but that hadn't stopped Lily either.

"Is this duct tape harmful to the students?"

"Other than being really effective as a hair remover, I don't think anyone will come to much harm," Rose said just as one particularly small First Year dropped to the ground with a piercing shriek. "I'll tell Lily to put a stop to this right away Professor McGonagall, I'm so sorry."

McGonagall turned to Rose with a sigh and a resigned look on her face. "Don't worry Miss Weasley, no one will cause my blood pressure to spike dangerously as much as your uncle George and Fred did during their time at Hogwarts."

McGonagall walked past Rose, pushed the portrait hole open and paused just before she exited the common room. She turned back to Rose, leaned in, and said quietly, "Just make sure people don't end up in the Hospital Wing with an injury that's too serious."

And so Rose was left to find an open seat from which to watch the spectacle as everyone continued taping each other to the common room walls. She took her spot next to a student who had timer counting down in the air in front of them.

"Oh hello Miss Weasley," the student said turning to her with a bright smile. Rose smiled back in response. "Are you excited for our Fly On the Wall competition?"

"I'm always happy to clean up after Lily's disasters," Rose deadpanned. She looked around the room where various students had taken the position of step stool for their friends. All of them had various looks of pain on their faces as their friends shifted from foot to foot while they were taped to the wall.

"Why don't they just use chairs, or tables?" Rose asked the student sitting next to her. The student immediately to Rose's left collapsed on the floor, unable to take being stood on anymore. Their friend who was in the middle of being taped gave a yell as their body gave a jerk. Only half of their body had been stuck to the wall, the other half was dangling, all of their weight being left on whatever limbs were currently stuck to the wall.

"Hurry up, hurry up!" they shrieked, eyes closing shut to tolerate the pain they were no doubt in. Their friends immediately jumped to taping as fast as they possibly could to aid their friend. One brave soul took up the position as the new step stool as the previous rolled out of the way with a groan.

"The rule is that you're not allowed to use any other objects except your team members, your tape, and your wit to get the person stuck to the wall," the student replied with a smile.

Rose focused on them until the shrieking had stopped and then let her eyes wander around the room searching for Lily. Her ears were searching for the usual yelling that accompanied whatever muggle event Lily was involved in but Lily's distinctive hair-raising shriek was nowhere to be heard. When Rose finally found Lily in the corner of the room, she understood why.

Lily, being the good sport that she was had taped shut the mouth of her rival and sworn enemy, Jeremy. Although why Jeremy was even on the same team as Lily was a mystery to begin with. Kai had been the chosen candidate as their fly on the wall, a position he took quite seriously as Rose judged from the expression on his face. His face was tilted upward, the corners of his mouth tugging down as he looked up towards the ceiling in despair.

Jeremy was of course being of no help at all and stood to the side with his arms crossed petulantly, his eyebrows lowered and scrunched together in irritation. Rose made her way over to them quickly, ducking under and around the various outstretched arms as they ripped up more rolls of tape.

Rose tapped Lily on the shoulder once she was close enough and motioned with her head for her cousin to come speak with her for a moment. Lily gave a sigh of irritation, tossed the roll of duct tape to Jeremy, gave him a threatening look and told him to keep taping.

"What?" Lily asked, her voice rough with her irritation.

"Is Kai alright, why is he making his face like that?" Rose asked, looking over Lily's head, the boy looked as if he was ready to burst into tears.

"Oh that, he's just acting like he's being sacrificed as a martyr, or maybe he said crucified," Lily muttered, pursing her lips and looking up towards the ceiling, "whatever that means."

"As long as he's not seriously hurt," Rose said with a nod. "And why is Jeremy's mouth taped shut? Why is he on your team in the first place, you don't even like him?"

"We needed one more person to be a qualified team and I didn't have time to find someone else. As for why his mouth is shut, he was breathing too loudly it was getting on my nerves," Lily replied with a shrug, she turned around to make sure that Jeremy was doing as she had silently commanded him too. "Are we done here, Rose?"

"Just how long do you plan on this little competition going on for?" Rose asked.

"Oh not long, the time's almost up for gluing our team member's to the wall and then we just have to wait until only one person is left sticking to the wall," Lily said, and before Rose could say anything else, she flounced off to Kai and snatched the tape out of Jeremy's hand.

Rose went back and took her seat next to the student keeping time. There was less than a minute left on the clock. When the time eventually reached zero, a loud blare followed the end of the countdown. Everyone involved in the competition immediately stopped what they were doing and stepped back. Students were taped to the walls with varying levels of success. Some of them appeared ready to drop within a few seconds (which they did), and others looked as if an Unsticking Charm was going to be the only thing capable of getting them off of the wall.

Anyone who wasn't glued to the wall had taken a seat on various flat surfaces and the floor and waited silently and patiently for students to start dropping to the ground. Not a peep was heard from everyone watching as the time passed. Rose was willing to bet that never in her life had she ever seen Gryffindor Common Room so quiet with so many people in it.

As time passed by people began to fall off of the walls, some with a quiet thump, others with a loud and painful sounding thud, and a few started hollering as they fell.

Ten minutes had come and gone and Rose was fairly certain that Lily was going to win at yet another muggle competition, as she always did, when Kai's tape suddenly gave away and he fell in a crumpled heap on the ground. He gave a groan and slowly got to his feet, shaking his hair out of his eyes, careful to keep his arms and legs separated lest the tape on each limb get stuck to each other.

Rose never got to stick around until the very end of the competition to find out who won, because once Kai had dropped to the floor, Lily had immediately turned to Jeremy, and with a strong swing of her arm, sent the roll of tape flying at Jeremy's head. The roll of tape landed on its mark hard and sent Jeremy tumbling to the ground.

"L-L-Lily, control yourself!" Rose sputtered indignantly as she rushed to Jeremy's side and helped the poor boy to his feet. Rose helped Jeremy walk towards the portrait hole as she led the way to the Hospital Wing so that Madam Pomfrey could take a look at his head, Lily giving her the stink eye the entire way.

"Lily you better hope Jeremy doesn't have a concussion," Rose said threateningly, narrowing her own eyes at her younger cousin as she helped Jeremy through the portrait hole and it swung shut behind her.

a/n: i hope you will all forgive me if this isn't my best work out there, i get quite rusty in my writing since i got for such long periods of time without writing anything but nevertheless i hope you get some enjoyment out of this thanks!