"Roger, wake up!"
Roger sighed and rolled onto his stomach. Maurice pulled him out of his bed and he landed on the floor. "I stayed for you, you better get up with me on Christmas morning!"
"What's so special about Christmas?" Roger muttered, grabbing his blanket and pulling it down with him. Maurice gasped.
It was silent. Roger sat up and then Maurice threw something furry at his face. Roger fell backwards.
There was a kitten on his face.
"Happy Christmas!" Maurice cheered. "You seem awkwardly lonely all the time, so I got you a kitty. I wasn't going to name it, but then it started killing my homework, so I named it Annoying and the name sort of stuck."
"Its name is Annoying?" Roger asked, sitting up and holding the kitten up to his face. It was small, gray-and-white, and had just scratched his nose. "Ow."
"I should've named it Evil," Maurice mused. "Anyway, look, you have presents. I throw them at you with great enthusiasm!"
Roger briefly wondered if anyone had gotten Maurice candy for Christmas, then stared at the pile of presents he had. Why did he have presents? He could understand Maurice giving him something, but who else?
"You got something from Jack, something from Harold – hey, he didn't get me anything, he probably hates me, something from Draco, something from… uh, I can't read that, and- ooh! You got something from your girlfriend!"
Roger set the kitten down and grabbed the smallish package from Maurice.
To Roger
From Luna
He didn't want to open it with Maurice practically falling on top of him, but he honestly wanted to know what was inside. So he ripped it open and a gold necklace-thing fell out. Maurice grabbed it out of his lap.
"Ooh, it's got a wolf thing-y," he said. "Your girlfriend likes you-"
"She's not my girlfriend," Roger muttered, turning red. Maurice grinned and put it on Roger. It caught on Roger's ear. "Watch out, you're going to take my ear off!"
Eventually Maurice stopped touching him and Roger was able to open the rest of his presents in peace while Maurice played with Annoying – okay, Roger was really going to have to think of a better name for that thing.
Nemesis sounded good.
He'd gotten that scarf from Draco, some candy – which he immediately tossed over to Maurice, who squealed and nearly gave Nemesis a heart attack, and a letter from Jack.
First-years aren't allowed broomsticks, but next year you'll have one. Maurice says you're good at Quidditch. I'll give it to you when we go home for summer.
The rest of the day passed smoothly – they mostly stayed up in their dorm, because the minute they stepped downstairs Malfoy started interrogating them about how they liked the imported scarves – and soon it was time for Christmas dinner.
"Hurry up!" Maurice said, grabbing Roger's hand and pulling him out of their dorm. "No, Annoying – uh, Nemesis, you can't come! Hurry up!"
It seemed that since Harold (and Jack, and Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott…) had gone home for Christmas, Roger was going to be the center of Maurice's attention until they came back. Even Draco bragging about his new sweater couldn't tear Maurice's attention away from Roger, which Roger found extremely creepy. "What does Nemesis mean, anyway?" Maurice asked.
"Greek goddess of revenge," Roger muttered. Maurice rolled his eyes.
"Of course you'd pick revenge," he said. "But if you were going to go creepy, why not go Hades or… uh… Hades? I mean, the cat's a girl, but still."
The entire dinnertime conversation was like this, and Roger couldn't even glance over to the Ravenclaw table to look at Luna, because she'd gone home. He settled for glaring at the Gryffindor twins in his year.
"Hey, Maurice…" Roger said, watching the twins as they got up from the table and headed for the door. "Let's go."
"What? I'm not done yet-" Maurice cut himself off when he saw where Roger was looking. "Okay."
They followed the twins up to the Gryffindor Common Room. Maurice was suspiciously good at sneaking around, though he was a little bit too dramatic about it. Roger, when he wasn't trying to intimidate people, just seemed to melt into the walls, so not being seen wasn't really a problem.
They leaped into the common room before the door closed.
That's when the twins saw them.
"What are you doing in here?" one of them asked. Roger glared, and Maurice grinned.
"Hey! I'm Maurice Macmillan, and this is my creepy friend Roger!" he said. "We're Slytherins!"
"Yeah, we could tell that for ourselves," the other one said. "Anyway, I'm Sam-"
"And I'm Eric."
"Do you guys ever switch places for fun? I would if I had a twin. You know, I wonder if I could have a lost twin somewhere…" Maurice rambled on, and soon both twins forgot about Roger, who decided to go mess with some Gryffindor dormitories.
He eventually found himself in some random dormitory with Zonko's products strewn all over. Two of the beds were pushed closer than the others – partially for scheming, partially for comfort, Roger guessed.
There was someone coming up the stairs. Roger dove underneath one of the beds that looked like its owner had gone home for Christmas and waited.
It was the other Gryffindor twins.
"I wonder why there was a Slytherin in the common room," one of them said.
"Well, it was the weird one – you know, the one who's got a Hufflepuff brother and drags the werewolf kid around with him."
"True."
"Mum's going to regret she sent us this for Christmas," the second one said, changing the subject abruptly.
They didn't leave. Roger ended up falling asleep under the bed, curled up in a ball on the floor. Thankfully he was quiet – if Maurice had been in this situation his snoring would wake the twins up even if he could manage to keep quiet – or otherwise he'd have been in some trouble.
It was quiet. Maybe they were sleeping, or already at breakfast.
Roger slid out from under the bed.
"Gotcha!" one of them shouted, and Roger was dragged up onto the bed, kicking and trying to bite whoever was holding his arms back.
"Well, George, it seems we've caught a trespasser," one of them said. The one that was holding onto him laughed.
"It's that werewolf kid. The one that hit the bludger that gave you a concussion," he said.
Roger was fairly certain more would've happened had Maurice not burst through the door at that exact moment. "Roger! There you are! Why are you still here? I left hours ago. Also I ran into Harry Potter and that orange-haired kid on my way back to the common room in Slytherin robes. That's something we should've thought of – Gryffindor robes. Oh, hi, I'm Maurice!"
"Fred-"
"And George Weasley."
"Can you let Roger go now? I need to drag him down to breakfast and annoy him with tales of his kitten."
"Uh… okay, I guess…" George said, letting go of Roger. Maurice grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the Gryffindor common room, ignoring stares from random Gryffindors as they went.
"Wow, you're lucky I showed up when I did!"
And here we go. :)
Uh, yeah. I hope you enjoyed, review if you have something to say, et cetera. :D