An American At Hogwarts: Book Three

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The rest of March passed mostly uneventfully, which I was grateful for. After losing hope of getting the centaurs on our side, I doubled down on my research into mermaid culture, and Myrah and I worked even harder together to learn the language. Lessons with the DA were always fun, but they took an immense amount of time and effort, and the workload for my senior year of muggle school certainly wasn't light either. By the time the last day of March came, I was more than ready for a break to let loose and have fun.

And what better opportunity for that than April Fool's Day, also known as the twins' birthday?

Unfortunately for us, their birthday this year fell on a Thursday. Among other things, that meant we'd have a full day of classes, including our last period of the day with Umbridge.

None of us were going to let that deter us, however. We had a very cheerful morning breakfast together in the Great Hall, and then I even went with them to their first period History of Magic instead of taking my usual extra hour of sleep on Thursdays. Binns never paid any attention to his classes anyway, so we passed the period sitting in the back, playing exploding snap, and planning out the rest of our day.

"Okay, so we're agreed the number one birthday objective is not having to deal with Umbridge?" I asked while Angelina and George played a mid-class championship round.

"Definitely," my three remaining friends chorused at once.

"And Snape, if we can manage it," George added. A second later, one of his own cards blew up in his face, and he returned his attention to the game.

"Yeah, Snape's only fourth period, so I don't think we're going to be able to ditch him without being suspicious," I said. "And if we all try to get out of Umbridge's class together, there's no way she won't ask questions and make herself a problem for us. But I think I have a plan."

Lee fixed me with a grin. "I always love seeing an Alexa Stark plan in action."

"Yeah, well, fair warning... you might like this one a little less than usual."

After I explained my plan, although Lee agreed it might not be the most ideal (especially in terms of side effects), we all agreed it would be worth it to escape Umbridge for the day. We'd have to be strategic in our execution if we wanted to get away with it, but by the time we finished up our second period Care of Magical Creatures, I felt confident in our chances.

We gathered supplies at lunch and tried to act a little under the weather in all of our subsequent classes, then in fifth period Herbology, it was finally go-time.

Thankfully, the in-class work for the day played into the plan perfectly. Our assignments required groups of three, so the twins and I formed one group while Lee, Angelina, and Alicia formed the other. We worked like normal for a while, until Lee started acting a little strangely.

At first, nobody else really noticed. The twins and I pretended not to either, until it started getting worse, and affecting Angelina and Alicia too. From there, it wasn't long before the whole class had started to take notice, Professor Sprout included. She came over, concern written on her face, and right on cue all three of our friends got very, very sick.

The twins and I scooped up the wrappers from the Puking Pastilles as everyone in the class took one giant step back. Professor Sprout quickly diagnosed them with an illness as the side effect of one of the upper-level greenhouse plants that they must've accidentally touched, and sent them to the hospital wing with a few minutes left in class. Most likely, Madam Pomfrey would diagnose them with bedrest and send them back to Gryffindor Tower for the rest of the day.

Exactly according to plan.

Thanks to the twins' inventions, the nausea and other symptoms would wear off quickly, leaving us free to do what we wanted before our last class let out. It had been unbearably tempting for all six of us to take the candies together in Herbology and skip Umbridge's class completely, but if all six of us were absent due to illness, she'd definitely follow up. Much easier in the long run to let her see the twins and I, the three people other than Harry most on her troublemaker radar, get violently ill in her class. Then there'd be much less doubt about the legitimacy of the six of us all missing her class.