A fusion with Harry Potter because why not.

Pairings: Sephiroth/Cloud, Zack/Aeris.
Rating: PG-13 for some mild language and innuendo.

Includes a reference to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall."

History of the Chocobo Wars

jukeboxhound

"Not a word."

"I didn't say anything," Sephiroth replied serenely.

Cloud shot him a suspicious look when he finally settled into his chair, blushing a little when a small bit of chocobo fluff drifted towards the staff table. The House tables were far enough away that the students never noticed.

"Some excitement in the stables?"

"It wasn't because of the chocobos," Cloud muttered.

Sephiroth paused in the middle of reaching for a bowl of mashed potatoes to sweep his gaze up and down the staff table. "I suppose it has to do with the reason Professor Fair isn't currently present."

"You suppose correctly," Cloud said darkly. He accepted the bowl of mashed potatoes with good grace, however. "There were students around."

"Ah," Sephiroth said noncommittally. Zack must have ambushed Cloud just after Cloud's class ended, then. "Are you all right?"

"Brace yourself." Cloud's eyes glittered. "Winter is coming."

"It's April."

"Oh, shut up."

…

A small crowd of students plus Professor Lockhart, Professor Kisaragi, and Madame Gainsborough were milling around one of the windows of the fourth floor corridor overlooking the grounds. Sephiroth slowed, thought for a moment, then headed over to join them, ignoring the students that practically tripped over themselves to get out his way.

"Is the headmaster indulging one of his, ah, eccentricities?"

"Better," said Aeris cheerfully, grinning. Tifa was blushing slightly beside her. Sephiroth followed their line of sight towards the far edge of the grounds where the chocobo stables sat.

"How many times is that this week?"

"Three."

Sephiroth gave Aeris a sidelong glance. "You sound quite pleased."

"Two fit, attractive men are wrestling in the dirt in plain view, no doubt getting very sweaty and dirty. A galleon says that Zack finds a way to lose his shirt in the next two minutes."

"Madame Gainsborough!" Tifa scolded her.

"What? You don't need to be a seer to know that."

"Got it!" crowed Yuffie, scribbling something in a small, battered notebook. "You want the odds?"

Tifa said to Aeris, "There are children present."

Aeris turned around and said to the small gaggle of teenagers, "You heard her, children. Shoo."

"But Madame Gainsborough!"

"Aww!"

"Aww," Yuffie echoed, "I haven't finished taking all the bets!"

"Bets on what?" Sephiroth asked, curious despite himself. Yuffie flipped back through her notebook expertly.

"Uh, let's see, we've got 'who comes out on top,' both literally and colloquially. We've also got 'first one to yell the other's name' – it was Cloud, by the way, I think Zack got in a grope somehow – "

"And he didn't invite me?" Aeris sounded honestly disappointed. Tifa immediately turned to the students and commanded, "All of you, get to your classes!"

"But it's almost dinnertime, we don't have any more classes," said a sixth-year Hufflepuff.

"Then go somewhere that isn't where someone can legitimately find a way to bring up a sexual harassment lawsuit on voyeurism against you."

"Your time in America certainly shows on occasion," Sephiroth observed while the students meandered off with disappointed grumbling.

"So does your pureblood upbringing," Tifa said, dry as an Arizona summer, "but I always felt it was more polite not to comment on the blind elitism or arrogance."

"Oh snap," Yuffie said.

"Oh my," Aeris said, and everyone quickly looked out just in time to see Zack's muggle shirt go flying.

Yuffie pulled out a pocketwatch that appeared to be the terrifying offspring of a clock and a shuriken and sighed with disappointment. "One minute and fifty-three seconds. Merlin's balls."

"Merlin's balls," Aeris said dreamily, "or Zack's abs?"

"Zack's abs, or Cloud's?" Sephiroth said without thinking, which he never did except, apparently, when Cloud's shirt – he'd always claimed that it was easier to wrangle creatures in muggle clothes rather than robes – also came off and took Sephiroth's self-restraint with it.

Sephiroth, Aeris, and Tifa stood in silence for a moment while Yuffie counted up the bets in her book. Then Tifa said, "Why not both?"

"Both. Both is good," Aeris agreed, whose higher-level thinking had gone the way of Cloud's shirt and Sephiroth's self-restraint.

"Are you guys still watching them?" Yuffie huffed. "We've got better shit to do."

"Like preparing lesson plans for tomorrow?" Sephiroth asked sardonically.

Yuffie rolled her eyes, but then, she was only a few years older than the seventh-years. "Like money."

Sephiroth, Aeris, and Tifa didn't respond, so eventually Yuffie threw her arms in the air, said "Adults!" with the kind of disgust usually reserved for Zack's more interesting Herbology projects, and wandered off towards the dungeons to go poke at Vincent. The other three didn't notice her leaving, mostly because Zack had managed to pin Cloud by sitting on him and twisting an arm.

"The fuck's going on here?"

Sephiroth pretended not to have heard Professor Wallace thundering down the corridor. Aeris said brightly, "Hi, Barret, we're indulging in a homoerotic display thinly veiled as an innocently boyish wrestling match between two best friends."

The heavy footsteps sped up a bit and continued right on down the hallway.

"He was blushing," Aeris stage-whispered to Tifa. "Wasn't there a rumor of him kinda-sorta asking Cloud out?"

"Cloud still isn't sure if Wallace was asking him out or ranting."

Aeris' smile widened in Sephiroth's direction. "Is that why you always turn into ice when he's around?"

"Are you jealous?" Tifa asked, surprised and amused.

Sephiroth stepped back from the window and headed in the direction opposite of Wallace, calling out, "Excuse me, but I must go collect Cloud and ensure he's presentable in time for dinner."

"I know you guys haven't been dating very long, but you do realize that he's, like, head-over-heels for you, right?" To her credit, Tifa sounded more serious.

Sephiroth ignored her. He had a Care of Magical Creatures professor to track down, clean up, dirty all over, and then clean up again before dinner. As he walked away, he heard Aeris suddenly exclaim, "Hey, where did all my crystals go? They were in my pocket just a few minutes ago!"

…

Sephiroth and Cloud showed up twenty minutes late to dinner.

…

Sephiroth was marking up his seventh-year Arithmancy students' essays when the wards on his office door starting hissing like angry cats. "No, Zack," he called out.

It took a few moments for Zack to dismantle the wards without appearing to notice how they'd made his hair even spikier than usual and open the door. "You know, one of these days I'm going to want to ask you something and you'll regret saying 'no' without even letting me talk."

"Stranger things have happened," Sephiroth allowed. "I hear Professor Valentine actually smiled in class the other day. One of the students was taken to the Hospital Wing for shock."

"Oh, fuck off," Zack retorted cheerfully. He kicked the door shut quickly, avoiding the set of ghostly jaws that snapped at his foot, and meandered over to drop into the chair in front of Sephiroth's desk. The thick stack of parchment rolls earned a moue of disgust.

"What do you want?" Sephiroth asked without looking up.

"Treacle pudding," was the immediate reply, and Sephiroth, still distracted, said, "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"

When the silence lasted longer than half a second, Sephiroth blinked and realized Zack was staring at him gleefully. "What?"

"You made an obscure muggle music reference, holy shit, Sephiroth."

Sephiroth let the essay he was marking roll back up with a snap and sniffed. "Hardly."

"No way, Pureblood, let me enjoy this moment."

"What do you want, Zack?"

"Well, originally I just wanted to say 'hello,' but now I want to know what Cloud's been making you listen to when I'm not around."

"Mostly long enumerations of all your faults. It usually takes the whole evening."

"Ha-fucking-ha, Sephiroth."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "You think I'm lying?"

"I think that you are grossly misrepresenting Cloud's love for me. It's gotta take at least half the night."

"I will never understand the relationship between you two, and I thank Jenova for it," Sephiroth muttered, then winced, because if he'd just slipped up around anyone else he would've found himself facing the business end of a wand. Zack just raised an eyebrow right back as though to say, Wow, that was stupid of you, and let it go.

"Actually, I've been thinking about a combined lesson between Herbology and Magical Creatures, and get that look off your face, I haven't been crossbreeding anything illegal or whatever."

"You do remember what happened when you tried to smuggle in a Touch Me, yes?"

"Okay, yes, and you practically swore an Unbreakable Vow not to tell anyone about that, Sephiroth, oh my gods."

"The headmaster has banned all flora and fauna from Gongaga for a reason."

"He's a city boy, Sephiroth, anything larger than a flobberworm is going to make him shit his very fashionable pants," Zack said bluntly. "This thing isn't from Gongaga, anyway, and stop trying to distract or ignore me, I know those essays are boring you to tears."

Sephiroth set down his quill with a sigh and leaned back in his chair, silently admitting that Zack was right. "Fine. What's your idea?"

"A malboro."

Sephiroth gave him a long, unblinking stare, then took up his quill again as one of the wards reached out a great transparent hand that would pick Zack up and deposit him unceremoniously in the corridor. Zack ducked its grasping fingers and cried, "Wait, wait, hear me out!"

The ward retreated a little. "It'd only be for the sixth- and seventh-years. We're halfway through the year, we've gotta step up their game, and if we combine our classes, then Cloud and I will both be there to keep an eye on everything."

"What am I keeping an eye on?"

Zack twitched, wand slipping reflexively into his hand, but it was just Cloud, who had permanent access to Sephiroth's wards and so didn't need to worry about opening the door without permission. His eyes moved from Zack to Sephiroth to Zack again, narrowing suspiciously. "You look like you stuck a fork in a socket."

When Zack grumbled good-naturedly, Sephiroth wondered, not the first time, if it might actually be worth looking at the Muggle Studies curriculum, just to understand what they were talking about half the time. "Zack is proposing a joint lesson between your classes about malboros."

"This is a theoretical lesson, right? Because a practical one would be a really stupid, really dangerous idea."

"Well," Zack hedged, and Cloud gave him a glare that tried for disapproval and ended up as reluctant interest. Sephiroth started making a list of all the healing potions he might have to request from Vincent. "Just for the sixth- and seventh-year students, Cloud. We've got that corral where we kept the runespoors last year, and if you and I are both there, then we've not only got supervision from two professors but also two ex-Aurors. What could go wrong?"

"Now that you've said that, just about anything," Cloud growled, "and I was a trainee, not an Auror," but the reluctant interest was turning into excitement, and Sephiroth knew both men too well to think that any protests he made at this point would make a single lick of difference.

"Cloud," Zack went on solemnly, "when I told the students about that malboro you and I took care of by the Northern Crater, they laughed in disbelief."

When Sephiroth saw Cloud's face, he just sighed and reminded him, "If you die, I'm not feeding the chocobos."

…

To be fair, the lesson went well until about ten minutes before the end, and most of it was Reno's fault. No one really knew how it was Reno's fault, only that he'd sauntered down from the castle – probably after dismissing his Muggle Studies class early, assuming he'd bothered to show up for his own class at all – and a few moments later there'd been an explosive bang that shattered the corral's padlock, which the malboro took as permission to start flailing around and trying to breathe poisonous gas at the screaming students. The students' professors, fortunately, were both stupidly brave and quick-footed, so by the time the miasma had been trapped in a giant bubble and the malboro itself frozen into a grotesque statue, the only casualty was a student who stumbled off to the side and vomited up what seemed like a week's worth of dinner.

"Okay, so maybe that could've gone better," Zack said. "But hey, no one died!"

Not even Sephiroth could compete with Rufus ShinRa's ability to appear cold, condescending, and amused all at once. Sephiroth wasn't even entirely sure why he was in the headmaster's office, but he supposed it had something to do with the fact that his best friend and his lover were the ones praying they weren't about to get sacked. Reno yawned and slouched unconcernedly in his chair.

"Young Mr Macklethorpe's father is threatening to sue," Rufus said mildly.

"Young Mr Macklethorpe is just mad that he was the only one puking up his guts," Reno snickered.

"Aeris got young Mr Macklethorpe to stop almost immediately," Zack added.

"The point remains that it should not have happened at all," Rufus reminded them.

"Oops," Cloud deadpanned.

Ultimately, Cloud and Zack were assigned supervision of all the detentions they could fit in for the next two weeks, even those handed out by other professors. This meant that Cloud would come back to their quarters late in the evening with a scowl and Sephiroth had the onerous task of coaxing a smile out of him (or an orgasm. Semantics). Cloud was stubbornly patient enough to put up with the students, but every other day or so, Zack would appear in Sephiroth's office to complain. "Can't you do something about your Ravenclaws," he'd beg, and when Sephiroth asked why, he explained, "They think they know everything. Do you realize how annoying it is when a fourteen-year-old tries to explain your job to you?"

"I'm the head of a House to which more than seventy of said students belong."

"Yeah, but you grew up with Genesis. You're used to it, like someone who gets injected with snake venom over a long period of time to build up an immunity."

"I'll be sure to tell Professor Valentine you said that about his House."

"That's not what I meant and you know it, you jerk."

The two weeks might have passed without incident if two different detentions hadn't accidentally been assigned to the same task and Cloud and Zack ended up competing to see which group of students could clean the most chocobo stalls. When those students returned to their respective common rooms, a number of their respective housemates went to their respective Heads to complain about the reek of chocobo dung that now clung to the common rooms. Cloud and Zack themselves ended up having to clean, by hand, the set of dungeons that hadn't seen a scrub brush since some students had thought it would be a great idea to set off a small mountain of dungbombs over twenty years ago.

"But we're teachers!" Zack protested.

"A fact that I regret every day of my life," said Rufus serenely.

Fortunately, no one was there to see them start a fight with buckets of cold water.

…

Sephiroth and Tifa were taking tea in Tifa's office, explaining to one another why their House was inherently superior to the other's, when Cloud strode past the open door in green camo trousers and a black sleeveless shirt. He didn't acknowledge them, didn't even look over at them, and so he didn't see their expressions when they realized he had painted his face in various shades of camouflage-green. Several dungbombs were hanging from his belt like grenades, and a muggle water gun filled with something that probably wasn't water was strapped to his back, and a bandolier of assorted Zonko's products was wrapped around his solidly-muscled chest.

The thread of their longstanding war of passive-aggressive insults was lost as Sephiroth and Tifa watched Cloud prowl past the door and out of sight again. They sat in silence until Tifa started rummaging around the bottom drawer of her desk. "I think I've still got some firewhisky in here somewhere."

Sephiroth held out his teacup. "Thank you."

…

Students were, ideally, supposed to grow in their education as time passed, but Sephiroth could swear that they were actually getting more stupid. Every parchment was a mess of grammatical errors and logical fallacies and half-hearted bullshit attempting to cover up the fact that no one bothered to read the assigned material at all.

"Sephiroth?" Cloud asked, and the parchment roll currently dripping with red ink under Sephiroth's quill promptly burst into flames. Cloud swiftly put it out with a flick of his wand and stared worriedly at Sephiroth, who hadn't done anything more than just sit back and glare.

"Yes, Cloud?"

He was aware of Cloud glancing towards the door to their shared quarters to make sure it was locked and warded before taking a few steps towards the couch. "Are you all right?"

"I'm quite well, thank you."

"Yes, because you normally set students' work on fire with accidental magic."

Sephiroth stiffened and reached for another scroll. "I have quite a few papers to grade, so if you'll excuse me – "

Cloud leaned over the coffee table and gently covered Sephiroth's hand with his own before he could pick up the scroll. A long, reddened scrape still marred the back of Cloud's hand where the wrestling with Zack had gotten too close to the rough wood of the stables. "What's wrong?"

"There are times I wonder if there's a point at which a student begins accruing an intellectual debt. It's the only explanation for why one of them might claim that the quadratic formula cannot pinpoint identical moments in time on either side of the present because it's a univariate when clearly – "

"Sephiroth," Cloud interrupted gently, ignoring the Ravenclaw chatter that could and would make people start crying.

"It's nothing," Sephiroth said more quietly, "I'm being entirely unreasonable."

"Well, it's been known to happen, but why don't you let me be the judge of that." Cloud pushed aside all the scrolls with his free hand, toppling some of them right onto the floor, and wiggled his way around Sephiroth's bent knees so that he could sit on the coffee table with his legs bracketing Sephiroth's. "What's wrong?"

Cloud's eyes were the kind of big and blue that made idiots on the Wizarding Wireless squeal and Dark wizards forget that his wand knew how to fuck their shit up. Whatever his father had once claimed, Sephiroth was only human and couldn't lie to save his life when they were looking at him like that. "Your ongoing war with Zack has been rather…high-leveled these last few weeks."

"Aah." Cloud tilted his head and studied Sephiroth for a good long moment, giving the highly-uncomfortable impression of Legilimency even though Sephiroth, an accomplished Occlumens, knew Cloud was so bad at it he was practically an anti-Legilimens. "Y'know," he eventually murmured, "after that whole mess with the malboro, I need to redo some of my lesson plans. Scoot over so I can sit on the couch, too, it's gonna take a while and I don't want my ass to get numb sitting at the desk."

Sephiroth obediently scooted and silently waited as Cloud kicked off his boots, grabbed a stack of parchment and another quill, and plopped down onto the couch beside him. As Sephiroth picked up the scrolls and Cloud got himself sorted, Cloud said casually, "I guess I've been spending a lot of time hunting Zack lately, huh."

Sephiroth made a noncommittal noise.

"I love you, y'know."

A few minutes passed with rustling parchment and the scratching of quills before Sephiroth noticed the soft tugs on his hair that came from the finger-combing that Cloud was absently providing, and the rest of the tension in Sephiroth's body floated away like wish-filled dandelion clocks.

…

Sephiroth sat at Zack's bedside in the Hospital Wing and listened to his whining without sympathy.

"Aren't you listening?" Zack whined.

"No." Sephiroth turned another page in his theoretical mathematics periodical.

"You don't love me," he whined some more.

"No."

Zack lifted the arm he'd thrown dramatically over his face, which was flashing colors like someone had implanted muggle fairy lights under his skin, and squinted at him. "Was that a 'no, I don't,' or a 'no, I do'?"

Sephiroth hummed thoughtfully over one of the propositions in Dr. Estheim's latest premise. Zack muttered Ravenclaws like it was a synonym for filth, lies, and deceit.

Aeris came bustling out of her office with a bubbling chalice in one hand and an odd expression that couldn't decide if it wanted to settle on irritated or impressed. "I don't know exactly what Cloud did, but whatever it was, you're lucky you didn't lose your eyebrows permanently."

"You would still love me even if I didn't have eyebrows, right?"

"I have eight reasons to love you, darling, and none of them have to do with your face," she said, holding the chalice out to Zack while Sephiroth finished choking off to the side. Zack winked and downed whatever was bubbling in one go, then started coughing and hacking. Aeris rolled her eyes. "Now, really, boys, neither of you have an excuse not to know how to swallow by now."

"Madame Gainsborough," Sephiroth started with no idea how he was possibly going to finish that sentence, but she just patted his hand in a motherly fashion and went on, "I went ahead and fire-called Cloud to let him know where you were and to make sure he wasn't trying to avoid a hospital visit."

"The little fucker's getting good," Zack said cheerfully, admiring the flashing colored lights under his skin that were slowly dimming and going out. "If we'd stayed at the Ministry, he would've made it for sure."

"Instead, someone gave both of you a position of authority over impressionable children."

"I know, right? It's brilliant."

"That's one description, yes."

"Also, no fraternization laws."

"Zack."

"No uniforms, unfortunately."

"Fair."

"What, are you going to give me detention now, Professor Crescent? Oh, please, let me make it up to you. I don't know if I could fit under your desk as easily as Professor Strife probably can, but – "

"Five hundred lines will do. It will strengthen your dominant hand, which, I imagine, will be a valuable gift when you find yourself exiled to the couch."

Zack pouted. Aeris giggled.

…

"'The gifts of the goddess' – "

"Oh, fuck me," Zack groaned, pushing aside his breakfast plate and letting his head thunk onto the table. Sephiroth took a bite of scrambled eggs and silently agreed.

"Come now, Professor Fair, everyone knows you're a halfblood, and bestiality is illegal," Genesis said silkily, taking the seat on Sephiroth's other side.

Zack moved his head just enough to be able to give Genesis a smirk. "Never stopped you, though, did it? Whatever did happen to that prized racing chocobo you showed off so proudly a few years ago?"

"Children," Sephiroth muttered into his cup.

Genesis sniffed and turned away from Zack with a cat's style of forced nonchalance. "Speaking of mudbloods and pets, where is yours, Sephiroth?"

"He's preparing for his lessons today," Sephiroth said, placid. "Perhaps you've heard of such a thing? It's usually practiced by those with a sincere desire to do well in their chosen profession and who keep said profession on a basis of merit rather than political expediency."

It took a few seconds, but then Zack was muffling his snorts in the table very poorly. Genesis gave Sephiroth a vicious smile and ran a hand through his hair, still streaked with grey from an Atrophy Curse from which he'd never fully recovered. "Well, sometimes even charity must be earned."

Later that day, Sephiroth was in the middle of a lecture on the magical applications of the number seven, particularly its triplicate form ("When used appropriately, 777 may increase one's magical capabilities dramatically for several seconds") when one of the headmaster's Turks (no, adjunct faculty, Sephiroth reminded himself wryly) sauntered in.

"Hey, Professor," Elena grinned, "so I've been sent to get you because Professor Rhapsodos is trying to kill Professors Strife and Fair."

Sephiroth honestly considered closing the door in her face and pretending he hadn't heard anything. His fifth-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were suddenly wide awake and focused. "Where are they?"

"Last I heard, they were moving towards the grounds. I guess it started in Professor Rhapsodos' classroom down in the dungeons, but then something exploded in Professor Valentine's – "

"Which I'm sure had nothing to do with you."

"Of course not, I was with Rude and Reno, why would I have anything to do with it? Anyway, now they're saying that Professor Valentine has sworn vengeance, which is weird because I didn't think that guy was capable of saying anything that didn't come out in gothic imagery – that's probably why something exploded, imagine trying to brew a potion with instructions that are in, like, iambic pentameter or something – and Professor Rhapsodos tried to Transfigure Professor Strife into – "

"Class is dismissed," Sephiroth barked, marching towards the door. "Finish the current chapter and be ready for a short quiz in the next class period."

" – said Reno should stay in his class, but that's like telling a dog not to eat a steak in front of his nose – "

"Dogs are actually easily trained to do exactly that," Sephiroth informed her. Elena had to jog to keep up with his long strides.

" – and then Headmaster ShinRa said that he wished the Draught of Living Death was an acceptable method of keeping kids quiet, it's not like they're actually dead, after all – "

She talked at him all the way to the Great Hall. Sephiroth might have felt a very small pang of guilt for completely ignoring her if he hadn't known for a fact that she could hold an argument with an inanimate statue and lose.

" – and then Rude was like oh my gods holy shit –"

Sephiroth blinked at her, startled, and then realized that there was an enormous grey wolf lunging over the Gryffindor table straight at his face. He immediately dropped to the floor, rolling and coming back up on his feet just as Zack landed and whirled around with a howl and a doggy grin. Sephiroth opened his mouth to demand to know what the hell Zack was doing running around in his Animagus form when he heard the familiar scraping of the claws of a sprinting chocobo.

"Get down!" he yelled at Elena, but she was already taking advantage of her tiny body and ducking under the Gryffindor table. Cloud burst into the Great Hall, tall and proud, riding bareback on his favorite golden and backlit by the sunlight streaming in from the open doors like the romantic hero of one of Zack's western films. Then he lifted that muggle water gun and yelled, "Zack! Come out and fight like a man!"

Zack transformed back into a person mid-howl, which was one of the weirdest sounds Sephiroth had ever heard, and whipped out his wand to point at Sephiroth. "Aeris wouldn't approve of your gendered insults!"

Cloud grinned like a crazy person and fired the water gun. It spat out some sort of neon-green potion that missed them by inches and turned the table and floor bright green wherever it landed.

"You'll never take me alive!" Zack cackled, trying to dodge behind Sephiroth for shelter, but Sephiroth calmly raised his own wand and said, "Tarantellegra!"

"Traitor!" Zack cried as his feet suddenly began kicking around in the worst Tarantella Sephiroth had ever seen. Cloud whooped and fired again, this time managing to drench Zack's left side and make him light up like muggle Day-Glo.

Unfortunately, he also managed to clip Sephiroth's right arm, and Sephiroth didn't hesitate to look his darling lover straight in the eye and say, "Rictusempra!"

Cloud immediately shrieked with laughter as invisible hands started tickling the breath right out of his lungs, nearly unseating him. The chocobo squawked and danced awkwardly beneath Cloud to keep him upright. Sephiroth's Auror senses tingled and he whirled around just as Zack yelled, "Spongify!" and the stones beneath Sephiroth's feet softened. He stumbled with a sharp curse, but didn't manage to leap to harder ground before Zack added, "Avifors!"

"Hey!" Cloud yelped, no longer laughing hysterically, and Zack taunted back, "You already look like a chocobo, I just thought I'd make it official!"

"Avis!" Cloud snarled, and then Zack was yelping as a spontaneously-manifested flock of parakeets, swallows, and a lone seagull started beating at Zack's head with their wings. "Suck it, Zack!"

"Jenova's bloody head," Sephiroth swore fervently, resolving to never, ever admit that he might be starting to have a little bit – just a smidgeon – of fun, "how are you two even functioning adults. Cantis!"

"Gods damn it, Sephiroth!" Cloud sang, which made the chocobo start warbling in concert because this was way more fun than spending all day eating greens and hissing at lizards, and Sephiroth loved Cloud, very much so, but Cloud couldn't carry a note to save his life.

"Finite incantatem!" Zack finally managed, making the birds disappear in a cloud of sparkles, "Catus auribus!"

Sephiroth's ears popped and suddenly Cloud's terrible voice was a whole lot louder. He instinctively tried to clap his hands over his ears and realized that it was fur he was feeling.

"Cat ears?" he demanded incredulously. Zack smirked, said, "Figured it was only fair," and transformed back into a wolf to avoid the spell that went whistling over him. He took off towards the doors again, but Cloud, who'd finally managed the counter-charm, yelled, "Colloportus! Lepus!"

The doors slammed shut and a rabbit jumped out of empty space, landing on all four paws and looking utterly terrified at the wolf careening towards it. It took off under the tables and benches, zipping past Elena, who was still curled under the Gryffindor table and laughing so hard so she was crying. Zack's wolfy side zeroed in on the rabbit before his human side could intervene and took off after it, howling.

"What the hell is going on here."

The thing with Professor Valentine was that he never had to raise his voice. Sephiroth had always suspected that he had some kind of vampire thing going on to make his voice spread through a room like smoke, subtle but powerful. The softer his voice, the more intense it was, and this time it was hardly above a whisper despite filling all the corners of the Great Hall.

"Uh," Cloud said from atop his chocobo. "Hi."

Vincent stood in the center of the threshold leading out into the main hallway, backed by Tifa, Yuffie, and Rufus. Sephiroth wondered absently what had happened to their classes before noticing the gaggle of students peering around them from behind.

"Finite incantatem," Sephiroth said, making the rabbit wink out.

Zack skidded to a stop, stumbling over his paws, and finally managed to transform back. He put a hand behind his head and laughed, a little nervously, "Heeey, mates, how's it going? I, uh, didn't expect to see you here."

"Evidently," Vincent murmured, smoke-like.

"Where's Genesis?" asked Tifa.

Zack and Cloud exchanged a look, and Cloud said with a straight face, "He's indisposed."

Rufus looked around the Great Table solemnly. Sephiroth surreptitiously flicked his wand and repaired the section of floor that had been left as lumpy as cottage cheese from Zack's spell. "My office," he said simply. "After you put away the bird, Professor Strife. Professor Lockhart, if you would be so kind as to track down Professor Rhapsodos' body."

"He's not dead," Zack argued indignantly.

"Pity. I'm sure it would have been a kinder fate."

…

At least Sephiroth knew why he was in the headmaster's office this time. He made a mental note to ask Yuffie about future bets, and wondered if Zonko's would be interested in having some test subjects for any new products.

Purely for science, of course.