Tom, he claimed, had been a Slytherin student at Hogwarts who was imminently gifted at magic.
"Makes sense," Hermione affirmed. "Book characters are usually special in some way."
Slytherins are poopy-faces. George scrawled before Hermione grabbed the book from him, causing a small poof of glitter to douse all of them.
Can you please tell us if anything exciting is happening in your world, Tom? Hermione wrote before the book could respond.
"I think that's a much more likely way to get the story to start than calling Slytherins poopy-faces," she stated smugly.
"Oy, Wood! I think you're a poopy-face!" Fred shouted across the common room.
"Weasley, I would pummel you if I didn't want you functional on the Quidditch pitch," Wood groused as he sent a Langlock Jinx towards the twin.
"See, it's actually quite a reasonable strategy for getting action started," George finished as Fred mimed his enthusiastic agreement.
George snapped his fingers in front of Hermione's face, "Earth to Mini-Lee! Hey! We're creating high-quality entertainment here and she's not even paying attention to us!"
Fred was miming to Lee that he wanted the jinx removed; Lee, however, was actively misinterpreting his motions. ("Lipstick? I don't think that would look too good with the freckles, mate. Oh, no, you want me to charm your hair to stand on end? That, my friend I can do. No? Something else?")
The quiet, "oh" from Hermione caused the rest of the group to turn towards her. Her face pale, she showed them what the book had written.
Well, I think the only excitement here has been that someone apparently opened the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts, and a girl was killed. They were threatening to close down the school.
Fortunately, I apprehended the culprit. A half-giant named Hagrid had brought a pet Acromantula to school. I confronted him and alerted the authorities.
Ginny tells me the Chamber has been re-opened.
The pranksters looked at each other, wide-eyed.
Was Ginny scared that the Chamber was opened? Fred responded.
I don't like sharing secrets with people who don't tell me anything about themselves. The curly, antiquated handwriting retorted.
"Oh, my! We've been so rude!" George gasped, snatching the book from his twin. He was quiet for a few minutes, his brow furrowed in concentration while he scrawled furiously.
"Two galleons he's drawing an anatomically detailed penis that he'll claim is 'something about himself,'" Lee wagered.
"Dammit, Lee!" George swore. "Have I become that predictable?"
Lee quickly covered Hermione's eyes as George turned the book around.
She sputtered indignantly, "Well, you'd best all follow his lead so Tom doesn't know some of you better than others." She tried again to wriggle out from Lee's hand.
"I'm not trying to look, Lee! I don't want to see your gross drawings. I hear enough of your gross fart jokes every day!"
Lee removed his hand and motioned for the journal. He started drawing, the page blank except for Tom's request that they cease drawing juvenile cartoons immediately.
"Okay, but seriously. If this is a choose your own adventure, why is it talking about something that's really happening? Oh my goodness! What if this is part of the prank?" Hermione exclaimed.
The three boys looked at the book with sudden malice.
The young girl jumped up and ran up the stairs to her dormitory, while George critiqued Lee's drawing. "Not nearly enough hair there, mate. Yeah, really get those little curlicues in there. Tom wants to get to know us after all."
Moments later, the smallest prankster returned, a tome on "communication magic" in hand.
"So, I got this book for our tracking work, so the monitoring spells can inform us when something happens. It didn't occur to me that it might be useful for this! The magic for making a piece of paper say something else at a distance isn't that hard, not nearly as complicated as some of the warding magic we've been looking into for the 'diary'" she explained triumphantly.
"Evil Prankster has been pen-pals with Ginny?" George whispered. His face looked a little green.
Hermione swished her wand and finally released Fred from the Langlock.
"Ugh, I'm glad we nicked this then! The thought of that creep being near our sister…" He muttered, before sticking out his "poor abused tongue" and starting to massage it with the index finger from both hands. Hermione flicked his forehead, admonishing him for being "vile."
"Do you think he targeted her because of us? If he's trying to upstage us, targeting Gin would make sense." George continued.
"That's low. Not sure if it's quite as low as petrifying Creevey, but pretty low," Lee agreed.
"So this makes it war," the smallest prankster declared. "I think we've been too soft thus far. I'll work on charming some quills with a copying charm so we can set it to draw penises 24-7 while we figure out our next steps."
** JP ** JP ** JP **
"I am still a hard 'no' on involving Peeves," Lee warned ominously.
"And I still don't think that a plan to collect every book in the castle would even be a good idea even if it would work, which I also doubt," Fred sniped back.
"Have to mention the risk that Mini-Lee would die of a heart-attack if she had that many books within reach," George added seriously.
"What if we use a dose of his own tricks and write something like 'We know who you are, Tom'? on every black-board in the castle or 'We know who opened the Chamber.'" Hermione illustrated her point by flicking her wand at their Transfigured chalkboard which was instantly filled with her first statement, written in Tom's distinctive handwriting.
"Then what?" Lee mused. "We see who acts spooked? I am not monitoring the map for hours on end and listening to crackpot ramblings about the prank-to-end-all-pranks secret Peter Pettigrew mystery again."
"Oy, I'd almost forgotten about that! We still need to crack that!" Fred quickly unfurled the map and muttered his nefarious intentions. "The little bugger is in the Gryff second year dorms again, just so you all know."
"Fine, we can investigate that again, but after we return the school to a state of proper Weasley induced - fine, fine! Stop throwing things at me Lee! Weasley-Jordan-and-Granger induced chaos." George wiped a dribble of green slime from his cheek, while Lee and Hermione leaned across Fred to high-five.
"Back to the matter at hand," Hermione announced grandly, "What if we put something afterwards that only 'Tom' would know? Like, 'meet us where you caught Hagrid'."
"He hasn't told us where he caught Hagrid," Fred pointed out.
"He loves talking about this 'Tom' character he created and this whole concoction about the 'original opening of the Chamber of Secrets'," Hermione said loftily. "We'll get him to tell us, then we can use it as the 'meeting place.'"
"Three issues: One, won't whoever this is think it's suspicious that we weasel information on a place out of them and then immediately use it, Two: why would they believe we know who they are, when, newsflash, we don't, and Three: is meeting up with someone who petrified a fellow student really a good idea?" George held up three fingers dramatically to illustrate his points.
"Ugh, I never thought it would be so early, barely half-way through our Hogwarts career we'd turn stodgy and boring, but alas, I find myself agreeing with the excellent points made by the Uglier Twin," Fred moaned. (Quickly followed by: "Ouch! Stop trying to poke my eye! Disfiguring me won't improve your looks you ugly oaf!")
Hermione slumped. "Right, I really need to practice my blackmail strategies."
"It takes time, Mini-Lee," George consoled her.
"What if we drew bigger dicks in the journal?" Fred joked.
"Merlin, that's brilliant! No, seriously!" Lee breathed. "We know there is a linked journal somewhere at the other end. So, what if we cast a spell on the ink on our end that makes, I dunno, a giant fireworks version come blasting out of the pages on the other end. We do it during class, so people definitely see it. Then boom, we know who it is!"
"Make it a giant glitter dong and I'm in." George had already jumped to the board to draw a prototype.
"The Hogwarts rumor mill won't be able to resist reporting on a giant glitter dong," Hermione sagely agreed.
"Great, now all we need to do is figure out how to cast a spell through a linked parchment. Which, by the way, we should totally add to our future stock. Seems like it would be a nice addition to the greeting card line."
** JP ** JP ** JP **
"Nothing!" Fred moaned. "We've sent three, three! Spells through and not a sniffle from the student populace."
Lee was just about to respond when the grating voice of Professor Lockhart interrupted, "Oh ho, my boys! I hope you're not getting into mischief over here!"
"Just taking notes, Professor. We wouldn't want to miss any of your fascinating fables- err fabulous teaching," George interjected his face in a deadpan that the snickers of his classmates at his 'fables' correction didn't mar.
However, the lilac robed man had snatched the notebook (causing it to emit a cloud of pink glitter).
"This is blank, boys. Now, tell me what you were up to."
"Drawing phallic symbols," Fred groused.
"Mister Weasley, as much as I appreciate-" The man cut himself off as Tom's distinctive handwriting bled onto the page. "Well, then see me after class and you can explain what this is all about. I don't want to getting to the bottom of this negatively impacting your classmates' education!"
He flashed the classroom a brilliant smile, holding the notebook tight to his chest as it feebly emitted more puffs of glitter.