The Potter Twins and the Order of the Phoenix {5}

34. Calm Before the Storm

"Always the first to make amends, trying to find that perfect score" ~ Perfect Score, State Champs

The story of Fred and George's flight to freedom is retold so often over the next few days that I can tell it will become the stuff of Hogwarts legend: within a week, even those who were eyewitnesses swear they saw the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms and pelt her with Dungbombs before zooming out the doors. In the immediate aftermath of their departure, there was a great wave of talk about copying them. I'm frequently hearing students saying things like, 'Honestly, some says I feel jumping on my broom and leaving this place', or, 'One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley'.

Fred and George have made sure that their legacy lives on within the school. For one thing, they've left no instructions on how to remove the swamp that now fills the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing. Umbridge and Filch have been observing different means of removing it but with no success. Eventually, the area is roped off, and Filch, gnashing his teeth together furiously, is given the job of punting students over it to reach their classroom. I'm almost certain that McGonagall or Flitwick could remove the swamp in an instant, but just as the case of the twins' fireworks, they prefer to let Umbridge handle it.

Quite possibly the best reminder is the two broomstick shaped holes in Umbridge's office door. Although Filch was quick to replace it, and, as the rumour goes, Harry's Firebolt was moved to the dungeons where it is now supposedly guarded by a security troll.

Inspired by Fred and George's example, a great number of students are now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief. In spite of the new door, somebody manages to slip a hairy-snouted Niffler into Umbridge's office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge when she entered and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers. Dungbombs and Stink Pellets are dropped so frequently in the corridors that it has become the new fashion to perform Bubble-Head Charms on ourselves before leaving lessons, which ensures us a supply of fresh air, even though it gives us all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on our heads.

Filch prowls the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem is that there are now so many of them he never knows which way to turn. The Inquisitorial Squad are attempting to help him, but odd things keep happening to its members. Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that makes him look as though he has been coated in cornflakes; Pansy Parkinson, to my delight, missed all her lessons the following day as she has sprouted antlers. It's a long-running joke now between Draco and I that he might just sprout a tail at any moment.

Meanwhile, it has become clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts. Umbridge only has to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration, she attempts to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but we all tell her stubbornly that we are suffering from 'Umbridge--itis'. After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret, she is forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.

But not even the users of the Snackboxes can compete with the master of chaos, Peeves, who seems to have taken Fred's parting words deeply to heart. Cackling madly, he soars through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, toppling statues and vases; twice he has shut Mrs Norris inside a suit of armour, from which she is rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker. Peeves smashes lanterns and snuffs out candles, juggles burning torches over the heads of screaming students, causes neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows; floods the second floor when he pulls off all the taps in the bathrooms, drops a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast and, whenever he fancies a break, spends hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she speaks.