Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Now – ah – Cheering Charms!" announced Professor Flitwick, struggling to clamber up onto his pile of books to see over his desk.

That was one of his many oddities: in Percy's experience, Ravenclaws had an almost religious respect of books and wouldn't have been caught dead using them as a stepstool, but that was Flitwick for you. He didn't doubt his competence, but he was just so strange sometimes.

"One of my favorites, really."

Percy wondered if there was a single charm in the textbook that wasn't his favorite; he had no idea where he got his endless wellspring of general enthusiasm towards life. His passion for the subject was evident to anyone who listened to him for more than five seconds, but then, so was Professor McGonagall's, and she wasn't quite so... excitable.

"A charm to bolster one's mood and combat melancholy, though I'm sure I don't need to remind you that magic and feelings do not always mix well."

Many hands flew to their quills at the unusual severity in his voice. He may be a relaxed sort, but this sounded like something they'd be thoroughly quizzed on.

"The Cheering Charm is intended to be temporary, and though it certainly induces a pleasant sensation, it must be used sparingly. Overuse can result in uncontrolled giggling, persistent hiccoughs, and over time, paradoxically enough, an excess of sadness."

"But how?"

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Isn't it supposed to do the opposite?"

Honestly, had they all forgotten that you were supposed to raise your hand to ask for permission to speak? Professor Flitwick took points so rarely that it was as though basic manners flew out the window when he was around. Percy was astonished that anything got done in Charms class at all. The little man laughed in the face of discipline, yet he seemed to receive nothing but praise from the external examiners who swooped into the school every year: why, only last year, he'd overheard Madam Marchbanks positively raving about the greatness of Charlie's O.W.L. class. If things kept up, he should be able to pass his own Charms examination handily enough in two years' time; but how in the world did Professor Flitwick manage such a feat while shrugging off disruptive behavior, and frankly, sometimes encouraging chaos?

"Yes, yes, excellent questions, everyone," he said, smiling from ear to ear and looking perfectly unbothered by the breach of classroom protocol. "Indeed, how does a charm to make you feel happy eventually come full circle and make you feel sad? Well, suppose you've been using it every day. Suppose you've been jumping to it every time the slightest negative thought crosses your mind, suppressing sadness, forever chasing the burst of elation that only the charm can give you."

It was as though he'd weaved a subtle spell over the class, unseen and unheard: even the worst of them, the class clowns, the disruptors, those who laughed when it took two or three of his tiny little steps to match one stride of a taller adult, were hanging on his every word. It was at times like this that Percy finally caught a glimpse of how Professor Flitwick earned his respect, even if it wasn't by running a tight ship.

"After a time, if you let yourself get too familiar with the artificial cheerfulness of the charm, you might find that genuine happiness has lost its shine, and when you do experience it, it simply doesn't compare—hence why an excessive use of a charm for happiness eventually leads to a net increase in sadness."

Percy raised his hand, feeling rather smug when Professor Flitwick nodded his acknowledgement. Just because the rest of them were incorrigible hooligans, it didn't mean he should forget his social graces.

"Was it intended that way, sir? As a sort of... trap? Could the inventor of the Cheering Charm be classified as a Dark wizard for it, even if his creation is quite harmless in small doses? For that matter, how has it remained legal, if the risk of addiction is so high? Surely the Ministry—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your Hippogriffs, young man, one question at a time."

Percy could feel the back of his neck flushing scarlet. Maybe he'd gotten a little carried away.

"Now, the Cheering Charm has been around for quite some time, though the writings of its creator, Felix Summerbee, are fragmented at best. We can trace it back to sometime between the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century, and from the material we do have, it appears that he had no idea. Everything points to a thoroughly pleasant wizard who only wanted to help; the darker side of his work was, by all appearances, a later discovery. Summerbee died in 1508, leaving no indication in his surviving body of work that he regretted inventing the Cheering Charm at all. As for the legality of it, I suppose the Wizengamot had a hard time justifying a ban on a piece of magic that isn't directly harmful, the way a curse might be, and so left the regulation of its use to our individual common sense, though how common it really is, well, that's debatable."

Percy could hardly write it all down fast enough. Next to him, Oliver Wood elbowed him soundly.

"Seriously?" he hissed. "Eager, much?"

"Professor Binns isn't going to explain any of this anytime soon," Percy replied in an undertone, though he hated to speak ill of another staff member. "You've got to get your history where you can."

As much as Professor Binns was owed the respect that came with his position, he'd learnt more from self-study and gleaning bits and pieces from living teachers than he ever had from his lectures. He was fairly sure he held the record in his year for staying awake the longest, but even he had his limits.

"Okay, point taken," said Oliver, still making no move to take notes of his own. He'd probably beg to copy his later.

Professor Flitwick appeared to take no notice of the exchange, and continued his lecture with renewed vigor.

"Now that we've got the necessary warnings out of the way, on to the part you've all been waiting for! We could all use an extra smile or two, eh? Now, the Cheering Charm should not be exceedingly challenging from a technical standpoint. The incantation is Delecto; I can think of one or two it might be confused with, but I know for a fact you've had to wrap your tongue around worse. Remember, until you're old enough to cast non-verbally, clear enunciation is half the job done! You simply point your wand at your intended target and perform a little swoop, like so." He demonstrated with gusto, grinning widely. "Let's all try the motion together now, and put some bounce in it!"

'Put some bounce in it'? His instructions really were dreadfully vague at times. Percy did a couple of dry runs of the motion he'd just shown, just to get his hand warmed up, but he wasn't at all sure he had enough 'bounce'. What was that supposed to mean? Try as he might, Percy could not imagine the likes of Professor McGonagall telling them to 'put some bounce' in anything at all. That was where he thrived: their Head of House was terrifying when she put her mind to it, but at least she had a gift for communicating clearly, concisely, and with minimal wiggle room for creative interpretation, and Percy was rather good at doing as he was told, if he did say so himself.

Flitwick was... different. A master of his field, Percy wasn't about to question that, but boy, did he ever put the 'craft' in 'witchcraft'. The man was, at heart, an artist; he did things with a wand that he'd never have thought possible, but he was liable to spend half an hour discussing technicalities only to throw it all out the window and conclude that what really mattered was the feeling. Percy tried hard – it was one of the core subjects after all, a wizard's bread and butter – but there were days he caught himself wishing he could drop the class, which was as good as blasphemy. Give him Professor McGonagall's equations, Professor Vector's convoluted charts, even Professor Snape's finicky recipes, for Merlin's sake, and he'd easily come out on top: no amount of blatant unfairness could ignore the fact that Percival Ignatius Weasley could follow a precise step-by-step plan with the best of them. But ask him to 'put some bounce in it', and he was well and truly lost. This whole thinking outside the box thing that Professor Flitwick seemed to favor was simply not for him.

"Very nice, very nice, I think we're ready to put it all together now. Of course, the wand movement and the incantation alone aren't going to cut it."

Percy suppressed a sigh. Here we go again.

"You see, the essence of a Cheering Charm is... the sensation bubbling up in your chest when you're about to laugh, the spark of mirth when you're sharing a joke. It helps, I believe, to think of something funny, to guide the magic along, encourage it into the proper shape."

His mind went blank. For a single, heart-stopping moment, Percy could not recall the last time he had felt any of that. 'Think of something funny' was a clear enough instruction for once, but it was just about the worst one he'd ever received.

Fred and George had made it abundantly clear that he had no sense of humor to speak of. He was the boring one, the chronically serious one, the one who offered a vulnerable flank to all sorts of obnoxious practical jokes, who could only come up with a witty retort five minutes too late. His dorm mates tolerated him, if only because they could line up to copy his homework and he'd eventually cave by exhaustion after the seventh or eighth "It's for your own good" and "You're not learning anything this way", but he didn't have anyone like Professor Flitwick had described, a friend to glance at across the room, barely holding in a snort at some secret joke the rest wouldn't understand.

It wasn't that he never laughed; he just didn't laugh at Dungbombs stinking up the corridors or Nose-Biting Teacups jumping at you with a faceful of scalding hot liquid in tow, and according to those twin terrors, that was as good as never laughing at all.

It had been a not-too-secret relief to be away from them for several months out of the year, certain, for once, that he wouldn't find beetles in his bed or frogs spawning from his soap, but now... now Fred and George were everyone else's problem as well as his, and Hogwarts didn't know what hit her.

It fell to him, he knew, to make sure the castle remained standing in the wake of their loud, boisterous arrival: Bill was the only one they would have listened to, but he had to go and graduate just before they started, the lucky sod, and a strongly worded letter just wasn't the same as telling them off in person; Charlie, if anything, would egg them on, laughing at their antics with his friend from Hufflepuff who could never seem to decide what face to wear, and was worse than useless at reining them in.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Split up into pairs, and let's see you give it your best try!"

"You going first, or shall I?" asked Oliver.

At least this one, if it worked, was meant to be pleasant; being each other's practice dummy was a whole other experience when the spell of the day was uncomfortable. Honestly, Percy was as eager as the next person to widen the range of his spellcasting, but half the time, he caught himself wondering what in the world those wizards of old had been thinking, to invent certain things in the first place.

"I'll do it, let's get this over with, don't move..."

Hmm. Now what? He supposed the twins had taken full advantage of their first few months at Hogwarts to do plenty of things that passed as 'funny', but most of the time, Percy had been flailing miserably in the background of their chaos trying to put a stop to it. It really didn't speak highly of his leadership skills that he couldn't even keep a lid on his own brothers' misbehavior. Those two would sink his career before its maiden voyage, he was certain.

Still, perhaps he could draw from that. That time they'd only just freshly learnt the Sticking Charm, and somehow the occupants of the entire Slytherin table had found themselves unable to pick up their knives and forks at dinner—that was supposed to be funny, was it not? The other three quarters of the school had been in an uproar, cheering and clapping and falling apart with laughter as Fred and George stood triumphantly on their seats, bowing like consummate actors and soaking up the praise, not caring a single whit about the incoming detention. Percy had only felt like he wanted the ground to swallow him where he sat, but his trademark Weasley hair made it rather hard to pretend he wasn't related to them.

"Delecto!"

He thought maybe the corners of Oliver's mouth turned up, but whatever that was, it certainly wasn't a Cheering Charm.

"Not feeling it."

"You were sort of smiling."

"Only because I was thinking about that save I made against Hufflepuff. You want another shot?"

All around them, goofy grins were starting to spread on everybody's faces. He'd never been the last to get it before, and he thought the embarrassment might kill him.

"All right, I'll get it this time. Delecto!"

Laughter rose from all directions; one or two people had tears of mirth streaming down their faces, and though he knew it was only because of the charm, it seemed to him that it was all directed at him, mocking his failure. Why wasn't it working?

"Didn't feel a thing. You all right, Percy? It really isn't like you not to get a new spell straight away."

"What seems to be the problem here?" asked Professor Flitwick, sauntering over to where Percy was shaking frustrated sparks out of his wand as if that could loosen things up.

"I'm... I'm not sure, professor. It doesn't seem to be working."

"Happens to the best of us," he said encouragingly. "Perhaps if you switched roles? Sometimes knowing firsthand what a spell ought to feel like can help."

"All right, hit me."

"Delecto!"

Now, Percy had no idea if what Oliver had just done qualified as 'putting some bounce in it', but it was the most hilarious thing he'd ever seen. He was still in class, he was meant to be acting dignified, but the way he was going, he thought he might crack a couple of ribs holding it in.

"For goodness' sake, Mr. Weasley, let go, this really isn't good for you!"

Percy couldn't help it. He screamed with laughter, banging his fist on the desk as he fell apart completely.

"Phew. I thought I'd messed it up, your face was kind of turning purple."

"I can't recall any studies on what happens if you try to stave off a Cheering Charm by sheer stubbornness, Mr. Weasley, but you really don't want to be patient zero. There's nothing wrong with having a good laugh, you know, even in front of a professor."

"I just thought—"

What, that the Hogwarts rulebook had some secret paragraph and comma against breaking into a fit of the giggles? Perhaps it was the charm talking, but he couldn't even bring himself to finish the sentence, it seemed so abysmally stupid.

It had been almost a reflex—that the designated good kid, the future Prefect, the one with a plan from here until he was a hundred and twenty, was not allowed to crack up. That being seen having fun was almost as embarrassing as being seen in his birthday suit, and he couldn't for the life of him explain why.

He laughed and laughed until he was gasping for air, digging his fingernails into his palms to sober up, but it was no good. It just kept coming over him in relentless waves, entirely outside of his control, and soon tipped over from amusing to utterly terrifying. It felt like it would never stop.

"Dear me, Mr. Wood, I think you might have overdone it just a smidge."

Just a smidge? He couldn't breathe! If that was just a smidge, he would hate to see what it was like to overdo it by a lot.

"Make... it... stop," he gasped in between his peals of laughter. "Please."

"Ah, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do but let you ride it out, so to speak. It happens when the charm is overpowered... and, between you and me, when the target hasn't been laughing nearly enough. It is rather like shaking a bottle of pumpkin fizz, you see. Perhaps if you spent a few minutes in the empty classroom next door... isolation often does the trick. Laughter is contagious, after all."

And so he walked, head bowed in shame and shoulders shaking with barely contained laughter, into the next room. It was a perfectly well-appointed classroom, probably ready for Professor Flitwick to take over in case an especially egregious disaster made his regular room unusable, and in the silence, Percy was left alone, with the sole company of his thoughts and his magically induced giggles.

Had he really made himself so susceptible to the Cheering Charm because he didn't laugh enough without it? The idea alone was sobering. Even with the aftershocks of Oliver's spell still ripping through him, there was very little to laugh about if that was true. It was an unacceptable weakness: never mind how stupid it made him look, what if someone used it against him in a duel? He'd be easy prey.

And to add insult to injury, he still had no idea how to perform the spell himself. Oliver, who spent most of his classes scribbling Quidditch strategies in the margins of his patchy notes, had managed it in moments, and he was still at square one, his attempts fizzling out miserably.

Get it together, Perce. He had it on good authority (that is to say, from Charlie) that it was going to be on the third-year exam, and if he couldn't master it, he was up to his proverbial hair in trouble.

He marched back into class with a renewed fire, all laughter forgotten, but try as he might, he couldn't do it. Every time he tried to 'think of something funny', his mind was flooded with nightmare scenarios of failing Charms, having to repeat the year, saying goodbye to his chances of a badge, derailing his carefully laid path, and he froze up and couldn't produce so much as a spark.

It was just like earlier this year, with the Boggart. The thing had twisted and warped before his eyes to take the shape of a rickety little desk festooned with cobwebs, a peeling sign declaring it to belong to the Centaur Office. A lone, near-lifeless interdepartmental memo twitched feebly on top of an endless stack of paperwork, and he'd been unable to find a single funny thing about it—about fading into dreary mediocrity, unknown and without a Knut to his name, because he hadn't done enough, been enough.

Perhaps this was where it started: from being unable to force a Boggart into something funny, from pointing his wand at Oliver again and again and never hearing so much as a giggle. The cracks were starting to show. He'd had it easy for the first two years, when he was learning the basics, but the minute things got serious, he was left in the dust. He'd never amount to anything at this rate.

He gathered up his things and dashed off to Arithmancy without saying goodbye to anyone. At least Arithmancy was nice and solid, rooted in fact and not such pesky things as feelings. Maybe that would make his day a little better. The workload this year was truly stepping up, and until an hour ago, Percy would have said he reveled in it. He'd signed up for as many electives as he could, dreaming of an O.W.L. letter as long as his arm, with all his hard-earned Os gleaming on the page like so many pearls, opening all the doors he wanted, the prelude to a shining career.

It had seemed like a good plan this morning, and Felix bloody Summerbee had to go and ruin it. It was probably not at all normal or sane to be angry at a wizard from the fifteenth century, but Percy was seized by a sudden desire to chuck the man's Chocolate Frog card into a fire.

What was a Cheering Charm good for, anyway? Were there really people like Professor Flitwick had talked about, who believed that a spell to forcibly cheer you up meant never having to be sad again? Percy hadn't even particularly liked it—the idea that a single spell could cause his composure to unravel like that sent shivers down his spine.

If he was to have a laugh (which he did, thank you very much, no matter what Fred and George said), at least let it be on his terms, and not because someone else dictated his amusement. He already had enough people in his life trying to do that without magic, and he certainly didn't need them to try with it.

He really should have been paying less attention to the thrice-cursed memory of Felix Summerbee, and more to where he was going. One minute he was stomping down the corridor to the Arithmancy classroom, and the next he'd gone sprawling hard on the stone floor, the world turning blurry as his glasses flew off his face. A viciously pleased little laugh sounded from somewhere above his head.

"Peeves," he groaned, squinting at the poltergeist floating upside down near the ceiling. He must have been loosening the carpet again; he'd tried to report it a thousand times, pointing out that someone could break their neck if it happened on a staircase, but was only ever met with shrugs and lectures on the nature of a poltergeist, as if there were nothing that could be done.

He felt around for his glasses, but Peeves was quicker: he swooped down for them like some ugly, lurid bird of prey and sped down the corridor, cackling for all he was worth.

"Hee hee! Didn't know a weasel could be as blind as a bat!"

"Get back here, you little—"

Percy ran after him, but that only made things worse. Peeves dangled his glasses just out of reach, bobbing a little higher every time he felt his fingertips brush them, thoroughly enjoying his humiliation.

"Bit slow for a weasel, eh?"

"Give them back, Peeves, or so help me—"

"Accio glasses," called a voice from behind him, and they zoomed out of the poltergeist's grasp to... Merlin's pants, could his day get any worse?

Even through his blurry vision, there was no mistaking the figure of Penelope Clearwater; she slipped her wand back into her pocket, tucked a wayward curl behind her ear, and held his glasses out as Peeves floated off to look for his next victim, blowing loud raspberries as he went. His stomach promptly performed all the swooping and bouncing that his wand had failed at.

Why did he have to meet her like this, at his lowest, squinting and shouting like an idiot, and not, say, striking a heroic pose as he single-handedly saved a poor, hapless first year from the poltergeist's clutches?

"Oh, uh, i-isn't that next year? That thing you just did with the—" Smooth, Weasley, real smooth.

"Not if you're in Charms Club, it isn't. You should join us. It's a bit late in the year to sign up, but we don't mind new people coming to watch, to decide if they want in next year. It's cool."

Percy rammed his glasses back into place, nearly taking his eye out. Charms Club seemed like the best place on earth right about now, if only because it offered an excuse to talk to her, and—and then what? Hadn't there been plenty of Hogsmeade weekends, and hadn't he been too chicken to ask her every time? Why would Charms Club be any different? They probably wouldn't even want him, if his stellar performance just now was any indication.

He almost let it all spill out: if she was in Charms Club, surely she must know the trick to it, possess some secret that he'd missed, be able to make smiles and laughter bloom from the tip of her wand as easily as talking about the weather. But then he thought better of it. No need to make himself look more pathetic than he already was.

"Um... I-I suppose..."

"Come on," said Penelope, putting him out of his misery. "Professor Vector won't like it if we're late."

But not even Professor Vector's number charts saved him from feeling thoroughly down in the dumps. For one thing, it was impossible to concentrate anywhere in Penelope's proximity, because every time she caught his eye across the room, he could think of nothing but how stupid he must have looked, and for another thing, his fiasco with the Cheering Charm still ate him up from the inside. It was just like Oliver had said: it wasn't like him at all. Even with the trickiest spells, he was generally able to make something happen on his first try, even if it wasn't perfect. But coming up utterly empty like this, no better than Mother's Squib cousin who'd packed his bags and wanted nothing more to do with wizards for as long as he lived... that was new, and it scared him. What if it happened again?

He survived Arithmancy by sheer inertia, not quite knowing if his notes on Bridget Wenlock's frankly unhealthy obsession with the number seven made any sense, and dragged his feet to lunch with very little appetite.

He spotted the twins a few seats over, their heads together with their friend Lee Jordan, snickering about Merlin knew what. They would get it in an instant, he thought bitterly. They sure would have no shortage of ideas if a teacher told them to think of something funny. Could it be that they were right, that he was so incurably dour and humorless that his magic up and refused to be cheerful?

Percy pushed his food around more than eating it. Clearly, he'd have to set aside some time to practice until it clicked, but the trouble with putting in extra practice, quite apart from squeezing it in between all the classes he was juggling, was that he couldn't exactly shoot Cheering Charms at a wall.

"Oliver, do you mind helping me practice my Cheering Charms? I have to get it."

"Can't, I have Quidditch practice." Great. Just peachy. He'd probably stay out until after curfew, when everyone else had already packed up and was long gone, charming spare Quaffles to come at him from all directions and beating himself up for every one that slipped past his fingers.

The thought of going around begging for another guinea pig filled him with dread. Now more than ever, he keenly felt the lack of the easy camaraderie that seemed to come easily to everyone else. Had he just... forgotten to make friends, somewhere between checking out piles of extra books and pressing his nose against the gleaming glass cases in the trophy room, dreaming of seeing his name on a big brass plaque celebrating some great achievement?

He mentally ran through a list of people he knew, and couldn't come up with a single one he could go to with such an odd request without supreme awkwardness. He wasn't completely lonely, but his relationships suddenly felt like a collection of surface-level connections without substance, all carefully cultivated to either boost his image as a young leader, or get his foot in the door so that his upcoming career would go a little smoother. He could have recited exactly whose parents worked in what Ministry department, he'd been bending over backwards to do favors to the right people so they could introduce him to someone who mattered someday, and for what? For all that favors were meant to be mutual, there was no one to whom he was comfortable showing weakness, admitting that he was in need. He was 'Perfect Percy', and he couldn't afford to slip up.

He supposed, as a last resort, he could practice on himself; there were plenty of unused classrooms he could use to sequester himself away from the public eye and not look like an idiot.

His afternoon classes passed in a blur; he might even have dozed off a little as Professor Binns droned on about yet another goblin rebellion, because his notes stopped abruptly at Urg the Unclean being unceremoniously dunked into a pond, and resumed a few years later with said goblin, presumably not looking any cleaner, having somehow amassed enough forces that even the Muggles took notice and a mass Obliviation had to occur.

The spot he found to practice in was certainly not very conducive to cheerfulness: it was a place that might once have been a classroom, but was now nothing more than a few stacks of desks and chairs that someone had pushed out of the way, and inexplicably, a collection of bent and rusted birdcages ranging in size from a tiny one fit for a sparrow to a tall one that could have easily housed an eagle. Whatever had happened here, it was clear that Mr. Filch hadn't bothered cleaning this room in a long time.

Percy carefully levitated a chair off the nearest stack, made himself sneeze violently with a cleaning charm that kicked up a great cloud of dust off of it, and sat down to face his personal nemesis.

"Delecto!"

Not a single blip. Perhaps, he told himself rather hopelessly, it was like tickling: if someone else did it to you, you'd fall to pieces laughing, but if you did it to yourself, you wouldn't so much as giggle. But that was just wishful thinking: Professor Flitwick had made it quite clear that you should be able to direct the charm at yourself as easily as another, so that excuse didn't hold water.

Or perhaps he was as scared of succeeding as he was of failing: the incident with Oliver was burned into his mind, and he certainly didn't want a repeat.

Percy tried again. And again. And again. By the fifth time, he was decidedly getting frustrated; by the tenth, he was ready to blow a few cages to smithereens.

His rather miserable string of failures was interrupted by two identical ginger heads peeking into the doorway.

"Go away," he said irritably. He really didn't need their pranks on top of everything else.

"Wrong answer," said Fred, though there hadn't been a question at all.

"We're not going anywhere."

"We detected moping..."

"And we can't let that happen to our own brother, right, Freddie?"

"Even if he is the annoying one."

"Happens in every family."

"So what's going on, Perce? You're not exactly a ray of sunshine on a good day..."

"But this is a little much even for you."

Listening to those two talk was like trying to follow a pair of Chasers tossing the Quaffle around: you were never sure which one you should keep an eye on.

"How did you even find me?"

Fred and George looked at each other as if sharing some sort of inside joke.

"You weren't in the common room," said Fred.

"Or the library," George put in.

"Or any other place that made sense."

"So your next guess was a random abandoned classroom in the middle of nowhere? Are you two tracking me?"

"Who, us? Two innocent ickle firsties who can barely levitate a feather?"

"Never. Guess it's going to have to remain a mystery."

"We have bigger problems anyway. What's got you so glum?"

"Nothing," Percy lied through his teeth.

"I don't know about you, Freddie, but I've never heard a 'nothing' sound less like nothing."

"Out with it, Perce, we all know you're a lousy liar."

"Fine," he sighed. "There's this new spell we've been doing in Charms, and I can't wrap my head around it no matter what I do."

"Ooh, what's Flitwick having you do?" asked Fred. "Making spinach taste like Mom's fudge?"

"Growing out your nose hairs?"

"You're being ridiculous. Who would want a spell to grow out their nose hairs?"

"You'd be surprised," said George.

"People can come up with worse if they're bored enough."

"So what's Perfect Percy having trouble with?"

Percy suppressed his irritation. Even when they were being helpful (which was suspicious in itself), they just couldn't help but throw in a little jab.

"It's called a Cheering Charm. It's supposed to—"

"We know," they chorused. Percy raised an eyebrow. It was two years ahead of them, how in the world did they know about it already?

"Heard about it from Bill," said Fred.

"Downright shame you've got to wait until third year for it, if you ask us."

"We can't wait."

"So what's so hard about it, that even the resident know-it-all is stumped?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure. Might be the fact that it makes me look like an idiot."

"Well, then you're not having trouble with it at all, are you?"

"Looks like you've already done it!"

"Oh, wait, that's just your face."

"Shut up," Percy growled. "This is important. It's going to be on the exam for sure, and I'm doomed. Can't you two ever be serious?"

"All right, all right, truce," said George. "Our brother's in trouble. No teasing..."

"... much..."

"... until we get to the bottom of this."

"Too right, Georgie. You might be our favorite person to prank..."

"... although, to be fair, you do make it so easy..."

"... but at the end of the day, brothers have to have each other's back."

Percy stared. They'd never said that to his face before. What did it say about their relationship that it felt like a trap, like they were going all sentimental on him now, to get him to lower his guard, only to slip Stink Pellets into his book bag later?

"How do I know your 'help' isn't going to make things worse?"

Two identical flashes of hurt clouded their faces. Perhaps he'd gone a bit too far.

"Hey, now, I know we've made trouble for you before, but we mean it this time." Fred looked unusually earnest, the playful sparkle in his eye replaced by determination.

"If it were one of us having trouble, you'd help us."

"If you were having trouble, you'd just go to Bill or Charlie," said Percy, frowning. When had they ever come to him for help?

"Only because the kind of trouble we usually have is the kind that comes with a lecture," said Fred.

"And your lectures are second only to Mom's."

"But for something like this? You'd be our first choice for sure."

"It's not just because of your grades that everyone knows your badge is coming, you know."

"Lee told us you helped him when his feather wasn't even twitching."

"And Angie said you taught her a trick to remember Binns's dates."

"It's about time someone helped you for a change."

Percy was stunned. He would be lying if he said there wasn't an element of selfishness in his tendency to stretch himself in a thousand directions to assist his underclassmen, to establish himself bright and early as a role model and a helper: that was what the teachers looked for in a future leader, it was all part of his unrelenting quest to be noticed, to stand out, to prove that he wasn't a nobody.

He never knew, between one all-nighter and the next, that Fred and George had been watching, that they'd realized just how many times the words "Anything I can help you with?" passed his lips.

And maybe, just maybe, he could start reaping the rewards a little ahead of schedule.

"All right. I have the horrible, sinking feeling that I'm going to regret this, but if there's anyone in this whole castle who can help me get this stupid charm, it's probably you two."

"That's... quite the vote of confidence," said Fred.

"So how's it supposed to work?"

Percy showed them, though he knew he was only regurgitating empty words. He had the theory down pat, could recite Professor Flitwick's explanation almost word for word, and still it wouldn't come to him.

"The thing is you're supposed to think of something funny, and—"

"Ah. Found the problem."

"Explains a lot, really."

"Perce... when was the last time you laughed?"

"This morning, playing guinea pig for Oliver. I hated it."

"Doesn't count." Fred shook his head disapprovingly. "That was just the spell talking."

"Er—then I'm not sure."

The twins slapped their foreheads in perfect synchrony, as if they'd never heard anything so stupid.

"You're not sure?" said Fred. "Merlin, Perce, do you have any fun? Ever?"

"I do!" said Percy indignantly. "It's just—"

"What, that you don't have time? That it's stupid? That it's not useful? Or, Merlin forbid, not respectable?" said George bitterly. "We get enough of that from Mom."

Every question was a vicious splinter digging under his skin, pricking at that uncomfortable spot that had been aching since this morning.

"I... I don't know. Is that really why I can't do it, do you think?"

"I don't see why else."

"You're usually good at pretty much anything you put your mind to."

"Except Quidditch," Fred snorted.

"But that's just more of the same, isn't it?" said George. "It's not that Percy can't fly, it's that he doesn't want to play. He only really sees a broomstick as a way to get from point A to point B, but throw some fun into the mix, and he doesn't know what to do with himself."

Fred let out an impressed whistle. "Wow. Never saw it that way."

"Yeah... me neither," Percy mumbled.

That was what frustrated him to no end about Fred and George: they had plenty of brains, they just had a strange definition of what was worth using them for.

"So maybe your magic just isn't used to it," Fred mused.

"Used to what? Having fun?" said Percy doubtfully.

"Yep. Be honest, Perce, when have you ever whipped out your wand to do something completely, unashamedly silly?" asked George.

"Why would I do that?" Percy countered. "Magic is a privilege, and it ought not to be squandered—"

"Blah, blah, blah. Save it for someone who will listen."

"Do you seriously think fully grown wizards never use magic for fun?"

"Look at what Dad has to deal with."

"Shrinking keys, tea sets going rogue..."

"That's Muggle-baiting," Percy frowned. "If Father hears that you think it's fun, I don't want to think about the state of your buttocks."

"It's not," said Fred, "but only because Muggles can't hex you back."

"If they could give as good as they got, it would be fair game."

"But it would still be stupid," said Percy.

"So? A little stupidity is good for the soul."

"Don't be such a party pooper."

"If you were any more uptight, you'd explode."

"You need to loosen up a bit, Perce."

"Yeah! Turn somebody's hair purple..."

"Make a volcano out of their porridge..."

"Ooh, good one, Georgie."

"All right, all right, I get the idea—but why?"

The twins shook their heads sadly, putting on an air of gravity like a Healer about to announce that the patient wouldn't survive the night.

"Oh, Percy."

"Percy, Percy, Percy."

"Will you stop saying my name and get to the point?"

"For someone so smart, you sure can be dumb sometimes," said Fred.

"You're asking the wrong question."

"I think you meant to say why not?"

Percy blinked, trying to digest this latest bit of madness. That... explained a lot about Fred and George, if he really thought about it.

"Because—because none of it makes any sense! What wizard worth his salt would make a compass that only points north on Tuesdays, or... or a cauldron that spits out anything you try to put in it? Who needs that?"

"Nobody," said Fred, grinning.

"But thanks for the ideas."

"You two are impossible," Percy sighed. He hadn't meant any of it, but if anyone could pull it off someday, it was probably them. He was scared of what they would come up with once they had a few more years of schooling under their belt.

"It's all part of our charm."

"Sense is overrated, anyway."

"A bit of nonsense every now and then is like candy," said Fred sagely.

"You don't eat it because you're hungry, but because it tastes good."

"And sure, you could go without it..."

"It would probably be healthier, even..."

"But why would you do that to yourself? It's just sad."

"Besides," said George, "all the greatest wizards are a bit mad."

"Seriously, just look at Dumbledore."

"Professor Dumbledore is a genius, and he deserves more respect than that!" said Percy sternly.

"But we do respect him, Perce," said Fred.

"Only, we respect him because he's mad, not despite it."

Percy scrambled for an argument, and he could not find one. The result, he was sure, must look remarkably like a gaping fish.

"Are you two usually this clever when you're writing your essays?"

"Sometimes," said Fred.

"When it's worth it."

"Which isn't often."

"But enough about us. How do we get Perfect Percy to embrace the madness?"

"Good luck. Closest thing he's ever done to breaking a rule is bringing that stupid rat."

"And I bet he turned himself in after a week, begging for a 'reasonable exception'."

"Hey! Scabbers isn't stupid!" he said, peeved.

Three days. That was how long he'd lasted, before the stress of smuggling in a pet that wasn't on the approved list did his head in. But he didn't correct them, because he knew better than to show weakness in front of them. They'd take the mickey until he was fifty.

"Details, details. You know, George, I think there's really only one way out of this conundrum."

"Which is?"

"He's coming pranking with us."

"No way! We'd be giving away all our secrets!"

It was so rare to see the twins actually disagree on something that Percy felt as if the world had turned slightly sideways. That couldn't be right.

"Maybe not all of them. Just a carefully curated selection," said Fred shrewdly, and Percy frankly didn't want to know what secrets he might be referring to. When it came to those two, what he didn't know couldn't hurt him. Much.

"Now we're talking. So who's going to be the unfortunate victim of baby's first prank?"

"Now see here—" Of all their teasing, somehow, it was being called a baby that gave him the urge to nail them with a good Stinging Jinx.

"And most importantly," said Fred, talking over his objections as if he weren't even sitting there, "what's it going to be? Strategically placed Dungbomb?"

"Screaming Yo-yo in the middle of History?"

"That's just cruel, Georgie. It'd wake everyone up from their naps, and they'd actually have to listen." Fred gave a great, exaggerated shudder. "Epidemic of hiccoughs? I've just stocked up."

"By owl order," said George in a winning tone. "Wouldn't want our future Prefect here to think we've personally stocked up on a product that's only available in Hogsmeade."

Well, that was the most deliberately unconvincing lie he'd ever heard, which meant that the twins had definitely found a way to sneak into the village, and weren't going to let him in on it anytime soon, worried that he'd spoil their fun. Which, admittedly, he'd have to, but still.

"Fred, George, I appreciate your... enthusiasm, but there's just a small problem: none of that is funny to me. That's what I've been trying to tell you for ages. Just because I don't have your sense of humor, it doesn't mean I have none. I just laugh at different things."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know you're thirteen going on thirty," said Fred, rolling his eyes.

"No, wait, maybe he has a point. What do you find funny, Perce? I can't believe we never bothered to ask."

"Well... things like the satirical vignettes in the back of the Prophet, or—"

"Okay, first, I can't believe you actually find those funny," said Fred.

"And second, those aren't even meant for a good, honest belly laugh. More like a 'look how clever I am' kind of chuckle."

"Why do you never let yourself laugh, Percy?"

"I—"

But if he were honest with himself, there was nothing after that. He'd learnt the hard way what happened when you were serious all the time: the slightest touch of giggle-inducing magic would unleash some kind of pent-up flood you didn't even know you had, leaving you wheezing and helpless. So why did he never allow himself the release of a good laugh?

"I guess I didn't want to be seen as immature."

"And why would being immature be a bad thing?" asked Fred.

"Honestly, this whole 'growing up' business isn't nearly as glamorous as it looks."

"Too true. The later we do it, the better."

"I suppose—but you'll just say it's stupid," Percy trailed off pathetically. The thing about Fred and George was that you never knew what they were going to use as blackmail, so you ended up not talking to them about anything more important than the weather, to protect yourself from future mischief.

"We won't," they said simultaneously.

"We reserve the right to call you stupid the rest of the time," Fred quipped.

"But this doesn't sound stupid at all, so spit it out."

"Well... I think maybe it's because after Charlie, Mother and Father had to wait a bit longer before I came along. Growing up, they were always the cool older brothers who were so much more advanced than me at everything, and I guess I believed I had to act older than I was for them to give me the time of day. They were always attached at the hip, and I thought they didn't have room for me because I was too much of a baby, so I just... stopped being a baby altogether. Then you two arrived, and someone had to make sure the house was still standing."

"Merlin's baggy Y-fronts, Perce. And here I thought it was an Aging Potion in your milk or something," said Fred, clearly scrambling to make light of the situation.

"That... explains a lot of things, actually," said George, more serious than he'd ever heard him. "But neither Bill nor Charlie ever asked that of you, you know? That's just a rule you made up for yourself."

"That's Percy for you. When he doesn't have enough rules to follow, he makes his own."

"Then maybe he should start by breaking those, if he's too chicken to break any school rules."

"Hey! Not breaking any school rules doesn't make you chicken!"

"Does too!" said Fred petulantly.

"Does not."

"Does too!" George chimed in, his eyes sparkling. Ugh, two against one was hardly fair.

"Does not."

"Does not."

"Does too—argh!" He really should have noticed Fred's smirk.

"Oh, Perce, you really do make it too easy," said George, his voice laced with laughter.

"If you two were half as serious about anything as you are about your jokes, you'd take over the world," said Percy, which was the closest thing to a compliment they'd ever get from him.

"But we are serious, sometimes," Fred protested.

"Once in a blue moon."

"For example, right now, we're completely serious about helping you get that charm."

"We just don't know how."

"I mean, how do you help someone who's forgotten how to have fun?"

"I have not forgotten," said Percy, with a stubborn edge to his tone. "I just have fun... sparingly."

"'Sparingly', he says." George sounded less like a little brother and more like a disappointed father.

"Open your ears, Perce: if you're having fun so 'sparingly' that you can't say for sure when the last time was, you're not having any."

"And if you want to learn the Cheering Charm before you're old and grey, you're going to have to let us fix that."

"Even if you don't like our methods."

Percy took a deep breath. He supposed it was true, after all, that beggars could not be choosers, and he was just desperate enough.

"You know what? Do your worst, but only because my exam is on the line."

"Strange motivation, but who are we to question it?" said Fred.

"'Do your worst'? What do you make of such a generous invitation, Freddie?"

"I think," oh, dear, it was always cause for alarm when Fred turned thoughtful, "we should swing by the hospital wing first."

"The hospital wing?" Percy echoed, not following the leap in logic. "Are you two in the habit of kicking people when they're down?"

"We're not kicking anyone," said George, sounding offended. "Who do you take us for?"

"It's just good inspiration."

"And Madam Pomfrey is slightly less of a dragon than Snape when it comes to guarding her stores."

"You've been stealing from her? She needs those stores for people who are sick! You ought to be in detention from here until you graduate!"

"Probably," Fred admitted candidly.

"If you count all the stuff we've never been caught for."

"But you need us, so we'll find a way to teach you that charm and call it even."

Percy felt distinctly like he'd just entered a deal with a pair of goblins who had a very strange idea of what was fair, and his next move could well incite a bloody rebellion.

"And what exactly does the hospital wing... inspire you to do?"

"A little of this, a little of that," said George dismissively.

"But mostly, we're taking you there to prove a point," said Fred, and Percy suddenly found himself very unwilling to discover what that point was.

Percy walked a step behind them with all the enthusiasm of a convict being led to Azkaban, and peeked uncertainly through the great double doors of Madam Pomfrey's domain, still not seeing the purpose of coming all the way here.

"This is a fool's errand," he muttered. "I ought to be learning the Cheering Charm the old-fashioned way, with books."

"Just look, will you?" said Fred.

"Books aren't going to teach you this particular lesson."

Percy looked, but he wasn't sure what lesson there was to learn in the scene before him. Madam Pomfrey was bustling to and fro, dividing her attention between an unfortunate girl who could express her complaints in nothing but song, a boy who'd cursed his own ears off in a clumsy attempt to clear his acne, and the miserable, sniffling loser of an impromptu duel, who had his knees on backwards and eyebrows long enough to cover most of his face.

"That's what you get for taking on someone two years above you over such a silly disagreement," Madam Pomfrey tutted. "That'll teach you to talk it out like a civil person."

"I don't get it," Percy whispered. If she noticed them, she'd either pull them in for a full physical examination, or kick them out for disturbing the peace, and neither was a very inviting prospect.

"Look me in the eye and tell me any of this is nice and sensible," said Fred.

Percy frowned. "But most of these things happened by mistake. They weren't being silly on purpose."

"Still a good source of ideas," George shrugged.

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but mistakes are definitely the father."

"That is not how the saying goes."

"Who cares?" said George.

"Besides, we take it as a sign that magic itself wants to be silly sometimes."

"And if you don't let it, it's going to come back to bite you."

That was... definitely an interesting way of looking at things. Percy had never considered it from that angle. It would certainly explain the existence of spells to turn someone's head into a pumpkin or curse their shoes to bite their feet. But then, how come no professor had ever expressed that sentiment out loud?

"Show me where Adalbert Waffling says that in Magical Theory," he challenged them.

"He doesn't," said Fred nonchalantly.

"But only because Waffling was a boring old codger who liked to hear himself talk."

"You should go annoy his portrait sometime, if real, living people are too much for you."

"Ooh, that's a start. Remember when we gave Mirabella Plunkett a mustache?"

"You've been vandalizing school property?!"

"Vandalizing?" Fred scoffed. "I think you mean 'improving'."

"They're bored out of their little canvas minds, a mustache is a nice change of pace."

"I think the portrait of Miss Plunkett might disagree with you."

"Well? What are you three crowding the doors for? Are you unwell?" Madam Pomfrey barked in their general direction.

Great. As if this suicide mission weren't bad enough already.

"No, uh, just... just visiting someone," Percy improvised.

He was fairly certain that the boy hiding behind a curtain of his own eyebrows was Gabriel Truman, a Hufflepuff he'd occasionally worked with in the greenhouses; the last he'd heard of him had been this morning in Arithmancy, when he'd all but squealed in delight upon finding out that Bridget Wenlock had been one of his own.

"Make it quick," she snapped, and hurried off, sighing as if visitors were an unfortunate necessity she had to put up with against her will.

Fred and George stared at each other, then at Percy, their eyes as wide as dinner plates.

"Perce... did you just lie to her?" said Fred, sounding as though he'd just personally witnessed an event as rare and awe-inspiring as the birth of a baby dragon.

"We really are a bad influence," said George, who looked like he'd been struck in the head with a frying pan.

"What was I supposed to say? 'No, we're just here to ogle at the sheer stupidity you have to deal with all day'? That would have been a cheerful conversation. Besides," he said pointedly, a blush creeping on the back of his neck, "it's not lying if we make it true."

And he marched to Gabriel's bed, bracing himself for awkwardness. It would have been a stretch to say they were friends: they existed in each other's general vicinity, passing the occasional quill, but were nowhere close to the sort of bosom buddies who would rush to each other's bedside the second they heard the other was hurt. Come to think of it, Percy didn't have anyone like that. It was a rite of passage he'd simply missed out on.

"Uh, hey."

"Hang on, I can't see a thing..." He sat up and parted his excess of hair so he could get a proper look at him. "Hey, fancy seeing you here."

"So, uh, what happened?"

"Long story. I was talking to my friends about what Professor Vector said this morning, and we passed this group of Ravenclaws who started laughing and said there was no way Bridget Wenlock could have been a Hufflepuff, that she must have been one of theirs, and we'd never be smart enough to discover anything more useful than a broom cupboard."

The rage in his voice as he told the story was a wild mismatch to his miserable appearance; Percy thought he might bite his hand off if he went for a pat on the shoulder, so he stood there, not quite knowing what to do with his own limbs.

"I sort of... saw red and started hexing their ringleader, not realizing who I was going up against, and here we are."

That seemed so unlike him; from what little he'd seen of him, Percy would have guessed him to be a quiet, studious type, slow to anger and always laden with books, someone he would have liked to approach, even, except that he seemed to have a strong group of friends closing ranks around him already, and he could find no opening to squeeze into.

"I'm... sorry?" he said, hating that it came out like a question. Was it even the right sentiment? "That must be uncomfortable."

"And this is after Madam Pomfrey's done unscrambling the rest of me. Worth it, though."

It was a wonder that he said it so lightly: sure, there was very little in the wizarding world that was truly permanent, but even after your physical scars were done healing, the damage to your reputation was a lot harder to fix.

"Really? I thought you were going for Prefect for sure. What are you going to do now that this is on your record?"

Gabriel shrugged. "You're only saying that because for you, the final decision rests with McGonagall. Professor Sprout is a different sort. She didn't like it, but she's a little more willing to accept that even her prospective Prefects are... well... human. And I got some coconut ice in the bargain, so I don't think this hurt my chances very much after all." He pointed at an open box of sweets on his bedside table. "Help yourselves, no way I'm going to finish it."

"Ooh, don't mind if I do," said Fred, descending on the box like a ravenous wolf.

"Must be nice," said George. "If we started hexing people in the corridors, we definitely wouldn't be getting coconut ice for our trouble."

"That's why we have to be a little more subtle about it."

"You two wouldn't know subtlety if it bashed you in the head with a Beater's bat."

Gabriel snorted through his curtain of hair. "He's got you there. Are you two the firsties who released a Dungbomb down the Charms corridor a while back? That wasn't exactly subtle. Everyone had to find alternate routes for ages, it smelled so awful."

"Guilty as charged," they chorused, not sounding sorry at all.

"Hey, speaking of Charms, you're in Percy's year, right? Is Flitwick having you do the same stuff?" asked Fred.

Percy felt a stab of irritation. It had to come up eventually, but he'd rather confess to his failings on his own terms than have them paraded to all and sundry by his brother, thank you very much.

"More or less, I'd imagine. We all have to get to the same place by the end of the year. Pfft—" He spat out some hair that had found its way into his mouth as he spoke, and continued as if nothing were wrong with his face at all. "Why? Are you having trouble?"

Percy sighed. The Kneazle was out of the bag anyway, might as well get it over with. "Sort of. Cheering Charms are turning out... harder than expected. These two are saying it's because I don't know how to have fun."

"What do you usually think of when you cast it?"

"Er—honestly, at this point, any suggestions are welcome," he said, defeated. "How do you fuel it?"

"Oh, we have it easy," he shrugged. "You know Tonks, in sixth year? She's a riot, I'll bet half of Hufflepuff got through that class by thinking of her."

"I know of her, she's in my older brother's year. Why does she go by her family name, anyway?"

"Because her first sounds like she was named by a fussy old lady who's had too much Firewhiskey in her tea. Her words, not mine. Isn't that kind of the same for you? I always figured you went by Percy because Percival was a little much."

"Er... no, it just sort of happened," he said lamely.

He'd wondered once or twice if going by his full name wouldn't project an air of greater maturity and respectability, but with that many siblings around who couldn't quite say it as they were learning to talk, trying to stop the nickname from sticking was about as good as convincing a dragon not to breathe fire.

"A girl after our own heart," said Fred, snorting at the tale of Tonks's antics.

"Always knew Charlie had good taste in friends."

"Yes, well, I always see her doing strange things to her face at dinner. I'm surprised she has time to eat," said Percy.

"Surprised she has time to do anything at all, more like," said Gabriel. "Ever since her career advice meeting last year, she's been on a mission. She wants to be an Auror, and it's brutal. They'll only take the best of the best."

Percy spluttered. A comedian, maybe; an employee at a loud, garish place like Zonko's, sure; but an Auror? Was she entirely delusional?

"Really? What are her chances? I mean, I can hardly see her enforcing the law when she treats school rules like suggestions."

Gabriel frowned, which only drew his impressive growth of hair further down his face.

"Maybe, but she's brilliant. She only looks like she doesn't care about school, but it's all an act. She has some of the best grades in her year, and if she catches you bullying someone, she'll hex you harder than if you'd called her Nymphadora to her face. And after all of that, she still manages to be hilarious. If she could see me now... maybe she'd grow out her eyebrows on purpose. You've got to admit it's a little bit funny."

Percy could think of a lot of words to describe Gabriel's predicament, and 'funny' wasn't one of them. In his place, he would have found it thoroughly humiliating. Besides, he found his lavish praise hard to believe. If she could do all of that, then either she had more hours in the day than everybody else, or he wasn't nearly as efficient in managing his time as he thought.

He was already stretched thin enough as it was, between his new electives, his self-imposed extra reading, vying to be noticed by Professor McGonagall, milking his upperclassmen for connections and advice for a future Ministry career, and making sure Fred and George didn't tear the castle down just by existing. If Tonks was cut from the same cloth, a high achiever, career-oriented, and a defender of the weak to boot... where in the world did she find the time or energy to have fun?

"Reckon Charlie will let us borrow her for a bit?" said Fred.

"Yeah, sounds like she might speak Percy's language better than we can."

"Fluent in Percy." Fred pretended to shudder. "I can't imagine."

"But if it helps us get it into his stubborn head that fun isn't a crime..."

"Where can we find her?"

"At this hour? Common room, I guess. Good luck not getting soaked in vinegar," said Gabriel.

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it," said George jauntily.

"We know."

"Perks of being kitchen smugglers."

"That's a field invasion, that is," Gabriel pouted, but there was very little heat in it.

"Fred! George! You're not supposed to—"

"Ah, leave it be, they've earned it. Worst that can happen is that the plants don't like you. Watch out for the Venomous Tentacula."

Percy had a general idea of where the Hufflepuff headquarters were located, if only because he saw them emerge from that direction every morning at breakfast, but he'd never had much reason to visit. The only places of interest were their common room and the kitchens, and both of those stood in a grey area he didn't quite know what to do with: he supposed if you figured out the trick to them, then you'd 'earned' your way in, but the feeling of being out of bounds was still there.

Fred and George, of course, had no such compunctions: they marched right up to the entrance as if they used it every day (which, knowing them, they just might), and looked at Percy with identical grins.

"Watch and learn."

"The masters are at work."

It was completely unlike the Fat Lady at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower: instead of a guardian demanding a password, what stood in front of them was a great stack of barrels large enough for a person to fit in. He'd heard tell that the Hufflepuffs were a little more... proactive than most when it came to keeping out intruders: if you failed to gain entrance into any other common room, you'd be stuck outside at worst, but this one was another story.

Unable to guess the range of the spray, Percy stepped back and to the side, hoping to be well away from it.

"Where are you going, Perce?"

"Don't you trust us?"

"Not in the least. It would be just like you to get it wrong on purpose so I get showered."

"First rule of pranking..."

"Don't give the prankster any ideas."

"But this is an emergency..."

"So we won't."

"No guarantees, we might get it wrong accidentally..."

"Way to inspire confidence, Freddie."

"Do you know how to get in or not?" asked Percy irritably. How much longer were they going to stand there finishing each other's sentences?

"In theory," said Fred.

"We've seen it done a million times."

"Easiest system in the school."

"Except for the part where trespassers get seasoned like a salad."

"Will you do the honors, George?"

"Oh, yeah, because my natural rhythm is so much better than yours. Alright, here goes nothing..."

And he knocked on a barrel as if it were a door, rapping a short sequence that he must have heard on their expeditions to the kitchens, like the suspended start of a tune.

Percy braced himself, but the shower of vinegar never happened. Instead, the barrel opened up quietly and turned out to be a short tunnel, not entirely unlike the hole behind the Fat Lady's frame.

"Woohoo! Score!" Fred cheered.

"You... don't sound too sure that that was going to work," Percy noted with a touch of unease.

"We weren't," said George casually.

"But what's life without a little risk?"

And they clambered into the tunnel as if they owned it, leaving him with no choice but to follow.

The inside was... exactly what he'd guessed, and somehow completely different. Like the Gryffindors' space, it was built for comfort, offering plenty of nooks and crannies for studying and socializing; but instead of developing upwards like a tower, it spread outwards like the home of some burrowing animal, all rounded shapes and low ceilings as if carved directly into the earth. Where he'd expected black and yellow to be an exact replacement of his familiar red and gold, he found that instead, the House colors were overshadowed by great tangles of greenery and gleaming copper cookware that would have given Mother a fit of jealousy.

The wireless was playing music somewhere, an unholy mix of guitars and bagpipes that Percy vaguely recognized as the latest hit by the Weird Sisters, and several Hufflepuffs stood in a huddle, clapping rhythmically and cheering through their laughter, sounding for all the world like they were egging someone on.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Do it again!"

Through a tiny gap in their tight formation, Percy tried to look at what was going on, but... that was impossible.

The tall, dark figure of Professor Snape was dancing with abandon, singing along to the screaming chorus, even, and Percy was certain he was trapped in some kind of topsy-turvy dream. There were several things wrong with that scenario, and the Potions Master being in Hufflepuff territory was the least of them.

But there was no time to ponder the strangeness of it all, because a shrill voice called: "Intruders! Intruders!", and suddenly, Professor Snape was warping and shrinking, swimming in his black robes as his features softened and his hair receded rapidly into his scalp, turning an incongruous bubblegum pink. In a single fluid twirl of his wand, his clothes turned into a slightly rumpled student's uniform, and he wasn't Snape anymore, but a frighteningly determined Nymphadora Tonks, eyes flashing and wand at the ready.

"Oi! What do you think you're—oh, false alarm, everyone, they're okay. Did Charlie send you?"

In the background, Myron Wagtail was still shrieking about Hippogriffs, and questions were swirling madly in Percy's head, mostly variations on 'What in Merlin's name was that?'.

"Nope," said Fred, who had apparently not lost his ability to speak in the face of such absurdity.

"We just needed to talk to somebody fun..."

"And by the looks of it, we found her."

"Can you do Filch next?"

"Sure. First one's on the house, then there's a fee of one Chocolate Frog per request. Anybody got a cat I can borrow for effect?"

"Forget it, Dora, Mittens is still holding a grudge from last time," someone called from the crowd, eliciting general laughter.

"Only my mom gets to call me that," she said, narrowing her eyes at the offender. "Anything I can help you with?"

Percy was surprised not to see a badge gleaming on her chest; everything he'd seen of her so far seemed to point to the kind of person everyone in Hufflepuff looked up to, except maybe for the part where she was casually impersonating the staff—and even that, to his neverending astonishment, seemed to make the general population of the House think more of her, not less.

"Uh... it's complicated."

"No, it's not," said Fred.

"Pretty straightforward, really."

"It just might be a little above our pay grade."

"You said you were looking for someone fun? That's... specific."

"I'm... hitting a bit of a wall with Cheering Charms," said Percy, hating the eyes of the crowd on him. At least the Hufflepuffs wouldn't be very inclined to gossip about it.

She looked at him as if he were an interesting puzzle to be solved. "Strange thing to hit a wall on, but to each their own. I've been a thorn in McGonagall's side all year with human Transfiguration, she says I have to put in the work like everyone else and not just coast along on this."

She screwed up her face in a look of intense concentration and turned her hair purple as if to prove a point.

It worked, somehow, this trick of admitting a weakness of hers in return for one of his: he was so accustomed to any hairline crack in his armor being an invitation for teasing that her easy acceptance threw him for a loop.

"Want to take it to somewhere more private?"

Percy couldn't see where in the room they could find any privacy: wherever he looked, people were milling about in twos and threes, looking for an open table on which to spread out their homework or animatedly discussing the latest exploits of Puddlemere United. And yet, as they sailed through the crowd in her wake, it became obvious how much Hufflepuff House universally respected her, and that respect automatically extended to anyone she considered her guest: everywhere she went, people looked happy to see her, and a gaggle of first years simply sprang out of their seats before she asked, as if following some unspoken hierarchy, not seeming to resent being displaced.

Forget Cheering Charms, he wanted to learn her secret. This was what he'd been working so hard for day and night: to build a world where he was taken seriously, where people moved to let him pass and occasionally wearing Bill's hand-me-downs didn't brand him as a joke.

"Ah, here we are. Whoops!"

Tonks somehow managed to trip over the edge of a decorative rug and land perfectly into a squashy armchair as if she'd planned it, twisting mid-fall with a clumsy grace that seemed to break two or three laws of Muggle physics in a single motion.

She patted an open seat in invitation with one hand, and with the other, she drew her wand and traced a complicated pattern in the air that felt like a soap bubble coming to stand between them and the rest of the world, a barrier that would break if you breathed on it funny, but a barrier nonetheless.

"Notice-Me-Not charm," she explained. "It'll hold unless you start shouting and doing cartwheels. Been reading up on the Auror training program, and I don't like the look of that Stealth and Tracking exam. Gotta compensate somehow, I'm about as stealthy as a mountain troll."

This, too, boggled Percy's mind: her easy self-deprecation, her willingness to make herself a joke before anyone else did. Was it some kind of deliberate strategy, a long-term plan to make herself immune to anyone who would tease her, or did it just come naturally?

"So what's so tough about a Cheering Charm that made it worth breaking into another House?"

Percy felt about two inches tall. "Sorry. We'll just... we'll just go."

She didn't even let him get out of his seat.

"Ah, relax. The way I see it, if you found your way in without getting soaked, you can stay. So why did you come and find me? Not that I'm complaining, but you could have gone to Charlie first, kept it all in the family."

"Nah. Charlie's fun when he puts his mind to it..."

"But he wasn't the man for the job."

"If you say so," said Percy. "Or it might have something to do with the fact that it's Quidditch today, and I swear he and Oliver are in a competition to see who's the first one up and the last one down."

"Oh, yeah."

"That too."

"Are you two trying out next year?" asked Tonks. "I heard those two human boulders you've got for Beaters are both graduating."

"We might," said Fred.

"Could be fun."

"You two really don't need what little sense you have left to be knocked out of you by a Bludger."

"Shut up, Perce. There's really only one thing holding us back..."

"What if one of us passes the tryouts, and the other doesn't?"

"Do you reckon we could say it's both of us or neither? Offer a package deal?"

"And deny yourselves the satisfaction of getting it fair and square?" said Tonks. "Where's the fun in that?"

"Huh. Took a Hufflepuff to put it that way, eh, Georgie?"

"Yeah. If one of us is good enough to pass, the other can't be too far behind."

"But we're not here to talk about Quidditch."

"Not a sentence I ever thought I'd hear you say, brother dearest, but here we are."

"Right, Cheering Charms. Been a while since I've used one of those. Happy to help, but... what exactly makes you think I'm uniquely qualified for the job?"

"These two have gotten it into their heads that the problem is I don't know how to have fun, but their idea of fun is a bit..."

"Oh, yeah. Believe me, I've heard all about their idea of fun. How in Merlin's name do you get Peeves to listen to you?"

"Trade secret," said Fred.

"Not gonna give it up that easily."

"Fine, be that way, then. So what exactly happens when you try to cast a Cheering Charm? Does it do something it's not supposed to, or...?"

"Nothing. It's like I never even tried."

"Oh, dear, that's... not promising. But I refuse to believe you don't know how to have fun, no one is that boring."

"There's an exception to every rule," said George.

"And Percy's your exception."

"That's not true! It's just that with all the new classes, and homework, and making sure I get picked for Prefect—"

"That sounds like burnout waiting to happen," Tonks interrupted. "You're thirteen, for Merlin's sake. That badge is ages away, and the world is your oyster! Not sure what oysters have to do with anything, I just picked up the phrase from my dad, but you get the sentiment."

Percy almost protested that no, he did not, in fact, get the sentiment at all, but something held his tongue.

"Burnout? What do you mean?"

"I'm going to give it to you straight, kid: if you're taking on so much responsibility in your third year that fun is an afterthought, what's your fifth going to look like, when that nice, fat letter comes your way with your badge in it, and suddenly you have to worry about all your regular responsibilities, and the new ones, and your O.W.L.s all in one go?"

"Um..."

Percy had never considered it that way before. To him, it was all a perfectly natural progression: Prefect, Head Boy, possibly a Medal for Magical Merit as the icing on the cake, and he'd have his pick of any job he liked. He'd make himself so accomplished, so desirable, that all the departments would fight over him like a litter of Crups with a bone, rise above his humble origins, and finally be recognized—

Except, as he'd come to discover, that took work, and for all that he was happy to work hard, there were days he existed in a sleep-deprived haze just to keep up with everything, and only his strict adherence to the rules had stopped him from stealing the ingredients for a batch of Wideye Potion from the student stores just to see if he could go without. Not forever, just for a little bit, to catch up with some of the thousand and more things he should be doing and wasn't, because it was never enough, and any rare moment of idleness was filled with guilt.

How long could he keep going before something broke? Had it already broken, perhaps, in the form of this stupid charm that refused to come to him?

"Yeah, I thought as much. I'm not even a Prefect, myself, and last year had me tearing my hair out."

"How are you not a Prefect?" Percy blurted out.

"Honestly? Never wanted it in the first place, and Professor Sprout didn't want to invite that kind of trouble. I mean, can you imagine? Me, keeping the firsties in line? I'd rather step out of line with them, thank you very much."

"That... that makes sense." After all, impersonating Professor Snape for a laugh was hardly Prefect behavior.

"Besides, I've got enough to think about with preparing for the Aurors. I don't know what kind of career you're thinking of, but just as a word of advice, it's not just for Cheering Charms that having fun is important. Things will only get tougher from here, and there will come a day when fun is how you stay alive."

"Huh?" Though her demeanor hadn't changed, her words carried the weight of a prophecy: just as certain, and to Percy, just as incomprehensible.

"Look... there's a reason I make stupid faces and get paid in Chocolate Frogs to do impressions of the teachers. Which reminds me that I have several debts to collect, but that's neither here nor there. For now, it's a way to unwind when keeping my grades up gets too much, but I know I'm heading towards a job that'll let me see the ugliest, darkest things a wizard can do, and if I don't go in with a smile, I'll either wash out of the program before I'm even done training, or go straight up mad. So. Fun saves lives, literally."

Fred and George whistled in unison.

"Can we steal that speech?"

"Yeah, it might even convince our mom..."

"And believe us, she takes a lot of convincing."

Tonks tossed her head back and laughed, and when she stopped, her hair was back to pink. Percy privately thought she was a bit of a show-off.

"Steal away. So... supposing it's true that you don't know how to have fun, and I have my doubts... how do we teach you?"

"That's why we came," said Fred.

"We have our ideas..."

"But this one won't listen to them coming from someone who'd rather pickle a barrel of toads than do homework."

"So we needed someone like you."

Percy wanted to argue, but if he were honest with himself, they might not be too far off the mark.

"Someone like what?"

"You know... someone who actually cares about school."

"And is fun at the same time."

"Just to show him that you can do both."

"Okay, let Operation Fun begin. What were your ideas?"

"You know, the usual."

"Dungbombs, Hiccough Sweets..."

"Anything to get him to have a laugh, really."

"Fun doesn't have to be at the expense of others, though," said Tonks, and it was as if something clicked into place.

Percy had never heard it put so simply, but it was what he'd been trying fruitlessly to tell them since they were old enough to have a conversation, always feeling like he was talking to a wall. Perhaps it was because he'd been on the receiving end of one too many pranks himself, but any fun he might have had switching someone's telescope for one that punched them in the eye was tarnished by the fact that the victim wouldn't be laughing in the slightest.

But then, he didn't think Tonks's brand of fun suited him either: from what he'd seen, it seemed that the twins found their enjoyment in laughing at others, and she found it in making others laugh at her, and he wasn't sure which prospect horrified him more. Every day of his life, so much of his energy was spent on not being a laughingstock; was he to throw it all out the window?

"Okay, so what next? It's just that... I do have fun sometimes, I swear I do, but now that I'm being ordered to have fun, I'm stuck."

"Hmm... so we've established that you don't like pranks. Which frankly boggles the mind, but hey, can you imagine how boring the world would be if we all liked the same things?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it would be rather dull," he agreed politely, though in the privacy of his thoughts, he'd rather have a boring world than one where you had to watch out for any food or drink you were offered, just because people like Fred and George delighted in slipping Babbling Beverage into your pumpkin juice.

"There are loads of other ways to have a laugh, though. Do you play Gobstones? At least there everybody has an equal chance to get sprayed."

"No," said Percy quickly. He'd outgrown the stupid game when he was about five, and was all too glad to leave it behind. "That's for little kids, and the smell is awful."

"Merlin, what a difficult customer. But we'll find a way, I promise. You survived dancing pineapples, you'll survive Cheering Charms too."

"Don't remind me," Percy grumbled. "What was the point of that?"

Charms was always such a mixed bag of a subject. Being so varied in nature, it tended to jump from week to week from the most useful tidbits to the most mind-numbingly pointless exercises, and Percy took it all without complaint, but inside, he burned with questions. He could understand making things float, or lighting up the tip of your wand to see in the dark, but charming fruit to dance, or egg cups to perform cartwheels... he would never confess this to a living soul, but sometimes he was worried that Professor Flitwick wasn't quite all there.

Tonks was quite unfazed. She swung her legs casually over the armrest as if bored with sitting up straight, and the next words out of her mouth had Percy utterly stumped.

"Does it have to have a point?"

"Now you sound just like them. Isn't magic supposed to make our lives better? How does a dancing pineapple improve anything?"

"It makes you smile, for one thing, and if you're so allergic to smiling, no wonder you're finding the Cheering Charm so tough."

"I am not allergic to smiling!" He could hear his voice rising dangerously. What was this, pick on Percy day? Oh, wait, every day was pick on Percy day. "And a dancing pineapple is childish, stupid, and should go straight to the Improper Use of Magic Office!"

Something in the air snapped.

"What's this about a dancing pineapple?" called a little boy from the next cluster of armchairs, and Percy realized, to his supreme embarrassment, that his outburst had collapsed the privacy bubble.

"Oh, come on. If you really want to be a Prefect that badly, you need to increase your tolerance for nonsense."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"First, if you put a bunch of kids with wands in the same place for months, you're going to have to deal with a lot of nonsense, and I mean a lot, and no amount of taking points or giving out detentions is going to stop it, so you might as well learn to roll with it. And second, if you're that uptight, you might not even make Prefect at all."

Percy spluttered. What was she on about? He'd been doing everything right, checking all the boxes religiously, what was this about his tolerance for nonsense? He was pretty sure he knew the requirements for a badge backwards and forwards, and that was nowhere in them.

"You might be getting good grades, gathering every scrap of extra credit you can find, even making sure you're seen helping younger kids, but honestly, if I were one of your firsties and I needed help, I'd go to anyone but you."

Percy recoiled as if she'd slapped him in the face, and to his horror, his eyes stung with the promise of tears. How had he never noticed that in his effort to be seen as helpful and responsible, most of the help he did give was because he offered, and not because they asked?

"Helping patrol the corridors and enforce rules is all well and good, but you've got to make sure people want to come to you with their problems, and if you keep going this way, you'll be wound so tightly by fifth year that everyone will be scared to approach you. I don't know if you've noticed, but this is a school of magic. Strange things are going to happen, and no one's going to look up to you as a leader if you just shout and call them childish and stupid. I don't know about you, but I don't think Professor McGonagall wants that in a Prefect."

"Ooh, low blow," said Fred, as if watching a duel from the sidelines.

"I'm calling that a checkmate," said George, who had rather lost his taste for chess since Ron was old enough to start making mincemeat of everyone in the house, but still knew a resounding defeat when he saw one.

"And just so you know, you're wrong about the Improper Use of Magic Office."

The twins 'oohed' and 'aahed' as Percy blushed scarlet.

"Get him, Tonks! Finish him off!"

"Perfect Percy's wrong about something? What is this world coming to?"

"He thinks the sun shines out of the Ministry's—"

"Boys, that's enough, you've made your point. What I mean is, they're practically the Aurors' next-door neighbors, so I've been reading up on what they do. They're there to make sure Muggles don't see anything they shouldn't, or to put a stop to experiments that could be outright dangerous, but they'd laugh you out of the office if you reported a dancing pineapple, unless it happened in front of a bunch of Muggles. There's no law against magic being too stupid."

"Well, there should be," Percy insisted.

"And who's going to decide what's too stupid? You? You'd have a riot on your hands within a week. People are already looking for all sorts of ways around the Ministry's restrictions as it is, imagine if they took away their right to use magic just because."

"'Just because' isn't a good enough reason!"

"Most wizards don't need a reason. Why are you thinking like a Muggle? Are you seriously telling me you have a wand and you never, ever use it for anything other than doing what you're told in class? Either the temptation is killing you, or you're officially the least rebellious teenager I've ever met."

"This is all pointless, anyway. Even if I knew how to make a quill that only writes stupid limericks, or... or a pillow that spontaneously starts its own pillow fights, I still wouldn't find that funny, and it wouldn't help me with my Cheering Charms."

"Do you not find it funny, or have you just never tried? Because it sounds to me like the ideas are definitely there, you've just never let yourself act on them."

"Er... both?"

The insinuation that he was thinking like a Muggle was a strange one, to say the least; others in his stead would have taken it as an unforgivable insult. It was different for him, what with Father going starry-eyed whenever Muggles were mentioned, but it still gave him pause. What did she mean by it, exactly? That not whipping out his wand willy-nilly to do stupid things that benefited nobody was somehow a betrayal of wizardkind, something that held him back from his full potential? How absurd. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

A glimmer of something dangerously similar to Fred and George's mischief lit her eyes. She drew her wand, recited something way beyond Percy's textbooks (so much for being pleased that the word 'intermediate' was starting to pop up in his titles!), and a plump, perfect pillow appeared out of thin air with a great pop, sitting smugly in the dead center of the rug.

"Come on. I dare you."

"To do what, precisely?" asked Percy, though he had the sinking feeling that he knew the answer.

"I hereby officially dare the prim and proper, rule-abiding Percival, whatever your middle name is, Weasley to start a pillow fight."

"Ignatius," he mumbled. "And that is not happening."

"Seriously? Only you could be named something that pretentious."

Percy felt an angry sort of blush creeping up on him. Admittedly, he was maybe a little relieved that his middle name only existed on his paperwork, but that gave her no right to—

"That's rich coming from you, Nymphadora."

"You did not just say that."

"I think you'll find that I did."

Looking distinctly like they were having two birthdays this month, the twins took up a chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" that pounded in his ears like the steady beat of a drum.

Percy sprang to his feet. He wasn't sure how his wand had found its way into his hand, or what in the name of Merlin's dirtiest, most tattered pants he was thinking.

"Locomotor pillow!"

It leapt into the air and smacked her soundly in the face, vanishing in a burst of feathers.

She spat one out, grinning from ear to ear. "Ugh, no wonder she's always on my case about my conjurations being unstable. Couldn't even take one good hit."

"Pillow fight!" shouted a voice he didn't know, and he was reminded rather rudely that the Notice-Me-Not charm was gone, and the rest of the Hufflepuffs had very much noticed.

They were already level with the ground, it shouldn't take too much work to just bury him where he stood.

Several people whooped and cheered. Loud pops of displaced air sounded from all directions, and where there were no older students to provide conjured pillows, the round dormitory doors slammed open to admit a steady stream of ammunition flying in from the beds.

"That's what I'm talking about!" Tonks roared over the noise of the pillows starting to connect with their unfortunate targets. "I was going to say 'wands only', but it's a bit late for that!"

"Oi! Some of us are trying to study here!"

"Believe it or not, so are we!" And she simply sent a stray pillow flying towards whoever dared to complain.

"Is this... normal in Hufflepuff?" asked Percy, bewildered.

"Well, it's not abnormal. Gotta let off steam however you can. Incoming!"

With the instinct of someone who'd been on the receiving end of far too many flying objects, Percy ducked, feeling a pillow sail over his head.

This was 'letting off steam'? A Gryffindor's idea of 'letting off steam' usually resulted in a lot more burns and broken bones: strange explosions, impromptu dueling, an airborne game of chicken to see how close to the ground you could dive before your fear of crashing your broomstick kicked in. All things he heartily disapproved of. He was suddenly seized by the desire to witness the remaining two Houses' versions of 'letting off steam', to see if at least one suited him.

(His money was on Ravenclaw, but that was just because it made Penelope's face float to the forefront of his mind. Would her laugh be as pretty as the rest of her?)

"Did you know we were going to start a riot?"

"I was counting on it."

"You absolute—" He wasn't sure how he was going to finish that sentence, but a pillow to the face prevented him from having to come up with an appropriate insult, knocking his glasses askew. "Just kill me."

"Why?" Tonks flung a pillow at the boy who'd had the audacity to call her Dora, hardly even pausing in her speech. "These aren't even your Housemates, you're going to see them for, what, one class? Your precious reputation is safe."

One class plus electives, which was still rather a lot. He was never going to live this down. But he didn't belabor the point, because that would have meant more pillows. He adjusted his glasses and said nothing.

"If anything, you're going to be famous!"

That... wasn't as reassuring as she probably meant it.

"Well, I don't want this to be the only thing I'm famous for!"

"Relax, it won't be." Another pillow narrowly missed him as she spoke. "You're going to be famous for the most pathetic pillow fight in the history of Hogwarts if you don't keep moving!"

Percy squinted through the whirlwind of feathers. Even with his glasses in place, it was hard to see what was going on: the air was full of wandering bits of fluff, and some had entirely given up on bashing their opponents with pillows and were picking up stuffing by hand or by wand and shrieking as they tossed it every which way.

Even the portly figure of the Fat Friar casually strolled through a wall, laughing heartily at the spectacle and sighing about the good old days when he would have joined right in.

"Carry on, carry on," he said cheerfully. "That's what I call enjoying life!"

He strained to pick out Fred and George in the mess. They were fighting back to back, bits of down caught in their ginger hair like snow, and were seemingly starting to feel the disadvantage of being first years swarmed by older opponents who could use their wands more effectively and had no special reason to go easy on them, but they were laughing their heads off even in evident defeat, and what their spells couldn't do, their arms were compensating for hard and fast. Maybe they did have it in them to be Beaters after all.

Percy saw the opportunity, but hesitated to take it. That was the problem with living with the twins: they would tease you relentlessly for doing one thing, but then somehow find a way to tease you for doing the opposite as well. If he acted aloof and refused to join their silliness, they'd call him Perfect Percy, stick-in-the-mud, party pooper; but if he did join, in what other, novel ways would they punish his timid foray out of his comfort zone?

Perhaps if he whispered, cloaked himself in anonymity, hid his wand behind his back when they looked and pretended it had never happened... it was full of people, after all, and the air tingled with spellfire coming from all directions. How were they to know?

He ducked behind an armchair, and two pillows took to the air and struck them in a single, coordinated flump, then another, and another.

And finally, without a spell to help him along, Percy did let out a strangled bark of a laugh, but it was not the sort of laugh that would fuel a proper Cheering Charm. It was a bitter, vindictive thing that tore out of his throat like a sob, the result of being the butt of the joke all his life. This wasn't fun, it was retribution.

There was just one small problem: he had given away his location. The looks of complete betrayal on their faces as they realized where the onslaught was coming from were so, so sweet.

"Oi! That's friendly fire, that is."

"You're supposed to be on our side!"

"Sorry, lads," Tonks grinned. "There are no sides in a pillow fight. Besides, you know the old 'if you want to stop a Dark wizard, you've got to think like them'? Goes for pranksters too. Let's get them!"

And without further warning or explanation, she grasped his wand hand at the wrist, thrust a pillow into the other, and dragged him bodily into the fray.

What followed was less fun and more self-defense, really, or so he told himself. It was that or a spell, a whispered word among the noise that threw his can'ts and shouldn'ts out the circular windows opening onto the grass; something, anything to justify why he was suddenly smacking strangers wherever he could reach, or using the same nifty little jet of hot air that dried off his robes after a heavy rain to stir up the layer of fluff littering the floor into whirlwinds.

"Having fun yet?" asked Fred, or maybe George. He could tell them apart most of the time, with optimal visibility, that is, but good luck discerning which was which while they were ducking and weaving among stray flying pillows and unexplained streams of enchanted feathers.

"Uh..."

Never had a simple 'yes' or 'no' question stumped him so badly. For lack of a more intelligent answer, he whacked his brother in the shoulder.

"Weird way to say yes, but I'll take it!"

Was he, though? At what point had he gone from trying to worm his way out of this ridiculousness to – perish the thought! – actually sort of enjoying it?

Pillow fights were something he'd never cared for, and even when something like that broke out at the Burrow, he usually took care to be well away from the thick of it. Never in a million years he would have guessed he would incite one, of all things.

In his mind, pillows were for sleeping, and that was that; at most, they might be for practicing spells without ending up covered in bumps and bruises. And he was practicing, he supposed, in a very strange and twisted way, if sending pillows flying at a moving target counted as practice. Even this, the discovery that not all practice had to be a repetitive, dreary affair, was an odd concept to grapple with.

There was a sense of lightness, he might say, that he couldn't remember feeling in a while. Wading through a sea of feathers and ripped pillowcases wasn't useful, or responsible, or sensible, but for the first time in... he really didn't want to contemplate how long, he thought that perhaps being sensible wasn't something that was baked into him, impossible to separate from the rest, but a weight he could afford to put down every once in a while, before it broke his back for good.

This, he supposed, was fun; he doubted he would ever turn into someone like the twins, who seemed to think that a day without it was a day wasted, but perhaps he didn't have to weigh every action on the fiddly scale of a master apothecary, imagining cascades of consequences, finding five reasons to say no for every one reason to say yes.

He still wouldn't be jinxing people so they could only walk backwards, or enchanting fireplaces to release a load of soot and ash onto anyone who tried to place a Floo call, but there was something to be said about doing things for no reason after all.

Somewhere at the periphery of his vision, Tonks was letting herself get pummeled on purpose, doing strange things to whichever body part was hit: she'd get smacked full in the face and somehow come out of it with a hideous snout-like nose, bat at a flying pillow with her hands and give herself long, gnarled fingernails like a hag, let someone strike her in the back of her head and pretend all her hair had fallen out with the force of it.

On any other day, he would have tried to stop her, lectured her, even, about giving nightmares to the first years or nearly taking someone's eye out with those claws.

Today, he watched a young man aim a pillow squarely at her rear just to see what she would do, swallowed his scandalized rant, and cheered with the rest of them as she whipped around, shiny bald head and all, and landed a perfect Bat-Bogey Hex, shouting: "In your dreams, Cadwallader!".

And maybe, in the general confusion, he snorted with amusement. Just a little. But then again, so did everyone else, and Professor Flitwick did say that laughter was contagious.

Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, there were calls of "All right, all right, break it up, it's almost time for dinner!", and though they were initially met with booing and disappointed noises, watching the whole of Hufflepuff House pitch in to clean up the unspeakable mess was a fascinating sight.

Cleaning and repairing charms were spoken in long, unbroken chains by those who knew them, and even the little ones who did not seemed physically unable to stand around doing nothing, even if their greatest contribution was to gather the fluff in great piles for someone else to vanish. Percy even spotted a few who took it as a learning occasion, copying words and wand movements and mostly just causing stray feathers to explode in their faces, but where he expected laughter and mockery, he saw only gentle correction. With something akin to a great full-body shudder, Tonks returned all her wayward bits to their usual appearance and set about teaching the Scouring Charm to a little girl who had accidentally upset somebody's inkwell in her pillow-slinging fury.

And throughout all of that, he saw people with badges keeping an eye on the proceedings, but very little intervention was even needed on their part. There were no orders to bark or fights to break up: everyone in the room seemed to quietly accept that such chores were adequate payment for their moment of collective nonsense, and they went about their tasks quickly, efficiently, and without complaint. The arguments that did arise were surprisingly short, civil, and a lot more mature than you'd expect from a group of people who were just now bashing the living daylights out of one another with any soft object they could reach.

"So... you still alive, Perce?" asked Fred.

"Um, what?"

"You heard me. Are you still in one piece..."

"Or did your brain leak out of your ears for doing something stupid for once in your life?" George finished for him.

"And most importantly, do you think you can figure out the Cheering Charm now?"

"Even if you can't, I still don't regret it..."

"But it would be nice to know we actually did what we came for."

Percy gulped. Other than Penelope and another boy from Ravenclaw he shared a few classes with, he was definitely the youngest in the room, and he didn't like it one bit.

"Welcome to Charms Club. It's Percy, isn't it? Penny told me you might swing by."

A gleaming Head Boy badge was pinned to the chest of the young man who spoke to him; perhaps then it would look good for his credentials if he joined, but looking around, he found that hard to believe.

Their meeting place might once have been a classroom, but when Percy had first stepped in, he thought he'd come to the wrong place, because this couldn't possibly be it. The least alarming display was a collection of hourglasses behaving in ways they absolutely shouldn't, turning themselves over of their own accord, measuring time with sand that flowed backwards, or staying perfectly still and not doing their job at all. A few fifth years were taking advantage of the meeting to study for their O.W.L.s, but they were being interrupted again and again by a pair of overzealous dragonhide gloves trying to hand-feed them treats from Honeydukes no matter how much they insisted that they were full; someone had tried to replicate the ceiling of the Great Hall, except it was a perfectly nice day outside, and looking at it, you'd have expected a hurricane.

"Hello. Nice... nice place you've got here," he said, trying to be polite.

"So what got you interested?"

"Just wanted to try something new," said Percy, because the truth was too pathetic to tell.

"You're welcome to stay and see what we're doing, but we do have one requirement."

"What requirement?" Penelope had never mentioned anything like that.

"Just show us what you can do. The charm you can do best, something that's special to you, or better yet, the latest thing you've been working on, so we can get some idea of where you stand."

Just his luck. In front of all these people? What if it fizzled out and Penelope became a pariah in her precious club for vouching for such an idiot?

"We've, uh, we've been doing Cheering Charms this week."

"Oh, excellent, we could all use a round of those. Rob, you up for it?"

"Sorry," said the boy who sometimes sat next to him in Ancient Runes. He seemed to be having difficulty speaking for some reason: that single word stretched out to at least three times the length it should have been.

"Ah, let me do the talking, or we'll be here forever," said a girl from Slytherin. "Botched Slowing Charm, he's not playing anyone's dummy until he's back to normal, who knows what it might do. Although, honestly, it might be worth studying."

"I'll do it. I asked him in the first place, it's only fair."

Percy nearly turned tail and ran right then and there. With a name like 'Charms Club', it wasn't completely out of this world that members would turn their wands on one another, but he definitely hadn't bargained for this.

Penelope was entirely oblivious to the sweat forming around the handle of his wand in his pocket. She just stepped forward, resigned and smiling at the same time, because at least the Cheering Charm was nice.

In theory. If he didn't botch it in a spectacular fashion. Merlin help him.

His mind nearly went blank again. What was he supposed to cling to? Somehow, the image of Tonks turning more and more hideous with every pillow that struck her wasn't nearly as funny now, with Penelope looking at him expectantly.

"Are you okay? It's just a Cheering Charm, you're not going to hurt me."

"Uh, yeah, just... just give me a minute."

He tried to imagine her flushed with exertion, her eyes bright, with fluff caught in her curls, as she would have been if she'd been in the pillow fight; it did something decidedly funny to his insides, but not that kind of funny. And yet—

That lightness, that unburdened feeling of not overthinking every step, of freely smacking someone in the face with a pillow without being paralyzed by the thought that that someone might be his superior at the Ministry when he was thirty... wouldn't it be that much more exhilarating if he shared it with her?

It was as though a balloon were expanding in his chest, though on reflection, it might just be his lungs. It was so rare, these days, to just breathe easy.

"Delecto!"

It was slow, quiet, and not at all as spectacular as what happened with Oliver; she looked away as if trying to hide the dimples in her cheeks as she broke into a grin.

And then he heard it. A single, entirely undignified snort of laughter. Somehow, he'd been building up her laugh in his mind until he believed it would be as beautiful as phoenix song, and the real thing wasn't nearly as moving.

But it was wholly and unashamedly human, and, well... even future Prefects were allowed to be human.