Mulan was a good movie to start with.
It was a classic princess movie with a lot of humor, and as far as I could tell everybody in the room loved it.
After Mulan, we watched the Incredibles. Everyone loved that one too, and I could tell they thought I was going to start the sequel as the last movie of the night.
Not quite.
Since everyone in the muggle world had to wait like, twelve years for a sequel, I decided to give the rest of my house a similar experience. If nothing else it would help them bond.
When the opening scenes of Lion King (our last movie for the night) began, Oliver hopped up and made me pause it. To my delight, he was really getting into this whole movie marathon thing.
"Alexa! Someone just told me there's a second Incredibles movie. Why aren't we watching it?"
"Ah, right, well you see, we actually had to wait forever for that movie to come out after the first one. So Incredibles Two will be the last movie of the marathon, viewed Sunday night." Everyone in the room groaned, but I just grinned and waved my hand at Oliver. "Let me start the movie now, would you?"
He glared at me for a second, but I just shrugged. Finally he gave in and sat back down, and I relaxed into the last movie of the night.
So far, this was going exactly how I'd hoped.
****************
The next morning, I woke up just before it was time to go down to breakfast and hung the list of upcoming movies:
SATURDAY
1. The Little Mermaid
2. Mary Poppins
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. The Sound of Music
5. Tangled
6. Lilo & Stitch
7. Frozen
8. Cars
9. The Princess and the Frog
10. Up
SUNDAY
1. Ratatouille
2. Moana
3. Monsters Inc.
4. Monsters University
5. Aladdin
6. Despicable Me
7. Big Hero 6
8. The Emperor's New Groove
9. Incredibles 2 :)
To my surprise, the first people to show up (literally seconds after I hung the list) were Percy and Oliver.
"Good morning, Alexa," said Percy, smiling brightly as he came over to inspect the list. He nodded thoughtfully, but I was confident that every single title was virtually meaningless to him. Finally, he turned back to me. "I just wanted to congratulate you on a wonderful idea. This movie marathon has really brought the house together, and those movies last night were excellent. I can't wait to see what you have in store today."
"Thanks Perce," I said, smiling. Before i could say anything else, however, Oliver was shoving Percy out of the way.
"Percy, you can talk to her without standing in the way of the list," he said, staring at it almost as intensely as some of his Quidditch plays. I fought the urge to laugh and lost when I saw the outrage on Percy's face.
"We can talk later Percy," I said, putting a consoling hand on his shoulder and suppressing a smile. "I'll see you at breakfast?"
"Hmpf. I suppose so." Percy straightened his robes and marched out of the Common Room, clearly not over it. I couldn't even begin to imagine how he'd shared a room with Oliver for seven years and neither of them had killed the other.
"What are all of these about? Give me a play by play," said Oliver once he'd finished inspecting the list. He was staring at me with the same intensity he used in our pre-practice pep talks.
"Oliver, it's great that you're so into this marathon, but you're just gonna have to wait and see."
"Alexa, come on! I want to know the game plan for the weekend so I know what I can't miss."
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to decide if continuing the argument would be worth it. Figures that I finally got Oliver to relax about Quidditch for one weekend and he just turned around and directed all that intensity at something else. I glanced back up at him and, at the look in his eyes, quickly decided arguing wouldn't be worth it.
"Okay, come here and don't say anything to anyone else," I said, pulling him off to the side. I thought for a quick second, then just went for it. "Little Mermaid is about a mermaid who makes a deal with an evil witch to be human, Mary Poppins is about a magical babysitter, Beauty and the Beast..."
I kept going through the whole list, trying to simplify things down as much as I could. It was harder than I expected for some of the movies (Emperor's New Groove, anyone?), but I managed it. When I finished, Oliver looked thoughtful and like he was struggling with a decision.
"Oliver? What's wrong?" I asked, trying not to let any annoyance into my voice. I was happy he was so into this, but I wanted to go eat breakfast now.
"I can't decide which ones are most important to see..."
I grabbed him by the shoulders and stared him dead in the eyes, snapping him out of his weird contemplative zone. "Oliver. There is a simple solution. Just come watch all of them."
"But... I mean... I should probably spend some time drawing up plays, since we'll only have three weeks after this before our match against Ravenclaw..."
"You remember that thing I said about a break? I applies to you too. I've known you less than six months but I can still guess that you spent all break drawing up plays and thinking about Quidditch, right?" I asked.
"Of course!" Oliver sounded offended that I would consider anything else.
"And you've been scratching your head all week trying to come up with something new, right?" I asked, and Oliver nodded, looking a little dejected. "Well then this is exactly what you need! Take a break, watch the movies, and let your subconscious work on the problem. You'll probably be in the middle of one of the movies and suddenly be struck with inspiration, once you're not trying to force it."
Oliver nodded slowly, gaining speed as my idea sunk in. "You might be right Alexa." He straightened up, looking much more determined than he had a few minutes ago. "Maybe one of these muggle movies is just the inspiration I need."
"That's the spirit! Now go eat food, I'll see you after breakfast." Oliver smiled and headed out the portrait hole, still looking pretty distracted. Managing all these wizards was almost harder than managing the Avengers.
"Alexa!" I turned to see Fred and George bounding down the stairs, Lee, Alicia, and Angelina close behind. "You ready for breakfast?"
"You have no idea," I sighed.
Other than meals, I spent the rest of the weekend in the tower. We got some weird looks from the other houses, since Gryffindor was basically travelling as one big pack, disappearing for everything other than food, but I didn't mind. Honestly, completely bewildering the other houses made things even more fun. By the end of the weekend, everyone was noticeably closer, and even better all the wizards would understand way more of my references.
When we finished Sunday night with Incredibles 2, everyone was in a good mood as they headed up for bed. My friends and Percy stayed in the Common Room with me to clean everything up, and I couldn't help thinking this weekend was perfect.
"This was great, Alexa," said Angelina, helping me fold one of the massive blankets I wanted to keep.
"It really was," agreed Alicia. She threw a piece of popcorn to Angelina who, expert athlete that she was, caught it in her mouth. "We should do it again."
"Hey, I'm in if you all are. We should probably wait until after our Ravenclaw match though. It was hard enough to get Oliver to relax a little this weekend." Angelina and Alicia laughed; I'd told them all about my struggles with keeping Oliver sane.
"Well, I think we can all wait three weeks, at least," said Alicia. "Maybe then we can—"
"Alexa!" I turned to see Oliver come barreling down the stairs, straight towards me and Angelina. "I figured out a new play! You were right about getting inspiration from the movies. We need to start practicing right away to be at our best for Ravenclaw, it's our only hope if we want a chance at winning the Quidditch Cup now. Make sure everybody knows, we're having practice as soon as classes end on Monday. We're going to win this game."
With his announcement finished, Oliver marched off to bed. I face planted into our growing pile of pillows and groaned. With the movies over, Oliver was already back to Quidditch crazy mode, and it sounded like he was trying to make up for lost time.
This was going to be exhausting.
****************
After an incredibly hard workout on Monday, Oliver announced that we would now be practicing five days a week. Between Quidditch, Hogwarts, and online muggle school, I had no time for anything else. Unfortunately for me, I still needed to practice my sling portals and get more familiar with my armor. I had to make time somewhere, and that meant slinging between classes and flying for barely half an hour after dinner before I got to my homework.
Exhausting didn't even begin to cover my new schedule after break.
After a week that felt more like a month, it was time for Ravenclaw to play Slytherin. Oliver was a nervous wreck, and ever since the movie marathon he'd been coming to me about everything that was riding on this game. Apparently he credited me with the new plays and how well we'd been doing in practice (which had everything to do with taking and break and nothing to do with me), and he'd started treating me as a sort of Quidditch right hand.
I didn't have the time or energy to try to redirect him, so I just rolled with it. According to him, we needed Slytherin to win, which would not be my first choice. They kicked Adrian off the team for no good reason and they were jerks about it, so as far as I was concerned they could all go to hell. I told Adrian as much, but he just laughed.
"Alexa, that's sweet and all, but come on. I'm fine. And if this is what it takes to give them hope so that you, the new, inexperienced muggleborn, can kick them to the curb later, then so be it."
I grinned. "I like the way you think. I'm still not going to cheer for them until they put you back on the team, though."
"Thanks, I'll be sure to tell Flint."
Even though I didn't want to cheer for Flint, I screamed my head off for the entire match. Oliver was right next to me, radiating stress, and after the week I'd had I just needed to vent. Everyone else was screaming, so it was the perfect place for me to blow off steam without freaking everybody out.
To make things even better, Slytherin only won by a few points. According to Oliver, this was the best possible thing that could happen to line us up for the Quidditch Cup. Everything was looking up until Oliver reminded us about 6:00am practice the next day.
I was going to kill that kid.