What About Quidditch?

Where it all Begins

James looked through the compartment window, trying to catch a glance at the platform below.
"Fred, do you think Hailey's coming?" Fred smirked, then went back to his chocolate frog. "James, mate, she's sat in the compartment with us ever since 1st year, when you pulled her pigtails."

Hailey chose this moment to pop through the door. "Talking about my finest moment, Freddie? Remember after that? I did complex magic and turned him green!"
Just as she was about to sit down, another head popped into through the door. "Hello? Is there anyone in 'is compartment?"
Hailey gave a snicker behind Fred's back as his jaw dropped. A tall beautiful girl stepped into their space. She had almost luminescent blonde hair, and large light blue eyes. James whistled.

"Well, we need introductions!" he said, reaching forward to shake the new girls' hand. "Who are you and where are you from?"

The girl gave high-pitched giggle. "Well, my name iz Toria. I come from, how does ze say it? Beauxbatons? Madame Maxine sent ze here for the International Wizard Exhange Program."

Fred gave her a huge grin. "And we're happy to have you! This is James Potter, and his friend, Hailey Wood. And I'm Fred and..."
"I'm Roxy, dear little Freddie's twin!" Roxanne Weasley waved as she climbed through the doorway. "You must have stumbled into the wrong compartment. I'm afraid ickle Freddie is usually in quarantine."

Toria looked like she didn't know what to do with this new information, but soon she didn't have time to think. The door banged open, and five more students shoved each other into the compartment.

"I'm Lily Potter," said a short redhead that was climbing over a trunk.

"Rose," Another redhead mumbled, her face stuck in a large textbook.

"Danny Jordan," a grinning boy said.

"Dom," yet another redhead offered, quickly turning to gaze at Toria before flouncing to the window and sitting down. The whole hoard filed into the compartment, squishing onto seats.

"Why are you all here?" asked Fred incredulously.

"Well, my dear brother, there were no more compartments left!" replied Roxy.

"And I've gotta go soon! Prefect Duty!" Rose inserted proudly.

"Lily, why don't you go find Hugo?" asked James, who was so squished he was practically sitting on Hailey's lap.

Lily gave a sniff. "He's in the boring old chess compartment. It's not even like he needs to practice! He may be a bludgering idiot at everything else, but no one can beat him at chess!"

James gave her an eye roll. "Please, just leave already!"

"Fine! If you want me to leave, I'll go snog Adrian Finnegan!"

"What? You're dating that piece of no good dragon dung?" James practically yelled, his eyes darting about wildly.

"I never said dating! I said snogging!" Lily yelled back, not one to give up on a fight.

"You're too young to snog!"

"I'm in 5th year James! By then you had practically snogged half the girls in the castle!"
Fred sniggered, but stopped when he saw Toria looking in his general direction.

James glared at Lily. "Well, you're still my sister! No one goes around snogging my sister!"

"Mum gave me permission to date! Stop scaring off all the boys! If you do anything to Finnegan, I'll write Mum!"

"See if I care!" James shot back. He tore out of the compartment with gusto. They could hear him all the way down the hallway.

"FINNEGAN! WERE YOU SNOGGING MY BABY SISTER?"

There was a mumbled reply, then a squeal followed by laughter, and James came panting back to the compartment. "Got what he deserved, the little whelp!"

Lily gave him a look that could kill, then went to help her snog buddy. Hailey patted James's hair as he leaned against her, apparently tired from hexing Finnegan into a toad.

Fred turned amusedly to Toria, who was sitting beside him with a bemused expression on her face.
"Wild group aren't they? You have to watch where you step, but I've got your back," he winked, obviously attempting a line from "50 Ways to Pick Up Witches". The whole group hooted with laughter, and Fred turned purple in the face.

The rest of the ride passed mostly peacefully, with only the occasional death threat, and loud bang from James and Hailey's part of the car, where they were experimenting for the opening prank. After a few more attempts at flirting with Toria, Fred gave up and went to join them.

***

On prefect duty, Rose was having more than enough trouble. Luckily she had learned a few spells from her mother that helped.

"Mund Morbis" she said, pointing to the ground, where a WWW product had made someone sick. It vanished immediately. Walking down the aisles, she pointed her wand at several nooks and crannies, where the older students might be doing less than desirable things in.

"Honum Revelio" she whispered, pointing to the cleaning closet. A pair of abashed Hufflepuff 6th years came stumbling out of the closet, and darted to the closest compartment. The only other embarrassing thing that happened was stumbling upon Dom having a full out snog session with a Slytherine boy. He scowled at her, and then closed the door, magically locking it this time. She went back to her compartment flushed, knowing Dom was going to give it to her tonight.

Fred snickered at her when she finally came back in. "Who was it this time?" he asked knowingly. Rose just shook her head.
"Dom, probably. She's trying to beat Victoire's record," Lily provided helpfully, having successfully returned Finnegan to a human form and rejoined the rest of the group.

Rose elbowed Roxy, who had settled down to sleep next to Danny. She opened one eye, groaned and rolled over three inches, and went back to sleep. Rose huffed and sat on the very edge of the seat. She noticed that Danny seemed a bit pink in the face, and he had stealthily snuck a hand around the sleeping Roxy's waist.

She nodded towards him, and Danny gave a chuckle. "Seems like love is in the air. I stumbled on your little cousin Lucy with a Ravenclaw in the little wizard's room. Isn't she only in 4th year?"

Rose groaned. "Yeah, that'd be her. Who would think Percy would have such a little rebel? And with her sister being such a Daddy's girl too!"

The compartment gave a unified shudder. Tales of Molly Weasley still haunted all little children who wanted to have any fun.
"Must be Audrey's side of the family," said James, looking up just enough to have a bang come out from his wand. The room was suddenly filled falling snowflakes. Rose laughed and made them come faster, so in a few minutes the room was filled with snow. This kept them occupied the rest of the train ride, until they saw the peaks of Hogwarts castle rise up in the distance. At this point Roxy jolted up and slapped Fred, since he was supposed to wake her so she could change her robes. She was still wearing Muggle shorts when they stepped into the Great Hall, and Fred laughed gleefully as Professor Parnell led her away to the first detention of the year. James and Hailey happily used the distraction to have one final discussion about their prank. It was agreed that this prank was the potentially going to be the best one they had ever pulled.