DISCLAIMER: You're a highly intellectual individual, apparently, because you can read. Meaning that you are smart enough to realise that I'm not JK Rowling, my writing style is nothing alike nor do I own Harry Potter or anything but Kate and the plot. And I'm not a good enough writer to be her, anyways. D
A/N: Thank blazing-orchid if you were one of those people who wrote to me asking me to continue this story. I initially wanted to discontinue it, after 1 review for every 100 hits, but blazing-orchid, and a handful of others let me know that they actually care that this was being discontinued. SO enjoy, people. And please, review. I would like to know what you think of Kate, I'm a little insecure about her. Snaps for anyone who reviews!
Flump.
Kate landed on her bed, dropping her heavy school bag on the floor and groaning. Friday night two weeks into her time at Hogwarts and she was absolutely exhausted. It wasn't the classes that tired her out, so much as the journey to and fro them.
Often she would walk to class with Sirius, Remus and James only to find that the door had decided to pay a visit to it's sibling on the previous floor, or taken a nap and was snoring loudly. On more than three occasions they got caught on the swivelling staircases, with slightly tipsy nuns in tapestries hissing at them and giving them wrong directions to their classroom, which Sirius seemed to find very amusing, whereas Kate thought it highly ironic that nuns, of all people, were tipsy.
Not to mention the night-time wonderings that Kate partook in. James was in possession of an invisibility cloak that meant that the four of them could sneak down to the kitchens (where they discovered a kitchen full of cheerful, eager house elves) and cram their pockets with food at any hour of the day.
As Kate mulled on her experiences with her newfound friends over the past fortnight, there was a sudden click of the dormitory door and Kate sat up to see who had just come in.
"Oh, hi Lilly," Kate said, upon seeing the vibrant head of red hair from over the foot of her bed. Lilly looked around, her bright eyes landing on Kate.
"Kate! I didn't see you here!" Lilly said, looking genuinely surprised. Kate noted that she had a smudge of dirt on her face and her usually immaculate uniform was slightly skewed.
"I thought… I thought you were… Have you seen Sirius and Remus around? Or… James?" Lilly spat the last word like faecal matter that was poisonous and left a bad taste in her mouth.
Kate smirked a little at this. Lilly had detested James since their first charms lesson when he 'accidentally' set Lilly's notes on fire. Personally, Kate hadn't seen the big deal, and she was a fairly studious person herself, but Lilly had taken to either avoiding or hissing sly insults and James whenever he was within a 2-metre radius.
"No, I haven't seen them since dinner. I had to do my Charms work, they'd finished it all in class because… well, they'd finished it, and they said they were just going on our usual.-no they just went." Kate said honestly. Well, almost honestly, at least.
If she was being completely honest, she would have told Lilly that they had gone to the 5th floor transfiguration corridor to look for more passages out of the school. But she wasn't foolish enough to tell Lilly that.
She liked Lilly and all, but she could be a little… pompous at times, and Kate knew she couldn't trust her with the information of their nightly escapades.
"Mhmm," Lilly nodded, "… it seems that someone's let off some hiccoughing gas on the 5th floor corridor, and I saw the three of them walking towards the very same corridor a couple of minutes before hand."
"Oh," was all Kate could say. Just that morning, Sirius was telling them about the canister of hiccoughing gas he had found in the boy's bathrooms.
"D-did you tell anyone?" She asked Lilly nervously. Lilly visibly paled.
"Well, no, if they got caught they'd be in heaps of trouble! But, if they do one more thing to annoy me, so help me Merlin, I will tell someone! It's a horrible trick to play, they could lose us so many points!"
"They're not hurting anyone, I don't see why it's such a big deal." Lill looked at Kate, bewildered. Kate scowled.
"Y'know what? I think i'll just go talk to them," she said haughtily, swinging her legs over the end of her bed and leaving the dorm.
"Who is it?" came Sirius' voice, the laughter within the room dying out.
"It's Kate!" Kate replied, poising her hand on the door handle.
"Right. In you come, then!" James' voice called. Kate wrenched open the door without further ado to see all three boys still in their uniforms, Sirius and James sprawled across one of the beds and the floor respectively, Remus sitting calmly on his bed scribbling on some parchment.
"She knows!" Kate said breathlessly. She was met with blank looks and wide eyes. Kate rolled her own eyes at their reactions.
Honestly she thought, about to get told on by the biggest goody two shoes in our year and they don't even care.
"She? Which she? And Knows what?" Remus asked, his right hand still moving across the parchment. Kate shut the door and sat onto the bed next to him. Compared to the other 4 beds in the room, which were laden with underwear, towels and Merlin knew what else, his parchment strewn bed was immaculate.
"Lilly! She saw you three headed to the corridor shortly before the hiccoughing gas was released! And she realised that you just got back from the very same corridor without hiccoughs!" Kate explained.
"Yeah, well did she tell anyone?:" James asked nonchalantly. Kate shook her head. Sirius picked some dirt of his sheets and then said,
'Well, as long as she didn't tell anyone, we're fine."
"You don't get it do you? She will tell someone if we do anything else to annoy her! And chances are, we will- anything we do seems to take the mickey out of her." Kate said exasperatedly.
"Woah, woah, woah. Kate, calm down. Your starting to sound just like your average pre-teen girl: dominant and hysterical." Sirius teased.
Kate grinned and threw Remus' pillow at him. Hard. It made contact with his left ear. And hard.
"HEY!" Sirius cried, holding his arms up in defeat. "So what are we going to do about Lilly?"
"She was the best person to prank…" James said, in an almost wistful tone, "she got so agitated over the littlest things…"
Remus and Kate exchanged incredulous looks.
"Easy, we prank someone else, you dolts. There are plenty of people out there to prank. There are always the older years too, I mean, what about those fourth years who keep tormenting us about not being able to join the Quidditch team?" Remus said reasonably.
"Ahh, good idea Remus, old boy. Now you're talking!" James said from his position on the floor. "I still have a supply of dungbombs we can use… and we've picked up quite a few good hexes. I think it's time we have an all out prank day!"
The alarm clock buzzed from beneath Kate's pillow where she had stuffed it the previous night so as not to wake the other girls in her dormitory when it went off. Quickly, she turned it off and then dressed swiftly in a pair of faded black pants, dirty tennis shoes and a green t-shirt of a muggle band. She stashed her wand in her pocket and tied her hair in a messy bun at the back of her head, before tiptoeing to the door and creepy down the stone staircase.
As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, a hand grabbed her and yanked her roughly into the niche at the foot of the steps. Another hand clamped itself firmly over her mouth. Kate frowned, and wrenched the hand off her mouth and turned to look at her attacker.
"Ow, what the- James?" Kate asked, blinking in the dull light.
James nodded and then pulled her back out of the niche. Kate glared at him, rubbing her arm where he had grabbed her.
"Sorry," James said sheepishly, "Just had to make sure that it was you- we have a pretty big hoard of pranking materials lying around the common room-if anyone else saw it…"
Kate arched an eyebrow and then stalked away into the common room.
"I don't see why you have to be so secretive, James, it's seven thirty- only half an hour later than we usually get up." Kate said over her shoulder.
As she entered the common room, she noticed how right James really was about the amount of pranking material. Bags and boxes were laid out on the couch, all neatly labelled with masking tape and green texta. Remus mock-saluted Kate, who returned the gesture.
Sirius, however, was busy putting labels on the last of the boxes, and didn't look up. Kate caught sight of some of the labels, namely 'Dragon dung bombs''Tickling Toast' and 'Adhesive Whoopie cushions'. Prank materials of both muggle and wizarding origin sat demurely in their places, ready to be used.
Sirius finished putting on the label on the last bag ('Self propelling spit-balls') and then turned to look at the other three, grinning.
"I now declare the Hogwarts feel-the-wrath-of-the-first-years prank day officially begun!"
