Author's Note: This little fic (it'll probably only be two or three chapters long) was inspired by a recent experience at the high school I attend here on exchange in Finland. I happen to be grouchy today, so it started writing itself to cheer me up. It's already taken on a life of its own – far different from what I had intended. We'll see where things end up.
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me. Not one little drop.
Fred Weasley glared at the group of giggling second-years sitting in the corner of the Common Room. How could Ginny actually be friends with those people? They were so annoying, so immature, so... young!
He was actually rather surprised at his annoyance – four months ago, he would have been aiding them in their childish endeavors. The story was different now though – he had exams to study for... OWLs, no less, and even a Weasley twin is not completely without ambitions. So if those kids would just... just...
"Shut it!!!" Fred bellowed. The occupants of the Gryffindor Common Room looked up in surprise. They'd never seen a Weasley boy (with the exception of Percy) so focused on his work. Fred glared at them all, and went back to studying for his Ancient Runes exam.
Someone sat down next to him at the table. Being in a fairly bad temper, he ignored whoever it was, and continued reading. Eventually, though, the sense that he was being stared at intensely was too much for him to handle, and he wheeled around in irritation.
"Easy, Fred-o." It was George. With a stupid, dopey grin on his face. Fred had never wanted to maul him as much as he did at the current moment. He'd come awfully close before, especially when his brother – his own flesh and blood! – had nearly gotten them caught by Filch when he dropped the flask of marbled eel spores that they'd been nicking from Snape's office. Close. But not this close.
"George... now is not the – "
"Merlin, Fred! Can't you see what this work is doing to you?" George ripped Fred's book out of his hands and dragged him up the stairs to their dorm. "You're acting like Percy," he said, as he shut the door behind them.
"I beg your pardon?" Fred huffed, indignant.
"Case closed."
"Fine! Alright! I concede! So this work has got me bogged down! What do you expect me to do about it? Mum'll kill me if I don't pass Runes AND Herbology in addition to everything else, and we all know how I fare with those two subjects..."
"What you need," George looked at Fred with a glint in his eye that Fred was only too familiar with. "...is a diversion." Identical grins spread slowly onto the faces of two of the most feared inhabitants of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Oliver! Hey! Over here!" Oliver Wood hoped beyond hope that there was another Oliver in the vicinity who might be the target of the Weasley twins. Please please please please please...
"Oy! Wood!"
Damn.
"Yes?" He turned slowly, gripping his wand in his pocket, always at the ready to avoid the boys' latest trick. Fred and George approached him, hands outstretched and open.
"You can take your hand off your wand, you know. We come in peace." Fred winked.
"And bearing goodies!" George pulled a box of sweets out of his pocket.
"Er, I'll pass..."
"Right-o. Come with us, pal, we've got a job for you." Fred slung his arm around Oliver's shoulders, and steered him away from the Great Hall, and into a small, empty classroom. "Make yourself comfortable."
"Make this quick, you two. I've got some studying to get finished." George's friendly grin turned to a look of horror, and Fred feigned a swoon.
"It's got him too," he whispered. His brother, fanning him with one hand, gripped Oliver's shoulder with the other.
"Snap out of it, Wood. All of these books aren't doing anyone any good. Look around you – have you noticed the atmosphere around here lately?" Oliver thought about that. He had to admit that the students seemed much more worried about exams this year than ever before. He wasn't sure why – usually people spent exam days relaxing in the sunshine and tossing their last-minute cramming to the wind. This year, however, half of the student body had chairs staked out in the library, and Oliver had seen more than one student above the fifth year shrink away from the light as they emerged from the depths of it. He sighed. He could go for a break, that's for sure. Couldn't hurt to hear what the two of them had to say.
"Alright. You've got my attention."
"Excellent..."
Ron eyed the small group of students sitting close together near the fire in the Common Room warily. His brothers seemed to have gathered a little following in the past two days, and it worried him.
"What do you think they're up to?" he asked, for the fourteenth time.
"Oh for heaven's sake, Ron! Why don't you just go ask them?" Hermione slammed down her Arithmancy book and glared at him.
"I'm not going to do that!"
"And why not?"
"Well... because! I don't need a reason!" He sputtered, turning red in the face.
"Truthfully Ron, it would save the rest of us a lot of grief. You've been lurking around them non-stop for the past few days..." Harry apologetically informed his friend.
"I'm not lurking!"
Harry glanced at Hermione and shrugged. She rolled her eyes and snatched her book back up. Ron slumped in his chair, glaring darkly at his brothers, and muttering colorful words under his breath.
"...What was that?" Hermione asked, arching an eyebrow at him from behind her book.
"NOTHING!" He snapped, and started doodling two identical stick figures being hanged on Harry's old Potion's essay.
"Is everything ready?" George whispered, tiptoeing past a girl fast asleep on her Transfiguration book. Fred nodded silenty, and the two of them ascended the stairs to their dormitory. "You did talk to Dumbledore, didn't you?"
"Of course I did! You think this would work without his cooperation?"
"Good. I knew my faith in you was not misplaced." George winked, and got into bed. "Tomorrow we reap the fruits of our labor." He pulled his curtains closed, and lay back with a contented sigh.
