AN: Sorry this update took so long; serious writer's block!
Emma3mikan: Yes, I thought that without Ron and Harry's adventures taking up her time, she was way too far ahead to not skip forward.
Guest, MrsPotterDrEw, buriedromance, tbirdstar, anon1, Smithback: Thanks so much! I'm glad you're enjoying this!
RebeccaRoy: It was so hard to decide who would win! Glad it seemed fitting.
"Weasley's World of Wonders," Fred suggested.
"Weasley's Wizarding Wonderland?" George mused, tossing an every-flavour bean into his mouth then quickly grimacing.
Hermione bustled into the compartment and swished her wand to levitate the trunk upwards.
"Gosh," she breathed as she settled next to Lee, "I've missed being able to use magic for things like that! I'm so excited to be back."
Lee ruffled her hair, earning himself a swatted arm.
"Fred's Fabulous Funland," George continued. "George's Gregarious … er, what else starts with 'g'?"
Hermione glanced at Lee. "What are they on about now?"
"They want to start their own wizarding amusement park, like the one your parents took us to but, you know, with magic. It's a great idea, even if their names are rubbish. They've been on this track for, oh, about fifteen minutes already."
"Have they considered any names that don't involve their own?" Hermione wondered aloud, grinning.
"Nope. It's like we don't even exist. And you and I both know who'll be doing most of the planning," Lee grinned back. He offered the young witch a chocolate frog which she eagerly accepted.
"I suppose the wonder twins don't have our special sibling bond though, so maybe we should let them have this?" she suggested around a mouthful of chocolate.
"I actually think the 'Wonder Twins' has a nice ring to it," Lee joked. With a slight lurch, the train set out on its journey to Hogwarts.
It was shaping up to be a great year.
**JP**JP**JP**
"What are you doing there, Lee?" Fred asked curiously.
Lee was bent over a cauldron with a set of notes to the side, looking uncharacteristically studious. Fred was suddenly struck with worry that adopting Hermione as a little sister might have had some terrible, unintended side-effects. The two had been as thick as thieves on the train ride, not to mention having written twice as often over the summer as Fred and George, since they had sent joint letters (or so Lee claimed; Fred thought this was ridiculous; George thought it was a stupid argument).
"Revenge," the boy responded distractedly. "Hand me the Valerian root?"
"What sort of revenge?" Fred asked, relieved it wasn't something horrible, like homework.
"This is Hermione's first day taking advanced classes. I figure some of the new third years won't appreciate that, and while I do strongly believe that Hermione can handle herself, I believe it is my solemn duty as her favorite big brother to have her back."
"She does have more moral scruples than we do," Fred agreed.
"That didn't answer the question-" George groused.
"Of what sort of revenge this is," Fred finished.
"You know our experimental Pooting Powder?" Lee added the last bit of Dragon Dung with a flourish.
"Do I ever!" Fred laughed.
"I don't know if Charlie will ever eat anything we give him ever again," George reminisced.
"And his face! Running after us while farting non-stop," Fred's face was the picture of bliss as he too sunk into the fond memories.
"Exactly!" Lee enthused. "I've improved it. Well, by improved it, I mean extended the life-time of it."
"By?" George asked, leaning over the potion intently.
"By about a week!" Lee crowed.
He held his hands up for both twins to high-five.
"Wicked," they breathed in synchrony.
** JP ** JP ** JP **
"What do you mean you handled it?" Lee whined.
"I told them 'I was one of the oldest in my year anyways, so it makes sense I moved up,'" Hermione shrugged.
"Now don't you get sassy with us, young lady!" Fred admonished in a fair imitation of his mother.
"I really wasn't being sassy! You're being sassy!" she exclaimed.
"But we had this great revenge planned," Lee continued to whine.
"Shouldn't you be happy that I can handle myself?" Hermione huffed, putting her hands on her hips and striking a bit of a dramatic pose.
"In the most boring way possible! It's like you've forgotten all our lessons from last year. Our plan involved an improved Pooting Powder…"
"So I would have had to deal with a horrible stench all day from my classmates? No thanks!" Hermione wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Plus, having me on teachers' good sides always serves us well. How many near calls did I help out with last year?"
"She makes a fair point, Forge."
"That she does, Gred."
"Indeed she does," Lee pouted. "But the Pooting Powder is so funny! And I modified it so it lasts for an extra long time."
"Well, if you wanted to use it on a group I don't interact with, like, oh, say, second year Slytherins," Hermione had flopped into her favorite chair and already had a book out.
The three older boys ignored the gesture and sank into the adjoining chairs and started sketching out how to get the powder into the Slytherins' morning tea.
** JP ** JP ** JP **
Halloween was quickly approaching, and Fred, George, and Lee had realized with horror that they had neither accomplished any truly monumental pranks yet this year nor had they planned anything to celebrate their junior-est prankster.
"I imagine this is the feeling folks get when they realize an exam is coming up and they haven't studied," George moaned. "How could this have happened?"
"We went for small stuff-the pooting powder, the colored eye-lash charm, those laughing gas bubbles-"
"Those were really good. I think we should keep that on our list for the shop," Lee interrupted.
"Hermione has the list. Take it up with your sister," Fred griped as he dramatically slouched across the couch. "George is right though, we're terribly behind. We haven't had a single epic prank yet, despite all the new ideas from the Muggle world."
"I thought the pooting powder project really had potential. Snape made an antidote way too fast," Lee whined. His new version of the powder had only lasted 5 hours before the potions master had rescued his snakes. Fortunately, he had at least recruited the little Creevy kid to take photos of the frenzy that had occurred as the other students fled the smelly Slytherins. Hermione had made him three nice frames so he could hang the photos next to his bed.
"And, party for the junior prankster," Fred reminded them. "Anniversary of her adoption into our esteemed league of pranking."
"What if we combined them?" George nearly shouted, sitting up.
"I'm listening, brother-mine."
"Okay, so what if we give Hermione a pranking test-she loves tests-and those pranks somehow build into a larger mega-prank."
"I like where this is going!" Lee pulled out some parchment and a quill. "Three stages, like a sort of scavenger hunt?"
"Make it seven. She loves a challenge and we'll have her moping for days if it's too easy," Fred suggested. Lee nodded.
"Wait, are we pranking Hermione or she pranking everyone else? Or are we pranking everyone through Hermione?" George asked.
"It was your idea!"
"Which means my genius needs a few seconds to recharge! I thought you two could at least take a gem like this and run with it." He sniffed haughtily until Lee tackled him and all three boys fell to laughing uproariously. They were already back on track, they could feel it.
** JP ** JP ** JP **
"We didn't do it!"
Fred and George heard the voice of their youngest brother up ahead and wordlessly sprinted forward. They found Ron with Harry being berated by an enraged, crying Filch. Lee and Hermione were close behind and gasped when they took in the full scene-Mrs. Norris hanging stiff as a board from the wall underneath sloppy red letters that stated "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware!"
They had celebrated too soon on their glorious return to pranking supremacy, Fred reflected grimly as the crowd around them grew. Either something terrible had just happened or someone was upstaging their pranking in a big way. The latter seemed much more likely.
"Why would you terrible boys hurt poor Mrs. Norris? I bet you set them to do it!"
Fred was broken from his musings by the gnarled finger of Filch quivering inches from his face.
"Of course they didn't! Fred, George, and Lee would never hurt a cat!" Hermione cried passionately. The boys nodded vigorously, and Fred made a mental note to destroy all the parchments that detailed some of their more nefarious plans for Mrs. Norris before Hermione found them. As his eyes drifted back to her frozen form though, he had to admit, even they had never even considered killing the evil thing.
"Argus, what is going on here?" the headmaster soothed.
Soon, he had explained that Mrs. Norris was merely petrified and not dead, to which point Filch nearly fainted with relief, and the crowd began to disperse, still frantically whispering about who could have done this and wondering what the Chamber of Secrets was.
They really had been completely upstaged!
** JP ** JP ** JP **
"Why don't we figure out who they are? Know thine enemy," Hermione suggested.
They quartet had been buried in books and brainstorming for several hours after the event with Mrs. Norris. A quick skim of Hogwarts a History ("best pranking purchase we ever made," Fred assured Hermione) provided almost no information on the Chamber, although George swore he'd heard Bill tell him a scary story about it once.
"You're right. They have to be planning something else on top of this, otherwise they'd have picked something everyone already knew. This Chamber of Secrets is too obscure," Lee agreed.
"Or it hasn't been invented yet! What if this is some sort of marketing scheme for an amusement park? The Chamber of Secrets would be a wicked name for that sort of thing!" George looked positively panicked.
"That seems unlikely," Hermione mused. "But we should be really careful no one hears about our ideas and plans. I'll look up some spells for us to use when we talk about the park. And you already put jinxes on all the parchments, so they should be safe."
"So glad we adopted you a year ago," Lee chirped. "So pragmatic and talented!"
"We did have a whole event planned for you, but it all seems really lame and pointless in light of our new battle," Fred added, pouting.
"Oh! But we also have cake!" George scurried up to the dorm to grab the cake they had asked the house elves to make. When the small kitchen denizens had heard it was for their beloved pranksters and Missus Grangy, they had crafted a true work of art; the cake was shaped like Hogwarts with different types of cake scattered throughout so every bit was a surprise. It towered at nearly a meter high and only the cushioning charms the elves had added when they clucked in disapproval at the boys' plans for transporting it had ensured its survival thus far.
As the group tucked into the cake, laughing as they tried to find all of the flavors, Fred suddenly exclaimed, "Oy! The map! We can use the map to figure out who is doing this."
An uncharacteristic silence greeted him.
"How will we know what we're looking for though? It could be literally anyone and since we don't know what the next prank will be, we don't even know what to be looking out for." George's serious response was rendered less impressive by the streak of pink frosting that rimmed his lips.
"We know it'll be big," Fred argued. "So we need to be watching for someone or multiple someones doing really odd things. Going odd places. We can trade off using the map between all four of us to cover more time."
"What about the middle of the night?" Hermione asked skeptically as she carefully turned the cake to reach the turret with the lemon cake.
"Well, we might miss some things, but monitoring at night is easy because practically no one is out at night. Or we could bribe Peeves to help us-"
"Because that went so well last time?" Lee asked, affronted. He'd landed in detention for nearly three weeks after that fiasco.
"Or we could leave Peeves out of it," Fred quickly amended. "Anyways, I'm not saying it's the whole solution, but I think it's a critical component."
"Fine, but I'm not monitoring it during class," Hermione huffed.
"Never expected you to," Fred tried to ruffle her hair and was rewarded with a light stinging hex.
Hogwarts had been nearly half-demolished before the group wrapped up their discussion and Fred took the first watch with the map.
