Hello everyone! This chapter was particularly fun to write. Also sorry if the parts where the POV switches from third person limited to third person omnipotent are messy; I can't stand writing omnipotent, so rest assured, this is going to be one of the only times it happens if not the only time. Also, I drew a picture of Cathie, if anyone's interested in seeing it. Not a very good picture, but it's honestly the best thing I've ever drawn, so, well, make of that what you will. Doesn't really have a set time and place, but I imagine it taking place in the scene when Cathie 'finds out' she's a witch, from Flitwick. Here's the link: wwjacksparrowd .deviantart art/ Cathleen-McGinley-Harry-Potter-OC-556307588 I do not own Harry Potter or Raise Your Glass.

Chapter 10: Too School for Cool

Date: Sun. – Tue., 17-19 November, 1991

Theme Song: Raise Your Glass by P!nk

Neville managed to avoid Cathie until Sunday afternoon, when she, Dean and Seamus caught him in the library talking to Daphne. As soon as he spotted them, he paled and hurriedly put his book up upside down. Cathie rolled her eyes and stomped towards him before slamming the book onto the table. "I can't believe you," she fumed. "I've been looking all over for you the past twenty-four hours! What's wrong with you?"

Neville looked down guiltily. "I'm sorry, Cathie. I know I should have stopped that fight, or at least helped…."

"Don't be an idiot." Cathie pulled up a chair and sat down. Dean and Seamus gave Daphne wary looks as they did the same. "There would have been no point in fighting with us. All we accomplished was gaining a week of detentions. And how would you have stopped it?"

"I don't know…." Neville shuffled his feet awkwardly. "I could've stood up for myself. Then you wouldn't have had to get involved."

Cathie laughed. "Let me ease your mind; there was nothing you could've done to stop me from slapping that git. Nobody talks about my friends like that without getting their butt kicked."

Neville hesitated, then looked up. "And… about my dad…."

Cathie held a hand up to stop him, and shook her head. "Don't. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. Your past is your own. Whatever secrets you might keep, you're still my best friend."

Neville smiled gratefully at her. "You're a great friend, Cathie."

Cathie smiled back, then turned to the rest of the group. "Now, since the three of you are here, there's something that needs to be addressed." Daphne started to get up, but Cathie quickly added, "Stay, Daphne. I think you'll be interested in what I have to say." Surprised, Daphne sat back down.

"Are you sure you can trust her?" Seamus asked Cathie uncertainly.

Cathie nodded firmly. "Yeah, she's cool. She's not on very good terms with Malfoy and his minions either."

"Particularly Cadence," Daphne muttered.

Cathie grinned at her four friends. "Now, I don't think Malfoy's paid nearly enough for all the things he's said and done since school started, and I don't think Cadence has either. Wouldn't you agree?" They all nodded. "I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to come up with a good way to get back at them, but to no avail – until I realized I was just overthinking it. Who needs some fancy, complex solution? Let's just put them through as much as we can, give 'em as much as we get!"

They all stared at her, torn between thinking she was a genius and delusional. "It sounds like a good plan," Daphne started, "in theory. I'm just not sure we could ever pull it off. I mean, how do we do that? We're just five kids, and Cadence has what seems like the whole of Slytherin behind him."

Cathie smirked. "I've been doing some thinking, and I think we'll just start with little things. Use all the spells we've learned and every little other thing we can think of and do all the small things that, together, can potentially ruin someone's day."

Dean nodded slowly. "This could work," he agreed. "We'd have to do some planning though. Let's combine all our knowledge of spells and see what we can come up with, okay?" Everyone nodded vigorously.

Seamus frowned, thinking hard. "Okay, so we've learned the wand-lighting charm, the fire-making charm, and the severing charm. Oh, and you four are probably decent at basic levitation charms, too. I still set things on fire." He scowled for a moment, then continued. "We also learned…, well…, not much in Defense, really. We learned to turn matches into needles in Transfiguration, and in the other classes we didn't learn much."

"We've been learning the knockback jinx in Defense," Neville muttered, "but I'm not very good yet."

"I don't think any of us are." Daphne smiled encouragingly. "We only just started, after all."

"Does anyone know anything outside of what we've been taught?" Cathie asked hopefully.

Daphne raised her hand. "I, uh, I do know the movement-slowing charm. I've been practicing some of the more interesting upper-year spells."

Cathie nodded slowly. "We can definitely find a use for that."

"I also know the tickling charm."

Cathie beamed. "Oh, that's a good one. I know the silencing charm – does anyone else know something extra?" No one responded. Cathie thought about the list that had built up. "Okay, now it's time to start brainstorming."

The next day, Cathie, Neville, Dean and Seamus sat together at breakfast in the Great Hall, trying to smother their smirks. They caught Daphne's eye, and she grinned at them.

They began piling food on their plates as they did every day. Cathie winked at Neville; then she pointed her wand at the Slytherins from underneath the table and whispered, "Wingardium Leviosa." Malfoy's cup lifted about an inch, then fell on him, spilling pumpkin juice on his robes. As he cleaned himself up, looking confused, Cadence's pumpkin juice spilled on his robes as well, and Neville winked back at Cathie.

A few minutes later, as Malfoy was leading his cronies out of the Great Hall, a tear appeared in his bag as a tear appeared in Cadence's. Dean and Seamus low-fived.

Cathie and Neville got up and followed the four out of the Great Hall. They gave both Gryffindors suspicious looks, but Cathie and Neville must have managed to pull off at least semi-innocuous, because the four walked by without paying the two too much attention. This was good, because Cathie and Neville muttered, "Diffindo," at the same time, with wands subtly pointed in the Slytherins' directions. Two tears crossed the two that were already on the bags, and everything spilled out.

Malfoy whirled around and stomped up to Cathie. "You did that! You must have!" he insisted, pointing at her accusingly.

She held his gaze. "I have people who can and will attest to me walking to class with them at this very moment. It's our words against yours."

Clearly infuriated, Malfoy stomped back to his bag and dumped all his books in Crabbe's bag. Cadence taped his bag up and put the books back in, but the tape tore without any help and released the books onto the floor once more. Goyle wordlessly picked the books up and put them in his own bag.

Dean and Seamus had snuck ahead while the Slytherins were distracted and slipped some Dungbombs in their path (Cathie had paid Fred and George double what they'd paid for them, all the while receiving thoughtful and suspicious looks). Distracted by their infuriation, Malfoy and his cronies didn't even notice them and stepped on them, causing them to slip and fall on their butts. The Dungbombs went off, and the four were plunged into smelly green smoke. Dean and Seamus met up with Cathie and Neville nearer to the Entrance Hall, and they shared a good laugh before heading off to Herbology class, which was, luckily, in another direction.

During lunch, rumors were circulating that Malfoy had been unable to stop laughing during both his classes. Cathie, Neville, Dean and Seamus all smirked at Daphne, pleased that she'd performed the tickling charms so well.

All of a sudden, Malfoy and Cadence's wizard hats burst into flames upon their heads. They were burnt to crisps, but the fire evaporated once there was nothing left of the hats to burn. Cathie and Neville gave discreet thumbs-up to Seamus for his perfectly imperfect levitation charms.

Having become friends with the house-elves, Cathie had gotten them to do her a favor. When they had transported the lunch to the table, they had also transported two bottles of oil underneath the Slytherin table, to the spots in front of where Malfoy and Cadence usually sat. Now Cathie carefully levitated one bottle while Neville levitated the other and pour oil all over the two pairs of shoes. When Malfoy and Cadence got up a little while later, they immediately started slipping and sliding around on the floor. One of the upper years glanced over, pointed their wand at the shoes, and stated, "Scourgify." The shoes became clean, and Malfoy, his expression giving Cathie great amusement, stormed out of the Great Hall, closely followed by his minions. Cathie and Neville smirked at each other, and up at the Head Table, Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall exchanged glances.

Meanwhile, Dean was waiting outside. He and Daphne had left dinner early; Daphne should be at the Charms classroom by then. It was his job to stall the Slytherins. He hid inside an unused classroom as they walked closer. Then he carefully levitated a Dungbomb from behind a nearby column into Crabbe's bag. It exploded into smelly green smoke, and Dean slipped out in front of the cloud and levitated another bottle of oil from a hiding place inside the cloud. Since he couldn't see, he just covered the entire floor there in oil. Then he ran ahead to the classroom, equipped with extra stalling devices if necessary. "Daphne, you almost done?" he hissed.

Daphne walked out with a huge smirk. "Yep. The job is finished. Oh, he's never going to live this down. Now c'mon – let's get going. I'll take another route to the Great Hall so that they won't know I was here before them, and you go to your next class so that it doesn't look like we walked in together."

"Yes, God forbid that anyone think we're friends," Dean scoffed as they headed down that direction. "That would be a horrible thing."

Daphne rolled her eyes. "It's not that. I mean, after today I don't really care. But if you go down for this stuff, I'm not letting you bring me down with you."

"Just for that, I'm going to tattle if they find out. Only on you, though. See you!"

"Yeah, yeah, see you."

They went their separate ways.

After the next class, the four Gryffindors and lone Slytherin met up again at the library. "How'd Charms class go, Daphne?" Seamus sniggered.

Daphne grinned. "Oh, splendidly. I'm so glad that Professor Flitwick decided on Friday that Malfoy's report was so good, the whole class should hear it. That's what he gets for switching our reports."

"So he read the, ah, additional information on the back?" Cathie asked.

"You bet he did. He finished the report and said, 'Oh, there seems to be more on the back. Shall I read it?' And Malfoy, being the idiot he is, just assumed he had missed that part and said, 'Sure, go ahead.'"

"And what did the class think of the fake diary entry you wrote on the back?" Dean questioned, eyes glittering with mischief.

Daphne smirked widely. "They especially enjoyed listening to the part about his fear of the dark and his collection of dolls." Everyone laughed. "Professor Flitwick didn't read the whole thing out loud, of course, but one of my classmates stole the report from his desk and read it very loudly in the corridor. Probably, most of the Slytherins won't believe it, but the ones who will are the ones most likely to have friends in other Houses that they can tell, so the rumors will reach everyone else."

"We can pass those rumors onto our friends, too," Neville exclaimed. "After all, you were in the class, so it's possible that you would have come to tell us afterwards. God knows you'd never pass up an opportunity to mock Malfoy."

Daphne's expression brightened further. "That's true! Ha, the rumor-spreading has already begun."

The five of them went to dinner, and as the Gryffindors sat down, Ron turned excitedly to them and said, "Did you hear? Apparently Malfoy is afraid of the dark!"

They couldn't help it. The four masterminds exchanged glances and dissolved into evil cackles.

The other five gave them weird looks. "What's up with these guys?" Ron asked Harry.

Harry shrugged. "No clue. Hey, what's up with you guys?"

Cathie finally stopped cackling long enough to tell them, "Don't tell anyone, but we're the reason everyone thinks that. We have a friend in his class who wrote down a fake diary entry on the back of Malfoy's report, and Professor Flitwick accidentally read it to the class. He didn't read all of it, but another classmate stole the report and read it to everyone."

Everyone except for Hermione laughed. Hermione sniffed and looked away, clearly disapproving. "Oh, lighten up, Hermione," Harry commented. "Even you can't say he doesn't deserve it."

Hermione frowned. "It was still a very risky thing to do. Who is this friend?"

"Oh, it's Daphne, that girl Neville and I saved from the troll on Halloween," Cathie explained. "And before you say anything, you should know – that report Professor Flitwick read was apparently so good, he read it to the whole class because they could all learn from it. And Malfoy didn't write it; he stole it from Daphne. So this whole thing was very justified."

Hermione narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Daphne's not bad. I suppose you're right, but be a bit more careful from now on."

"I will take your advice into consideration."

"…That's not an agreement."

"I know."

"Cathie."

Cathie grinned. "Actually, I've decided I rather like this whole 'breaking the rules' thing. It's been quite fun."

"What do you mean? You did more than just the diary thing?" Ron frowned.

Harry grinned wickedly. "Wait – were you lot behind the Dungbombs and the oil?"

"And the drinks spilling," Seamus put in.

"And the bags tearing," Dean added.

"But it was really all Cathie's idea," Neville told their classmates as they gasped. "She came up with most of it, we just helped."

Cathie flushed as Dean and Seamus nodded vigorously. "She was the one coming up with all the ideas for the diary entry," Seamus voiced. "Her and Daphne. And she wrote it out – Daphne copied it onto the back of the report."

"And she realized that one tear wouldn't do it on the bags, so she came up with having us two do the first tears and having those two do the second tears," Dean announced.

"Professor Snape, sir, it was her – McGinley!" The Gryffindor first-years all turned to Malfoy as he approached the Head Table. "I know it! She arranged the whole thing!"

Snape gave her a suspicious look. "And why do you believe that, Mister Malfoy?"

Malfoy hesitated, and Cathie smirked – he had no proof. "I – think what a coincidence it is," he insisted. "Yesterday she gets into a fight with Crabbe and Goyle, today the four of us get pranked all day – isn't that a huge coincidence?"

"It is," Snape agreed. "Miss McGinley, come up here, please." Her friends shot her worried looks as she obliged, getting up and walking over to the Head Table. "Where were you before your History of Magic class today?"

There was no proof that she had been behind all the pranks, none at all – and yet – "Throwing Dungbombs at Malfoy." – what better way to tell Malfoy that pranking him was worth all the detentions, even if she got caught?

The entire Great Hall fell silent, and she felt thousands of eyes burning into her skull as she faced Snape. Her gaze flicked briefly towards Malfoy, and she was pleased to see that he seemed a bit unnerved by her confession. He had to know that her guilt would never have been proven.

"I don't believe you," Snape said softly. "You could not possibly have done it all by yourself. Who helped you?"

Incredulous, Cathie raised an eyebrow. "Do you really expect me to tell you?"

"…You have another week's detention for the pranking, and a third for insubordination…, though, of course…, it could always be overlooked if you told me who helped you."

"…No, not happening. What kind of person do you think I am?"

Snape's nostrils flared. "Fine. If you don't tell me, I'll make one of those weeks a month."

"Well, that hardly seems fair. I'm going to get punished for not being a tattletale?"

"If need be, yes."

"Fine. Punish me."

He scowled at her. "Fine. For the pranking, insubordination, and refusal to cooperate, that will be one week and one month in addition to the week you were given on Saturday."

"Sounds good."

"Excuse me, Severus," Professor McGonagall intervened, shooting Cathie a glance with thinly-veiled amusement. "I do believe it's my job to punish my students, yes? I hardly think some small pranks and some little comment deserve five weeks, and as for the refusal to cooperate, well, I don't teach my Gryffindors to sell their friends out. I think maybe three more detentions should do it."

Snape gave her what was quite possibly the dirtiest look Cathie had ever seen. "Fine," he bit out.

Professor McGonagall winked at Cathie, and Cathie smiled gratefully before returning to the Gryffindor table. Dean, Seamus and Neville surged around her. "Thanks for not telling on us!" Seamus exclaimed.

Cathie blinked. "Of course I didn't – like I said, what kind of person would that make me?"

Lee, Fred and George walked by as they left the Great Hall, and as he passed, Lee whispered in her ear, "Meet us next to the kitchen after your detention, and bring your cohorts – but remember not to tell them about the kitchen."

After dinner, Cathie, Dean and Seamus went to a classroom they'd never been to before, where Professor McGonagall would be supervising their detention. They were surprised to find a potions lab there. "Don't worry about supplies," she told them. "You'll be using some spare ones."

"Where are Crabbe and Goyle?" Dean asked, wrinkling his nose. "Don't they have detention, too?"

"They will be serving their detention with Professor Snape. Now, I understand you've been learning how to make the Wiggenweld potion, yes? Madam Pomfrey needs more for her supply, so you'll be brewing some for her. The three of you will be working together. Miss McGinley, I trust you can prevent any explosions?"

Cathie could hardly believe it. Her punishment was potion-brewing? She loved potion-brewing!

The three delinquents exchanged glances. "I thought we'd be doing something nasty," Dean muttered. "Not making some potions. This… isn't that bad."

Seamus grimaced. "So you say now. You'll change your mind when your eyebrows go up in flames."

"Not on my watch," Cathie stated sternly. "If that cauldron blows up, I'll eat my cat."

Five minutes later…

"…Let's just forget that whole 'eating my cat' thing, 'kay?"

Luckily, with Cathie and Dean's combined efforts, there were very few cauldrons blowing up, and at the end of the detention, there were so many potions that Professor McGonagall left a few and told them that they were excess, and to 'dispose of them.'

Disbelieving, Cathie hesitantly glanced at Professor McGonagall, took some potions, glanced back, walked towards the door, and glanced back once more, half expecting her Head of House to say, Psych! But there was no call back, and of course the professor had to know that Cathie was most certainly not going to dispose of any potions.

Best. Teacher. Ever.

Cathie, Dean and Seamus stuffed the potions in their bags. "What are you going to do with yours?" Cathie asked as they headed to the Entrance Hall, where they would meet Neville and Daphne.

Seamus shrugged. "Sell 'em, maybe. I'm sure people could find a use for them – you know, if they get into fights and don't want to go to Madam Pomfrey because they'd get in trouble?"

"That's a good point," Cathie mused.

"I thought we were throwing them out." Dean frowned, confused. Cathie and Seamus laughed.

"No way am I 'disposing' of mine," Cathie announced. "I think I'll keep them for emergencies. I'm a bit clumsy, and it'll be annoying to have to go running to Madam Pomfrey every time I walk into a wall or fall down some stairs or trip over a speck of dust."

They chuckled, and then Neville and Daphne came into view. The five of them went down to the basement, where Lee, Fred and George were waiting by the ticklish pear painting. "Why did we meet here exactly, anyway?" Daphne wondered.

Cathie shrugged. "Maybe not many people come by here."

They walked up to the troublesome trio, who grinned as one. "Welcome," George intoned.

"We have a proposition for you," Lee informed them.

"It has come to our attention…" one twin began.

"…that there are some new pranksters at Hogwarts…" the other continued.

"…in need of some guidance," the first finished.

"So we're offering you the chance to learn from the best," Lee proclaimed.

"Us," Fred and George clarified.

The five first-years exchanged awed glances. "I…" Neville hesitated. "You guys really are the best… but I think I'm gonna turn you down. I'm not really a fan of this whole 'pranking' business, if I'm being honest. Thank you for the offer, though." Lee, Fred and George nodded understandingly.

Dean and Seamus exchanged glances. "Hate to say it, but I think we're in the same boat," Seamus admitted.

"Yeah…. I'd love to learn from the three of you, but I don't think I'm quite smart enough to get away with all this pranking and doing well in classes like the three of you do," Dean put in.

It was down to Cathie and Daphne. "I think…." Daphne grimaced. "It'd be real hard for me to be your pupil. I'm in Slytherin, after all; it's not like I get many opportunities to slip away and prank some people. My housemates would notice, anyway; like I said, I'm in Slytherin, house of mistrust and paranoia. I think I'd better say no, too."

George turned to Cathie. "And you?"

Lee wiggled his eyebrows. Cathie shook her head at him, smiling. "I've never been a troublemaker before," she confessed. "Actually, I was always known as a goody-two-shoes – although that's mainly because my mom and I never have issues regarding rules because, well, in my house there barely are any rules, my mom's pretty awesome like that – but anyway, this was fun. I'd definitely like to take you up on that."

Lee, Fred and George grinned at her. "Brilliant," Lee exclaimed. "I knew I liked you from the moment you were the only kid willing to pet Shelob."

"Shelob?" the others echoed. Lee and Cathie grinned at each other.