MetaFic

1 Sep 1991

Minerva McGonagall led the Weasley twins away from the Great Hall towards her office. The path was second nature to her, and even the two boys’ presence behind her as they walked that particular route was familiar. They had all walked it together several times over the past three years.

She had to admit, however, that this was the first time the twins had dared to disrupt the start-of-term feast. Indeed, it was unheard of in her experience for any student to make mischief during or after the Sorting. She had hoped – perhaps vainly – that even the most rambunctious of students held some respect for the ancient ceremony.

Minerva opened the door to her office, walked around behind her desk, and waved the boys at the two chairs in front of it. “Sit.”

Once they were all settled, she paused for a moment. She was running out of ideas for punishing them in any meaningful way. They had still not done anything worth a truly serious punishment, but the detentions she had given and the points she had taken seemed to have no effect on them. In order to truly motivate them to reduce their chaos, she needed to know what they most cared about so that she could deny it to them.  After a full term’s attention, however, she had yet to find the lever that could move the two boys in the right direction.

She glanced from one to the other. No matter how many times she had spoken to them or seen them answer to their individual names, she still could not tell them apart. Their expressions that day, though identical as ever, were unfamiliar to her. Rather than the carefully neutral masks she had expected, the twins looked slightly confused.

“So,” Minerva said, folding her hands on her desk and watching the boy’s faces. “Would you care to explain to me why you found it necessary to disrobe in the middle of the Great Hall?”

They glanced at each other, and their eyebrows twitched simultaneously. “Well, since you put it that way, Professor . . .” one said. “We did it because there were lizards in our trousers.”

For a moment Minerva worried that the entire episode was an elaborate setup for a puerile anatomical reference, but the Weasley twins had never stooped to such levels in the past.

“Lizards?” she asked coolly. “What sort of lizards?”

“Well . . . rather small ones, I suppose.”

“About the length of my finger, plus the tail.”

“Green, I think.”

“No teeth, thank Merlin . . .”

“But they pinch like mad.”

Both twins winced and shifted their weights a bit.

Minerva slowly and carefully raised her eyebrows. Since mastering her Animagus form, she found that she did not have to blink as often as other people, and that peculiarity came in very handy in situations like these. “You removed your trousers because there were small, green lizards in them?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And do you know where these lizards came from?”

“No, Ma’am. We were quite startled by them, as you can imagine.”

Letting herself blink, the professor leaned back into her chair. She reflected for a moment on the boys’ behaviour in the Great Hall. Most of the commotion had actually been caused by Lee Jordan’s pet spider, for which he had received a legitimate dispensation to have at the school. The twins’ antics had permitted the spider’s escape, but during the confusion they had not been watching events unfold. Instead, they had been shedding their trousers and, to her eye, looking quite panicked. They had acted exactly as she would expect someone to behave if there were, in fact, an uninvited lizard in their trousers.

“Where did the lizards go?” she asked at last.

“They . . .” For the first time, one of them hesitated. “They vanished, Professor.”

“You Vanished them?”

“No, Ma’am. Mine was pinching my leg one moment, and the next it was gone.” The other twin nodded his agreement.

Minerva quickly reviewed the most likely possibilities. Someone else might have seen the boys’ distress and Vanished the lizards, but that would have required either incredible luck or some form of foresight. It was also possible that the lizards had been Conjured, in which case their disappearance would have been the simple result of an expired spell. The most likely explanation, however, was still that the lizards had never existed.

“Did anyone else see these lizards, to the best of your knowledge?”

“Erm . . . no, Professor. Probably not. They never actually made it out of our trousers, you see, and we’re the only ones who could see in there.”

“It is possible someone else saw them, though.”

Minerva nodded. “If they were not too distracted by Mr Jordan’s pet.”

“Well . . . yes.”

She sighed. “Five points each from Gryffindor, gentlemen, for disrobing in the Great Hall. And detention with Mr Filch at a future date I will arrange. The next time a small animal appears in your clothing, I suggest that you leave the public view before attempting to remove it. Is that clear?”

Both boys nodded, and she waved them towards the door. “Off to the tower, then. The password is ‘caput draconis.’ I hope I do not need to see you in my office again until your first Transfiguration lesson.”

The twins grinned at her in a perfunctory sort of way and left the office, already whispering to each other. She waited for the door to close behind them and then sagged in her chair.

As a rule, the twins did not lie. They might deceive, mislead, or withhold information, but they did not simply fabricate information without the tacit admission that they were making something up. Whatever had happened, they seemed to believe that a pair of lizards had crawled inside their trousers. In spite of her prior experience and all rational probabilities, Minerva believed them.

She could not be certain what had happened, but assuming the twins were correct in the most basic sense, the next most likely explanation practically leapt out at her.

Minerva McGonagall sighed. The very last thing she needed in her school was another troublemaker.

* * *

“What the hell?”

“Dunno.”

“Who would?”

“Who could?”

“Loads. Sixth and seventh.”

“Maybe fifth.”

“Teachers?”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Dunno.”

Fred pushed his hands further into his pockets, blindly staring at the flagstones as they passed beneath his feet. George’s robes on his right guided him effortlessly through the halls.

“Say a student, then. Had to be reasonably close,” Fred said after a moment.

“How close?”

“Hmm. I’ve seen Dad conjure up lights from about eighty feet.”

“That’s Dad. Half?”

“Could be less. Lizards, not lights.”

“Never know. Hidden talents.”

“So forty’s probably a good bet anyway.”

“Most of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Maybe half the ‘Puffs, and a few Snakes.”

“But still. Who and why?”

“Caput draconis.”

Fred spotted the bottom of the Fat Lady’s portrait and stepped into the common room a moment later. From the distant babble in the stairwell, they were only a few minutes ahead of the rest of the students returning from the feast. “Handy, that,” he said, dropping into the best sofa in front of the fire.

“Always works out for us in the end.”

As the other Gryffindors began to flow into the room, settling in clusters around tables and other sofas, Fred dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Percy,” George whispered.

Fred looked up warily, expecting their older brother to stop and preen his ego in their direction. Fortunately, Percy was too busy leading the first-years to the dormitories.

“You know, George,” Fred said slowly. “Same thing happened to Poncy this morning.”

“More lizard, less snake.”

“What d’you reckon?”

“Can’t be coincidence.”

“Still . . .”

“. . . a lot of options.”

“Not too many. We were late, remember?”

“True. Mostly parents around by then.”

Together, they turned to look across the room to where a pretty sixth-year girl was shedding her school robes, revealing a tight jumper and tighter jeans beneath. “I would,” Fred stated.

“Absolutely. Twice to be sure.”

The black-haired girl disappeared up the stairs, and Fred returned to his contemplation of the ceiling. His musings were interrupted when Ron dropped onto the sofa.

“Harry Potter, eh?” Ron said.

George shrugged. “So it seems.”

“Doesn’t look like much, really, but still. He’s got the scar.”

“Well spotted, Ron.”

“Did you see him on the platform? He was practically right next to us. Had a titchy black cat in a cage.”

Fred glanced over at George, whose eyebrows answered the unspoken question.

“I thought I might run into him on the train, you know, but . . .” Ron straightened proudly. “He’s in my dormitory.”

“You don’t say?” George said. “The first-year Gryffindor boys all share a room? What luck for you, Ron.”

“Oh, shut up,” the younger boy said, his face colouring. “He’s -”

“Go away, Ron,” Fred said.

“What?”

“Go. Away. Stand up and walk in any direction until you hit a wall. Try to avoid the fire. Don’t return.”

Ron huffed loudly and stormed away.

“So,” George said.

“Harry Potter, though?”

“He was there both times.”

“Probably wasn’t the only one.”

“D’you have a better theory?”

“Hmm. No.”

“And he’s Harry Potter. Surely that’s good for something.”

Fred snorted. “Just ask Ronnie.”

At that moment, Harry Potter and two other boys emerged from the dormitories. The three of them glanced around the crowded room and then moved off to one side, where they dropped onto the floor in a loose circle. Within seconds they were deep in discussion about something.

“Harry Potter?” Fred asked again. He could not see George’s eyebrows, but he knew what they were doing.

“Harry Potter . . .”