"Meow"
That cat. For a second they stared at her. Then they stared at each other.
The twins could hear footsteps approaching. "Run," Fred gasped. He grabbed his brother by the hand and ran away from the caretaker and his scary pawed minion. Or at least, tried to. Filch was crazy fast for his age and the castle was unfamiliar. Every corridor was way too similar to the next and … where is that fucking staircase?! Just as they thought they were on the right track, they hit a dead end. George pulled at Fred's arm to get into one of the classrooms, but it was no use.
"What is it with you young Griffs out of bed, heh?" Filch suddenly stood right behind them and wasn't even out of breath. "DETENTION! Tomorrow. You come to me one hour before curfew as you are so fond of staying up late," He grinned maliciously. George squeezed Fred's hand. They dropped their heads simultaneously and followed Filch back to Gryffindor Tower. He rambled on about pain and mutilation and whatnot, but they didn't listen. After getting caught for like the tenth time they were numb to his threats.
"I wonder," Fred said when they entered the common room. "how that old codger gets us. It's a giant castle and everytime we turn a corner he is there and ends the night."
George could only guess, "Maybe he apparates at random spots until he finally can jump on someone from behind!"
Fred grinned, "Maybe-"
"No one can apparate or disapparate on Hogwarts Grounds!," Percy approached them. He crossed his arms and wore a stern look on his face. He is obviously trying to copy Mom. "You would know it, if you read the book I gave you for Christmas: Hogwarts, A History."
"Books, Perce," Fred said.
"What are books to Life itself?," George adds with a dreamy expression.
They wrapped their arms around each other talking to themselves exaggerating every sentence for the pure pleasure of pushing their brother's buttons.
"To roam the castle-,"
"To find the unfound-"
Fred held up his finger to make a point, "How can someone find the unfound if someone already found the unfound?"
"And wrote about it in a book!" George sticked out his tongue as if he thought a book about adventure would be a distasteful thing.
The twins closed out their moment with: "Life would be boring!"
They looked at Percy with teasing smiles only 11-year-olds can pull off without looking crazy, but their brother just rolled his eyes. "You two have to watch it, seriously. You cannot go around and break all the rules. We are not back home! Every time you get into trouble we lose points. You have to grow up and show some respect! What were you even doing out outside after curfew? And don't tell me finding the unfound!"
"Then we have absolutely nothing to tell you, brother", Fred said and George replied "It's not like we want to lose points. Filch just catches us, out of nowhere!"
"If you don't stop I will tell Mom."
"Tell her," Fred dared. "She'll be surprised"
George wiped away a fake tear "Her well-behaved twins, suddenly gone bad!"
"I will!," Percy shouted angrily "Tell me what you were doing or I'll write a letter! Now!"
"Okay, give our best to Filch on your way to the owlery … now," Fred replied with George chiming in on 'now' in a mocking tune. They sat down on the sofa and started talking to Lee and Angelina who were also still up in the common room working on their potions essays.
"You can't just… I'm still talking to you!," Percy called out. He felt a firm hand on his shoulder and looked up to Charlie. "Let them be. You can't win this fight and you don't need to."
"They can't just dismiss me! Why are you always on their side?!" "I'm not on anyone's side. You are all my brothers. But fighting will only make you angry and change nothing else. Let the teachers and prefects do their job and make them follow the rules." Percy looked put out but let his brother hug him and stroke his hair like he used to do since they were little. "And what if I am the prefect one day?" Charlie chuckled, "Maybe they will have changed for the better."
The next day was uneventful. Classes were fun and in the afternoon the twins continued to roam the castle. They tried to find their way back to the corridor they were exploring the day before, but they had a hard time finding it. During the night everything looked a little different. The portraits were sleeping. The light from their wands was illuminating small details easily overlooked at daytime, but they could not see the corridor as a whole.
When they finally found their way back, they looked into the abandoned classrooms they could enter. They didn't yet know the unlocking charm. It was one of the top points on their to-do list, but as it was they found nothing special in the unlocked classrooms. Finally they tried to memorize the way to the great staircase in case they ever had the need to come back to this exact corridor again.
Next they went back up to the tower. Lee let them copy his potions essay yesterday, but they still had to do one for transfiguration so they returned to the common room to do their homework with the others. One Inch on the basic theory of transfiguration was not as basic as you would think and in the end they asked Charlie for pointers. Good to have a big brother on hand! That left them with enough time to practice the tempevanescet spell on the big brother that had not been helpful for as long as they could remember. Percy was writing an excruciatingly long essay and if they got their spell right, the ink on that scroll would vanish in a few hours. Their mother used that spell all the time at home when they were learning how to write so they could cut costs by reusing their parchments.
"Oh, how I'd love to see his face," Fred laughed mischievously, "when Perce presents Flitwick with an empty scroll." George shushed him but still giggled.
When they could not stall the inevitable any longer George halfheartedly dragged his twin to the portrait hole. It was time for their detention, but suddenly Percy grabbed them from behind. "Where do you think you are going?," he exclaimed angrily "It's nearly curfew!"
Fred raises an eyebrow "Oh, I didn't know I had to report my location to you, big brother."
"I will see that you two don't get into any more trouble! You are staying, did you hear me?"
Fred laughed "Make us!" and turned to go but Percy drew his wand and locked Fred's legs with a jinx the twins never heard of and Fred toppled over. George could just hold him up so Fred didn't fall face first on the floor.
"What the -," Fred cursed and George complained "Release him! We have to go to detention with Filch."
"This late? You are making that up."
"No it's true" George looked distressed, but his twin nudged him and joked, "We would not lie about such a sad affair." George grinned, "Yeah, where would be the fun in that?"
"Well," Percy said and released Freds legs. "If what you say is true, you will have nothing against me walking you to your detention."
Fred, who had bounced happily at getting to use his legs again, grinned, grabbed his brother's wand and yelled: " Race you!"
So the three brothers raced through the castle. Percy was not as fast as the twins but he had longer legs and knew his way around the castle, so he closed up to them on every corner. When they were running down the last staircase to the ground floor, Fred placed a dung bomb on the Floor and Percy, who was running at full speed, could not stop and stepped on the dung bomb causing it to explode.
Fred and George were heaving with laughter as Percy was lying on the floor coughing for fresh air. They high fived, threw Percy's wand near his feet and quickly continued their way to Filch's Office.
The door stood open and the caretaker was mumbling inaudibly to himself. The shelfs in the office were mostly empty and the floor was covered with various wet objects. The twins stayed at the door, because they did not want to step on anything Filch confiscated. Those things tended to be quite explosive or otherwise dangerous.
"Hello, the party committee has arrived!," Fred and George saluted.
To their shock, Filch chuckled, but quickly sent them a glare. "Just about time! As you see you are not the only troublemakers here, heh."
He was standing at his desk, possibly the only part of the room that looked like it usually did. He kicked at something at his feet.
"That fucking poltergeist will be the end of me! If I ever catch any of you little shits messing with my office, you are out of this castle before you can say fucking "excorcism" is that understood?"
"Abso-" "fucking" "-lutely!" The twins said cheerful.
Filch raised his eyebrows "Go on, mock me, boys. You think I mind? I have you clean my Office till your hands start bleeding and your firstborns finally learn how to spell curfew."
The twins looked at each other. Well that wiped the smiles out of their faces.
"Lucky for you, wee little firsties, this mess is beyond your capabilities." He signed to the floor. "Not that I would not enjoy your truly deserved suffering at the loss of a limb or two, heh."
He cackled a long moment then sighed and suddenly bluffed, "What are you doing? Come over here! You will help me get my archives in order!"
The twins approached, treading carefully on the narrow path that was leading from the door to the desk. On the left side of the desk, Filch stood over a gooey, soaking pile of scrolls and record cards only halfway inside their files. The right side was neat. A few boxes stacked with record cards already inside. Another narrow path led to a shelf that had a few rolls of parchment in them.
"You have the night shift party committee," Filch mocked them, "your fellow miscreants already started on this task. It's simple: clean and dry the papers, sort them and put them back on that shelf over there."
"But we don't know the spell to clean or dry something yet"
"Don't you, heh. So you have to do it the good, old, muggle way and transcribe the files, heh. "
"But-"
"One word and I will have you here all week!"
Filch made his way to the door, taking no care and nearly making George fall outside the cleared path.
"I want tidy handwriting. I want it quick. I will have a look in this room everytime I complete a round and if I return and you are not here and busy this detention will look like a holiday in retrospect!" He barked and sent his spit flying at the twins while speaking. They were tempted to duck behind the desk. It was just so gross.
Then his cat joined Filch and the twins were alone. "It's just so unfair that we have to do that! It would be such a quick job if we were even second years!" George complained.
"We will make that coot suffer." Fred comforted his brother, "But I guess we wee little firsties have to up our game for that." He sighed and they started with their tedious work.
Fred was making faces, but took to the task of heroically holding up the papers with whatever goo was on it. He read the file to George, who wrote it down on a clean parchment. On and on they worked.
"Tonks, Nymphadora: Misdeeds: Muddying the floors in the dungeon, breaking the window in room 2-401 from the outside with a broom, sheltering a… I can't read that, just skip it! And … haha" he burst out in laughter "breaking curfew, unclothed with Charlie Weasley!"
"What?!" George nearly forgot the record was filthy and grabbed it from his brother to see if he was real. "No way!" He laughed and Fred showed him the card. The ink was smudged but it was definitely reading unclothed with Charlie Weasley.
"This is gold! We have to keep that one!", George grinned.
"Oh my, what will we have him do for this one?" Fred grinned wolfishly. He already had an idea… maybe Charlie could get them on the Quidditch team. He was the captain after all.
"He never even told us about seeing anyone," George said disappointedly.
"I thought he was gay to be honest."
"With who?"
"That dragon guy, Jason!"
"Well, yeah I would ship it, I guess"
George finished Nymphadora's new card and filed it in. He passed an empty file to his brother who tucked the original inside without touching it and George put it in his pocket.
"We should check Percy's file, maybe we will get something on him!" But both their brothers had a clean file save the unclothed comment on Charlie's card.
"This is just not possible. Filch gets his knickers in a twist for sneezing at the wrong moment. How can anyone have an empty page?" George complained.
If you are a sad bore like Perce, it should come easily," Fred answered.
"True."
Their own files had a long list of misdeeds already.
"I think those cards are so wrecked, they are unsaveable. What do you think, George?"
"I guess we just have to go by memory then," George grinned in anticipation.
Fred straightened his back and spoke in a solemn voice, "Forge the innocent Weasley -
misdeeds: not pulling the stick out of Percy Weasley's ass"
George roared with laughter and could only write it down after wiping a tear from his eye.
George added, "being obscenely funny."
"obviously. Thirdly:" Fred hung his robe on the chair and stripped his jumper and button down shirt "after curfew, unclothed in Filch's Office!"
George wrote that down laughing and said, "What are you doing? Filch will close his current round soon."
"Yeah, whatever. I got that goo all over my clothes already. I don't feel like adding more to it."
"Right, sorry bro."
George sent him an apologetic look, but was still happy he got to do the easy part of the job today. "Got another one?"
"Just write down 'caught after curfew' until the card is full, I guess"
"And one 'threw a dungbomb' for good measure."
After he finished writing, George wanted to grab the next card to note the misdeeds of Taylor, Laurel, which Fred was currently reading aloud, but they were out of cards. "You see some empty parchment anywhere?" he asked Fred.
Having had a good look around the room in the hours they'd been in Filch's Office, they knew there would not be any spare parchment anywhere other than on the desk…
But the desk also had drawers!
"Possibly here?" Fred pulled the drawer open. It was filled to the brim with muck. Yew! As he closed the drawer again, a piece of parchment got stuck and pushed out of the drawer. Interestingly, it was clean where it was not inside the drawer anymore. Fred pulled it out and looked at it closely.
"Has to be enchanted," George supposed.
"If Filch has got enchanted paper: why not use it on all his files and save us all that work?!" Fred complained.
"Cause he's thick as beans?"
"Sad, but true."
At just that moment Filch stepped through the door.
"You lot!" He yelled," Straight to your dorm room and no excursions! I have to clean up the mess of you spoiled brats again and I don't want to additionally have to babysit you while I do it!"
The twins stared at him in shock. Thanking their luck, Filch hadn't cared to listen in to them, Fred grabbed his clothes and they ran up straight to Gryffindor Tower before he could give them another detention for setting up that dungbomb.
Part 1/4
A/N Thanks to anyone reading this far! As you might have guessed, my native language is not English. Does anyone of you lovely readers want to join me in this adventure and be my beta? I'd highly appreciate it, as well as any constructive criticism or feedback in the comments.
Updates will come once a week on Sundays.