Fairytale

On Monday, September 2nd of 1971, Althea woke up to Lily Evans screeching. She tumbled out of her bed in shock and hit her head on her bedside table. She let out a yelp and then groaned.

"Althea! Are you alright?" Marlene McKinnon asked, leaving a still screaming Lily’s side to tend to Althea, who was laying on the floor in a pained heap of bones.

"Oof," was all Althea replied, as she rubbed the part of her head that had hit the bedside table. "I think I've got a concussion, and I'm 99% sure I will be deaf within the next minute."

Marlene chuckled, but kneeled to check Althea's head regardless. "What happened to your head?"

"Nothing too important," Althea brushed her off, even though her face was still contorted into a pained grimace. "I think a better question would be: why is Evans screaming bloody murder?"

Marlene stole a glance at Lily, who was now jumping up and down on her bed as Mary Macdonald was trying (and failing) to calm her down. "She's claiming she saw some animal here?"

Althea rolled her eyes. "Well, 'course she did. Doesn't Mary have a cat or something?"

"She does, but Lily's saying it was something else," Marlene said, shaking her head. "In fact, she swears it was sitting on her head when she woke up."

By then, Althea's pain had subsided enough that she could sit up from her place on the floor and take a look at a now whimpering Lily. She wore her pale pink nightgown, and... oh, Merlin. A bedazzled sleeping mask. "Crap."

"What?" Marlene asked in confusion.

But Althea didn't answer. Instead, she just jumped to her feet and scoured the room for that familiar ball of shiny grey fur. "Nellie!"

This seemed to attract Mary's and Lily's attention, because Lily stopped whimpering for a moment and she and Mary both turned to look at Althea.

"Who's Nellie?" Mary asked, clearly perplexed.

Althea ignored the question. "Nellie, I swear to Merlin, don't you pull another disappearing act on me!"

"What's she doing?" Marlene mouthed to Mary, but Mary just shrugged her shoulders.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Mary mouthed back to Marlene.

Suddenly, a flurry of movement caught Althea's eye. She saw her little thieving fur-ball trying to climb the red curtains on the windows, holding onto a plastic pink jewel from Lily's bedazzled sleeping mask. She exclaimed, "there you are, you little sneak!"

Then, before any of the girls could understand what was going on, Althea bolted toward the windows, jumped on the windowsill and cupped her hands around the sneaky Niffler. "I've got ya!"

"What's that?" Lily asked in an impossibly high-pitch. There was fear written all over her face. At the sight of the tufts of fur escaping Althea's cupped hands, she cowered even closer to the wall.

"This is Nellie," Althea announced unperturbed, climbing down from the windowsill. "I s'ppose I should've warned you about her... thieving tendencies yesterday, but I didn't think any of you would keep bedazzled stuff around."

"Wait..." Marlene muttered then, understanding dawning on her face. "Nellie - she's a Niffler?!"

"Yup," Althea said, popping the final 'p'. "And a sneaky one, too. She keeps getting away from me. Yesterday on the train she left my pocket and ended up in the boys’ compartment."

"Okay, one thing at a time," Lily said, finally climbing down from her bed. "What's a Niffler? I don't recall seeing it as a pet option on my letter."

"That's because it's not," Marlene stated with a mischievous glint in her eye. "Nifflers are furry little animals that have a penchant for anything shiny: spoons, jewels, coins, you name it. And because they have, as Althea so astutely put it, thieving tendencies, they're not actually allowed at Hogwarts."

"So," Mary finally spoke up, "you mean to say Althea has an illegal pet?"

"Well, not illegal," Althea asserted. "Just... prohibited."

"That's the same thing," Lily scolded her, throwing her a cold gaze and crossing her arms before her chest. "You're breaking school rules."

"Oh, c'mon, Evans, it's not that big a deal," Althea cooed, approaching Lily. She extended her arms forward to show Nellie, who was sitting calmly on her palms, while still holding on to the little pink jewel. "Look! She's harmless!"

"She stepped on my face!" Lily complained, raising a pointed eyebrow.

"Only because your sleeping mask is bedazzled!" Althea countered. "Please, Evans, don't say anything. I promise Nellie won't mess with any of your stuff going forward. I'll make sure of it!"

"How can you be sure of that?" Lily looked quite doubtful. "You said it yourself; she keeps getting away from you."

"Oh, let it go, Lily," Mary interjected.

"What?" Lily asked, looking at Mary as if betrayed.

"I mean, I get that this freaks you out, just as much as it would freak out any other Muggleborn - myself included - but honestly, Nellie doesn't look too threatening," Mary reasoned. She walked to Althea a bit hesitantly and reached out a hand to pet the very quiet Nellie. "So what if she likes shiny things? We all do. That's not a crime."

"But it's against the rules!" Lily insisted.

"Who cares about some stupid rules?" Althea said, but realized immediately that that must have been the wrong thing to say. Lily, who was already a bit wired, turned around and looked at her as if she were crazy, or as if she'd said something terribly foul.

"Stupid rules?" Lily repeated incredulously. "Rules aren't stupid! Rules are what keep every system in place! They're made for a reason: to keep us all safe."

"Are you implying that Nellie is some great threat to your safety?" Althea asked, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

"M-Maybe. I don't know!" Lily exclaimed, though Althea could see a flush of embarrassment tainting her ears. She sighed, "look, my point is that we don't really know much about Nifflers and what they're capable of in the long run."

"Of course we do!" Althea retaliated. "I've lived with Nellie for four years. The most dangerous thing she's ever done is litter in my mum's favorite vase. But I don't see any vases here, so you're pretty safe!"

"Okay, but what if professor McGonagall or headmaster Dumbledore find out about this?" Lily continued.

"First of all, they're not going to find out unless you tell them. And secondly, okay, say they find out, what's the worst that could happen?" Althea explained.

"We'd get detention!" Lily exclaimed, sounding fear-striken. "Or worse - we might be expelled!"

"Are you dense, Evans?" Althea asked, a bit more rudely than she had intended. "You're not going to get expelled for harboring a Niffler. And detentions aren't really that bad."

"Are you dense, Holmes?" Lily returned the question, just as scathingly. "Of course detentions are bad! They go on your permanent record, you know."

"Oh, no! Shiver me timbers! The detentions are going to be on my permanent record!" Althea said mockingly.

"You mock it now, but what are you going to say when it's time to find a job and no one'll hire you because your permanent record is riddled with detentions?!" Lily retorted with a scowl.

"Merlin, you're uptight," Althea mumbled underneath her breath with a roll of her eyes. "That's seven years away! What sort of employer's going to care if I got a couple detentions at school?"

Lily was about to reply, but their argument was interrupted by an irritated Mary, "okay, you're both dense. We haven't even been to our first class yet and you're already discussing employers? Because of what? A little Niffler?"

"Yeah," Marlene agreed. "Mary's right. You're both out of line here. First, Althea you have to respect that Lily might not like having Nellie around, but Lily, you, too, have to loosen up a bit! You don't have to go telling on Althea just because of a little Niffler!"

"I guess you're right," Althea muttered, stroking Nellie's fur.

"'Course I am!" Marlene boasted. "Now, we have to find a middle ground, a compromise - a way with which Lily won't have to see Nellie, and Althea will get to keep Nellie all the same..."

"Oh, I know!" Mary intervened. "Althea, you're friends with those boys, right? James and Sirius and those others?"

"Yeah..." Althea agreed.

"Alright, great, so why don't you ask them to keep Nellie in their dorm?" Mary offered. "That way, Lily won't have to wake up every morning screaming - and waking up the rest of us - and Nellie won't be found out. How's that?"

"That's brilliant!" Marlene cheered, high-fiving Mary. "And I know James. Our parents are friends. He's definitely going to say yes."

"I don't know..." Lily mumbled, uncertain.

"What do you mean you don't know? It's perfect, Lily!" Mary insisted.

"It would still be breaking the rules..."

"Oh, please, Evans," Althea pleaded. "Nellie's the only thing I have to remind me of home! Please, don't let them take her."

Lily appeared to be deliberating Althea's point, but eventually gave in. "Alright, fine. I won't tell. But only because I know what it's like to be homesick!"

Althea was so happy at Lily agreeing that she squealed and engulfed Lily in a tight hug. "Thank Merlin! Thank you, Evans. I knew there was a heart somewhere beneath that rule-abiding nerdy exterior of yours!"

Then, as quickly as she had hugged Lily, Althea jumped away and, still in her pyjamas, exited the girls' dorm. Lily, still a bit shocked from the hug and overwhelmed by the morning's circumstances, yelled after her, "hey! I'm not a nerd!"

But Althea didn't hear her, because she was already bursting into the common room. A bunch of first years and older year kids, who were lounging around or dragging themselves out of the common room to breakfast, turned to look at her weirdly, as if she were some alien species, but she paid them no mind.

Instead, with Nellie still in her hands, she confidently attempted to march over the stairs to where she knew the boys' dorms were. She made it up two or three stairs, when suddenly, she felt the ground beneath her give out, and she tumbled down a... slide? As she fipped down the stairs and fell on a heap at the floor (she was sure that, at this rate, she'd get a concussion by the end of the day), she looked at the stairs and gasped.

The stairs had turned into a slide. Wicked. Her mind was already racing with the possibilities that this presented her with, but she stopped herself before she could get distracted, and remembered the task at hand. She had to get to the boys' dorm. But how exactly was she supposed to do that if the stairs turned into a slide halfway through?

She groaned and just then, a shadow fell over her. She stared up in confusion only to find a boy surely a couple years older than her, looking at her with a perplexed yet simultaneously amused expression.

"Hi there," the boy greeted, clearly trying to restrain himself from laughing.

"Hi," Althea greeted, struggling to get up. She looked at him expectantly and when he did nothing, she added, "y'know, I could use some help here."

"Oh, right, sorry," the boy said in realization and extended his hand for her to take.

Satisfied, she took his hand and lifted herself up, untangling her limbs one by one.

"So," the boy began, "I see the stairs have already claimed a victim this year."

"Oh, yeah," Althea agreed absentmindedly as she dusted off her pyjamas. "I'm just wondering why this wasn't part of the tour last night. I would've appreciated a warning about the stairs turning into slides."

"The prefects tend to skip that part just to see how many firsties will fall for it at the start of every year," the boy explained. "It's a source of entertainment to them."

"Yes, I'm sure my concussion is very entertaining," Althea muttered cheekily.

The boy just chuckled and shook his head. "So, why were you trying to go up the stairs to the boys' dorms, anyway? Wait, you do know these lead to the boys' dorms, right?"

"Yes, I do know that, thank you very much," Althea huffed. "And if you must know, I have to discuss an urgent matter with some of my friends."

"Urgent, you say?"

"Yes, very urgent," Althea nodded. "In fact, it is so urgent that I might just start yelling for them from here."

"That's not a good idea," the boy warned. "If you start yelling, chances are the prefects will hear you before your friends do. And they're really cranky in the mornings."

"Crap," Althea mumbled and hung her head low in disappointment. But then, she got a brilliant idea. Her whole face lit up and she gave the boy a mischievous grin. "Hey, you're a boy."

"Well-spotted," the boy commented blandly with a deadpan expression.

"Then, your dorms must be up these stairs too, right?" Althea continued, undeterred.

"Astute observation, firstie," the boy agreed with that same deadpan look.

"So, that means, you can go up these stairs and tell my friends to come down, can't you?"

The boy looked at her with a hint of amusement this time when he said, "yeah, I s'ppose I could."

"Brilliant! You'll be looking for a James Potter and a Sirius Black. There's a high chance they're in the same dorm with a Peter Pettigrew," she informed him. "When you find their dorm, tell them that if they don't hurry and get themselves down here in the next five minutes, I'll shove their faces down the nearest toilet."

"Woah, hold on there, feisty," the boy commented with a smirk. "I never said I'd do it, did I? I just said that I could."

"Alright, how 'bout this? Do this for me, or I will shove your face down the nearest toilet," Althea threatened.

But the boy didn't really seem to care about her threat. If anything, he didn't find it threatening at all. He found it funny. He broke out into fits of laughter that he'd been holding in ever since he saw her fall down the stairs. "You're funny, firstie. I'll give you that."

"I wasn't joking," Althea clarified, raising an eyebrow.

"Alright, y'know what? I like you, so I'm going to do you this one favor," the boy said fondly. "But then, you'll owe me."

"Fine, whatever. Just go tell them to get down, will you?" Althea conceded.

"I will," the boy nodded, but before he left, he turned around and asked her, "what's your name, by the way?"

"Althea," she informed him off-handedly. "And what's yours?"

"Frank," the boy said in passing as he climbed up the stairs.

Althea watched on, satisfied, as Frank stopped in front of a door and poked his head in. She could faintly hear someone answer the door and then, she could hear Frank tell them something back. She couldn't tell if he was passing on her words exactly, but she frankly didn't care.

Whatever he said, it must have been effective, because not two minutes later, a strangely hyper James (though still in his pyjamas) followed by a very sleepy Sirius came down the stairs.

"Allie?" James asked as soon as he came down the stairs. "What's up? Why couldn't you come up to our room?"

"Bloody stairs turn into a slide when a girl walks on them," Althea grumbled.

"Really? Wicked!" James cheered.

"Yeah, yeah, stairs turn into slide, sounds lovely," Sirius mumbled grumpily. "Now, is there a reason why you had to disturb us at eight in the morning?"

"Yes, actually," Althea told him, ignoring the rude edge to his tone (which was no doubt exacerbated by his lack of sleep).

"What is it, then?" Sirius inquired.

"Well, I uh can't tell you here," Althea said.

"Why not?" James asked.

"Because it has to do with a certain thief," Althea whispered to him, giving him a pointed stare.

"What about Nellie?" James asked loudly this time, attracting some attention.

"Speak louder, would you?!" Althea scolded him.

"Right, sorry," James mumbled an insincere apology. "Well, what about her?"

"Can I come up to your room? I'll tell you there," Althea suggested hastily.

"I'm sorry, didn't we just establish that the stairs won't let girls up to the boys' dorms?" Sirius questioned, looking at her as if she were dense.

"Yeah, but I was holding out hope that at least one of you dimwits would be creative enough to think of some really dumb way to get me up there," Althea fixed him with a glare.

There was silence for a second, but James finally spoke up with an idea, "well, we could carry you up, I guess."

"Carry her?!" Sirius exclaimed, scandalized. "Oh, no, no, no. I'm not carrying anyone anywhere at eight in the morning."

"You'll carry me up there right now, or I will let Nellie loose in your stuff and let her steal anything shiny she finds," Althea threatened.

Unlike Frank, who had seemed unfazed by Althea's threats, Sirius seemed to take her seriously. He grumbled and grudgingly agreed, "alright, fine. But this better be important."

And just like that, James and Sirius grabbed Althea by her armpits (very graceful) and quite literally dragged her up the stairs all the way to their dorm. They pushed the door open and entered first, leaving Althea to come in after them.

What greeted her was an absolute mess. She gasped at the sight. She could hardly believe that the boys had only been there for a night. Their room was already in shambles. There were clothes thrown around on the floor, random socks (missing their pairs) scattered haphazardly here and there, a great number of ties hanging off the bedposts.

"Merlin's underpants, what's happened here?!" Althea exclaimed as soon as she walked in. Her voice startled the other two occupants inside it. The plump mousy boy, Peter, who was leaning over his trunk searching for something, nearly jumped two feet up in the air at the sound of her voice. The frail and scarred Remus Lupin, on the other hand, turned around so fast he could have caught whiplash. His eyes were wide like saucers, and he had the sudden urge to hide behind the curtains on his bed.

"James over here threw all his stuff out of his trunk this morning while trying to find - get this, Allie - his lucky socks," Sirius explained, pointedly.

"Lucky socks? Really, Potter?" Althea deadpanned, entirely unimpressed.

James flushed scarlet, but tried to hide it by scoffing and strutting ahead. "Are you going to sit there and criticize me or are you finally going to tell us what the problem is with Nellie?"

At that, Althea seemed to remember the reason she'd gone there to begin with. "Oh, yeah, that. Well, princess Evans apparently thinks Nifflers are dangerous."

"Evans?" James asked. "Who's Evans?"

"That girl with the red hair that tried to scold me for jumping in the lake yesterday," Althea explained briefly and watched as James' eyes lit with recognition.

"Oh, yeah, I remember her. Real buzzkill that one, isn't she?" James commented.

"You can say that again," Althea said sourly. "Well, apparently, Princess Evans sleeps with a bedazzled sleeping mask and Nellie tried to grap one of the jewels off her sleeping mask this morning. Then, our little princess woke up to Nellie lounging around on her head and started screaming bloody murder. When she learnt that Nellie's a Niffler and that Nifflers are prohibited here, she lost her mind. She threatened to tell McGonagall, for Merlin's sake!"

"Merlin!" Sirius exclaimed, now looking more lively than before. "She sounds mental!"

"She is," Althea agreed. "We started arguing and then she went on a long tangent about how getting detention apparently stays on your permanent record and will make it harder for you to find a job later?"

"Oh, she's more than mental. She's barking mad," James laughed out.

"Yeah, well, the other girls in the dorm got really upset with our fighting and they made us compromise," Althea explained. "Lily won't tell on Nellie, but I have to keep her out of the dorm."

"So, you mean -" James started, catching on.

"Where do you guys stand on harboring a fugitive Niffler in your dorm?" Althea asked hopefully.

"A Niffler?" Peter suddenly asked, looking terrified.

"Yes, Pete, a Niffler," Althea deadpanned. "That a problem?"

"N-No, but Nifflers are -" Peter began, but Althea cut him off.

"Sweet, fluffy fur-balls?" Althea suggested, raising an eyebrow.

Before Peter could reply, James intervened. "Yeah, sure, I s'ppose we can keep him if that's alright with everyone. I mean, I know, Sirius, Pete and I are in. What about you, Lupin?"

Remus, who had been doing valiant efforts to ignore Althea's intrusion, raised his head at the sound of his name. "Huh?"

"Would you mind having a Niffler around?"

"I guess not," Remus said, though a tad uncertainly.

"Brilliant!" James exclaimed once he'd gotten approval. "It's settled, then! We'll be glad to co-parent your Niffler, Allie."

"Hey! You're not co-parenting her, okay? This is more like babysitting," Althea corrected. "I'm her mother."

"A bit possessive, aren't ya?" Sirius teased.

"You guys can be uncles if you want," Althea stated, ignoring Sirius' teasing.

"Excellent! Uncles it is!" James cheered, taking Nellie out of Althea's hands. "Heya, Nellie! You'll be staying with Uncle James, now!"

"And Uncle Sirius!" Sirius added hurriedly.

"Great! You guys are the best!" Althea cheered, flinging her arms around James' neck excitedly.

Her hug caught James very off-guard. His eyes widened and he stumbled backwards at the sudden contact. So stunned he was that it took him a beat or two to reciprocate the gesture.

"Don't I get a hug?" Sirius asked teasingly, wiggling his eyebrows at Althea once she pulled away from her hug with James.

"No. I don't hug grumpy gits," Althea mocked, sticking her tongue out at him.

"I'm not grumpy!" Sirius retaliated, but he bit his tongue when he noticed the accusatory look that James was giving him.

"Mate..." James muttered.

"What?!" Sirius demanded, now completely energized. "I'm not grumpy at all! See?" He said as his lips broke out into an over-exaggerated smile. "Totally happy and energetic!"

But James wasn't convinced. He gave Sirius a monotonous look and crossed his arms before his chest, "you threatened to throw me down the stairs just twenty minutes ago."

"Because you were throwing everything around to find your lucky socks!" Sirius exclaimed, still with that idiotic over-exaggerated smile on his face. "Your bloody underwear landed in my face. You almost suffocated me!"

"Okay, wow, that's... way too much information for eight in the morning," Althea commented, looking very taken aback. "This conversation has obviously taken a very weird tangent that I do not want to listen to any longer, so uh, I think I'll go back to my dorm and see you boys at breakfast, yeah?"

"No, Allie! Don't abandon me with the weird smiling lunatic!" James cried out comically, grasping at Althea's hand in desperation.

"Aww, ickle Jamie, don't be scared," Althea teased him back. "You have Pete and Remus to protect you. And Nellie, too."

James whipped his head around immediately to throw Remus and Peter a pleading look just as Althea slipped out of his grasp and out of their dorm altogether. The last thing she saw before she closed the door was Nellie leaping onto James' bed and Sirius wrestling poor James to the ground.

Stifling her giggles again, Althea made her way down the stairs (or rather, slid down them) of the boys' dorms and out into the common room. To her utter surprise, Frank was still lingering around at the bottom of the stairs, as if waiting for her - only this time, he wasn't alone. Next to him stood a pretty girl with wavy dark brown hair tied up with a red bow.

"Heya, Frank," Althea greeted again, getting up off the floor and dusting off her pyjamas. "Who's this?"

"This is my..." Frank paused as a red blush coated his cheeks, "...friend, Alice. Alice, this is Althea, the firstie I told you about."

"It's nice to meet you, Althea," Alice smiled kindly.

Althea first eyed Frank, whose cheeks were still a faint shade of red, and then turned to Alice to return the smile. "It's nice to meet you, too! Oh, and you're really pretty! Isn't she really pretty, Frank?"

If Frank's face had been red before, it went completely crimson now. His blush was so strong that it actually matched his uniform. His eyes were wider than Althea had ever seen them and it almost looked like he was sweating. He did his very best to avoid Alice's shy, but evidently flushed, face by taking a sudden interest in his shoes as he attempted to cough out an answer. "Uh- S-She's, she's alright- I-I mean, she's more than alright! She's- She's definitely not bad-looking, but not- But no, I mean, yeah, she's- she's... pretty."

Alice looked absolutely overjoyed at his answer. Her smile got three times bigger and ten times more bashful and her eyes glowed brighter than the morning sun. In a (futile) attempt to hide the flush creeping up her own cheeks, she hung her head low and fiddled with her hands. "T-Thanks, Althea."

"No problem!" Althea said kindly, looking directly at Frank with all the mischief in the world inside her eyes. "So, what are you and your pretty friend Alice doing here, Frank? I mean, I'm new to the whole Hogwarts daily routine, but shouldn't you be at breakfast?"

"We should," Frank agreed, finally regaining his composure. "And so should you."

"That's why we're still here," Alice clarified. "The castle is a bit confusing and most firsties have a hard time finding the Great Hall at first. Frank thought that, if you want, we could take you and your friends to breakfast?"

"Really? That would actually be great!" Althea cheered, clapping her hands together excitedly. Jumping energetically on the balls of her feet, she smiled and added, "wait here! I'll be back in, like, ten minutes!"

And without waiting for a response, she bolted up the stairs.