"You sure this is going to be okay? I can't handle the smell" you asked uncertain.

You did say that next time you'd help messing around with Filch but you also almost threw up last time you were in the vicinity of a Dungbomb, how in hell would anyone be able to deal with being hit with one you wondered.

"We hit him and we run, it's easy don't worry" answered one of the twins holding a Dungbomb in his hand.

The four of you stood on the top of the moving stairs crouching and looking down, it was nearly 9 o'clock, and most students were already in their common room so it was the perfect time to attack Filch. You didn't have a reason to do it, you hadn't even interacted with the caretaker at all, only seeing him once in a while to berate students, but you also didn't care for a reason other than it would be funny.

So far life at Hogwarts had indeed become interesting but you were eager to use magic towards your own personal entertainment and classes weren't letting you do much. Sure you had mastered some charms, after all, levitating objects wasn't as difficult as Professor Flitwick had made it seem, the hardest thing to do was listening to him repeat "Swish and Flick" about a thousand times.

You didn't expect to be great at anything since you were only a beginner but charms class was the only one you actively got an outstanding grade.

Potions class was a nightmare after the cauldron incident, Professor Snape had decided that it was for the best to separate you and the twins when it came to potion making, the only good thing that came out of it was that you got to pair up with Adrian often, who ended up being decent at the class, and since Professor Snape always favored his house you got away with a lot of mistakes.

"How do we know he's going to pass by?" you asked looking all the way down to the bottom of the moving staircases, you didn't enjoy heights but you had to live with the fact that every day you had to make your way up to the 7th floor of Hogwarts, sometimes even higher for your astronomy classes, which you hated deeply.

"We made a pact with Peeves" replied Lee enthusiastically "He agreed to not make our life hell if we in turn make someone else's life hell. In better words, Filch's"

"Surely there are also other people we can mess with? Besides Filch" you asked.

"Yeah. The Slytherins." Said one of the twins

"Some of those assholes have been calling us blood traitors" said the other, he looked rather angry now, more than offended.

"Really, Fred?" you squinted your eyes because you weren't 100% sure it was Fred

"Just because our dad likes muggle stuff…" he continued, this time he definitely wasn't interested in keeping up on the guess who game "Slytherins are nasty so we're actually doing the whole school a favor"

"Don't worry, somehow Mr. Pussy isn't just like all Slytherins. He keeps his mouth shut around us" George, if it was George, gave you a reassuring smile "Anyways, Peeves is going to lure Filch here. We throw some dungbombs and run back to the common room"

It didn't take long till you saw the annoying poltergeist flying around, loudly insulting Filch with several swear words and throwing around old pumpkins from last month's Halloween feast.

You ducked down with your dungbomb in hand, waiting for the moment where Filch would be just close enough to be hit with no less than 4 smelly bombs that would definitely leave an awful stench on him for a long time, you weren't even sure if you could get rid of it with a simple shower.

"Alright" Lee whispered "Just a bit more" you waited quietly. He rushed through the stairs chasing after peeves, cursing at the poltergeist.

"Now!" and you all threw the smelly balls and prepare to run.

"I HAVE A BAD AIM!" you scream while running away laughing.

"I think I hit a painting!" Lee was behind you also running.

"He's coming! Scram!" you heard one of the twins yelling while jumping around the moving stairs.

You got separated from the twins, so you and Lee took a left on the 4th floor and ran for your life, you could still hear the voice of Filch screaming somewhere, and peeves laughing like a maniac. You ran through the 4th floor corridor until you finally stopped and had to a grab a wall and catch your breath.

"Where did they go?" you asked looking around.

"They'll find their way, come on I know a shortcut here that leads to Gryffindor tower" he pointed towards a tapestry and you followed him through a set of stairs quickly, it was nearly time to be in bed and if you were caught outside you'd lose points again.

After about 5 minutes of sneaking around you finally found the corridor that led to the fat lady's portrait, who welcomed you with a frown asking what sort of time you thought it was, you asked her to quiet down but that only made things worse, leading her to become very offended and trying to give you a pep talk, she only shut up after Lee had yelled the password three times.

You got inside the common room expecting to see the twins inside, but instead you were met by a very angry ginger boy who was nearly twice your size, Charlie Weasley.

"Where have you been?" he asked staring at both of you, Charlie was usually laid back and always carried a warm smile in his face but right now he was very upset "It's past 9 o'clock, you should have been in here 15 minutes ago! If I hadn't heard the fat lady screaming I wouldn't even have noticed the time!"

You held your hands together in front of you and slowly bit your bottom lip and looked at Lee, who looked anything but innocent, you looked back at Charlie who had his eyebrows raised still looking at you.

"Well you see, Charlie…" you tried to make up an excuse in your head as quick as you could, but you weren't as fast thinking as Angelina was in these situations, something you adored her for. "We got distracted." You almost stuttered.

"What could possibly be distracting you on a Friday night?"

"Homework! We were in the library!" you lied

"The library closed at 8:30." he stated, looking exasperated.

You swallowed. You ran out of ideas and quickly looked to Lee, who was looking up to the ceiling as if something very interesting was up there. You were about to say that you got lost, as if you hadn't explored enough of the castle already to know where the common room was, but you were interrupted by the sounds of the fat lady yelling outside.

"AGAIN? What time do you think this is?!" you heard her muffled angry voice.

Charlie sighed deeply, as if he already knew who was behind the portrait and walked towards it and opened the portrait hole quickly, you heard the fat lady getting even angrier "Excuse me? Not even a warning?! I was in the middle of talking! This is absolutely unacceptable!"

"Inside. Now." You heard Charlie speaking and after a couple of seconds you saw two ginger boys enter the common room with smug faces and red cheeks, one of them was sneakily concealing something under his grey sweater.

Charlie stood before the four of you, looking very displeased but not surprised. He stared for a couple of seconds and then moved his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. In the quick moment where Charlie closed his eyes, you felt one of the twins elbow you and mouth the words "we got something".

"I'm not even going to ask, just go to bed" Charlie said finally.

You moved towards the girls' dormitory and behind Charlie's back you mouthed the words back to the twin "show me tomorrow" and gave him a thumbs up.

"Okay, let's try it again" said one of the twins pointing his wand at the old parchment "Uh, show me your secrets?" he asked unsure.

"Are you sure it does anything else besides insulting us?" you asked after the parchment flicked to life for a moment and the words Mr. Padfoot thinks you should bug off little guy showed up on it.

"Why would Filch shove it in a cabinet labeled dangerous if that's all it did?" asked the other scratching his head.

You took your chance to figure out who was who.

"Fred, maybe you should ask something different?" you looked at the twin who was standing up with his wand in hand, he didn't respond immediately instead he stared at you and then smirked.

"Nice one, Fox" he raised his eyebrows still smirking "But I've been trying all night different phrases and words" he sat back down and looked deep in thought.

"Have you tried asking nicely?" you said in a mocking way.

"You try then, Camila" said George pushing the parchment towards you.

"Alright then" you stood up, took a deep breath and pointed your wand "Will you please show us what you can do?"

Mr. Moony thinks you should just give it a rest, miss

Mr. Padfoot advises to try harder if you really want to.

Mr. Wormtail is tired of insulting you and would rather be left alone

Mr. Prongs believes that if someone really wants to view the contents of this parchment, they will need to make a few promises…

"Promises? What are we supposed to promise? To screw things up?" you continued to point your wand at it.

Mr. Padfoot believes screwing things up is a good step to take.

"Hey how come it's not insulting you?" asked Lee in disbelief.

"I'm asking it NICELY!" you replied "Okay, I promise to screw things up!" you yelled at the parchment in frustration.

Mr. Moony believes a formal language is necessary

Mr. Wormtail thinks maybe you should swear

"What? Do you want me to be polite or rude?" you asked with frustration "Because I can drop a couple of swear words on you, stupid piece of paper" you said in defeat and sat back down.

Lee got up and decided to try his luck, taking the advice of swearing from the parchment he started saying several swear words in order to get something out of it, only to be scolded by Charlie Weasley who happened to come down from the dormitory at that moment.

"Stop screaming swear words, please." He sighed deeply as if he was already tired, even though it was only 10 o'clock "Why don't you go outside? Or watch the Quidditch match today?" he asked.

"I totally forgot about the match!" exclaimed Fred

"Wish I could say the same, little brother" Charlie looked anxious and sat in a chair next to you.

"You're gonna do fine, you're the best seeker Gryffindor has had!" said George trying to reassure the older Weasley "You always catch the snitch!"

"What's good in catching the snitch if we don't win the game?" replied Charlie "What's good in winning Quidditch if you small brats keep losing us points all the time?" he gave everyone a disapproving look.

"It's not like we're the only ones losing points! Just last week a 4th year Gryffindor lost 20 points for punching a Ravenclaw in the face!" said Fred with an offended face "So far we haven't punched anyone" he shrugged.

"We did egg him on, but that's no excuse" said George without a care, Charlie looked emotionless, clearly it was no surprise to him.

"Anyways, what are you guys even doing?" he tried to get a look on the old parchment but Fred grabbed it quickly and folded it before Charlie could see the words that were still etched on it.

Mr. Moony is very offended at those words, no need for such language just to accomplish mischief

Mr. Padfoot is loving this situation

Mr. Wormtail is surprised such kids even know swear words

Mr. Prongs thinks you're really up to no good

"Okay I'm not even going to ask" Charlie got up from the chair and started walking towards the hole that led outside the common room "Come watch the game and stop trying to teach the paper swear words" and you also heard him mutter to himself something along the lines of "God damn kids" and so Charlie left and you were again alone in the common room.

"I've never seen a Quidditch match, can we go watch it?" you asked

"Yeah we'll go, maybe we can brainstorm some ideas on the way"

"Okay so, the chasers are the ones with the ball" George pointed towards the flying students who were zooming around the field "It's called a quaffle" he looked back at you to make sure you were following, you had to shift closer to him in order to hear him properly, every single Gryffindor student was loudly cheering.

"Then there's the beaters" he pointed towards two boys who were carrying what looked like small baseball bats "Me and Fred are going to try to become beaters next year" he said enthusiastically.

"What do those do, exactly?" you asked. You were having issues keeping up because everyone was flying so fast.

Gryffindor was playing against Hufflepuff and so far Gryffindor was losing, the Hufflepuff chasers were extremely fast and kept passing the quaffle so quickly between them that not even the Gryffindor players could react in time.

"Do you see those flying balls?" George pointed to the sky, you didn't see it but you pretended you did "They use the bats to hit them towards other players, and away from our players of course" you opened your eyes wide in a frightened expression

"Don't worry, nobody has died yet" he quickly added "I can't wait for next year so we can try to get in"

"So your life goal is to hit people with a bat?" you asked still very confused

"Are you going to tell me you don't want to hit people with bats once in a while?" he chuckled.

"Good point" you replied smiling

"GRYFFINDOR SCORES!" you heard a loud voice coming from the other side of the Quidditch pitch "TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR, HUFFLEPUFF IS ON THE LEAD WITH 30 POINTS"

"About time too!" you heard Fred scream behind you.

"The guy who stays around the three hoops is called the keeper" George continued.

"Oh that one is easy, just like football right?" you asked looking at Gryffindor's hoops, George didn't continue immediately so you looked back to him only to see his very confused face. Of course wizards didn't know what football was. "Never mind, continue!"

"Okay so" he got interrupted by Gryffindor scoring again "The keeper tries to stop the quaffle from getting in, that's basically it. Oliver Wood isn't a bad keeper, but hufflepuff is playing him hard"

You could barely see who was who, it all seemed too fast to keep up.

"What about Charlie?" you asked trying to look around and see if you could spot him "Where is he?"

"He's the seeker, he chases after the snitch." He replied and turned to you "The snitch is a very small ball, just like this" he used his hands to convey the image of a small ball about the size of a lime "And it flies around very fast, the seekers have to catch it. Catching it ends the game and the team gets extra one hundred and fifty points"

You decided to look for Charlie, moving your eyes cross the pitch, up and down until finally you saw his flaming red hair, he looked very serious, more serious than when he got mad at you and the twins just last night, his eyes were focused on the game, occasionally looking around to catch a glimpse of the snitch.

The game lasted quite a while, both teams scoring often but sadly Hufflepuff was always in the lead, it was starting to become very frustrating to watch Oliver Wood missing a lot of saves by inches. For a moment you thought you saw the small snitch, but it could have also been a bird in the distance, you wondered how people managed to actually watch Quidditch when so many things were happening at the same time.

By the time the score was 320 to hufflepuff and 290 to Gryffindor you finally saw Charlie moving across the Quidditch field, speeding through the middle of the game as fast as bullet. Everyone started cheering for him, the voice commenter loudly announced that the Weasley had started his pursuit of the small golden snitch.

"Go Charlie!" you screamed along the twins and every other first year, even Angelina was screaming, she looked way more interested in the sport than you would be.

After a long chase after the snitch, with the hufflepuff seeker just behind him, Charlie Weasley caught the snitch in a quick motion and zoomed around waving his arm with a big warm smile in his face, his red hair was messy as if he had just blow dried it. Charlie Weasley was brilliant.

The Gryffindor students were all inside the crowded common room celebrating, hopes were high to win the Quidditch cup this year, Percy had mentioned that Gryffindor hadn't won in years and hoped that this year would be the one, something that surprised you because you didn't think such a serious student like him would be so interested in the sport, you guessed it might just be a Weasley thing.

Due to the noise, the four of you decided to take the parchment and head outside, the cold air hit you hard after being inside the warm common room. You didn't exactly know what part of the country Hogwarts was located but you had never gone through such a cold winter before.

October had been acceptable, November had been awfully cold, but now December was worse than anything you had ever experienced, on the bright side you had seen snow for the first time in your life and you did enjoy it.

"So far we don't know what this parchment does or how to unlock it" Lee had the parchment in his hands and unfolded it, the last words were no longer there "Maybe we should figure out who are these… people? The ones replying in the paper" he added.

"They have weird names, never heard about anyone called Prongs, or even Padfoot" remarked one of the twins "Who even names a kid that?"

The four of you sat by the courtyard, not a student in sight which was good because you had promised that the parchment issue would only stay between the four of you, and since it had become so cold most students were inside.

"Did you ask the parchment what it really was though?" you asked

"I tried, but it insulted me" replied one of the twins "Here, it seems to have liked you enough not to insult you though"

You grabbed the old piece of parchment and pointed your wand at it.

"What are you?" you asked eagerly, and the words appeared out of nowhere.

This shows you the lay of the place

So you know where things can be found

It also show passages

So you know how to get around

"What? What does that mean?" Lee sounded very frustrated "It's giving us riddles now?"

"I'm not good at those" you admitted "I'm rather thick when it comes to those things"

"Let's keep trying new things, at least we have some clues" one of the twins folded the parchment and concealed it under his jumper "We're gonna have Christmas break soon, me and George will keep trying to unlock it at home"

You didn't even realize Christmas was nearly here, time was passing by too fast, it seemed like just yesterday you had left Eliana's house and boarded the Hogwarts express. The past 3 months passed like a breeze, you had learned a lot in such a quick time and you couldn't wait to get back to your mother's side.

You made sure to write back home at least twice every week, even if it was only brief messages, you'd make sure to tell only the good things to Eliana, but you learned not to lie to your mother so you'd include some small notes about "bad" things you had done, as long as they weren't bad enough to receive punishment from her.

It was exciting to be at Hogwarts, but you really missed home, you wanted to share everything about your first term, and maybe sneak around and try some spells since you were lucky enough to not have the trace on you.

You spent the last days of the term planning to raid Eliana's library for books about magic and daydreaming about what you'd get for Christmas, you had also made a list of presents you wanted to gift to your friends, especially to the twins and Charlie, you had grown to quite enjoy the company of the Weasleys.

And so on the last day of the term, right before saying good bye, you promised to look around Eliana's books to try and figure out something to unlock the old parchment, the twins promised to keep trying to use different words and phrases to see what responses they got, and Lee promised to send you all the best candy he could find for Christmas.