Chapter Text
Jeannie Lupin is pretty sure she’s going to end up testifying in front of the Wizengamot one day.
And it’s almost certainly going to be Olaf’s fault.
History of Magic is far from her favorite subject. She finds it tedious, and dull, and just overall wretched. To her chagrin, her marks reflect her opinion on the subject pretty accurately: it’s hardly her best subject, either. Thus, when she was given an opportunity to retake an exam from earlier in the term that was weighing heavily on her grade, she was ecstatic.
Now, she almost wishes she had taken the ‘acceptable’ and been done with it.
She tries her hardest to keep her eyes focused on the exam in front of her - truly, she does. But as Olaf’s grubby little body sneaks further and further away from where he had previously hidden himself beneath her robe, it becomes impossible to concentrate on anything but mentally begging the niffler not to do exactly what Jeannie knows he is going to do.
Which of the following surnames belong to a known master of the fabled Elder Wand?
Agrippa
Peverell
Belby…
All of Professor Binns’ tedious droning slips her mind, as does the content of the books she had meticulously studied for hours to prepare for this exam. Her eyes can’t seem to stay fixed on her parchment, flickering relentlessly to the unruly beast currently trotting uncaringly across the middle of the classroom floor.
Entirely in the line of sight of Binns if he were to look up from his grading.
In a school where nifflers are strictly prohibited as pets.
So, when out of the corner of her eye, Jeannie spots Olaf finally going in for the kill (aka. diving for the shimmering paperweight housed on the bottom shelf of Binns’ bookcase), she doubts anybody could blame her for hurriedly scribbling down half-assed answers to the rest of the exam questions, gathering her things, and booking it out of the classroom, hot on the niffler’s tail.
Despite her haste, Olaf is already a good four meters ahead of her by the time she makes it into the hallway to run after him. She rushes past any lingering students, ignoring their confused looks and questioning noises in favor of keeping her eyes on Olaf at all costs; if she loses sight of him, Binns will probably never see that paperweight again. The niffler is criminally good at stashing things away.
Luckily (or perhaps unluckily), Jeannie has plenty of experience playing Olaf’s game. She knows that she simply has to keep her attention on him and he will eventually tire of the chase. Then, she’ll be able to calmly apprehend him, give him a very stern talking to (and maybe some tummy rubs), and finally return the paperweight to its rightful owner with a sheepish excuse.
This plan goes to shite pretty much immediately.
Suddenly, Olaf’s scurrying comes to a screeching halt in front of a pair of frighteningly recognizable black boots. Jeannie comes to a stop soon after, and she has to make an outward effort to not grimace as she looks up.
. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
Jeannie has always admired Professor McGonagall’s patience. After years of watching her deal with the antics of the Marauders with nothing less than fortitude and grace, it’s sometimes difficult to understand how she doesn’t just lash out in frustration sometimes - how she manages to be helpful and understanding in the face of utter ridiculousness. Yet, even the most composed wizard alive can’t always turn a blind eye, Jeannie supposes.
Jeannie sits hunched over, opposite to McGonagall on the other side of the desk in the Professor’s study. Olaf is settled comfortably in her lap, blissfully oblivious to the carnage he just potentially caused to his own quality of life.
Although, while the professor’s interference obviously embittered part of her, the other part is thoroughly surprised she’s made it this long without being pulled aside sooner.
Her attention is drawn from the niffler in her lap when McGonagall lets out a loud sound of exasperation, setting her eyeglasses down to rub at the bridge of her nose. Jeannie flinches at the sound.
“Ms. Lupin,” McGonagall starts. “I’m assuming you’re aware of why exactly we’re here today?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jeannie says, embarrassed. “I- yes, I am aware. I’m really sorry for inconveniencing you.”
Truly, Jeannie never intended to cause a fuss by bringing her… disallowed pets with her, despite what would be expected from her brother’s reputation; she just couldn’t bear to leave them at home with her parents. She does her best to keep them contained in the girls’ room, but sometimes they simply have their own ideas… like hiding beneath her robe to run amuck as soon as they see a clear escape route.
The professor’s gaze softens briefly as she takes a moment to consider the situation before speaking. “Ms. Lupin, what exactly is the reason you’re currently in possession of a niffler, of all creatures? Where on earth did you get one?”
“Well, my grandfather used to be a Curse-Breaker at Gringotts - they’re given nifflers to help with burrowing underground to find treasures in cursed sites, you see. He received Olaf here, of course,” she explains, bashful.“When I began taking Care of Magical Creatures with Professor Kettleburn my third year, I knew Magizoology was always going to be the path for me. So, when my grandfather retired, he gave Olaf to me as a gift… he thought it would be a good way to get more experience with creatures Hogwarts may not have.”
“I see. I suppose that makes sense,” McGonagall nods. “But, frankly dear girl, what could have come over you to bring him to the castle with you? They’re not authorized as pets for a reason: they can be difficult to manage, as it seems you know fairly well.”
“Olaf can definitely be a handful… but I honestly just couldn’t bear to leave him at home. He’s my best friend,” she says, giving the professor an uncomfortable smile. “I swear I have a proper enclosure for him in my dorm. He has plenty of space, and tons of shiny toys, and none of the other Hufflepuff girls my year mind him at all. He’s very happy and well loved.”
“That I do not doubt,” McGonagall smiles. “Ms. Lupin, just this once, I will let you off with a warning and will not inform the headmaster. However, you absolutely must govern your niffler well and keep him out of sight. If I see him roaming the grounds again, I will have to give you detention and dock house points. If another professor or a prefect sees him… I cannot promise your punishment will be so light.”
. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
After narrowly avoiding total catastrophe with Professor McGonagall, Jeannie was more excited than ever to enjoy a peaceful dinner with her housemates. She had already brought Olaf back to the dormitory and carefully put him into his pen, where he should stay for the rest of the evening, so she’s happy to have an opportunity to relax without needing to worry about him.
She sits with her small group of friends, tuning into their conversation as she enthusiastically digs into the lamb chops and potatoes, the taste absolutely heavenly after a long day.
“We were tending to Venomous Tentacula today in Herbology,” Ruth begins, an impish smile reaching her bright eyes even with her mouth full of pudding. “It nearly strangled Davey Gudgeon right there in the middle of the greenhouse. I swear, his eyes about popped right out of their sockets, you lot should have seen it. Professor Sprout had to use a severing charm to get the wretched thing off him.”
Evelyn lets out an amused snort from her seat beside Jeannie. “Poor bloke has a horrible history with plants. It’s a miracle he’s survived so long in that class. Remember fourth year when he tried to touch the trunk of the whomping willow and got his arse sent flying halfway to Hagrid’s Hut?”
Jeannie does remember that - quite vividly, in fact. Gudgeon’s face had been scarred pretty severely, and the incident caused the headmaster to ban students from getting too close to the tree. Her brother had been pretty torn up about it for a good while.
“Even that’s not as bad as the time Patricia Rakepick got bit by a puffskein last year when Kettleburn let us handle them. I don’t even know it was possible to make a puffskein angry,” Jeannie giggles.
Evelyn hums.
“Speaking of… what happened earlier with you-know-who? I heard from a group of Ravenclaws that you were running after a mole in the hall before being stopped by Professor McGonagall. Is everything okay?” she asks tentatively as Ruth nods behind her. The two of them had grown quite attached to Olaf throughout the years spent rooming with the little guy.
“Oh, you know, the usual,” Jeannie chuckles. “Olaf somehow managed to sneak into History of Magic with me when I went in to retake my exam, and he made off with one of Binns’ paperweights. McGonagall let me off pretty easy, just gave me a warning.”
“That’s good!” Ruth nods zealously, piling tarts onto her plate. “I’ve gotten so used to having the bugger around, I don’t know what I’d do without him… even if he does have a nasty habit of digging up the soil of my fitterblooms,” she grins.
Jeannie goes to say something in defense of the niffler, about how it’s only his nature, or how he just looks so cute when he does it, but all of her thoughts are cut short when two tall shadows darken the table in front of her. She turns around slowly, almost regretfully, and comes face to face with one James Potter and one Sirius Black. So much for a peaceful dinner.
“Hey there, Little Lupin,” Sirius grins, motioning for Evelyn to scoot aside before sitting down and throwing his arm around Jeannie’s shoulder.
James slides in on the opposite side of her, resting his elbow on the table and grinning at her, a mischievous glint already in his eye.
Oh, this one’s gonna be good.
Jeannie sends her two friends a quick excuse me, I’m so sorry look before glancing between the two seventh years with a grimace. “What could you two tossers possibly want from me?” She asks, ruffled.
“What, can we not just want to chat with our favorite badger? Would that be such a crime?” James asks with faux innocence, pouting at her with wide eyes and pointedly ignoring the scowl on the face of the poor second year he had pushed aside to sit with her.
“Sure, you could. You never do though,” Jeannie rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Why are you really here? Don’t you have a Slytherin to go and terrorize?”
“Right you are, dear Jeannie o’ mine!” Sirius exclaims, standing up eagerly. “That’s exactly where you come in!”
She tilts her head in a silent question.
“As you know, we made quite a statement last year with our marvelous Valentine’s Day prank,” James begins.
Jeannie shudders at the memory - the boys’ had somehow managed to create absolute chaos with the slew of phony love letters, and it certainly stuck with anybody unfortunate enough to be targeted, herself and a certain Gilderoy Lockhart included.
“Oh boy, don’t I,” she drawls grimly.
James lets out a bellowing laugh at her expense before continuing. “This year, we have a lot to live up to. We have a bright year ahead planned, and we think it starts with a phenomenal idea, thought up by yours truly,” He winks. “We would just need one little thing from you, and only for a couple of hours. It wouldn’t even be an inconvenience to you, I swear it.”
“And what would this one little thing be?” She cocks her brow.
“Well…Moony might have let it slip that you just may happen to be in possession of a Murtlap?”
Her eyes flash across the Great Hall to find Remus sitting next to Peter at the Gryffindor table, her brother pointedly not looking in their direction.
Wanker.
She knows she should say no. She knows it’s a bad, bad idea, and that whatever they have planned is certainly nothing she should get involved in, especially considering Olaf’s recent rebellious streak. Yet, as she meets James’ gaze, she just can’t find it within herself to deny him.
She lets out a groan, and the two boys whoop in victory.
. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
By lunch the following day, Jeannie was beginning to get antsy.
“This is Pepin. He is not very sociable to those he does not know, and he will bite. Do be careful with him. If he gets hurt in any way, and I mean any way at all, I have a nasty pus-squirting hex I’ve just been dying to test out.”
Pepin is a typical Murtlap. He is a pink, rat-like creature equipped with growths on his back, making him resemble a sea anemone. She had caught him herself on a rare family holiday to the coast: she had accidentally stepped on him while swimming, and took it upon herself to treat the resulting injuries - she always did have a soft spot for animals. By the end of the trip, she had grown attached, and ended up bringing him home to live with her family and Olaf. Now at Hogwarts, the two creatures and her brother make up her own family-away-from-family, making the distance far more bearable throughout the year.
She had handed off the Murtlap early that morning, before the sun had even risen, and she had yet to hear or see anything of the prank - she had really wanted to have Pepin safe and sound back in her dorm by now. Part of her allows herself to hope that maybe the boys’ had simply decided not to go through with the plan after all, for whatever reason, and that she’d been worrying over Pepin’s safety for no reason.
She’s half-heartedly listening to Ruth and Evelyn's conversation about Lucinda Talkalot’s dreadful new haircut when she hears the distinctive sound of Severus Snape’s yell echoing from the other side of the Great Hall. She stands up suddenly, trying to decipher the frantic scene in front of her.
It’s no question that this is the prank the boys’ had mentioned. They never did have half a mind to leave Snape alone. Yet, Jeannie has no clue what a little murtlap could have done to make him scream in such a manner. Maybe he has a phobia?
Her eyes widen as she watches Pepin’s small pink body get flung off of Snape’s arm, a gruesome bite mark visible all the way from the Hufflepuff table. The Murtlap goes flying, and before she can think about it, she climbs over the bench and rushes after him to make sure he’s alright.
She cradles Pepin in her lap, inspecting him for injuries, while still keeping her eyes on Snape. Getting him bitten by a scorned murtlap didn’t seem like that great of a prank to her - unnecessarily cruel to poor Pepin, if anything at all.
Focused on comforting the frightened thing, Jeannie gasps in surprise when flames suddenly erupt from Snape’s bottom and he howls loudly in discomfort. The roaring laughter of four particular Gryffindor boys is booming from the table behind her.
It’s only then when one of the short passages she had read while researching care for the creature comes back to her.
Murtlap bites are typically not serious, while they may be painful. However, severe effects of being bitten include twitching, sweating, and flames from the anus.
So that’s what they were playing at, then.
It’s admittedly a little funny (a shared opinion, if the erupting giggles from around the Great Hall are anything to go by,) albeit slightly brutish. Jeannie doesn’t get to focus on the success of the prank or the hilarity of the situation for very long, however.
As she gathers Pepin up and turns to bring him back to the dorm before the post-prank chaos naturally develops, she collides with another body. A body dressed in green dress robes she’s sure she recognizes from somewhere.
She’s confused for a moment, before - oh, of course.
She looks down, and confirming her suspicions, she yet again finds a pair of familiar black boots tapping at the floor impatiently.
. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
She supposes that it was inevitable she would find herself back in McGonagall’s office eventually. She had just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.
This time, instead of sitting across the desk from the Professor, McGonagall had ushered her to take a seat next to her by the fireplace. She had quickly summoned some tea and searched for sweets to offer, placing them on the table in front of the fire. It was clear that the Professor was stalling.
Finally, after a good few minutes of Jeannie anxiously watching McGonagall sip her tea, the Professor clears her throat.
“I… honestly am not used to needing to speak with you so frequently, Ms. Lupin.”
Jeannie looks down in shame.
“After our talk yesterday, what were you thinking, deciding to do such a thing to Mr. Snape? Inflicting harm on another student is no joking matter. Especially when such harm comes from the mouth of another banned magical creature!”
“No, no! That’s not what happened at all, Professor! You have it all wrong!” Jeannie winces, glancing at the murtlap gurgling about in the makeshift aquarium on the table. “Well… mostly wrong. The murtlap is mine.”
“If the creature is yours, how did it manage to find its way up Mr. Snape’s sleeve without your interference? From what I know, murtlaps are mostly aquatic creatures. Why would it just be wandering the Great Hall and not in a proper tank? Or even better, the ocean?”
“James and Sirius asked to borrow him,” she whispers, avoiding the Professor’s gaze.
“And you simply handed the poor thing over? I admittedly didn’t expect you to be the type for such misguided… pranks, Ms. Lupin,” McGonagall asks, disappointment clear in her voice.
This just makes her curl into herself further.
“They didn’t tell me what they were going to do with him, Professor. I’m sorry. I should have just said no,” Jeannie replies despondently.
“Yes, you should have,” McGonagall agrees. “Ms. Lupin, I know when we talked yesterday, I said I would take disciplinary action if I were to see your niffler again. However, I was unable to predict that another creature of yours would stir up such a fuss. Thus, I will be docking Hufflepuff fifteen house points, and you are to serve a week of detentions with Mr. Filch - you shall report to the clock tower at curfew tomorrow night. I will look into Mr. Potter and Mr. Black’s involvement in the situation, as I do not doubt your claims, but your part is still entirely unacceptable.”
“Yes, Professor,” Jeannie murmurs.
McGonagall rubs at her temples. “Now, dear girl, seriously. I understand your passion and I sympathize with you, but you cannot allow these creatures to run amuck on school grounds. As Deputy Headmistress, I should be removing them from the premises promptly, and any other superior who may find them will likely take immediate motions to do just that. I absolutely cannot see another illegal magical creature roaming the castle. Do you understand?”
Jeannie goes to respond, but is distracted by a soft nudge to her ankle. Olaf is sat patiently at her feet when she looks down, looking quite satisfied with himself.
On the floor next to him sits a rather expensive looking silver ring, bearing an unfamiliar family crest. She reaches down to pick it up, her brow furrowing at the engraved words:
Toujours Pur
Beside her, Professor McGonagall just sighs.