The excitement at the Gryffindor table Sunday morning was contagious as the Snape boys and their friends congregated for breakfast. Calista had insisted on her brothers escorting her to the Great Hall and fully enjoyed being the golden-haired princess holding court amongst the Lions. And, just like a princess, she had the boys wrapped around her fingers filling her plate, cutting her food while the girls eyed the child’s golden curls with longing – their fingers fairly itching to play with them. Narcissa sat between Severus and Minerva and enjoyed watching the students intermingle among the tables, commenting on the camaraderie that seemed to have a hold on the majority of the students. Of course a lot of that could be that the majority were united in their hatred of Umbridge and the revelations of the day before. While the Snapes had been holed up in the dungeon quarters most of the day, It hadn’t taken long for the grapevine to spread the news throughout the school as to why students had been called to the Headmistresses office. The defence group had managed that small feat quite quickly and efficiently.

She nodded at William Weasley as he slipped in next to Severus, pouring a large cup of milky tea and sliding bacon, tomatoes and eggs Benedict onto his plate in quick succession. He reached for the pot of jam in front of his colleague and whispered, “Toad in ten seconds and counting,” into Severus’ ear. The Potion Master’s only reaction was a quirked eyebrow that was just as hastily lowered as he directed a floating rack of toast corners over to Bill.

Sure enough, the pink wonder herself came stalking through the doors. Well, she was trying to stalk. Instead it appeared as if she was mincing her way along the central aisle towards the teachers table, sometimes even stumbling as she went. Titters from the students flittered through the hall as speculation flew as to whether she was drunk. Minerva’s mouth tightened into a severe line and, unless you knew her, you wouldn’t know she was doing her utmost not to outright laugh. Flitwick followed in her wake and after her third tripped step, where she had to catch herself on the corner of the Ravenclaw table so as not to land on her face, he hurried up to her to see if she was alright.

“May I help you, Madam Umbridge?” he asked solicitously, extending a hand in her direction. The laughable part was, she really wasn’t that much taller than the part-Goblin. However, she acted as if he was offering her a poisoned branch and reared back, hissing to keep his filthy hands to himself, she was perfectly fine, thank you very much!

The Ravenclaws nearby took clear affront to this and started to stand up to defend their Head of House until he waved them back to their seats and breakfasts and gestured for the woman to precede him to the teachers table. She straightened up, smoothed down her pink herringbone skirt and continued her trek to her spot at the table, tripping one last time and landing in Hagrid’s lap. At that point several students were doubled over and Umbridge glared at them from her compromising position.

“Now, now, Madam,” Hagrid chuckled as he helped her to an upright position. “Thar’s no need fer that this early in the morn’!”

“What! I – I,” she blustered, cheeks as pink as her fuzzy cardigan. “The corner of the flagstone tripped me!” She turned to where Dumbledore was watching her amusedly. “Dumbledore, it is clear the floor in the Great Hall needs to be redone. Obviously with its age, the stones are a crumbling mess!” she declared. “Why, you saw for yourself the number of times my heels caught the edges of the flags coming up here!”

“Hmmm,” was all Dumbledore said as he sipped at his goblet of Pumpkin juice. She obviously was not going to get any help from that corner!

Snape just caught the eyes of the twin pranksters who were grinning from ear to ear and gave them a discrete nod. That was one.

)O-O(

“Minerva!”

Professor McGonagall stopped on her way to her office and slowly turned to face the person calling her name out so familiarly. She watched as Dolores Umbridge hastened towards her, almost staggering as she approached. She arched an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Dolores, don’t you think it a bit early to be indulging in spirits? It’s before ten, you know!” she reprimanded.

“I have most decidedly not had anything to drink! I think perhaps I have a loose heel. Yes, that must be it...” she ended by mumbling to herself, twisting an ankle around to eye her low, kitten heeled, sensible pink, oxford pump. She frowned when an inspection of both heels showed them to be in perfect working order. “I don’t understand...” she whinged.

McGonagall sighed. “Madam Umbridge, did you wish something of me? Otherwise, I have quite a number of essays to mark this morning.”

The toad stamped both feet once, striking the heels hard on the floor before looking up at the Transfiguration Mistress. “Yes, yes. I thought that I had several detentions this afternoon, but when I checked the book, they were assigned to you and Snape,” she pointed out.

“Just an evening out of duties, Dolores. We take these in rotation, you know. Or perhaps you didn’t – you’re not an academician, so I suppose that might have been missed in your orientation.” The slight dig, expertly applied had the desired effect of causing the choler to rise in Dolores’ cheeks. McGonagall continued as if she hadn’t noticed anything. “I had noticed you’d had a fair amount of these onerous duties over the last couple of weeks and thought you would like a little break. Really, they can get so tedious, especially when you tend to see the same students over and over again.” They had begun walking again along a corridor lined with suits of armour every few feet and Umbridge kept peering intently at the visors of the armour as they walked past each one. At one point she even shook her head, as if to dislodge a biting gnat.

“I see,” she said distractedly. “Pardon me, Minerva, but do you hear that – whistling?”

“Whistling? No, can’t say that I do. Where are you hearing it?” she asked stopping and looking down at the woman.

“From this armour!” She walked over to the nearest tin man and lifted the visor, peering inside and knocking on the breast plate to make sure it was still hollow. “But there’s no one in here!” she groused.

“Dolores,” Minerva asked quite sharply, “Are you sure you aren’t starting the Hallowe’en celebration a little early? It isn’t until next weekend!”

“Can’t you hear it?” the woman asked desperately. “It’s like a funeral march... Dun dun dun, dun de dun, dun de dun...” she demonstrated, whistling an off-tune line of music which Minerva instantly recognized as the theme from the Imperial March from Star Wars. You couldn’t be a Head of House that included a number of Muggle-born or Half-blood witches and wizards over the last seventeen years and not heard the music from those three movies. It was all she could do not to bust a gut in the corridor. However, years of dealing with pranksters such as the Marauders and the Weasley and Prewitt twins had trained her in keeping her amusement to herself and projecting a stern facade. It came in handy now as she let peevishness creep into her voice.

“No, Madam Undersecretary, I hear nothing but the two of us. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have office hours I must keep.” She stalked off, heels clacking rhythmically as she traversed the rest of the corridor to her office door, shutting it firmly behind her.

Ignoring the frustrated professor, Umbridge kept lifting the visors and peering into the empty metal suits, mumbling to herself.

)O-O(

“C’mon, I’m your brother!” Ron wheedled as he and the other pack of Weasley’s piled in through the portrait hole. “Give me some sort of hint of what to watch out for!”

Fred and George turned their heads towards each other for a moment then turned back to their younger brother. “No,” they stated firmly.

“Two words,” George said.

“Plausible –“

“Deniability.”

“What you don’t know, you can’t be implicated in. You’re already enough of a target for being Harrikins best friend,” Fred pointed out. “This way you won’t be able to tell what you don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t tell!” Ron protested hotly. “Hermione, tell them, I wouldn’t tell the toad anything!”

“Leave me out of this, Ronald, I happen to agree with them,” she stated from her position on the couch, a huge Arithmancy textbook on her lap. She didn’t even bother to look up from her reading.

“Thanks a lot, Hermione!” he groused. “C’mon, guys, I can help!”

“No, actually, you can’t. You see, little brother, this is our swan song to celebrate the years of pranking we’ve given this school –“ Fred pointed out, draping one arm chummily over Ron’s shoulders and gesturing widely with his other, as if presenting Ron with a huge diorama of their future plans.

“We fully expect to be expelled when this is over and if we’re not –“ George said, mimicking his brother’s stance on the other side of Ron.

“Then we intend to quit,” they declared together. 

Ron gaped at them, doing a fair imitation of a codfish. “Quit? But you – you can’t! Where would go? What would you do? Mum will murder you!” he hinted darkly.

“I expect they’ll open that shop they’ve been yammering about for the last decade,” Ginny piped up from where she was sitting in Dean’s lap.

“Ginny!” All three of her brother’s protested, turning as one in her direction.

“Oh, bother!” she muttered before placing a chaste buss on Dean’s willing mouth, then hopping down and sauntering past her siblings. “Get over it,” she advised over her shoulder.

Harry’s shoulders were trembling in laughter from where he sat next to Hermione. His dad had told him some of what the twins had planned for the week, and if breakfast had been any indication, it was going to be a fun week. But the siblings were entering dangerous territory when it came to the questioning that Ron was subjecting them to.

“Back to the subject!” Ron insisted, snapping his fingers in front of the twins’ faces. “What are you going to do if you leave?”

“We have our savings-“

“And we have our eye on some premises in Diagon Alley – “

“Already put a down payment on it.”

“How can you afford a down payment?” Ron asked. “Mum and Dad can’t afford to lend you the gold, and while I know your mail-order business was bringing in some money, after overhead you wouldn’t have cleared much,” he said wisely. Harry looked up in shock; who knew Ron paid that much attention to his brothers’ burgeoning business, or that he knew such terms as Overhead! Fred caught his eye, nodding towards Ron. If they didn’t tell the youngest male Weasley, he’d snitch on them to their mother. Harry sighed and shrugged. It was going to come out at some point.

Fred looked around for a moment and, spotting an open corner, guided his brother’s over to it. Harry watched from under his fringe.

“They’re telling him where their funding is coming from, aren’t they?” Hermione whispered from her seat next to him. His quill screeched to a halt on his parchment. He’d have to remove the jagged line of ink from his transfiguration homework.

“Where do you think it came from?” he asked, swallowing convulsively.

Hermione gave him a pitying look. “Really, Harry, it is quite obvious you gave them your winnings!”

“It is not!” he hissed at her, glaring at his friend. “How did you find out?” he demanded.

She smiled over at him and flicked at his queue playfully. “I followed you on the train,” she confided in a whisper. “I saw you give them the bag with the Ministry of Games stamp on it.” She bumped his shoulder with hers conspiratorially. “I think it was quite generous of you, and really nice.”

“So glad it meets with your approval,” he whispered back, raising his wand to erase the mistake. He watched in satisfaction as it siphoned off the unwanted ink. “Don’t know if Ron will see it that way. Uh oh...” he said as he looked up at the dark shadow in front of him. “Uh, hi, Ron.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why them?” Ron asked, although not as angry as Harry thought he would be. Ron actually sounded as if he was just curious as to Harry’s reasoning.

Harry sighed and rubbed at his eyes before resettling his frames and looking up at Ron. “Because they are geniuses when it comes to inventing new things and I wanted a place to put the money where I felt it would do the most good; because with the war coming on I felt we all deserved a laugh, and because Zonko’s products are six decades behind the times.” He squinted at Ron. “Enough reasons for you, mate?”

“Yep, just wondered.” He looked over at the twins. “Make it good – that’s all I ask. Drown her in kittens, I don’t care – just make her pay.” With that he turned around and stomped through the portrait hole.

“I think our little brother is growing up, Gred.”

“Nah, it was just an aberration, Forge. But I do like that idea...”

)O-O(

The next morning, during breakfast, a loud croaking sound was heard coming from the Gryffindor table before an irate Neville Longbottom was seen chasing his toad across the Great Hall.

“Trevor! Come back here!” he yelled impatiently as everyone present laughed at the sight of the fifth year running and making attempts to grab the reluctant amphibian. “Merlin’s pants!” he cursed before whipping his wand out and yelling out clearly, “Accio toad!”

As Trevor came zooming to him from under the Ravenclaw table, the doors to the Great Hall flew open and hundreds of brown and olive-drab toads were hopping into the wide area, causing the tiny lower year girls to begin screaming their fool heads off, jumping onto the benches and tables to escape the plague. Neville slipped out of the room after nodding to his Potions Master, pocketing the escape artist toad, barely able to keep the grin off of his face.

Ignoring the screaming chits, the toads manoeuvred down the length of the hall, resistant to any repeated attempts of Accio-ing them by the Inquisitorial Squad into waiting transfigured bags, and they began making long leaps onto the teachers’ table, all in the vicinity of Umbridge herself, who squealed when the first one landed in her porridge, splattering her blouse with white gruel and croaking love songs to his queen. More and more of the large, wart covered animals made it onto the table, joining in the chorus as they crooned in deep, bass notes.

The sight that nearly made Severus lose his composure and had Minerva snorting her tea was Filch running down the centre aisle, asthmatically wheezing, his high-kneed stride looking absolutely ridiculous as he attempted to side-step the toads on the flagstones.

Umbridge floundered out of her chair, vainly attempting to shoo the offending creatures away as more and more piled in around her. “Filch! Do something! Get these vile creatures away!” she cried, flinging porridge in every direction as her hands fluttered, causing the teachers at that end to either duck or raise hasty shields.

To Filch’s credit he looked at her as if she’d lost her reason. “How?” he simply asked; looking tearfully at all the croakers around his feet. Mrs Norris twined around his shoulders, hissing at the amphibians.

“With magic, of course!” she said exasperatedly. A collective intake of air rendered the room silent and everyone held their breath, waiting for the caretaker’s response. It was one of those facts that you learned in your first weeks of going to Hogwarts: Filch was a Squib and was quite ashamed of it. Mrs Norris, his beloved Kneazle, was the closest he would ever come to having magic. It was also a known fact that Mr Filch had been a firm supporter of Umbridge and her over-reaching policies all term; applauding the formation of the Inquisitorial Squad and delighting in the harsh detentions she would let him supervise. To have her turn on him now – unthinkable.

“Madam!” Dumbledore chastised quite sharply.

“What?” she replied sarcastically, actually rolling her eyes in the Headmaster’s direction, not yet realizing what she had done. He nodded to Filch and her eyes finally saw the heartbroken look on the old man’s face. “Argus, I –“

“I see,” he said; voice breaking, full of emotion. “I see how you really feel, Madam. Come, my precious,” he crooned to the cat draped around his neck. “Let’s leave her to her - admirers.” He turned around and shuffled out of the room, a few sniffles were heard from his retreating back and nearly as one the entire student body swivelled their accusatory eyes towards the Undersecretary. Filch, no matter how inept, was one of their own. He was an institution in the school – and, as an outsider, you don’t insult an institution. Only the students had the right to insult him, and even then it was never to his face. It just wasn’t done.

“Madam, I think you should go change. Leave the amphibian chorus to me – I will see that they are removed,” Dumbledore said, quite firmly, and Umbridge meekly obeyed – slipping out the teacher’s entrance.

Taking a large, satisfied, gulp from the coffee cup the boys had gotten him years ago, Snape mentally ticked off in his head, that’s three.