STOMP STOMP STOMP

"Err—" Gregory Goyle ventured. "Hermione?"

Hermione glanced back at him with a huff. "Yes?"

STOMP STOMP STOMP

"We're going up the stairs."

"Why, yes Greg." Her voice was saccharinely sweet. "We are."

STOMP STOMP STOMP

"Umm. But… Hermione… the dungeons are down?"

Hermione stopped short.

"I know, Greg," she said. "We're not going to the dungeons."

Greg looked alarmed. "We're not?"

"No." Hermione seized his arm. "We are going up to Gryffindor tower."

"What?" Greg froze in alarm. "No, no. I don't want to go up there."

"Why not?" Hermione growled.

Greg shrank from her. "The—the Weasley Twins are up there. They're mean to Slytherins."

"You will have to get over that," Hermione snarled. "I need to see some people with sense in their heads right now, not deal with stares and whispers and giggles."

"Umm." Greg hurried to keep up with her. "You could just take the flower out of your hair."

"I can't," Hermione groaned. "It's stuck."

Greg looked confused. "You could untangle it?"

"No, Greg, it's stuck as in he stuck it in with a nonverbal sticking charm," Hermione sighed. "He has a mischievous streak. I suspect he wanted to rile some people up when I returned to Slytherin."

"But we're not going to Slytherin…"

Hermione bit her tongue. "No, Greg, we're not. That's rather the point."

A terse Wattlebird at the portrait flung the Fat Lady open, and Hermione stormed in as if she owned the place. The common room fell silent at the sight of two Slytherins invading, Goyle shirking back though Hermione held her head high.

"I need the Weasley Twins," Hermione announced loudly, to the room at large. "Where are they?"

There was a murmur. The eldest Weasley, Percy, looked put out, while Ginny just looked surprised; Greg made a beeline for her, relieved to spot the only friendly person in Gryffindor he knew. Hermione scanned the crowd looking for people she could recognize, not finding her friends, before two identical red heads came striding forward, wearing matching grins.

"Miss Slytherin! You came to see us!"

"We'd thought you'd gone and forgotten us, down in your dungeon—"

They grabbed Hermione, each taking an arm, and pulled her over to a sofa by the fire.

"Now," Fred said, grinning. "How can we help you?"

"We're ever so eager to offer our aid," George added, winking.

"Having a Slytherin in our debt, after all—"

"Can you imagine the potential, Gred?"

"I really can't, Forge. It's just—"

"There is a flower stuck in my hair," Hermione said loudly, drawing their attention back to her. She gave them a dark look. "I need it unstuck, please."

They gave her a blank look.

"That's… easy enough for us," Fred said slowly. "We are the master of pranks like that."

"How'd it get stuck?" George wanted to know.

"Sticking charm, I thought, but it won't dissolve with a finite like I thought," she said grumpily. "I need to go to bed, and I just want it off of me."

Fred and George exchanged a look.

"Well," Fred said easily. "How badly do you want it off?"

Their eyes glittered with mischief, and Hermione sighed.

"Alright," she conceded. "What do you want in exchange?"

First, they wanted access to the Slytherin common room, which Hermione flatly denied. Then, they wanted her to leave an object in Snape's office, again which she flatly denied.

"I came to you, but I could easily just go to a prefect," she said, annoyed. "I'm asking you to remove one spell. Ask for something of equivalent value, will you?"

She was bluffing; she wouldn't go to a prefect. A prefect would want to know who had done it so they could file a report, and then word of Cedric giving her a rose in public would wind its way back to Slytherin.

The twins sat back and considered for a long moment, tapping their fingers to their chins.

"This is hard, isn't it?" George mused aloud. "So much we could ask for…"

"So little you'd get," Hermione snapped.

"Ah, but so long as we're fair…"

"Hermione?"

Hermione glanced up to see Neville looking down at her, looking cautiously concerned.

"Is everything… okay?" he ventured, glancing at the Weasley Twins.

Hermione sighed.

"I'm fine, Neville," she told him. "But thanks for checking."

"Little Miss Slytherin here just needs our help with an embarrassing teensy eensy weensy little problem," Fred said.

"And, of course, she thought to come to us as soon as she could," George said, nodding wisely. "We are the experts, after all."

Neville looked confused.

"Experts?" he repeated. "Experts at what?"

"Experts at undoing the done," Fred said promptly. "At unsticking the stuck."

"In this case, the flower in her hair," George said, nodding to it. "But we're still wondering what to ask for in exchange."

Neville's eyes flicked to the rose behind her ear and widened, and Hermione suppressed a groan.

"Hermione? Did someone give you that rose?" Neville's voice was shocked. "Do you know who it was?"

This was exactly the sort of circumstance Hermione had been hoping to avoid.

"Yes, Neville," Hermione said dully. "The Weasley Twins are helping me take it out."

Neville gave her a wide-eyed, astonished look.

"There are different meanings for flowers, in the wizarding world, you know," he ventured. "I have a book on it, if you—"

"I know what it means, Neville," Hermione snapped. She paused. "…sorry. My patience's run a bit thin at the moment; the berk stuck the rose in my hair, and I can't get it out."

Hermione saw comprehension dawn in his eyes.

"And you don't want to go back to Slytherin with that in your hair," Neville said. A small smile teased his lips. "Fun bit of mischief by a non-Slytherin, then, right? Your house wouldn't let you ignore it and live it down."

"They wouldn't," Hermione said, gritting her teeth. "Which is why I'd very much appreciate it if you never mentioned this to anyone, Neville."

Neville laughed.

"Your secret's safe with me, Hermione," he told her, amused. "Good luck getting it out!"

Hermione watched him leave to go upstairs, presumably to his dorm room. When she refocused on the Weasley Twins, they had matching devious looks on their faces, and she flinched.

"Oh, no," she groaned. "What have you thought of?"

Fred and George exchanged a heavy glance.

"Your parents, Miss Slytherin," Fred began. "They are muggles, aren't they?"

"They are." Hermione held her chin up. "What of it?"

"And you must write your parents frequently, right?" George said. "At least weekly?"

"Yes…" Hermione said slowly. "Where are you going with this?"

"So if you were to ask your parents, for, say a muggle potion," Fred said casually, "it wouldn't take you at all long to get it back from them in the mail?"

Hermione gave them a puzzled look.

"A muggle potion?" she said. "Fred, muggles don't have potions…"

"The kind they make with science," Fred said, waving her concerns away. "Not the magical kind."

"We have heard of a particular potion," George said, whispering for dramatic effect, "that the muggles have concocted that has great prank potential. We want some of it, so we can learn to duplicate the effect with magic."

Hermione found herself interested despite herself.

"There is?" she asked, curious. "What is it?"

Fred and George moved closer, their eyes alight.

"It is called," Fred said, reverently, "Ex-Lax."

Hermione stared at him, then started to laugh.

"You want me to send my parents to the chemist for a laxative?" she said, laughing. She settled down, still amused. "Alright, I can do that. The normal kind, or the chocolate kind?"

This choice seemed too much for the Weasley Twins, who were thrown off their game.

"There's a chocolate kind?" George said, awed.

Hermione laughed.

"Let's do this," she suggested. "You get the flower out of my hair for me, and I mail my parents for your muggle potion tomorrow. You promise not to use it on me or any of my house mates, and I promise not to tell anyone where you got it. Deal?"

"Deal," George said, grinning. He aimed his wand at her ear. "Epoximise."

"Lovely doing business with you," Fred said, plucking the flower from her hair easily and tossing it into the fire. "I trust we'll be seeing you again soon."