THE NEWS OF Quidditch being cancelled came as a fatal blow to the group of Gryffindors seated around the fireplace in the Common Room. Quidditch, as their former captain Oliver Wood had put it, was the whole point of Hogwarts after all, and their house had just established a winning streak. Having won the cup three times out of the past four years, they were sitting on top as the best team that Gryffindor had seen in a decade. It didn't make sense that the game would be taken away from them, the stars had finally aligned.
Fred, Angelina and Lee were throwing up a mild fuss, complaining about how unfair life at school was. Katie was sitting on the floor, slumped against the armchair with her face buried in her hands, her brand new broom resting pathetically against the armrest.
"We're just gonna have to man up and ask them to reconsider," said Angelina as she paced up and down the room. "If we can get enough people on our side, maybe we could do a petition of some kind... strength in numbers and all that. Dammit, we'll riot if we have to!"
"It's just not fair," said Lee. "They did it two years ago and they're doing it again. Didn't think to ask us what we want, did they? Bloody tournament."
"Bloody tournament indeed," Fred agreed. "What's that nonsense about the age restriction? We're as capable as any Seventh Year."
"More, even. And what do they even need the pitch for?" Lee continued argumentatively. "There are miles upon miles of empty ground where they could do it."
George Weasley didn't join in the discussion. He sat by his brother on the sofa, slumped down with his arms crossed over his chest. An idea dawned on him at Lee's words, an entirely mad one. So mad that it might just actually work. "That's right, there are..." he muttered into his palm.
"What's that?"
"Listen," George said in a hushed, yet urgent tone, "there's a whole field round the side of the Whomping Willow... I don't think anyone ever goes there... The grass is long and overgrown, but it's big enough. And then you've got all those trees out there, so if you set up some sort of pillars..."
"I know the place!" exclaimed Katie. Then upon realising the secrecy of the situation, she lowered her voice. "Been meaning to take Ciara out there for a flying lesson or two, but I never got round to it. There's loads of room. It would be perfect!"
Katie's friend, Ciara Quinn, who was a year below Fred and George, nodded enthusiastically. She was a small, pale girl, dark-haired with bright grey eyes—built like a Seeker, but rotten at Quidditch. Good at cheering, though. Everyone liked her.
"It's a great idea, George," said Lee. "Doesn't sound like you wanna make public knowledge of it, though. It'd be just a few of us, and a few of us aren't enough to have a proper cup."
"We'll see to that. I'll plant the seed with the Hufflepuffs—no mention of our names though."
Fred and George exchanged looks before Fred nodded back. "Okay, we'll give it a go. What say we ask McGonagall about it?"
"And if she says no?"
"Well..." Fred grinned, looking down at his feet in contemplation. After a moment he looked up again. "If she says no, we do it anyway."
Angelina let out a laugh. "If the Slytherins catch wind of this..."
"They won't," George interrupted her firmly. "Trust me."
"How about that Black girl, eh?" chimed Alicia as the group made their way across the grounds. It was lunchtime, and a couple of the students were gathered under the shelter of a beech tree by the lake, making use of the last of sunny days. Others lounged on blankets scattered along the ground, pretending to read but instead discussing school gossip and laughing heartily.
Katie shrugged. "Dunno, she's a bit menacing, isn't she? Why? What about her?"
Katie hadn't been with them in the carriage, and George was itching to tell her about what had happened.
"She was dead out of line the other night," George began.
"Really?"
"Oh yeah," added Fred with an amused grin. "George and I were teasing her about You Know What, and let me tell you, she completely lost it. Turns out her father knew about the Triwizard Tournament, so he gave her a heads up so that she could go boasting about it to the entire school."
"You were the ones out of line, incinerating her hair last year," Angelina interjected. "You were asking for trouble."
They were coming down a path of cobblestones towards a grove of trees. George was leading the way, being careful not to slip as he diverted through a thick patch of coarse foliage.
"Anyway," George continued the story, "once she was done raving about that, she called us mud-licking scum and uh... something-something about our dad being poor and unprivileged, and hers being..."
"A Death Eater?" finished Ciara.
"But that's horrible!" exclaimed Katie, mouth wide open. "I can't believe they made her Prefect."
"That's not even the worst bit—" began Fred, but Angelina quickly interrupted him.
"Oh, come off it," she said, earning her a couple of confused glances. "That's all a load of tosh, Fred, and you know it. She only says what her father tells her to say."
"She called you Mudblood."
Angelina laughed out loud. "And I'm supposed to be hurt by that?" She plucked a piece of wood from a nearby sapling and used it as a cane to shield from the shrubbery catching on her clothes.
"I would be," Ciara added in a low voice.
"Hurt or not, it doesn't make it right," said George.
"And since when do you two care about what's right?" asked Angelina with a sly smile.
"Oh Angelina, you wound me..." George feigned a deep, deep frown. "We all know that I'm the most righteous Gryffindor there is."
Fred snorted and rolled his eyes. "And that's saying something."
They made it to a clearing just ahead, revealing a large, barren expanse of land surrounded by rows of towering oaks and thin birches—perfect for goalposts, George thought.
"This should do," said George, breaking away from the trees and pausing at the edge of the clearing. "Now, we just need some hoops, right?"
Fred and George didn't worry about those hoops over the next couple of days because the teachers were kicking the term off with tremendous amounts of homework. N.E.W.T. Year was already proving to be a challenge, especially for those students who had less... formal careers in mind. Luckily for Fred and George, they were of a different ilk altogether. Charms and Transfiguration were a summer's breeze, but the other subjects needed special tending to. Their Herbology assignments were usually handled by one of the first or second year students, who gladly accepted Zonko's products as compensation. And they would pawn off their Divination homework on Katie, who actually enjoyed the subject (but demanded actual payment). This would rob them off their remaining sickles, of course—but time meant money, and money meant fun.
Speaking of money, there was the Bagman situation. They had barely scratched the surface on that one, and were no closer to extracting the money from the man than they were when they had first met him. In fact, now they were getting further behind; since it had become clear that he wasn't going to make good on his promises to them, their own confidence had taken a serious hit, leaving them in the proverbial pit of despair. They had always been diligent in their business dealings, and Ludo Bagman's duplicity was the last straw.
"Dad's got to know a few people from work that could come and help out. You know, from the Auror Office. Just think about it... they show up there—a bunch of burly Auror blokes. They cave down his door. We get the money, and we leg it. We'll be gone before he knows what hit him. We could really make this thing work, you know?"
"I don't know," George said from inside his four-poster, "sounds a lot like Burglary."
Fred sighed and said, "It can't be Burglary when it's technically our money." Then, after a moment added, "Can it?"
"Breaking into the man's house has to qualify as some kind of crime," said George. "Besides, Mum would never allow it."
This final assertion had buried the idea, leaving them crestfallen.
It was, however, a good source of irritation to keep the creative juices flowing. The end result being an hour or so each night spent in the dormitory arguing the finer points of justice and morality until they had sufficiently worked themselves (and their unsuspecting dormmates) into a fit of indignant outrage.
The following day, after their first lesson in Defence Against the Dark Arts with Mad-Eye as the new professor, Fred had suggested—rather too enthusiastically for George's liking—utilising one of the Unforgivable curses against Bagman as a means to an end.
It took an entire afternoon for Angelina and George to dissuade him from it.
"Hey," greeted Katie as she caught up with the group in front of the Great Hall. Ciara was there too, giggling about something.
"Alright, Katie?" Lee replied.
Katie nodded, then turned to address the entire group. "Did you hear about Black, then?"
"No?"
"Well, Cho Chang just told me. Allegedly, she cursed another girl in Mad-Eye's class."
George knitted his eyebrows, glancing towards the Slytherin table—the subject of conversation was missing.
"What, you mean she used an Unforgivable?" asked Ciara immediately, her former grin had dissolved entirely.
"Yes."
"In class?" added George.
"Mhm."
Fred, who had been silent the entire time, burst out with, "See, if she can get away with it, so can we, mate."
George rolled his eyes. "Fred, it's madness! Let it go, will you?"
"We've got to get him back on the broom, or he'll go completely loony," whispered Lee once they had sat down to dinner.
"Ah, yeah, we have a plan for that, actually."
"Yeah?" Lee asked, leaning over his plate conspiratorially.
"Fred and I are paying Filch's office a visit tonight."
The desolate corridors of the castle echoed with each step, and the twins were only two shadows on the wall, slipping silently around each bend. They'd made this journey hundreds of times before, each memory laced with the same visceral thrill that came from evading detection: the faint sound of footsteps somewhere behind them alerting the prefect stalking at the next corner, whom they avoided with practised speed and agility, cutting between the distant torches and into hidden passageways.
Fred led the way, keeping a sharp eye out for Filch, while George carried a stack of black, circular objects wrapped in brown. Just one more dreaded corridor and they'll have pulled it off successfully.
As they reached the familiar door at the end of the hall, Fred held his hand forward, signalling George to stop, then drew his wand, and whispered, "Alohomora." With great effort to not sound a creak, they pulled the heavy doors open and stepped through.
Both boys breathed a deep sigh of relief, and though it was pitch darkness, George knew that his brother was grinning, too.
"We did it."
The relief was short-lived; just like that, a flash of light erupted in his vision and George raised his arm to shield from the blinding brightness, his heart rate spiralling. When he regained his senses, Luxanna Black was standing in front of him, leaning against the bannister and wearing a look of utmost scrutiny as she brandished her wand right in front of his face.
"Did what exactly?" Her words were dragging, and her eyes were slowly travelling along their figures with the manner of a tyrant surveying her offerings, finally settling on the concealed object under George's arm.
He squinted against the light, his eyes still adjusting. "Nothing," he said bluntly, then corrected himself, "Nothing that would be your business, I mean."
Fred leaned against the wall with an exhausted sigh. "Ugh, what are you doing out here, Black?"
"Patrol duty."
"This isn't your area; you're supposed to be down in the dungeons," Fred argued. He and George always made sure to know the prefects' routes and schedules.
"I fancied a stroll," she said in what she thought was a witty throwback.
"Good for you," said George dismissively. "We'll be on our way now."
He made to walk past her but she quickly blocked his path. "Oh, no, no," she said in a tone reminiscent of a mother scolding her toddler. "I don't think so. Have you two any idea what time it is?"
"Bed time," George quipped, with another failed attempt of squeezing past the insufferable girl.
Black smirked. But it wasn't a smirk, not really. More like a smug little sneer of satisfaction, thinking herself clever. "Exactly," she said. "And would you care to tell me what dragged you two weasels out of your blankets tonight?"
"Not really."
"What conniving sort of scheme might have a pair of hooligans such as yourselves sneaking about in the corridors this time of the night?" she persisted. "Working on your pyrotechnics, hmm? Terrorising another first year, perhaps. No... it'll be thievery, won't it?"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," interjected Fred with a loud groan. "Cut it out already. Black, go on. Give us your worst, then—get it over with."
"Gladly."
George glanced at his brother, then back at the girl. "What'll it be then? A week's detention with Snape?" he asked.
"100 points from Gryffindor?" Fred added.
"Both?" said the twins in unison.
Black beamed at them (or whatever that murderous look on her face might have been called) with renewed vigour, having replenished her daily quota of sadism. "Hand it over," she demanded, pointing her wand at the prize.
Fred and George looked at each other for a long moment, then subsequently burst out in giggles. The giggles quickly developed into full on laughter once they spied the look of confusion on Black's face.
"What? What's funny?" she asked guardedly, eyes darting back and forth between them. "What?"
A few more waning gasps, another wordless glance, and they both pivoted, pushed past the girl, and went on their way.
"Wait. Wait! Where are you going? I'm not done with you yet!" she barked after them. "Get back here!"
"We don't have to listen to you!"
"Yeah, we don't talk to hypocrites."
"Huh?!"
"You call us hooligans, but we heard about what you did in Defence today." They had stopped in their tracks to deliver the final blow. "Casting an Unforgivable on a classmate isn't something to be proud of, you know."
"Actually, George, I think that's exactly what 'The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black' stands for."
"So don't act all high and mighty."
"YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME!"
"And you know nothing about us!"
"FINE!"
"Brilliant!"
"AND 100 POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR!"