Cowboys and Angels

moment twenty-six: the games people play (May 1992.)

Sometimes, Oliver thought, he really really wanted to strangle Percy Weasley. True to form, Percy had indeed become a prefect, and then used it to make everyone else's lives completely miserable. Today was just a case in point, one in a long line of grievances people were building up against the anally retentive Gryffindor.

Even his brothers weren't safe; indeed, perhaps because they were his brothers Percy seemed to go after them even harder than he did anyone else. Which was, indirectly, why Oliver was sitting on a cold hard bench outside McGonagall's office, and why Fred and George were in there right now, presumably getting the tongue lashing of their lives. Oh, and Gryffindor had lost three hundred points as a result.

Cheers, Perce.

It had all started out so simply. Fred and George and Oliver had been talking after training a while back, and conversation had turned to Snape, and what a mean prick he was, and how everyone hated him, and how he clearly hadn't got laid since the mid-seventies. Anyway, that had led Fred and George to thinking - always a bad idea - and they had thought up a prank. And needed Oliver's help to do it.

Percy had inevitably caught wind of this (possibly because they were his brothers and Oliver seemed to note that brothers had a subconscious divination-like thing going on; no matter how Fred and George smiled and protested their innocence, Percy could smell their guilt) and without Fred and George volunteering any information, he had tracked down their possible partners in crime.

Which meant Oliver.

Oliver had denied everything of course, but then Percy had told him he'd been to visit certain shops in Hogsmeade, and had reports from shopkeepers of everything that Oliver had bought for the past month. He'd managed to work out what Fred and George had been planning from Oliver's purchases, and suffice to say, Oliver was rather gobsmacked (not to mention annoyed) at Percy's prowess as a makeshift detective. He'd asked Oliver to come clean, and of course Oliver hadn't.

Which was exactly why Oliver was sitting on a cold hard bench outside McGonagall's office. Bloody Percy, Oliver thought to himself. Always needing to be the fucking teacher's pet cause he couldn't do anything else. Merlin, wasn't anyone allowed to have any fun these days? Percy was like that Muggle organisation during the Second Muggle War Oliver had heard about, what was it, the Gestapo or something? His grandmother had told him stories about that war, and Grindelwald. Yeah. That was it. Percy was like a one-man Gestapo.

The door opened and two very abashed looking Weasley twins made their way out. McGonagall stood in the doorway and eyed Oliver. "Mr Wood," she said primly, "when you're ready," and turned, leaving the door open.

Oliver got up of the bench grimacing, and muttered to the twins as they passed. "I am going to kill your brother."

"Not if we get to him first," the twins chorused, and then Oliver passed through the doorway and into purgatory.