It had been nearly a week since the incident in the library, and once again Lynn was seated away from her friends at dinner. The dinner table conversation she was missing tonight seemed to be fixated on Aimee, probably due to the fact that she'd spent the entire day pulling pranks on anything that moved. Well, she and the twins, but even they'd fallen victim to some of her tricks, or as she called them, "birthday surprises". Evidently April Fools Day was one of her favorite days of the year.
"Anyone want some more pumpkin juice?" Aimee asked cheerfully, bouncing in her seat as she gestured widely with the pitcher.
Dani snorted from across the table. Aimee ignored her, shrugged, and plopped the pitcher just as bouncily back down on the polished wood, causing a large fountain of pumpkin juice to come spraying out and hit Ron in the face. The Gryffindor table erupted into laughter that spread quite a ways down, where apparently the juice fountain had still been visible. Ron closed his eyes and attempted to blow the juice away from where it was dripping down from his now literal mop of hair.
"Mmmm," he groaned. It had been a long day for him, as he seemed to be one of Aimee's favorite new prank targets.
Harry, loyally trying to stifle his laughter, had to duck behind Dean's back until he could calm himself. Hermione began dutifully dabbing at Ron's hair with a napkin. Ron waved her off, and though she looked regretfully at his sopping head, she restrained herself.
"Did you know not everyone drinks pumpkin juice?" Aimee said.
It was one of her usual rhetorical questions, the kind usually fielded by Lynn, but which had lately become something of a common ailment of mealtimes. No one else seemed to understand how to stem the flow of Aimee's never-ending stream of wonderment.
"I did not know that," Fred answered, looking quite exaggeratedly taken aback.
Aimee nodded matter-of-factly.
"Yuuuuup," she said, pulling a bowl of mashed potatoes closer to her plate, "Some people don't even know it exists."
"Crazy stuff," said George this time from beside his twin.
Angelina giggled from beside him. She was one of the few not still embittered at the day's events, having only been involved in one relatively minor prank in which a large feathery hat was stuck to her head for a few hours. Likewise, several members of the Gryffindor house had come down to breakfast that morning wearing exotic headwear of all shapes and sizes, apparently unable to remove them from their heads.
They lightened up quite a bit after discovering that the entire Slytherin house had grown enormously lengthy pointed ears, and oversized green shoes that curled at the bottom. The shoes proved impossible to take off, and the other students enjoyed watching the repeated failure of their increasingly frustrated efforts. If they hadn't been so otherwise clearly identified, Slytherins could be easily spotted by their constant tripping in the hallways.
Dani sighed as she watched Aimee build a huge mound of mashed potatoes on her plate.
"So, are you looking forward to Quidditch beginning tomorrow?" She asked, twisting a strand of dark hair around in her fingers.
Although it had been meant as a general question, everyone instinctively turned in unison to Oliver at the word "Quidditch". The exception was Aimee of course, who was now using her spoon to form an oval shaped depression in her potato mound. She didn't seem to notice even as the table grew silent.
Oliver, whose enthusiastic reply and possible maniacal rant had been everything but prophesized, did not respond. Instead he continued staring distantly at the table and lifted his glass to his mouth. Speechless, the other Gryffindors watched as he lowered it once again to the table, having not even noticed that his drink had been transformed into jell-o.
"What?" He asked, noticing at last that he was the new center of attention.
Even Hermione's jaw was hung slightly open. Angelina cautiously picked a cube of ice out of her drink and shot it at Oliver's forehead. The cube ricocheted off and landed in the mashed potato pool that Aimee had since filled with gravy.
"Ow!" Oliver cried out, as though this shot had woken him from a long sleep. "What was that for!?"
Aimee was angrily staring at the ice cube now lying in the middle of her food architectural masterpiece. She quickly levitated it out of the gravy and dropped it on Seamus' head. Apparently his hair had grown so thick he didn't notice.
Angelina shrugged in response to Oliver's question, and then smiled.
"Years of early morning practices," she said, grinning.
The rest of the Quidditch team grunted in agreement.
"And in the rain," Fred added.
"And snow" said his twin.
"…and hail," finished Harry, grimacing at the memory.
Oliver rolled his eyes.
"The hail was only that once," he mumbled.
Harry raised an eyebrow at him darkly from the other side of the table.
"Mmhmm."
Oliver grinned sheepishly.
"So how's our torture schedule looking this week, captain?" Fred questioned cheerfully.
On cue, George picked up a bowl of grapes and gestured toward Harry.
"Yes, should I begin the preliminary training of our seeker for play amidst the bombardment of small objects?"
Oliver smirked.
"Depends, could you manage that with blue hair?"
George looked as astonished as the rest of the table, having suddenly realized his locks were not the ginger color they used to be. Sure enough, he now had a mop of brilliantly blue hair. Oddly enough, it was precisely the same electric blue shade of a quill Aimee had been admiring the other day.
Dani fixed the smaller girl with a pointed look.
"Aimee," she said. "Really? Blue?"
Aimee shrugged. She was now happily floating carrots across the gravy pool, having magically carved them into the shape of small boats.
"Why?" Dani asked, sincerely curious and rather amused by this newest development.
Aimee stopped her miniature sailboat adventure for a moment and looked taken aback. She scoffed.
"Two words," she said, "Ice cubes…duh"
Dani smirked.
"That's three words genius."
Aimee rolled her eyes.
"The 'duh' was an afterthought to add to the dramatic effect," she said, head bobbing along to add emphasize to every syllable.
Dani only continued smirking and shook her head.
"Wait, but I threw the…" Angelina trailed off in realization.
"Punishing me for my girlfriend's deeds," George said, shaking his head and clucking.
Aimee only shrugged, and then looked at her pumpkin juice thoughtfully. As the rest of the table watched, partly out of curiosity and partly out of well-justified fright, she scooted back in her chair, lowered herself to table level, and began staring intensely at her glass.
"Erm…Aimee," Dani said, "What are you doing?"
Aimee didn't respond until she had glared viciously at her drink for a few more seconds. Then, she sat back up in her seat with an exasperated sigh..
"The Easter Surprise isn't working," she said to the twins, eyebrows furrowed.
Fred shrugged, unconcerned.
"Give it a sec."
"Whatever you all-UGH"
Angelina was cut off by the alarmingly instant growth of two large, white ears from the top of her head, the sight of which threw most of the Hall in sight of them into laughter.
"Are you serious," Dani said, though she was smiling, "This is the big secret project?"
Aimee shrugged, wide brown eyes and grin as innocuous as ever.
"It's been a slow week in Charms."
A moment later, she had turned again to George, who was both overcome by laughter at the success of their new product and trying valiantly to stifle it out of respect for his new relationship.
"I wasn't punishing you for her," Aimee said, picking up the thread of the old conversation as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "You should really not pull pranks on your girlfriend."
Dani's eyebrows could scarcely go higher - Aimee? Moralizing?
"Anyway, you should probably all get new pumpkin juice," Aimee continued, effectively ruining the moment of herself in a serious light.
Everyone nearby immediately put down their goblets.
Angelina's ears had grown even fluffier over the few seconds of their existence, and the twins were having great difficulty comforting her about it.
Oliver nodded at Aimee across the table, surprising more than himself at his willingness to participate, something he'd been avoiding to sulk for days.
"Could you at least change George's hair back before practice?" he said, sounding every bit the overbearing Quidditch coach..
Down the table, George's new locks and the fluffy towering ears made an admirable combination.
"It's only that it's blue jay mating season, and I can't have birds attacking my beater at practice."
The table laughed uproariously once again, including Aimee. She swished her wand and muttered something, and George's formally ginger hair returned to its natural state.
"Thank you," Oliver said with a quiet smirk.
He had been one of few to escape Aimee's wrath, either because he'd smartly referred to her as the "Queen of Thieves" in a rare moment of sociability at breakfast or because she already felt too sorry for him to make matters worse.
"Practice, straight after dinner tomorrow," Oliver said abruptly, pointing at each of his team members in turn around the table.
There was another group groan, but they grinned at the return of the obsessed Quidditch captain they knew and, though often wanted to lock in a broom closet, loved.