"Katie, this is stupid."

Alicia's tone was low and firm, the type of voice Katie had come to associate with Molly Weasley over the years. Katie ignored her friend, however, as she was already perfectly aware of the stupidity of her plan.

"Katie," Alicia said again, "this is-"

"I heard you the first time," Katie interrupted matter-of-factly. "And I already know."

"And dangerous," Alicia added, crossing her arms. Alicia's overactive maternal instincts always made Katie want to hug her and shoot her at the same time. While she knew it was always good to have someone on your side, it wasn't exactly the biggest comfort in the world knowing that that someone was the person who would be trying to talk you out of it every step of the way.

"Naturally," Katie replied, keep her tone light as she laced up her long, black boots and slid her wand into the left one.

Angelina sighed heavily. "Katie, don't do this," she pleaded.

"Are you going to help me or not?" Katie asked stubbornly, searching for an elastic to tie her hair back with.

"Hell yeah!" Lee answered, raising his hand for a high five. Katie didn't pay him any attention. Embarrassed, Lee let his arm fall limply against his side, like a piece of cooked spaghetti. Lee missed having the twins around, always laughing and slapping each other's hands. Lee knew he would always be a third wheel when it came to Fred and George, but they made him feel like a part of something, like he was hilarious and unique and just as brilliant as them. Plus it was hard on him, seeing Katie so sad without Fred. It was hard on all of them.

"Don't encourage her!" Angelina admonished Lee, smacking his arm. Lee yelped, holding his wounded arm in his hand and grumbling incoherently at her. Angelina didn't notice.

"Katie, please don't do this," she repeated, her desperation evident in her voice. "For us?" realizing her pleas had fallen on deaf ears, she tried a different approach. "For Fred?"

Katie stopped short, her hair falling messily around her face as she let go of it, the elastic flying from her hands and landing somewhere behind her bed. Had she been thinking, she would have realized the chances of finding it again were close to nil, but at the moment she didn't care. In the two weeks since Fred had left this was the angriest she had felt.

Katie froze, glaring at Angelina with such intensity in her bright green eyes that her friend dropped her gaze, unable to meet them.

"For Fred?" Katie deadpanned. "For Fred?" she repeated, louder, her voiced tinged with hysteria. In a flash she had pulled her wand from her boot, pressing the tip against her best friend's throat.

"That woman is the reason Fred left," Katie hissed. Angelina gulped, nodding.

Suddenly realizing what she was doing, Katie dropped her wand as if it had burned her, and it hit the floor with a dull thud. She tuned around swiftly, not looking at Angelina, who had gone pale.

"Sorry," Katie muttered, embarrassed.

"S'alright," Angelina said quietly, sharing a significant look with Angelina.

And that was how Angelina, Alicia, and Lee found themselves following Katie down a deserted corridor at midnight, searching for Umbridge's office.

Katie couldn't figure out how they did it. Fred had once made a vague reference to a map, but he'd refused to go into detail. At the moment, the four friends were all seriously wishing they had some fort of map.

"You've never done with without Fred, have you?" Lee asked offhandedly, observing Katie's knee-length black boots.

Katie shushed him, a blush creeping over her face. "He never let me wear them when I helped him pull a prank," she muttered lamely. "He said they were impractical." Katie refused to admit out loud that he was right. Her feet were killing her.

"I think it's through here," Katie whispered loudly, gesturing toward a door in front of them on the left side. The group had mixed feelings about having reached their destination.

Lee was thrilled to be pranking again, even if it was without Fred and George. He had been afraid that his seventh year was going to be rather anticlimactic after six years of pranking with Fred and George and then graduating with nothing to show for it.

Alicia was hoping Katie would come to her senses and stop this before she made a horrible mistake. This was stupid and they were all going to get caught and get into trouble, Alicia just knew it.

Angelina wanted Katie to be happy. She just wished she could be sure this was what Katie really wanted.

And Katie just wanted revenge. This woman had made Fred leave. Fred was everything to Katie. He was her port in the storm. When Katie's parents had died, he had been there, holding her until she couldn't cry anymore. She had never let anyone else see her cry, but Fred was special. Fred was all she had. And this woman had taken that away.

"Come on!" Katie hissed, opening the door to Umbridge's room as quietly as she could. As soon as she was inside, she turned to her friends. "I'm sorry," she whispered to them.

"For what?" Angelina asked, confused.

"For this," Katie responded, closing the door in their faces and locking it magically as best she could. "I can't let you get in trouble because of me," she told them through the crack in the door. Then she made her way to Umbridge's office.

The meowing kittens had to be first. They were horrible and ceaseless and Katie just wanted to smash them. Instead, with a flick of her wand, they were replaced. Warts for whiskers, slimy skin where fur used to be, a horrible, although somehow less obnoxious croaking noise filling the room. Perfect.

The next spell was a little trickier. It took three tries for Katie to get it just right. "Shoot!" she muttered, buggering up the second try and attempting it a third. There, she thought with satisfaction, watching toad after real live toad spill out of the drawers in Umbridge's desk.

Surveying her handiwork, Katie let her guard down for a moment, smiling at her own job well done.

"Miss Bell," came a shrill his from behind her, and Katie jumped at least two feet in the air.

"P-p-proffesor!" Katie cried, turning around as she hurriedly tried to regain her composure. "I-I was, uh…" Katie trailed off, deciding it would be wisest to not try and deny her actions.

An hour later, Angelina, Alicia, and Lee were again waiting for Katie outside of Umbridge's classroom, and they held her as she sobbed and Alicia wrapped a bandage around the words, I will not perform unnecessary spells.

*****

AN: I hope you guys don't think I'm dragging this story out too much. I rather like the way it's going, but I can't be sure how my reader's will take it. Please let me know how you feel, I love reading reviews!