Chapter 10: Setting Things in Motion
On the morning of October 19th, a visitor to Hogwarts would've noticed particularly weird behaviour from three-quarters of its students. The height of this peculiarity could be seen at the entrances to the common rooms. Students were seen walking out like any other morning, but then after a few steps, stopping to inspect their cloaks with horror. To the casual passerby, it would seem unnatural that nearly all of them promptly turned around and stormed back to their rooms. Looking a bit more carefully, this same passerby would notice that the colour of the students's cloaks changed upon crossing the threshold. Inside the common room, each student had either a red, blue, green, or golden cloak depending on their house. But once they set foot outside the common rooms, everyone was wearing a Slytherin cloak. This had no effect on those already wearing Slytherin cloaks so for a while it was only Slytherins in the Great Hall for breakfast. Many of them were too groggy to notice the absence of the others, but it was soon brought to everyone's attention. Some of the later arrivals laughed and cryptically said that the rest of the school was suffering a self-proclaimed clothing crisis. It wasn't long before they found out what that meant.
They watched as a few Gryffindors stomped to their table not wearing a cloak and sat glaring at the Slytherin table. The cloaks weren't mandatory to wear but it was basically the school uniform so seeing a group of students without cloaks was rare. But the snakes did not yet understand why they were getting such looks of hatred.
Then the rest of the students entered. It was clear that the heads of houses had ushered them along, saying they would work it out later. And so in filed the rest of the school, who had all seemingly decided to be Slytherins for the day. There was silence at first but soon the Slytherin table was in an uproar. Most couldn't eat they were laughing so hard. The laughter was contagious, Merlin joined in and even Salazar couldn't help himself. The other founders were glaring at him like their students but he held up his hands.
"Not me, I swear. I have no idea who did this." Although he had a slight inkling. Merlin? Was this your doing?
Now why on earth would you think that? A humble first year such as myself couldn't pull this off. He glanced up at the high table with a wide grin. Although I can assure you the prankster told me the spell will wear off overnight. Salazar just shook his head and grinned. He was beginning to see why Merlin was in his house.
Luckily today was not a day that Libæna was in class with Drugen or Flora. Though she was normally friendly, out of solidarity with her house, and for that matter the rest of the school, she refused to speak with them. Only the Ravenclaws spoke with their Slytherin friends that day, and only for prearranged study sessions. They weren't happy about the colour change but schoolwork was more important still. As happened the day before, everyone was trying to figure out who had pulled off this magnificent prank. One of the upperclassmen classes had asked Professor Slytherin, but he said much the same.
"I don't know who did this but it was a masterful prank. No one is an any danger, just good fun, and an undeniably Slytherin mark. The three things that make a perfect prank." When Merlin heard those words repeated later he knew Salazar was sending a message to him. But many of the other Slytherins took this as a challenge. After dinner, a bulletin was posted in the common room. It read: SLYTHERIN PRANKING CLUB, first meeting tonight at 8 o'clock in the common room, all ages.
"Are you going to go?" Merlin asked Flora.
"Of course! It will be so much fun," she said as they walked to the library to work on their Astronomy essays. "Plus, I still think the same person who was making the illusions in Runes is the same person who turned everyone's cloaks green. And maybe that person will be at the meeting. Don't you want to know who did it?"
"I don't know. I am content just enjoying their work." She shook her head.
"Whatever. Let's just work on these essays so we can have them done before this meeting."
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"I call this first meeting of the official Slytherin pranking club to order at five past eight on the night of October 19th." Stephen and Willow, both fourth year students, were leading the meeting while the other students sprawled on the furniture or lay on the floor. "The prank today inspired us to create this club to continue further occurrences of this type of perfect prank, as our fearless head of house said. While this prank today was some high-level magic, we are confident that together we can achieve many more pranks that even some of our first-years could help us with. Furthermore, we are aware that the person, or persons, responsible for today's joke is probably among us but we will respect their wishes to remain unknown. All we ask is for your help in further fun." A spattering of applause started as was picked up by the others before Willow raised her hand for silence.
"So to start things off we wanted to set some goals and basic rules for any pranks we come up with." She tapped her oaken staff on the large scroll they had previously attached to the wall behind them. "So far we have 'does not directly put anyone in danger, does not hinder the ability to learn in class, and easy to undo quickly if unforeseen circumstances arrive.' Does anyone have anything else?"
"Professor Slytherin had said he enjoyed this prank because it was clearly done by a snake, should we add that?"
"That's nice sometimes but I don't think it should be a requirement; sometimes you might want to have the whole school guessing."
"Both good points. I'll put that up here as an added bonus."
"Maybe they should only last a day at most. Much longer and it's not as funny."
"Also good."
"No prank should be used to make fun of anyone."
"Yes. These are meant for good laughs, not for bullying." She added that to the list as well. "Anything else?" No one spoke.
"Okay then, now the fun part." Stephen walked over to the other bit of parchment on the wall. "Prank ideas." Several hands flew into the air, others just yelled out their ideas. "Hold it, I can't hear when you are all talking over one another. Anna, you have nicely raised your hand. What is your idea?"
"Could we magically change the hair color of other students? Crazy colors like pink or orange?"
"Good. I like that." He put that on the list. "Izzy?"
"What if we enchanted a bunch of quills to tickle whoever tried to write with them and swapped them out with the normal classroom sets?"
"But one if one of us ends up with a tickling quill?" Lisa asked.
"We can tell all the Slytherins the counterspell before we plant them"
"Nicely planned already. But that might disrupt the learning in class so I'm not sure." There was a brief period of silence before Merlin raised his hand. "Yes Drugen?"
"Could we make it so that the enchantment only starts at a certain time? Once classes are through? Maybe we would want to put the quills in the library instead."
"Good thinking. Okay, tickling quills is on the list." The brainstorming continued for a few more hours before they called it a night and cast a cloaking charm over the parchment.
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With two weeks until holiday break, the pranks were spaced out accordingly. The plan was as follows: Saturday was crazy hair day; anyone who had washed their hands in the lady's restroom on the second floor was sporting a lovely shade of pink that day. On Monday the enchanted tickling quills were planted in the library and the giggles could be heard echoing around the halls up until midnight. The few druids in the school teamed up on Tuesday to hide behind tapestries and spook people by speaking into their minds. Nothing crazy, just holding a conversation and convincing them that they were arguing with their conscious. The snarky comments almost spoiled that one though. Then a break day to evaluate the success of the previous pranks. Two days before the holidays began, each person in the club picked another student's name out of a hat at random and placed a simple charm on them at lunch.
They delivered this charm by way of an charmed letter. The letter was unsuspicious, a nice little note of good cheer. Some read, "have a nice day," "you are brilliant," "be confident in yourself," or "your smile lights up the world." But, having read these letters, they now experienced the occasional sensation of being tapped politely on the shoulder. Yet of course, upon turning about, they saw no one. Or they saw their friends who denied the tap. This lead to a slight bit of paranoia for those unfortunate souls; a bit more than the pranking club had predicted. They made sure to undo that one only an hour after dinner rather than letting it continue till midnight like the others.
Though Merlin was enjoying these fun pranks, helping behind the scenes to make them more successful, he had one more master prank up his sleeve. One that would not wear off at midnight. But first he had to make sure to enchant the suits of armour. Really he should've done it long ago but he got distracted. School work, pranking, laziness, okay he forgot. However, Samhain was a time when magic was particularly strong. Which could be a good time for the members of the Old Religion to attack the school so he needed to finish his protection. Hopefully they wouldn't but if Morgana and Morgause were anything to go by, you never knew what was going on in their heads.
That night, Merlin cast a sleeping charm on his dorm mates to make sure they wouldn't notice his absence, and snuck out to the Room of Requirement. He looked over the final spell on last time and set out on his mission. He had a basic map of the castle in his pocket with a mark where every suit of armour was. Fifty-three in all. He walked to the closest statue and put both hands on its shoulders.
"Ego præcipio tibi, et defendere vitam meam, ad arcem omnis habitator. Cum in eis sunt. Nec quieuere antequam praeterit aut periculum in causa excideris." Merlin's eyes blazed gold and he felt a little bit of life come into the statue. It startled him and he jumped back. The suit of armour saluted him with his sword and resumed its previous position. Satisfied that it seemed to have worked, he crossed that particular statue off the map and proceeded to the next one.
He had made it through just over half of the suits of armour when he heard a voice coming from a few floors up. He turned around to see Professor Hemlock pointing down at him.
"All students are suppose to be in bed!" She shouted. "What do you think you are doing, sneaking about?" She started to storm down the stairs. "You best not be pulling any pranks. I've had enough of those ridiculous gags."
"Well you will only have to deal with one more," Merlin muttered. He threw his hands out in front of him, and without saying a word, pushed the staircase that Professor Hemlock was standing on. The sudden movement caused her to cry out in surprise and grip the handrails. The staircase swung gently to connect to an adjacent landing, pausing, and swinging back to its original position. Before it returned completely, Merlin flipped up his hood and darted up a different staircase. Also now causing this one to glide to a new landing. He hopped off and took off running toward his next target, leaving Hemlock shocked as the two staircases continued to glide back and forth between their two landings. He wasn't planning on initiating this prank until Monday night when his magic would be strongest, but he supposed now was as good a time as any.
Merlin continued through the rest of the night, charming the armour and setting advantageous staircases into perpetual back and forth motion. The whole school would be thrown off tomorrow, but it wouldn't be long before they realized it was for the better. It was way easier to walk across the center space rather than having to stick to the perimeter.
Finally, at almost four in the morning, Merlin collapsed back in his bed. The staircases were crazy but all fifty-three suits of armour would be ready to defend Hogwarts at a moment's notice. He would tell the founders the spell to activate them in the morning just so that someone else would know, but he might just happen to forget to mention what it does. No use ruining the surprise. With that thought, he was fast asleep.
The long spell = I command you to come to life and defend every resident of this castle at my call. Defend them with your being. Do not rest until the danger has passed or you have fallen in your cause.
A/N: Thanks to Emmie Fine faerygirl and some of my IRL friends for prank ideas.
Shameless self plug here: If you enjoy my writing and would like to read more, I nearly done posting my NaNoWriMo story from this year on my FictionPress page (link in profile and I use the same name) and I would really appreciate constructive criticism. The story is called The Fate of Our World. However, if you are just here for the Merlin fun then don't feel any pressure; I love you all just the same.