The first thing that Florence did as soon as she got dressed, was run all the way down to Madame Hooch's office, putting aside the grumbling noises that her stomach emitted, which was her body's soft plea for food. Madame Hooch herself was in a half asleep state when Florence barged in, the old witch still trying to get everything together.

"I want to book the entire week," she said in a single breath, noticing the half startled expression on her face "Oh...and good morning too, Professor. How were your holidays?"

Madame Hooch looked at her blankly for a couple of seconds, a yawn escaping her lips. She apologized, before she tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes, "My holidays were fine, thank you for asking... As for the bookings, I will have to find the registry..." she gestured to the pile, looking at it wearily, "As you can see, I haven't done much cleaning up yet."

Florence eyed the seemingly mountainous load of paperwork on the desk, checking the clock hurriedly. She still needed time to go down for breakfast.

"If you're in a hurry to get to breakfast, Ms. Price, please, by all means, you are welcome to scour this monstrous mess with me."

And she did just that, finding the book beneath a pile of drastically outdated paperwork, and just as she had dipped the quill into the ink, the door burst open.

"Do remember that it's still early." Madame Hooch rubbed at her temple as Olivia strode across the threshold, sweat glinting evidently on her face. "Goddamnit." she cursed, seeing Florence with the book, "I thought I'd be here earlier than you."

"It's okay, Olivia. You can have next week." said Florence, moving to continue her writing, the Hufflepuff girl letting out a protest, "Next week? Oh come on, Florence, don't be a bloody hogger. Save some days for me too!"

"But you aren't having any games for two months, Olivia. What you're asking for is unreasonable. I can't split the week with you."

"Yes, yes you can." she insisted, "Just think about it. Your players need time to rest inbetween strenuous practice sessions too, right? Give me those break days. Everyone needs to rest—!"

"Oh no you two aren't!" interrupted a voice, Madame Hooch's door slamming open yet again to reveal Angelina, who also looked like she had ran all the way from the castle, "I believe the bookings should be distributed evenly among the teams. Not just between you two. Well...we can leave out Slytherin, since, let's be honest, Montague's the epitome of a walking garbage and... he's also not here to argue his way into getting bookings for the week."

Florence gaped at the two, before clutching the logbook closer to her chest, "We will do no such thing. I got here first! So it's fair that I get to decide how many days I would like to book. First come first serve—that's a rule we always follow."

Angelina crossed her arms over her chest, an annoyed yet determined look on her face, "You know, for a Ravenclaw, you sure don't know what fair means, huh? I thought you lot were the smart house?"

This made Florence scowl, "It's a rule, Angelina." she retorted, emphasizing each word carefully, "I know Gryffindors have a knack for disregarding the rules, but I sure as hell won't let this slide. We have a match against Slytherin in three weeks!"

Angelina rolled her eyes condescendingly, turning to Madame Hooch out of frustration, "What do you, think, Professor?"

"Ladies," she sighed, evidently too tired to deal with such nuisances early in the morning, but the persistent looks on their faces made her rack her head up for a quick solution, "Okay, here's what we're going to do. Miss Price is right, the policy has always been first come first serve."

Florence beamed as the other two shot her annoyed looks, "However..." Madame Hooch continued, the smile on Florence's face faltering at that word, "She may only book three weekday afternoon sessions, and one weekend morning session."

"...okay, seems fair." Florence shrugged, before jotting down her bookings into the log book.

After a few minutes, the three had finally settled their dispute, piling out of Madame Hooch's office after a round of goodbyes, heading towards the castle for breakfast.

Nicolai, per Xander's words, was already on her third helping of scrambled eggs when Florence had settled into her seat. She glanced at the clock, before quickly putting a plate of food together.

"Where have you been? I thought you ran off somewhere with the twins but they were wandering around looking for you, as well."

"I was out. Tried to book the pitch for the entire week." she gave Xander a pointed loom, "But your girlfriend and Angelina came in and argued their way into getting a couple days in the week."

"Aww, Flo, that's alright. I'm sure you'll make the most out of how much time you've managed to get."

"Damn right I will." Florence said, "But I'm still slightly annoyed about it. I swore I woke up really early..."

"One thing to know about Olivia," said Xander, before spearing a piece of his pancake, "She's an early riser as well."

"Well what's done is done." said Nicolai, pushing a goblet filled with milk towards Florence, "Now eat up. We have to head up for first period in a couple of minutes."

This made her brows furrow, looking at Nicolai oddly, "Since when have you been so eager to get to class?"

She shrugged, "Must be the New Year effect... New year, new me?"

This made Xander snort, nudging Florence, "Watch as her resolution disappears in a few days..."

"Sod off, Xan. Stop being a twat."

This made Florence chuckle, the feeling of being back in the Castle and watching Xander and Nicolai bicker over the smallest things made her feel right at home.

Just then, a flurry of owls filled the Great Hall, dropping off parcels, letters and newspaper subscriptions to their rightful owner, Florence managing to catch her copy of the Daily Prophet, and a letter, presumably from her mum.

She set aside the newspaper, ripping open the envelope and unfurling the parchment. It was pretty empty, a sentence etched in the middle.

Please be safe, stay in the castle; we love you

Love, Mum

Her eyebrows arched, hearing a collective number of gasps all around her as soon as she set her letter down. Even Xander was gaping at his copy of the Daily Prophet, making Florence pick up hers and eead through it as well. But she didn't need to do too much looking, as the words Mass Breakout From Azkaban greeted her eyes, the picture of a deranged woman below the headline, hair wild as she thrashed her chained arms.

A shudder went down her spine, knowing very well that these criminals were Death Eaters, and that one of them may be her father's murderer. Nicolai looked to Florence worriedly, "You alright, Flo?"

She snapped out of her trance, flashing her a strained smile, "Peachy."

"I wonder how they did it, though." Xander marveled at how completely brilliant and at the same time terrifying the breakout was, "The only person who ever escaped Azkaban was Sirius Black."

That's because he didn't belong in there, Florence wanted to say, Nicolai nodding her head in agreement with Xander's question, "It's kind of baffling. I guess this means You-Know-Who really is back, since all his goons are racing out of their prison cells."

"Let's hope not." Nicolai mumbled, just as the bell rang, signaling that they had to get to first period.

Florence finished her breakfast in a quick silent manner and began talking with Nicolai animatedly as they filed out of the Great Hall with everyone else.

                                         —————
It took quite a while for everyone to arrive at the Quidditch pitch, Florence waiting patiently as she had to consider that some of them may still be hung over from the long holiday break. She kept glancing up at the sky, tapping her foot against the grass once in awhile. Though her team was her priority, they had a DA meeting as well and she wanted to be able to squeeze some time in for her homework.

Ivy came skipping in to the pitch first, looking rather enthusiastic to be back in her robes again. They chatted animatedly about their holiday break activities while waiting for the rest of the team, who came, much to Florence's relief.

"Okay, I have good news and bad news," Florence rubbed her hands together, facing her team with a determined smile, "The good news is that in three weeks, we're playing our first game of the season. The bad news, as some of you may already know, is that we're playing against Slytherin."

Collective groans came from the team, even from Ivy, who, as young as she is, somehow knows all the dirty tricks that Slytherin has pulled off in their past matches. Florence spoke again as the commotion died down, "For those who were here the school year before last year, or maybe those who were audiences in the stands, you may know what happened that caused us to...well...lose. They cheated to win. And this year, we will win against them, but not through cheating... We'll work hard and prepare ourselves so that three weeks from now, we will be able to beat their arses fair and square."

Roger blinked, leaning closer to Cho, "Were my speeches this annoyingly determined during my captaincy?"

"Oh, buddy. It was way worse," Cho replied with a slight smile, making Roger scowl, turning to Jeremy in hopes of getting a different response, but the brunet boy nodded, agreeing with Cho, "It was slightly overkill, man."

He mumbled something incoherent under his breath, before redirecting his attention back to Florence, who had given instructions for the team to spread out and do warm ups.

She decided to cut the practice short with only one mock game, a little back to school treat that her team enjoyed very much. It was best for them to be well rested so that they wouldn't feel burdened every time she would call for practices.

Taking her school work down to the library, she sat herself down at the back table. A couple of trips down the bookshelves, she was now shrouded in piles of books, listening to the clock tick softly away as she squeezed in as much work as she could before some unexpected distraction came along.

Sure enough, a few hours later, the twins come bounding into the serene library, calling out her name louder than Madame Pince would allow. They eventually find her in her cooped up area, dragging a chair over and scooting a pile of books away so they could get a better view of her.

"How was your day, boys?" she inquired with a smile, her eyes not leaving her parchment. She could tell, even without looking up, that the two had exciting news that they wanted to share with the way they fidgeted in their seats. George spoke up first, "Pretty productive, actually. We got to sell thirty snack boxes and finally fixed the kinks on the extendable ears."

"And," Fred eventually added, "We're developing a new line of Quills."

This caught Florence's attention, looking up at the two, brows arched in question, "Quills?"

"Yes, Quills." Fred chuckled, "Don't act so surprised, Flo."

"No, I'm not surprised...just...thinking what kind of prank twists you could possibly put on a quill to make it an authentic and original Weasley prank product." she set her own quill down, which meant that her undivided focus had shifted to the subject at hand, "So does it reject ink? Or maybe spurt it out on the user's parchment to create a big mess?"

The twins shared a look, Fred looking pleased with the concept pitches, "Although those are good ideas, love..."

"Really good," George piped up, "We should write that down so we won't forget it."

"We were thinking more of quills that actually function. I mean, just because we're establishing a joke shop doesn't mean we can't sell any practical items, right?"

Florence goggled at them, slightly baffled. Normal was never in their vocabulary. "So, normal writing quills...?"

"Mmm, not normal either. We were thinking along the lines of Self Inking quills..."

"Smart Answer quills."

"And Spell Checking quills!"

This made Florence smile, "Huh. Those are actually pretty good ideas. You might close down Ink and Quill businesses with the Self Inking ones, so you should probably have a limit to how long it can self ink."

"Okay, point taken. So they're a good concept, overall? You think they'd sell?"

"Hell yeah they'll sell." Florence said, "Picture this: parents walk in with their overeager child, the child immediately grabbing whatever joke toy they could find. So the parents have to wait, yeah? For Merlin knows how long. But then they see your line of practical supplies, and now they have something they can check out while waiting for their kid."

"Oooh." the twins breathed out in unison.

"It's a perfect concept, you two. Very smart. If you need any help with making them at all, just say the word."

"Well we do need help from you." said George with a chuckle, "Obviously."

"We've been trying to figure out what Charms to set in order to get it right." Fred added, "We even skipped Umbridge's class so we could work on it."

"Although I disapprove of the methods, I do appreciate your dedication..." she said, "But okay, I'll definitely help. I'm free tomorrow, since Olivia and the Hufflepuffs will be using the pitch."

"Great! We'll be using one of the empty rooms in the fourth floor."

Florence moved to return to her studies, but the sight of the clock made her stop in mid action of flipping through her books, "I had no idea it was this late already."

Fred chuckled, "You know you're almost always in your own zone when you study..."

"Best head down for Dinner, then, so we won't be late to the DA meeting tonight. Harry said he'll be teaching us something interesting."

With the three of them, putting away the books was a faster process, Fred carrying Florence's bag as they walked out of the library, talking about other potential prank toy ideas.

///////
a.n: Terribly sorry for the long wait, and also for my Protégée readers, who'll have to wait a little while longer for an update. I had a very shitty week, which has kept me away from my writing mood. But I'm back now! And thanksgiving break is around the corner, so, that means I'll be updating more frequently. Cheers!

-Denise ❤️