audere est facere ; to do is to dare

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"Promise me you'll behave?" Molly Weasley looked between the three, and eyebrows raised. She had that sort of expression that let them know that no matter what they said, she wouldn't believe them and so, Fred and George just shrugged. "Charlie - Charlie, dear, before you go..." Mrs Weasley waved her hand to stop her second eldest just as he was about to board the train. He was beginning his N.E.W.T studies that year, and was the eldest Weasley at Hogwarts now that Bill had graduated, and would be relied upon as his mother as such.

"Yes, Mum?" He asked, looking over the three, then back at Molly. "What, you can't be expecting them to be causing trouble already? They're not even on the train yet."

"Exactly." Mrs Weasley shook her head, frizzy ginger hair jumping around over her shoulder as she did so. "Just on the way here one of them managed to magic poor Scabbers into Percy's underwear."

"Can we please not talk about my underwear?" Percy whined. He looked most uncomfortable at the topic of conversation, and rather protectively shielded a hand over his rat's head, using his thumb to stroke between it's ears. "One of you have traumatised my pet, and I'd like to know who it was."

"I dunno." Fred shrugged, rocking back and forth on his heels and shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Why would we want to put Scabbers in Perce's underwear?" George chimed in.

"That's disgusting." Beatrice chimed in, bounding between the two boys. They grinned when they saw her; because they both knew it somehow had been her; but their smiles were quickly disguised once they saw Mr and Mrs Solace follow behind their eldest daughter, the latter placing a gentle hand over Beatrice's shoulder.

"They're already causing trouble, eh, Molly?" Mr Solace looked between the twins. "Ready to push your reign of terror over Hogwarts, boys?"

"Hey - what about me?" Beatrice frowned and it quickly turned into a scowl as her father ruffled her hair. She smoothed it back into place, clips produced out of the pocket of her cardigan to keep it in place this time. "I help them all the time!"

"I know you do, darling." Mrs Solace looked on, disapproving. "I certainly hope you're not intending to terrorise the student body."

Beatrice folded her arms and didn't answer. Fred and George smiled, not convincing in the least. "We certainly hope not to get her in trouble." George hummed.

"It is the furthest thought from our minds in fact." Fred added.

"And why would we want to get poor Bea thinking about old Perce's underwear?"

"Can we please stop talking about my underwear!" Percy exploded, and pressed a kiss to his mother's cheek before stalking down Platform 9¾ to board the train. Evidently, this was the desired reaction and thus, the three best friends shared certain smiles, before reverting to the look of wide-eyed innocent eleven year olds who had absolutely no idea what was going on.

Quite obviously, this fooled absolutely no one, and Molly Weasley rose a hand to her brow, despairing. She had enough to take care of, with her youngest son and daughter stuck to her side as they avoided the foot traffic of the platform without the mischief of the two she was supposed to be saying goodbye to.

"Say, Molly, where's Arthur? He couldn't have missed this morning to see the boys off?" Mrs Solace tactfully changed the subject, noting the absence with dilligent efforts of distraction from the thought that Mrs Weasley would have to suffer from a number of letters as a result of her sons' troubles and tricks. She too was worrying of such an outcome; she knew her daughter far too well and as much as she had tried to teach her otherwise, she had spent far too much time with Fred and George to not to.

"He went to see someone about a car." Mrs Weasley frowned, because she didn't really know much about them. "Why don't you come over for a cuppa later? See if he's back by then."

"Of course." Mrs Solace agreed in an instance; the Burrow had quickly become her daughter's home-away-from-home as much as it had become her own particularly in face of the war and their joint membership within the Order. "I baked a-"

She was cut off by the sound of steam pouring out of the chimney of the Hogwarts Express, a telltale sign of the train leaving in just a couple of minutes, and it incited a flurry of goodbyes from anxious parents to excited kids.

Molly, despite her upset at Fred and George's misgivings, she seized them both and pressed kisses to the top of their heads despite their groans of protests and best efforts to look a little cooler, whilst Beatrice happily accepted the hugs of goodbyes from her parents before the three of them were herded up onto the train, pulled up to safety over the considerably large gap by Charlie, who shouted promises to their parents that he would look after them.

Of course, he abandoned them just moments after they had all waved out of the windows, telling them that he'd come find them about halfway through the journey and sent them on their way. Fred, George and Beatrice managed to find an empty compartment and set up shop in in it, getting straight to work; they had spent the night before (Beatrice had slept over, as always), coming up with ways to smuggle Zonkos products to school. They couldn't get them in their trunks; they were too full and their mothers insisted on packing them with magic to ensure they stayed folded and thus, had woken early that morning under the guise of excitement to strap such products to their body parts.

"Brilliant idea, Bea." Fred commented, as the girl removed her cardigan and held her arms up so they could peel several fireworks away from her blouse. "George, hold up the bag."

The bag in question was Beatrice's, which she had told her mother she was using to keep books in to entertain herself through the journey. "I don't know how to open it." George complained.

"You're not very bright, are you?" Bea opened it for them. "There. Now hurry up, it's warmer on here then I thought it would be."

Fred and George got to work, and soon enough Bea was helping George rid Fred of several dungbombs. It was a careful process, because they had to tape them in a certain way so they didn't slip that saw pressure applied to the pin. But alas, their meticulous care would be disrupted by the sound of the compartment door open.

"Merlin's balls!" Fred exclaimed, and twisted awkwardly around.

"Fred - no!" Beatrice winced, and instantly used her sleeve to cover her nose. The small compartment had been completely filled with an acrid green cloud, an atrocious smell carried through it. "Open the windows!" She urged with a heavily muffled voice. "Open the windows!"

Minutes later and the three, now joined by another first year called Lee Jordan who had interrupted their smuggling business just looking for somewhere to sit, were still fanning the horrific smell out of the windows.

"Bloody brilliant." Lee commented, even though he still had to hold his sleeve up to shield himself. "My dad searched my trunk at least ten times before he came to drop me off. I'm hoping my mum doesn't find the box of stuff I stashed at my grandma's. What house are you guys hoping for?" He asked.

"Gryffindor." Fred answered for them, watching as Bea carefully stacked the last of the dungbombs into her bag. "Everyone in the family gets Sorted there."

"Personally, I think Percy should've gotten Ravenclaw." George frowned.

"We're pretty sure he was adopted."

"The only thing that makes sense." George continued.

"Except from the fact he's ginger." Beatrice nodded. "But that's easy enough to fake."

"What about you?" Lee asked, turning his attention to the girl as she zipped up her bag and stashed it in the space on the seat beside her, beside herself and Fred.

"What do you mean?" Beatrice asked.

"What house?"

"Gryffindor, of course." Fred swung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in. "Where else would she go?"

And that was that. Beatrice agreed, naturally, because she couldn't think of being Sorted anywhere but Gryffindor. The twins were her best friends, the two people she could spend absolutely all her time with and never get bored, who she could trust to welcome her with open arms when her mum told her off and took away the hiccuping sweets she had just bought. She hadn't even consider that perhaps, one of them - especially herself, as she couldn't imagine Fred or George apart - would be Sorted elsewhere.

That was simply the unthinkable.

But Beatrice had nothing to worry about. She had scoured her Hogwarts: A History so she knew utterly everything she could about each of the four houses' traits and was convinced of the fact that like the twins, she too would be a Gryffindor. She had to be.

The rest of the train journey seemed to pass by quickly. Her mum had given her a little money - a couple of sickles - and that was sufficient to provide her, Lee and the twins with enough sweets to send the lot of them into a food coma and, inevitably, with all the excitement of actually being on their way to Hogwarts after all these years of hearing about it from their parents, Bill, Charlie and Percy, and the mishap with the dungbombs, they were almost wiped out.

When Charlie came by to check on them, he brought along his friend Nymphadora who managed to wake them up a bit with her metamorphagus abilities, and they seemed to be able to keep their giggles under control for long enough not to rouse suspicion, and when Charlie and Tonks - because apparently she hated her full name - left they dissolved into childish giggled once more; Fred had slipped one of the dungbombs into Charlie's bag without him noticing.

And soon enough, Bea, Fred, George and Lee had formed a firm friendship. Somehow, even in their young brains, the idea had formed that all this was fate and their friendship and the fact that each of them enjoyed pranking was very much cemented within them during the very first few hours of their Hogwarts journey, and sent a precedent for what was to come.

But, despite their plans to be Sorted into Gryffindor and begin a reign of terror over Hogwarts in an attempt to cement themselves in the school's history and perhaps even overtake that of their predecessors - and it was a strong group to contend with; Fred and George's uncles Fabian and Gideon Prewett and furthermore, a group of four boys made up of James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew - there seemed to be something in the way of that.

Because as Beatrice was called up to the small platform on which a stool and a tattered old hat sat, and the tattered old hat was placed upon her head, it called out a word she had never quite expected.

Ravenclaw.

She had been Sorted into Ravenclaw.

And Fred and George's crestfallen expressions were enough to make Beatrice wilt as she wandered over to the table of blue.

But it wasn't enough to prevent her from thoroughly settling into her new House and rise through the ranks whilst simultaneously terrorising half the school, until the point of becoming the youngest Quidditch captain the house had seen in a long time.

It was certain; her loyalties to her three Gryffindor best friends would not prevent her from entirely destroying them when it came to the House Cup.

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