Detention. In all of her years of attending Hogwarts, Eleanor had never received detention. But there she was, standing in Professor McGonagall's office, completely dumbfounded after Filch had found her and Fred hiding in the broom cupboard. She couldn't even bring herself to say anything as Professor McGonagall questioned her involvement in the prank. But she wasn't about to put all the blame on Fred or bring George into it, as he had managed to get away without being caught. She had been involved, and truth be told, she had enjoyed almost every minute of it.
With no other choice, McGonagall issued her detention before sending the two of them off. Fred immediately began apologising to her, perhaps out of guilt that she had gotten into trouble, but she didn't let him continue. She only told him that she would see them at their upcoming detention before excusing herself to head back to the Hufflepuff Common Room.
Of course, there was little she could do to avoid telling Marnie and Cedric about what happened because she was sure that one way or another, Cedric would learn of the latest gossip and confront her about it.
"DETENTION?!" Marnie and Cedric screeched in unison after Eleanor had confessed. She flinched before waving her hands to get them to lower their voices, noticing that other students in the Common Room were looking over in their direction.
"Hush! You don't need to announce it to the whole bloody castle! I don't need everyone knowing, thank you very much."
Marnie flopped back onto one of the sofas, placing one of her hands to her forehead in disbelief. "You, Eleanor Ross, got detention, how can this be happening? Cedric, where did we go wrong?"
"I think you two might be overreacting," Eleanor said, " I was only trying to have a bit of fun. You two were busy with other things, so I-"
"A bit of fun?" Cedric repeated. "Who are you? This is not the Eleanor Ross we know. You find knitting fun, not pranking Filch."
"I can find other things fun outside of knitting! I know it was a bit out of my character but...you two should have seen Filch's face!"
Suddenly, her mouth was covered by Cedric's hand, his eyes wide as he shook his head like a disappointed parent.
"Ellie, you have detention-
"It's only one night of it," she shrugged, "I think I'll survive."
It seemed Marnie or Cedric were not going to come to terms that Eleanor had found herself in trouble. It was one thing if Marnie got in trouble, normally in the classroom, but Cedric and Eleanor were quite known for their squeaky-clean records.
"That's it, Eleanor," Marnie said pushing herself up from the sofa and pointing in the direction of the girls' dormitory, "off to bed, right now!"
With a roll of her eyes, Eleanor muttered "whatever" before making her way towards the dorms, only to hear Cedric call something after her.
"And no desserts for a week!"
She came to a halt in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at them.
"If you two keep this up, you'll be next."
After Eleanor left the Common Room, Marnie and Cedric exchanged quiet glances with one another.
"You don't think she was serious about that, do you?"
"Nah!" Marnie waved her hand. " Ellie, wouldn't do something like that to us."
Another moment of silence passed between them before Marnie suddenly bolted towards the girls' dormitory.
"Ellie! About that dessert thing, Cedric was just joking around!"
With how Marnie and Cedric were reacting, Eleanor would have easily believed that she was heading to her own execution rather than detention. And just like she had assumed, it didn't take long for the story to get out about what she had done to earn the detention, leaving her best friends to believe that Filch was going to torture her as a punishment. Finally, as time approached closer to the time, Eleanor couldn't take it anymore as she rounded on the two of them.
"Will you two stop it?" she huffed after listening to the various torture methods they had overheard Filch used. "For the last time, I'm going to be fine. It's just detention!"
"But Ellie, it's detention with Filch!" Cedric exclaimed. "Do you know what happens with Filch?"
"No, but neither do you," she said, "at least I'm going to find out. I'll see you two later. Remember how to breathe while I'm gone."
Leaving her friends behind, Eleanor travelled down the corridors by herself to make her way to the Great Hall entrance where she was instructed to go. Of course, left alone with her thoughts, Cedric's and Marnie's paranoia was starting to get to her as she thought about what would actually happen during the detention. She, like the other two, had heard rumours about methods of medieval torture techniques being used, but she figured those were just exaggerated rumours. After all, even if Filch had sadistic tendencies, it wasn't like the other adults in the school would allow such things.
When she came to stand in front of the Great Hall, Eleanor heard her name being called and turned around to see Fred approaching her with a smile.
"Ready for detention, my partner in crime?"
"I suppose as ready as I'm going to be," Eleanor told him, "you seem awfully cheery about all of this."
"I have my reasons," he said with a slight shrug, "besides, it won't be as bad even if it's with Filch."
"What makes you say that?"
Using his elbow, Fred nudged her side. "Because you're with good company."
"Good company, huh? You mean the same good company that got me into this mess in the first place?"
"Perhaps it has slipped your memory, Ms Ross, but I distinctly remember you have a good old time during the entire thing. You were laughing quite a bit and you even said, and I quote, 'This is the most exhilarating thing I've ever done!'"
"I don't sound like that, but yes, I will admit, I had a lot of fun."
Before they could talk amongst themselves any further, the two were interrupted by the sound of a clearing throat, bringing them to glance over. To their surprise, it was Professor Lupin, who looked equally confused to see Eleanor there, judging by the expression on his face.
"Professor Lupin," Eleanor greeted him, "what are you doing here?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing, Ms Ross, "he said, "I'm here to collect the students that are serving detention this evening. Are you one of them?"
Fred wrapped his arm around Eleanor's shoulder, bringing her into his side abruptly as he looked up at Professor Lupin with a proud grin.
"Yes, she is, Professor!"
Eleanor flushed a bright red as Professor Lupin returned his gaze to her. "Ms Ross, you were part of the Goop prank?"
"Guilty."
Not interested in Professor Lupin coming to terms with Eleanor getting into trouble, Fred started looking around the corridor before he interrupted.
"Where's Filch?"
"He reported he wasn't feeling well this evening," Professor Lupin said, "so I was asked to oversee this detention. But I wouldn't sigh in relief just yet. I wasn't in charge of assigning your task, Filch made sure to specifically assign your punishment."
Thinking to the times where she had gotten in trouble at home, Eleanor usually found herself suffering a lecture delivered by Margaret, sent to her room which didn't seem like much of a punishment, or told to clean something in the household. When Professor Lupin announced that Filch had assigned them to clean the floors, she didn't bat much of an eye. But when he added on that they were cleaning the entire third floor with only sponges and a bucket of water, she could feel the onset of horror.
As she came to rest her forehead on the stone wall, she lightly began hitting her head over and over, while Fred let out a loud groan. Professor Lupin grimaced before offering a sympathetic smile.
"You two should probably get started," he said, "or you're going to be here for a long time. If you need anything, I'll be in my classroom grading papers."
On her hands and knees, Eleanor took to scrubbing one section of the floor, while Fred was only a few lengths away, focused on another.
"We should consider ourselves lucky," Fred called out to her at one point, " by the looks of it, Filch went easy on us."
"You call this easy?" she asked him. "I mean, I'm used to cleaning by hand in my household, but my house isn't even close to the size of the third floor of this castle."
"Well, he could have always come up with something worse for us."
"Like what?"
"If he could get away with it, he'd probably have us strung up by our ankles in the dungeon, allowing all the blood to rush to our heads."
Eleanor let out a laugh with a shake of her head. "Of course, that would be the perfect lashing position."
"And the entire time, Mrs Norris would be watching us, while eating her salmon dinner."
The two went back and forth, each taking a turn to add something to Filch's true punishment practices. Every time they would come up with something equally or more ridiculous than the last thing added, and several times, they fell into a fit of laughter.
Meanwhile, Professor Lupin was settled in his classroom, grading the papers as he stated earlier, but continued to get distracted by the sound of laughter that echoed in the corridors. Every so often, he would set an essay down and listen to what the two were calling out to each other. Of course, he couldn't bring himself to venture into the corridor and tell them to stop. He could only remember back when he was in Hogwarts as a student and found himself serving plenty of detentions.
He and his friends would constantly call things back and forth to one another to keep their spirits up. Filch had told him to make the two of them scrub the entire third floor, but he had said nothing about making them do it in silence.
Hours later, Eleanor was beyond exhausted and her arms were sore. The joking between her and Fred died down as they grew more and more tired. And when they finished their final sections, Eleanor managed to crawl over to where Fred was sitting against the wall and settled next to him.
"Okay, I take back what I said earlier," Fred said, "Filch didn't go easy on us. Maybe we shouldn't prank him for the remainder of the term. I can't feel my arms anymore."
"Then you don't mind if I use this arm as a pillow," Eleanor yawned as she came to rest her head on his shoulder. "Besides, you know as well as I do that you wouldn't be able to resist pranking Filch, even if you tried."
Fred remained perfectly still after he felt Eleanor lean against him and a couple of minutes later, he peered down to see that she had fallen asleep. He couldn't help but smile to himself as he remained in place, leaning his own head back against the wall, closing his eyes.
About fifteen minutes later, Professor Lupin realised it had grown awfully quiet and decided to check on the two. He figured they had run off after finishing, but as he stepped out of the office, he found the two teenagers sound asleep in the corridor. Eleanor was resting against Fred and during his own sleep, Fred's head had come to rest against her's.
With a wave of his wand, Professor Lupin cleared the supplies away before walking over to Fred and tapping the boy lightly on the shoulder. Fred's eyes opened with a sleepy expression and looked up at him.
"You're free to go, Mr Weasley," he said, " I'm sure you'll see that Ms Ross gets back to her dorm safely?"
"Of course, Professor."
As Professor Lupin retreated back towards his classroom, Fred pushed himself up, already feeling the onset of soreness through his body. But he reached out and gently woke Eleanor from her slumber. Her eyes opened a few seconds letter before she looked around, seemingly confused about where she was. He offered his hand to her, which she took with another yawn before she was pulled up to her feet.
Rather than walking on her own, Eleanor leaned into Fred's side as the two of them walked along to leave.
"Goodnight, Professor," Fred called over his shoulder as they passed the classroom.
"Goodnight, Mr Weasley. Goodnight, Ms Ross."
Fred walked Eleanor all the way through the kitchens to the outside of the barrels. By then, Eleanor was a little more awake as she approached one of the barrels to knock against it. However, she quickly realised that he was still standing there, and turned to face him.
"Wait, what are you doing?"
"Professor Lupin said I should get you back to your dorm safely," he said, stubbornly folding his arms over his chest, "I'm just following directions."
With a snort, Eleanor pushed him back from the barrels gently. "I think I can manage from here. I'm not going to reveal the password to you. Merlin knows, what you and George would do with that kind of information."
She waited until he dropped his arms back down to his sides. "Alright, alright, I'm leaving. Goodnight, Ellie."
With a sleepy grin, Eleanor walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, bring Fred to look wide awake all of a sudden.
"Thanks for walking me back," she told him, "Goodnight, Fred."
Holding the side of his face, Fred walked away and once he was out of sight, Eleanor knocked against the barrel and hurried into the Common Room. She made her way up to the dorms, where it was quiet with the exception of Marnie's snoring in the room.
Falling back onto her bed, Eleanor grinned to herself before reaching behind her and grabbing her pillow that she held to her chest in a giddy manner. Eventually, she turned onto her side as she closed her eyes and as she started to fall back asleep, one thought crossed her mind.
Maybe detentions weren't so bad when one was in good company.