As Madam Hooch dragged Meghan and Oliver alongside her, holding onto the collars of their robes as they went down the hall, Meghan's heart sank. How could I have been so unbelievably stupid, she thought over and over in disdain. Only now, after her anger at Oliver had subsided, did she truly realize that all the food and dishes on the floor and all the black eyes and bloody noses in the Great Hall had started with her, as soon as she had decided to pick up his drink goblet.
Of course, it couldn't completely have been her fault, for she didn't recall how she set up the chain reaction that led to an all-out fight.
Still though, she thought, Everyone's going to blame it all on me and say that I started it, and I'm going to be expelled.
Meghan gulped.
Now Mum will hate me, and she'll send me to another muggle school where everyone else will hate me, too. And all because I couldn't go for two stupid weeks without getting into trouble!
Feeling like crying, she glanced over at Oliver Wood to see if he seemed to feel anything like she did. But his face was blank, and he didn't look back at her.
So much for Maile Shield's handsome boyfriend, Meghan thought. Why does Breanna even want him?
Her anger at Oliver boiled up again.
It wasn't just me! she thought. He fought, and practically everyone in the entire Great Hall put in a few kicks and punches and shoves themselves, and I just know that they're all going to say it was me so that they can save their own stupid, sorry asses…
She seethed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
Wrapped up as she was in her anger, she did not pay attention when a large stone gargoyle came in to view, and Madam Hooch stopped in front of it and uttered the incantation of, "Fizzing Whizbees!"
Upon it, the gargoyle ceased to be stone and came to life. It jumped aside to reveal an opening had been formed by the walls, which had split into two as if they were doors. A spiral staircase was sliding upward in this opening, and Madam Hooch, without hesitating, pushed Meghan and Oliver onto it before she herself stepped on. The walls closed again, and the staircase rose upward.
Meghan sucked in a breath and let it out in a long, low whistle as the staircase spun in dizzying circles. She was relieved when the contraption stopped with a startling jolt. Then her heart sank as Madam Hooch stepped off, turned to a well-polished oak door beside her, and rapped on it three times with its griffin-shaped, brass door knocker.
A voice was heard faintly on the other side of the door, saying, "Severus, would you please get that?" Then there were a few footsteps, and the door swung open so that Meghan and Oliver could see their sallow-skinned Potions professor wrinkling his hooked nose and sneering at them through a curtain of greasy, black hair.
"Come in, Madam Hooch," he said coldly, staring at Oliver and Meghan up and down, already knowing that they were in trouble. Madam Hooch nodded to Snape and stepped through the doorway, dragging Meghan and Oliver with her. Snape closed the door behind her and smirked.
For a moment, Meghan forgot her dread and surveyed the place in awe. Professor Dumbledore's office was an amazing room, large and circular, and the walls were covered with portraits of sleeping people in nightgowns and caps who emitted soft snoring sounds every now and then. There were spindle-legged tables all around that bore various silver objects that puffed smoke and made little whirring noises. Meghan stood there, slack-jawed in amazement. She turned to see that Oliver was furrowing his eyebrows, no less astounded than her by all the room's curiosities.
In the midst of all the curious surroundings, Professor Dumbledore was sitting at an enormous claw-footed desk, observing the trio from behind his half-moon spectacles. Professor McGonagall was standing beside him, indignantly curious why two students from her House should be brought to the headmaster's office at that time of night.
"What problem do we have here?" Dumbledore asked after a moment.
"Professor Dumbledore, this matter is of most grave concern!" Madam Hooch exclaimed. "About ten minutes ago, The Grey Lady came to me in distress, telling me that there was chaos brewing in the Great Hall. So I went in there, and there were these two," she indicated Meghan and Oliver, "fighting with each other by their table!"
As Madam Hooch proceeded in giving her raging account, a spot of crimson flashed at the corner of Meghan's eye. She turned around and noticed for the first time that there was a golden perch by the door where the sneering Professor Snape stood, and on that perch stood a dazzling red bird. It was the size of a swan, with a long tail and talons glittering and gleaming with gold. It seemed to be staring straight at Meghan.
"I see you notice my Phoenix bird, Fawkes," Dumbledore's voice said gently.
Meghan spun around again to see Dumbledore, his blue eyes twinkling at her.
"Erm…well, I guess so," Meghan mumbled, embarrassed. "I couldn't help but notice…he's a very beautiful bird. I didn't know that Phoenixes really existed."
"Of course they do." Dumbledore nodded and leaned back in his chair. "So… is there anything you two would like to say to this testimony that Madam Hooch has given me? Is it really true that you were fighting in the Great Hall?"
"Professor, I can explain," Oliver piped up. "I didn't start the fight we had. She did." he glared at Meghan. "She just ran up to me and threw my own cup of pumpkin juice in my face for no reason at all…"
"That's a lie!" Meghan shouted. "You were the one who told Percy Weasley that it was my fault that your riding broom-"
"Please keep your voice down, Miss Wolf," Professor McGonagall sternly reproached her. "I get the impression that you have had enough trouble controlling your anger tonight."
Meghan's mind flashed back to Anna, and she sighed.
"Please, I'll explain this," she pleaded to Dumbledore, who regarded her patiently, but with earnest. "It didn't really start in the Great Hall. It started some time before that. I was going off to Latin class one night, and I somehow slipped and fell down the stairs. Then I crashed into him…" she glared at Oliver, "and I apparently caused some injury to his broom. I swear it wasn't my fault!
"Well, I was walking out of the Great Hall tonight so I could go and finish my homework, and Oliver here was sitting next to someone and telling him that I was the reason why he didn't do as well as he could have at tryouts. But I don't remember the broom being that badly damaged. It was only a bit dented, and he made the Quidditch team anyway!"
Oliver opened his mouth and made a sound of protest, but Dumbledore waved his hand to silence him.
"And then," Meghan continued, "I know that this is my fault, but I was so mad that I just pounced on him at that point. I mean, he had been blaming me for the mishap for days, and I just snapped!"
There was a pause.
"I'm not sure how everybody else got to fighting," Meghan added slowly, "But it had nothing to do with me."
"Or me," Oliver snapped.
"What is this about 'everybody else'?" Dumbledore probed, puzzled. He glanced warily at Madam Hooch. "Weren't you two the only ones fighting?"
"No-o…" Meghan and Oliver answered in puzzled unison.
Professor Snape made tsk-ing noise and stepped forward.
"Really, Minerva," he said smoothly. "You would think that the head of the Gryffindor House would be able to teach her students better than that! You would never catch any of the Slytherin students picking fights at dinner." He regarded Meghan and Oliver with contempt. "It looks like it's a special night for Gryffindors to make trouble. Tell me, Minerva, is this some kind of tradition?"
Professor McGonagall glared at Snape as a knock sounded at the door.
Madam Hooch went over to the door and opened it, and in stepped Madam Pince, dragging two girls along with her. The light fell on their school robes as they were brought before Dumbledore's desk, revealing their Slytherin crests and prefect badges.
"These girls were caught fighting outside the library," Madam Pince said indignantly. "They were tossing food, hitting, scratching, and pulling each other's hair…it was despicable. They ought to be ashamed."
"She started it," one girl protested. "She punched me, and then she-"
"You were the one who scratched me!" the other one interrupted.
"Well, you threw the gravy dish at me!" the first one snarled back. "It was your fault and you know it!"
Professor McGonagall smiled triumphantly at Professor Snape, whose self-righteous sneer had collapsed in horrified disbelief.
"Nobody from your house would pick a fight at dinner, Severus? Certainly the prefects themselves wouldn't, at any rate!"
Meghan tried to hide a grin as she observed the two girls, who were as disheveled as she was. To her amazement, of them as Crystal Matrix, who had looked so put-together when they had first met over the amazing ruby. The other girl was a little taller, with straight, dark hair, brown eyes, and a sharp, angular nose and chin. She was holding a broomstick similar to Oliver's. Meghan could barely read the words Cleansweep 7 printed on the handle in gold. The girl's face was littered with gravy and scratch-marks.
"Girls, I am ashamed of you!" Professor Snape roared. "You two are prefects and Quidditch players! You are the last two people that the librarian should see fighting, when you are to instead be setting an example for the other students!"
Meghan and Oliver at once turned around by the sudden chill on their shoulders as Nearly Headless Nick, who had just floated in through a wall, put a protecting arm over each of them.
"Professor Dumbledore, I think some further explanation is needed here," he said.
By the nonplussed look on Dumbledore's face, he could not have said it better himself. He had looked forward to a quiet evening, but instead he had to deal with incidents involving six students, all irritable and angry and looking to him for judgment, when few could agree on who had done what. So he took a deep breath and said:
"Would you four students kindly step up to my desk?"
Meghan, Oliver, Crystal, and the other Slytherin girl quietly obeyed. When all were assembled in a line in front of the desk, Dumbledore studied them curiously through his half-moon spectacles. Just looking into the professor's soft blue eyes made Meghan drop her own to the ground, ashamed to have bothered this kindly old man.
"Well, you all have something in common, it seems," Dumbledore observed. "You have each perpetrated some kind of scuffle tonight."
"Professor, I didn't start a thing," the dark-haired Slytherin girl protested. "It was Matrix's fault!"
"Miss Malfoy…Excuse me, what is your first name again?"
"It's Sexybitch Malfoy," the girl answered sweetly.
Meghan looked over at the girl in disbelief.
"Oh, that's…right," Dumbledore said uneasily. "I had forgotten that."
He didn't seem the least bit surprised at this information, so it then occurred to Meghan that the girl was not joking. She wrinkled her nose and wondered what in the world possessed this girl's parents to give their daughter such a name.
"Anyway," Dumbledore continued, "As I was saying, uh, Miss…"
"You can call me SB," the girl said matter-of-factly. "I don't mind if you do."
"Miss SB Malfoy, then," Dumbledore said. "Understand that I am not asking who started the fights that went on. I am asking who participated in them. According to various witnesses, you all did in some way or another. Does anyone object to that?"
Everyone was silent.
"That's settled then," Dumbledore concluded. "In that case, I would like for you four to step outside, where the staircase will take you down to the floor. Wait right near the stone gargoyle while your professors and I discuss this matter. This time, I hope you all will behave in a more civilized manner. Can I trust you to do that?"
There was a general murmur of assent from the four, and they walked toward the door in silence. Oliver jumped ahead of the other three, pulled open the heavy oak door, and made a show of politely ushering the girls onto the staircase right outside.
"Well, Wood," McGonagall stiffly remarked. "It's good to see that you can still be a gentleman, even if you've already lost your temper once tonight."
Oliver nodded humbly to her and stepped onto the platform.
When he closed the door behind him, the staircase lurched into action and spun downward, and Meghan could feel her stomach sinking with it. She looked up at the oak door, which was getting farther and farther away with the descent of the spiraling staircase, and tried to imagine what the group of angry professors were saying on the other side. They were all in that office right now, discussing punishment.
The word reverberated through her mind, and the more it did, the sicker Meghan became. Punishment itself was nothing new to her, thanks to her tumultuous years at Sir Walter Raleigh, but this was something completely different from the past detentions and the frequent visits to the headmistress' office. Back then, she had mastered a certain sort of brinkmanship about the pranks she pulled, always allowing some prevailing concern for her mother and the shame that came from it to keep her behavior restrained within a teacher's knowledge. Otherwise, her morose apathy would have taken her across any line.
This time, however, she realized that she hadn't felt the pangs her mother's quiet worry for weeks. Nor had it ever occurred to her that, at long last, she might actually regret being kicked out of school.
If the others were as morbidly worried as Meghan, they didn't show it. They were dispassionately staring at their feet while clinging onto a pole at the center, trying to keep balanced against the rapid spinning of the staircase. They were conspicuously making sure not to touch anyone else's arm or make eye contact. Nobody spoke.
The spinning stopped when the staircase hit the ground with a jolt, and the walls opened once more to allow the students out. When everyone had stepped off the silence broke, and the Slytherin girls started to argue once more.
"Thanks, Matrix, look what you did now!"
"Get over it, Malfoy! It's not my fault that your stupid face deserved to get punched!"
"You're just jealous that I'm the captain and Seeker of our Quidditch team, and you're only a substitute for my position!"
"Oh, am I? Well, you're just jealous that I'm going out with Terrence Higgs!"
"Never. I have a boyfriend of my own, and he could run circles around Higgs."
"Shut up! You don't have a boyfriend; you're just making it up!"
"No, you shut up, I am NOT making him up!"
The girls walked a little bit down the hall as they argued, and Meghan was relieved to see that they were at least restraining from anything physical this time.
When the girls were a safe distance away, Oliver grabbed Meghan's arm and pulled her into a dark corner beside a nearby statue.
"What the hell are you doing?" Meghan hissed.
"I want to know what the hell you were thinking," Oliver snarled back.
"Oh, don't give me that! You continually blamed me for your stupid broom, when it hardly got nicked! And now you have the nerve to pin this whole incident on me!"
"Really? Well, thanks to you, I'll probably get kicked off of the Quidditch team, and just when I was about to make something of myself there!"
"That isn't my fault!"
"You just don't get it, do you? Four of us are in trouble tonight, and you're the only one who doesn't really have anything to lose, because you're only in your first year!"
"And just what do you mean by that?" Meghan snapped. "I am on the verge of getting kicked out of the school, just when I was actually beginning to fit in with the people there! I wanted to make something of myself, too!
Oliver looked at her incredulously.
"But that's all going to be gone soon because I'll be expelled," Meghan angrily continued. "So don't say I have nothing to lose!"
"Don't be bloody stupid. You're not going to be expelled!"
"What do you mean?" Meghan stared at him, unblinking. "Wouldn't you get expelled for a food fight?"
"Well, normally we might," Oliver sourly replied, "But I suppose a dumb first-year like you wouldn't get a clue right away."
"I'm not dumb," Meghan snarled, but Oliver paid no attention.
"It's like this," Oliver continued. "Nearly Headless Nick is going to speak up for us. He's going to tell Professor Dumbledore that almost everyone in the Great Hall was fighting, because he knows what was going on. You can't just expel the entire school!
"Another thing is that the fighting included prefects, as you can see from those two model citizens…" he gestured toward the hall to indicate the Slytherin girls, "…over there. You can't expel a younger student for fighting, even if she did start it, because two prefects were doing the same thing somewhere else. The prefects won't get expelled, of course, because Snape is bound to make excuses for them. And you know that he'll always stick up for those morons in his House.
"But all the same, the prefects could lose their badges, Malfoy could lose her captaincy, and we could all lose our places on the House Quidditch teams. And we don't want that." He gulped. "At least I don't want to lose my place."
"Well, I'm in the Flying Band. Wouldn't I get kicked out of that?
"Are you commanding it?" asked Oliver.
"Well...no"
"Then that's something completely different," he said. "I'm very likely to be captain next year, after Megan Fowler and Alicia Gruenther graduate. That goal is very important to me. But I would lose my opportunity for that if I lost my place on the team."
He sighed.
"Now, I can't honestly say that I like Crystal Matrix and not-so-Sexybitch Malfoy over there," he continued, "and in fact, I dislike them very much, because Slytherin is the enemy House. Not just opposing, like Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Enemy. Gryffindor and Slytherin have never gotten along. It's tradition.
"The fact remains, though, that we three are on the same boat. We either have leading positions already or we have them just beyond our grasp. And now we might lose them. And, at least in my case, it started with you."
"It sure as hell didn't end with you!" Meghan shouted. "You fought, too, and you knew what the consequences were. You can't play Mr. Innocent on this one, no matter how much you kiss up to McGonagall and try the to be such a damn perfect gentleman!"
"I am doing all I can to save my place on the team!" Oliver was frantic. "I'll probably get punished worse than you, for fighting with a girl!" He pulled up the sleeves of his robes to reveal a row of red scratch marks on his arms. "Even if you did this."
"Well, you twisted my arm!"
"WELL, YOU STARTED THE FIGHT, YOU FUCKING TWIT!" Oliver bellowed, grabbing her arm like he meant to twist it. "THAT IS FINAL, AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT!"
He was gripping onto one of Meghan's wrists, squeezing so hard that Meghan figured her bones would break any second. She yelped in pain and cracked a hard slap across Oliver's face with her other hand, and he let go of her.
For a moment it there was complete silence as both Gryffindors stared each other down, fuming with rage. Oliver, now red-faced from his feverish outburst, realized for the first time how absolutely foolish Meghan looked with a mess of mashed potatoes adorning her dark hair. She was also soaking wet with the rivulets of sticky pumpkin juice running down her forehead, but the most ridiculous aspect of her was her mouth, comically twisted as it was.
"YOU …" Meghan sneered, but then stopped.
Oliver still had wet specks of juice in his hair, sparkling like crystals in the light. Her eyes traveled down to the smudge of garlic on his nose and the bruise forming on his cheek, to the bite mark on his neck, to the food stains on his robes and tie, to the drying blood on his arms. Her eyes opened wide. She had scratched him quite badly, indeed.
A faint haze seemed to creep over the edges of her mind, bubbling, even, like a fizzy drink. She let out a small giggle.
"What's so funny?" Oliver demanded.
"You are!" she cried out mirthfully. "You look so funny…" She was laughing hard now, and her eyes were welling with tears as she whispered, "Oh my goodness, you look so damned funny…" She trailed off, trying to catch her breath, and she looked at Oliver out of the corner of her eye. She began to feel pretty good, in spite of herself.
Especially when she saw that he was sniggering a bit, too.
"You look pretty messed-up yourself," he chuckled, leaning back against the wall.
By now, Meghan was laughing so hard that she had to grip onto the statue nearby to keep her balance. Tears were streaming out of her eyes as she did so, and Oliver was chuckling hysterically and leaning on the wall for support.
"I can't believe how stupid that was," Meghan gasped for breath as she spoke. "First we were yelling at each other, then we fought, and then we yelled some more, and the next thing you know we're standing here, covered with our own dinner, for Merlin's sake! I don't know why that's supposed to be so funny…"
The two burst into hysterics once more.
"I can't believe it," Meghan chuckled, "You just look so hilarious when you're angry! I wonder how your girlfriend stands it!"
"You should talk!" Oliver replied, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.
The laughter eventually subsided after a few minutes, and the two stood there, catching their breath, facing and seeing each other in a new light.
"Well," Oliver said, awkwardly straightening his collar. "I must confess; I acted quite stupidly about the whole broomstick incident."
"So did I," Meghan admitted, shyly cocking her head. "With the fight, I mean."
"Anyway," Oliver turned his eyes downward, ashamed. "I'm sorry that I overreacted about my broom being dented. Maybe it won't matter that much this year if it didn't matter at tryouts. But I get really tense and irritable before Quidditch tryouts every year, and I become very likely to explode at someone. And…I regret that that someone had to be you."
"Oh, don't pull all that gentleman crap," Meghan playfully reproached him. "McGonagall isn't here right now to be sucked up to."
"But I mean it. And if you say that the whole incident wasn't your fault, I believe you. It had to have been an accident."
Meghan smiled.
"I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have attacked you, no matter how angry I was. I'll tell Professor Dumbledore that it was my fault, and that you were only defending yourself."
"But I continued the fight," Oliver protested.
"But I started it," Meghan argued. "You even said so yourself. I mean, you don't want to lose your chances at the Gryffindor Quidditch captaincy next year, do you?"
Oliver thoughtfully considered this.
"So it's a truce, then?" he finally said.
"Yeah…it's a truce, Oliver."
"Call me Wood. That's what all my friends call me."
Meghan giggled, and then stupidly added, "I feel so good right now."
Just then, the stone gargoyle came to life once more. When it jumped away, the spinning staircase was bearing the professors on it, lead by Professor Dumbledore and followed by Nearly Headless Nick. They stepped off (Nick floated off), and Meghan's dread came back to her again.
But she remembered the promise she had made to Wood, so she swallowed over the lump in her throat and stepped forward.
"Professor Dumbledore…McGonagall," she started timidly, "I started the food fight. It was my fault, so please don't kick Wood off of the Quidditch team."
Professors McGonagall and Snape regarded this sudden change of heart with narrowed eyes, but Professor Dumbledore's face stayed the same.
"I never said that I was going to kick anyone off of any team, Miss Wolf."
Meghan and Wood looked a little confused, and so did Crystal Matrix and SB Malfoy, who had just come back from where they had been arguing a moment ago.
"Well…what are you going to do?" Meghan asked, her voice quavering.
"Nearly Headless Nick informed me that almost everybody in the Great Hall participated in this…this culinary warfare tonight," Dumbledore said matter-of-factly.
Wood flashed a look at Meghan as if to say, "What did I tell you?"
"I understand that this outburst of fighting may have had to do with all the pent-up stress, competitive urges, and hard feelings that have surrounded today's events," Dumbledore continued. "However, that does not excuse you having acted as you did. Therefore, there most certainly must be consequences.
"We have all come to the decision that the more traditional punishments, such as the deduction of House points, would not be suitable in this case."
And then, as if he had read their minds, "Nor would the revoking of team memberships or captaincies."
All of the four looked greatly relieved, but wary.
"What we have decided," said Dumbledore, "is that the students who participated in any sort of fighting tonight, aside from you four, will spend the evening cleaning up the Great Hall so that it is suitable for use again tomorrow, without the assistance of the elves employed here. All of those students involved will do so. You would be surprised at how well I will be able to tell who is who.
"As for you two," Dumbledore turned to Meghan and Wood, "You, who were the first ones to set an example for the others of getting your clothes into a filthy mess, will spend the year learning the value of keeping clothes clean."
Meghan and Wood exchanged wary looks.
"Therefore," Dumbledore went on, "You will spend all of your Friday nights working in the laundry room for the rest of the school term."
Wood whistled inward in shock, and Meghan grimaced.
"The specific instructions," said Dumbledore, "are these: every Friday night after dinner, but starting this Saturday night, you two will report straight to the laundry room, where the school launderer will meet you and have all your work ready for you. I assure you, there will be bales of dirty laundry to wash. And wash it, you will, as well as rinse it out, hang it up to dry, fold it, and deliver it to the door of each House's Common Room. You will personally deliver it to the students in your own House by yourselves, to reconcile the shame you put on them by your representation. Miss Wolf, you will put away the laundry into the dormitories for the girls of your house; Mister Wood, you will do the same thing for the boys. Then you will both clean up the laundry room when you are finished. You are not to be dismissed until all this has been done."
Meghan had thrown heavy rocks at people before and thought nothing of it. Now she was certain she would never throw so much as a crumb again.
"I will warn you, further,"-it was Professor McGonagall speaking now-"that before you run off to any late-night Quidditch practices, any Band instrument playing, any chats with your friends, or-heaven forbid!- anything as productive as studying or school work, or even sleep, the launderer and the accompanying house-elves must approve of the job you have done, or else you will not be permitted to leave. Any sloppy or half-done work will not be excused. Is all that understood?"
Meghan and Wood nodded vigorously.
"Good," said Dumbledore. "I think we have settled that one." He turned toward Crystal and SB. "Now as for you two, we decided…"
"Pardon me, Professor Dumbledore- may I have a word with you?" A new voice broke in. Everyone turned to see the grumpy face of the Argus Filch the caretaker, who had one of the Weasley twins on either side of him, each being held by an ear. Before Dumbledore could reply, Filch started on a tirade.
"I was getting prepared to sweep the dust out of the halls, and this is what I found in the broom closet!" Filch let go of Fred and George and pulled out two brooms from under his arm, the bristles of which were gummed together all throughout with what looked like a thousand chewed-up wads of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum.
"I tell you, this was no accident, and nor were the culprits very hard to find! When I looked around, I noticed these two standing nearby, as they always do when trouble can be found. I'll have you know that I am well aware of what these boys are up to when they think that I can't see them. Doesn't this look like something they would do?"
Fred and George, looking horrified, shook their heads in fierce disagreement From behind Dumbledore, Snape's mouth crinkled into a nasty sneer.
Professor McGonagall stepped forward, and seeing the tired look on Dumbledore's face, said, "I'll handle the matter from here, Albus. You go get some rest. It's been a long day."
"All right, then, Minerva," Dumbledore sighed. "Fizzing Whizbees!"
The gargoyle disclosed the entrance to the spinning staircase once more, and Dumbledore stepped on and said, "You all should get some rest, too. However, with the rate at which students are getting in trouble tonight, we'll all be lucky if we can sleep at all by the time breakfast rolls around." He shook his head and disappeared from view when the gargoyle jumped back into place.
When he was gone, Professor McGonagall turned sternly toward the twins.
"You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"
"But we didn't do it- did we, Fred?" George protested. Fred shook his head.
Snape make a tsk-ing noise behind McGonagall, but she paid no attention.
"Don't give me that, Mr. Weasley- both of you Weasleys. Your reputation is known around the entire school." She turned to Filch. "Argus, how long ago did you discover this?"
"Uh…" the caretaker squinted and turned his head to the side, thinking. "About fifteen minutes ago. I've been looking for an appropriate authority figure around here for some time, now." His eyes scanned McGonagall, Snape, Madam Hooch, and Madam Pince, and he said, "Looks like they've been hiding out here."
"Your robes are clean," McGonagall said, turning back again and observing the twins. "So you apparently did not participate in the food fight, then."
"Food fight?" Fred's eyes widened, amazed. "There was a real food fight?"
"Yes, Fred, but just because you weren't a part of it, that doesn't mean that what you and your brother did to these brooms is any more excusable!" McGonagall shouted, exasperated. She turned to Crystal and SB. "You two ladies will clean up whatever mayhem you caused anywhere near the library, and assist Madam Pince there for the rest of the year. You will do it every day after dinner until ten. Also, you will clean the girls' bathroom tonight. Fred and George, you will thoroughly de-gum those brooms and clean the boys' bathroom. Is that understood?"
"But we didn't-" Fred protested.
"You are already in enough trouble tonight, so I don't want to hear another word!"
"But-"
"Have I not made myself clear, Mister Weasley?"
Fred sighed dejectedly.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Now the four of you may go and clean the bathrooms. You will not be dismissed for the night until everything, and I mean everything, is spotless. Madam Hooch, you may escort these two to the laundry room right now."
The students obediently nodded, and the small group dispersed in different directions. Madam Hooch, satisfied, put an arm behind Meghan and Wood and said:
"Well, let's go then, shall we? We haven't a moment to waste."
Then she led them down the hall to begin a year's sentence.