Chapter Five The Careful Art of Paper Aeroplanes

It was well after midnight. No one was supposed to be in the halls of Hogwarts. Well, no students. Snape, Filch, Mrs. Norris, and the like prowled around to ensure no students violated their curfew. Well, the Weasley twins-famous among students and infamous among staff for their pranks-were not exactly the type to pay close attention to things like "rules" and "curfew" so they were carefully sneaking back to the Gryffindor common room, a Slytherin toilet seat in hand.

"Um~ excuse me, but aren't you two supposed to be, like, asleep?" The twins froze when they saw Rinoa-Professor Heartilly to them.

"Uhhhh . . . Professor."

"We have a good excuse." The said putting on their most innocent faces.

"Riiiigggghhht." She smirked, gesturing towards the toilet seat.

"Uh-" They hid it behind their backs, a little late and put on goofy grins.

"The Weasley twins innocent? Yeah, right. I wasn't born *yesterday* boys." She frowned.

"Aw, come on Prof, didn't you pull a few pranks in your day?" George asked, Fred nodded.

"Well . . . once me, Sirius, James and Selphie got drunk and trashed the Slytherin bathroom . . . but this is completely different!" She placed her hands on her hips indignantly. "OKAY, so no it isn't! But tell me . . . did you rig it so when they open the door the fireworks and stink pellets would go off?" She started to chuckle.

Fred and George looked at each other and grinned.

Just then, however, Snape stormed around the corner, black cloak billowing out and looking as menacing and glowering as he always did. The twins gulped, Professor Snape was definitely the teacher to avoid. "The Weasley twins." He sneered, obviously happy he had someone to give detention to and yell at.

"Uh . . .Severus." Rinoa waved.

He cursed under his breath, and felt his eyebrow twitching, there was something inherently discomforting about Rinoa and the Weasley twins in the same school.

"Well, Rinoa." He said dryly, "Students are not to be out of their house common rooms after hours-"

"Uh, they were serving detention with me, actually. So, uh, I take all responsibility." Rinoa said absently, waving her hand in the air as though to signal Snape to leave. This made him quite infuriated (more so).

"And WHAT is the meaning of that?" He demanded, pointing at the dislodged toilet seat.

The twins glanced at each other. "School project." They said in unison.

"Oh really?" Snape sneered, "And I suppose it was for your class, Professor Heartilly?"

"Uh, yeah," Rinoa said, "Defence Against . . . uh, haunted bathrooms. It got a bit messy. I'd stay away from the Slytherin bathrooms for a while if I were you, Severus."

Professor Snape looked angry, more than angry, he looked ready to kill angry, he was about to say something more, when Professor McGonagall appeared. "You two, go back to your common room. NOW." She said without even looking at Fred and George.

"Minerva these students were out-"

"Severus, you are wanted in the Headmaster's office right now." McGonagall said sharply, it must have been serious, the look on her face told them as much. Severus glared at her, and then followed, forgetting about the twins.

Fred and George grinned and gave each other a high five.

*

Rinoa walked back to her room, still grinning and shaking her head. Well, boys would be boys.

She opened her old chest and rummaged around, finally yanking out a very thick old, bound book. She fell back on the floor and opened it. It was the yearbook from her last year at Hogwarts. Inside was a large full page print of a huge group of students all smiling and waving at the camera. There was she, arm looped in Squall's, elbowing him in the ribs to get him to smile! On her other side was Sirius, grinning like mad, and James and Lily hand in hand smiling and waving. Selphie and Irvine stood beside Lily and James, their arms wrapped around each other, Selphie wearing Irvine's trademark cowboy hat. Peter Pettigrew was there too, although he was pretty much in the background of the picture, and since he had been so short, he was mostly hidden. Finally her eyes fell upon the other two in the image, Remus Lupin and Quistis Trepe, standing a bit apart, with shy smiles, their eyes shyly flashing between each other and the camera. Rinoa smiled at first, then her smile faded, and she frowned at the image, shutting the book and dumping it back in the chest.

It was strangely painful to look at the old image. Lily and James were both dead, Peter was dead as well and Sirius . . . Sirius had killed him, she bit her lip, she had NEVER believed that, but he was locked away in Azkaban where they didn't even allow visitors and had probably gone mad because of the dementors. Remus had all but vanished off the face of the earth, they only got an owl from him at Christmas and no one knew where he was the rest of the time. And Quistis . . . Quistis had-for reasons none of them could fathom-had gone and married that bastard Malfoy.

*

"Okay class!" Rinoa called, as the second years filed in, "Because I lost my lesson plan . . ." She looked around the desk again as though hoping it had reappeared. ". . . Peeves." She muttered under her breath. "Anyway, because I lost my lesson plan today will be dedicated to the ancient-and-long-practiced-muggle-originating-and-still-practiced-today- careful-art of . . . paper aeroplanes."

The class looked confused, except for Hermione who frowned. Clearly making paper aeroplanes was not her ideal lesson. Oh well.

"You . . . um take a piece of scroll and tear it off, here fold like this and this . . ." She showed them by making a very sloppy paper airplane. It didn't look very convincing.

Luckily, Fred and George were walking by the classroom. "Hey you guys, are you supposed to be somewhere?" Rinoa called.

"Nah. We got a spare." Fred shrugged.

"Excellent! Can you help me with a lesson?" She asked.

"Uh, gee Professor Heartilly we'd love to since you helped us out last night but, like we don't know-"

"I'm teaching them how to make paper aeroplanes."

"OH, that we can do!" The twins smiled mischievously and entered the classroom.

"Thought you might." She smirked.

Ten minutes later all of the students had made a small paper aeroplane. "These are excellent to throw around and bug muggle teachers, but we have a special spell to make them EXTRA useful." George said and Fred nodded furiously.

"We've wanted to try this out on Snape for the LONGEST time." Fred added, winking. "So you guys will have to for us, you have him next, right?"

The students nodded, "HEY!" Rinoa said, stamping her foot, "If you're gonna use them for stuff like that at least have the sense not to discuss it in front of me! I am a teacher too, you know!"

"Aw, but you're not like the other teachers, you're cool, Prof." George said enthusiastically.

"Well okay then." She grinned, "But I'm still not gonna listen to this." She turned around and put her hands over her ears in a very funny way.

"Okay, here's the spell." George said seriously to the class. "You tap the plane twice with your wand and say, 'Ab absurdum!'" He demonstrated, instantly his paper airplane quivered and floated in the air on its own. "Now, when you send it off it will also play loud music and let off a trail of fireworks, best of all it will dissolve instantly when it hits the target so there's no evidence!"

"Yeah!" Said Fred, "So go and try 'em out."

"Alright!" Ron said happily to Harry and Hermione, "Wait until Snape gets a load full of these! That'll teach him to be such a jerk!"

Hermione snorted and tossed her hair back a little. "Ugh. Honestly. Paper aeroplanes? What sort of Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson is this! It's more like-a-a-farce then a class!"

"Hey! It's legit!" Ron argued, "It's defence against SNAPE!" He laughed out loud and Harry had to chuckle a bit as well.

"Come on; lighten up a bit, Hermione." Harry advised, "Snape, McGonagall and all the other teachers give us tons of work and hard tests and stuff as it is, it's nice to have ONE fun class."

At that minute one of the enchanted aeroplanes zoomed into the back of Ron's head, he yelped and jumped up, the Slytherins cackled. "Malfoy that jerk!" Ron cursed.

"Just ignore him!" Hermione begged.

"Not a chance!" Ron said, picking up his airplane and sending it straight at Malfoy's head. Malfoy, ducked and the plane hit Goyle, making a loud explosion of sparkly dust.

"Now, now, Weasley." Draco said dryly, "Even being wretchedly poor is no excuse for that aim."

Ron went bright red, it wasn't the first time Malfoy had insulted his family, which was very large and very poor, "You son of-"

"CHILDREN!" Rinoa said, interrupting Ron, quite intentionally. "Calm down! There's no reason to get worked up! Besides, class is over."

"She didn't hear what Malfoy said," Harry told Ron as they gathered up their books and scrolls.

"You should tell her." Hermione said.

"Yeah, run to a teacher that's your answer for EVERYTHING, Hermione." Ron said, rolling his eyes, but they could tell he was still upset over what Malfoy had said.

"Okay, okay, now you two better not start fighting!" Harry groaned, "Come on, we have Potions next."

*

Professor Snape was having a very bad day. Last night, Dumbledore had explicitly told him to go easier on the students, evidently the Headmaster believed giving the second year students work for fourth year students and tripling the homework was somehow "wrong." He frowned as he went back over his lesson plan, he'd been forced to make it easier. Something he didn't like doing. Especially with Professor Heartilly teaching in the same building.

Well, his day was about to get a lot worse.

Suddenly a dozen different loud banging noises went off around his head; he looked up in time to see whizzing colours, sparks, fireworks exploding, loud blasts of music and streamers going off all around him followed by several deafening blasts as the projectiles burst into dust and smoke.

Hermione and Neville glanced terrified at Harry and Ron, the other Gryffindors had actually thrown their airplanes! Naturally the Slythrins hadn't, since Snape favoured them. Said teacher wasn't facing them but the students could tell he was angry. He was shaking and his hands were clenched into fists, he looked like he was about to explode. "Who . . . WHO did that?!" He bellowed, spinning around. "POTTER!!"

"I-It wasn't me." Harry said helplessly.

"Mr. Malfoy, it was Potter, wasn't it?" Snape sneered.

"Yes sir." Malfoy answered, shooting Harry a wicked grin as soon as the Professor wasn't looking. "And Ron and Hermione too."

"Of course." Professor Snape said slowly, glaring at them with absolute contempt.

"Sir, he's lying!" Hermione protested.

"That is QUITE enough out of you, Miss Granger! You shall ALL have detentions. And I do mean ALL, every single Gryffindor!"

The class let out cries of protest. "Furthermore there shall be fifty points off Gryffindor!"

"Fifty points?!" Harry and Ron exclaimed. "That's not fair!" Harry muttered to Ron.

The Slytherins chuckled; they were having a great time.