August 11th 2019, 12:02 PM
Rose looked up at her one-eared Uncle in disdain while he smirked back at her. They had a staring match where Rose's eys kept narrowing towards George. Finally, Rose relented and let out a frustrated sigh, she sat up on the couch, righted her clothes and tried and failed to smooth down her bushy red hair.
"Happy?" She asked her Uncle George with sarcasm, crossing her arms in emphasis.
"Very much so, thank you, my dear niece," and with that comment, he waltzed off in the direction of the kitchen, Angelina tailing behind him.
The sound of a sniggering made Rose's head turn towards the fireplace. In front of the fire stood one of Rose's most infuriating cousins, (besides James and Albus, of course) Freddie.
Fred 'Freddie' Weasley was easily the most troublesome Weasley in their clan. He and James Potter were as thick as thieves along with their other cousin Louis. The three of them often were responsible for many a practical joke. While Louis was subtle and never seemed to get in trouble for his pranks, Freddie and James were quite the opposite; they took pride in the number of detentions they had collected over the years. Freddie, being the son of one of the best pranksters in the wizarding world and James, the grandson of one, they made quite the troublesome pair.
Whenever Freddie, James, and Louis were together in a room, a prank was sure to follow their private meeting. Most of their jokes took place at Hogwarts during the school year, but they often used the school Holidays to test out new ideas on unsuspecting family members. James and Freddie had a dream of beating the late James Potter and Sirius Black's record for most detentions; their goal was in reach.
Freddie was chuckling by the mantle of the fireplace while his sister, Roxanne, whacked him with her elbow. Freddie's laughter grew as he moved to look at Scorpius and Rose still sitting on the couch.
He walked over to them, laughter still evident, placed his hands on their shoulders and said, "This is why I love family events, I get free entertainment the moment I walk through the floo."
Shaking his head in laughter, he moved towards Albus. Before Freddie could open his mouth, Albus answered his unasked question, "He's upstairs in his room with Louis." Albus smiled at Freddie as he patted his shoulder in thanks before dashing up the stairs to find James.
Roxanne decided to leave her obnoxious brother and headed after her parents and into the kitchen.
Rose, who had not said anything since Uncle George left, scowled at Freddie's retreating form.
"It's not like I ask anyone to watch me snog my boyfriend!" Rose stated, arms still crossed. "I mean, leave me in peace!"
Albus rolled his eyes at his cousin before walking back towards the stairs. "Come on, you two, let's prevent the next prank war." Not checking to see if they were following, he set off up the stairs. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he noticed it was quiet. Too quiet. Albus turned to look at his companions who had followed him up the stairs. Rose, Albus, and Scorpius all shared a glance before making their way to Albus' room.
~~~
James looked at the artefact he held in his hands. It sparkled in the sunlight streaming through his windows. He admired the object with Louis looking over his shoulder.
"What do you think it is?" Louis asked a concentrated looking James.
"I don't know. I think I saw it in a book somewhere, but the name escapes me." James replied.
"HA!" The door slammed open, and James and Louis jumped, the object of their affections nearly fumbling out of James' hands. "You read a book! I don't think so!"
"Merlin Freddie! You scared the shit out of me!" James exclaimed, hand on his chest in an attempt to calm his rapidly beating heart.
Freddie just laughed and took a seat next to James on the floor of his room. "Hey, Lou!" He said to Louis, who sat atop James' bed looking just as shocked as James.
"So what have you guys been up to that made you so scared to see me?" Freddie said, eyebrows raised in question.
"We found this funky looking object." Louis told him, finally having recovered from his shock.
"Yeah and we decided to take a look at it," James said, he too had recovered.
"Oh cool, let's see then." Freddie gestured with his hands, indicating him wanting to view the object. James lifted his hands and showed it to Freddie. The gadget appeared to be pure gold. It had a glass hourglass in the centre of a galleon sized gold plate. Around the hourglass were rings of gold with knobs on the side to twist the rings is opposing directions.
"Don's touch it! We don't know what it is or does!" Louis nearly shouted as Freddie stretched his arm towards the object.
"Fine! I'll look, not touch!" Freddie responded, retracting his hand.
The three sat in silence, an unusual thing, contemplating the object. James moves it around to look at it from different angles, and their heads moved to see other aspects of the artefact.
Footsteps could be heard coming down the hall, and James quickly hid the object under the bed. Fred and Louis looked at each other guiltily, and James righted himself we the footsteps neared his open door.
Albus, Rose and Scorpius were walking down the hall to Albus's room but stopped when they saw the trio in James' bedroom.
"What's the matter with you three?" Albus asked with suspicion.
"Nothing!" Freddie said entirely too loud.
Albus and Rose looked sceptical at that but decided it was nothing new and went to continue their way down the hallway, but Scorpius stopped them when he said, "What's that?" Pointing towards the bottom of James' bed.
James followed Scorpius' point and mentally scolded himself. Scorpius was pointing at the gold hourglass object that had somehow rolled out from under the bed. Freddie cursed under his breath and Louis flopped back against the bed he was on.
"James..." Rose said following Scorpius' line of sight to the object. "Why on earth do you have a time-turner?!" She marched over to the foot of James' bed to pick it up, but James was faster. James grabbed the 'time turner' and hid it behind his back.
"I have no idea what you're talking about!" He almost shouted.
"Really?! Then what did you just put behind your back?" Rose said, trying her best to reach behind his back without toppling over him.
"Um. Er..."
"That's what I thought! Now give it to me."
"No!"
"Yes!"
"It's mine! I found it!"
"Ja—"
"HEY!" Rose had been cut off by a new figure in the doorway. "James give it over!" Lily Luna Potter told her brother with a deathly stare. "NOW!" She said when he hesitated.
James sighed dejectedly and gave in and placed the golden object in Lily's open palm.
"Now who can tell me what's going on here?" Lily said with her hands on her hips, a scary impersonation of an angry Molly Weasley.
While Al and James, physically, cloned to their father. Lily took after her mother in most ways, including looks and legendary rage. She had bright red hair that matched her first temper, and she could always put people in their place, including her brothers. Although she was the youngest of the Potters, everyone listened to her and did ass she said for fear of being on the receiving end of her wrath.
"James has a time turner, and I wanted to know why. So I tried to take it, but he got it instead, and so I tried to get it off him before he tried to use the time-turner!" Rose said in one breath.
"Well, that's quite a story. Isn't it?" A newly appeared Teddy said with Victoire, Dom, and Hugo at his side.
Lily's angry facade immediately melted off her face and contorted into one of pure joy as she turned to face Teddy. "TEDDY!" She exclaimed as she jumped into his arms.
Using Teddy as a distraction, James quickly snatched the time-turner from Lily's hands. She didn't seem to notice, but Teddy did, he immediately broke her hug with Lily to try and snatch it from James' fingers but failed and instead tripped on his own two feet, knocking both him and James to the floor.
James groaned in pain and heard thundering footsteps coming up the stairs. More people appeared in the doorway and piled into James' bedroom. It seemed that the rest of their cousins had arrived.
"What was that?!"
"We came to see what the noise was."
"Oh Teddy, always tripping!"
"Ouch James, that looked like it hurt."
"Teddy, did you have to trample James!"
"Brothers am I right?!"
"What's that glass on the floor?"
Everyone's heads snapped to the floor at the last question, and sure enough, there were pieces of glass littering the floor near James' hand. It appeared that the golden time-turner of James' affection had smashed in the fall and golden sand had poured out from the broken hourglass. James groaned as he looked at the mess of the time-turner.
"Great. Now, what am I going to tell Dad?" James asked, rhetorically.
"You mean you took that from Dad's office?!" Lily nearly screeched at her brother.
James winced at the volume before replying, "Well yeah, and now it's broken, so I'm screwed big time!"
"You thi--" Lily started to say before she was cut off as the sand that littered the ground began to swirl and rise. "Shit." Lily nearly whispered as the sand rapidly engulfed the whole room and its occupants.
Lily's vision started to blur, and she blacked out, and the next thing she knew, she had landed on top of a dog pile of people in a dark hallway.
"JAMES SIRIUS POTTER!"