Of Pranks & Princes

What was supposed to be a rejuvenating catnap before breakfast wound up a full night's worth of sleep, though Emily woke up feeling as tired as before – if not worse. The watch that rested on her bedside read five, and it took her a moment to realize that it was not five in the morning. Her grumbling stomach was also ever-eager to remind her that she had missed not only breakfast but lunch as well.

And beyond that, she had wasted away her first full day at magic school in her crappy four-poster.

As she sat up in bed and pulled her knees to her chest, the dorm door swung open. A gaggle of girls walked into the room all a-chatter. In the centre of the pack was Violet, unwrapping a thick blue-and-bronze scarf from her neck.

"Oh, Emmy, you're up," she said as she stopped at her bed. "We didn't want to wake you."

"Thanks."

"Unfortunately you slept through Robbie's tour." Violet set her scarf down onto her bed and dug through her trunk until she pulled out a set of bright blue studded earrings. She put them on and then admired her reflection briefly in a small compact mirror.

"It was wicked cool," another girl chimed in.

"He might do another after dinner, but I'm not sure."

As if on cue, Emily's insides churned, eliciting a low rumbling sound. "When is dinner?"

"Soon, I think." She glanced down at the sparkling watch that adorned her wrist. "'Bout forty minutes."

Emily grabbed the clothes she had set aside the night before along with a hairbrush and her toothbrush and darted off to the bathroom, where she'd have just enough time to shower and make herself presentable before dinner. She dressed, throwing her hair into a messy braid, still nearly drenched. She had certainly looked better, though she took some pride in knowing that she was, at the very least, clean and comfortable. She pulled an oversized white sweater over top of her shirt and headed out, hoping that she could brush off her belated appearance as nerves coupled with a bad case of introversion.

"You can come with us, if you'd like, Em," the one girl, Amina, said, pulling her hair back with a butterfly clip. "We're heading down now too."

Emily nodded with a small smile. "Yeah, thanks."

Their conversation from that point centred on class schedules, which Emily had yet to receive. Violet talked about how excited she was for Defence Against the Dark Arts, her mum's favourite class when she had been in school; Amina preferred Flying, since her brother had secretly taken her joyriding over the summer.

The other girls made space for Emily with them at the Ravenclaw table, where she sat, admittedly hungrier than she had anticipated, and filled a plate to its capacity. She was so thirsty she downed pumpkin juice like it was water.

"You all right there, Em?"

She looked up, mouth full of mashed potatoes, with gravy running down her chin in cascades. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she struggled to swallow, and her throat burned against the heat of the food. Staring back at her, stifling laughter, was one of the twins with his brother and Lee in tow.

So much for a decent first impression.

"I'm, uh, I'm fine," she replied, pushing her plate a bit aside, suddenly so aware of how much food filled her plate.

"You've got some food on your…" Fred began, hesitantly. He made a circular motion near his mouth and then moved the circle further and further. "… face."

Nervously, she covered her mouth with her hands, hoping to hide the remnants of her dinner that remained before she got the chance to wipe them away.

"We didn't see you at lunch," Lee interjected, and George added on, "Or breakfast even."

"Yeah, I was… uh…" What was she supposed to say? Oh, I was in bed all day because I couldn't sleep and I wandered out into the common room and then I got locked out all night because I couldn't figure out the stupid riddle.

"She was with us." Violet, who had been sitting next to her, turned around to face the boys with a grin. "We went out crazy early because we wanted enough time to wander the grounds properly."

The three boys responded with satisfied humming shrugs, and Emily let out a deep, deep sigh of relief. From the corner of her eye, she saw Violet wink at her.

She stuck out her hand to them, almost as if they were all one person, and said, "I'm Violet, by the way."

The boys, rather than introducing themselves, each introduced the other – Fred to Lee, Lee to George, and George to Fred – giving Violet a sort of whiplash as she tried to process the information.

"A pleasure to meet you," Fred said, his tone playful.

Violet blinked a few times in response. "Same…"

"And where were you three all day?" Emily asked the boys, all of a sudden sparked with fresh coolness. "Causing trouble, I presume?"

Fred chuckled, and both George and Lee let smug half-smiles crawl across their faces.

"If there's one thing you can be sure of, Princey," Fred replied, crossing his arms against his chest, "it's that we'll always be causing trouble." He raised his brows at her and nudged her shoulder. "In fact, we're off to cause more mischief now, if you'd like to join us…" He turned to Violet to extend the invitation her way. "Both of you. We do love an audience, after all."

Violet grinned and stood up from the table, grabbing the sleeve of Emily's jumper to pull her along too. "Let's go, Emmy!"

She moved to leave with her and the boys until she heard it.

"Miss Prince…" The voice behind her stopped her dead in her tracks. "Might I have a word?"

Her throat closed up as she ushered Violet and the boys on without her and then turned around, barely squeaking out, "Y-yes?"

Severus stared at her with black irises, almost empty. "Do you have a reason for not gracing us with your presence at breakfast this morning – and lunch this afternoon?"

Emily stumbled her way through her justification. "I had some… um… issues… with the common room."

"Excuses, excuses." He shook his head, raising an eyebrow as he looked back at her again. "You'll find that your Head of House has your timetable for this term."

"Oh," she replied, pleasantly surprised by how reasonable he seemed. "Thank you, Sev–"

"And I'll see you in my office after dinner hours for detention."



Emily begrudgingly trudged herself to Severus's office in the dungeons as the large clocks signalled the end of dinner with eight tolls. Her braid was still damp, though the air had dried it slightly into a loose frizz, and she could feel it tickling against the back of her neck.

The dungeon was dark and dank, and Severus's office was in its furthest corner. The stench of wet stone burned in her nose. It was a wonder he could work down here.

"Miss Prince," he greeted her at the door, bringing her in to his large Potions classroom. He sat her down at one of the long tables, with a large piece of parchment and a quill with ink set down in front of her. She looked up at him expectantly as she took her seat. He explained, "You'll be writing a full page of parchment about why it is necessary to abide by school rules and procedures."

"But I —"

He cut her off. "I won't have you getting into more trouble on my watch."

As she picked up the quill, examining it before carefully dipping it into the ink well, she let out a slightly exasperated sigh. Severus poked his head out the doorway and stood waiting. A few moments later, in walked Fred and George, both greeted by surname in Severus's low drawl.

"Hey! It's Princey!" came Fred's exclamation as he entered with his brother.

"Silence!" Severus shot the two a stern glare, bringing them over to the opposite end of the classroom, each gripped by the collar of his shirt. He pointed to a stack of cauldrons and a bucket of soapy water, handing the boys a pair of toothbrushes. As he made his way back across the room, and as she tried to focus on her essay, Severus said, more to the boys than to her, "You'll stay until you've finished."

And the door slammed behind him.

Emily hadn't ever used quill before, which was painfully obvious by her first use now. She moved to start her essay, leaving a large stain of ink that had dripped from the oversaturated quill atop the parchment. She really wished that she had brought a pen instead…

It is necessary to abide by school rules because —

"So… what're you in for?"

She looked up from her parchment at Fred and George who sat cross-legged on the floor, their toothbrushes lying askew on the ground beside them.

"Missed meals." She kept her answer curt in the hope that she could avoid questions.

School rules and procedures are important because —

"Didn't take you as the detention type."

Emily clenched her teeth, drawing in a sharp breath. "I'm not."

School rules and procedures ensure order and that a school runs —

"Well, you're here though, so…"

She slammed her quill down against the table and turned to face them, swinging her legs around to the other side of the bench. "But I won't make it a habit to be here. Unlike the two of you."

"What's Snape got you doing?" George asked.

"Essay." She picked the quill up again, dipping it absentmindedly into the inkwell.

Fred scoffed. "School didn't even start yet, and you're already writing a paper?"

"At least I'm trying to do my work."

As she turned back to her parchment, Emily caught Fred's shrug in her periphery. He and George picked up their toothbrushes and looked at the stack of dirty cauldrons that loomed over them. George stood up to pull one to the floor and struggled beneath its weight and heft. It, along with the ones immediately below it, clanged to the ground, echoing in the emptiness of the dungeon classroom.

"Can't you two clean quietly?" Emily hissed. She had rewritten the same sentence three times over already.

"You know," Fred began, scratching the dry bristles of the toothbrush against a particularly grimy dirt patch on the cauldron, "this would be a lot quieter and faster with some extra help…"

She rolled her eyes and turned back to her essay, writing a quick, though admittedly somewhat slapdash, explanation about school rules establishing structure for students and faculty. Her large, loopy cursive quickly brought her to a full page of parchment and then some.

Over her shoulder, she called over to the twins, "You still looking for some help?"

"Yes, please," George replied, and she noticed that they were both still scrubbing the same one spot on the cauldron as they had been before.

"Hold on," she said, staring blankly at the tall stack of cauldrons that still remained, the fallen few strewn about, and the one that was set in front of them on the floor. "Have you done anything yet?"

"We were waiting for you."

Groaning, Emily ripped the toothbrush from Fred's hand and dipped in the whole way into the bucket to scrub a particularly unsettling green stain on the inside of the cauldron. She was on the floor on her hands and knees leaning over the edge of the bucket, working quickly to finish cleaning it so she could least start a 'clean cauldrons' pile next to the extensive dirty pile. She looked back and forth between the two of them and demanded, "Are you lot going to help or what?"

While George picked up the other toothbrush to clean another cauldron, Fred laughed. "You work too hard; that's the problem, Princey. In life, spontaneity is key. Let loose; have fun."

"We're in detention," she replied, scrubbing harder. "I don't see how this could possibly be fun."

"Oh, really?"

She caught a mischievous gleam in Fred's eye and sighed, shaking her head. She was about to reply when a handful of soap bubbles flew at her face. Upon hearing Fred and George snicker, she wiped the soap bubbles from her nose and tossed them back at them. Despite throwing them with all of the force she could muster, the bubbles floated gently towards the twins, landing on George's ear and in Fred's hair. As the two exploded into a fit of laughter, she found it infectious and fell into it herself.

There was a hiss coming from the corridor, and they looked up through bubbles to see Violet's face.

"Want some company?" She was smiling until she saw the mess. "Or some... help?"

The perplexed look on Violet's face caused the three to erupt in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. She quirked her brow at them and stepped into the room.

"Emily?" she asked, her voice a concerned whisper. "Are you okay?"

They had not gotten much accomplished by that time. Emily was only just starting on the second cauldron, and Fred and George were each pulling down another. Things were going a bit quicker, though, now that the boys had at least started to really work.

"Detention's fun with us, Lilac," Fred said with a wink as he continued to scrub. "You should try it sometime."

"It's not fun," Emily corrected, shooting him a glare. She turned back to Violet and added, softly, "Really, they're awful."

In faux-offence, George scoffed. "Oi, we resemble that remark!"

Violet chuckled from behind her hands. She grabbed a dirty rag that was on one of the tables and tossed it to George. "You lot might want to clean this mess up soon. I saw Professor Snape heading this way." She turned to leave but waved first and said, "I'll see you later, Emmy. Bye, boys!"

The three were quick to get back to work, though grateful for the brief distraction that Violet's presence had given them, and their cleaning was shoddy – as shoddy, at least, as Emily's essay. And as they heard Severus's footsteps approaching the door, Emily rushed back to sit in her seat, quill in hand as she pretended to finish writing her paper.

"You know, Princey," Fred said as he and George stacked the half-cleaned cauldrons in a pile. "This could be the start of a lovely friendship."

And so it was.