TWO

The first week of classes came and went a lot more smoothly than Eve had anticipated. She knew her studies were going to be more challenging this year, with the preparation of N.E.W.T.S. next year and all, but Eve had always been an earnest student. That didn't mean though, that she didn't lament the moment she left her first DADA class with Umbridge, who made it very clear they would not learn anything productive in the school year to come.

The class was already not Eve's strongest suit, but she had felt she was destined to improve by her sixth year. In all his wild outbursts and often ruthless approaches to the subject matter, even Professor Moody had helped her tremendously last year. But with Umbridge, there was certainly no hope for Eve.

The saving grace of the week came when Professor Sprout offered her an assistant position in her Herbology classroom. She shined the most in the subject and had always been one of Sprout's favorites. She accepted the offer immediately, hoping that more class time would only serve to keep her mind off of other troubles.

And here she was, inside the Hogwarts greenhouse, at the start of her second week of classes. Red inked quill in hand; she was currently working on a group of first year assignments on Galanthus Nivalis. The project was simple enough, just a hand-drawn diagram of the plant, labeled from root to blossom, but still, she found herself marking countless lazy mistakes most students who didn't care for the subject made.

Eve started with the labels, drawing arrows between mixed matched terms, making sure to cross out the words that didn't belong altogether. She grinned at the most comical, made-up words by the students who had no clue but couldn't find it in themselves to leave the spots blank. From there, she would go to task fixing the sketches themselves, giving special attention to the roughest of drawings in any attempt to leave the student with some sort of sentiment of a plant.

Having parents as artists offered Eve an advantage in the drawing department, and she found correcting the sketches in way more detail than probably necessary. But she thought it may be helpful, and it passed the time no less. She glanced up to a side of the greenhouse that had pasted example diagrams. There were quite a few that had been done by her in the mix. Her own little mark left at Hogwarts. And now, she was leaving even smaller marks all over the school in students' workbooks. It was strangely sweet to her.

"Dear?"

Professor Sprout broke her stare from the greenhouse wall, and for a moment, she thought the teacher was going to chastise her for dazing off, but instead, the older woman just gestured for her to come to her side of the room, where she had been organizing new material for the year.

"What is it?" Eve asked, reaching Professor Sprout's side and glancing at the worktable in front of them.

The teacher pointed to the plant she had centered on the table. It was relatively small, no more than 6 inches, with a long single stem that adored a closed yellow blossom at the top. For a moment, nothing seemed out of the ordinary about the plant, but as she watched closely, Eve could see the flower bulb slightly expand and contract every few seconds. It was breathing, or at least it seemed as so.

"Look at this, one of a kind," Professor Sprout beamed, her finger gently running against its single long leaf.

"Yes, it's quite beautiful," Eve agreed.

"It's an Austrian Yellow Sleeping Tulip. Chrysus Anthos Dicentra."

Eve leaned closer over the table, reading the small label on the plant's pot herself. Chrysus Anthos Dicentra was marked with a shorter line that read in parenthesis C.A.D.

"Cedric Amos Diggory," Eve muttered allowed, and she saw from the corner of her eye her professor wiped what assuredly tears from her face. She pretended not to notice, though.

For a moment, the pair stayed in this exact position, watching the flower take its slumbering breaths.

As the head of Hufflepuff house, Professor Sprout always had a particular fondness for Cedric. He was kind and loyal and ever setting this as such an example for other students. For the first time, Eve considered the particular pain that must be felt by a teacher to lose a student, especially one of such light and magic like Cedric. Sprout had watched Cedric grow up just like her students had. Like the rest of her house, she had felt immense pride when he was picked for the Tournament. And she now, in turn, had to find her own way of saying goodbye to him.

It was Professor Sprout who turned away first. Eve watched as she took her work apron off, hanging it on her designated hook by her desk, and grabbed a few stacks of paper from the student tables.

"Do you mind, dear, if I pop into my office for a bit? I have some things I need to organize before tomorrow's lessons," she asked, but she was already putting on her outdoor robes.

"Yes, of course, professor. I can see myself out if need be," Eve nodded, trying her best to give her favorite teacher a comforting smile.

Professor Sprout nodded back, giving her own weak smile to Eve, and walked out the greenhouse doors. Eve watched through the glass walls as Professor Sprout headed up the hilled lawn, disappearing out of sight into the main castle buildings.

Eve finally turned, making her way back to her grading spot at the student worktable, and began tackling the second-year assignments again.

Not a minute later though, her concentration was broken by the sound of the front greenhouse doors swinging open. Two identical faces peered into the classroom, and in seconds their eyes landed both on her.

There was absolutely no student at Hogwarts who didn't know who the Weasley twins were. Even if you couldn't tell them apart, which Eve indeed couldn't, or had never had a conversation before with them, which Eve also hadn't, the pair's antics over their time at the school were enough to get them noticed by everyone else. Whether one watched from the sidelines or found themselves caught in the crossfire of their mischief, seeing the two redheaded anarchists together made it apparent to anyone that trouble was unquestionably imminent. Well, at least for Eve, this intention was beyond doubt.

"Right, what is it then? A bit of theft? Arson?" she asked the pair, placing her quill neatly back into its inkwell, "Perhaps you two were going decide when you got here?"

For a moment, the twins seemed caught off guard by the Hufflepuff's boldness, but the confusion quickly turned to amusement. They took her reply as a green light to come fully inside, one of them shutting the door behind them with such a manner of casualness, one would have thought the three were meant to have met together.

"We saw Professor Sprout head back to the castle," one of them started. Eve noticed the pair had split with the long table in the middle, each twin approaching her either side. It was as if she was getting approached by questioning ministry officials.

"Didn't expect to see anyone in here," the other twin finished.

"Sorry about that," Eve replied. She glanced from each boy carefully, her eyes landing on the one looking at her with fixed puzzlement as if searching for her identity in his brain.

This sentiment ended up being correct, and after a moment, the twin's eyes lit up, and he pointed to her in recognition.

"de Santos!" he exclaimed, "Hufflepuff quidditch team, yeah?"

The other one nodded in agreement before adding, "Dawson yells your name quite a bit."

"Yeah, that's his preferred method of team encouragement," Eve responded with the mention of the other chaser for their Quidditch team.

Unlike most of his fellow Hufflepuffs, Louis Dawson had always taken the sport with such aggressive mindfulness, one would have thought every game was the Quidditch World Cup finals. By fifth year, Douglas and Eve had perfected their imitations of Dawson, making a routine of shouting each other's names the exact way he did during practices, their fellow chaser, of course finding no humor in it.

As if reading her mind, one of the twins shouted her last name with the same offensive enthusiasm as Dawson, earning a laugh from his brother.

"Solid attempt. It could use a bit more unrestrained panic, though," Eve said with a cordial smile as if the twin's impression was up for an O.W.L. grade.

"You're quite funny, aren't you?" the one that gave the Dawson impression asked, looking at her with genuine interest, "Where have you been around this school?"

"Dodging your dungbombs, like the rest of our peers, I suppose," Eve shrugged, glancing back down at her now abandoned graded parchments.

"What did you two want then?" she continued. This question perked up the twins.

"Well, technically, one of your initial accusations was correct. But seeing as you are in a position of branded alignment with said Professor Sprout, we are not sure if you can be trusted," the twin on her left began. This one, she had noticed, always spoke first.

She looked between the two, shooting an innocent smile to both, but made no attempt to reply. They weren't wrong, after all.

"Ever heard of Aconite?" the one to her right asked.

"Obviously," Eve replied with slight puzzlement. The question seemed a bit useless since she was clearly an advanced Herbology student given her position, but she figured this was a part of the twins' scheme.

"Over the summer, we were testing with the plant for one of our joke products," the left twin explained.

"Aconite's quite poisonous," Eve began, causing him to nod with an enthusiastic smile.

"The leaf properties, in small doses, can cause just mild sickness," the right twin continued, looking at her with the same proud grin.

"We are making it into sweets. Puking pastilles, we're going to call them," the brother finished.

Eve eyed them pointedly, mulling over this information carefully.

"I like the name," she began, "but I don't see how puking is a joke."

This comment made the boys grin and exchange a glance at one another.

"It's not just for pranks. We are going to advertise it to kids to use to get out of class," the left twin explained.

"Or puke on a particularly pink-clad professor," the right one finished.

The mention of Umbridge was a compelling selling point for Eve. The Hufflepuff idly considered her next reply.

"How much were you two planning on taking then?"

The boys looked at her with surprise, but the left one quickly swung into action, taking a few steps closer to Eve, shrugging in innocent decisiveness.

"Only a leaf or two; we're only making prototypes right now."

Eve nodded, glancing between the two for a moment. She got off her seat and headed to an area in the back of the classroom reserved for purely harvesting tutorials for students.

Scanning between the countless neatly placed plant shelves, she spotted the purple blossoms that she was looking for. Grabbing a pair of planting shears that hung on a wall panel in front of her, she carefully cut a single leaf off the Aconite plant. She turned back to the twins, handing the leaf to the brother closest to her.

"You know," started the twin she had handed the leaf to, "this is very un-Hufflepuff-like behavior of you." He placed the leaf in the pocket of his robes all the same.

Eve sighed at this comment, hanging the planting shears back in their rightful hook.

"You Gryffindors really think you're the only ones with personalities, huh?"

"No, just certainly the best ones," the other twin smiled, taking a few steps towards her and extending his arm out, "I'm George, by the way. This is Fred."

He motioned to the twin next to him that had pocketed the leaf. She exchanged handshakes with the boys as if their entire encounter had been a professional business transaction. Perhaps, to the twins, it really had been.

She looked from Fred and George, eyeing their appearances for a moment.

"And how am I meant to tell the difference between you two, then?" Eve asked.

"If you look closely, I am slightly more handsome," Fred offered.

Eve smiled at this.

"So, what you are saying is, whichever one of you is acting slightly more arrogant at any given moment, I should just assume it's Fred," she answered, earning a laugh from the other twin.

"Precisely," George agreed.

Eve made her way past the boys and back to her seat in front of her papers.

"Now, if your antics are done here, I have work to do."

The boys nodded, heading back into the direction of the front greenhouse doors.

"We'll remember this act of Hufflepuff solidarity, you know. Weasleys always repay their debts," Fred said with a wink, patting the side of his robe that held the Aconite leaf.

Eve watched as the twins gave one last wave and slipped out of the classroom. Her eyes followed their fogged figures through the glass doors as they headed back up the lawn. They hardly went a few feet before she saw them stop in the middle of the grassy field.

"de Santos!" she heard one of them shriek in their best mid-Quidditch-match-Dawson.

Yeah, they'll have to keep working on that.


Author's Note: Thank you to everyone that has followed/favorited this so far! This is my first story on here, so I appreciate it!