Like the last one, this chapter is a little silly. I'll get back to more serious chapters next update.

Niffler

April, 1996
Spring break and shortly after
7th year
-

Today was Leilani's 18th birthday. She was, according to the Muggle world, an adult. It was weird, she didn't feel any different than she had last week, or last month or even last year, when she'd become an adult in the eyes of the Wizarding world and yet somehow she was. She was hanging out with her family today, mostly Kanani.

"So what do you want to do today?" Kanani asked.

"Um, well, I did have this one idea."

"Yeah?"

"I want a tattoo."

"Seriously?" Kanani's jaw dropped. This was totally unexpected, she'd been thinking Leilani would want the upper part of her ears pierced or just a nice, calm birthday at home with their parents.

"A magic tattoo, not a muggle one," Leilani hurried to say. "I've got all my birthday money from Gramma and Grampa saved up. I know everybody thought I was going to use it to buy a car," she laughed.

"What do you want to get?" Kanani asked, still stunned.

"A niffler. On my ankle. They're cute."

"Do mum and dad know you want to do this?"

"I…mentioned it."

"So, no, then," Kanani grinned.

"Yeah, no, not really."

"Do you have a place in mind?"

"I've been booked since Winter break. Will you come with me? I'm nervous."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! Of course I'm nervous, I'm about to be stabbed with needles over and over again just to get a niffler on my ankle. I'm terrified! I mean, what if I don't like it? What if it hurts a lot? You know full well and good I don't handle pain very well. What if it bleeds? Or fades? Kanani!" she whined nervously, "Stop me before I talk myself out of this, please!"

"Stop it. It'll be fine. You'll love it, I'm totally sure."

"You think so?"

"Totally!"

An hour later, the artist was explaining to them how Wizarding tattoos worked. "Most people, when they hear about Wizarding tattoos assume it's applied with a wand and a spell, but they'd be wrong. You see: it's not the needle that's enchanted, but rather the ink. This means that a needle, not a wand, is used. The bad news is that it won't be painless. The good news is it'll be like our photographs, the tattoo will move around. It'll interact with anything else you put in that space."

Explanations explained and designs approved, the artist began her work, saying exactly what she was doing as she did it. First Leili's ankle was scrubbed with a pad soaked in rubbing alcohol and then shaved, even though Leili had shaved that morning.

"Any hair on the canvas can interfere with the process, so this is just standard operating procedure; we do it to everybody," the artist said.

She swabbed Leili's ankle again with more alcohol and then applied the stencil paper. When the paper came away, it left a blue-purple Niffler holding three small stars behind. "You ready?" Both the artist and Kanani asked.

Leilani could feel her hands shaking, she didn't think she was breathing she was so nervous, "Do it."

"Don't hold your breath, it'll just make it worse."

Leili tried to breathe normally, and then came the first stabs of pain. Normal breathing went out the window.

"The first minute or so is the worst, you should get used to it after that."

Leili nodded breathlessly.

By the time the outline was done, Leilani was very light headed.

"Do you have anything to deaden the pain a little?" she squeaked.

The artist frowned, "It hurts that much?"

"I don't do pain. Like, at all well," she laughed.

"It's pretty true, she broke her ribs once and passed out." Kanani turned to Leilani, "Not to mention the time you dislocated your thumb."

"There were extenuating circumstances in both those cases! You try being thrown into a tombstone and see how your ribs like it!"

Kanani motioned for the artist to keep going. She'd keep her sister distracted; that should help. Up till now they been pretty quiet, giving Leilani nothing else to concentrate on other than the stabbing pain in her ankle. Plus, talking would help her breathe more evenly instead of not-breathing-not-breathing-not-breathing-GASP.

It did help, some. Not a lot, but some.

"Hold still, please," the artist said.

"Sorry." Leili stiffened her foot to try and hold more still.

A few minutes later, "Look, if you don't hold still, I won't be able to finish inking you and you'll be running around half colored in!"

"I thought I was holding still! I'm trying!"

Kanani broke in, "She's not actually talking to you, Leilani."

"Huh?"

"She's right, it's your Niffler that needs to hold still. Whoever enchanted these inks went a little overboard, I've never seen such an active outline!"

Leili sat up to look; she'd been lying on her back with her foot in the air. The little Niffler was juggling the three little stars he'd been given. The tattoo turned to look at Leili who jabbed a finger at it and ordered, "Now you hold still! If you keep twitching, she's going to have to stop and I really want to get this done today, so Cut. It. Out."

The Niffler blinked at her and then to Leilani's surprise, actually nodded! He proceeded to hold still as a muggle tattoo unless otherwise directed.

Leilani lay back and tried to remember to breathe normally. Kanani kept up the conversation to keep Leili's mind off the pain in her ankle.

When it was finally, finally done, Leili had a little black Niffler with three little gold stars sitting happy as a clam against her anklebone.

The artist taped a bandage to Leilani's ankle, "Ok, this is still an open wound so keep this bandage on for at least two hours. Normally, the tattoo doesn't move until the wound is healed, but this little Niffler is quite a bit more active than usual. So after two hours, you can remove the bandage and wash your ankle. Use lukewarm water and mild soap, pat dry, no scrubbing."

A week later, back at school, Leili pushed down her sock and proudly displayed one sun-blinded Niffler. Which she promptly got into trouble over.

Umbridge swooped down, dispersing the gathered students like Timon and Pumbaa bowling for buzzards.

"No tattoos are permitted at school!" she crooned.

"I'm 18!" she objected.

"You are still a student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, are you not?"

"Yeesss…"

"Well, then, no tattoos are permitted on school grounds!"

"Oh sure, I'll just leave my foot off campus then, next time," Leili scoffed.

Umbridge began to huff and puff and Leili was sure she was going to blow the school down. Jo took her hand and pulled her along behind as she marched off.

"Just where do you think you are going?!" Umbridge screeched.

"To our Head of House!" Jo yelled back.

"Oh, yes, excellent idea!" Leili enthused and began to march up alongside Jo.

"I rather thought so!" Jo grinned.

They linked arms and marched on over to Professor Sprout's Green House office. She had two, one in the green houses and on in the common room, she retreated to the Green House Office when she needed a break from her students. About every other Wednesday.

"Professor Sprout," Leili called with the tone of a kid searching for their mom to tattle on their older sibling.

"Professor Sprout, we have a prob-lemmm…" Jo said in the same tone.

"Yes, dear, what is your problem?" Professor Sprout responded with a distracted air.

"THAT," the girls said, turning to point at Umbridge who came stomping into the green house.

"Oh, oh yes. I see."

"Umbridge wants to cut off Leilani's foo-oot!"

Professor Sprout looked between Jo and the sputtering Umbridge, "I'm used to your dramatics dear, but isn't that a bit over-board?"

Umbridge spluttered, "She," an imperious finger shook in Leilani's direction, "has violated several of the Decrees for Underage magic set down by the Ministry-"

"I'm not underage! I'm 18! Legally an adult in both the Wizarding world and the Muggle world!" the raspberry she blew in Umbridge's direction was entirely implied.

Professor Sprout watched the exchange with a rapidly growing headache.

"She," more imperious pointing, "has an illegal tattoo on her ankle!"

"SHE was eves-dropping an entirely private and very personal conversation with Jo. And by the way, there's nothing illegal about it!"

Professor Sprout fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"Detention!" Umbride squawked.

"For WHAT?!" Leilani and Jo shrieked back.

"For purposefully and knowingly breaking several Education Decrees!"

"No! No! You can't give me detention for breaking a rule I didn't know existed!"

"A rule that didn't exist when she had it done!" Jo added.

"And by the way, have I mentioned that I'm 18?"

"You did," Jo said matter of factly, voice no longer raised.

Leili responded in an overly solicitous tone, "I did, didn't I? I rather thought so."

"Legally, you haven't violated anything."

"Right?" Leili said in the way of someone finally finding a person who agreed with them.

"EVERYBODY, let's just calm down," Professor Sprout interjected; this was getting out of hand—beyond out of hand. "Delores, Miss Montgomery has a point, the educational decree governing 'distracting body piercings, hair styles and colors, or tattoos' went up during the Easter Holiday, when Miss Akina wasn't on the grounds."

Umbridge 'hmphed'.

Leili thought about mentioning that her nylons, tights or socks covered the little inked Niffler unless she specifically decided to show it off, which led to being the opposite of distracting. Before she could, her head of house continued, "Leilani, Jocelyn you will both serve detention…" Leili and Jo gasped in betrayed horror at their Head of House as Umbridge gloated. "With me."

"Now see here, Pomona…!" Umbridge started.

"Delores, they are my students, and as the Head of Hufflepuff House it is up to me to decide with whom they serve their detentions." It was the best she could do. It was the best any teacher could do now, with Umbridge as usurping Headmistress, especially with the full knowledge that Umbridge tortured students now out in the open.

They did their best to keep their students safe after the truth about Umbridge's torturous methods had been revealed. They'd been lucky in a way. Dumbledore had been chased away just before the break and the students had been extremely well behaved or not on campus at all since. Their luck wasn't going to hold for long, though.

"Well I never!" Umbridge huffed, whipping out a clipboard and quill and angrily muttering to herself as she took down notes, waddling out of the room.

The girls grinned like fiends at Umbridge's retreating back. "Go, Professor Sprout!" Jo said in amused awe.

Pomona rubbed her temples, "I hope you appreciate what I go through for you, young ladies…"

"Oh, we do!" Leilani assured her. "So about that detention…?" She was really hoping that was just a ploy to get Umbridge out of the room.

"Yes, you do have detention, and our dear Headmistress will likely want to oversee it so you'll be working with the Venomous Tentacula. Be careful: it's teething again."

The girls shrugged, poisonous plant was better than anything Umbridge had planned.

It wasn't long after that detention that Umbridge declared a new Educational Decree, in which all teachers must delegate the schedule and planning of detentions to her.

The girls kept their heads down, but not everyone else did. So they took matters into their own hands once again. Leili went to Fred asking how he, George and Lee had gotten into Umbridge's office without getting caught. Fred gave her the details and in the dead of night, dressed in shades of almost black the five of them crept on cat-like feet through the halls.

They snuck up the stairs and disabled the alarm spells. Their wands tips glowed softly as they searched the office for the dreaded black quill. They searched high and low until they found their elusive quarry.

Well, quarries.

The twins dragged the box out and counted the smaller boxes inside, six down and three across by four deep. Roughly 72 blood quills lay in malicious wait.

From their pockets, everyone pulled Weasley Joke Quills; all self-inking, all made to look like Umbridge's blood quill. They opened each of the 72 boxes and replaced the real quills with the joke quills. They had originally intended to replace them with the smart-answer and the defective spell checker quills but after careful consideration they determined that, when caught, the student would be punished more harshly for their attempt to escape their already unfair punishment. This way, hopefully Umbridge would never realize the switch had happened, especially with Leilani's illusion spells worked into them. The illusions were set to be triggered when the quills were used for writing, the students would have all the cuts, the faint scars but with none of the pain. After about a day, the illusion would fade, leaving the skin exactly the same as before.

"Love you for enabling us," Leili whispered to Fred as they were leaving.

"Love you too," he grinned, pressing a fleeting kiss to her cheek.

Faster now, but just as quietly, they took the real quills and reset the alarm spells, making their way down the halls and to their houses. Upon arriving, the five of them threw the quills in the fireplace so they couldn't get caught with the stolen things and no one could ever use them to hurt another student ever again.