Chapter 8: The Halloween Prank
A week before Halloween, long after Sirius' rainbow hair, Lexie still had not seen any form of revenge from Sirius. She assumed he was busy planning a good enough prank to get her back, but in reality, Sirius had no intention of inflicting any revenge on her, at least not after the night with the sketches by the fire.
Sirius still hadn't asked Lexie about the drawing of him, but he felt that pranking Lexie would be wrong after everything she told him. James was chomping at the bit with ideas to get her back, but Sirius had so far managed to shrug them off claiming he wanted to do it alone.
Remus seemed to share Sirius' attitude for once and thought pranking a nice girl like Lexie was completely unnecessary, but he certainly didn't want to bring it up. Peter forgot about the prank quickly and seemed too interested in expanding his chocolate frog collection to bother with any plotting.
It wasn't until breakfast exactly seven days before the Halloween feast when pranking was brought up again, unexpectedly by Lexie herself.
"So are you guys sick or something?" she asked James and Sirius who were sitting across from her.
They both frowned and shook their heads in unison.
"Then where are all the pranks? I mean you've gone what… three weeks without a single prank?"
James glanced at Sirius who was looking unaffected by Lexie's statement and decided to answer for his friend, "I'm sure Sirius here is just coming up with something to get you back, isn't the right Sirius?"
Sirius looked up and gave an unusual close smile, "Yeah, sure."
Lexie frowned at Sirius' unusually withdrawn behavior; she really thought the boy had long gotten over his insecurities. "Okay… well I have an idea."
"Oh Lexie, while I'm sure your idea is great, you do realize how completely stupid it would be to prank you with your own prank right?" replied James with a smirk.
Lexie rolled her eyes, "Not for me you dolt. I was thinking… instead of pranking me who, no offense, hasn't seemed to give a shit about any of your pranks, what would you say to a little mayhem on the rest of the school?"
Sirius frowned while James' gapping mouth soon turned into a mischievous grin, "Are you suggesting we prank the whole of Hogwarts? Lexie you're brilliant! Why didn't we think of that before?"
"Because clearly you aren't as brilliant as me," Lexie answered plainly as if answering a question in History of Magic. "Now I was thinking something along the lines of Halloween, you know something kind of spooky, have any ideas?"
Remus, who had been reading, looked up from his book "Are you sure that's such a good idea? Pranking everyone? You do realize you could get detention?"
"Oh Remie, live a little, it's not like they're going to hang us up by our ankles. It'll be something like lines or polishing trophies or something."
"You've had detention?" spoke up Sirius suddenly.
"Nah, not yet. I heard some fourthies moaning about it. Honestly, you'd think they've never cleaned before."
James frowned again, "I've never cleaned before, house elf work as far as I'm concerned."
Lexie rolled her eyes again having no idea what a house elf was but was very used to constant magical gibberish. She also couldn't believe that she was having to convince these boys to follow through with a prank, even at the orphanage the youngest boys were willing to help out whenever she wanted to create a little mayhem for Mrs. Tobias, so Lexie said the one thing she knew would get the ball rolling.
"Okay, putting aside the fact that I have no idea what a house elf is, are you all too chicken to pull a prank or not? Because I thought you were boys, but right now you're acting like a bunch of sissy girls."
James puffed out his nonexistent chest and beat it savagely, "I'm all man Lexie!"
Sirius looked at James with a pained expression on his face, "James, please don't ever do that again if you want me to keep hanging around you."
"Right, sorry" James said sheepishly.
"I like Lexie's idea," spoke up Peter for the first time having finished his pile of bacon, "I think it would be a lot of fun."
"Oh come on Pete, please tell me you aren't falling for this blatant rule breaking too?" sighed Remus.
"Oh come on Remie, it will be fun, please," said Lexie batting her eyelashes at him.
"Yeah come on Remie please," said James trying to bat his eyelashes as well but managed to look like someone with an incontrollable eye twitch.
"James stop with the eye spazzing you're starting to scare me," replied Remus "And only Lexie is allowed to call me Remie."
"So does that mean you're in?" questioned Sirius.
Remus let out an aggravated sigh, "Fine. If we get detention though I will not be helping. I will be sitting back and watching the rest of you clean or polish or whatever."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say Remie. Now let's get to the planning! So uh, anyone got any ideas?"
"Dye everyone's hair orange?" suggested Sirius.
"Nah, I'm kind of over the whole hair thing. Plus, Lexie said she wanted spooky," said James thoughtfully.
"We could turn everyone into banshees or something, I mean that's pretty scary," suggested Peter.
"Seems really complicated, I mean we've barely even transfigured beetles into buttons, could you imagine trying to turn a person into something?" replied Remus with a frown.
"Well, let's start with what we can do then. Our best bet is probably either some sort of charm or simple transfiguration spell. Or we go old school."
"Old school?" questioned James.
"Yeah, you know something that doesn't require magic."
All four boys frowned. "I've never pulled a prank without magic in some form or another," mused James, "It just doesn't seem like it would be very entertaining."
"Or good," added Sirius.
"Oh come on boys, have some faith. There are plenty of things you can do without magic. I mean, we can still use magic, but the best pranks might be something more creative than just simple spell work."
"You do have a point," James said as his face regained its brainstorming look.
"Well, what's something everyone is afraid of then?" asked Sirius, "Maybe if we start there we can think of a prank."
"Ghosts?" asked Peter.
"Hardly," said James smiling, "Considering there are ghosts wandering the halls and people aren't exactly fleeing from them kind of speaks for itself."
"What about spiders? I know loads of people who are afraid of spiders," added Remus thoughtfully.
"Spiders, really Remus, that's what you came up with? Something the size of a button?" James scoffed.
"Well I don't hear you spouting out suggestions," Remus argued.
Lexie however looked thoughtful and cut James off before he could argue back. "Except what if they weren't the size of buttons? What if they were say the size of a dog or a horse?"
James looked at Lexie and let a slow smile cross his face, "Giant spiders terrorizing the students? Now that's more like it. A simple Engorgio should do the trick don't you think?"
"I dunno, doesn't that seem a little too mean?" asked Peter who happened to be quite afraid of spiders when they were regular sized and wouldn't wish large spiders on anyone.
"Nonsense Pete, it is Halloween after all," replied Sirius grinning, "Plus it's not like they're murderous spiders or anything."
"There's only one problem. Well two really. One, where are we going to find a bunch of live spiders and two, how are we going to hide, well forget hide, how about control a bunch of giant live spiders. I mean we can't just stick them in a broom closet for safe keeping until Halloween" said Remus as he thought out the plan.
"Hm, Remie has a point. What if we cast a simple body-bind curse or stupefy them or something? I mean at least then we can kind of control them."
"It could work. I still don't know where we could find them though. Or hide them" mused James.
"Well until we enlarge them we can keep them in jars. I say when Halloween comes around we divide and conquer and each take a jar to a part of the castle, freeze them, enlarge them… hey do you think body-bind curses wear off over time?" asked Sirius.
"Nah. Not likely" added Remus.
"Well let's work out that later. Now where are we going to get a couple dozen spiders?" asked Sirius.
"Forbidden forest" stated James with a shrug.
"Or maybe," trailed off Lexie not too keen on entering the forest hunting out spiders, "We could just transfigure some? I mean we've done beetles, why not spiders? They can't be too different, can they?"
"I'm with Lex on this one, entering the forest would guarantee we'd get detention if caught."
"Okay, so step one: transfigure spiders. Step two: find some sort of freezing charm that isn't long lasting. Step three: utter chaos," said Sirius with a smirk.
"Hey!" exclaimed James suddenly as if a light bulb had gone off over his once thoughtful face, "My mum used to use some sort of freezing charm on me all the time when I got into trouble, she'd freeze me and leave me somewhere while she went back to her chores or cooking or whatever and it always wore off after a little while. I bet we could find something like that somewhere!"
"Why can't you just owl her and ask?" replied Peter.
"Well, I suppose I could but knowing her she would automatically know I was up to something. It's probably best we just try and find one."
"Okay, well we have a week so I say we start at the library and see what we can find. I would ask McGonagall about spider transfigurations since she's always keen on answering my questions but would like way too much of a coincidence," said Lexie.
"Alright, so how about James and I search for some sort of freezing spell and you three look for the a way to transfigure buttons into spiders or something," suggested Sirius.
"Deal," everyone said before breaking out into appropriate maniacal laughs resulting in strange looks being shot in their direction.
Like planned, the five spent the next couple days dodging in and out of the library trying to avoid suspicion. This wouldn't have been so hard if James, Sirius, and Peter hadn't spent the term avoiding the library since every time they seemed to enter Madam Pince, the stuffy librarian, automatically became suspicious. The boys played it off well saying they were working on a project together and some of the suspicion vanished.
The day before Halloween the five gathered to share their research. Sirius and James had uncovered the spell that Mrs. Potter had most likely used on James in a book called How to Raise Young Wizards: Proven Spells of Discipline and it turned out to be an altered version of the body bind as they had originally thought of using.
Peter had surprisingly been the one to uncover a way to transfigure any small object, such as a button or pebble, into a completely harmless spider. Lexie had nicked a few jars from behind Slughorn's back during a Potions lesson a few days prior and the five were now in search of a room to put their plan in action. They ended up cramped inside the most spacious broom closet they could find, each with a jar and a handful of pebbles.
Lexie ended up being the first one to successfully transfigure her pebble into a tiny black spider and once she had immobilized it and secured it in her jar, did she work on helping the boys with the spell.
In no time they all had a jars with no fewer than six spiders and decided that they would sneak out before breakfast to enlarge the spiders and set them loose in various part of the castle before rejoining in the Great Hall in time for breakfast. By the time breakfast was over the spiders should be unfrozen and perfectly capable of terrorizing the students on their way to their first class. Then as Sirius had pointed out in step three, utter chaos would ensue.
Lexie met the boys in the common room the next morning and aside from the occasional yawn they all shared looks of excitement for what was to come.
"Okay so I figure we tackle the areas that will be the most populated," said James logically, "So Lexie can take the third and fourth floors near the Charms classroom and library, Pete can cover the first floor near the classrooms, but you should probably try and avoid anything too close to McGonagall's office," he added as an afterthought before continuing, "Sirius can take the dungeons near Potions, we should be able to sufficiently scare the Slytherins that way, Remus can cover this floor, and I'll bravely conquer a corridor close to the Great Hall, I'm thinking Filch's office would be the perfect place to unleash a few arachnids."
"Wow James, you really thought this one out," said Sirius impressed.
James shrugged, "Couldn't sleep last night, figured I should do a little scheming. Okay then, if everyone knows the plan let's get to it before everyone starts waking up. Just remember, try to find somewhere to hide the spiders until everyone gets to the great hall, behind tapestries, behind statues, whatever, we just need to be discrete."
"Hold on," interrupted Lexie as the boys started heading towards the portrait hole, "I say we make a pact. If one of us gets caught we don't tattle on each other."
Remus frowned, but when he saw the determination on the other boys faces he just sighed, "Fine, we protect our own."
"Hear! Hear!" said Sirius, "Let's go release some mayhem!"
The five quickly dispersed to their assigned locations. Lexie made her way towards the library and quickly scanned the corridor, not a single person was in sight. She pulled out her jar and muttered the freezing spell James had taught her before opening the lid. She shuddered as she reached in the jar to pull out a spider, she noticed a mirror and made her way over to it hoping it could temporarily hide a couple enlarged spiders.
She looked behind the mirror but it appeared attached to the wall. Lexie took one last glance down the hallway before sliding her fingers along the edge of the mirror wondering if she could somehow move it forward and prop it against the wall to hide something behind it, like a dog-sized spider. She gently pulled and to her amazement the entire thing swung forward revealing a spacious passageway.
"Whoa" she breathed in surprise, "Was not expecting that," she muttered. As much as Lexie wanted to explore the passageway she had a plan to execute. Deciding it wouldn't be wise to reveal the recently discovered passageway Lexie settled on a giant urn like structure a little further down the hall as a suitable hiding place. She placed a couple frozen spiders on the ground before enlarging them and scampering off towards the third floor. Once Lexie had found suitable hiding spots for all her spiders, she quickly made her way towards the Great Hall.
The rest of the boys minus Sirius were anxiously waiting for her and breathed a sigh of relief when they saw Lexie skipping towards them.
"You guys are never going to believe this!" she shout-whispered.
"You didn't get caught or anything did you?" asked Remus looking around nervously.
"Nah, nothing like that, I found a hidden passageway!" she said excitedly.
"You what?" replied James equally excited. "Wicked," he breathed with a grin, "Where?"
"Fourth floor behind a mirror. I didn't go down it, but we need to pronto, it looks like it goes somewhere!"
The other boys grinned. It looked like they had their next adventure planned out.
"Where's Sirius?" asked Lexie noticing he wasn't there.
"Dunno" said James nervously, "Hope he didn't caught or run into anyone."
They didn't have to wait long, less than five minutes later Sirius was bounding towards them with a huge grin on his face.
"You are not going to believe what I found!" he said unable to contain his excitement.
"Secret passageway?" asked Lexie with a grin just as wide.
"No, way better… wait you found a secret passageway?" he asked still grinning.
"Behind a mirror on the fourth floor, what'd you find?"
Sirius' face broke out into an even wider grin if that was even possible, "Only the best thing in the whole castle. The kitchens! They're incredible! House elves everywhere willing to get you anything you want!"
"Anything?" asked Peter awestruck.
Sirius grinned at him, "Anything," he confirmed.
"Wow, that is seriously awesome!" said Lexie bouncing up and down with excitement still unsure at what a house elf was but completely willing to find out.
"What! Where is that? How come I didn't find anything," pouted James.
Lexie patted James, "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find your own passageway in no time."
Sirius replied with a laugh, "Funny story actually, I was searching for a place to you know, hide them, and came across a portrait of some fruit. I thought maybe I could, I dunno, pry it away from the wall or something so I started running my hands along it trying to get a good grip. Well I must have touched the pear because all of a sudden I heard giggling. I freaked, thought someone had seen me, turns out the pear had laughed! Actually laughed can you believe it! A handle appeared, I pulled, and well ta da! There were the kitchens brimming with elves. I asked them how exactly I had managed to get inside and this is where it gets even weirder, you tickle the pear."
Lexie snorted, "You tickle the pear? Really Sirius? That's the best joke you could come up with? What happens when you massage the apple or flirt with the banana?"
The other three boys laughed and Sirius scowled, "I'm being completely serious!"
Lexie patted him sympathetically, "Well of course you are, you are Sirius Black after all. Who else would you be?"
"No, not Sirius like my name, serious like, oh never mind I'll just have to show you and then you'll just look like a fool when I'm right," he pouted.
"Mhm, whatever you say mate," replied James grinning.
Sirius opened his mouth to retort but was hushed by Remus.
"As much as I hate to break up this monumental conversation, breakfast starts soon and to avoid suspicion maybe we should go sit down and look innocent or something."
"Good idea," said James as the five made their way towards the Gryffindor table looking as angelic as possible as other students began entering the hall.
They loaded their plates like every other day but had yet to take a bite as they were excitedly waiting for any sign that their plan had worked.
It didn't happen until they had almost finished with breakfast when they heard an ear-splitting, very feminine scream reach the Great Hall and watched as a very frightened Filch burst through the doors gasping, his eyes bulging.
"Headmaster! Headmaster!" he gasped trying to make his way towards the staff table but having to stop and refill his lungs every couple of feet. At this point the entire hall was watching him with curious eyes.
"SPIDERS!" he finally managed to blurt out once he had reached the middle of the hall, "Spiders the size of dragons I tell you! Everywhere, we're doomed" he screeched before promptly fainting.
The rest of the hall had broken out in laughter at a passed out Filch on the Great Hall floor while his kitten Mrs. Norris began to lick his check as if trying to revive him.
Nobody laughed harder than the five Gryffindors who had been the root cause of Filch's damsel in distress moment, but were shocked when Hagrid the gamekeeper suddenly yelled over the noise, "I swear it wasn't me Dumbledore, I swear it on my life! Not again, not again please!"
The distress in Hagrid's voice had caused the hall to go quiet and Lexie looked towards the boys completely confused. The boys shrugged and shared her puzzlement as Hagrid began hyperventilating into his eggs.
Dumbledore seemed unperturbed by both Filch's and Hagrid's outbursts and magnified his voice over the din echoing off the walls. "Students, please allow your prefects to escort you back to your common rooms until we have the situation under control. Do not leave your common rooms until instructed to do so and stay with your house."
"Is it just me or are they all taking this thing way too seriously," muttered James.
"Definitely," said Lexie still puzzled at Hagrid's sobs now being carried through the hall, "I mean they're just spiders."
The other boys looked equally confused and were gathered by the two Gryffindor prefects and led out of the hall back towards their common room. However, their puzzlement soon turned into delight as they noticed the Hufflepuffs cowering as two of their enlarged spiders began scuttling towards them. The rest of the Gryffindors were chuckling as well as they watched several Hufflepuff girls attempt to use the boys as shields before the Hufflepuff prefects managed to successfully stun the spiders.
They heard a snort of laughter as the boy Lexie recognized as Frank Longbottom pointed out to a fellow Hufflepuff, "The size of dragons eh? Isn't that what Filch said? That thing isn't even as big as a hippogriff let alone a dragon!"
Lexie found herself laughing along with many of her other classmates as the situation appeared to regain some of its previous humor.
The prefects lost some of their seriousness and instead smiled as they continued their trip towards the common room. On the way they passed a few more spiders and while many of the girls screeched at the sight causing the boys to laugh and taunt them, the prefects were able to stun the spiders before continuing.
By the time they had reached the common room many students were now excitedly discussing how the spiders added some much-needed Halloween décor to the castle and were now doing impressions of Filch's feminine squeals before fainting.
Entering the common room, Lexie and the boys made their way to one of the more private tables in the corner of the room with huge grins on their faces.
"You know even though the scare tactic didn't work quite as planned on everyone, I'd say it was worth it to see Filch's face. He's never going to live this down," mused James.
Sirius grinned, "Definitely worth it."
Remus secretly agreed before adding, "Not to mention, everyone actually seemed to enjoy the prank. I'd even go as far as to say they would be complimenting us if they knew we were behind it all."
The four boys grinned while sharing a laugh.
Lexie laughed with them but couldn't help asking, "Wonder what was up with Hagrid though, he seemed genuinely panicked. Didn't he say something about it not being him too? What was that about?"
Sirius frowned, "Haven't a clue. So you think classes are cancelled for the rest of the day?"
Before they could reply McGonagall had entered the room looking stern and answered Sirius' question, "Classes have currently been cancelled until the rest of the spiders are rounded up. No need to worry, they appear to be perfectly harmless and somebody's idea of a joke. If you have any information about the possible culprit please inform me or your prefects immediately." She swept her cloak behind her and began marching towards the door and the room caught her muttering something about "bloody misbehaving students and their bloody pranks" causing the pranksters themselves to share secret grins with one another.
"This was way too much fun, I believe we are going to have to do this again sometime," said James.
"Oh most definitely," replied Sirius.
"Somebody has to keep McGonagall on her toes," added Peter.
"Now that you mention it, I bet Filch can scream much higher if he puts his mind into it more," grinned Lexie.
Remus just turned to the group "Oh you all are bloody impossible!" before storming up the boy's staircase muttering about needing a good book.
"Oh yeah, he's totally in for next time" said Lexie grinning.
James, Sirius, and Peter just grinned back.