It started, like most of Astra Potter’s best (or worst) ideas, with sheer boredom.
“You know what this place needs?” Astra mused, lounging across a Gryffindor common room couch, flipping through Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them like it was an exceptionally dull tabloid.
Luna Lovegood, perched upside down on a chair with her legs dangling over the backrest, tilted her head. “More nargles?”
“More chaos,” Astra corrected, eyes gleaming. “Hogwarts is far too predictable. It’s time for a little… wildlife enrichment.”
Luna nodded sagely. “Educational chaos.”
“Exactly.”
And thus, the Great Hogwarts Menagerie Massacre began.
The morning feast was in full swing when it happened. Students were eating, teachers were muttering over their tea, and then out of absolutely nowhere a massive skeletal thestral landed right in the middle of the Slytherin table, sending plates of eggs and sausages flying in all directions.
Screams erupted. Half the hall didn’t even know what they were screaming at, since only those who had seen death could see the creatures.
“What’s happening?!” Seamus Finnigan yelped, looking around wildly.
“There’s something on the table!” Pansy shrieked, clutching Draco, who shoved her off like she was a particularly unpleasant flobberworm.
“Oh, don’t be rude,” Luna said dreamily, offering the thestral a piece of toast. “She’s quite friendly.”
“LUNA WHAT THE HELL,” someone shouted.
Astra, cackling, clutched her stomach. “I didn’t think this through. Half of you can’t even see the damn thing. You must look ridiculous.”
Professor McGonagall stormed forward, looking like she was regretting every career decision that had led to this moment. “Miss Potter. Miss Lovegood. Why is there a thestral in the Great Hall?”
Luna blinked. “She was hungry.”
Astra nodded, dead serious. “Yeah, and the Slytherin table seemed like the best place for a meat-eater.”
Draco, now splattered with pumpkin juice, hissed, “Oh, sod off.”
If the thestrals had been unsettling, the acromantulas were outright traumatic.
It started in the dungeons, where Astra through a method she refused to disclose had smuggled in three of Aragog’s children. The second the Slytherins entered their common room, all hell broke loose.
“OH MY GODS, KILL IT!” someone bellowed.
“BURN THE COMMON ROOM DOWN!” Blaise Zabini shrieked, leaping onto a couch.
Draco, pale as a sheet, climbed onto the nearest table with the speed of a man whose ancestors were whispering survival advice in his ears.
Mattheo and Theodore? Gone. Disappeared. Possibly already halfway to another country.
Astra, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, elbowed Luna. “And they call me dramatic.”
Professor Snape arrived moments later, only to be met with an acromantula crawling over his desk. The noise he made was not quite a scream, but it was also not not a scream.
One flick of his wand and the spiders were blasted backwards, but Astra and Luna were already gone, laughing as they sprinted toward their next target.
By evening, the entire school was on edge.
Hagrid had been way too enthusiastic about Astra and Luna’s “interest in magical creatures” and had happily let them borrow four full-grown hippogriffs for “educational purposes.”
This was a mistake.
Because when the students arrived for dinner that evening, they were not expecting to see Astra and Luna riding hippogriffs straight through the Great Hall.
“Make way! Important business!” Astra called, grinning wildly as she swooped low over the Ravenclaw table, causing books and plates to go flying.
Luna, sitting serenely atop her hippogriff, waved. “We’re patrolling the skies for wrack spurts.”
“WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” Hermione shrieked, looking one second away from catastrophic organ failure.
“EXPELLIARMUS!” Ron bellowed, firing off a spell that did absolutely nothing, because hippogriffs do not hold wands.
Dumbledore, for once, looked mildly surprised but there was unmistakable amusement in his eyes. “Miss Potter… Miss Lovegood… I do hope you plan to return Hagrid’s creatures in one piece?”
“Of course,” Astra said, patting her hippogriff’s side. “After all, they’re not the problem.”
Dumbledore raised a brow. “Oh?”
Astra smirked.
The doors burst open, revealing ten rampaging nifflers, two pygmy dragons, and what appeared to be a very lost manticore.
McGonagall dropped her goblet.
Filch fainted.
Luna clapped her hands together. “Oh, wonderful! I was worried the manticore wouldn’t make it.”
It took four hours, seventeen teachers, and five separate fire-extinguishing spells to return Hogwarts to semi-normalcy.
Astra and Luna sat side by side in McGonagall’s office, looking entirely unbothered as the professor massaged her temples.
“This,” she said tiredly, “is the worst case of student mischief I have seen since the Marauders.”
Astra beamed. “High praise.”
McGonagall glared. “That was not a compliment.”
Luna tilted her head. “We were just helping the students connect with nature.”
“NATURE DOES NOT BELONG IN THE GREAT HALL.”
Dumbledore, sipping tea beside them, smiled. “I must say, Minerva, their creativity is quite remarkable.”
McGonagall inhaled. Exhaled. Then pointed at Astra. “Detention. For a month.”
Astra shrugged. “Worth it.”
Luna nodded. “Absolutely.”
As they left the office, walking side by side, Astra slung an arm around Luna’s shoulders.
“Same time next week?”
Luna grinned. “I was thinking… griffins.”
McGonagall’s distant scream echoed through the castle.