Here is some background information that you may find useful whilst reading this chapter. It’s an excerpt from “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” by Newt Scamander aka JK Rowling:
Mooncalf
Ministry of Magic Classification: XX (harmless; may be domesticated)
The Mooncalf is an intensely shy creature that emerges from its burrow only at the full moon. Its body is smooth and pale grey, it has bulging round eyes on top of its head, and four spindly legs with enormous flat feet. Mooncalves perform complicated dances on their hindlegs in isolated areas in the moonlight. These are believed to be a prelude to mating (and often leave intricate geometric patterns behind in wheatfields, to the great puzzlement of Muggles).
Watching Mooncalves dance by moonlight is a fascinating experience and often profitable, for if their silvery dung is collected before the sun rises and spread upon magical herb and flowerbeds, the plants will grow very fast and become extremely strong. Mooncalves are found worldwide.
She woke up as she tried to to shift into a more comfortable position in her chair. Oh no, she thought, why am I sleeping in a chair? Looking around, she could see through the dim light that she was not in the Gryffindor dormitories or even in the common room but still in the library. She’d been studying for N.E.W.T.s, completely lost track of time, and fallen asleep.
Quickly and quietly, she gathered up her books and parchment and stuffed them into her school bag. Madam Pince usually made rounds before curfew to wake any sleepers, but evidently she didn’t take the time to check the upper lofts tonight. The library was almost eerie, but in a very serene way, at this hour of the night. She climbed down the ladder from the study loft. Looking at her watch, she saw it was well after one in the morning. She ran quickly between the rows of shelves and past the tables, out of the library and down the halls.
She thought she heard someone behind her and turned her head to look. There was no one there, but as she turned the corner, she ran into someone and fell down on her back.
“I don’t much appreciate you knocking into me, Bingham. Out a bit late, aren’t you?”
Emeline looked up from where she was sprawled on the floor to see Draco Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.
“No later than you,” she sneered, sitting up.
“True, Amelia.”
“It’s Emeline,” she corrected automatically.
“Whatever, Bingham. The point is I can do pretty much anything I want as long as no one knows I’m breaking any rules since I’m a prefect. For you, it’s a different story. I do not believe you’re a Prefect. Now, I could give you detention, but the worst I can give you is lines. So, Crabbe, Goyle, if you will,” he motioned toward Emeline Bingham.
She tried to scoot away, but the two burly boys reached out and pulled her up by the arms. Hoisting her a few inches off the ground, they carried her over to one of the nearby staircases, finally depositing her right into one of the sinking stairs. Malfoy pulled out his wand, “Petrificus Semular.” Emeline’s arms were now pinned to her sides.
“Malfoy, let me out!” Emeline bellowed. She had already sunk in past her ankles and was quickly sinking even farther.
“There’s no harm done, you know they’re enchanted to stop at your shoulders. Pity, but true nonetheless. "This way I can tell someone with a little more authority”or in other words someone with clearance to give harsher punishments”that I thought I heard someone out while I was doing my rounds for the evening.”
“You can’t do this! Get me out!”
Crabbe and Goyle merely laughed as they followed Malfoy away from the staircase.
“Have a good night, Bingham,” Malfoy lazily called back to her.
Being caught in the stair itself wasn’t the only problem. Sinking stairs were extremely cold. Angry tears stung her eyes and streamed down her face. This was completely horrible. Snape, Filch, or Umbridge would undoubtedly find her. Malfoy would make sure of it, and, as she began to shiver, she couldn't quite imagine who out of the three would give her the worst punishment.
~*~*~
While Andrea was dismal in Herbology and had to work extremely hard to master Charms, there was one thing beside Quidditch that fascinated her and that she picked up easily. That was Astronomy. She loved nothing more than to look at the stars, study their patterns, marvel as they moved, and wait for them to come back to their once familiar positions at different times in the year. Andrea had always gotten on extremely well with Professor Sinistra because of this passion. That and the fact that they were both left-handed, sharing woes such as always bumping elbows with neighboring people at the dinner table and having to buy a special, instantly dry ink that would not smudge while one was writing with it. These connections are what made Andrea and the professor so fond of each other, and it was that fondness which made Professor Sinistra understand and accomodate Professor Sprout’s extra-credit project for Andrea.
She needed to watch the Mooncalves dance, collect some of the magical manure they left behind, then write an essay about the special properties the manure held and how they benefited plant life. This dance only occured on the full moon, and the full moon happened to coincide with one of Professor Sinistra’s lessons for the fifth years, so she gave Andrea permission to do the Herbology assignment that evening instead.
The Trouble Twins decided to keep Andrea company on her little Herbology project. Fred was convinced that the droppings left behind by the Mooncalves could also be used for the development of some new products. George was convinced that would be an excellent way to spend an evening with Andrea.
Nothing of consequence happened while they were out on the grounds, other than the spectacular event of watching the Mooncalves. It truly was a beautiful thing to behold. Fred offered to collect the remains for Andrea, which gave her and George a bit of time to themselves. After the magical manure had been collected, they headed back to the castle. Fred went ahead of the other two to keep an eye out for trouble and so he could give the golden couple some space. Most of the time, he was fine around them, but on occasion, they got into this extremely nauseating “cute couple” mode, and it made him want to ram his head against a wall. Tonight was one of those nights.
He looked over his shoulder at George and Andrea. At that moment, George was whispering something into Andrea’s ear that made her smile. His brother was definitely one lucky dog. Fred didn’t really want that sort of thing at this point in his life, but he did plan on eventually settling down. He wouldn’t, however, admit that to anyone any time soon, let alone himself. And so it was that he was taken completely by surprise when he saw that there was someone stuck in the upcoming staircase. The hallway was dark enough that he couldn’t tell who it was. He immediately pulled out his wand, and muttered, “Lumos.”
He couldn’t help but laugh out loud when he recognized who it was. “Well, well, well, this is a surprise, Miss Bingham. Fancy seeing you here.”
“Oh, shove off,” she groaned.
“Manners, Mel. I’m here - to rescue you, no doubt - and you tell me to shove off?”
“Sorry, it’s just not the most comfortable place to be, and I’ve been here for probably an hour.”
“I understand. If you don’t mind me asking though, how exactly did you end up stuck there? Every Gryffindor, including Longbottom, knows to jump that stair.”
“Malfoy and his trolls forced me here, you dolt!”
“Did you just call me a dolt?”
“Fred!”
“Mel, here I am, a knight in shining armor, if you will, trying to help a darling damsel out of a distressing stair of quick sand, and you call me a dolt? Besides, you’re sort of distorting the truth. While those two in Malfoy’s gang resemble trolls, I think they’re much worse.”
“You are just taking the opportunity to tease me mercilessly,” she replied spitefully.
At that moment, she truly was saved because George and Andrea had reached them. They immediately freed Mel from the stair; Fred watched with a smirk on his face.
“You’re freezing, Mel!” Andrea cried as she started vigorously rubbing her hands up and down Emeline’s arms to try to get the blood flowing more quickly.
“How long have you been in that stair?” George asked.
“Too long, but I’m not sure exactly, maybe an hour,” she answered, her teeth chattered violently.
“Here,” Fred stepped forward with a heavy blanket he’d just conjured. He wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Do you think you can walk back to the common room?” Andrea asked.
“Well,” Emeline hesitated. It felt like her limbs had pretty much frozen up on her.
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you back,” Fred said, and with one swift motion, he scooped her up, blanket and all, into his arms. He winked at her as he whispered, “Told you I was being a knight in shining armor tonight.” George and Andrea led the way back to the common room. George merely rolled his eyes at his brother’s performance, but Andrea couldn’t help logging it away for later.
“So, Mel, what exactly happened to you?” George asked, looking back over his shoulder. He had his arm wrapped around Andrea’s waist again. Mel explained her trauma with the Slytherins. When she finished, George and Fred shared a dark look, both of them furrowing their brows in thought.
“Kind of funny, or not so much funny as it is strange, that Snape or Umbridge or Filch hadn’t already found you, then,” Andrea surmised.
“Just what we were thinking,” Fred agreed.
“We rarely get caught,” George continued.
“But we usually have someone on our tails in no time.”
“It’s half the excitement, the getaway,” George clarified.
It didn’t take them much longer to get to the entrance of Gryffindor tower; Andrea gave the password and led the group through the portrait hole. “HA! There’s the escapist!” Umbridge’s voice froze them in place. They weren’t in plain sight of the fire yet, but they knew that her head was sitting in it, anxiously waiting to catch her prey. “Now, come out, come out,” she coaxed in her sickeningly sweet voice. “We can do this the easy way, and you can just come get your punishment right now; or you can wait there until morning and I’ll simply figure out who you are by your extreme exhaustion during the day tomorrow.”
Andrea stepped forward, signaling the others to stay back with a flick of her hand. “Er, Professor Umbridge, I don’t really know what the matter is. I mean, yes I’m a little late on my way back from Astronomy, but Professor Sinistra had to go over part of my star chart with me for some revisions, so she kept me after.”
While Andrea kept Umbridge occupied, George silently maneuvered his way over to the side of the fireplace. He climbed onto one of the nearby chairs, and up onto the large mantelpiece.
“Oh, well, off to bed with you then, I’m waiting for”” she broke off when a bottle of ink, which had been knocked by George's foot, fell off the mantelpiece and smashed right in front of her face. “What was that?”
“Someone’s cat just jumped onto the mantelpiece,” Andrea quickly lied.
“Oh. Well, go on to bed, Miss Benning. Don’t expect to laze about in my class tomorrow simply because you were up late from Astronomy.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she muttered as she turned on her heel and met George at the bottom of the staircases.
“Wait here,” he whispered and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before dashing up the boy’s staircase. Less than two minutes later he was back, armed with a dung bomb. Fred and Emeline, who was still in Fred’s arms, watched from the other side of the room. A moment later, Umbridge let out a hideous scream, her face covered with the explosion of a dungbomb landing in the fire. There was a pop and she was gone. In the wake of her absence, the four started laughing hysterically.
“That should take care of the toad for tonight,” George smiled.
“Scourgify,” Andrea pointed her wand into the fireplace to get rid of the remnants of the explosion.
Fred carried Emeline over to one of the couches near the fireplace so she could warm up.
“We’ll just leave you two,” Andrea said, taking George’s hand in hers.
“Thanks for the help,” Mel smiled.
“Think nothing of it,” George replied. He and Andrea walked towards the staircase and said their goodnights to each other, leaving Fred and Emeline alone.
“You don’t have to stay down here with me, Fred. You’re probably really tired.” Emeline was staring into the fire, but Fred didn’t leave. Instead he plopped down onto the couch next to her and draped his arm around her shoulder.
“I’ve got to make sure you get nice and comfortable again,” Fred said matter-of-factly. “Unless you want me to go,” he said the last bit slowly.
“Oh, no, I’d love for you to stay.”
“I will then,” he smiled, not one of his usual proud, teasing, mischievous smiles, but a small, tender one. They sat in silence for a long time after that. Fred actually suspected that Emeline was falling asleep because she had rested her head on his shoulder, but he didn’t mind it at all. Fred was itching to ask her something, and finally, he just let it slip from his mouth. “Mel, why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“Huh?” her head snapped up, not feeling sleepy anymore.
“Well, I mean, you’re very pretty and sweet and smart and fiery. You’ve got to have guys lined up waiting for a chance to go out with you.”
“I don’t know. None of them are people I want to be with.”
Fred looked into her eyes, and he didn’t know exactly what made him do it (probably being around George and Andrea so much), but he was leaning his head in towards hers, closing his eyes, holding his breath.
The moment before their lips met seemed to hang in the air forever, and then the moment was broken by the sound of someone coming downstairs from the dormitories. Emeline turned her head away from his, and Fred looked over his shoulder, blushing, to see Andrea approaching them. She had a bit of a smirk on her face and was raising an eyebrow in question. “I remembered I had some Pepper Imps in my trunk and thought you’d appreciate them, Mel.”
Emeline turned, and Andrea tossed the bag to her. She caught it and smiled, “Thanks, Andrea.”
“Don’t mention it,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried back up the stairs.
Mel polished off a few of the hot candies, while she and Fred chatted about how much they hated Umbridge, Slytherins, and the like. Then there was a pause as Mel threw the empty paper bag into the fire. She stood and so did Fred. “That did the trick.”
“All better then?”
“Other than a bit of a stiff feeling, nothing that some sleep shouldn’t take care of.” They walked over to the staircases.
“Thanks for sitting with me Fred, it was nice. And thanks for helping me back to the common room.”
“My pleasure,” he said, finding himself going in for the kiss again, not knowing why.
He was surprised, though, when Mel turned her head and he met her ear instead of her lips. “Come on , Fred. You’ve kissed far too many girls to be able to kiss me.”
He quickly recovered his shock and a touch of embarrassment, “Your loss, then.”
“Both of ours, I guess,” she looked, it seemed to Fred, almost a little sad, even though she was still smiling in a teasing way at him. “See you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, Mel.”
“Goodnight.” Fred drifted up the stairs, echoes of some girls yelling at each other following him up the stairs, though he didn’t really pay them any heed.
~*~*~
The arguing was coming from the fifth year girls’ rooms. The conversation started out normally enough before it escalated to Andrea and Hermione full on duking it out.
“Hey, Hermione,” Andrea greeted as she came in. The first time she came into the room, Hermione must have been in the bathroom. She was now sitting at her desk, a lamp on, furiously scribbling her quill across the parchment beneath her fingertips. This was not an unusual thing for Hermione to do at such a late hour.
“Hey, An.”
Andrea looked to Sophie’s bed, fully expecting her best friend to be zonked out. Sophie wasn’t there though. “Do you know where Sophie is?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s in the hospital wing.”
“What?”
“Well, this huge raven came and swooped down on our class during astronomy, and it dive bombed a couple of people and started pecking and clawing at them furiously,” Hermione explained. “Sophie was one of them, so they took her down to Madam Pomfrey.”
“Wow. That sounds insane!”
“It was. If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have missed the spectacle,” Hermione replied.
“Oh, sorry Hermione Granger, Almighty Prefect.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, the tone of your voice made it sound like you were accusing me of skipping class.”
“I wasn’t wrong, was I?”
“No, but I rarely, if ever, miss class. Plus, I cleared my absence with Professor Sinistra ahead of time.”
“Oh, and that makes it okay to have a little rendezvous instead of going to class? You’ve always sucked up to Professor Sinistra.”
“Don’t EVEN talk to me about sucking up. You’re the one who has free reign from Dumbledore to do pretty much whatever you want along with Ron and Harry! I mean, come on! How many times have you been out after curfew? I can’t even keep track! You don’t deserve that Prefect badge you wear!” Andrea was yelling now.
“How dare you?” Hermione yelled right back.
“It should have been Sophie’s! I don’t think she’s ever broken a rule in her life! Do you know what it’s like for her to see you be Prefect when it’s all she’s wanted since she was a little girl? Every single one of her sisters have been Prefect and then Head Girl, and then you come along and consistently break curfew and who knows what else. Merlin, Hermione, you’re such a bloody hypocrite!”
“I always have a reason when I step over the line!”
“Oh, and that makes it perfectly all right? What if I just decided that I had a good reason to set your bed on fire? Then would it be okay if I did it?”
“GO AHEAD!”
“FINE!”
“FINE!”
They just glared at each other. Hermione was turned around in her chair to face Andrea head on, her hands tightly gripping the wood of the chair back. Andrea was standing ten feet away, one hand pointing her wand at Hermione’s bed, the other clenched in a fist at her side.
“I’m waiting!” Hermione clucked.
“Well, the sooner you get in it, the sooner I’ll do the deed!”
They just continued to glare at each other for another minute or so, and then burst out laughing at the same moment. Hermione was out of her chair, clutching her stomach on the floor, and Andrea collapsed onto her bed, writhing with laughter.
When they finally calmed down, Hermione picked herself up from the floor and walked over and plopped down next to Andrea on her bed. “Sorry, An, I shouldn’t have accused you like I did. You’re right. I am a complete hypocrite.”
“No, Hermy, I’m sorry.”
Hermione rolled her eyes the way she always did when Andrea called her that.
“I shouldn’t have blown up at you and said all those awful things. I mean, I don’t know what got into me. Probably just feeling a bit tired. Sophie doesn’t even care anymore about the Prefect thing. She’s been over it for months, so I don’t know why I brought it up.”
“At least we're getting better with these yearly fights,” Hermione surmised.
“A grand total of what? Seven, eight minutes?”
“Significantly down from last year, when it was about seven or eight days.”
“We must be losing our touch,” Andrea sighed. They looked at each other and smiled, then started laughing again at the sheer absurdity of their fights. They seemed to blow up at each other once a year, and then after that they were fine. It was always started by something too stupid to fight about in the first place, and in the end their friendship grew to be stronger than it was before.
Andrea, Sophie, and Hermione were good enough friends that if Hermione had spent more time with the girls instead of the guys, the three would be as thick and inseparable as Hermione was with the guys. Probably even more so because they didn’t argue as much as the boys and Hermione did. If Andrea was completely honest with herself, she would have to admit that if she hadn’t built up so many walls between herself and Harry over the years, they’d probably all be really close. The five of them.
~*~*~
A few minutes later, the twins were up in their dormitory, in bed, the others in their room already asleep. “Hey, Fred.”
“Yeah, George?”
“I’ve just had a very interesting thought cross my mind.”
“Me too, I was wondering why we’ve never finished the invisibility gum. Would’ve come in handy tonight.”
“I know, that’s exactly what I was thinking. That and the fact that Andrea thinks you and Emeline may have had a connection.”
“I really am tired of looking for books about invisibility; all they ever say is ‘invisibility cloak this’ and ‘saliva of a phoenix that.’”
“I mean, I’ve never seen you so intrigued by a girl since””
“George, that’s it! Dumbledore has a phoenix in his office at this very moment!”
“I knew we were missing something.”
“Well, I think it’s because, and I hate to even mention it, but I think it’s because you’re not devoting all of your thoughts to the business. You’re the one who is supposed to come up with the brilliant realizations, and I provide the tools you need to get to those realizations. Remember? That’s how Team Weasley works.”
“I think Emeline used to have a crush on you, back when you were going out with””
“Don’t worry, all is forgiven.”
“You could probably get her to like you again.”
“I doubt it,” Fred sighed.
“I’ll try and devote a little more thought to our enterprise.”
“Besides, it’s not like it even matters. I’m not looking for that right now.”
“I don’t know how much I can promise, but I’ll boost my WWW thinking time by at least seven percent,” George promised.
“Will you just drop it already, it was nothing. She’s just Emeline. All I did was lend a helping hand,” Fred hissed.
“No more than eight and a half percent.”
“G’night, Gred.”
“Night, Forge.”