Like the year before, FitzSkimmons tried to mind their own business as much as they could, which included avoiding Lockhart at all costs, as he seemed like trouble based on his unsolicited advice, and stories of him letting loose uncontrollable pixies in the DADA class FitzSkimmons had missed.

Harder to avoid, however, was Colin Creevey, who was stalking Fitz. Despite their multiple abrupt dismissals of him the night before, he was still trying to hang onto Harry Potter like one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Tower, saying to Fitz the half a dozen times a day he successfully managed to pass by him, "All right, Harry?"

After politely saying "Hi" the first couple times — Fitz knew the boy had told them his name when he'd first introduced himself, but Fitz pretended like he didn't remember it, Simmons thankfully didn't call him out on it, and Daisy pretended her plain fingernails were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world every time the boy approached — Fitz finally just started completely ignoring the kid and pretending he couldn't hear him, despite the fact the kid resolutely continued speaking at Fitz every time he very frequently saw Fitz, and was still carrying around his camera like he thought Fitz might eventually wear out and relent. The only good thing was that he was at least respectful enough not to try take any photos of Fitz without Fitz's permission (or noticeably at least, and FitzSkimmons were all highly experienced spies, trained to notice clandestine behavior).

But Creevey was not the only thing they couldn't completely ignore, as Mrs Weasley had decided to send Ronna a howler for not waiting at the train station for her and Mr Weasley to come back through when the barrier hadn't let them through on Sunday morning. While FitzSkimmons didn't really care if anyone knew they had missed the first day of school or not, it still wasn't pleasant to hear any deafening screeching, whether the screeching was at them or at anyone else in the near enough vicinity to risk rupturing their eardrums.

The three of them had already finished eating and were just waiting on the mail owls on the off chance someone had sent them a letter, when the Weasley's dust mop came splatting onto the table, a red envelope tied to its leg.

As soon as they saw it, they all three leapt up like there'd been a chemical spill in the lab, Daisy saying, "Welp, that's our cue to get the hell out of here."

The letter had already started smoking, so they knew they weren't going to be lucky like the previous year when the letter had never got close enough to Ronna to activate, but they still didn't want to be within it's dangerously high volume zone when the shrieking started — they valued their hearing too much.

As they rushed out of the Great Hall and across the Entrance Hall they heard it explode, shouting for everyone to hear, "RUNNING AWAY TO DIAGON ALLEY, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE FOUND OUT YOU WERE MISSING — VISIT FROM DUMBLEDORE YESTERDAY, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU, HARRY, AND HERMIONE COULD HAVE ALL DIED IF DUMBLEDORE HADN'T FOUND YOU — ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME —!"

"Such a pleasant woman," Fitz said sarcastically as they made it outside into the courtyard, and could no longer hear the din.

"Yeah, imagine having to actually live with her — if she was real, of course. Would be terrible," added Daisy. "No parents was bad, as I'm sure was a bad father and then no father, but I couldn't imagine having to live with that hag, either." Turning to Simmons, she said, "You know, you're really lucky to have two parents who were good, and still together and both alive at that."

"Yes, well, we'll just have to make sure when we finally have kids of our own, that they have parents like I had or even better," replied Simmons with a soft smile.

Family was always a difficult conversation with them, and while she didn't want to make light of what Fitz or Daisy had gone through growing up, she also didn't want them to dwell on it more than they had to, or begin to question whether the three of them would be good parents when the time came — because she already knew they would be, and hoped her spouses believed it as strongly as she did.

Thursday night, as FitzSkimmons walked across the Entrance Hall after supper, Oliver Wood came brushing up beside them, saying quietly as he passed, "Harry, we're having our first quidditch practice Saturday morning at sunrise."

Fitz froze, having completely forgotten that Harry was on the quidditch team. Simmons and Daisy both turned to look at him, to see what he was going to do.

Wood had already walked several feet away from them before Fitz managed to blurt out, "Wait!"

Wood stopped, and turned around and walked the few feet back to them.

"I, uh — I don't think I'm going to play quidditch this year," stuttered Fitz. As Wood stared at him in shock, he continued on more assuredly, "I want to concentrate on my studies, since I am here, at a school, to learn, and I'm afraid practices would take up too much of my time."

"But—But, you're the greatest seeker Gryffindor's had in years! Your father was a great seeker before you, it runs in your family! You have to play seeker, how can we win without you?!" exclaimed Wood.

"Sorry," shrugged Fitz. "But I'm not interested in playing quidditch this year. You'll have to find someone else to be your seeker."

And with that he turned and started walking up the Grand Staircase, leaving Wood standing there frozen in shock, and Simmons and Daisy hurrying after him.

However, if they thought that was going to be the end of it, they were unfortunately mistaken. The following morning at breakfast, soon after they had sat down and started eating, Wood walked over to them, pulling Professor McGonagall along with him.

"What is this I've heard about you not playing quidditch this year, Potter?" she asked sternly as soon as she got up to them.

"I feel like practice would take too much time away from homework and studying," answered Fitz, all three of them turning to look at their Head of House.

"But you're such a natural! And your grades were just fine last year," said McGonagall. "We need you to finally beat Slytherin. Thanks to you three we beat them in the House Cup last year, but we still don't have the Quidditch Cup. And Professor Snape will never let me hear the end of it if we lose again."

Simmons and Fitz looked at McGonagall strangely, finding it more than a bit disturbing that a professor would be sounding more invested in a sport than in their education, as Fitz had said he didn't want to play so he could study more. Daisy, on the other hand, who'd had a more normal high school experience before dropping out, was less surprised to find a teacher that cared more about their sport than about learning, though McGonagall admittedly hadn't exactly struck her as that kind of teacher the year before.

"It is just a game, you do realize that, right?" Simmons finally said.

When McGonagall didn't say anything for a second, Fitz said, "Look — I'm not playing. That's final. Now if you want a repeat of what happened Monday night after we assured that Malfoy won't ever bother us again this year, that's your choice, but I find it hard to believe that there's any school rules about quitting the quidditch team that could warrant taking points from us, or trying and failing to give us detention."

After that, McGonagall finally left them alone.

~FSK~

Saturday morning before the sun had even risen from its bed behind the mountains, as FitzSkimmons were still sound asleep, Colin Creevey was awoken by the sound of heavy footsteps descending the stone spiral staircase outside of the dorm room he slept in with the rest of the first years.

Cracking open the door, he saw red quidditch robes brush past, and immediately ran back across the room to grab his camera before hurrying after them. He knew Harry was the seeker on the team, youngest House player in a century, and he hoped to get some good action shots of him flying. He didn't know a thing about quidditch, being a muggleborn, but he hoped Harry would explain it all to him, being one of the greatest Hogwarts quidditch players to have ever lived and all.

When he finally caught up with the quidditch team just as they were walking through the great oak front doors, he noticed that Harry wasn't with them like he'd expected the Boy-Who-Lived to be. But he thought that maybe Harry was already down at the pitch starting his own practice even earlier, so he didn't say anything or ask any of them anything, and just followed along behind them. But as they disappeared into the Gryffindor changing room and he found a seat in the empty stands, he still didn't see Harry anywhere, and started to become slightly worried. Harry had seemed fine the seven times Creevey had run across him the day before, but maybe he had suddenly become ill or injured or something equally terrible.

Creevey had been sitting in the stands for almost two hours, and was seriously beginning to wonder what they were doing for so long in the changing room, when he finally spotted them walking out onto the pitch with their brooms in hand.

But there was still no Harry.

The players had barely been soaring through the air when the oldest-looking of the lot flew directly over to where Creevey was sitting in the stands, giving him the perfect opportunity to ask where Harry was. Because Wood had seen the first year sitting in the stands with a camera, and not liking it one bit, flew down to see what was really going on.

"Who are you?" he practically growled as he came to a halt in the air a few feet in front of the boy.

"Where's Harry?! He's your seeker!" exclaimed Creevey excitedly. "I was hoping to get some pictures of him flying! I'm Colin Creevey — I'm in Gryffindor, too!"

"How do I know you're not a Slytherin spy, trying to find out about our new training program?"

"Because the Slytherins don't need a spy, Oliver," came a voice from behind Wood as George flew down to their captain.

"What do you—?"

"They're here in person," cut off George, pointing down to the grass where seven boys were walking onto the pitch with broomsticks in hand.

An outraged Wood was soon in the Slytherin captain's face, bellowing loudly. As it turned out, in the dick move of the century, Snape had blatantly ignored Wood's booking of the pitch, with the pathetic excuse of Slytherin needing to train their new seeker, who happened to be none other than Draco Malfoy. But they all knew it was really because the Snake just wanted to interrupt Gryffindor's practice, as there were twenty-four more hours of daylight that weekend that Wood hadn't booked that he could have told Slytherin to practice during, but he hadn't because he was a cunt.

It also turned out that in order to appease his son's demands to be on the Slytherin team since Harry Potter had made the Gryffindor team the year before, senior Malfoy had bought the entire Slytherin team the brand new Nimbus 2001 brooms that had just been released to the general public a month before at the start of the professional quidditch seasons.

But the Slytherins hadn't been gloating about their new brooms for very long when Malfoy suddenly asked as he looked around, "Where is Potter? Where is your perfect little seeker?"

Gritting his teeth, Wood ground out, "He isn't playing this year."

News of that fact would get out soon enough when he had to host tryouts, so there was no point trying to hide it until it did.

Malfoy, and the rest of the Slytherin team, just stood there for several long seconds staring at him in shock, clearly not having expected who they all had to admit to themselves, even if they would never admit it out loud, was the best seeker playing at the moment and was probably going to be one of the best seekers Hogwarts had ever had, to not be playing quidditch that year. After all, quidditch was every single one of their lives, and it was incomprehensible and inconceivable to them that anyone would not play given the chance.

"He's what?" Captain Marcus Flint finally got out, confused beyond belief. There was no way Wood had just said what he thought he had said.

"He told me two nights ago that he wants to concentrate on his schooling, and that he's not playing. Even Professor McGonagall couldn't make him change his mind yesterday morning, and I haven't had a chance to set up tryouts."

It was the hardest thing Wood thought he had ever had to say, and it physically hurt him to say. Even more so when Malfoy burst out laughing.

"You're going to get absolutely swept off the pitch this year! We are going to absolutely annihilate you and claim our eighth straight Quidditch Cup, and reclaim the House Cup Dumbledore stole from us and gave to you because Harry and his little friends broke all the school rules, with how bad we demolish you!"

Wood and the rest of the Gryffindor team secretly had to agree — their chances really didn't look good.

~FSK~

Meanwhile, as the Slytherin quidditch team was rubbing it in the Gryffindor team's faces, FitzSkimmons were finally making it down to breakfast after sleeping in late and then enjoying each other once they had finally woken up.

They hadn't been eating long when they saw the Gryffindor team come stomping in, clearly unhappy about something. Waving the twins over, Daisy asked them what was wrong.

"Slytherin stole our practice time with the excuse of Snape saying they needed to train their new seeker, despite there being the entire rest of the weekend to train him," grumbled Fred. "And that seeker is Lucius Malfoy's son."

"Malfoy?!" exclaimed Fitz. "Bet he was proud of himself."

"Even more so since his father bought the entire team brand new Nimbus 2001's in order to buy his way onto the team," answered George. "We're going to get killed this year without you out there, Harry."

"Sorry, but it would just take too much time away from learning magic," replied Fitz, adding in his mind, 'And my wives.'

George just nodded despondently, knowing that Harry had no intentions of relenting, no matter what he tried saying to the younger boy.

Eventually FitzSkimmons finished eating and bid goodbye to the twins, before heading outside to spend the day out of doors. As they aimlessly crossed the grounds, they saw Professor Lockhart leaving Hagrid's hut, and after skirting around the edge of the Forbidden Forest to avoid meeting the mauve-robed professor, decided they might as well pop by and see the gamekeeper — after all, it was something their characters had done numerous times in the first book, and they were still trying to half-way pretend that they really were who everyone thought they were.

Knocking on the wooden door, it was opened by a grumpy Hagrid, but he quickly brightened up when he saw it was them.

"Bin wonderin' when you'd come ter see me — come in, come in — though' you mighta bin Professor Lockhart back again," he said as he let them in.

"What was Lockhart doing here?" asked Simmons as they all sat down at Hagrid's table.

"Givin' me advice on gettin' kelpies out of a well," growled Hagrid, replacing a half-plucked rooster with a teapot in the center of the table. "Like I don' know. An' bangin' on about some banshee he banished. If one word of it was true, I'll eat my kettle."

"So you don't believe his books either?" asked Simmons. "I did think they all seemed rather far-fetched."

"When did you have time to read all seven of his books or whatever it was?" asked Daisy in disbelief.

"Harry and I both read through them all in those couple of afternoons at The Burrow we read through all the books we bought at Flourish and Blotts," answered Simmons.

"Oh, yeah — forgot you were both speed-readers," groused Daisy.

"You barely made it through two or three books, didn't you?" sighed Fitz, rolling his eyes.

"Hey! — Reading's not my thing. And doesn't have to be for hacking or quaking," replied Daisy defensively. "Anyway, what do I need to read for, when I have you two to do it for me?"

"Okay, okay, enough you two," said Simmons, before turning back to Hagrid. "Why did Dumbledore hire him, though, if he hasn't done anything he says he has?"

"He was the on'y man for the job," answered Hagrid. "An' I mean the on'y one. Gettin' very difficult ter find anyone fer the Dark Arts job. People aren't too keen ter take it on, see. They're startin' ter think it's jinxed. No one's lasted long fer a while now."

"Interesting — any other positions at the school like that, or just that one?" asked Simmons, always keen to learn.

"Just tha' one, and been like tha' for decades," answered Hagrid. "Can' remember a professor ter last more 'an a year fer a long time."

"That does sound like a curse of some kind," replied Simmons. "Didn't know teaching positions could be cursed, though."

They settled into silence for a bit, before Hagrid said abruptly as though struck by a sudden thought, "Harry — gotta bone ter pick with yeh. I've heard you've bin givin' out signed photos. How come I haven't got one?"

Fitz looked up at him with a bored, 'oh great, what rumors are being spread about me now?' look. "Who's been spreading such lies — that first year kid who's still trying to take my picture, Malfoy, Lockhart, or Snape?"

"Snape? How would he—?" began Simmons in confusion.

"He seems to hear about everything negative about me," replied Fitz, cutting her off. "Heard it from Malfoy after we face planted him in the Shepherd's Pie, saw it from the head table, although now that I think about it I don't remember seeing him in there when it was going down. I don't know — I'm just sure he's heard about it somehow by now."

"Oh — okay, you're right," said Simmons.

Hagrid, meanwhile, after looking at the two of them in surprise at their personal conversation, answered, "It was Professor Lockhart. Told me just a few minutes ago when he was here that yeh had been givin' out signed photos. But I knew yeh hadn't really. I told Lockhart yeh didn' need teh. Yer more famous than him without tryin'."

"Unfortunately," mumbled Fitz under his breath, and Daisy reached under the table and squeezed his knee gently in consolation.

But Hagrid wasn't paying any attention, rambling on about how he'd told the flamboyant professor that he hadn't read any of his books, and that that's when Lockhart had finally decided to leave. When he finished, he invited them outside to look at his pumpkins he was growing for the Halloween feast, that were already the size of large boulders.

"You've been using an engorgement charm on them, haven't you?" smiled Simmons, walking over to the nearest pumpkin. "Looks good."

"That's what yer little sister said, Ronna," said Hagrid, looking over at where Daisy had followed Simmons over to the pumpkin. Then looking sideways at Fitz, he continued, "Met her jus' yesterday. Said she was jus' lookin' round the grounds, but I reckon she was hopin' she might run inter someone else at my house. If yeh ask me, she wouldn' say no ter a signed photo," he finished with a wink at Fitz.

Fitz wondered how on earth Hagrid could already think the youngest Weasley daughter had a crush on him or whatever it was, if the gamekeeper had just met her the day before, but as it was never happening, he ignored it, instead smirking as he looked over at where Simmons was studying the nearest pumpkin and Daisy was leaning up against said pumpkin watching her wife study said pumpkin, "Sorry — I already seem to be up to my ears in girls. And I don't think they'd appreciate a third, especially one of their sisters."

"Damn straight," smirked Daisy, looking over at him. "You're all ours."

If Hagrid found any of this conversation odd, he wisely kept it to himself, and FitzSkimmons had soon bid him goodbye and headed back up to the castle for lunch.

Where they hadn't been eating for more than ten minutes when the entire Slytherin quidditch team came swaggering up to where FitzSkimmons were sitting minding their own business.

"Heard you're too chicken to play quidditch this year," drawled Malfoy, though noticeably staying well out of arm reach of any of them, not quickly forgetting the splitting headache, nausea, and sore ribs he'd had upon waking up in the hospital wing at the beginning of the week. "Heard I was seeker as well and ran away before you could get your arse handed to you out on the pitch, didn't you?"

Fitz didn't even bother turning around yet to look at the git, instead leaning around Simmons who was sitting in the middle that meal to give Daisy a pointed look.

Turning around in her seat to look at the intruders, and specifically the chief intruder, she said, "You do remember how I knocked you out cold with one punch in the bookstore over the summer, and how Harry and Hermione knocked you out on this very table just five nights ago, don't you? Are you really sure trying to rile us up is in your best interest?"

By this point Fitz had turned around, and added, "And as for quidditch, I'm not playing because I'd rather spend my time at school studying and becoming smarter and more powerful, than playing some stupid game. But have fun flying after your balls."

And with that he turned back to the table, turning his back on Malfoy. Which would have been a very bad thing for Malfoy if Professor McGonagall hadn't walked up at the very moment Malfoy whipped out his wood, as had the Snake landed a spell, he would have been very lucky if the injuries he suffered from Daisy in return were fixable by the hospital wing — death being one of those rare injuries even Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal, and Daisy having more than enough strength and technique to snap Malfoy's twelve year old neck or break his windpipe with a single well-placed uppercut.

But luckily for him, he heard Professor McGonagall snap, "What are you doing?!" before he could actually attack Fitz, and so his pathetic life lived to see another day.

Wand out and pointed at Fitz's back, and no excuse to give other than Harry turning his back on him while he was trying to ridicule and taunt the Gryffindor (none of which he actually said out loud of course, not wanting to admit it and knowing that it wouldn't help him anyway), Malfoy had soon received a twenty point loss and a detention for trying to fight another student, and at a continued glare from Professor McGonagall, the entire Slytherin team stalked off to their own table, all of them feeling surprisingly less happy at the moment than they knew they should, having just confirmed that Harry Potter was in fact was not playing quidditch that year.

Late that night, as the hands of the clock approached their most upright positions, Fitz had just extracted himself from between Simmons and Daisy to make a quick trip to the loo, when he heard it.

"Come…Come to me...Let me rip you...Let me tear you...Let me kill you…."

A murderous hiss that chilled him to the bone. He immediately shook both of his wives awake.

"Fitz, what's the matter?" asked Simmons groggily, struggling to wake up.

Fitz continued to listen hard for a few more seconds, but heard nothing more, so he finally turned back to where his wives were looking at him in sleepy confusion, and said, "I just heard this terrible voice — no, not Leopold," he quickly added as Simmons and Daisy looked at him in worry — "that for lack of a better word hissed the words, 'Come…Come to me...Let me rip you...Let me tear you...Let me kill you...'. But I haven't heard anything more since then."

"Did it sound human, or something else?" asked Simmons.

"Umm…not, I guess?" answered Fitz. "But it also kind of seemed a long way off, muffled by the stone walls of the castle or something, so it's hard for me to tell."

"Should we go tell one of the professors? Wherever we could find one this late at night," asked Simmons.

"And get detention from Snape for wandering around out of bounds in the middle of the night? — I think not!" exclaimed Daisy. "We can tell MG in the morning."

"We're supposed to be Shield agents, shielding the world from evil and that awful acronym," admonished Simmons.

"Not here, where everyone wants to throw detentions at us for doing the right thing and saving their asses," countered Daisy. "Anyway, none of this is real and resets every year anyway, so death is only temporary for everyone actually from here — they're sort of like Time Lords or something."

"That's not at all—"

"Regeneration isn't —"

FitzSimmons started launching into lectures on how this was absolutely nothing like the Doctor, but Daisy quickly cut them off.

"Okay, okay, I get it, it's nothing like that! I have seen it all with you, you know. I was just trying to make some kind of comparison so you'd stop considering trying to be the heroes here, and stay in bed where you'd be my hero."

Simmons rolled her eyes, but Fitz leaned over and kissed Daisy lightly.

"Give me two minutes to use the loo like I woke up for, and I'll be your cuddling hero for as long as you like. I'll even let you have the middle so you can be cuddled from both sides since that's clearly more important to you than saving anyone's life."

"You? Voluntarily giving up your spot without one of us having to literally jump in between you and whoever's already in bed to force our way into the middle spot? Maybe this mysterious voice has already attacked and replaced Fitz," smirked Daisy.

"Shut up," Fitz retorted playfully, smacking her bum as he stood up and headed into the bathroom, making Daisy chuckle.

A few minutes later he returned to find Daisy already cuddling into Simmons' chest, clearly intent on taking him up on his offer. Which didn't surprise him in the least, as she had always been the cuddliest of their trio, even if he did end up in the middle more often than not with both girls cuddling into his sides, whether it was in bed or sitting at the Gryffindor table for meals or any time back in their real world where the three of them could reasonably be too close together and not get in trouble. He figured it was mostly because it was much easier for him to tuck both girls into his side and hold them than for Daisy or Simmons to do, what with him being bigger and taller than both of them, and it was just his job as the guy to protect both of them, even if Daisy was the one who actually protected all of them any time anything real happened.

But he didn't mind in the least either of his girls taking the middle when they wanted it, so he quietly slipped back into bed behind Daisy, wrapping his arm over both of them as he pressed up against Daisy's back, and within a few minutes they were all asleep again, no more mysterious voices interrupting them for the rest of the night.

~FSK~

The following morning, as they sat down at the Gryffindor table, they glanced up at where Professor McGonagall was sitting in her normal spot at the head table.

"Should we go tell her what I heard last night?" asked Fitz quietly.

"How are we going to do that without revealing to her that we aren't in Gryffindor Tower like we're supposed to be, though?" asked Daisy. "Because there's not much point telling her we heard it if we don't give her an approximate location, because if she just assumes it was near Gryffindor Tower that won't do them much good, they'll be starting looking in the wrong place, and our whole excuse for not telling anyone last night is predicated on the fact that it was after hours, when we should be in the tower. Anyway, I don't see any panic yet, so it doesn't look like it actually hurt anyone."

Simmons looked rather torn about what to do, but she finally said, "Why don't we wait until more people get here, and see if it looks like anything might have happened last night once everyone's here. If there's not, we'll assume it's not serious for the moment and wait until there's some reason to tell — and if something did happen last night, we'll go tell, and face whatever consequences we have to for having our own dorm. Sound good enough?"

Fitz and Daisy both nodded their agreement, and so the three of them settled in to wait and see if they'd need to go tell. But as it turned out, everyone seemed to still be alive and well, as they saw no panicked whisperings amongst any of the other students and no hushed meetings between any of the professors, so they concluded that the voice must not have been anything serious, and put it out of their minds until something changed.