Victoire and Fred both managed to keep their noses clean until after they'd served their detentions. She woke up on Halloween morning intent on trying to plan some prank with her cousin over breakfast, but that desire dissipated as soon as she entered the Ravenclaw Common Room.

The statue of Rowena Ravenclaw was emitting sparks that spelled out ʻHappy Halloween, bookworms.ʼ

That had Fred's fingerprints all over it, and she needed to get him back for the insult to her house.

However, as soon as she started trying to come up with an actual plan, she hit a brick wall. Fred was much better with pranks ideas than she was - he'd commented on more than one occasion that he was good at coming up with detention-worthy mischief, and she was good at landing them in the hospital wing.

She slumped against the wall that separated the girlsʼ staircase from the boys'. It was all well and good to declare mental war on him, but it wouldnʼt mean anything if she couldnʼt think of a good way to get him back.

It was still early enough that most of the Ravenclaws were still getting ready for the day's lessons, but there were a few students scattered around the Common Room. The first years in particular kept glancing toward the statue as though they were afraid the sparks might do more than just spell out words.

The statue emitted a particularly bright explosion of sparks just as a boy with messy blond curls emerged from the boys' staircase, and he stopped dead. He was so busy staring at the status with a mixture of horror and dismay that he didn't even see her. "Fucking Fred," she heard him mutter.

"Yes," Victoire agreed. "Iʼve just declared war on him."

Micah started and looked over at her. "You didn't help him, did you?" When he saw the look on her face, he backtracked very quickly. "Well, I'm in. Do you know the password to the Gryffindor Common Room?"

Victoire made a face and followed him over to an isolated circle of couches and chairs as far away from the sparks as they could manage. "No. Itʼs not fair - all he had to do was walk us back to our Common Room once and he knows how to get in forever. We have to find out the new password every few months."

Micah blew out his breath and settled into the couch heʼd claimed. For Micah, settling in tended to mean taking up as much space as humanly possible - heʼd already put his feet up on one of the arms so he could lay backward onto a large mountain of bright blue pillows.

Thankfully, Victoire - who was quite familiar with her friend's habit of spreading out - had chosen to claim an armchair instead.

"Well, we need the Gryffindor password," he said. "Think Cheyenne would give it to us?"

"Doubt it." The trouble was that Victoire, Micah, and Fred had the same group of friends, and heʼd almost certainly tipped off the Gryffindors not to give anyone the password.

Micah sighed. "Too bad Teddyʼs gone. Heʼd give you the password in a heartbeat."

Victoire was momentarily diverted from her plans for revenge. "Fred wouldʼve tipped him off, too."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but heʼd have told you anyway."

Victoire chose to ignore this, and before he could say anything else, there was a loud bang from the statue. They both jumped and looked over at it as two of the first years squealed and made for the stairs. The sparks had turned purple and were now spelling out, "Toil and trouble, bookworms!"

Micah seemed to take this as a sign that he probably shouldn't be teasing Victoire about Teddy, which she was just as grateful for. "You could try to charm Dale Scovell. Figuratively, I mean. Heʼs been wanting to ask you out for ages."

She wrinkled her nose. She had nothing against Dale Scovell - not really, anyway - but if she were going to try to charm the password out of anyone, Dale would be near the bottom of the list. She didnʼt like his nose. Or his hair.

After a short back and forth in which they each tried to convince the other to flirt with a Gryffindor in hopes of getting the password, they decided to head downstairs for breakfast.

"He didnʼt do it alone, you know," Micah pointed out as they made their way downstairs for lunch. "Fred never does anything alone. Somebody helped him."

He was right. Fred had a deep aversion to ever doing anything by himself - he claimed it ruined the fun.

"Lexy?" Victoire offered after a moment of thought. Micah grimaced and nodded.

When they entered the Great Hall for breakfast, however, Lexy Abbott was sitting alone at the Hufflepuff table, pushing her food around her plate with her fork and looking more than a little disgusted.

Victoire glanced over at Micah. "Maybe not Lexy, then," he said, making a beeline toward the Hufflepuff table. Victoire followed him. "What's wrong with you?" he asked as they slid in across from her.

Lexy glanced up. "Don't ask." Now that they were closer, Victoire could see that her hair was still damp, and there was the faintest scent of lavender in the air, probably from Lexy's shampoo. That was odd – Lexy never showered in the morning.

"We're asking." Micah began to serve himself from the Hufflepuff platters.

Lexy sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "Fred decided to set off a dungbomb in the Hufflepuff Common Room."

"Just one?"

Lexy shot them a withering glare. "Yes, just one. We don't have proper windows. One was really more than enough." She glanced over at the Gryffindor table. Fred was nowhere to be found, which was probably a good thing. "He wanted me to help him prank you guys for Halloween and I said no." The surprise must have been evident on their faces, because she hurried to add, "Well, I wanted to, but Neville caught me out of bounds a couple days ago, and he said that if I put another toe out of line before Christmas he'd ban me from Hogsmeade for the rest of the year. And tell my mother."

Micah whistled. Victoire could sympathize, too, but she had another, more pressing question. "Out of bounds meaning what, exactly? Breaking curfew?"

Lexy snorted. "If only. He caught me in Hogsmeade. No, not coming back from Hogsmeade, Micah – in Hogsmeade." They winced. "Yeah. So what did Fred end up doing?"

"Charmed our statue to say, 'Happy Halloween, bookworms.' And it explodes sparks."

"That's it? Ravenclaws are so melodramatic."

"What do you mean, it?" Victoire and Micah said together.

"We're not just bookworms, you know. That's an unfair stereotype."

"And who knows what the sparks are going to do next – it's Fred, it could be anything."

"They could turn into beetles."

Lexy held up her hands. "Okay. Okay. I get it. It's horrible, terrible, and an insult to your entire house. You can shut up now." She wrinkled her nose. "But on the bright side, it's not dungbombs. The Common Room is going to smell for days, I don't see how the house elves will get that smell out, whatever they said. Personally, I'd probably take the insult to my house, though probably not the beetles."

Victoire acknowledged that with a shrug of her shoulders while Micah said, "So, are you up for getting him back?"

Lexy sighed. "No, Micah. I'm still supposed to be staying out of trouble, and I doubt Neville will accept 'but he started it' as an excuse. I will give you the Gryffindor password, if that's worth anything - it's Patronus Charm. Would you like some of my firecrackers? Or help planning it?"

It was just as well that Fred had the morning free. On one hand, Victoire resented his ability to sleep in, but on the other, he hadn't seen them scheming with Lexy, so it was a win overall.

She, on the other hand, trudged off to Magizoology as soon as breakfast ended. It had become her favorite subject, and Goldstein had said that an old friend of his from school would be spending the next few weeks with them, which certainly sounded interesting.

At the same time, there wasn't a chance he hadn't heard about the common room, and she was pretty sure that he'd think that she had something to do with it.

When she walked into the classroom, her suspicions were almost immediately born out. He was deep in conversation with a man with light brown hair and a very noticeable black eye, but the look he gave her promised trouble.

Since she hadn't actually caused trouble yet, that was more than a little irritating. She fidgeted through the entire lesson, even though she ordinarily would have been very keen on learning about the explosion in British acromantula population since the end of the war. Before she could bolt from the room when the lesson ended, Goldstein caught her eye. "A word, Ms. Weasley?"

She let her bag drop to the floor and slumped back into her seat. "I didn't do it."

Goldstein's friend snorted and leaned back against the wall. "I can see a family resemblance," he said dryly.

Goldstein, unfortunately, was not in the mood to be deflected. "I couldn't help but notice that the statue in our common room has been defaced."

Victoire jerked upright, absolutely furious. "I didn't do that!" she snapped.

He regarded her for a moment, and then he sighed. "Then I don't want to hear anything about mischief in the Gryffindor common room."

She avoided meeting his eyes and made a quick escape.

He was going to hear about mischief in the Gryffindor common room, of course. That was already a given. The detentions would be worth it. She hoped he wouldn't take off too many points, but if he did, there was nothing to be done for it.

She caught up with Micah just before lunch, and he was looking entirely too self-satisfied to have done nothing. She glanced down the hall and then yanked him through the illusion of a stone wall to the dimly lit passage it concealed. "What did you do?" she asked eagerly.

"I made the fat lady orange."

She stared at him. "You did what?" He opened his mouth, and she shook her head. "No, I heard you. How do they not have charms to stop that?"

"They probably do." He stretched his arms above his head. His smirk was getting wider. "They probably didn't anticipate someone using a potion."

Victoire had to clap her hands over her mouth to hold muggle a giggle. "Are you serious?"

He grinned. "Come on. We should get to lunch so we don't look suspicious."

She followed him down the corridor. When they walked in, her cousin was already seated at the Gryffindor table; he waved to them, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

"I don't think he's heard yet," Micah murmured. "Should I sneak into their dormitory after lunch?"

She shook her head. Fred looked entirely too carefree right now - she couldn't let Micah have all the fun. If Fred was going to laugh at them, she would make him hate the very sound of laughter.

Fred, of course, insisted that he couldn't understand why she was annoyed by the defacement of the statue. "Come on, Vic," he said when she gave him the cold shoulder in Defense Against the Dark Arts. "It's just a bit of fun. Don't take it so seriously."

She stuck her tongue out at him again. In response, he helped himself to one of the chocolate frogs sitting at the top of her bag.

"Ms. Weasley," Goldstein said at the end of the lesson. "A word."

She sighed. This was the issue with Goldstein taking both the Magizoology and Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWTs - he had ample time to call her out on mischief without having to find her first.

The look on Fred's face was almost worth it, though. "What did you do?" he hissed as she slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Just a bit of fun," she murmured back.

When she reached Goldstein's desk, she could hear her cousin frantically shoving his belongings into his bag.

"I specifically remember telling you to stay out of the Gryffindor common room," he said clearly. Victoire wasn't sure whether he was playing along to make Fred more tense or trying to make matters more uncomfortable for her.

Or maybe just a bit of both.

"I haven't been near the Gryffindor common room all day, sir."

"Then why is the Fat Lady bright orange?"

Behind her, Fred let out a loud groan. She heard his footsteps thud onto the floor as he rushed toward the door.

"I really didn't do it, sir," she said. Now there was a twinkle in Goldstein's eyes; he'd definitely been giving her cousin a taste of his own medicine. "I swear."

"Mm. In that case, when you see Mr. Higgins, tell him I want to see him after dinner."

"After dinner, sir?" she asked, just to make sure she'd heard right.

"After dinner," he confirmed. "You might as well come with him."

She schooled her expression to innocence. "Sir?" He raised his eyebrows, and she made a face. It wasn't worth trying to lie, not about this. "Yes, sir."

She turned to go, and he added, "And Victoire?" Victoire looked back. He was smiling. "Try not to get caught in their common room."

It occurred to her that Teddy may have had a point about favoritism. "I never get caught, sir."

He waved his arm toward the door, and she got to it. She didn't even bother to go back to Ravenclaw tower - it was already after 3:30, and while NEWT students didn't finish until 5:30, the younger students finished with their classes well before five.

Of course, there was always a risk of stragglers, even at this hour… so she ducked into the first passage she passed and pulled out a small bottle out of her bag. It looked like an inkwell, but when she pulled out the stopper and waved her wand over it, the illusion thin black ink lifted, and she was left with a substance that looked vaguely akin to mud.

She carefully pushed a few hairs into it, and the potion turned a very violent shade of red.

"Figures," she muttered to herself. She drank it down in one gulp; it tasted vaguely like cinnamon.

It was a piece of luck that Fred's sister Roxanne was far more loyal to the idea of pranks than she was to her brother. In hindsight, Victoire would have bet that Roxanne had known that something like this was coming - she'd handed over half a dozen hairs and a pair of trousers the week before with a vague 'just so you have them if you need them' comment when Victoire had asked her why.

She quickly pulled the trousers on under her skirt, pulled the skirt off, and shrugged out of the now-unnecessary bra under her shirt. There was nothing to be done about the shoes, but they were passable for a little while - she'd always had small feet, so at least they weren't falling off.

As she'd suspected, there were a few people in the common room - and none of them batted an eye when she climbed through the portrait hole and made a beeline toward the staircase to the boy's dormitory. She bumped into Dale on the stairs, and he grinned at her. "What is it this time?"

"Firecrackers," Victoire-as-Roxanne said cheerfully.

"Does your brother know you're skipping class to steal his firecrackers?" She held a finger to her lips. He snorted and thundered down the rest of the stairs.

Victoire did actually take some of the firecrackers. She had to, to sell the story if anyone mentioned Roxanne's presence to Fred, and besides, she didn't have any doubt that her cousin would be thrilled to set them off at dinner.

She was fairly certain that leading her first year cousin down the path of rule breaking wasn't something their grandmother would approve of, but given how good Roxanne had proved herself at creating havoc in two short months, Victoire didn't think that a few firecrackers were really going to tip the scales.

Once the firecrackers were safely stowed in her bag, though, she got to work. She made a beeline to Fred's bed and cast as strong a silencing spell as she could manage on the inside of the drapes - it was no good casting a spell that others would immediately hear.

Then she climbed onto the bed, stood up, and pointed her wand at all four posts. When she tested it out by laying down, the sudden maniacal laughing told her that she'd been successful.

The silencing spell would wear off, of course. Fred would just wake the boys he shared his dormitory with up first, and they'd tease him for having nightmares just because it was Halloween.

She escaped without incident, and Roxanne was indeed thrilled to have firecrackers to set off at dinner. They caused the appropriate amount of chaos before the professors extinguished them, and Roxanne was so happy with her work that she positively bounced after Longbottom when he motioned for her to follow him out of the Great Hall.

The firecrackers had also managed to sidetrack Fred for long enough that Victoire and Micah were able to shovel food into their mouths and escape. When they left the Great Hall, they saw him laughing at the last firecracker, which had taken refuge in the pudding in front of him.

There was no smile the next morning, which made the detention Goldstein had given each of them the night before worth it all on its own. Instead, Fred stomped up to the Ravenclaw table ten minutes before breakfast was set to end. When Victoire looked up at him, he had dark circles under his eyes. "Are you fucking kidding me, Victoire? The thing with the Fat Lady was funny, but I barely slept!"

She shrugged and turned back to her breakfast. "You started it."

"I charmed your stupid statue," he snapped. "You made it impossible for me to sleep."

"Yes," she agreed.

He groaned and fell onto the seat next to her. "Give me some toast," he said listlessly. "And I hate you."