"Oh would you knock it off and get back here!" Dani shouted, watching helplessly as Aimee ran in circles around the clearing - the two of them blissfully unaware that they were being watched.
Aimee laughed instead, knowing it irritated her, skipping a figure eight in the white powder.
"Why? There's nothing fun to do in that stuffy old thing!" She turned a neat little back handspring as though to support her point, and then collapsed on her back down on the ground.
"Look! Dani!"
She gasped in fake awe.
"Snow angels!"
Dani rolled her eyes but gave up, leaning gracelessly against a tree stump at the center of the clearing.
"You're a hopeless nutcase, I just hope you're aware," She said, exasperated.
Aimee looked up from the ground in shock. "Of course I do! Why else would I still be here?"
Dani smirked. She couldn't argue with that.
"Aimee," Lynn said, walking towards them wearily from the carriage. Her eyes were tired, and her arms folded only half-heartedly around herself against the cold air. "Is this really necessary?"
"By all means! Every last one of them! All of the means in the world!"
Dani gave Lynn an apologetic look. "I tried."
Lynn cast a worried glance toward the castle, where the rest of her schoolmates and the headmistress were.
"Relax, Lynn," Aimee advised from where she was now sitting upside-down in a headstand. "Madame won't be back for another hour at least."
Lynn seemed to try to take her eyes off the castle, but they only skipped about nervously before landing back in the distance, looking even less relaxed.
"Besides," Dani said smirking, "What else can she punish us with?"
Lynn had no answer for her, and Aimee was caught up in creating her own personal snowman. Dani continued.
"I mean…she's already grounded Aimee about a zillion times," Dani stated.
"Five," Aimee corrected her while rolling over a growing snowball.
"Right, I meant five. Thank you, Aimee."
Aimee saluted smartly and returned to her snowman.
"Anyway," Dani continued, used to Aimee's failure to grasp sarcasm. "She's grounded Aimee five times, gave me night lookout for three days, made you scrub the carriage inside and out for a week, made you practically wait hand and foot on that spoiled brat Fleur and her sister for a week, made me shovel winged horse dung for a week, AND!" She ended her sentence with some impressive hand gestures and a crescendo.
"Let us not forget that we are here 'guarding' the carriage while the rest of them go mingle and act pretty with their new little friends. And why?," She said bitterly, "Because some bloody son of a flobberworm was stupid enough to ask her about the 'beautiful young lady' who was 'possibly rival to the champion' that he happened to see in the hallway."
Dani was, at this point, ranting and raving with full out hand gestures and quotation fingers. Not only that, but her voice had risen considerably, and the hideaways behind the rocks had absolutely no problem hearing her.
Lynn's eyes had gone from staring worriedly at the castle to fixed upon a spot in the snow. She had only done her best to avoid attention, and it seemed her friends were still being punished no matter what she tried. It was a wonder they still hung around. She was strongly beginning to wish she'd never come.
"Oh, way to make her feel like Crup crap, Dani!" said Aimee, "Honestly…you'd think you were one of Fleur's friends."
Dani gasped.
"Take that back!"
"No!"
"Take…it…back!"
"Make me!"
And though it sparked a smile back on Lynn's face, it was the usual bickering that resulted in an enraged Dani chasing Aimee's screams about the clearing.
"Oi, Aimee! Why are you always being chased?!" Fred called from where he now stood behind the rock.
The rest of the hideaways stood with him. Lynn suddenly looked almost frightened, Dani stopped abruptly in her confusion, and Aimee continued to run in circles, having either not noticed or not cared that her pursuer had stopped.
"Why's your hair always so funny?" She shouted, only slightly out of breath and apparently unfazed by his just popping out from behind a rock.
Fred gasped.
"How dare you!"
The others chuckled, even Ron in a considerably lightened mood. Their laughter pulled Aimee to a stop, as though only just aware of the presence of the other students.
"Who're they?" She asked, reserving her battery of hairstyle insults for a later time.
His twin answered for him.
"This sorry-looking fellow here would be our brother Ronniekins." George said, ruffling Ron's hair gleefully.
"It's Ron," Ron corrected as the hair-ruffling passed.
"This is the famous Harry Potter," George continued, ignoring Harry's instinctive grimace.
"And this is the lovely Hermione Granger!" He finished, holding his hands out to showcase the final fourth year. "Their lot's all in their fourth year. Never mind them, though, who're your fellow fairies Tinkerbell?"
Aimee ignored this.
"Hey idjit, you left one out!" She said, pointing to where Oliver still stood beside George.
"This, my noticeably tiny friend," Fred said, ignoring Aimee's scowl.
"Is the charming bloke himself," said George.
"The Quidditch captain with the most inspiring speeches of blunt honesty."
"The one, the only-"
"Oliver Wood," Lynn finished for them.
Aimee and Dani both looked equally confounded, but the twins simply turned their attention to Lynn.
"A psychic!" They proclaimed, falling to their knees dramatically to grovel at her feet.
"You've met?" said Hermione, a faint hint of amusement in her voice.
"We've met," said Oliver. "Twice actually; the second time still hurts."
"I said I was sorry about that!" Lynn defended immediately.
"I know, I know," said Oliver, holding his hands up defensively, "I'm just saying it's not everyday I get run into in a corridor, and then run away from in the very same without so much as a name."
Lynn looked sheepish - she had failed the mandatory rules of courtesy Madame had drilled so hard into their brains, even while turning herself into a nervous wreck to obey them.
"Well," said Aimee, smirking, "Allow me to formally introduce seventh year Lynn Poésy."
Hermione smiled pleasantly at her.
"I saw you in the library the other day."
"Wouldn't surprise me, she spends half her time there," Dani said.
"It's a nice library!" Lynn said, defending her cause to the ever-smirking Dani.
"And this," Aimee continued, "Would be the magnificent Daniella Ytrevois."
She finished her introduction with a flourish of one hand, the other stroking an invisible moustache.
"You're in our classes, aren't you?" said Harry.
"Yes. And as monotonous as it is at times, I have you all to thank for countless entertaining moments…porcupines for example," Dani said, sending Ron a meaningful look.
Ron scowled at the memory, and quick to change the subject demanded of Aimee, "Who're you?"
"I'm Aimee," She informed him matter-of-factly, flipping some hair out of her face and glaring at it.
"She's our newest find," said George proudly.
"Should've seen the entrance she made to the first class with Snape!" Fred added.
Dani sent Aimee an accusing glare. She had conveniently not yet shared the story with Dani and Lynn, having rambled on about a Defense Against the Dark Arts Lesson until Dani grew bored and boy-talked over her.
Lynn's level gaze had Aimee shrinking back.
"This is a story we have yet to hear," said Dani.
"I swear it wasn't that bad," Aimee said quickly.
"Did you break anything?" said Lynn, regarding her carefully.
"No."
Lynn's gaze softened. Likewise, Dani shrugged, muttering, "Well there's been worse," under her breath.
"Erm…so did you blackmail anyone to the ball yet?" asked Aimee.
George puffed up with an air of superiority, "I'm going with Angelina."
Aimee blinked and exchanged glances with Fred before the both of them burst out laughing.
"What?" George demanded.
They didn't answer, still laughing at his pompous demeanor.
"At least I have a date," He said lowly.
"We have dates too," said Fred.
Dani and Hermione both fixed him with doubtful looks.
"Yeah," He continued, "Aimee's going with me, right?"
Aimee blinked but without missing another beat said, "Yes, it's just been decided."
Aimee turned back to reconstructing her snowman as though nothing had happened, its side smashed from Dani's chase.
Hermione shot Harry and Ron a reproachful look that said clearly not to bring up that she already had a date.
"Who're you going with," George asked Ron, "Eloise Midgen?"
"No!" Ron stated hotly.
"He's going with Padma Patil," Harry explained, "I'm going with Parvati."
"I'm disappointed," George said, still shaking his head as though he'd always dreamed Ron would ask Eloise Midgen.
"Hey, you're little sister's Ginny right?" Dani asked.
"Yeah."
"She's a friend of Roslin, a third year friend of ours. Helped her get someone to go with her a while back."
"Oh," said Ron, re-entering the conversation with more enthusiasm, "Wasn't she ranting about something that had to do with someone named Roslin, Harry? I 'member now! Something about Maxime wanting you all to have dates…She went on for ages about it."
"Yes," said Aimee smartly, "She says we've all got to have dates in order to…erm…preserve the, um…"
She trailed off, looking to Lynn for help.
"To preserve the 'rightful respect and dignity we have achieved as an elite institution'" Lynn and Dani chorused.
"Oh it's an institution all right," Dani spat, "A mental institution…the head's a bloody head case!"
"Don't let her hear you saying that," Lynn said.
"I thought I was a head case?" Aimee asked from the ground.
"No, you're a nutcase," Dani said, waving her hand dismissingly.
"Oh," said Aimee, before turning her attention back to the three fourth years, "You lot got some dateless bloke to go with Dani?"
Hermione shrugged, Ron shrugged, and Harry actually spent a moment contemplating it.
"Well," He started after a moment of thought, "I don't think Seamus has a date...or Neville."
Hermione immediately snapped at him, "I told you, Neville's already got one!"
And as it was the worst of the Ron-vs-Hermione bickering that most fascinated the twins, they drew closer to the encore argument that ensued while Oliver stepped around them towards the formerly mysterious hallway girl.
"Lynn's a lovely name," he said.
"It's my aunt's," she said quickly. Then grimaced. Idiot.
"Not yours?" he said, toeing the ground between them.
"I'm named for her," she said, "She was killed."
He nodded gravely. There was something about Oliver Wood that could become serious in a blink of the eye, and Lynn decided at that moment that it had something to do with his jawline.
"An honorable name then," he said.
Beside them the row between Ron and Hermione had died down to its origin.
"Should we tell Seamus you'll go with him?" Ron was asking Dani.
He looked ruffled, partly because of Hermione but also at how comparatively horrific his own journey to find a date had been.
Dani shrugged back at him.
"Would you go to the ball with me?" Oliver said suddenly to Lynn as Dani's score was settled.
She nearly jumped and he mistook her surprise. She'd been very busy trying to seem ignorant of how closely he was looking at her while standing up a little straighter.
"If I promise not to talk about Quidditch," he added hastily, hands up.
Lynn smiled genuinely for what felt like the first time since she'd come back to school that year.
"Talk all you want," she said, brushing hair away from blowing in her face and trying not to look too proud of herself. "I know a bit about Quidditch."
He smiled brightly.
"Oh do-"
But he was cut off by George, who'd overheard them.
"You just told Oliver Wood he can talk about Quidditch as much as he wants," he said flatly.
"We're doomed," said Fred.
"QUIDDITCH!? WHAT about it!?"
And all was lost to the depths of an Aimee obsession.