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[TarantulaHawk]

She had never felt so out of her element. Maybe it was the change of seasons or how the wind kept, almost teasingly, pulling strands of straightened hair from her high ponytail - whatever it was, that day had just not been going well and she was getting frustrated. First, Deidre was starting drama with another student. She hadn't really thought about the repercussions of fighting with a Slytherin, as they seemed to come along in packs, so Ines had to drag Deidre to Madam Pomfrey. The younger girl really had gotten beat up. She messed up on her transfiguration essay an hour later and she had only realized it when she turned it in; her grade was going to suffer greatly from it, she just knew.

Ines had then opened a letter from her father - both of them talked mostly about her mother and their general struggles. Everything was always so uncomfortable when she got home from Hogwarts, so the two of them vented about things back and forth in letters to get it all out. Her father had mentioned another fight with her mother, but Ines hadn't really cared to look at the details yet. She was used to arguing with her enough when she was home, so of course she knew what it was like when her parents fought each other as well.

"Whoa, Ines, you look awful."

The girl glanced over to her left to see another Hufflepuff. Ophelia Whitewood was someone Ines had sort of grown up alongside. The girls had instantly become friends because they met in their childhood - Ines’ father worked with her mother. They went to Diagon Alley together to buy all of their supplies for their first year. Ines was just glad to have a friend like her. She was honest (quite obviously).

"It's just been a rough day, that's all." Ines sighed, tucking yet another group of annoying flyaway hairs behind her ear.

"And it's going to get even worse." Ophelia said easily as they walked down the hall in the dungeons.

Ines frowned, her eyebrows furrowing together. "Why?"

"We have a dual class today, remember?" The witch responded as she pushed the doors open to the potions classroom, "With Gryffindor?"

Ines held back a low curse as she glanced around the class. One half was full of Hufflepuffs, many of which smiled and waved at Ines, and the other half was crowded with Gryffindors, who looked over both Ines and Ophelia for a moment before going back to their own conversations. These were the worst kinds of classes; Ines worked best alone and always got the highest marks when all she had to worry about was herself. As her mind began to overwhelm itself with stress, her friend pulled her over to an empty desk so they could take their seats.

When Professor Snape made his appearance only a few seconds later, the entire class fell silent. He was an intimidating man with a reputation of being critical and curt, and honestly, Ines was worried she'd have a breakdown if he got angry with her that day. Unfortunately, after learning what they would be brewing, her mind decided to wander. She sort of wanted to drink the Drought of Peace instead of turn it in, at this point. She needed it. She also knew that she just couldn't handle any other sort of stressful situations that day. If she got low marks in Potions too, her grades would begin to slip. Her mother would be furious with her. Her father would likely be frustrated, but at least he wouldn't fight with her when she returned home for break - the next break was slowly approaching her like a wolf would its prey.

"Pairs have already been pre-assigned as to avoid any same-class partnerships." Snape's voice broke her out of her trance for a moment.

Though she was sucked back into her mind when the anxiety began to climb. Pre-assigned partners made everything so much worse. It would have been fine if she could have just worked with another Hufflepuff, as they would either let her take control of the brew and things would turn out fine, or she'd be partnered with someone who was actually capable of helping. But she would have to be paired with a Gryffindor. Not that she liked to have any stereotypical thoughts about any of the other houses (she had met some Slytherin students who were nice, believe it or not), but she knew that Gryffindor students were not detail-oriented, nor were they quiet or particularly careful about their grades. At least, that was what she had been exposed to in terms of the kind of people they were.

"Hey, Ines," she jumped a little when Ophelia nudged her, her eyes darting to the Asian girl, "weren't you listening? He just had someone announce our partners!"

"Oh, Merlin." Ines closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. "No, I wasn't listening. Did you hear who I'm supposed to be with?"

The gleam in Ophelia’s eyes would have been missed by anyone who didn't know her well; smug and mischievous. She hated it when she got that look. It always meant that Ines would struggle somehow with something. As the girl got up, she tossed her hair behind her shoulder and leaned next to Ines’ ear to say,

"One of the Gryffindor pranksters. Fred Weasley."

 

[Flak-Bait]

​

“Snape’s class next.” Lee Jordan groaned as he led the way down the spiraling staircase towards the dungeons, pulling the collar of his robes tighter as the air began to chill. “Man, I’d give about fifty Galleons to get out of this...”

Fred Weasley's ears pricked at the invitation. He glanced to his left at George, a wicked smirk spreading across his freckled face when he saw mischief glinting in his brother’s eyes. Without saying a word—because they so rarely ever needed to—Fred stepped to the right and dashed forward to hook his arm under Lee’s right armpit while Geroge grabbed his left. Lee let out a surprised yelp as they lifted him off of his feet and started running full tilt down the spiral staircase.

“Right then! A note from Madam Pomfrey should do the trick–!” Fred blustered as he leaned into the momentum of their downward charge.

George picked up the taunting without missing a beat, “Reckon we get you going fast enough you’ll tumble the full flight. That’s got to be at least what? Couple broken bones?”

“Oh, at least six or seven!” Fred argued back candidly as their hurried footfalls echoed through the dimly lit stone corridor. He watched with a wide grin as a couple of Slytherin girls ahead of them gasped and pressed themselves flat against the wall to avoid their chaos. Above them, he could hear students hurrying to peer over the edge of the spiral stairwell to see what all the noise was about. Seconds later, familiar Gryffindor voices burst with amusement, a few even whooped encouragement; laying claim to Lee’s spot as Quidditch commentator while he was recovering.

Lee Jordan himself struggled feebly between the twins, trying hard to hide the unmistakable edge of laughter in his voice, “Get off—pft—Get off me! Both of you red-headed gits!”

“We’ll take our payment as soon as you’re out of hospital!” Fred chimed in unison with George as they stormed further down the staircase. As soon as they felt Lee starting to find purchase on the stone stairs with the bottom of his heel they turned him loose and waved as they watched their friend half run, half stumble down the rest of the staircase to balance out his footing. As they had predicted, Lee eventually managed to regain control of his own momentum by the time he hit the last stair and landed gracelessly (but safely) on his own two feet at the bottom.

Not even bothering to smooth out his robes, Lee spun around to face them and Fred watched with some amusement as his friend finally broke into a smile, albeit an evil one. “Ohh, you two’ve done it now. You better play perfectly against Slytherin in a few weeks, cause I’m going to announce every single hair out of place!”

“So nothing’s much changed then.” Fred shot back, earning himself a playful elbow to the ribs before they all erupted into a fit a laughing.

“You three!” An instantly recognizable voice hissed down at them from halfway up the stairwell. Fred sighed and shot an exasperated look over at George before craning his neck back to look up and see Percy glowering down at them over the staircase’s railing. “Stop goofing around and get to class already!” He barked, face pink with indignation. “Honestly, would it kill you to TRY and make a good impression for the first-years? It's been months and they've seen nothing but trouble from the lot of you all! They're going to think—" Fred was pretty sure they’d have gotten even more of an earful if it hadn’t been for a professor calling out to Percy for help from further up the stairs. Luckily for them, Percy’s brown nosing took priority and he promptly vanished from sight before he had time to hound them any further.

“Yeah, be a real shame if we suggest people are actually allowed to take the stick out of their arse and have a laugh now and again, wouldn’t it?” Honestly, he felt like their antics were needed now more than ever. Between the tired old news of Sirius Black’s escape and the lingering glimpses of Dementors just outside the school grounds, the whole castle had been a bit grim all term. He’d at least gotten the breakfast table to brighten up this morning by suggesting that maybe it was a good thing the Dementors were there as it gave Snape the opportunity to meet and possibly date someone just as cold and soul-sucking as he was—which was bound to improve his mood in the classroom. People had snorted into their drinks and choked on their porridge and eggs to laugh. Even Harry had managed to crack the faintest of grins. Since then, the joke had spread like wildfire through the halls, causing snickers everywhere it went, which he’d gladly take over the gloom any day of the week. So what did Percy with his rigid policing know? At least they made the place lively.

“Well anyway, come on, ” Lee’s voice pulled Fred out of his vindictive thinking, “Let’s not be late. I just finished the detention McGonagall gave me for that crack on Duncan Inglebee during last week’s match. I don’t need another.”

Reluctantly, the three of them headed down the hall and swept away into the potions classroom at the last minute. Fred paused in the doorway, momentarily surprised to see the tiny room more packed than it usually was, dotted with flashes of yellow from Hufflepuff robes. Right. Today was a dual class. He’d heard chatter about it around the common room for the past few days, but he hadn't really given all the talk a second thought or bother. Though…he would have picked Ravenclaw to team up with if he could’ve. Easy A, that was. They tended to have all the work done before class even started. Shrugging it all off, Fred slid down into a seat in the back of the room next to George. Mere seconds later, Snape marched in through the room’s double doors, looking as gruff and unwashed as usual. Before the man had even reached the front of the classroom he’d started the day’s opening lecture, though Fred found it hard to focus on the droning instructions. He'd propped an elbow up on the table and was about a million miles away from the classroom when he felt George nudge him and slide a piece of parchment his way. Curious, Fred turned the parchment over on top of the desk and snorted instantly when he was greeted by stick-figure drawings of Snape and a Dementor surrounded by hearts and making out with cartoonishly long reptile like tongues. Leave it to Geroge to bring an idea to life...

"Pairs have already been pre-assigned as to avoid any same-class partnerships." Snape’s voice cut through their snickering. Still grinning, Fred looked up to find the professor’s eyes locked pointedly on him and his brother until finally, the old codger looked away again to write something on the board, his long black robes sweeping up a thin cloud of dust as he turned his back to the class—

Almost at once, an idea struck him as he stared at the potions professor.

Fred reached up at once and snatched George’s drawing off of the table, shoving it deep into his robe pockets and looking over at his brother with a finger held to his lips. George grinned back, already seeming to know exactly where this was going.

For the first time that day—alright, maybe all semster—Fred sat up in his chair and listened attentively as a mousey Hufflepuff boy read the partners list out to the class. He watched as people rose and changed desks, shuffling this way and that as they sought out their partners. Some seemed relieved to be with old friends, but most looked awkward and out of place on both sides. Finally, he heard his own name called.

“Fred Weasley will be with…Ines Glaspy!”

Glaspy? The name sounded familiar and with a sweeping glance over at the Hufflepuff’s side of the room, Fred quickly realized why when he saw a familiar face in the crowd. Glaspy! Of course! She was one of the Hufflepuff’s beaters. He was pretty sure he’d hit her smack in the face with a Bludger last term, though his ribs remembered one or two good bruises that said she’d returned the favor. Other than the fact that she was decent with a bat (and pretty easy on the eyes, admittedly), he didn’t know much about her, but…now was a good a time as any to make a new friend. Especially since he was going to need a partner in crime for his latest scheme.

Patting his pocket to make sure he had George’s artwork secured, Fred rose to his feet and started towards up towards the front of the class where his new partner waited. When he was close, he hopped over the top of an empty desk to avoid shuffling among the other students who were still trying to pack up their cauldrons and quills. He slid easily across the polished wood and landed with a hefty thump into the empty seat next to Ines Glaspy.

“George Weasley will be partnered with…Atticus Blackwater!” Snape's appointed announcer called.

“Ahh, lucky you, Glaspy…” Fred grinned and glanced back at his brother for a second before leaning back into his seat and kicking his heels up to rest them on the table’s edge—all while giving the Hufflepuff witch a wink, “You got the good lookin’ one.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

​

She couldn’t believe it. Of course, she had seen Fred on the field many times and the two of them had exchanged bruises during Quidditch matches, and she had heard about plenty pranks pulled off by him and his brother - she had even witnessed a few. But as funny as they may have been, she worried a lot for her own grade and she was a little too anxious to think of anything else. Usually she would be friendly and open to the idea of meeting a new person, but things were different in Potions class. She had to focus or things could go completely wrong in an instant.

Ines forced herself to look up from her notes on the assignment, scanning the room for the Weasley twin. It didn’t take her long to find him and notice that he was heading her direction. At least she didn’t have to move from her spot. But her stomach dropped a little bit when she watched him hop over an empty desk and she realized that this assignment would likely not end the way she wanted it to. How could someone be so at ease in Potions class?

At his comment, she sighed and rolled her eyes, cringing a little at how he kicked his legs up onto the table. “Good looking?” She echoed, glancing over at him briefly and then back to her notes to double check a few things. “That’s a stretch, I think. But whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Ines wouldn’t deny it, at least to herself, that Fred Weasley was an attractive individual in her mind. She was fairly sure that it was because of his roguish behavior, mainly because that was all she had really heard about him and witnessed. But she did like his freckles, at least. She shook her head lightly to distract herself from those thoughts. She needed to focus on the potion.

“Would you powder the moonstone?” She asked him after a moment, eager to get started. “I can take care of the porcupine quills and unicorn horn.”

She honestly did feel kind of bad for being so short with him. She wasn’t really doing it in a rude way, as her voice was fairly quiet. But she knew that if she got this wrong, it would not be a pleasant time for her. And she just wanted to get it done, honestly. If they had time after the assignment, she knew herself well; she’d probably apologize for her behavior. She really wasn’t one to be rude or standoffish toward others and she wouldn’t be in Hufflepuff if she was.

Ines glanced over to her friend Ophelia, noticing that she had been paired with a Gryffindor that seemed rather awkward and quiet. At least she got a partner that didn’t try to talk her ear off or messed things up. The two girls made eye contact for a moment, and Ines was the first to break it so that she could grab her mortar and pestle to start grinding the piece unicorn horn they needed for the potion.

But as she started to work, she found herself wanting to talk. That wasn’t unusual for her. Again, she was usually rather friendly, but she was just in a very stressful place mentally. And it really wasn’t fair for her to act short with someone else because she didn’t feel calm or at ease.

“I’m sure Gryffindor will beat Slytherin in the next match.” She said suddenly, voice still quiet as to not disturb the conversations of the others around them. “Gryffindor has had an incredible track record this year.”

If there was one thing that a lot of people didn’t know about Ines, it was that her love for Quidditch went far beyond just playing the game. She really enjoyed learning the statistics for things and, if she couldn’t find them, she would calculate it all out herself. It gave her something to do when she couldn’t find a good book on her off time. She also enjoyed reading new tactics whenever she could, trying to get an edge up on her own skills when playing. Cedric Diggory, the team’s captain, often urged her to take over once he graduated. And each time he suggested it, she denied.

Even though she would’ve loved to take the position, she unfortunately had things to do that were more important than to lead a team in her favorite school-related pastime. She had grades to achieve, magic to make stronger and her siblings to protect. All of that meant more than a game.

 

[Flak-Bait]

Still reclined quite comfortably—or as comfortable as one could be in the dreary cold of the the Potion’s classroom—Fred gave a soft snort through his nose at Ines Galspy’s pointed examination of him. He couldn’t help himself. It was so rare to hear anything other than polite conversation from a Hufflepuff that finally hearing one of them speak with an edge in their voice was almost comical. Even if he was probably supposed to be insulted rather than amused.

“Oh yes. Truth sleeps quite easy, thank you.” He mused right along with the witches’ insult, still wearing a grin, though he felt the expression falter a little at how quickly the girl turned back to the assignment in front of them with such a grimly determined look on her face that he almost could have believed they were in the middle of their N.E.W.T.S instead of one of their normal weekly classes. He leaned a bit to the side, peering closer at her half of the workstation desk and realized that the multiple rows of parchment spread out in front of her were filled all the way to the edges with carefully penned notes. Fred raised his brows an inch, idly wondering if he hadn’t been matched with a Ravenclaw student after all, but he pushed the thought aside when Ines spoke to him again—this time about their assignment instead of anything surprising or interesting, but he obliged her all the same, only too happy to be doing the bare minimum when it came to something as mind numbing as potion making.

With his feet still propped on the table’s edge, Fred leaned up in his seat just far enough to pull the workstation’s handheld mallet and flat board closer to him. He then set to work on beating the Moonstone down into smaller more manageable pieces before transferring the shards to a second mortar that he scooped off the table and held in the crook of his left arm so he could lean back in his chair as he started the boring process of refining the shards down to powder with a heavy-grade pestle.

His eyes flickered up to Snape constantly as he worked, watching the man loom around the room and peer over student’s shoulders to criticize their work. Occasionally he caught George looking at him expectantly from across the room, but Fred continued to bide his time, waiting for the right moment to pull their latest trick. He just needed Snape back at the board in center of the room–the more eyes on him the better. Such thoughts were all that was on his mind until Ines spoke to him again. About Quidditch, no less. Not potions.

He blinked back a second of surprise and looked over at her again, a grin returning to his lips. “Yeah, practically in the bag, that one is.” He mused back enthusiastically, a little less quiet than she was, “Slytherin’s never had much of a chance since we got Harry, but they really screwed themselves over putting Malfoy on their seeker’s spot. Little git’s so slimy he can barely hold onto his broom.”

Rearranging the mortar in his arm, Fred spent a few spare seconds crushing down the last of the larger pieces of moonstone before turning his attention back up to Ines. “Hufflepuff’s got a match with ‘em next after us, right?” He ventured, “I remember your swing. It’s wicked.” He gave her a devilishly crooked grin and lifted his heavy pestle out of the mortar and held it up as though he was brandishing it against an incoming Bludger there and now, “Give ‘em a few extra bruises wherever me and George might miss. Won’t be a long game for either of us after all, but between both our houses we can get the whole—”

He was only halfway through the sentence when something invisible took hold of his legs and ripped them off of the desk’s edge. Fred sat upright, shoving the mortar and pestle out onto the table so that he could free a hand to balance himself. When he finally straightened up in his seat, he lifted his head to see Snape glaring over at him and Ines from a few desks away, wand held calmly but firmly in his hand.

“Proper form, Weasley.” The professor drawled out every syllable frigidly, almost spitting his name when he got to it, “I won’t see perfectly good ingredients wasted by your ineptitude.” The man’s dark gaze then slid to Ines, “And I don’t recall Quidditch being of any relevance inside this classroom. Focus. Both of you.” Without waiting for response or excuse from either of then, Snape turned sharply and stalked down the next row of workstation desks like a house cat prowling for its next living plaything.

“Huh. Not bitter at all, are we?” Fred muttered sarcastically over to Ines, feeling quite sure that half of Snape’s attitude came from the badmouthing of his precious Slytherin. It wasn’t as if they weren’t doing the work, after all, and plenty of other students had been caught up in conversations of their own up until now but they’d all been left to it.

Whatever the cause—a general hate for anything and everyone or house rivalries—their scolding seemed to have put Snape in one of his moods. Fred looked up from working on the Moonstone powder to see the dark haired man stop alongside a couple students who held their beakers up to ask a question about porcupine quill measurements, only to be met with Snape mercilessly hissing that they would have known the answer to their question if either of them had bothered to listen to anything he’d been saying for the past week. The student who’d dared to ask a question looked worryingly pale as the professor walked away, leaving them to find the answer on their own somewhere in their textbooks. The drawing suddenly felt heavy in Fred’s robe pocket. A chance to unleash his and George’s machinations couldn’t come soon enough. Snape was practically begging for it at this rate.

 

[TarantulaHawk]

Ines couldn’t help but cast him a sideways glance. Was he just lazy, or did he really just not care in general? She couldn’t judge him for not caring. Even if she wanted to, really. Potions class was boring and extremely stressful, but he didn’t seem stressed at all. She wished that she had that sort of confidence in her own grades to not worry about academics. She had near-perfect grades in every single class she had ever taken, with the exception of Herbology. That was honestly the most boring class she had ever taken. But when her grade suffered, she had suffered through multiple howlers from her mother until she got the grade up. That had really kicked her into making sure her grades were high.

And as she began to work with the next ingredient, she listened quietly to what Fred had to say, though she couldn’t withhold a bit of a snort at her comment about Draco Malfoy. He had no idea how correct he was. Though she couldn’t exactly focus on the satisfaction of someone saying such a thing when her face flushed softly at the noise she made. It wasn’t common for someone to make her do that. Though it wasn’t uncommon.

Just before she got a chance to respond to what Fred had said about giving Slytherin players some extra bruises, she jumped at the sound of Fred’s feet forcefully hitting the ground. She almost dropped the ingredient and tool in her hand and looked over to see none other than Professor Snape - not that it would be anyone else.

She wasn’t really focused on what he said to Fred, and she only focused when that dark and intense gaze moved over to herself and she felt her ears getting hot with shame. It wasn’t often that a teacher scolded her, usually because they knew she was always working hard on her assignments even if she was talking with someone else. But Snape was a different sort of man - he seemed to harbor a hatred for every single one of his students (except for the Slytherin students, of course).

“Yes, Professor.” She mumbled, her stomach churning with unease and embarrassment.

Ines was just not having a good day. On top of being stressed and having so many problems with everything she was doing, being scolded by a teacher was almost the boiling point. But she simply closed her eyes for a second and took in a deep breath, exhaling slowly to keep herself calm.

“Huh. Not bitter at all, are we?”

“Not in the slightest.” Ines murmured with a nod, making sure her voice was quiet so she would not be potentially pounced on by the black-haired man sweeping about the room in an almost uncomfortably slow and focused pace. “Then again, I’d be bitter if I taught this class too.”

Potions was not an easy or hard class, but it was sort of mind-numbing sometimes and always kept her on edge - like she needed more stress in her life.After a minute or two of silently crushing the fragment of unicorn horn that she had in her mortar, she chuckled, soft and dry.

“How much trouble do you think I’d be in if I drank this entire draught once it’s finished?” She asked him lowly. “Even if we overdo the ingredients, I could get some sleep instead. Either would be fine with me.”

The one side effect of putting too much of the ingredients into the draught was that it could put the user into a deep sleep, which Ines was sure she needed. Yes, fixing her anxious state of mind right away would be wonderful, but passing out for a few days would likely do her body wonders. Either way, it was a win to her.

 

[Flak-Bait]

“Not in the slightest. Then again, I’d be bitter if I taught this class too.”

Okay. She definitely wasn’t a Ravenclaw in disguise after all, Fred decided, feeling pretty sure that a real Ravenclaw would sooner chew their own hand off than admit to finding a class boring. Even if it was Potions. But Ines Glaspy was still something of an oddity to him—A Hufflepuff who’s ear tips glowed vibrantly with red undertones when she snorted aloud instead of laughed, but a Hufflepuff who wasn’t so timid as to hold her tongue when she had a point to make or, even better, a joke to crack.

He smirked quietly to himself as he side eyed his surprisingly entertaining lab partner for a moment before begrudgingly following her example and returning his attention back to the mortar in front of him. Now sitting up ‘properly’ in his chair, he worked the pestle over the crumbled stone for a few more minutes until finally it began to break down into a shimmering silver powder that occasionally made his eyes sting whenever he worked it too quickly (which was often, since he was trying to be done and rid of the task as quickly as possible). The seconds seemed to drag from then on, as they always did inside a classroom. After Snape had yelled at the two of them for chatting, the whole room had gone unbearably quiet apart from the gentle gnashing of pestles and the low bubble of solvents finally coming to boil inside various cauldrons. Every now and then Snape hissed something at a student, but Fred had long since stopped listening. If you’d heard one nasally scolding on how badly someone could defile a potion, you’d heard ‘em all.

What did get his attention, however, was the sudden quiet chuckling beside him. He looked over at Ines, ducking his head and leaning in closer to the center of the table to listen as she pondered the trouble she’d get in for downing the potion before class ended. It seemed like such a strange idea to him. Not the defiance of classroom order, of course—that part was brilliant—but of all the potions in the world, throwing back the one that did little more than make you sleep sounded…boring. Still, he couldn’t help a snicker, picturing the look on Snape’s face as one of his students chugged their assignment straight from the cauldron right under his long crooked nose. Why hadn’t he and George done that yet?

Not to be outdone with absurdities though, Fred drew himself upright in his chair, giving her his best baleful look (though his crooked grin stayed put), “Really, Glaspy. Have a heart!” He scolded with mock indignation, puffing his chest out to make himself look important as he picked up his mortar and tipped the freshly powdered moonstone into the brew between them, “You drink all of this and there’ll be nothing left to ferment and rot at the bottom of the cauldron. You’ll be robbing poor old Snape of his favorite hair product.”

Beaming at their exchange, Fred set his now empty mortar back on the table and leaned up in his chair a bit to peer down into the cauldron as the hellebore solvent inside popped and boiled, a new silvery sheen rising to the surface of the thick liquid as the moonstone powder broke down. Fred curled his nose as a smell akin to brimstone and a touch of wet dog wafted up from the new mixture. He knew it’d only get worse by the end of the class. Potion smells always did. He sank back down into his seat and grinned devilish encouragement over at Ines, “Five Sickles says you can’t get through half of it before the smell gets to you.”

“Enough!” A sudden stern barking from the back of the classroom almost cut him off before he’d finished his dare, yet alone had time to hear a response.

Fred turned in his seat and followed everyone else’s wide eyed stares to the back of the class where Snape stood. Sitting at the table next to him, a Hufflepuff boy and Gryffindor girl cowered, looking bewildered to have the whole class turning attention their way.

“The level of incompetence in this room is astounding.” Snape growled. His voice was level, almost sounding bored in spite of the edge in his words. “I could find more wit and talent on the floor of the owlery than in the whole of this classroom. We’ve been going over this potion alone for a full week and half of you still can’t comprehend a basic simmer. Ten points from each of your houses!”

The whole room whined collectively but Snape didn’t so much as bat an eye as he stalked up towards the front of the room. “I will go over this only one more time, so watch your cauldrons and pay attention!” The dark haired man spoke thinly and paused in front of the chalkboard to glower across the room threateningly, “Anything less than perfection after this will earn you a failing grade for the whole of this assignment.” With that, the Professor turned his back on them and began to scrawl on the chalkboard.

Fred could hear a few strained whispers break out in the seats behind them as student clamored for their quills to compensate for Snape’s even-worse-than-usual mood and take notes. The threat of a failing grade seemed to put half the class into a panic, but Fred was only focused on the empty back of Snape’s robes. He smirked to himself as he reached into his pocket for his wand and George’s drawing. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was only about to fan the flame and likely lose Gryffindor a fair few more house points, but…to hell with it! If they were going to have to deal with Snape’s mood it might as well come with a show.

“Hey,” The redhead whispered and gave Ines a tiny nudge with his elbow, “Don’t slurp and snooze me just yet. You’re gonna want to see this. Believe me.”

Just as Snape was putting emphasis on the measurement of unicorn horn powder, Fred pulled his wand free of his pocket and held it under the table. He tapped the end of his wand against the parchment and muttered an incantation under his breath before flourishing his wand forward, sending a small needle made entirely of white light across the classroom towards Snape’s back. The magic needle wove its way busily in and out of the outer layer of Snape’s cloak, working hurriedly until it had created a perfect cross stitch of George’s drawing onto Snape’s back—large enough for even the student in the back to clearly see.

From the corner of his eyes, Fred saw George lean up to his toes and cast a spell of his own, so that the stitch drawing on Snape’s back came to life, the hearts in the drawing rising up and popping with a tiny spark every time the cartoon rendition of Snape and the Dementor leaned into each other.

Snorts broke instantly across the classroom as Snape continued to write furiously across the blackboard, none-the-wiser to the state of his cloak. At least, not until the laughter started to get louder and more and more students found their nerve. “What?” The dark haired man finally hissed as he turned to look back at them over his shoulder, “What could possibly be so amusing to you all about failing?” As soon as he turned, the other half of the class got a glimpse of his robes and burst into a new roar.

 

[TarantulaHawk]

Ines was very careful as she added the powdered unicorn horn into the liquid, knowing that it was a volatile ingredient if not handled right - which she thought was odd, considering the creature it was harvested from. But she found, as they continued to work in silence, that her previous thought happened to be the only interesting thought that she could really think of at the moment. Potions really was a mind numbing class for her. She had no idea how her sister found genuine enjoyment from it.

Though, luckily, it seemed that her potions partner had more to say. As he tipped the moonstone into the brew and she, very carefully, stirred it into the mix, she listened to what he had to say.

“You drink all of this and there’ll be nothing left to ferment and rot at the bottom of the cauldron. You’ll be robbing poor old Snape of his favorite hair product.”

She swiftly raised her hand to cover her mouth, stopping a laugh before it could escape. Though the corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement. Usually Ines rolled her eyes at the comments about how greasy the potion teacher’s hair was, but it seemed that he was ridiculously good at delivering slightly rude humor in a way that actually amused her. And then she looked at him and rolled her eyes, dropping her hand and the smile on her face not fading. She was ever so slightly starting to relax around him. Maybe he wasn’t so obnoxious after all.

“I’m fairly sure that if I actually drank—“

Ines was swiftly cut off by an outburst from Professor Snape himself, which made her smile instantly drop and her eyes widen slightly. She was one of the many eyes that wandered over to see the source of his sudden rage. The poor Hufflepuff boy was trembling a little bit and the Gryffindor girl just looked very uncomfortable. Being the target of his rage was terrifying, which Ines knew first-hand.

Just as the rest of the class did, she sat there and listened to his rant. Quietly did she glance around at the other cauldrons and noticed that only a few of them didn’t appear to be the right color or temperature, which was actually different than usual. Everyone was doing decently that day.

But as he deducted points from both houses, all Ines did was sigh. House points didn’t really matter that much to her. Especially because Hufflepuff usually came in third consistently. But what did matter was what came next.

“Anything less than perfection after this will earn you a failing grade for the whole of this assignment.”

Ines visibly blanched. She was already worried about getting in trouble for the way that her grades were currently, considering that she hadn’t been doing too well that day. She knew for a fact that if the potion didn’t turn out well, her grade in potions would drop and she would be receiving an unfortunate letter from her mother. She was trying her hardest to bring everything up before her parents caught wind of it, but a dropped potions grade would really cause some family problems.

The nudge from her partner made her glance to the side, despite the feeling of anxiety swirling anxiously in her stomach. The second she caught a glimpse of his wand, her eyes widened. But she didn’t have a chance to tell him not to do anything and was forced to watch the entire scenario unfold.

As the magical white thread began to weave itself through the professor’s robes, Ines looked over at her friend. Ophelia was already biting her lower lip with a little grin, which was the opposite of what Ines was hoping for. Even her best friend was excited for what was to come. Was Ines the only one who cared about her grades?

She looked back to Snape just in time to also catch a glimpse of George Weasley, the twin to her partner, casting a small spell. And when the image on the back of their professor’s robe began to move, the sound of low snorting and giggling filled her ears. For the second time that class period, her hand came up to her mouth. She only had a small smile on her lips. Her eyes showed more worry than anything else. Sure, it was funny, but she could not fail that assignment - even though giggling a little bit herself was rather tempting.

“What could possibly be so amusing to you all about failing?”

As Snape turned and flashed the animated image to the other half of the class and the timid noises grew double in volume, Ines couldn’t stop her smile from widening.

Okay, it was really funny, actually.

 

[Flak-Bait]

To Fred’s great joy, Snape spent a solid minute glowering around the classroom. The dark haired man swept this way and that to shoot glares at separate sections of the class. However, with each twist and turn, the Potion’s Master renewed laughter on the side of the room that his cloak was facing as students who had started to recover from their laughter burst into renewed fits of giggles—the Professor’s visible confusion only adding to their amusement.

Beaming a grin at their ingenuity, Fred flashed George a quick look from across the classroom to see that his twin was–as ever–a grinning mirror of himself, laughing along heartily with the rest of the class. Even Glaspy seemed to be cracking, Fred noted as he turned his focus back to her and saw a grin spreading underneath the fingers she’d clamped over her face to contain herself. He couldn’t help but give his head a shake. The whole class was in an uproar. What was the point, or the fun, in holding back now? He was just about to lean over and mention as much but before he could Snape snapped to attention yet again.

“Weasley!”

Fred looked up to see Snape standing at the front of the class. He figured Snape must have finally caught on to the fact that the class found his back amusing because he’d wrenched his cloak off and now stood with it held firmly in his fist, only a fraction of the animated sewn drawing visible in the folds that spilled from his hand. Fred could see the professor’s knuckles going white as he gripped the cloak tightly and glared across the room at his brother. “You…”

“Me?” George perked up in his seat, his mockingly feigned air of innocence and surprise at the accusation drawing a particularly loud snicker from Lee Jordan a few rows down. “How d’ya think it was–”

“Who else would have such a proclivity for benign pointless magic besides you two?” Snape cut George off venomously and turned his glare to pin Fred to his seat as well as he spoke. But, more than anything, the glare just bolstered his resolve.

“Oh no, Professor…” Fred said quite sarcastically, “You had us figured the first time. ‘ Owlery floor talentless ’, I think it was?” Behind them, Fred swore he heard someone choke in an effort to conceal a laugh behind the guise of a cough.

The redhead watched the professor’s lip curl into a sneer. Then, before Fred even realized what had happened, he felt his wand wrench away from his grasp and fly up towards the front of the class where Snape seized it out of the air along with George’s.

“My office. Both of you. After class…” Professor Snape drawled the words out menacingly before speaking up to address the whole of the class, his chin held high in what Fred supposed was some effort to look dignified even as half the class was still snickering at “You all now have just TEN minutes to finish your assignments!” He proclaimed. “And since it seems your table has the time for humor,” Snape’s dark glittering gaze fell pointedly on Ines and Fred, “I’ll presume you are almost done with your assignment and will be grading your potions first.”

There was an unspoken threat of unobtainable standards in his voice as he glowered at them, but eventually, he turned away. He barked for the class to stop gawking and get back to work as he stormed out of sight into the potion’s storeroom, already working with barely contained fury to unhex his cloak.

Even in spite of the hell he and George were likely to be catching soon from their mother for this one—since she was probably going to have to sign off on the return of their wands…again— Fred felt a rush of satisfaction as the room broke out into a low chorus of excited chatter and laughter, everyone apparently seeming to feel much lighter and more at ease without Snape prowling around the room.

‘Did you see his face??’ A whisper from behind asked over the hiss of freshly powdered porcupine quills being poured into a cauldron.

‘Yes, but–oh–they’re done for this time!’

‘I’m glad we’re not going first. Ten minutes! You need that just for the simmer alone!’

‘I just wish we’d brought the camera.’

Grinning contentment at what he felt was a job well done, Fred turned back to Ines, for some reason particularity interested in the Hufflepuff’s reaction and appraisal, “Told ya you wouldn’t want to miss it.” He mused cooly, then sat up and carried on as if nothing at all had happened, completely nonchalant about their assignment time limit or his looming punishment, “Anyway…where we? Five sickles for the whole cauldron?”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“Weasley!”

That was what made Ines drop her smile, her hand falling into her lap almost uselessly. It wasn’t like she didn’t expect the two boys to be caught, as they were the pranksters that caused almost every issue in any class or during their free time, but she was sitting at the table with one of them, which made her a target to Snape’s fury just as much as they were. She stayed quiet as she listened to the way that the twins bounced back-and-forth, almost egging him on. And it was working. His anger was rising and Ines was growing more and more uncomfortable with his rage, despite the other students holding back giggles and words of amusement.

“You all now have just TEN minutes to finish your assignments!” The professor’s outburst made Ines wince a little bit, though she was mostly used to the sound of an enraged voice. Though when he turned to both her and Fred, she could feel her stomach drop anxiously. “And since it seems your table has the time for humor, I’ll presume you are almost done with your assignment and will be grading your potions first.”

For a moment, Ines felt like everything was falling apart, her anxiety shooting her heart up into her throat and making her palms sweaty. But after a moment of thinking, she instantly relaxed again and a little smile appeared on her face. As Snape left the room, quite obviously still riled up over being pranked in front of his entire class, she moved over to the small satchel she kept some of her Potions tools in.

She glanced over at Fred and rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to actually drink it. This amount would likely put me in a coma. Not only that, but five sickles? A cheap bet for something so potentially dangerous.”

After a second more of digging, she pulled out a very small vile of something that looked like water. She was careful as she uncapped it. It was odorless. There wasn’t much left, and she could only hope there would be enough to help them out. She glanced around briefly again, knowing that she would be in a great amount of trouble if she was caught. It was basically cheating, after all. And then she looked at Fred.

“If this doesn’t work, I will be personally giving you and your brother something wickedly nasty as recompense for my destroyed grade and likely detention.”

Ines brought the small vial up to her lips and whispered something. A little bit of her breath slid into the glass vial and the liquid inside turned a slightly cloudy white. She leaned forward and poured it into the mixture. For a second, the simmering Draught of Peace turned a light blue. But it then slowly faded back into the shimmery silver sheen it was meant to be. Ines let out a little sigh as she sat back into her seat and rubbed her face briefly.

“I mean that, by the way.” She tacked on as an afterthought.

A threat from a Hufflepuff likely didn’t seem that intimidating and she was well aware of that. But she would go through with it, even though the revenge would only bring her personal delight. She had to get something other than a Howler out of getting in trouble and her grade being decimated because of two goofy twin brothers.

She took another glimpse at the drought and very carefully stirred it. It had already been simmering since before both of the boys decided to prank their professor, which was probably a good thing. That meant it wouldn’t really be detectable that she simply sped up the simmering time with magic.

Her sister was the Potions genius. That girl was making new Potions and making old ones better every single moment she had free time. Ines only had to use that little vial twice before and it had saved her grade each time. Now that she was finally out, she was going to be commissioning her sister for more right away.

Ines didn’t like to cheat, but if it involved getting out of a Howler and getting an assignment perfect, she would do it.

 

[Flak-Bait]

“I’m not going to actually drink it.”

“Yeah, that’s the hope.” Fred couldn’t help but interrupt cheekily when the Hufflepuff witch rolled her eyes at their proposed bet. After all, if she choked and tapped out halfway through the potion, then he’d have a pocket of sickles and she’d not be passed out in the hospital wing. That all sounded like a win in his book—even if Galspy felt the price was a bit low. Truth be told, five sickles was more than he even had on him at the moment (most of his and George’s funds had been spent over a week ago trying to perfect the new Canary Creams they’d dreamed up over the summer), but he wasn’t about to admit to that. Especially not when something far more interesting was cropping up right in front of him.

Fred leaned up in his seat and watched Ines pull a tiny crystal vile from the depths of her potion’s satchel. He studied the colorless liquid swirling inside the bottle for a second, then cut his eyes back up to Ines’ face, his brows raising curiously as he watched her duck her head and glance guardedly around the room. He grinned. He knew that look. Those wandering eyes were the tell-tale sign of someone who was about to break a few rules.

The redhead felt his grin widen when Ines finally turned her sights back to him and hissed out a threat that all but confirmed his suspicions. “If this doesn’t work, I will be personally giving you and your brother something wickedly nasty as recompense for my destroyed grade and likely detention.”

Some small part of him quietly hoped that whatever it was she was doing didn’t work, just so he could see what a Hufflepuff considered a wickedly nasty bit of magic to be.

Too distracted to think long on it, however, he watched attentively as she breathed an incantation into the vial and then poured the foggy liquid into the cauldron between them. The mixture sizzled and swirled into the potion, turning a powder-blue color before settling back into its natural silver sheen. She’d done this before, he realized with prickling interest. She’d handled the mystery tonic too smoothly to only be giving this its first go. She seemed confident in it too, judging by the way she let herself slump back into her seat with a sigh…and huffed out a few more sharp words to boot.

“Yeah, yeah,” He couldn’t—nor did he really bother to try—to hide the bemusement in his voice at her reiterated threat. He picked his arm up, letting his elbow rest on the desktop as he propped his chin up with a loose fist. He gave her a sly knowing look, a smile still resting on his lips, “But, you know…I reckon we could take it, your hex.” He mused, unable to keep himself from toying with her via a few threats of his own, “And you just gave me the perfect out. Handing you over to Snape would probably distract him from whatever he’s planning for me and George after class. Would sure save us a lot of bother. Not like I care much about my grade, anyway, if he flunks it. Might even get marks just for turning you in.”

He stared at her, dark brown eyes glinting mischievously as he let the words hang heavily in the air. This was normally where George would come in with something witty and give him a moment to compose himself, but without his brother within earshot, Fred found himself cracking at his own hollow threat after a few seconds of silence. “Nah, can’t do it.” He dropped the malicious pretense and laughed warmly, “Can’t even pretend I’d give the greasy git the pleasure. Assuming he can be pleased.” The redhead shook his head then looked over at Ines, picking his chin up off of his fist, “Can you imagine? Snape smiling—?”

He started to pretend to shudder, but just as he did, the door to the potion’s store room swung open and Snape—now rid of the drawing on the back of his cloak—swooped out into the class room and stalked over to his desk. “I assure you, Weasley, that I have no expectation to find anything worth smiling about in here.” The professor bit the words out without looking up from the desk drawer he was shuffling through.

“Case and point…” Fred whispered just loud enough for Ines to hear, only too pleased that Snape had more or less walked right into making a joke of himself.

He watched as the Potion’s Master pulled a fresh roll of parchment and a old gray quill from his desk. The man paused just long enough to scratch something down quickly and viciously onto the paper and then, at last, he turned sharply on his heel came prowling up to them. Snape stopped just in front of their workstation, looming over them with all the likeness of a stiff and ugly gargoyle. Fred watched him glance between the two of them before adding a note to the parchment in his hand.

“For the record, Ms.Glaspy. I expected better from at least you…regardless of your assigned partnerships. I hope that this will serve to—” Fred saw Snape’s dark eyes sweep over the potion in the cauldron as he cut himself off. It was hard to tell, since Snape only ever had one facial expression, but he was pretty sure the man was surprised.

Snape’s eyes lifted briefly to them and then he jotted something down onto his parchment and set it aside, picking up an empty phial off their table. He dipped the phial into the mixture and lifted it up to examine it in the dim light of brazier nearby. Fred waited impatiently, growing more and more amused as he watched Snape tip the phial back and forth carefully. Eventually the man even lifted his wand, muttering a quick spell under his breath and it was all Fred could do not to snort at the dissatisfied look on Snape’s face when nothing at all happened.

“Not bad, huh?” The redhead beamed wryly and looked over at Ines, appraising her with fresh admiration.

Snape didn’t answer him. He didn’t even look at him. Instead, the Professor just capped the phial in his hand with a cork and held it loosely while he wrote something down on his parchment again. “Pass.” The man finally growled, seeming terribly put out to have to admit it. Not offering praise or anything else even remotely friendly, the dark haired man turned, his next words terse and pointed as he headed for the next desk.

“Weasley, get started cleaning the storeroom. Glaspy, you may leave. Review chapters six through eight over the weekend.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“You know…I reckon we could take it, your hex.”

“Who said it would have been a hex?” Ines asked, crossing her arms after carefully setting the small vial back in her satchel. She shifted to cross one leg over the other and looked at him. “For all you know, I could just find something extremely unpleasant to surprise you with that has nothing to do with magic.”

If there was anything that she knew how to do after growing up with her sister, it was banter. Ines had learned quickly when her sister was young that nothing could keep her mouth shut when she had some sort of opinion to get out, and usually that meant Ines was the one who was tasked with making sure her sister didn’t get into trouble because of it. At least it had helped them both sharpen their tongues; words were more effective weapons than anything else, sometimes.

“And you just gave me the perfect out. Handing you over to Snape would probably distract him from whatever he’s planning for me and George after class.”

Her gaze immediately snapped to the ginger beside her and she felt her fingers twitch, the slowly growing worry in her stomach making her want to start fidgeting with anything she could possibly find within reaching distance. She was still having some issues with anxiety, even though she wasn’t afraid of failing the assignment anymore. Maybe it was because she couldn’t honestly tell if he was joking or not. Would he really be the kind of person to tell the teacher that she cheated? She didn’t think so, but then again, she hadn’t met him before that class.

“Would sure save us a lot of bother. Not like I care much about my grade, anyway, if he flunks it. Might even get marks just for turning you in.”

“Don’t you dare.” Ines mumbled, still looking a little bit uncomfortable as she shifted her position.

And after a moment of eye contact that made Ines slightly uncomfortable, he laughed and she inhaled as if she had forgot to start breathing again. Of course he wouldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of person. Ines felt ever so slightly embarrassed with herself. Maybe going and taking a warm bath before bed would snap her into realizing that just because she had a bad day didn’t mean the population of the entire world was out to get her.

“Can’t even pretend I’d give the greasy git the pleasure. Assuming he can be pleased. Can you imagine? Snape smiling—?“

Ines frowned and felt a lightly queasy feeling at the idea. It really was sort of uncomfortable to think of, but she also smiled a little bit as Fred started a dramatic shudder - the fact that it was cut off by their professor made that smile disappear instantly. She straightened up her position a bit, keeping her left leg crossed over the right as he approached their table. He seemed to have simmered down a little bit, but it didn’t ease her worry. If she got caught, she was dead. She was just worried enough that she had missed Fred’s comment about him - she could only hear her heart in her ears.

As Snape reached the desk, her gaze snapped down automatically. A habit that she knew she would likely never break. She could feel eyes on her from other students around them, obviously quite curious about what was about to happen.

“For the record, Ms.Glaspy. I expected better from at least you…regardless of your assigned partnerships. I hope that this will serve to—”

The pause was what caused Ines to look up again, though carefully and against her better judgement. She watched as he did his usual examination with baited breath. When he drew his wand, her heart stopped momentarily and she felt as if time was frozen. Had she made a terrible mistake? Did it not work for once?

But the look of displeasure on Snape’s face was all Ines needed to relax her shoulders, keeping her posture straight but at ease. Of course it worked, what was she thinking? Her sister used it all the time when she just didn’t want to make a potion for an assignment and she was the one who made the potion in the first place! There was no way it could have failed.

“Pass.”

She waited until he turned to let an almost smug smile creep across her face. It was satisfying to give a professor a reason to not disbelieve in her abilities, even if she proved it by cheating. Carefully she took a small piece of parchment and wrote down the chapters before placing things back into her satchel and standing up. She smoothed her palms over her skirt and adjusted the black and yellow tie around her neck before glancing at Fred with that same, self-contented smile.

“Have fun with that.” Ines said as she turned, but when she glanced over her shoulder at him, she added. “Oh, and you’re welcome.”

She didn’t just save her own grade after all. He said that he didn’t care about his grades, but she knew that he had to care a little bit - he hadn’t dropped out or anything, after all.

And with the knowledge of having done at least one thing successfully that day, she quickly left the classroom and stayed only until she met back up with Ophelia. The girl looked proud of herself, but also amused.

“I passed,” she said happily, but the nudged Ines with a little grin, dropping her voice a little as they began to walk, “and I did it honestly.”

“I’m so proud of you.” Ines rolled her eyes with a laugh. “And for the record, you know I wouldn’t have done that if I had the choice, right?”

“Of course, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. You would never cheat on an assignment unless you would die if you didn’t.” Ophelia said, her voice playfully airy and dramatic. “But that’s strange... you’re about to go and pay your sister five more galleons for another vial of Liquid Finish, aren’t you?”

“Oh, for the love of Merlin, shut up before I curse your lips together.”

 

[Flak-Bait]

Fred watched with relish as Snape loomed darkly over the students a desk over from theirs. It was one thing to blatantly rile the Potion’s Master up–and worth it for the laughs–but to make the old codger stew, beholden to his duties as a professor over his pettiness, was a whole other flavor of victory all together. The fact that Snape has suffered both insults within the same hour was just the icing on the cake. Not even the threat of cleaning the potion’s storeroom could spoil the moment.

The redhead looked up at his unexpected partner in crime as she stood from the desk, gathered her items and wished him luck with his impending detention. He grinned and gave a lazy unbothered shrug in response and was about to turn away again, but she caught his attention when she paused on the other side of the desk and flashed him a sly look over her shoulder before touting, “Oh, and you’re welcome.”

Cheeky little—
Fred felt his grin spread into a smirk as he watched her turn away and for a few seconds, he twisted in his seat to watch her go.

“Today, Weasley.” Snape’s arid voice eventually dragged his attention back to the classroom, “Unless you’d like to spend the whole of your weekend in this dungeon scrubbing cauldrons.”

✧​

As it turned out, the Potions Professor hadn’t been entirely bluffing his threat. Dirty cauldrons—some looking as old as the castle itself—were stacked from the floor to the ceiling inside the storeroom. It took him and George a solid hour of work to scrub the grime and ingrained stains out of the Cauldrons. Well, out of some of them anyway. The rest they’d simply bewitched to appear clean for the next three hours or so when Snape wasn’t looking. It wasn’t like they needed their wands returned for the trick. (Not when they’d been doing it back at The Burrow since before their magic was even fully developed or monitored). After that, they’d been left alone to pickle a fresh supply of toads organs, rat brains, and a few dozen other foul smelling potions ingredients, but even then, the pair of them had managed to weasel out a few shortcuts and had finished their punishment white plenty of time left to make it to dinner.

However, food was hardly at the top of either of their minds right now.

“I’m telling you, one drop and you’re done. Simple as that.” Fred mused as he wound his way up the last of the dungeon stairs with George at his side. Ines Glaspy and her cheating tonic had been all they’d talked about since being left alone in the dungeons.

“Could be worth something.” George agreed, “Has to be. She’s probably already selling it though. Easy money like that, she’d be mental not too."

“ ’Course she is,” He shrugged at his twin, “But there’s more than just selling it outright. Think of the production value, George. If we're serious about expanding past abandoned bathrooms and common rooms to an actual shop, we’re going to need every time-saver we can get. There’ll be demand.”

“And the faster we can test and pass prototypes the more things we can try,” Fred looked over to see George’s eyes coming alight with sudden understanding, “expand the inventory faster…”

“Exactly.” He beamed, well aware that the thousands of ideas that’d been bouncing around his head afternoon were now swarming around George’s mind too. The pair of them had gotten pretty good at producing joke poultices, elixirs, and charms over the past few summers, but if there was something out there that they could use to simplify the process, well…one had to spend galleons to make ‘em, and they could stand to rake in the profits by the dozens here if they played their cards right.

“Huh, Hufflepuff…” George let out a tiny huff of wonder beside him, “Who'd've thought?”

They made their way quickly up through the rest of the castle towards the Great Hall, taking shortcuts they’d long since memorized past the kitchens where house elves were busy bustling around premises to keep up with the demands of dinner above them. A few seconds later they slipped into the Great Hall, unnoticed by staff and students alike as they stepped out of a broom closet and melded in with a passing group of Gryffindor students who had just arrived and where sweeping towards the middle table.

Fred paused in the middle of the room, letting the crowd dissipate around them as he scanned the Hufflepuff tables, searching for a familiar face in the sea of yellow fringed robes. From the corner of his vision he saw Ron, Harry, and Hermione eyeing them warily since they weren’t taking their usual spots at the Gryffindor table, but for now, he ignored them—and the pressing expressions on all their faces. Whatever mess they’d gotten themselves into this time they could sort out for themselves. He and George were on a mission of their own.

“There.” He felt George’s elbow in his ribs and turned his head to follow his brother’s lifted chin to the far side of the Hufflepuff table where a girl sat with her back turned towards them, a curtain of dark and meticulously straitened hair obscuring her face. “Wait…isn’t she the beater that gave you a black eye last year? You didn’t mention that.” There was rapturous amusement in his brother’s voice (and a new sense of approval), “Should’ve said. I’d have believed you about her sooner.”

“Shut up.” Fred rolled his eyes but grinned as he stepped forward and lead the way over to the Hufflepuff table.

“’Evening!” He chimed merrily as he slid into the seat next to Ines’ right as naturally as if they ate here every day, “Thought we’d come by for a little inter-house mingling.”

“Don’t mind, do ya, mate?” George followed suit, taking the spot to Ines’ left, much to the shock of the young Hufflepuff first year who sat a seat down from the lot of them. The first year blinked at George’s question, shook his head, then turned away from the scene as if he was ignoring something he wasn’t supposed to be seeing.

“This is my brother, George.” He gestured to his twin with over-acted flair and manners, knowing full well the two of them probably didn’t need introduction at this point. But what was the harm in a little showmanship?

“Big fan,” George answered instantly, leaning up on the table and snatching a buttered roll off one of the serving trays and taking a huge bite out of it before carrying on, “You gave us dirt on him for weeks last spring. Lee and I owe you for that one.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

Ines, after leaving the dungeons, had split from her friend’s side and went up into her shared room. The spare time that she had before dinner was spent neatening things up in there - cleaning her clothes and folding them carefully to put them away meticulously as she always did, and then making her bed and enchanting a non-flying broom to do a quick sweep of the floor. And as it swept, she sat at her desk and began to go over the assigned chapters from Potions class. And when her sister came to get her for dinner, the sight of Ines studying was met with a scoff.

“Do you ever stop and, I don’t know, take a nap?” The younger girl asked, tightening her hair on top of her head. “Or play a game? Have fun?”

“I don’t have time for that and you know it.” Ines sighed as she got to her feet, abandoning the book to follow her sister down the stairs.

“That’s a lie.”

Ines winced a little, but hid it well. Deidre was right. She knew that she did have time to put her books away and actually relax, but Ines wasn’t sure she knew how to do that. Or if she wanted to. Rigorously putting her mind through the paces of studying and writing essays and such kept her distracted from other things that she didn’t really want to think about all the time.

Both girls then met their younger brother in the common room before heading to the Great Hall for dinner. As they walked, Ines glanced over at her siblings. She wasn’t sure where Deidre got her fiery attitude from - their parents weren’t exactly exuberant people. She also had no idea how to be as brave as her. Deidre never listened to their mother, even though she spent countless hours being scolded in their parents’ study for it. She always had average grades, even though everyone knew she could do better, and her hair was wild even when it was pulled back into her usual updo - a rag-tag sort of bun. And then there was Killian. The younger boy was definitely a Hufflepuff through and through. He was quiet and well-mannered, sort of shy but patient and dedicated to his interests. But he was nothing like their parents either and barely anything like Ines, Deidre and their baby brother (so far).

“So, rumor has it that you got paired with one of the Weasley twins during Potions.” Deidre said, a slightly inquisitive tone edging at her voice.

Ines groaned. “Yes I did. And it’s not much of a rumor when practically my entire year was in class with me.”

“How did that go?” Killian asked.

“It was... interesting, I guess.” Ines admitted with a shrug.

She couldn’t deny that she had been thinking of the entire encounter since she got out of class. It was something she wasn’t used to, being so close to a troublemaker or two and watching them perform their tricks without exposing them to someone of authority. But she was glad she hadn’t in retrospect. It had been an experience that lightened her day a little bit, and she had needed that at the time.

It didn’t take them long to reach the Great Hall, and when they did, the siblings took their usual spots at the Hufflepuff table. Ines always sat on one side and both Killian and Deidre sat opposite of her. It was a habit they all had grown up with; they learned to stay close at a young age. Sometimes Ines wondered if they would ever be comfortable enough to break that habit.

As her siblings delved into conversations with others, she carefully filled her plate. She ate healthy, plenty of vegetables and fruit, as well as some sort of protein. And just as Ines took the first bite of the ham slice she had placed onto her plate, she was greeted by a shockingly familiar voice.

“Evening!” Ines found herself rather tense as Fred Weasley himself took a spot right next to her, looking ridiculously comfortable being at a different table than their own (which irritated Ines, who quite frankly just wanted to have some peace while she ate). “Thought we’d come by for a little inter-house mingling.”

”How thoughtful.” Ines answered dryly, rolling her eyes.

She watched quietly as his twin asked a younger Hufflepuff if he minded and then her attention was quickly diverted by the sound of a cough from across the table. Ines narrowed her eyes at Deidre, who was covering her mouth with the back of her hand - it didn’t hide the excitedly amused grin on her face, of course.

“Big fan,” Ines once more moved her attention, but this time to George Weasley. “You gave us dirt on him for weeks last spring. Lee and I owe you for that one.”

“I’d love to do it again.” Ines rolled her eyes, moving her attention finally to her plate, shuffling a few vegetables around before putting a forkful of them into her mouth.

Ines didn’t have to look across the table to see her siblings - she could feel both Deidre and Killian’s gazes burning holes in her. She just couldn’t get a break, could she?

 

[Flak-Bait]

“I’d love to do it again.”


Even under threat of bodily harm, Fred caught himself grinning as he watched Ines. He couldn’t help it. The sour look on the the girl’s face as she hunched over her plate and speared a couple of vegetables vindictively into her mouth was just too good. The Hufflepuff witch had seemed so sure she’d gotten the last laugh back in class when she’d told him he was welcome for her help and had wished him luck before abandoning him to his detention. Now he’d snatched it back, and best of all, his mere presence seemed to be enough to catch her off guard and knock her off her game.


“Come on now, Glaspy…” Fred cooed mockingly, making no effort to hide just how much amusement he was getting out of all this, though after catching a warning glance from George, he tried not to toy with her too much. They didn’t want to lose their business prospect, after all. “Don’t get yourself in a state, we’re just here for a bit of a chat. That’s all.”


“That’s right,” George piped in after audibly gulping down what was left of the roll he’d poached off the middle of the table. “We’ve got a question for you—the lot of you.”


Fred felt his brows lift slightly at the extended invitation. He glanced over at his twin and promptly followed his brother’s gaze to the two pairs of eyes staring back at them from across the table. He’d been too preoccupied with Ines to see them sitting there before, but now he couldn’t help but notice their intent stares and quiet smiles—the pair of them appearing to find Ines’ scorned irrigation just as funny as he did. Siblings, he decided at once at that observation. Siblings who were currently enjoying watching their sister squirm a little. That had to be it. He knew the girl’s devious grin all to well to mistake them for anything else. (Plus, glancing between the two younger students and Ines, he supposed he did see some physical resemblance to credit the idea as well, but really...a grin like the girls? That said it all. You didn’t grow up in a house of seven and not know that look by heart.)


Fred smiled widely at them, only too happy to have an audience. “Right,” He settled into his best showman’s voice and reached up to push the sleeves of his robes halfway up his forearms before he leaned up in his seat and reached out across the table to help himself to some of the food that had been laid out on the Hufflepuff’s dining table. The first-year Hufflepuff students who’d been sparing them conservative wary glances ever since they’d settled down now gawked openly down the table at them, still apparently convinced they were watching something taboo. He ignored them and carried on with his sale, “You’ve all been to Diagon Alley a few times by now, yeah? Can hardly get in the doors here without emptying your pockets there, after all.”


“Great place, though.” George pitched in bracingly to avoid their pitch sounding too much like a complaint, “Has everything any Hogwarts student worth their salt could need. Wands—“


“Brooms,” Fred put in mildly, ladling soup into his bowl.


“Robes,” His brother followed, tossing him a roll without needing to look up from his own plate.


“Butterbeer,” He caught the tossed bread. Also with little more than a glance.


“Owls,”


“But,“ Fred broke the monotony of their back-and-forth as he settled back down into his seat with a hearty steaming bowl of potato soup in front of him. “We can’t help but feel like something’s missing around ol’ Diagon.” He did his best to sound thoroughly put out by the alley’s lacking as he tore the roll George had tossed him in half and dipped it into his soup, “Something any modern self-respecting student ought to have full access to just as readily as any of their other supplies.”


“Anyone fancy a guess at what that something is?” Fred heard George prompt from around Ines’ other side before his twin wolfed down a lamb chop in two swift bites.


Unable to help himself, Fred turned his sights back on Ines and leaned in towards her, giving her a gentle nudge with his elbow as he smirked and teased, “Don’t worry. We’re not grading. Just curious.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“Come on now, Glaspy…” the way that Fred crooned at Ines made her turn her gaze to him, eyes narrowed and her ears feeling hot at being singled out like that, “Don’t get yourself in a state, we’re just here for a bit of a chat. That’s all.”

“I have a feeling that it’s never just a chat with you two.” She mumbled, setting her fork down and crossing her arms, looking between the twins.

“That’s right. We’ve got a question for you—the lot of you.”

At George’s words, her younger siblings looked between each other and then back to the red-headed boys. Killian looked quite worried as he spooned some soup slowly into his mouth. But Deidre, on the other hand, had set her utensils down on her plate and leaned in. Her eyes were practically shining and that made Ines’ stomach churn anxiously. That was never a good sign, that expression on her sister’s face - curiosity.

And as they begin to talk, exchanging words and passing food easily as only twins could do, she began to feel quite uncomfortable. She knew where this was going. She didn’t like it. In the back of her mind since she had left potions, there was a nagging voice that had told her she made a mistake by using that little vial in front of Fred, and it seemed that her mind had been quite right.

Ines looked back to Fred as he nudged her, and that little smirk made her feel even more irritable. “Don’t worry. We’re not grading. Just curious.”

“Of course you are.” She grumbled to herself.

“I-I’m not sure.” Killian admitted, eyebrows furrowed and lip quivering as if he had forgotten the answer to an important question during a test. “Deidre?”

And when Ines and Killian looked at her, she was grinning a little bit. That’s what Ines had been afraid of. She knew the answer.

“So,” Deidre turned her sights on her older sister, only looking down briefly to stab at a piece of steamed carrot on her plate, “you really didn’t think before you used it this time, did you?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Ines sighed, her face on fire - she could feel the stares of the other Hufflepuff students on her.

Deidre chuckled at the expression on her sister’s face, the sound unbelievingly mischievous as she looked at the twins again. “I’m going to say... Diagon Alley is missing something that could make your schoolwork so much easier; particularly in Potions class.”

The way that her sister put more effort into simply saying the name of the class made Ines feel an uncomfortable pit of guilt in her stomach. She hated cheating, but she truly hadn’t really been able to brew the potion properly with the time constraints she had been given! And it wasn’t like what Fred and George decided to pull wasn’t the reason for that issue in the first place.

“You used it all?” Killian looked at Ines in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“Hush up.” The eldest sibling sighed, tucking a few straight strands of hair behind her ear. “When I said I didn’t have a choice, I meant it. I wasn’t about to let my grade be completely destroyed.”

“But really? Using it in front of...” Killian trailed off as he looked between the twins confusedly,
obviously unable to decipher which one was which, “...one of them?”

“I told you that she really didn’t think it through...” Deidre hummed with a confident grin as she popped the piece of steamed carrot into her mouth.

 

[Flak-Bait]

It hadn’t exactly been his plan to get dinner and a show, but as he watched Ines set her fork down and cross her arms over her chest like a pouting child, he had to admit he was getting exactly that. His smirk only widened behind the spoonful of soup he brought to his lips and gulped it down with a quiet chuckle at her grumbling.

He peeked back over the table when he heard the young Hufflepuff boy clamoring anxiously for an answer to their question, looking for all the world like he thought the pair of them were going to beat him senseless if he didn’t cough something up. (Which, in so far as he knew, the kid might’ve believed that. He’d heard—and made no attempts to discredit—a few wild exaggerations about Gryffindors around the Hufflepuff common room during his time traipsing around the castle after hours with George.) Before he could give the boy’s nerves much more thought, however, the kid had turned all attention to his sister—Deidre, apparently.

The glint in her eye made Fred instantly like her. As did the wholly unimpressed assessment the that Deidre made of her older sister, whom he could now feel embarrassed heat radiating off of in waves since they were shoulder to shoulder on the bench. He cut a glance over at his now former lab-partner, not at all surprised to see that some of the color that flushed her ear tips today in potions class had now spread to glow under the color of her cheeks.

“I’m going to say... Diagon Alley is missing something that could make your schoolwork so much easier; particularly in Potions class.”

The answer pulled Fred’s attention back across the dining table after a moment’s hesitation. “Right in one!” He cheered merrily, propping himself up in his seat and pointing in Deidre’s direction with the end of his recently-cleaned spoon.

He took the time to down a bit more of his soup, a grin now feeling permanently set on his freckled face as he watched the exchange between the three Hufflepuff students. From down the table he could see George biting back on a snort of laughter when the boy glanced between them fretted, “But really? Using it in front of...one of them?”

“Us?” George questioned. From the corner of his eye, Fred could see his brother sit up and place a hand to his chest as he did a hilariously poor job of acting hurt by the lack of trust, “C’mon, mate. We’re connoisseurs. We’ve nothing but respect for this kind of work.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like Ines here is lying either,” Fred joined in, deciding to 'mercifully' come to the Hufflepuff witch’s defense in some belated effort to start buttering her up towards the idea of a partnership soon, “Ol’ Snape really didn’t give her any choice. You know how he is.” He shook his head to show disapproval, but dipped the other half of his roll into his soup and took a very conveniently large bite out of it before he could be expected to point out that he and George had played a significant role in Snape’s attitude that afternoon. Those were unimportant details anyway.

“Shame.” George muttered in a sympathetic undertone before continuing the pitch, “Happens all the time too. You catch one professor chuffed about something and that’s your head on the block.”

“And if not that, they’re robbing you blind of your youth with O.W.L.S and detentions and what not.” Fred added pointedly.

“Hardly fair, is it?” George took a moment to pile a generous helping of Shepard's Pie onto his plate then looked up with a grin curling his lips, “We’ve always felt something should be done about it, Fred and I.”

“And so we have! Or, we’re working on it at least,” Fred boasted proudly, “We’re developing a whole line of products to give the average Hogwarts student a chance to reclaim some freedom ‘round this place. Things that’ll get you out of class, things to let you deal with that annoying Slytherin prat that’s been bugging you without leaving a trace, things to get you out of a pinch…” He cut a glance over at Ines, that knowing grin still plastered on his face. Even as he lifted his bowl up to drain what was left of the potato soup.

“S’why we think your little miracle mixture is so brilliant.” Fred could see George turn his sights on Ines too as he addressed her, his brother's voice was airy and complimentary but his eyes were alight with cunning, “Not just for class either, mind. It takes time doing what we do. If we had something like what you used in class today we could cut production times in half. Which we’ll need once we really get this thing off the ground and beyond common-room sales.”

“So,” Fred plopped his now empty bowl down onto the table noisily. A few of the nosy first years jumped at the sudden clatter, but yet again, he refused to give them much attention. He reached out and snatched a decorative napkin off the table's center piece to wipe his mouth with before he continued. “How would you feel about a partnership?” He leaned back from the table and angled himself in his seat so that he was facing Ines again, one elbow propped on the table’s edge with no mind at all for manners as he winked at her, “One skiver to another?”

“With full credibility to your creation and shared profits on anything we used your mixture in, of course.” George put in very quickly behind him, for the first time sounding completely earnest since they were serious about that sort of thing. Honor among thieves and all. “You could even sell the mix itself through us, if you’d like. Take the full profit of those direct sales and let us shoulder the burden of fencing it for you. As a show of good faith.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“Right in one!”

Deidre smiled contentedly at his words, taking a drink of what was in her goblet. And as the twins continued, she seemed to have sucked in a piece of ice with the sip, and she was now alternating between chewing and sucking on it.

Ines watched the twins carefully after pulling her gaze away from her sister, who seemed to be doing the same. She still didn’t really trust them. Troublemakers were the kinds of people she usually avoided and now she was trapped between two of them (three, if she wanted to count her sister).

“C’mon, mate,” George sounded playfully offended at the way Killian addresses them, which was what brought Ines back into the conversation, “we’re connoisseurs. We’ve nothing but respect for this kind of work.”

And when Fred addressed the situation that Ines had found herself in, she rolled her eyes blatantly at his explanation.

“I love how you seem to have forgotten that I wouldn’t have had any sort of problem with the assignment, had you and your brother decided to not...“

But she found herself quickly drown out by the twins continuing to speak about how professors acted like that all of the time and how they wanted to do something about it, so she just allowed her words to trail off entirely.

She was becoming more and more frustrated as the conversation continued. She wanted nothing to do with this and it had been a simple mistake that she decided to use that small potion in front of Fred Weasley - a mistake that was going to undo what little sanity she had left, at this point.

“So, how would you feel about a partnership?” She looked at Fred abruptly, eyes widening. “One skiver to another?”

And then her eyes darted to George as he said, “With full credibility to your creation and shared profits on anything we used your mixture in, of course.”

“Boys, boys!” Deidre laughed, and she didn’t fail to notice how Ines relaxed the second that she was saved from being cornered by them. “I think you’ve gotten something mixed up. She didn’t make it. I did.”

The younger Hufflepuff student flipped her hair out of her face, quickly tucking some of the strands behind her ears so that she could keep her attention directly on the twins without having to focus on her hair being in her face.

“I did make it for Ines, though,” Deidre shrugged, taking a bite from a buttered roll and chewing, but continuing to talk after covering her mouth politely, “she’s rubbish at Potions.”

“Excuse me! Don't talk about me as if I’m not here!”

The young girl easily ignored her sister’s protests and continued on. “And usually I would only sell it to her, considering that she would never tattle about me making it.”

Ines looked down at her plate. Deidre was right. She would never tell any professor that her sister was the one who made it because that would get both of them in trouble, and she would do almost anything to stay out of trouble.

“But,” Deidre put the roll down, as well as her hand, “I can see that I could definitely make a profit from this.”

For a moment, she went quiet. She looked between her little brother and her older sister and then over to the twins. One could almost see the gears in her mind working to come up with some sort of plan, and the longer the quiet stayed, the more nervous Ines became.

“How about this?” Deidre said, only addressing them for a second before shooting the other Hufflepuff students a look that seemed to startle them into starting their own conversations again - they were, mostly, ignoring what was happening between the Glaspy’s and the Weasley twins. “I will brew a batch, brand new and fresh, just for you two. Ten galleons.”

And then she propped her arm up on the table resting her head in her hand. “Or, if you don’t have the coin, you can do a favor for me.”

“Deidre...” Ines warned lowly, narrowing her eyes at her younger sister.

“As you can probably tell, my darling sister doesn’t really do anything fun on her free time—” Deidre said, though when she saw Ines opening her mouth, she quickly shut her down with, “Quidditch practice is still practice!”

And when she was sure Ines wasn’t going to interrupt again, she continued. “As I was saying, my sister doesn’t really have fun. She stays holed up in the dorm whenever she has any spare time and uses it to work, or even study ahead! Boring, if you ask me.”

“So, I want you two to loosen her up!” She said confidently, smiling. “Make her laugh and have some fun. Get her to relax a little bit. Do that by the end of the week, and you’ll have a batch for free.”

“Absolutely not!” Ines protested. “I happen to enjoy studying and getting things done so I don’t have to worry about it all later!”

“I-Ines? I think.. I think Deidre is right.”

The two girls looked at Killian, one looking quite pleased and the other looking completely betrayed. The boy swallowed idly, adjusting his tie.

“You really don’t smile anymore, or actually enjoy yourself.” Killian explained simply. “And if this can get you to do that... if they can get you to do that.. maybe it’s for the best.”

Ines groaned after a moment, burying her face in her hands. She was feeling like a mess, her emotions were everywhere. But mainly she sort of felt guilty. Even her little brother noticed that she was sort of keeping to herself, drowning herself in books and extra credit. She was keeping herself so busy that she didn’t have time to interact with others.

“So, do we have a deal?” Deidre piped up, the grin on her face confident as she extended both hands for the twins to shake, if they so pleased.

 

[Flak-Bait]

“Boys, boys!”

Deidre’s laughter pulled Fred back into his seat. He looked over at the younger witch and blinked in surprise when she claimed ownership of the potion mixture. He glanced over Ines’ ducked head at George and found his brother starting dumbstruck back at him for a half a second before he pulled an exaggerated impartial expression that lifted his brows high and tugged at the corner of his mouth low.

‘What did it matter to them who made it?’ Fred understood his brother’s miming instantly and gave an unbothered shrug to show his agreement, ‘So long as they could still get in on the deal, it hardly mattered to them who did what.’

But...
He did still find himself pleased when Deidre had another teasing go at her older sister. Ines may not have been the cheating mastermind he originally took her for back in Snape’s class, but watching her bristle and bluster was still rather entertaining. He picked up a fresh order of pumpkin juice from the table’s center and, grinning around the edges of his goblet, watched the range of expressions playing across the eldest Glaspy’s face.

“Excuse me! Don't talk about me as if I’m not here!”

Fred snickered into his cup then turned his sights back on Deidre as she weighed the pros and cons of doing business with them.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about us selling you out either,” George spoke mindfully when the young Hufflepuff mentioned only ever selling to family in order to keep herself out of trouble. “Fat lot of good it’d do us to go around getting a reputation as stool pigeons. What with the market we’re trying to build. We’d never make a sale again if we went suddenly up and went straight!”

“S’right.” Fred agreed, lifting his free hand in a mock gesture of swearing to an oath of secrecy. “Not to mention--” He dropped his hand back down to the table top and leaned forward, making a disgusted face to go along with his next words, “we’d never be able to live with the disgrace if we did.”

He could just make out George nodding along in fervent agreement, but after that, the pair of them fell quiet as they gave Deidre the opportunity to consider them; though it was taking slightly longer than Fred would have liked. When she finally spoke again, he perked up, encouraged by her acceding tone...though that feeling of lightness was quickly crushed by the price.

Ten galleons.

Fred set his jaw, trying to keep a straight face, though a seat over he could hear George trying desperately to hide the fact that he’d choked on the bite of Sheaprd’s pie he’d just taken. That was a quarter of their entire savings. There was absolutely no way they were going to afford that. Especially not for just a single batch. With a flicker of irritation, Fred suspected that Deidre was all too aware of that fact, but before he could get too annoyed with the girl, she spoke again, “Or, if you don’t have the coin, you can do a favor for me.”

“Deidre...”

The redhead glanced over at Ines’ warning growl, then back to Deidre, his irritation quickly forgotten and his interest piqued by the eldest Hufflepuff’s resistance.

“As you can probably tell, my darling sister doesn’t really do anything fun on her free time—Quidditch practice is still practice!”

This time it was George who snorted at Ines’ expense, apparently now recovered from the Shepard’s pie that had choked him earlier. Fred felt his own grin returning as he listened to Deidre’s proposal, already liking the sound of it. They got to spend a week teaching a shut-in book worm how to live a little and in return got to shave a few weeks of research and development off of their production line? It was brilliant.

“Absolutely not! I happen to enjoy studying and getting things done so I don’t have to worry about it all later!”

Fred turned, just about to quip something about Ines possibly being an impossible case to Deidre, but he found himself cut short by a quiet voice from across the table. He bit back on his words and looked over at the Glaspy brother (who was now looking a bit nervous to suddenly have so many eyes on him). Fred almost had to strain to hear the kid’s words over the general chorus of the Great Hall, but when he finally did understand him, he was surprised. He’d half been expecting another tease or jab, but the boy sounded...worried. Genuinely so.

Fred shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling as though he and George had just tread into something private and personal---and not the fun we’ve-got-dirt-on-you-now kind of personal either. It didn’t sound to him like Ines actually enjoyed those books as much as she claimed to, but rather than let the mood spoil, Fred decided to take that as a sign that there might just be help for Ines yet. She hadn’t gone full Granger on them, after all. If anyone could pull her back from the brink of monotonous study, they could.

“So, do we have a deal?”

He turned his head, meeting George’s eyes for just a second, their agreement instant and decided without speaking. Letting his grin widen over his freckled face, Fred mirrored his twin as the two of them leaned up in their seats and closed their hands tightly around Deidre’s.

“Deal!” They spoke together, shaking vigorously over the commitment.

“Com’on, Ines!” He heard George pipe up brightly as his brother settled back down into his seat first, “Don’t look so glum.”

“Yeah, we’ve been bought to do WAY worse before.” Fred joined in more briskly, clapping a hand lightly over the Hufflepuff witch’s on the shoulder as he slid back down on the bench next to her and leaned forward to grin up at her through the fingers she was trying so desperately to hide behind, “You’re in for the best week of your Hogwarts career thanks to Deidre, here.”

 

[TarantulaHawk]

"Excellent!" Deidre gave them a brilliant grin as she gave their hands a shake and then let go, easily settling into her seat and getting back to eating.

The content look on her sister's face made Ines' blood boil a little. Ines wasn't about to mention that Deidre usually made her pay way less for a little bit of the potion she had dubbed "Liquid Luck" (Deidre was still looking for another name, considering that it was currently sharing that title with a potion called "Felix Felicis"), especially because she knew that the Weasley family was not well-off - Deidre was most definitely taking advantage of that and it was deplorable. It would be something that Ines was definitely going to bring up with her later.

“Com’on, Ines! Don’t look so glum.”

She shot a glare over to George from behind her hands, looking more frustrated than upset. But she supposed he didn't care much. He was just glad to be able to get what he and his twin needed in order to work more on... whatever they were making, exactly.

“Yeah, we’ve been bought to do WAY worse before.” As Fred clasped her on the shoulder, the sight of him leaning forward to look at her through her hands made her drop them - his grin was contagious, but not contagious enough to fix her irritation with the situation she was facing. “You’re in for the best week of your Hogwarts career thanks to Deidre, here.”

"I highly doubt that." Ines sighed, looking defeated as she poked at her food.

"I don't!" Deidre chimed through a mouthful of food, which she again covered politely. "If anyone can get you to have fun, it has to be these two. Especially because I can't, for some reason."

"Some reason?" Ines scoffed, rolling her eyes so hard her irises disappeared in her skull for a moment. "It's because you're the biggest pain in my arse I've ever had to deal with and I hate you."

Deidre laughed at the quite obviously empty threat and even their younger brother grinned as he chewed a bite of his own food. The younger Glaspy siblings seemed absolutely delighted at the idea of Ines going through a week of dealing with the twins, but Ines was realizing that irritation she felt for the situation was actually nervousness. Most of her house was close to her because they knew that she went through a lot and had a ridiculous amount of weight on her shoulders for many reasons, but dealing with two of the most well-known students in the entirety of Hogwarts was going to make her go crazy. She just knew it.

"Are you okay?" Killian's voice floated into her ears and she looked over at him, but was disappointed to see that he was grinning. "You look like you're going to explode."

A few seats down, a voice said, "She might if you keep poking at her. But go for it. I kind of want to see her lose it."

Ines looked over to see Ophelia giving her an amused smile and a few other Hufflepuffs were mumbling things to each other, looking between themselves and Ines. This was going to be the talk of Hufflepuff house for a while, and she was sure that Gryffindor would eventually find out of the deal the twins had made as well.

She groaned lowly as she put her face back into her hands, shaking her head. She was in deep and it was going to take one whole week to get out of the grave her sister had dug for her. Ines had no idea how she was going to survive.

 

[Flak-Bait]

Still sporting a grin on his freckled face, Fred settled contentedly back down into his seat and watched as Ines reluctantly dropped her hands away from her face and accepted her fate. (Though not without spitting a healthy amount of venom at her sister first).

"It's because you're the biggest pain in my arse I've ever had to deal with and I hate you."

“Ah,” he mused warmly, propping an elbow up on the table so that he could hold his chin in his palm as he watched Deidre laugh while Ines fumed at her. “I love when we can help bring a family closer together.”

“Speakin’ of…” George’s voice trailed.

It would have suited Fred just fine to sit there and watch the Hufflepuff table continue to descend into chaos all night, but the distraction in his brother’s tone pried his attention away from their new found friends. He followed his twin’s gaze over to the Gryffindor table where Ginny, now looking quite impatient with them for ignoring her when they’d first arrived, was demanding their attention with a glare and rigid beckoning wave of her hand. Beside her, Ron was sitting with his head hung low, uncharacteristically indifferent to the stacked chocolate cake that Harry was trying hard to coax onto him.

“Well, looks like our services are needed elsewhere for the time being.” Fred announced almost as soon as the Hufflepuff girl a few seats down had finished speaking.

“Good doing business with you,” George followed with the same casual flair giving the younger Glaspys a wink, “Suppose we’ll be seeing you around, then.”

“Especially you, Ines.” Fred said as he got to his feet, taking the time to swipe a few apple scones off of the Hufflepuff’s serving table as he did so. He turned to go, letting George lead the way, but stopped short and turned so that he was walking backwards after a few steps so that he could face Ines as he called back at her, “Oh, and...you’re welcome!” He smirked as he shot her earlier words back at her. Then, after taking a satisfied bite out of the scone he’s stolen, he turned on his heel and hurried along to catch up with George.

✧​

The rest of their night had been decidedly less interesting. They’d learned after settling down at the Gryffindor table that Ron’s troubles where as simple as having lost Scabbers to Crookshanks’ appetite--which, Fred personally couldn’t see as much of a loss at all, old and pathetic as the rat was--but all the same, they’d done their part in attempting to cheer their younger brother up before calling it a night and heading to the Gryffindor tower for bed.

The next couple of days passed like any school day did, filled with classes and exams, both of which he and George had either skirted entirely or breezed through so that they could make good on their deal with Deidre. They’d made sure to be under Ines’ nose at every possible turn. They were in the halls, seated and partnered with her during dual classes, lurking the shelves at the library, and of course, they had even become set features at the Hufflepuff table during every meal (though first years still watched them warily). They’d even made it a habit to show up outside the Hufflepuff common room now and again, knicking snacks as they ventured through the secret passages in and around kitchens. They’d pulled numerous pranks in that amount time. On Teachers, on students, on each other, on Ines. Any and everyone was fair game and they’d gotten riotous results from those who’d taken to watching the ordeal and keeping score, but in spite of all the effort, Fred wasn’t sure if they ever got Ines to completely crack. He thought he might have seen a few hidden grins here and there, or maybe the smallest of giggles, but neither he nor George had anything concrete to take to Deidre for their prize. Slowly but surely, this whole thing was turning out to be far harder than they had expected.


But thankfully, they lived for a challenge…

It was now Saturday afternoon and the day, crisp and breezy, found them no less committed as they marched out onto the Quidditch field with their brooms in hand.

“Morning Cedric! Or, well, afternoon really.” Fred spoke up merrily, casting a glance up at the sky as the fall sun shimmered distantly through layers of heavy clouds. Overhead he could just make out the distant silhouettes of a couple of Hufflepuff chasers darting in and out of sight.

Cedric, who had been busy carrying out a crate of practice bludgers from the storeroom, set his burden down onto the grass with a quiet grunt before straightening and looking between them. “Oh, Hello…?” Fred saw the taller boy eyeing their brooms skeptically before politely reminding them, “Sorry guys, Hufflepuff’s got the field scheduled for the evening. Should be all your tomorrow, though.”

“We know.” George placated, “We’re actually here to deliver a message. Rickett sends his apologies but he won’t be coming to practice today.”

“What? What do you mean?” Cedric’s brows rose, he sounded surprisingly more concerned than indignant like they’d expected, but Fred supposed not every Quidditch captain was quite as high-strung as Woods. “Is he alright?”

“Yeah, should be fine. Just stuck to the hospital wing for the day.” George assured with a nod, “He had detention with us this morning. Professor Sprout had us tending the Bubotubers again and Rickett’s glove had a hole. Poor sod didn’t notice until the boils were all the way up his arms.”

“Nasty business, that.” Fred offered sympathetically, “Hedi Macavoy went with him when she saw us in the halls with him.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Cedric conceded with a soft laugh hidden in his voice, apparently amused by Heidi’s concern now that he knew his housemate would be fine. The lightness in his expression didn’t last long, though, and Fred watched with some amusement of his own as Cedric looked between them skeptically before speaking again, this time more guarded, “I appreciate you letting me know, but is there a reason you two brought your brooms to tell me this?”

“Well…” Fred drawled innocently, unable to keep himself from smirking as he shot a sideways glance at his twin, “You’re down one beater and chaser by our count--”

“and we’ve nothing better to do--”

“So we thought we’d lend you lot a hand, if you want?” Fred turned his grin back up to Cedric who was crossing his arms over his chest as he listened.

“Hm-hmm. And this has nothing at all to do with that deal you made with Deidre the other day, I suppose?” The Hufflepuff Captain pressed, his tone knowing but level.

Cedric might have been a rigidly polite and boring sometimes--as all Prefects so sadly were--but the guy definitely wasn’t an idiot.
Fred always had liked that about him.

“Only some.” George conceded for them and without even looking over at him, Fred could hear the smile in his brother’s voice.

The Hufflepuff sixth year stared at them for a long moment before sighing and glancing around the field, surveying the early-fall bleached field for a few seconds. “Well, we do need the practice…” Cedric eventually agreed, kneading the side of his neck with his hand, but he swiftly dropped it back down into his robe's pocket and stood up to his full height before meeting their eyes again. “But, look you two, I don’t want you distracting Ines or the rest of the team when we really get into running our drills, got that?”

Fred let his grin spread further across his face. “Wouldn’t dream of it!”

“Alright then,” Cedric gave them an appraising look for a few more seconds before turning his attention back to the crate at his feet, “Would you mind helping me set everything out while we wait on the others then? Shouldn’t be long.”

“Sure thing!” Fred chimed along with George, tossing his Cleansweep Five over his shoulder and bending down to grab one of the handles on the bludger case while George took the other. They walked along behind Cedric who’d run back to grab a quaffle before returning to them and leading them out to the center of the field. Truthfully, he’d expected more resistance from Diggory about their joining the practice today, but but like so many of the Hufflepuffs they’d run into these past few days, Cedric too seemed to be of the mindset that Deidre had the right idea--Ines needed the laugh and Cedric wasn't about to stand in the way of that.

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“Oh, and...you’re welcome!”

That was enough to make Ines whip around, her eyes narrowed angrily on the twin who gave her a smirk. A choking noise came from her friend Ophelia, who had overheard that entire exchange from Potions and obviously found the return of her snarky remark funny enough to have to spit the cider she was drinking back into her goblet.

Deidre, when Ines looked back at her in an attempt to scold her for more than just a few things, hopped up from the table and gave her older sister a playfully wicked smile before going joining a group of students hanging around the entrance to the hall. And then, when Ines looked at Killian, he simply shrugged apologetically and continued to eat his food.

Ines realized something when she saw her sister giggling deviously along with the students who she usually hung out with. They were guesturing at Ines and then shooting looks over to the Gryffindor table.

It was going to be more than simply a rough week for her.

✧
​

The rest of her night had been surprisingly peaceful, even though she was on edge already. She have expected the twins to be in the dormitory right after dinner, ready to harass her and somehow to make her laugh and enjoy herself. She still didn’t see the need for her sister to make that sort of deal. Ines was just fine dealing with homework and studying to pass her time.

But she couldn’t that night. She was too antsy and irritable. So, she settled in for bed early and hoped that she wouldn’t have to deal with the twins right away the next day.

✧
​

Despite her wishes, the next few days actually turned out to be quite frustrating to deal with. Of course, the twins were obviously ready to make good on their deal and were underneath her feet almost every second of the days that went by. She really just wanted to have some peace and quiet, but that obviously wasn’t an option. She was growing weary of not having enough time to do her homework before one of them, or both of them, showed up to try and distract her.

What made that worse was the fact that it worked once or twice.

Even though she wished that she was in a situation like that, Ines was not made of stone. She found some things funny and there was an occasional time or two when she really put a strain on her facial muscles when she had to not crack a grin at a dumb joke, and even just to avoid a smile (she had, however, begrudgingly thanked them when they had pilfered a snack or two from the kitchens when heading to harass her in what was usually the quiet sanctuary in her life - the Hufflepuff common room).

But at least she knew that she had a small break from the torture coming up soon.

✧
​

It was the perfect day for practice. Even the breeze felt nice, even though she really didn’t like the idea of having to charm her hair into place so that flyaways wouldn’t get into her face like she did before an actual game.

And it wasn’t just the weather that had her in a good mood. The fact that the Weasley twins would most likely not be getting in her way for a little while was quite uplifting and she really needed some sort of positive note lately. Between the twins bugging her, having tons of homework, and a new test to be studying for at the end of the week, she was loaded with all sorts of stress.

Beating some bludgers was exactly what she needed.

Though after changing into her uniform and heading out to the field, she stopped dead in her tracks - she had caught sight of two unfortunately familiar red-heads instead.

“What are they doing here?” Ines’ voice was laced with irritation. And when she glanced around, she saw the rest of her team walking onto the field as well, though there seemed to be a few absences. “And where is Rickett and Macavoy?”

Cedric turned to face her, his expression level. He had never been one to really get worked up with his teammates’ potential attitudes or to generally just show a lot of emotion at once, though she knew how to read him - she was no stranger to the look in his eye, after all. He knew why she was frustrated.

“Rickett had detention this morning with Professor Sprout and got himself hurt. Bubotubers.” He said simply, jerking his head over toward the twins. “They let me know and decided to lend a hand.”

“How thoughtful.” Ines huffed, leaning against her broom - it wasn’t brand new, surprisingly, but it was well-taken care of and obviously recently polished.

“So, which one of you is going to be chaser and which one of you is going to be beater?” Cedric turned his attention to the twins after a moment of staring, ever so slightly amused, at Ines’ fuming expression.

The other members of the team that had arrived were standing next to and behind Ines. It was obvious that if there was anyone they would rely on more than Cedric, who was obviously the team captain and their seeker, it was her. And they were quite attune to the fact that she was already riled up - though it was hard to tell if they found it more worrisome than funny.

 

[Flak-Bait]

Fred had only just finished opening up the bludger crate and checking the straps restraining the struggling orbs when he heard a familiar voice echoing behind them incredulously.

“What are they doing here?”

The redhead popped up straight and put on his best grin as he turned around to face Ines. It took everything he had not to laugh the second he saw her face. She was livid. Not that that was anything new. She’d been fed up with the pair of them since day one, but just as he and George had predicted, she’d clearly not been counting on dealing with them today. At least not when she was supposed to have been protected by house boundaries.

“Good to see you too, love.” George mused idly back at her.

Fred cracked at that, letting a low snicker escape him while he watched Cedric, poised and composed as ever, round on his team and defend their presence there. He glanced passed Ines to the rest of the Hufflepuff team that had begun to bunch around behind her and gave them a beaming smile; just as amused by their anxious glances and whispering as he was Ines’ huffing.

“How thoughtful.”

“Yep, that’s us. Dead helpful.” Fred simpered, eyes glinting mischievously before following up the act with a quick, “You’re welcome.”

Ever since that line had turned her ears instantly red in the Great Hall a few nights ago, he hadn’t missed an opportunity to use it on her again. George had warned him he was probably going to get a cuff over the ears long before he got a laugh out of her for the joke, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself.

And he hardly seemed alone in that.

Even Cedric sounded like he might be verging on a laugh as he turned to face them again, though when he spoke he was all business as usual. “So, which one of you is going to be chaser and which one of you is going to be beater?”

“I’ll take beater.” Fred decided at once, standing up straight from where he’d been propping casually on his broom. He tossed a glance George's way, checking only briefly that the choice suited him, but as usual his twin seemed content to let him lead---though there was something else in his brother’s expression too. A silent warning not to push Ines’ patience too far and get his head lobbed off, and...a touch of amusement. At him?

Shrugging it off as little more than his brother just patiently waiting for him to ignore his advice (which he would), Fred bent down and fished the beater’s bats out of the Bludger’s carrying case. Like all the practice gear, the bats where a bit worn from years of use and the yellow and black banner that signified the bats as belonging to the Hufflepuff team where starting to peel from the center, but the gear still looked to be in better condition than the ancient gear he and George usually used.

Hefting the Cleansweep Five over his shoulder, Fred lifted his chin and crunched his way over the dry grass of the field to stand in front of Ines, a suave grin resting on his lips as he spun the beater’s bat around in his hand with a casual flourish. “Looks like it’s you and me again, then.” He chimed, bringing the bat to a clean stop just as he lifted it up to offer it to Ines, the handle end of the bat pointed directly towards the Hufflepuff witch, as though the deftness of his hands took no effort at all.

 

[TarantulaHawk]

The look that Ines gave Fred at the re-use of her words from the Great Hall (and before that, Potions) would have been sharp enough to cut through dragon hide if not for the way that one of her teammates withheld a laugh of sorts and another bit their lip to prevent a grin from spreading across their face. It was an unknown to them what she had said, considering that her best friend and sister had big mouths and the Hufflepuff house knew almost everything that went on with each individual house member.

But Ines did her best to focus on what Cedric had to say. She was determined to not get in trouble during practice. She had more self-control than she let on - or so she hoped, anyway.

“I’ll take beater.”

Fred was the one who took position as the spare beater, and Ines found herself both annoyed and unsurprised. If there was one twin that seemed to bother her just a little bit more than the other, it was Fred. He always seemed to make himself known over his brother and he never failed to drive that stupid, one-time confident thing she said to him into her head to the point where all she could do was think of when she had said it and flush with embarrassment at her actions.

Reluctantly did she walk over to the case after him. She kept her arms crossed and her broomstick tucked up under one of them. She didn’t hesitate to narrow her eyes when he turned and walked over to her the rest of the way, twirling the bat around carelessly.

“Looks like it’s just you and me again, then.”

“Seems that way.” Ines snatched the bat from his hand and rotated it a little, jostling it until it felt perfectly balanced in her hand.

She really didn’t look like a girl who was supposed to be playing as a beater. She had an athletic frame, but a lot of it didn’t show when she was wearing the four uniform. She always made sure to keep up her appearances, and that was the only excuse she could make when her mother had asked why she signed up for the team. But Ines realized, with each year passed, the more she enjoyed it and the more anger she could get out while playing - a bonus, if you asked her.

“Oh, just as a friendly warning...” she looked at him and jabbed the bat into the middle of his chest, though much lighter than she would have if she aimed to hurt him, “don’t distract me. We have a game coming up and I don’t want to have to worry about my performance going down the drain because you got in my way.”

“Is everyone here?” Cedric’s voice caught her attention and she jerked her head toward him. After a moment, he nodded a silent confirmation to himself and said, “Alright, let’s get started.”

 

[Flak-Bait]

Positively beaming with amusement at the way Ines stormed over to meet him, Fred let her rip the bat out of his hand with a renewed grin stretching across his lips. Swinging his broom down off of his shoulder so that he could prop on it, he stood and watched as Ines swung the beater bat around to warm up her wrist, looking for all the world like she contemplating beating him senseless then and there--and she probably could’ve, he noted, his ribs burning with the memory of the last bludger he’d taken from Hufflepuff the year before.

Not that he was going to let that give him any pause in his badgering...

“Oh, and just as a friendly warning,” Fred blinked and looked down, wrenched from his thoughts by Ines rounding on him and shoving the bat into the center of his chest, “don’t distract me. We have a game coming up and I don’t want to have to worry about my performance going down the drain because you got in my way.”

He picked his head back up slowly, eyebrows raised high and his grin now twisted into a devilish smirk, inexorably pleased that she’d just admitted to finding him distracting.“ ‘Course! I’ll be on my best behavior.” He assured, hardly bothering to sound convincing, “But, really, you shouldn’t--”

“Is everyone here? Right, let’s get started.”

Cedric’s call to attention cut him short and, knowing better than to risk them getting sent away early, Fred quieted and answered the call, falling quickly in line with the Hufflepuff team---though he was hardly listening to the speil Cedric was giving them. Instead, he sidestepped down the line up until he was standing just behind Ines then leaned down so that he could finish his quip in a hushed tone above her ear, “Like I was saying: Shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Glaspy. You’re only human. Perfectly natural to get distracted. Happens all the time.” He side eyed her and winked, unabashedly turning her remark into a flattering compliment about his own presence, “I’m used to it.”

A couple of the Hufflepuff team members within earshot turned around to look between them, mouths pursed with barely contained snorts and giggles.

“--and my point is:” Fred heard Cedric slightly raise his voice halfway through his speech and looked up to see the older boy staring pointedly at him. Fred straightened back up and Cedric, now satisfied that he’d no longer be spoken over, swept a warmer gaze back across his team, “I know we’ve been a bit behind on practices but we’re still the most coordinated team out of all the houses. We use that to our advantage and Slytherin won’t stand a chance in a few weeks. Agreed?”

A few member of the hufflepuff team that had been listening to the full speech gave a few whoops of agreement, raising their gloved fists and brooms up in the air in a show of support.

Cedric gave them another nod, this time daring to smile just a little as he squared his broad shoulders and started pacing down the line up. “Alright, Let’s start off with some warm up laps, shall we? Come on, up in the air...” He ushered, somehow managing to sound just as calm giving orders as he did giving support.

With a single sweeping gesture, Cedric mounted his own broom and pushed off from the ground, sending a few spare bits of earth flying out behind him as he climbed a good ten feet in a heartbeat. Once he was perched high above the pitch, Cedric leaned over the side of the broom and peered down at them, “Keep pace with me now, all of you.” He called and then, seeming determined to push them, the seeker captain turned his face skyward and rocketed away down the pitch.

 

[TarantulaHawk]

“‘Course! I’ll be on my best behavior.” His tone made her roll her eyes, her irises disappearing behind her skull for a second with how hard she rolled them - he didn’t care in the slightest about bothering her and she knew it. “But, really, you shouldn’t--”

When Cedric began to speak, she’ll be really turned her attention back to him, pleased that her team captain had managed to cut Fred off from finishing whatever he was about to say. She really didn’t want to have to deal with somebody trying to distract her, but she figured that she really didn’t have a choice and it was bound to happen. The best that she could do would be to ignore him, if she could.

“Like I was saying,” Ines jumped ever so slightly at the sound of his voice so close to her, unable to stop herself, “Shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Glaspy. You’re only human. Perfectly natural to get distracted.”

Again, she rolled her eyes. She was raised in a household where being distracted wasn’t tolerated and that was why she was so annoyed with herself that she had allowed him and his brother to already get under her skin (not that she would admit that aloud, or anything).

She glanced over at him quietly to glare, but at the sight of his smirk, the glare faded away slightly and her eyebrows furrowed, and when he winked, she could feel her face get warm.

“I’m used to it.”

A little scoff escaped her lips, and it she didn’t hesitate to say something in return, eyes narrowed - “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my type.”

”— and my point is...” At the sound of Cedric’s voice, her attention quickly snapped to the team captain and she did her best to focus on his words more than the lingering burn within her ears, “I know we’ve been a bit behind on practices but we’re still the most coordinated team out of all the houses. We use that to our advantage and Slytherin won’t stand a chance in a few weeks. Agreed?”

Her teammates seemed to agree, hollering and shooting a fist or two into the air. And Ines had to smile, nodding her agreement as well. But she wasn’t focused at all and she was sure that Cedric, unfortunately, knew that. She really was trying, though. Fred was just making it a surprisingly difficult task.

“Alright, Let’s start off with some warm up laps, shall we? Come on, up in the air...”

Ines let out a breath after a moment as he mounted his broom. She followed suit, as did her teammates, and easily kicked herself up into the air. She felt so much happier when she was in the air, almost as if she was free from her worries. Usually, it was a great reprieve from her stress and it always made her smile a little bit more than usual.

“Keep pace with me now, all of you.”

Ines was, if only by a split second, first to race after Cedric. The wind hit her face harshly and whipped around the long, straight hair in her ponytail and she realized that she felt a little more determined that day than any other.

Maybe it was because she had Fred Weasley harassing her without restraint and she was ready to shake him off.