Disclaimer: Not mine, mine, not mine, mine... HP fits into the first one, I can tell you.

Challenge Name: Characters and Prompts challenge

Issuer: xCyaniide

Where?: Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum

Challenge: Pick a Character number and a Prompt number and write something with them. My character was George Weasley and my prompt was A scary encounter with a Professor.

A/N: As you can see, the above pairing of character and prompt had a large number of possibilities. Not sure why my muse chose to write it like this, but that's what happened. My main hope is that the characters - particularly George - are in character, but I'd love to hear any comments you may have to say about it. Constructive criticism is as welcome as any comment you have to give me, but I do hope you enjoy~ (Also, I apologise if there is a missing linebreak at the start of it. The formatting on this site is not working for me at all - it's all sort of gone crazy and I'm experiencing a lot of problems.)

-a-

George put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes; it had been a long day at work. Things going wrong all over the place, stock missing, attempted shop lift, sick assistants and not a smile all round. Not good. Business wasn't good when he didn't smile - experience had already taught him that, and today it had given him a painful, pointy and altogether stressful reminder.

He half-expected Angelina to be there with a cup of tea and warm hands when he came in, but she wasn't. George wasn't inclined to argue, but Angelina could be a bit... fiery when stressed. And he was stressed out, too, so they'd agreed it was best that she stay away for a few days, until they could both calm down.

It was the little things that could really break you, when you were this worked up by everything.

Things had just been going wrong lately.

"Daddy?" asked a small voice from the other side of the room; his head snapped up to see his daughter Roxanne standing in the doorway, looking hesitant to approach him. As soon as their eyes met, however, Roxanne rushed towards him, clearly very upset. "Daddy, Fred said I'm ugly!"

Great.

"You're not ugly, sweetheart. You're not ugly at all," he reassured her, slowly stroking her hair, something which she loved. "In fact," he continued, "you're beautiful."

She seemed unwilling to be comforted - an insecure child, no matter what anyone told her - but at the same time very pleased at what he had said. "...But, if I am, why would Fred say I'm not?" she asked. "He's older, so he knows everything."

George suddenly found it easier to smile. "Is that would he told you?"

Roxanne nodded, a little confused by the looks of it. "He knew that Mummy was going to... was going to l-leave... before she d-did..."

Her lip wobbled (adorable in other circumstances) and he had to resist the temptation to sigh. It seemed that Fred had been listening at doors again, but now was not the time to mention that. He had to put this in such a way that she would understand and not judge either of her parents for the decisions they had to make.

"Roxanne," he began seriously, "we've already explained this. Mummy is just staying away for a few days; she'll be back quicker than you know it."

He tilted her chin up from its distinctly downwards position, gently making her look at him. "There's nothing to worry about. We love each other a lot and we love you and Fred too, so neither of us would ever leave you. This is why Mummy is staying away for a little while; when you love a person, sometimes you can really get on their nerves. Being a grown-up is when you can recognise when it's better to leave things alone for a bit - but only for a bit."

He tickled her chin and she giggled. "You and Fred do it, too, you know. He's horrible to you sometimes but you love him, right?"

Still smiling, she nodded. "Right!"

"Aww, thanks, Roxy," said Fred as he wandered in, eating a banana.

"He listens at doors, you see," George told Roxanne. "It's not that he knows everything because he's older - he just takes the initiative."

Roxanne's eyes widened and she whirled around. "Fre-ed!" she whined. "You lied to me!"

Keeping his face straight, George said, "I think you should apologise to your sister, Fred."

Fred shuffled his feet guiltily. "I'm sorry for lying to you, Roxy," he mumbled eventually.

George grinned. "I meant that I thought you should apologise for calling her ugly, actually." He looked back at Roxanne, then at Fred again. "If you think she's ugly, then you never met my professors at Hogwarts," he said, feeling a story coming on.

Evidently they felt it, too. Fred came in closer and sat beside Roxanne; Roxanne, meanwhile, looked at him eagerly. "Who was the ugliest of them all?" she asked.

"Well, Flitwick the Charms Professor was part goblin, McGonagall taught Transfiguration and she was old, and Dumbledore the Headmaster was even older."

Roxanne gasped. "But Dumbledore was a great wizard!"

"He was still old," deadpanned George. "You're only truly great when you are."

They both looked queasy.

"All the other professors were ugly, too, but the ugliest of them all was the Potions professor. He had greasy hair and a large, hooked nose. He dressed about two-hundred years out of date. And he was mean, the meanest git you ever could meet."

"Professor Snape?" asked Fred, frowning with the struggle to remember the name.

"Uh-huh."

"Didn't Uncle Harry name one of his children after him?"

George cursed inwardly. Why had Harry had to do that? It ruined every Snape story he had in his repertoire. Hence why he tended to save them up for only when he really needed them. And when Harry wasn't around to champion Snape's virtue.

"Put that banana skin in the bin, young man," George ordered, trying to avoid the awkward question. He could always tell them that Uncle Harry was just a bit weird, but he had a funny feeling Angelina wouldn't like that. Children had this embarrassing tendency to repeat things they shouldn't, even when you told them to keep them a secret.

"Funny thing about banana skins, though," began George once Fred had settled down again, "is that they have this tendency of messing up potions."

Fred looked interestedly at the bin just a few steps away in a manner which he seemed to think was subtle.

"And the funny thing about Professor Snape is that he really didn't like it when people messed up their potions."

George could swear he heard his twin say, "And he especially hated it when we messed them up", but that happened sometimes. It was just an echo of a time when he didn't have to tell anecdotes on his own. Angelina sometimes helped, but it wasn't quite the same, and she wasn't here right now. His fault, partly, because he griped a lot when he was stressed... but he didn't want to think about that. Not when he was telling a story and trying to tell it well.

It was a little nerve-wracking, having to do this without someone to bounce back and forth with. Luckily, his children knew the routine better than he thought they did. Sometimes he didn't give them enough credit.

"People?" asked the Fred of now. "Like who?"

"People who wished to remain anonymous, if they didn't want to spend more time with Snape in a detention that lasted hours and hours and involved lots of slime and dead creatures. Not to mention, house points would be taken off, which is bad."

George liked to think that he encouraged in his children a respect for the rules and what breaking them would mean for them... if they were caught.

"So..." mused Fred, "do you know what kind of people were involved?"

"I know a few of them," responded George with a wink, "and, let me tell you, they had a fair few nasty encounters with the greasy-haired git that they would quite like to forget.

"There was one particularly scary time - or so I have heard - in these... people's first year, when they didn't know enough to make disrupting someone's potion-brewing look accidental.

"It happened like this."

Dramatic pauses were fun.

"Like what?" Roxanne squirmed around. "What happened?"

Very fun.

"Dad!" Fred moaned.

"As I know it, it was just a normal Potions lesson. All was quiet as they brewed the boil curing potion, but two particular students had different ideas about what they were making.

"You see, they didn't want to cure boils, but to cause them."

"Why would they do that?" said Roxanne. "Surely they wouldn't want boils?"

"No," agreed George, "they didn't. But they thought it might be funny if Snape were to have boils."

"But he was already ugly enough!" interjected Roxanne again, sounding to anyone like she had actually met him and knew what she was talking about.

Fred shushed her. "Obviously, they did it to make him even uglier."

Roxanne shushed him back and stared resolutely at George - something that he knew she would do until she got an answer. Like her mother, that one.

George gave her one: "Actually, Severus Snape was so ugly they figured boils would greatly improve his appearance.

"But if I may continue?"

They shut their mouths and sat up, eyes begging him to continue (adorable).

"They timed it just right, they did. The students were all looking at their cauldrons, Snape was marking essays and there was a haze around the room that made it harder to see.

"So what went wrong? At the time, they were just ickle firsties who didn't know enough about potions. Many of the ingredients they put into their neighbour's cauldron that day were just thrown in at random to see what happened. The problem is, that's very dangerous. The resulting explosion was bigger than they expected it to be and caused a lot of mess - but not only that, they slipped up elsewhere, too.

"For one thing, they shouldn't have used the cauldron right next to them. No one would throw such unrelated ingredients into a potion by accident, and no one would deliberately blow up their own cauldron, so it logically went that they were the ones who had done it.

"Snape had a grudge against them, too, which didn't help. But that's a story for another day."

"Did you and Uncle Fred put the banana skin in the cauldron?" asked Fred, looking at the bin again.

"Ah, now, who said it was me and Fred?" replied George, looking hurt. "We were never ickle or stupid, for one thing. We came into school at second year with all the knowledge of fifth years."

"You did not," accused Roxanne.

"We did too," retorted George, sinking to her level quite deliberately. "And we were the best pranksters in the school from the very beginning, no work needed."

"You're lying!" accused Fred, glaring. "How come you can do that and I can't?"

"You doubt my story?" whined George. "Well, if you don't believe me, then I don't see why I should tell you the rest..."

He let them beg and plead and flatter him a little before caving in and continuing. "The two newbie pranksters slipped up somewhere else, too, and I mean literally. They didn't put the banana skin into the cauldron because they dropped it, and in the ensuing time... forgot.

"I'm sure you can imagine for yourselves what happened next."

George was starting to feel his fatigue again, but luckily there wasn't much of the story left to tell. "There was complete chaos for about a minute, but then Snape descended like the greasy, ugly bat he was and interrupted the pranksters' chaos mongering.

"You see, there is one thing I haven't mentioned about Severus Snape."

Dramatic pause.

"He had no sense of fun."

They both looked queasy.

"Now Snape, he caught them, and I won't lie: the time afterwards made the whole thing seem completely pointless. As they made the boil curing potion in detention - which had to be made to perfection or else the boils Snape had given them would never come off - they doubted their dreams and themselves. Was pranking worth all this? Could they ever get away with rule-breaking at Hogwarts and become legends in their own right?

"It all seemed so hopeless."

Roxanne stared. "Did Professor Snape really make them do that?"

"Yep. But do you know what? After it was all over and the boils were gone, the two pranksters soon got back into the swing of things. They decided not to let this one incident stop them from becoming legends, and to learn from their failures."

"...And - and did they become legends?" asked Fred quietly.

George nodded solemnly. "They did."

Fred grinned. "Thanks, Dad," he said, fidgeting.

George mock-sighed. "...Yes, Fred, you can go now. Go play for a while while I make dinner," he said, noticing his son's restlessness. Neither of his children could keep still for long periods of time. He liked telling stories because it brought them all together, but he knew it couldn't be like this forever.

Fred jumped up and raced out; Roxanne shouted after him to wait and that she wanted to come, too, but he didn't reply.

George stopped her from leaving with a gentle call of her name. "Could you take the bin out and empty it into the kitchen one, please? I'll be there in a sec."

Roxanne looked down at the bin and said, "Um, okay, but how do I...?"

"You've seen me do it, haven't you? Use your initiative. I know you can," he said with a wink and a very deliberate look at the banana skin at the top of the rubbish in the bin.

Her eyes widened as she looked down, too. "Okay, Daddy!" she exclaimed, grinning and practically tearing off with it.

George waited for around a minute and then went off to the kitchen himself. When he got there he found a lot of rubbish on the floor, as though Roxy had attempted to empty the bin but hadn't quite managed it. When he'd cleaned it all up he could ascertain that the banana skin was nowhere to be found.

...

Merlin, he loved his children. Funny anecdotes about his life hadn't stopped when Fred died. As long as they were here, he'd have many other stories to tell.