**A/N** Hey guys! The following images are of Lorcan and Lysander Longbottom, the twin boys of Luna and Neville! Note that I always make the portraits look older than the characters actually are so you get a sense of what they will grow up to look like! (These characters are 12 years old right now xx)
Lorcan Longbottom^^^
Lysander Longbottom^^^
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"There you are, I've been looking everywhere for you."
I sit down in the great hall between Jordan and my best friends Lorcan and Lysander Longbottom and sigh, "Sorry I was up all night cause I was thinking about candles."
They all look at me, "Candles." Lysander repeats.
I nod as I fill my cereal bowl with some milk, "Yeah I mean they just don't make sense. Where does the wax go? Why do they have to burn away at all? And if you can just reuse wax from old candles then why do people buy so many of them?" I take a spoonful of cereal and look between my two friends, "I mean there are stores dedicated to candles and candles alone in Hogsmeade, they must be making a killing."
"It's like seven-thirty in the morning. I don't have the mental space to deal with your intrusive thoughts right now." Jordan says taking a sip of her tea.
"Also why haven't wizards just made the switch from candles to muggle electricity? That doesn't make sense to me either because I'm tired of having to either wave my wand around or go searching for a match every time I want to see in the dark."
Lorcan puts his hand on my shoulder, "Take a breath, you're spinning out... did you even bring your stuff for class? Where is your backpack?"
"That's what you're worried about? The girl is in fuzzy pink pyjama pants." Jordan says looking down at my lap, "You're a mess."
"Yeah, I tried to get back into the common room but I couldn't figure out the password, 'take away the whole and some still remains' what even is that? The first thing that I thought of was sand because, you know, you take sand out of a hole when you're digging but the damn eagle laughed at me."
"See? I could never be a Ravenclaw, all I had to do was press my palm on the wall and guess my blood status; muggle-born by the way, who'd have thunk it?" Jordan says.
"Wholesome." Lorcan blurts out.
"What?" I ask him.
He looks at me, "The answer. It's wholesome. Take away the whole and some remains. You take away the word whole..."
"Oh my god. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Come with me so I can get changed before class would you?" I pick up my bowl and bring it to my lips, drinking the rest of the milk that was inside.
"You're going to be late. You can't be late for the first day of class." Lysander says matter of factly.
"I was late to literally every single one of my classes last year and I still manage to scrape by." I say to him.
Jordan rolls her eyes, "Yeah because I did nearly all of your assignments when you were lying down on the floor in the middle of the astronomy tower trying to convince me that we could just be a figment of someone's imagination."
"We totally could be though!" I want to go on another little tangent but by the look on Jordan's face, she would hit me if I tried it.
Lorcan and I say bye, or more of a see you later to Jordan and Lysander and head back out of the great hall and up to the fifth floor where our common room is.
I guess now is a good time as ever to explain who I am. My name is Annabeth, Annie for short, Banana if you're my sister Ophelia, and I'm the youngest kid of those oafs with the joke shop also known as Violet and George Weasley. I'm a Ravenclaw though I'm not too sure how that happened. I get the worst grades out of all of my siblings; and I'm talking bad grades, like if it wasn't for Jordan and Lorcan I wouldn't have passed first year.
Not my fault I have the attention span of a flobberworm and I leave all of my assignments to the last possible second. I know that my brother Fred got loads of detentions when he was here but we had a sit down with my whole family over the summer and compared my detention record from first year to Fred's and Ophelia's and well... I take first place. Not for the dumb stuff that those two were doing back then, but because I didn't submit a single assignment for the first six months of last year... Well, that and I also may have cussed out Professor Binns once or twice. But that's aside the point.
"When is ninety-nine more than one-hundred?" The eagle-shaped knocker says to us when we get to the Ravenclaw common room entrance.
I look at Lorcan, "Go on then."
"I don't know!"
I look at my phone, we've got a solid five minutes before class starts, "Uh... in the alphabet?" I say to the door, "Cause you know... n is before o?"
The door doesn't budge.
"That was actually a good guess." Lorcan laughs.
"Don't patronize me."
"What if we walk away and come back, maybe it'll give us a new one."
"Nah, bun this, I'll just go to class like this."
"No wait, we can figure this out... it can't be that hard."
We start saying random words to try and trigger any kind of reaction from the door. The longer we're standing here the dumber we get.
"Tennis balls."
"Sports!"
"Quidditch."
"The oven."
The class bell rings, signalling that you better be on your way to your first class right now or else you'll be late.
"Wait. What about a microwave?" I ask Lorcan. We can hear the door unlock and it swings open. Neither of us wastes any time walking into the common room.
"How the hell...?" He asks me.
I rush over to the big spiral staircase in the middle of the room as I explain myself, Well you said oven, which made me think of food, and then of microwaves. Punch ninety-nine into a microwave and it'll go for like a minute and thirty-nine seconds. Punch one-hundred into a microwave and it'll go for a minute."
"So you can figure that one out but you can't get 'wholesome?" He shouts after me as I run up the stairs to my dorm, which of course has to be on the fifth floor of the Ravenclaw tower cause that's my kind of luck.
I change into my school uniform which is an itchy skirt, an itchy white top, itchy socks with a blue bit around the top of them, and an itchy robe; topped with an itchy blue tie that Mum charmed to tie itself cause I'm absolutely useless at it. I rush out of my door, stop for a second, then rush back into my room and shove all my books and pencil case into my backpack before essentially chucking myself down the staircase and into the common room where Lorcan is waiting for me.
As soon as we leave the common room the both of us start sprinting through the corridors and down the stairs to get to Transfiguration but it's too late, by the time we get there class has already started and Arabella is writing on the chalkboard.
"You go first," I whisper to Lorcan, "She likes you best."
"I think you should go first, you'll be able to talk us out of it."
"I am not that skilled, you go first."
"You go first."
We're to busy bickering to notice that Arabella has stopped writing on the chalkboard and is now looking right through the open classroom door at us, a disappointed frown on her face, "Miss Weasley, Mister Longbottom, why don't you come in at the same time and take your seats instead of interrupting my class even further, hm?"
"I mean if you insist," I say before walking into the classroom and dragging Lorcan in behind me. Jordan gives me a disappointed sigh as I sit down beside her, Lorcan sits down beside me too and Arabella continues on with her lesson.
"This year is going to be more taxing than your first. You will need to give a hundred percent in this classroom if you want to succeed. Second-year is when your grades begin to matter, many of the things taught in this class will be reappearing on your OWLs during your fifth year. Fail this year, fail your OWLs. Simple as that."
People all around me dip their quills in ink and jot down what Arabella has now finished writing on the board. I've always thought that quill and parchment is a dumb way to take notes in class, I mean why would you willingly stop every ten seconds just to dip your quill back in some ink when you could use a muggle pen or pencil and write interrupted? That's why I refuse to use them, I only write using muggle technology, including lined paper and binders; don't even get me started on parchment canisters.
Arabella drones on and on about how to properly transfigure things, writing more and more on the board as a way to refresh our memories of last year's lessons. I want to say that I'm trying to jot everything down, but I'm really not. I wrote down the transfiguration equation at the top of my page then got distracted by the near-perfect Z I wrote and then covered my page with more and more Z's to try and do it again.
"Beetle to button is a simple transfiguration and one of the most useful ones that we teach. You won't ever have to worry about losing a button off of your robes again..."
I move on from drawing Z's all over my page to doodling little beetles, then little flowers for the beetles to eat, then a whole garden at the bottom of my page. By the end of the class, Jordan has four bits of parchment covered in perfectly written and spaced out study notes, Lorcan has a few bits of parchment covered in unreadable chicken scratch... and I have a carefully planned out garden and some Z's.
Three types of people.
"Mister Longbottom, Miss Weasley, a word with you both please?" Arabella says once the bell has rung and people are packing their things and heading off to Herbology. Both Lorcan and Lysander turn around and look at Arabella, "Lorcan Longbottom." She clarifies. Lysander looks at us both like 'welp, good luck' and heads out of the classroom with Jordan.
"If I get in trouble on the first day of classes I'm gonna blame you when Dad yells at me," Lorcan whispers in my ear.
"Honestly? Valid." I whisper right back to him.
We walk up to Arabella's desk and stand in front of her, "I won't give you detention for being late this time. But you two have seriously got to pick it up this year. None of your siblings have given me this much stress in my classes before."
"Didn't Freddie blow up your desk one year?" I ask her, "And Ophelia spent a whole month saying everything in a singing voice to annoy you? And correct me if I'm wrong but Theo..."
"And Alice did let a niffler lose in your office once didn't she?" Lorcan asks.
Arabella ignores Lorcan completely as she squints her eyes at me and I shut up, "Miss Weasley, need I remind you that you struggled the most in my class last year..."
"Maybe teachers should take that as a critique on them instead of a critique on me, this class has been taught the same way since my parents were at Hogwarts. If you changed the way you taught it and made it less boring then I probably would be interested..." I look at my teacher and sigh, "I just talked my way into a detention that you weren't going to give me didn't I?"
"I'm afraid so. I'll be informing Headmaster, if I remember correctly the other Miss Weasley..." She thinks for a moment and I can't help but smile as she tries to remember which Miss Weasleys are in fact my sisters, "Yes, Miss Weasley is also serving detention tonight so you'll have your sister to keep you company."
I know that she's using this as a way to be like 'aha! I have broken the spirit of this small child!' but I just shrug it off and walk out of the room, Lorcan follows right behind me.
"How you manage to talk teachers into giving you detention is something that I'll never understand," Jordan says once Lorcan filled her in.
"Was what I said so wrong though? Not everyone learns the same." I say to my friends.
"No, you were right. Whether or not you should have said it..." Lysander says.
I swat his arm and he pretends to be hurt, "I'm the one that it's affecting! If they can't find a way to make me understand what they're saying then I won't be able to thrive when I get out of here. Then where will I be? Stuck working for my Dad?"
"I'd love to work for your dad," Lorcan says.
"Course you would." His brother Lysander says back to him.
The four of us turn down the corridor towards one of the back doors of the castle so we can get to the greenhouses for Herbology and nearly get run over by Ophelia and Chandler who are sprinting as fast as they can in the opposite direction.
"Wouldn't go down there Banana!" Ophelia shouts as she runs past, "Bout to be a hot cheese tsunami in about six seconds!" She and Chandler laugh again and pick up their running pace.
"How much do we believe her? On a scale of one to run?" Jordan says peering down the corridor. There is a loud crash and a scream from down the hall.
"I'd say it's looking to be more of a run for our lives thing. Shall we?" Lysander says before turning around and running in the opposite direction. The rest of us waste no time chasing after him and taking refuge on the first landing of the grand staircase. Somehow, Ophelia and Chandler are dangling from one of the big chandeliers in the Entrance of the castle hidden from the view of everyone down below.
For a moment I think she's just pulling my leg, that nothing is going to happen and she just wanted to see us run for fun. But then bright orange goo pours out of the corridor that we were just heading down and pools in the middle of the entrance hall. Students from all different corners of the school come over or peek their heads out of their classrooms to see what's going on. Professors are staring at the mess like they don't know where to start with it all.
The whole time Ophelia and Chandler are sitting on top of the huge wooden chandelier hidden from everyone but me absolutely losing their minds. Cassiopeia is standing on the edge of the cheese pool and I can tell that she knows full well that it was Ophelia's mess and she doesn't look too happy with it.
The class bell rings just as Filch comes into the great hall looking completely defeated cause he knows that he's going to have to clean it all up. Me and my friends walk down the stairs again and carefully walk around the edge of the cheese. When we pass Cassie she pats my head a few times to show affection and that she's acknowledged my presence.
"First day of classes and Ophelia has already flooded half the school with hot cheese...." Jordan says once we've finally made it outside.
"It's her last year. She's got big dumb plans to destroy the school and everyone in it before she leaves. Everyone will remember the Weasley name or whatever." I say.
"I'm too young to be destroyed." Lysander and Lorcan say at the same time. It's weird being friends with them. Like I'm no stranger to twins but Cass and Ophelia look and act nothing alike, whereas the only obvious difference between Ly and Lor is their houses.
"Everyone already knows the Weasley name from Fred's three-thousand firecracker show on his last day at Hogwarts," Lorcan says.
"And your Dad's infamous escape from the school when he was here." Lysander continues.
"And Dominique's complete domination over the Gryffindors during her last quidditch game," Jordan adds.
"Yeah but that's the thing. Sure they're all Weasleys but they're not Ophelia Weasley. She thrives on the attention of others. She wants to be a Hogwarts legend..." I think for a moment, the joke is right there... "Or should I say, she wants to be legen-dairy."
My friends all groan at the same time,
"Godric Annabeth!"