Year 1: A New Generation
Chapter 3: November 2011
About mid-way through November, Hogwarts experienced it's first snowfall. It was just a light dusting over the grounds – not enough to elicit a school-wide snowball fight or anything, but Victoire thought it was absolutely beautiful. She insisted, much to their dismay, that Kara and Brianna go for walks outside almost everyday with her and admire the beauty of the coming winter.
The only downfall was that it was getting colder too, which meant gloves and scarves, and when it was really cold even hats. Victoire despised hats because they messed her hair up.
"I can't believe Professor Leftbridge would assign us such a long assignment," Brianna grumbled as they made their way back to the common room. "It's going to take all weekend."
"Defence is such a dumb subject," Kara agreed. "I mean; it's not like we're in the middle of a war. Nobody's running around attacking people anymore, and if I don't want to be an Auror, then when am I really going to use it?"
"I'm with you," Victoire agreed. "And I mean, this assignment? If I were facing a Death Eater or something, I definitely wouldn't use the curse of the bogies as my first offensive attack. What's it going to do? Give him a runny nose and a headache? That's not going to stop anyone."
"Snozzcumber," Kara muttered at the Fat Lady when they reached the portrait hole.
"I'm sorry," the Fat Lady said. "That is incorrect."
"What? That was the password this morning," Kara disagreed.
"And I'm afraid the password changed at noon," the Fat Lady said. "If nobody informed you then there's really nothing I can do about it."
"Oh no!" Brianna exclaimed.
"What?" Victoire asked.
"There was a notice on the bulletin board last night. I thought it was just another Quidditch practice rescheduled, but it must have been the password notice," Brianna explained.
"So you didn't see what it said?" Kara asked, dismayed.
"I'm sorry," Brianna hung her head.
"Well then how are we going to get inside?" Victoire wondered.
"I guess we'll have to find a prefect or something," Kara declared. "Come on, there's got to be someone around."
The girls retreated and began searching the corridors. Apart from coming up to Gryffindor Tower, they hadn't spent all that much time exploring the seventh floor. There were tons of empty classrooms that seemed to be in complete disuse. Victoire wondered if they had ever used them, or whether they were just there.
"It's useless," Brianna sighed. "We might as well just go back down to the Great Hall because nobody's going to be up here in an abandoned classroom."
"One more room," Victoire pleaded. "Come on, I don't want to go all the way back down and then up again if we can avoid it."
"Fine, last door," Brianna agreed, pushing the door in question open and stepping in.
"Nobody," Kara sighed when they found themselves yet again in a room full of toppled chairs and spare parchment littering the tables.
"Alright, I guess we can go down – "
Victoire stopped short when she turned around and came face to face with Peeves, the Hogwarts poltergeist.
"Oooh, ickle firsties!" he squealed excitedly. "Are the ickle firsties lost?"
"We're not lost, we were just trying to find someone," Victoire replied, trying to push past him. Unfortunately, he was taking up the entire doorway.
"Who was you trying to find?" Peeves asked curiously.
"Nobody special," Victoire said, still trying to get around him.
"Well you has found me!" Peeves exclaimed in excitement. "Now we can play!"
"No thank you, we don't want to play," Victoire told him. "If you wouldn't mind just moving aside, then we can be on our – "
"Ickle firsties stay and play!" Peeves exclaimed, slamming the door shut behind him.
Victoire stepped back nervously while Kara and Brianna stayed behind her.
"Ickle firsties come and play. Ickle firsties here today. You can either play with me, or very sorry you will be!" Peeves sang at them.
"I'm very sorry, but we really can't play today, we have a ton of homework to do and if we don't get started we'll never finish," Victoire insisted.
"Vic, maybe we should just – " Kara began to whisper from behind. Unfortunately, it was too late. Victoire's words had angered the poltergeist.
"Ickle firsties, you'll be sorry!" he cried, lifting up a desk and throwing it through the window.
"Oh no!" Victoire exclaimed, running over to the window and peering through the shattered glass. The desk had fallen right in the middle of the transfiguration courtyard. It didn't seem to have landed on anybody, but it did seem to have crushed a bench. "Peeves, what have you done?" she cried.
"Not me," Peeves cried gleefully. "All you."
He opened the door again and gleefully sailed down the hallway, bouncing along as he went, singing his little song.
"We've got to get out of here," Brianna said, realizing the situation they were in.
They spun around to find Mrs. Norris sitting in the doorway.
"Oh no, we're too late," Kara said, terrified.
"What have we here?" a wheezing old voice asked. Mr. Filch hobbled into view, the last few strands of his long gray hair left hanging down around his face. "Thrown a desk out a window, have you? That'll be detention for the lot of you."
"It wasn't us!" Brianna insisted. "It was Peeves!"
"Peeves was it?" Mr. Filch said suspiciously. "Well then tell me girl, where is Peeves now?"
"Well, he left, Sir," Brianna replied.
"Without me seeing 'im?" Filch asked. "I think not. You lot are coming with me to see your Head of House."
Reluctantly, the girls traipsed after Mr. Filch, following him down to Professor Longbottom's office.
"Professor," Filch said, knocking on the door. "I have found the little miscreants who threw the desk from the seventh-floor window."
"Professor Longbottom, I swear, it wasn't us, it was Peeves," Victoire insisted, hoping that if Filch wouldn't listen then at least maybe Professor Longbottom would believe them.
"Is this true?" the Professor asked, looking at Filch for confirmation.
"I know of no such thing," Filch said. "I was there almost right after it happened, and there was no Peeves to be seen."
"He left as soon as he'd done it!" Victoire cried. "He wanted us to get in trouble. He did it on purpose!"
"Lies!" Filch hissed. "You first years are always causing trouble."
"Thank you, Mr. Filch," Professor Longbottom said. "I can take it from here."
With a smile and something nasty whispered under his breath, Filch turned and left, probably off to find more students to get in trouble instead of doing his job and actually cleaning the castle.
"Why don't you three sit down?" Professor Longbottom suggested.
The girls obediently took their seats and waited for their Professor to say something.
"A desk was thrown out of a seventh-floor window," he finally said. "And the three of you were found in the room where it was thrown only moments after it happened. Have I said anything wrong yet?"
"No," Victoire admitted.
"You see how this looks, don't you?" Professor Longbottom asked. "Now personally, I don't see why a trio of first year girls would want to throw a desk out a window, but – "
"That's just it, we didn't!" Kara exclaimed.
Professor Longbottom held up a hand. "But the facts remain the same and all the evidence points to you. I'm afraid you're going to have to be held responsible, unless you can prove for a fact that it was Peeves who threw the desk."
The girls looked back and forth amongst each other. Of course Peeves had thrown the table, but how could they prove it? It's not like poltergeists left fingerprints, and Victoire was pretty sure she'd touched the table before Peeves had entered the room.
"Well then I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you girls detention tonight," their Professor said. "You'll be cleaning up the mess you've made in the transfiguration courtyard, supervised by Mr. Filch."
"Oh no, not Filch!" Kara exclaimed.
"You will report to him in the courtyard at 7PM," he informed them.
"But it's a Friday night," Brianna complained.
"And the perfect weather for picking up splinters," Professor Longbottom countered.
"Alright," the girls agreed reluctantly. There was nothing else to do. They would have to serve the detention, unless they could somehow prove they were innocent.
"Oh, Professor Longbottom?" Kara asked as they were about to leave his office. "What's the password to Gryffindor Tower? We seem to be under-informed about the password-changing schedule."
"It's billywig," their Head of House told them.
"Thanks," Kara returned with a smile.
They returned to the common room about ten minutes later and started working on their Defence assignments. They had to get a move on it, because they were going to lose an entire night's work serving their detentions.
"So I heard you threw a desk out of a seventh-story window," Teddy said, sitting down with them at the table they had nabbed at the back of the room.
"We didn't, Filch just thought we did," Victoire informed him.
"And why might Filch think something like that?" Teddy asked.
"Well, he might have found us in the room it was thrown from minutes after it happened," Victoire confessed.
"And what, pray tell, were you doing there?" Teddy wondered.
"Well we went in there looking for someone who knew the new password," Victoire explained. "And then Peeves showed up and did it and he framed us for it."
"Oh Peeves," Teddy smiled. "The Hogwarts student's favorite excuse."
"It's not an excuse, he really did throw the desk," Victoire insisted.
"Mmhmm," Teddy hummed, nodding his head.
"So I heard you girls threw a desk out a window," Billy Carmichael said sitting down with them all, a huge grin on his face.
"Oh no, actually, it turns out it was actually Peeves," Teddy said, turning to face his friend.
"Oh, of course. It was Peeves!" Billy cried. Their tones of voices were clear in showing that they didn't believe a word Victoire was saying.
"It was, it really was!" Victoire insisted. "I can't prove it, but it's true!"
"What will your mother say?" Billy cried jokingly.
Victoire froze and grew extremely pale. What would her mother say when she heard about this? She wasn't going to be happy, that was for sure. She might send a howler though. If she sent a howler, Victoire thought she might just die.
"Relax, I'm just joking," Billy said.
"But you're right," Victoire said. "Professor Longbottom has probably already owled my parents. He's a friend of the family, so he wouldn't waste a second. Ohhh, maman is going to be so upset with me."
"Hey, don't worry about it," Teddy reassured her. "Everyone gets in trouble sometimes. I'm sure your mother got up to her fair share of mischief back at Beauxbatons. And what about your uncles? From the stories I've heard, Uncle George used to get in trouble on a weekly basis, and Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron were always doing things they weren't supposed to."
"Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron were saving the world," Victoire countered. "And maman doesn't like Uncle George all that much."
"Well then I guess you'll just have to tell her the wonderful cover story you used on us," Teddy said with a smirk.
"It was not a cover story," Victoire cried, shoving Teddy's shoulder so that he almost fell off his chair. "Peeves really did do it! Why would we throw a desk out a window?"
"I don't know," Teddy said. "For a laugh?"
"Well I'm not laughing," Victoire frowned.
"Oh, we've got to get going," Kara said, noting the time. It was ten to eight and they were a long way from the transfiguration courtyard.
Victoire checked the time and hurriedly began packing her things, throwing them into her bag haphazardly.
"Have fun in your first detention!" Teddy called out after them as they hurried off, not wanting to get in any more trouble for being late.
Mr. Filch was extremely pleased to see them when they arrived for their detention. There was a large cart next to the wreckage clearly designated for the debris to be thrown into and three rakes for raking up the smaller pieces that would be harder to pick up individually.
"Now remember, no magic," Mr. Filch instructed, setting up a folding chair on the grass a few feet away and settling down in it to watch.
The girls grumbled when they saw how big of a mess there really was to clean up. It was so unfair. They hadn't even done it, and they were stuck cleaning it up. And it would take like, five seconds to clean this up with magic.
"Where do we even start?" Brianna wondered.
"I guess we should start by moving the bigger pieces," Victoire decided. "We'll probably need all three of us to lift the really big ones."
Rolling up their sleeves, the girls got to work. About two hours later, they were sweaty and exhausted and raking up the last of the splinters.
"Alright girls, good job," Professor Longbottom said, emerging from inside his office. He waved his wand and the last of the splinters sailed into a nearby garbage can. "That's enough, you've served your detention for tonight, you can go back to your common room."
"But they've only been here two hours," Filch complained. "Should've they be made to do more cleaning?"
"I think two hours is plenty long enough for a few first years," Professor Longbottom declared. "Go on now," he added to the girls, who eagerly grabbed their things and hurried away before Filch could convince their Head of House to make them stay any longer.
"Where have you all been?" Caitlin asked when they returned to their dorm.
"Yeah, and why do you stink?" Raina asked, plugging her nose.
"We had detention," Brianna explained. "Undeserved detention, but detention all the same."
"I bet you did deserve it," Raina shot back at them.
"Hey, you know what – "
"Bri, just let it go," Kara said, shaking her head. "I'm too exhausted to argue tonight."
"I just want to shower," Victoire groaned, realizing that she did in fact smell so bad that she hadn't noticed the smell of Raina's fertilizer yet.
"Me too," Brianna agreed.
"Well whatever you did, I hope you learned your lesson!" Caitlin yelled after them as the three of them trooped into the bathroom to clean themselves up.
"I really hate our roommates," Brianna muttered once the door swung shut behind them.
VvVvVvVvVvV
"To be fair, I think our roommates also hate us," Victoire pointed out.
The next morning started out fine. It was a Saturday, so Victoire got to sleep in a bit. When she awoke, Raina and Caitlin had already left, which meant that she didn't have to tiptoe around them or anything as she got dressed and ready for the day.
When they were all ready, Victoire, Kara, and Brianna headed down to the Great Hall for lunch (they had missed breakfast) and were happily eating when an owl flew into the Hall and landed right in front of Victoire.
"Oh no!" Victoire said, seeing what was attached to the owl's leg. "Oh no!"
"You've got to open it," Kara said. "You know it'll be worse if you don't."
Victoire knew her friend was right, so she reluctantly reached forward, untied the letter from the owl's leg and waited until it had flown away before carefully breaking the seal and unfolding the letter. Immediately, her mother's voice began to scream in French.
"Victoire Delacour-Weasley, je ne sais pas quoi dire. Comment est-ce-que vous pourriez faire quelque-chose comme cela? Je suis furieuse. Un bureau jeté à travers une fenêtre! Mon dieu, c'est fou! Qu'est-ce que vous avez pensez? Avez-vous pensez que ce serait drole? Ce n'est pas drole, ma fille, pas drole du tout! J'avais pensez que vous était plus intelligent que ça. Évidemment ce n'est pas le cas. Je suis très déçu ma fille, très déçu."
There was utter silence in the Hall for a moment, and then slowly conversation started up again.
"Well at least nobody understood it," Kara said optimistically.
"Maybe not, but I think they got the gist of it," Victoire sighed. "The tone of voice was pretty clear. Who cares what it said?"
"What did it say anyway?" Brianna wondered.
Victoire shot her a look.
"Sorry, I was just curious. I don't speak French, you know," she said.
"Basically that she's disappointed and thought I was better than this," Victoire sighed.
"I'm sure she'll understand when you explain it to her," Kara said soothingly.
"Right, because that's gone s well the past few times we've tried," Victoire muttered. "Why bother? She'll believe what she wants to believe."
As Victoire moodily stabbed her fork through some potatoes, two more owls swooped down, landing in front of Kara and Brianna.
"Oh no," Kara groaned, taking her letter and holding it in front of her like it was going to explode – which unlike Victoire's letter, it wouldn't.
"It's not like it's a Howler," Victoire muttered jealously. "Just go ahead and read it."
By then, Brianna had already read hers and was ripping it up, throwing the bits into her goblet of pumpkin juice. While Kara read her letter, Victoire turned to Brianna with questioning eyes.
"It was from my dad," Brianna said. "No big deal. It's what I figured he would say."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Victoire offered, sensing that Brianna's mood had drastically changed in a matter of seconds.
"Not really," Brianna muttered. "So Kara, what's the damage?"
"Let's see… shocked to discover that you were so immature… thought we raised you better than this… grounded the minute I get home for Christmas break," Kara read. "Well, I'm doomed."
"You're not doomed," Victoire assured her. "By the time Christmas break comes around, they'll have forgotten all about this. You'll be fine. You won't be seeing them for like, a month."
"Yeah, you're right," Kara agreed. "This will all blow over by then I'm sure."
"Exactly," Victoire said. "I mean, look around, everyone here has already forgotten about it and it only happened yesterday."
Kara glanced around the room and her eyes fell on Caitlin and Raina who were having lunch at the other end of the table. Victoire followed her line of sight just as Caitlin caught their eye and started whispering to Raina.
"Well, almost everyone," Victoire corrected herself.
"Let's change the subject," Brianna suggested. "Have either of you read this month's Teen Witch article about magical hair straightening techniques?"
Later that night, after Kara and Brianna had gone up to bed, Victoire stayed down in the common room to compose a letter to her sister. It had been a while, and she had promised after all.
Dominique,
I'm sorry I let it go this long without writing you. I know I promised once a week at least, but it's a lot more difficult to keep to that kind of schedule when the Professors are piling on the homework day in and day out. I'll have to talk to Teddy about seeing if he can convince his grandmother to give us less homework on the weekends – I think he's having dinner with her in her quarters tomorrow night.
I'm sure you've heard by now what's happened from maman or papa. Let me just start by saying it was not me. Why would I throw a desk out a window? What could I possibly have to gain from something like that? Anyway, I don't know if you remember hearing stories about Peeves, the Hogwarts poltergeist? Uncle George has loads of stories, so if you don't remember, you should ask him about them the next time you see him. But back to my point – it was all his fault. He was mad we didn't have time to play with him, so he threw the desk and framed us for it. I can't believe the staff fell for it, I mean, from what I've heard he pulls stuff like this all the time. Even Teddy didn't believe me when I told him the truth.
Nothing much else is going on here. Raina still smells and Caitlin still has a bad attitude. Thank Merlin Kara and Brianna are in the dorm with me. If I'd been stuck alone with those two I don't know what I would have done. I think it's official now that they hate us. It's going to be a fun seven years with them.
Victoire