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It was horrifying. How had things gone so wrong? All Harry had wanted to do was to beat Fred and George at their own game. The terrible twosome were always pulling pranks on the student population, and it was only fair that they got a taste of their own medicine. But now, here he was. Dangling by his ankles above the entrance to McGonagall’s office alongside an unconscious but equally upside-down Ron and Hermione. And he was thoroughly humiliated and confused.
It had all begun a week ago. Harry had been sitting in the Great Hall with Ron, having breakfast when Hermione had stormed over to them, hair sparking with electricity. This hadn’t happened since second year, when Snape had insisted she only got 87% - an incredible mark by anyone else’s standards - on her potions final. She was furious.
“How can those two menaces possibly still be at this school?! Have you heard what they’ve done?”
“Erm, Hermione, you might want to sit down and take a breath,” Harry suggested, while Ron cowered behind him, “You’re starting to make the cutlery rattle.”
It was true. Some nervous looking first years were eyeing their cereal spoons with suspicion. She huffed and sat down, closing her eyes and counting to ten under her breath. Slowly, her hair subsided to more reasonable levels of frizziness, and the small bolts of static electricity that had been building in it dissipated.
Once the immediate danger had seemed to pass, Ron came out from behind Harry and was finally brave enough to ask, “So what did Fred and George do this time?” As if there was any doubt that Hermione could have been talking about anybody else.
“Those two… hooligans, are hazards to the health of anyone they come into contact with,” she began to rant. “They’ve invented a new product. Invisibility hats. Only they haven’t checked their spell work properly, and now there’s a slew of first and second year Gryffindors, who they tricked into testing them, sat in the hospital wing with invisible heads! And Madam Pomphrey can’t fix them!
“How could they be so stupid as to allow young children to try an untested and dangerous product? We can’t allow this to stand. The teachers clearly aren’t interested in doing anything other than taking a few house points, so we’ll have to fix this ourselves.”
“How in Merlin’s name do you want to tackle Fred and George?” Ron exclaimed, sounding terrified at the very prospect, “They’re too good at what they do. They’d catch us in a minute, and the retaliation would be brutal.”
“Not if they never know it’s us,” Hermione responded.
Harry swallowed a hard lump. Ron had been right back in first year. Hermione truly was a scary witch. He couldn’t allow her to do this alone. She’d destroy them.
“Well, I think you’re right, ‘Mione. We can’t let them get away with it. But we have to be smart,” Harry stated. “Not that you’re not always smart, but this isn’t something you can do by reading a library book. We need an expert.”
“An expert? Who on earth do we know that’s an expert in this sort of thing?”
Harry paused and looked her straight in the eye, “Sirius.”
…
As it turned out, Sirius Black was more than happy to “encourage the next generation of Marauders” as he called it, and helpfully owled his book of prank ideas from his own troublemaking days to help the trio get their revenge.
And so it started.
In hindsight, Harry should have known that Sirius’ idea of a prank would be the total devastation of the entire school, but somewhere between turning Dumbledore’s beard bright pink and putting a compulsive singing potion in the house elves’ dinner, he’d gotten caught up in the ridiculousness of it all and forgotten their original goal; they were trying to catch Fred and George off guard.
This was easier said than done, however; hence their over the top pranking of the entire school. Harry figured that as the best known pranksters in the school, Fred and George would be the ones punished for all the things going wrong. They’d be so exhausted with being interrogated by teachers and attending detentions that they’d drop their guard and therefore allow the trio to sneak in a prank on them. Only, the twins seemed to be expecting it.
It had been six days of total bedlam in the castle. Mrs Norris had been charmed to produce bubbles when she hissed; the stairs to the Astronomy Tower had been transfigured into sponge, so no one could get up there without sinking into the stone; Hermione had even managed to hit Snape with a nifty little hex that caused his eyes to twinkle like Dumbledore’s whenever he shouted at anyone. Ron was still in awe of that one.
Finally however, Harry had seen his chance. The twins had just gotten back to Gryffindor tower after yet another detention spent scrubbing out Myrtle’s bathroom, and they were lounging, exhausted, on the big sofa nearest the fire. Donning his invisibility cloak, Harry crept towards them and snuck a certain item Sirius had provided into the pocket of one of the twins. All he had to do now, was wait.
…
The next morning, Harry sat in History of Magic, waiting with baited breath for the shouts from the floor below. Any moment now, that little card should do the trick. He glanced at his watch. Three… He looked over at Hermione, who looked equally nervous. Two… Ron’s leg was bouncing up and down under the desk. One…
Draco Malfoy leapt to his feet. Startled, Harry jumped and then he realised that Draco was striding straight towards him! Harry scrambled out of his chair and whipped his wand out to defend himself, when Draco reached for his face and planted an enormous kiss right on Harry’s mouth. In his shock and horror, Harry froze. He came back to his senses when Draco abruptly dropped to the ground in front of him, clearly unconscious.
He looked around to see that a dishevelled Hermione had her wand pointed at Draco’s prone form and realised that she must have stunned him. He then noticed that Crabbe and Goyle were also on the floor. They must have also both jumped up, and surprise-snogged Ron and Hermione!
Ron looked as though he was about to be sick, while Hermione just looked plain furious. Harry however took a moment to consider his distinct lack of proper mortification. What was all that about?
Just then, Fred and George came bursting into the classroom, laughing hysterically and clutching at each other in order to stay upright.
“Your faces,” gasped George.
“- were hilarious,” finished Fred.
“This was you?! Hermione screeched. “Why would you do that?”
“Oh please,”
“- as if you three weren’t planning,”
“- to do exactly the same to us.”
“What? How would we even pull that off?” Ron demanded, getting angry now that his disgust had begun to wear off.
“Why don’t you ask,”
“- Harrikins, here.”
Immediately, all the eyes in the classroom (besides Binns, who hadn’t looked up from his lecture notes) shifted to Harry, who had been coming to a slow realisation that perhaps he didn’t hate Draco Malfoy as much as he’d thought. And also, he suspected that perhaps the twins weren’t as oblivious on that couch last night as he’d assumed. He reached hesitantly into his pocket and felt the tell-tale shape of the cursed Tarot card that he’d thought he had planted on one of the twins. He pulled it out and held it up to show Ron and Hermione. It was such a simple looking object. ‘The Lovers’ embellished over a painting of two mostly naked people looking far too intimately entwined for public viewing. Sirius had assured him it would “cause chaos of the highest order when rivals are forced to come to a new understanding.” Well, he hadn’t been wrong, Harry supposed. He certainly had a newfound understanding of the taste of Draco Malfoy’s tonsils.
Going a bit pink, Harry gave Ron and Hermione a sheepish half smile, “This didn’t quite work out as I’d planned.”
Ron and Hermione seemed to realise simultaneously what Harry had done to cause their most recent trauma and glared at him.
“Erm… sorry?”
…
And that was what led to the threesome’s current precarious situation. Dangling upside down, waiting for McGonagall to arrive and unpin the note George had left on Hermione’s robes explaining how the three of them were responsible for all the chaos of the last seven days. It was just Harry’s bad luck that he seemed to be able to shake off a stunner quicker that the other two, so he could actually witness his doom walking towards him with her lips pursed and her eyebrows set into a firm scowl. If only he’d dodged Fred’s spell more effectively, he could have cornered Draco again to, erm, talk about what had happened.
Oh no, here came his doom, now.
“Well, Mr Potter,” McGonagall said, in a dangerously quiet voice, “I hear we have a lot to talk about.”