Chapter two: Double the trouble
"Watch out!"
The cry was loud and shrill, and it scared Giles out of his wits. He'd been out walking in the corridors – having left Willow in madam Pomfrey's excellent care – looking at the quite vivid paintings on the walls, and was therefore unprepared for any sudden sound or other impression. He stumbled backwards, tripping over something on the ground, only to fall over and hit his head on the hard, cold floor. He groaned from the hurt, eyes closed shut, and rolled over on his back.
"Goodness, he looks dead."
"He can't be dead, he just moved. Hey, are you awake?"
Giles felt someone tugging at his collar. He opened one eye slowly, trying to focus on the blurry image that his ocular nerves were feeding him. It was vaguely red. Red and freckly.
"It's alive! It's alive!"
"'Course it is… I mean, he is. No one could die from tripping over a cat, right?"
"Right. Right."
"Umm, hello? Mister? We're sorry, we really are. We thought you were someone else."
Giles sat up as fast as he could, opening his other eye in the process. He was now beginning to get a correct more view of things. The two blurry shapes that he had seen took form of two young men, tall and skinny, with red hair and school robes on. He could tell from the badges on their clothes that they were from Gryffindor house.
"I'm… I'm Rupert Giles, I'm here with…"
"Yeah, we know that now. Sorry again for the inconvenience. We just though, you know, that you were a new professor of some sort," one of the boys said. Giles couldn't tell them apart, it was impossible; they were identical twins.
"You though I was a professor, and… you wanted to scare me to death?" Giles asked, confused.
"Yeah. No, not scare you to death… rather make a good first impression."
"Or a bad one, it depends on how you look at things."
Giles shook his head a couple of times, just to clear his head. "Who are you?"
They looked at him disrespectfully. "What? You've never heard of us?"
"Well, I am new around here."
"The teachers should have warned you anyway," one of the twins said, grinning.
"I concur," retorted Giles dryly.
"We're the Weasley twins. I'm Fred, and he's George." The twin who had spoke last pointed at his brother. "You can call him Georgie."
"Oh, shut up, Fred."
"Okay, now that we've got that part straight," said Giles sternly, "can you tell me what it was that I tripped over?"
The twins grinned simultaneously. Then, they uttered a word that Giles couldn't really hear, waving the sticks that all of the people at Hogwarts referred to as 'wands', and a monster appeared in front of them. Giles couldn't tell what was the beginning and what was the end of the creature; it was coloured ginger, and had claws. He couldn't help but think that an experiment at the school must've gone horribly wrong, and that the beast they'd created had been somehow unleashed.
"This is Crookshanks," Fred said. "We borrowed him from Hermione earlier."
"Or stole, whichever you prefer," George filled in.
"Yeah, we didn't actually tell her she was lending it to us."
"She might've said no."
"Probably would've."
"Yeah, so, anyway, we wanted to see if we could make him run out of the shadows in the exact right moment, so you'd trip over him."
The pair looked pleased. Giles stared at them.
"Well, congratulations. You succeeded. Now I think I'll tell professor McGonagall about what you've been up to, boys."
Shockingly enough, this didn't exactly strike terror in the twins. They just laughed maniacally, and started walking off, away from Giles. "You do that, old geezer. I doubt that she'll be very surprised."
"She deals with us every day, you know."
"Yeah, it's not like this is our worst – best – stunt ever."
"No. Hey, remember the time when…"
Their voices disappeared with them, as they advanced through the corridor. Giles found it hard to stand up – he felt like his back had been thoroughly mangled.
"Now which floor was that madam Pomfrey on," he muttered to himself, as he heaved himself up the best he could, using the only parts of his body that weren't in excruciating pain: his arms.