October 1st, 2022

Louis turned over the book in his hands, flipping to the first page, where Lucy had signed her name. She had small handwriting that toed the line between messy and neat, but her signature - Lucy Olivia Weasley - was clear enough. He sighed. She was going to kill him for this. It had been a risky decision - a risky plan, as well. He had been sure that Lucy noticed when he had come up with the plan; he had felt his eyes light up, felt his back straighten slightly and his body tense up. He wasn't the most subtle person in the world.

The actual plan had worked perfectly, however. Lucy had left her book on the arm of the chair, and he had dragged her away from it to tell her about Lily's Halloween scheme - and then said that he was going to bed, and was she? That had been the riskiest part of it, because he couldn't be sure if Lucy was going to forget her book, but she had. After that, it had been simple to head toward his dorm, and double back when he was sure she was in hers. He had grabbed the book, raced to his dormitory, and hidden it underneath his pillow.

At breakfast, Lucy had asked him about it, but he had played it cool. He could tell that she didn't even think he knew where it was; she was just asking in the hopes that he had seen something. Nobody would ever expect Louis to come up with a scheme; he wasn't intelligent enough, even if his mother told him otherwise. He wasn't stupid - he would never sink low enough by calling himself stupid - but he didn't have the academic brains of Molly or Rose, or the scheming, mischievous mind of Lily or James.

He did, however, have the mind of a boy who wanted to convince his best friend that she was worth something, that her writing was good.

He had told Lily between classes to meet him in the Room of Requirement. It was Lily's favorite meeting place, he knew - it was private, soundproof, and comfortable. He hadn't been in there very often, since he and Lily didn't generally meet up, and there was no other reason for him to enter it besides meeting with Lily, but he knew where to go.

Louis didn't have the talent for making the Room's structure that Lily had; she entered five minutes after him, looking slightly disgruntled at the bare walls with peeling paint, at the two hard chairs that sat across from one another, a small, high table separating them. "You are kidding me," Lily said, but she slung her bag down to the floor and sat on one of the chairs. Her feet didn't even touch the floor. "So, Louis. I know you didn't just call me in here to catch up on old times. What, exactly, do you need?"

Louis reached into his bag and pulled out Lucy's book, sliding it across the table to Lily. She inhaled sharply upon seeing it, but checked the first page anyway, nodding as she saw the signature. "Why do you have this?" she asked, folding her hands on top of it. "And - more specifically - what exactly do you want me to do with it?"

"Lucy doesn't think she's a good writer," Louis said.

Lily waved a hand. "I need more than that, Louis."

"So I was thinking...er...if I let a bunch of people read her book, then - "

"You were thinking? Louis, that's - no. I don't do stuff like that."

Louis folded his arms. "What do you mean, 'like that'? You don't do nice things for people?"

She huffed. "That's not 'nice', Louis. I know you don't have permission from Lucy to be spreading this around - I know because you have that face on, that guilty face. Not to mention the fact that Lucy practically sleeps with this thing so that nobody takes it." Louis didn't even question how she knew that - that was typical Lily for you. She knew things that a normal fourth year shouldn't. "Why are you even asking me for help? This isn't a prank, or a scheme, or one of the things people generally come to me for."

"You have connections, though," Louis said.

"I'm not in the freaking mob, Louis. I do not have 'connections'." A mental image of Lily as a Muggle mobster popped into Louis's mind; it was surprisingly easy to imagine. "If I have permission from Lucy - and that is face-to-face permission, before you ask - then I will help her to spread this around Hogwarts. I'm not doing this without her, though. I see absolutely no need to spread something around simply because you think it will help improve her self-esteem."

Louis sighed. This was when Lily decided to get moral on him? Was this honestly the same girl who used the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map to sneak to the Restricted Section at one in the morning and read up on illegal curses? "Lily-"

"No, Louis. It's not happening." She slid off of the stool and collected her bag.

"Why," Louis said, "are you so against this? You aren't some - you don't exactly live by a high moral code, Lils."

"Don't call me Lils," Lily snapped, so quickly it almost seemed to be an instinctive reaction. "And first of all, my morality - or, as you seem to think, my lack thereof - is absolutely none of your business. Not to mention, I draw the line at targeting my own family members with a scheme that I know they will not enjoy. I may be a lot of things, Louis, and I may do a lot of things that you might find appalling, but I will not harm my own family." The door slammed behind her, and Louis was left there, shocked.

He had to admit, he was expecting Lily's full participation - even excitement - in the matter. She always seemed to be plotting something, and it seemed to be a pleasurable activity for her. She loved pranks and schemes and plots - he only had to bring to mind her Great Halloween Thing, as he half-jokingly referred to it in his own mind, and that alone was a perfect example of Lily being Lily. For her to turn down an opportunity...it was strange. He knew she was perfectly willing to help people with schemes; it gave her leverage over people that she could often use to her own advantage, to ask for favors when she needed something. Helping him with this would have given her that same sort of leverage over him - and yet, she didn't take it.

He shook his head. Girls.

He stuffed the book back into his bag, preparing to leave, but a thought occurred to his mind. Lily might not help him - but that didn't mean he couldn't do this on his own. After all, Lily did most of her schemes alone, and although Louis might not have her brain, this wasn't the most complicated thing in the world, either. He set the book on the table, and took out his wand, tapping it. "Gemino."

He repeated the process.

Several minutes later, Louis was sitting there, a stack of books piled precariously high on the small table. He wasn't sure exactly how many copies were necessary; distributing it widely was ideal, but he wasn't entirely sure how he could do that. His circle of Hogwarts friends extended to his cousins, roommates, and the Hufflepuff girls in his year, namely - although there were others that he would talk to, those were the only people he considered friends, and that wasn't a very large range of people.

His mind flashed to Michelle - a Muggle girl, who lived in the town near Shell Cottage and had become friendly with Louis on frequent trips to the beach - but then he shook his head. He didn't even know what the contents of Lucy's book were; he couldn't ask Michelle to spread it to Muggles. Ah, well. Louis flicked his wand at the stack, tucking Lucy's original copy back into his bag and making the large stack bob along behind him as he left the Room of Requirement.

The first person he came across was Lily's friend, Autumn Vaisey - a Slytherin in his year. He flicked his wand again, murmuring, and one of the books flew right into her hands. She jumped, rolling her eyes at Louis, but seemed more interested in what the book actually was then what Louis was doing with it. He continued along this way for a while, giving the book to whoever he happened to pass by, and when he had only a couple left, he resorted to holding the copies, shoving them into people's arms. He had one left when Lucy came along. "You found it!" She smiled, snatching it from him. "Thanks, Louis - where'd you find it?"

"Er, in the common room," he lied. "I was looking for you." It felt weird lying to Lucy; she was generally the only person whom he felt he could be entirely truthful with, but this was something he couldn't tell her. He knew it would get back to her at some point, what he had done, but he sincerely hoped that by that time period, she had heard wonderful things about her book from practically the whole school, and then she wouldn't be mad at him.

She nodded. "Well, I should go write as much as I can before I have to start on that Potions essay. I'm just so glad you found it and not someone else." She breathed a sigh of relief. "See you, Louis!" She dashed off, looking a lot happier than Louis had seen her in a while, and he sank against the wall. What had he done?

His newfound insecurity about his plan was what caused him to write the letter. He had, initially, been insecure about writing Michelle during the school year. She was a Muggle. But then, when Michelle had shown up at the Weasley-Potters' end-of-summer party and witnessed a few things she shouldn't, Louis had ended up explaining everything to her. None of the adults knew about it - and thankfully, none of the responsible Weasley-Potters had been around, and it wasn't as though Lily, Roxanne, James, Lucy, Al, or Hugo was going to tell.

He went into the library to write the letter; nobody was going to pester him in there, like they would in the common room. He didn't trust his roommates to keep his letters private, and he definitely didn't want them reading it. Michelle was his own little secret - his cousins knew the fact that she knew, but they didn't know her at all. Louis planned to keep it that way.

Louis never thought of himself as a particularly wordy person - he had difficulty whenever a professor assigned a three-foot essay - but something about Michelle brought out the more talkative side of him. It might have been because she was a talkative person himself; she wasn't sure.

Michelle, he started, because putting 'Dear' felt like it was going into areas that he wasn't sure about.

I don't know what happened. I think...I don't know. I did something that seemed like a great idea at the time, and now I'm not sure about it. My cousin - Lucy, the short blonde one - is writing a book. And she loves to write, but she's just really unsure about her writing. She thinks that it's not that great. I've never read her book, but I've seen her essays - hell, she helps me with mine - and I know she's a great writer. I tried to reassure her, but she didn't really listen. Besides, how can she trust me when I say her book is awesome, if I've never read it.

I made copies of it. About seventy, I think, but I lost count around twenty-five. And then I spread those copies around to a bunch of students here, just basically shoving it at them and hoping that they'll read it. I mean, it's their decision to, but chances are if someone shoves a book at you, you're going to at least look at it. I was hoping that they'd all read it, and then beg Lucy to tell them the ending, and that they would tell her how awesome it was. And then Lucy came up to me, and she just looked so incredibly happy that nobody had gotten hold of it apart from me.

I don't know what to do now. It's too late to take all the copies back. I know this isn't really your strong point, either, because you said that you don't do schemes, but...I'm not sure. I guess I just wanted somebody else to tell me what to do, because right now, I think that I screwed up, and I might not be the best person to decide what to do.

-Louis Weasley

He mailed the letter almost instantly, hurrying to the Owlery and borrowing one of the school owls. The delivery of letters had also been a concern in writing Michelle, but she had assured him that her parents were gone for almost the entire day, and that the only window left open in the house was Michelle's second-floor window. There would be little-to-no chance of her parents seeing an owl bring her a letter, and so Louis had consented to write.

As he watched the owl fly away, bringing Michelle tales of his possible screwup, he was glad he had.