Just A Typical Weasley, Christmas, Right?: Chapter 6

Guys I am so, so sorry for not updating in forever. I know that this is literally the most unsatisfying and lame excuse but I really was busy. I wrote whenever I could, and I finally was able to get it up. Also, I'd like to thank you again for continuing with this story, especially if you reviewed, favorited, and/or followed.

Quote of the Post: "All's fair in love and war, and this is a bit of both." -Ron

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

The Snowballs Strike Back

"Are you ready for your first prank as a Masked Marauder, Indigo?" I asked Lily. She smiled at the use of her new title.

"Oh, Merlin yes. I can't wait to see the look on his face," she said, a devilish grin spread across her face.

I messed up my hair and willed tears to my eyes. I deemed myself sufficiently heartbroken and then turned to Lily and said, "Alright, Phase Three's a go."

We went down the stairs, Lily skipping happily down the stairs, dragging me behind her so that we could sufficiently keep up our act.

"You know, you're a pretty brilliant actress, Rosie," Lily whispered, "if I didn't know you so well, I wouldn't have known that you were faking it."

I blushed at her compliment and said, "Maybe it just runs in the family." Now it was her turn to blush.

"Alright, let's stop this little love fest, or else we'll get nothing done," I chided. She laughed.

"Yeah, it was getting a bit too sappy for my liking. What do you think Al's face will look like? I'm guessing a mix of confuzzled and shock," Lily replied as she happily imagined her brother's reaction to his well-earned comeuppance.

"We'll just have to see, but if I were to bet than I'd say he'll be horrified and shocked but then it might turn into anger," I reasoned. I knew Al well enough (we have been each other's second best mate, behind Alice and Scorp, for seven years) to guess his reaction. Well, that and I'd seen his reactions to James' pranks on him countless times before. After all, he was James' favorite target, behind annoying gits that is. But after all that's come to pass over the past 24 hours, I'm beginning to doubt whether or not there was much of a difference after all. Don't get me wrong, I'd still do a great deal for him, but no one, NO ONE, not even one of my best friends, would try to come between Scorp and I and come out of it unpranked.

Lily and I reached the bottom of the landing, only to hastily dive onto the floor, narrowly avoiding a flying lamp that shattered against the wall, missing James by inches. I cautiously looked for the source of the offending object, only to discover that it was Domi who was blood red with anger.

"THAT'S FOR THE PINK HAIR!" Domi yelled. A jet of red light shot out of her wand and rocketed towards James, hitting him in the chest despite his attempts to counter it.

"AND THAT WAS FOR BEING AN ARROGANT AND IRRITATING GIT!" She shrieked at James who was now bright pink from the ends of his hair right down to the tips of his toes. After holding back a shriek of laughter and calming myself down, I motioned for Lily to follow me while they were distracted with James' new hue.

"AND FRED DON'T THINK THAT YOU'RE COMING OUT OF THIS UNSCATHED! I'M COMING FOR YOU NEXT!" I heard Domi yell from behind us.

We slipped into the kitchen, Lily pulling me behind her.

"Hey Al!" She said, getting his attention. His head shot up and he looked over at us. His face turned ash gray when he saw my heartbroken state. Merlin, that kid needed acting lessons.

"What's it Lily?" He asked, trying to appear casual and nonchalant and failing terribly.

"Oh, I was just wondering if you wanted to partake in chucking blindingly white spheres at each other," she replied. Al looked at her as though she'd just proclaimed that she was secretly a unicorn.

"I mean do you want to have a snowball fight, dummy?" She clarified. He made an "oh" expression.

"It might help Rosie feel a little better," she stage whispered. Al's cheerful demeanor dropped, replaced by blatant guilt. I will never know how everyone else didn't piece together that Al was responsible. That bloke couldn't act to save his life. I bit back a laugh, now completely sure that it was the right decision to make that girl a Masked Marauder. She was a natural.

"I-I'll go get Ali," he stammered.

"Oh no! You don't have to!" Lily protested quickly, Al gave her a confuzzled look and I shot her a pointed glance. "I mean, we don't want to bother her or anything," she recovered. It definitely wasn't her best excuse, but somehow Al bought it. I made a mental note to help Lily work on her excuses.

The three of us trotted outside into the snowy wonderland that was your stereotypical winter. I resisted the urge to leap into a powdery snow bank.

"Now the rules are simple," Lily declared, "we're going to do this the Muggle way since some of us are underage, so no magic." Al groaned, and I followed suit, keeping up my act. "Hey, hey now. No complaining. It's not my fault that I'm underage!" She exclaimed. Al and I exchanged a glance. We both knew that Lily never followed that particular law. "Alright, now that that's settled. The teams are Rose and me against Al," Lily determined.

"That's hardly fair!" Al protested, "there's only one of me and there's two of you. Let me just go get Ali. I'm sure she won't mind and that way the teams will be even."

"We're already out here there's no use in going back inside and getting her," Lily reasoned. "And anyway, just look at Rosie, Al. She's not exactly in her regular state," she whispered to him, just loud enough so that I could hear them. The look of guilt on his face was so sincere that I began to feel bad for the bloke. All that he had to do was to confess and tell me why the bloody hell he'd do something like this. Then we could just go back to being each other's best friend again. I must admit that I missed his overprotective manner, his surprisingly good advice, his awkwardness, and how he always thought that he should help anyone as much as he possibly could. I missed him even though this whole soap opera worthy mess had only been going on for less than twenty-four hours. But it wasn't only that, I realized. I couldn't remember the last real conversation that we'd had at Hogwarts. We were supposed to be best friends and I couldn't remember the last one on one conversation that I'd had with him. I'm a terrible best friend, aren't I? Maybe we'd just gotten distracted by all the rubbish happening around us. Oh poor Al, it was probably eating away at him. He probably thought that he was worthless because he couldn't directly help. Load of rubbish, that is. I know that the big battle is still coming. And it was going to be worse than anything that we could ever imagine. But surprisingly, I found that I wasn't scared. We would prepare the best we could for the oncoming battle, and we would protect each other with everything we had. But I had to trust my friends; I had to trust my family. That's why I had to figure out why Al had done this, that way I could completely trust him again. But the thing about Al was that if you asked him a direct question about something that was serious then he would either sigh and reluctantly tell you, or he would give you a cold shoulder and you'd never get an answer. Pranking, on the other hand, almost always worked. All that I wanted was to have my best friend back. Somewhere along the line we'd forgotten that we were best friends first. We were always there for each other, ever since the start. Before we went to Hogwarts, it was just me and him. We would watch the stars shoot across the sky and wonder where they came from. We would make up ludicrous stories to explain away things that we didn't know. We'd laugh the hours away and tease each other mercilessly. We had splash fights, mud battles, played Quidditch, me laughing at how in the world the son of Harry "youngest Seeker in a century" Potter and Ginny "Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies" Weasley could ever have had a child that was so horrendous at Quidditch. We scoured the woods for hidden secrets and battled imaginary monsters. I missed him, I missed him so much. We knew each other so well and I hoped that he understood why I had to do this.

"Alright! Now remember, no magic!" Lily exclaimed gleefully, snapping me out of my stupor. She was having way too much fun with that rule. We all knew that she'd break it at the first opportunity that presented itself.

"Ready set go!" She shouted and we raced to our opposing sides and hastily began to build a fort with our frozen bare hands.

"Lils, now you know what to do right?" I asked her. She nodded in response. We made a towering mountain of snowballs after constructing a suitable fort. I let out a breath.

"Okay, why don't you charm that half and I'll charm the others," I questioned as the first snowballs bombarded our fort. She gasped.

"But Rosie! I'm underage I can't do magic!" She teased in mock-seriousness. I laughed at her.

"Let's just do this, yeah?" I said while charming the snowballs. She followed suit. The spell was complicated, as it was a variation of an enchantment that I'd learned from my mum, which she'd used sometime during her 5th year. It took a little while to successfully adapt the spell, but after a while Scorp and I finally perfected it. I guess you could say we'd saved it for a rainy day

Once all the snowballs were charmed, I figured that Al had sent roughly seventy snowballs our way and Lily and I still hadn't been hit yet. I'd almost forgotten how dreadful Al's aim was. I gingerly gave the majority of the snowballs to Lily since she had impeccable aim; she was a Chaser after all. I chucked the first couple snowballs at Al, feeling a wave of glee as I nailed him in the chest. (I know, I know, I'm a terrible best friend, but have you ever delivered revenge by snowball? It's very rewarding and incredibly satisfying.) Lily and I launched the snowballs into the air, almost all of them hitting its intended target. When all of them were gone, Lily and I peeked out of our fort and declared our victory. We ran to where Al's measly fort was and found Al buried under a mountain of snow. He groaned and brushed the snow off of him so that he could stand up.

"Lily! I thought that you said that Rose wouldn't be her normal dominating self!" He said incredulously. She shrugged, smirking from our success. I had a permanent smile etched on my face, soaring from the success of our prank. All we had to do was add water and then presto! We had a pranked Al! I might have to get Scorp to come over just to see our results. Screw the fact that our cover would be blown, Scorp would want the look on Al's face to be forever engraved into his mind. Oh, the look on Al's face would be priceless!

"I'm going to take a shower and warm up after that," he said. Talk about convenience, right? But I knew that he'd do that, he's rather predictable. Lily and I hid our smirks and simply nodded at him, anticipating our results.

We tramped inside, only to be thrown back into the middle of the Prank War. Fred pushed past us, desperately looking for an escape route before sprinting to the kitchen where there were bound to be some witnesses. Domi stormed after him, seeking revenge. Al parted ways with us, barely avoiding a bucket of snow from falling onto his head.

Lily and I traversed to the kitchen, thinking that we'd nab some treacle tart. When we got there we had to dive onto the floor, narrowly dodging a stray jinx. Oh Merlin! We'd forgotten that Domi and Fred went this way. We scampered out, valuing our well being just a little more than our shared love for treacle tart, and found ourselves in the family room. We collapsed onto the couch, breathing heavily, before jumping up hastily. The couch was already occupied by a sleeping Alice.

"Oi!" She yelled in surprise before falling off the couch and onto a heap on the floor. She grumbled.

"Hey have you two seen Al?" She asked after calming down.

"He's in the shower. But I'm sure he wouldn't mi-" Lily said suggestively, causing me to stomp on her foot to get her to efficiently shut up. I did NOT need that imagine engrained into my mind. "OW! ROSE! WHAT WAS THAT FOR?" She exclaimed. I gave her a pointed look. She opened her mouth to retort, but was stopped by a piercing scream coming from upstairs. Lily and I exchanged a mischievous glance.

"What the hell was that?" Alice questioned, alarmed.

"We should check that out. Don't you think so Rosie?" Lily asked, attempting nonchalance.

"Why yes, I think that we should," I answered, matching her tone.

The three of us rushed up the stairs, trying to find the source of the scream. We found Al staring open mouthed at the mirror in the hall, a towel wrapped around his waist. Lily and I burst out laughing, and Alice joined in. Al was green, and I don't mean the type of green that you get when you're feeling ill, I mean emerald green. But that wasn't the best part. The word "snoop" was printed across his face in gigantic blood red letters. He turned and looked at us. His eyes narrowed, and then he sighed.

"I guess I really do deserve this," he said to me, "after doing that to you and Scorp." Alice gasped at that tidbit of information.

"Al why would you-" she began, only to be cut off by Al.

"Just let me explain," he requested. He took a deep breath and continued, "There's really no reason that can justify what I did, but first let me say that I really didn't want to do it." I was confuzzled. Why would he do it if he didn't want to do it? I glanced at Alice and Lily and saw similar expressions on their faces.

"You see, a while back James and I made a bet. It was a really long time ago when you and Scorp got in a huge fight. It was a stupid bet, it really was. He bet that if you thought that Scorp had forgotten something that you cared a lot about then the two of you would break it off. I automatically said that nothing could break the two of you apart, the two of you were so close," he closed his eyes, shaking his head at himself. "I was so stupid," he continued, "James said that if I was so sure then why wouldn't I prove it. I said no, I didn't want to do anything that had the off chance to break you lot apart. He said that I obviously didn't have enough faith in the two of you if I wasn't willing to prove it. Again, I said no, I knew that he was just trying to worm his way into my brain. He'd tried that one too many times," Al sighed. "He asked me if I would be willing to wager. He somehow knew that Ali and I were getting serious," Al ran his fingers through his hair, a nervous habit. "He said that if I didn't pluck up the courage to ask Ali to marry me by the time it was the Christmas of my seventh year, then I'd have to give the ring to Rose in a present in Scorpius' name." All of us gasped. Ali had her hand to her mouth and had tears streaming down her face.

"I somehow figured that I'd pluck up the courage. I was so sure that I would definitely do it. I mean I was a Gryffindor after all, of course I'd pluck up the courage," Al said, tears glistened in his eyes. "So I took his wager, thinking that it was out of the question that I wouldn't do it, that I wouldn't have other things to worry about. Like what my sister and her friends were doing behind my back," he gave Lily a pointed look, and her eyes widened and she let out a gasp. "Don't think that I haven't picked up on this stuff, Lils. I've noticed how the three of you get really serious and how secretive the three of you get," he told her. "And what my best friends were so obviously keeping from me. The deadline sort of just caught up to me and I choked. So I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry to all of you." He looked ashamed of himself. I had tears in my eyes and I rushed forward and crushed him in a bear hug.

"I'm sorry too," I whispered in his ear.

"What are you sorry for?" He asked, "I'm the one that messed up, what are you apologizing for?"

"For that," I said, gesturing to his new colors. His eyes widened.

"That was you?" He questioned. He pulled back and looked at me as though he was seeing a new person. "But that means-that means that-" he trailed off.

"Yeah," I said, I faint smile on my face, "Yeah I am."

"Wow," he responded, I laughed at the look of wonder on his multi-colored face.

"Wait…so does that mean that you know how to get rid of this," he gestured at his body. I laughed at him.

"Nope," I said, popping the p.

"What? You jinxed me without knowing the counter curse?" He asked, shocked.

"Hey Al?" I asked, pulling him back into a tight hug and changing the topic at the same time.

"Yeah?" He whispered.

"I missed you," I whispered.

"Right back at you," he whispered, "Hey Rose, would you mind letting go? You're squishing me." I laughed and then backed up, giving Lily and Ali some time with Al. After they had a while with him Al turned to me.

"Hey Rosie?" He inquired.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"Does this mean that you and Scorp really are engaged?" He asked me. Alice turned towards me and raised her hand.

"I'd like to know that too," she said, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah," I said, loving, that it was true, "Scorp and I are engaged."

"Well that's some interesting information," a voice said from around the corner.

Who do you think it is? Please Review!