As the Sister of Harry Potter

Fred and George are very lucky, because they only have three classes; DADA, Charms, and Potions. Don’t ask me how they go into that last one. I still think they cheater their O.W.L. My week looks like this:

Monday – Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy
Tuesday – Potions, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures
Wednesday – DADA, Transfiguration, Astronomy
Thursday – Potions, Herbology, History of Magic
Friday – Charms, Arithmancy, DADA

Now, most people think I’m absolutely MAD for taking History of Magic. Truth is, I love History as a subject. If Binns didn’t teach it, maybe more people would like it. I liked it because the class consists of myself, Cedric, and three Ravenclaws. It rocked.

The first Wednesday, however, was hell.

The N.E.W.T. Defense class was talking animatedly that morning, waiting for Madame T- I mean, Professor Umbridge to get there. I had to stop using that nickname. I knew I was sure to screw up and call her that to her face.

Anyways, I sat in the second-to-last row, talking to Cedric and doodling on my paper. On my other side was Ophilia, who was folding a paper plane. Fred, George and Lee sat behind us, scribbling out what I’m sure was an order form for their prank sweets. In front of us were Jared and Sarlanda. Up front was Dom, who had made a point to avoid me, Sam, a Slytherin girl and Sarlanda’s friend, and Lance. Observing the room, I found Brittany Chang to be sitting alone, which was weirder than Sarlanda being worried or Lance being calm. Brittany was highly popular, and usually surrounded by five or six other people. I was about to point this out of Ophilia when the door opened and Umbridge entered.

“Wands away, books out please,” she said in her annoying, girly voice. The entire room groaned and we pulled out Defensive Magical Theory. “Now, as you all know, this is your final year at Hogwarts. Which means, you have N.E.W.T. tests at the end of the year. There tests will be considerably harder than your O.W.L.’s.” She paused, as if expecting a reaction. When she didn’t get one, she continued. “Seeing as you’ve had a very disrupted education in this particular field of study, the Ministry had reviewed the curriculums and found you missed out on several important concepts early on. So, it is my job to cover there bases with you in a safe, risk-free environment –”

She stopped as Ophilia’s had shot into the air.

“And you are?” Umbridge asked sickly-sweetly.

“Ophilia McLaggen,” said Ophilia.

“Alright Miss McLaggen, what is your question?”

“Um… is risk-free possible?” she asked.

“In my classroom, yes,” said Umbridge confidently. I snorted.

Her eyes locked on her textbook, Sarlanda raised her hand.

“Yes?” Umbridge asked.

“Sarlanda Malfoy. Professor, there’s nothing in here about actually using spells.” Sarlanda raised an eyebrow. “We have practicals on our N.E.W.T. exams. Shouldn’t we practice beforehand so we actually know what we’re doing on the exam?”

“I see no reason why you can’t perform the spells perfectly for your exams if you’ve studied the theory diligently.”

“And what good’s theory going to do you in a fight?” I asked suddenly. Cedric shot me a warning look, but I ignored him.

“Students will raise their hands in my classroom, Miss Potter, and I foresee no situation where you’ll be in a fight.”

I thrust my hand in the air and continued arguing. “Well, maybe when a Death Eater jumps me in the alleyway and tries to kill me… would you consider that a fight? Or are you suggesting that while said Death Eater tortures me I should tell them that their state of mind for performing the curse is all wrong and they’d leave me alone?”

“You are not nor will you ever will be at such a risk. Therefore, myself and the Ministry will teach you the theory, which is substantial enough for you to know.”

“Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t learn?” I snarled, standing from my chair. Everyone in the room started at me, even Lance and Brittany. Stacey Fires’s mouth was slightly open.

“Fifteen points from Gryffindor, Miss Potter, and detention from now until Saturday for disrespecting myself and the Ministry. Now sit down,” said Umbridge in a deadly sweet voice. Shaking with anger, I sat down, not adverting my glare by an inch. “Now, everyone will please read Chapter One. There will be no need to talk.”

-

I posted a notice in the Gryffindor commonroom stating tryouts would be next weekend and left for the Toad Lair. I entered and found Harry in one corner, writing lines.

‘Damn, she got him too?’ I thought.

“That desk if you will, Miss Potter,” said Umbridge, looking at me from over her teacup and pointing at a desk as far away from Harry as possible.

‘No, I won’t,’ I thought bitterly, but threw myself down in the chair anyways. On the desk was a sharp, black quill and a blank sheet of parchment.

“Miss Potter, I want you to write, ‘I must not question authority.’ As many times as it takes.”

So I wrote, ‘I must not question authority.’ The quill leaked bright red ink, and there was a pain on the back of my hand. The words carved themselves into the back of my hand, then healed over. I gritted my teeth and continued writing, wondering what the evil Toad was making Harry carve into his hand.

She kept me well past midnight every night, even until one thirty on Friday, and by then, I was sure the words would scar over and be there forever. When I left that night, my hand was bleeding freely and Umbridge smirked heavily. “Tomorrow night, seven o’clock,” she reminded me.

-

I paced the Room of Requirement Saturday morning. I was angry. My hand was still bleeding through the bandages. And I was plotting mutiny with my best mates.

Prankcouncil was an idea of Ophilia’s and we’ve been holding usually it once a month on a Saturday morning since third year. It started out in the gent’s dorm and we moved it to the Room fourth year when Sarlanda had discovered it. This was how we usually coordinated all our pranks. Ophilia lead the meetings, Fred, George and Lee were the creative ideas, and Sarlanda and I had the magic to make it all work. But today, I was leading.

“We have to get rid of her. And since feeding her to the Squid would probably kill the Squid, we have to chase her out of here,” I said, throwing myself on one of the cushions. “Oh, and we have to do it without getting caught,” I added unnecessarily.

“I have an idea,” said George.

“Shoot,” I said, pointing to the ceiling lazily.

“Make her paranoid. Tell her who we are, but not really. She’ll know we’ll be the ones behind it all, but she won’t know what, when, where, or our real names.”

I sat up. “What’d you mean?”

“Secret identities, basically, and we’ll announce we’re pranking her,” clarified Sarlanda. She thought better in the mornings than me.

“Okay…” I said slowly, “what’ll we be called?”

“The Marauders of course,” piped up Ophilia. “This is exactly the type of thing your dad and Sirius would do.”

Yes, she knows about Sirius. I nodded. “Good, you can give us names later.”

“One question; how’re we going to announce this? We can’t just go up to the staff table and be like, ‘Hi! We’re about to make your life hell!’” Fred asked.

“A Howler?” George suggested.

I shook my head. “No, we need something more permanent… something that could be our first prank…” A light went on in my head. “An intercom system.”

“A what?” everyone else asked.

“Muggles use them in their schools to make announcements,” I explained. “They put speakers all over the school. There’s a microphone in the main office and when you turn it on and speak into it, your voice gets transmitted out of the speakers and all over the school. They’re really loud and really annoying.”

They all started nodding slowly. They were beginning to catch on.

“If we used a Protean Charm,” Sarlanda began.

“And place speakers all over the school,” said Fred with a dreamy look on his face.

I smirked and Ophilia pulled some parchment out of her bag. “Okay, so a Protean Charm… we probably should use a Permanent Sticking Charm and make them imperturbable to keep people from tampering with them,” she said, making a spells and supplies list.

“And put Disillusionment Charms on them, it’ll drive everyone mental if they don’t know where it’s coming from,” added Fred, and Ophilia added it to the list.

“If we get everything together, I think I can do a Protean Charm. We should do everything except the sticking charm before hand to keep installation time to a minimum. So when we go to put them up, all we have to do is the charm and levitate them up onto the wall,” Sarlanda reasoned.

I did the math. One for every classroom and commonroom, four for each floor’s corridor, and Library, Entrance and Great Halls, the Dungeons, the Grand Staircase, and two for the Greenhouses. In all, we would need seventy seven speakers and one controller microphone, counting bathrooms. Ophilia frowned. “How’re we gonna get Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?”

“We can get Cedric or Stacey to do Hufflepuff, and if I remember right, Ravenclaw doesn’t technically have a password. Supposedly, all you have to do is answer some witty question. If not, we could always fly through a window.”

Ophilia sighed and shook her head. “You’re mental Jennifer…”

When all the plans were made, Ophilia asked a vital question. “Where’re we going to put the microphone? We can’t put it in here; we might never see it again. But it has to be somewhere where no one will mess with it.”

There was silence. Then…

“We could put it in my dorm,” said Sarlanda, sighing. “I can disguise it as a book or something, and no one would ever suspect. Plus, I have anti-intruder jinxes all over the place.”

I snorted. “Anti-intruder jinxes?”

“Yes,” she said darkly, “you’d be surprised how many people tried to break into my Slytherin dorm over the years. I’m not relaxing my guard just because I’m Head Girl.”

“You’re just like Moody,” I commented.

“So Sarlanda’s fortress it is,” said George.

As everyone left, I caught Ophilia and we walked together a little farther behind everyone else. “Hey, so things are pretty weird this year, aren’t they?” I commented casually.

She gave me a confused look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, first Lance shows up looking odd and having this… this air around him, like, smug air.”

“Well, isn’t that typical for him?”

“Yeah, but this was even more extreme. And did you notice Brittany Chang?”

She shook her head. “No, why?”

“She was sitting alone in Defense. I actually haven’t seen anyone really talking to her since school started, and you know how she is.”

Ophilia was now frowning. “That I can believe though. Especially after that rumor that’s been flying around, I mean, I don’t really blame her for getting rid of those nasty friends of hers.”

“Why, what rumor?”

“Oh, just some stupid rumor going around about how she got pregnant over the summer. I mean, if someone spread that kind of thing about me, especially one of you guys, I’d disown you too.”

-

That evening at my detention, I was actually in a good mood. Fred and George had managed to sneak into McGonagall’s and make a copy of the speaker off her record player and had set to making copies. Sarlanda was disguising and making them invincible, and Ophilia had managed to get the Room to make her a microphone we could use. Sarlanda and I would be doing the Protean Charm once all the speakers had been prepared.

When Umbridge let me go at midnight, my was bleeding like mad. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson Miss Potter,” she said sweetly as I left.

“Oh, don’t worry Professor, I have. That outburst was so unlike me. It won’t happen again,” I lied fluently, and she ate up every word of it. ‘Yeup, passive aggressive is the way to go,’ I thought as I began my journey to the Gryffindor commonroom. ‘And next time, I’ll hex you in front of everyone.’