THE RAVENCLAW PRINCESS

chapter 23 - cheating

The winter holiday had come and gone. Lyra didn't snog anyone at midnight on New Year's but her, George, and Iliana would not let Charlotte, Fred, and Mieko forget who they had shared their New Year's Eve kisses with. Fred and Mieko were relatively unphased. Luckily for Charlotte, Eric was perfectly fine with not pushing their New Year's snog into something more than shameless flirting and kissing. The two had been rather mature and promised to meet again when Charlotte visited Rossendale Valley during the summer holidays, however that didn't stop the others from teasing her.

Almost immediately after returning to Hogwarts, everyone's course load had seemingly tripled and stress was running high. On top of OWLs, Lyra's focus was drawn to the upcoming Quidditch match against Slytherin. It was still a ways off but neither her nor Adrian wanted to see the other victorious. Adrian and Lyra pushed their teammates harder than either team captain to guarantee their victory.

It was now the week leading up to the Ravenclaw-Slytherin Quidditch match and Lyra was tuning out the irritating jeering from Slytherins as she walked to Defense. Fred was sitting with Lee while George occupied one of the seats behind them. Lyra dropped her bag on the desk causing George to jerk up from his sleeping position.

"Those fucking Slytherins, I swear to Merlin. How Malfoy manages to become more irritating each year is beyond me," Lyra huffed.

George nodded in agreement and dropped his voice as more people had entered the room, "hey, no more nightmares?"

"A few but not as many as earlier," Lyra looked around the classroom quickly then turned in her seat to better face George. "Georgie, you remember what we overheard on Halloween? The weird conversation between-"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I have to know more and they both know more than we do so-"

"No."

"Listen I can do it-"

"It's not that," George sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Ly, we don't know much about Lupin. What if he can do Occlumency? You can't just walk up-"

"I'm not going to. I need a distraction," she looked at him pointedly.

"A prank," George whispered and Lyra stared at him as if he had grown another head. He explained, "we could do the smokescreen spell and maybe plant a few waterbombs too- Wait what about Lupin?"

"I did some reading- in the common room thank Merlin- and you can't use Occlumency if you don't know who you're defending yourself from. And if you don't know the attack is coming-"

The two were interrupted by Professor Lupin. "My apologies for being late but today we'll be reviewing the smokescreen spell one more time before moving onto the reductor curse."

George and Lyra shared an understanding look. The two planned to meet to finalize their plan after class.

"How do you feel?" Cho asked Lyra as they walked out of the girls' locker room.

"Positive. We're going to wipe the floor with them," Lyra bumped into Cho's shoulder good-naturedly.

"I like the confidence, Tonks!" Davies said as the boys approached them from their locker room. "And that's the same confidence I want to see on the pitch. We have been working diligently for this since the beginning of term and even more so now. Together we have what it takes to beat Slytherin and we will absolutely wipe the floor with them!"