Frobisher liked being a penguin, albeit a shapeshifting, poltergeist one. And every knows that penguins love ice. Frobisher was no exception. And therefore, many of the pranks he pulled on the ever suspecting but still vulnerable Hogwarts students involved the cold, slippery stuff. There was the time when he froze everyone's ink, rendering it useless for days. Or the time he booby trapped Gryffindor Tower to rain ice on the next unsuspecting student to walk through the portrait door. However, the prank he was about to pull topped all of these.
He'd been planning for weeks. He had enlisted the ghostly help of Jack and Colin, and even the support of Professor Pink. This was the biggest thing he'd ever done, possibly.
The Great Hall had been magically cleared of all chairs and tables, those were now hovering up close to the ceiling, held steady by the Charms professor's spell. Jack and Colin guarded the doors, turning away any students who tried to walk through while Frobisher was working.
It took three hours of swift flying around the floor and sending wave after wave of blue and white cascading into the floor for his masterpiece to be complete. And it was truly a masterpiece.
Where the floor had once been, there was now an ice rink. One thick, perfectly glossy sheet of frozen water covered the entire Hall, crystal tendrils snaking up the walls and catching the light.
Now, the poltergeist's only job was to wait.
It didn't take long. A third year girl wandered through the door, looking to get dinner relatively early so she didn't starve while trying to find her friends and make them leave somewhere warm to eat, so she was not really looking where she was going, and promptly skidded and landed flat on her back, the contents of her bag flying everywhere. She scrambled up, slipping on the cold floor once more, and looked angrily around for the penguin she knew would be hiding somewhere.
Frobisher zoomed gleefully out of his hiding place, cackling madly at the girl's misfortune. Her name was Charley, he remembered. Good humoured, a fun sort always ready for a challenge such as an icy Great Hall.
"Got you! I GOT you!" He whizzed around her head until she got bored of glaring at him, and instead glared furiously at a single spot in front of her, and started picking up her stuff off the floor.
"Frobisher, if you don't stop that, I will- I will... Just stop that, okay!" She waved a hand through him in an attempt to get him out of her face, avoiding giving him a threat relating to her family's connections.
At that moment, there was a shriek and a fluttering sound and Charley turned round to see Clara, the first year she'd been tutoring, sprawled on the floor with a concerned Charms book flapping around her head. She (very carefully) walked over to help her up.
"You okay?"
"Yeah... Thanks, Charley." Clara smiled at the older girl and took the fluttering textbook back into her arms. "Why is the Great Hall an ice rink? Did I miss something?"
Charley glared at Frobisher, who was still zooming around above their heads.
"Blame the flying penguin."
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It didn't take long for news of the frozen Great Hall to spread around the school, and soon everyone knew. People were flooding in to have a go (usually after eating dinner in the kitchen), and Frobisher was feeling a little sidelined. It had been his prank, after all, and now it seemed to have been turned into a fairground attraction. Oh well, he thought. At least now there were more people to randomly shower with ice.
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One person who was not so keen to go on the ice was Anthony. Peter had to practically drag him all the way to the Great Hall, unfazed by his boyfriend's attempts to stop him.
"Come ON, you'll be great at it! You're great at everything. I'm the one who'll be rubbish, and I'm still willing to try..." This statement was the one that had eventually forced Anthony onto the ice, and the statement that had been proven incredibly wrong.
Peter seemed to be a miraculous professional skater, gliding around with ease on his charmed shoes. How he did it was a mystery, considering his ridiculous clumsiness in all other areas.
Anthony, on the other hand, kept falling over every few seconds, which was extremely embarrassing and completely out of character for him. He eventually resorted to clinging tightly to his boyfriend's arm and letting him take charge, which Peter was being decidedly smug about.
He found it pretty attractive, to be honest.
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Fitz and Lethe stumbled across the ice rink entirely by accident. They were walking back from the library (they'd been there since curfew ended, Lethe had slept in Gryffindor Tower that night), when they had been suddenly faced with an exceptionally cold Great Hall and about fifty chattering students doing their best not to fall over.
Lethe had been pretty nervous about going in. People, so many people, and a risk of serious injury from the ice. But Fitz had insisted, gentle persuasion eventually coaxing them out onto the ice.
And they were actually not that bad. It took them a minute, but soon Lethe was managing to hold their own in the small crowd of people. They could manoeuvre pretty well (they had a really good sense of balance. Flying was something that they had passed very well in first year, despite being...not so happy that year), but they tried to keep it slow for Fitz, who was sliding along very slowly and shakily behind them, and grinning massively.
Eventually Fitz's original momentum ran out, and he jogged carefully up to Lethe, taking their hand and pulling them close. Lethe didn't protest as Fitz pushed once with his foot and sent the pair of them into a gentle spinning dance across the floor, both smiling and Lethe blushing a little, keeping the balance a little shakily but managing to avoid everyone else on the rink.
Ace was not messing around. As soon as she'd heard there was ice skating, she'd grabbed Susan and pulled her into the rink, incredibly pleased with her sudden chance to show off.
She was a good skater. Seriously good. Years of Muggle birthday parties and a few lessons (that had mostly ended badly) had paid off, and she was soon cutting a path through the crowds of people, Susan trailing behind a little, and barely missing a pair who seemed to be dancing and were completely lost in each other. Susan called a quick apology out to them (though neither seemed to hear), and several others who were caught in Ace's unrelenting path.
Some floppy haired kid dancing like a drunken giraffe was nearly decapitated by Ace as she shot past, and this time she stopped to apologise, causing Susan to crash straight into her. Both girls fell on top of the thoroughly confused boy in a giggling heap, and stayed that way for several minutes, leaving the poor kid to crawl out from under them and resume his weird dancing.
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By the end of the night, only a few people were left in the Great Hall.
Charley and Clara were skating slowly around the edge, deep in conversation about Charms, and then stuff that was not Charms and then hey, did Clara want to meet Charley in the library after school on Monday for a date? To which the answer was a very shy 'yes'. Charley hadn't meant for it to happen that way, but the words came out and they were said now.
Lethe and Fitz were still caught in their slow, spinning dance, half asleep but too busy enjoying this rare moment of happiness to care.
Peter and Anthony (mostly Anthony) had given up on ice skating and were now shamelessly kissing just outside the Great Hall, and had been for quite a while. People mostly chose to just ignore the pair, but a few got pictures to embarrass them later.
A few other students skated lazily around the Hall, unaware to the not-so-evil plot that was taking place above their heads.
Frobisher had a plan. The penguin clapped his hands twice, setting off a mini fireworks display over the ceiling. Blue and white bursts of light erupted and then dissolved into thousands of tiny snowflakes, spiralling down and coming to rest on the hair and shoulders and faces of the few happy students left in the Great Hall.