"Are you ok?" he asked, holding her arms to steady her. "You look awful."

"Thanks a lot. I'm fine," she answered in her most stable and not at all unsteady voice.

Neville stared at her for a moment realising that they were in the door and in the path of anyone going past, "Come on," he said. "Let's go somewhere quieter."

Together, they went out of the library lobby and away from all the noise.

"I'm really ok, I promise," she told him as they went along. "Someone was just a little rude."

"Addie, people are rude to you all the time. People are just rude in general, but you have never looked as though you wanted to cry."

"I don't look like I'm about to cry!" Addie said incredulously. "That's just my face."

"Oh, no," Neville insisted. "Your face is completely different normally. And you don't look like your about to cry, you're too much like Harry- completely emotionally constipated to..."

With that, Addie felt as though she couldn't stop it. She had been doing so well. She had prevented herself from crying while she was being humiliated, which was something she had decided to not bring with her from Primary School, but then he had to go and bring up Harry.

"Oh Addie, I didn't mean to make you cry," Neville said softly. He sat down on a vacant bench in a quieter area and encouraged her to do the same.

"Oh no. It's nothing you've done. You're always kind to me. It's just when you mentioned Harry..." she looked down at the chapped skin on her hands. It was colder than she was used to in Scotland. "I always thought we were in this together, a team, but when they told me that I wasn't invited to the picnic and he just sat there looking awkward and not saying anything..."

"You weren't invited to the picnic," Neville breathed. "Everyone was invited to the picnic. I was invited to the picnic."

"He wants nothing to do with me anymore. I don't even know what I did. He just abandoned me on the train and then didn't try to talk to me after. Fred and George told me that I had abandoned him, but I didn't. I stood there, next to him and Ron, and tried to talk to him about the sorting and he was..."

"He was what?"

"...different. The brother who I grew up with would never have done that. He would have introduced me to his new friend, told me about the fact that he wanted to go to Gryffindor to be with his new friend, but I was sorted before either of them and that's not a connection I was able to make."

"Have you ever thought..." Neville started the uncomfortable question that she had asked herself so much since she had been at Hogwarts.

"...that he heard me be sorted into Hufflepuff and decided that he would go anywhere except Hufflepuff? Yes. Of course I have thought that. But why didn't he tell me that he wanted us to be more independent? Hufflepuff was the one that I liked the sound of most when I heard of it and clearly Gryffindor is something he has connected to as well. I wouldn't have held it against him. Really, I wouldn't have."

"I'm not going to the picnic," Neville decided. "You and me and the others are going to have a nice day to ourselves, and we are going to do whatever we want."

"Neville, I can't ask you to..."

"Well it's a good thing that you're not asking then. I'm offering. Wait here a second, I'll go and get the others."

Addie sat there alone for a few minutes, pondering what had just happened. Someone actually wanted to spend time with her unprompted? This was truly a novel experience for her, and she would try her best to appreciate it while it lasted. Neville came back very soon after that with Cho and Adrian in tow.

"It's lucky we happened to be in the library when you were looking for us," Cho was saying to Neville. "I was just thinking about going to my dorm. The other girls from my dorm are outside, I saw them from the window, so I could have the place to myself for a bit. Oh Addie," she said, seeing Addie's tearstained face.

"Those swamp trolls," Adrian continued. "telling you that you weren't invited to that Merlinforsaken picnic. What were they going to serve there? Probably pork pies and sweet chilli crisps. We are going to have a lovely time without them."

"I wonder if I would be any good at pranking," Cho said curiously. "I'm sure I could get into Gryffindor tower with something. What are the classics? Hair dye in shampoo? Itching powder in beds?"

"I could do it," Neville proposed. "Sometimes they forget that I exist and don't talk to me for days on end. They would never know it was me."

"Honey in slippers," Addie said quietly.

"What was that?" Adrian asked curiously.

"Honey in slippers," Addie repeated.

"Not honey though," Cho reasoned. "Why waste honey when you could use something far stickier. Treacle perhaps?"

"Adelaide, is it not treacle tart that your brother is such a big fan of?" Adrian asked with a grin in his voice. "We could kill two birds with one stone. I checked the menu for tomorrow night and treacle tart is front and centre. Treacle in slippers means no treacle tart."

Addie hadn't realised that Harry's love of treacle tart was so known among the houses, but she supposed that he did make a loud whooping sound whenever treacle tart was in the vicinity.

"How much treacle are we talking?" Cho asked seriously. "There must be other ways in which we can torture them involving treacle."

"Every chair any of them sit in, the banisters on the way up to the Gryffindor tower, the floors on the way up to the Gryffindor tower," Adrian listed off.

"So we're just pranking Gryffindor at this point," Neville said.

"Is that a problem with you?" Cho checked.

"Oh no. It's perfectly alright with me. I was just checking that I had got that right."

"Well, we should do our best to spare you the worst of it," Adrian decided. "Do you still have that burn on your hand from potions?"

"The one that Professor Snape told me to just deal with in my own time? Yes. It really hurts and it's going green."

"Do you think it will require overnight hospitalisation?"

"Oh yes," Neville said enthusiastically, clearly pleased to be avoiding the treacle. "Do you still want me to put the treacle in their slippers?"

Adrian told them that he had a contact in the kitchens. He would not disclose a name or any other identifying features, in order to keep his contact safe, but was able to tell them that there was enough treacle for their purposes. That was how they found themselves on an ordinary afternoon with more treacle than any of them had seen before. Adrian's contact had delivered said treacle syrup to a secluded broom cupboard, and throughout the day, they all filed in to get their allotted weapon. They prepared their revenge that night.

Cho volunteered to deal with the banisters. Through efficient research, she was able to find a cake icing spell in the library. She used it to liberally douse the banisters with treacle. This also enabled the deed to be done so quickly that she managed to avoid being spotted by portraits. As she went along, she thought about how although this was a massive waste of treacle, it wasn't the most harmful thing that one could do. It would take a fairly strong cleaning charm to get rid of, but the harm was fairly insignificant.

An additional issue had been raised by Adrian. For some reason (that he did not disclose) had explained to them all that if Filch was left to clean up, it would be unfair.

"I just think that we should make it time limited. He has enough to be getting on with. I don't know how we could achieve this, but I think it is the ethical thing to do."

"So, temporary mischief, not difficult to remove and easy for us to achieve," Addie had surmised.

"Surely if we're going to do this, we need to properly commit to it?" Neville had argued passionately. "If we're going to prank Gryffindor, we can't be merciful. We have to really erm stick it to them."

Addie had snorted at the last part, but had had the sense to look concerned when Adrian had given her a stern look. "Two things can be achieved at the same time, I think," he had continued. "We can 'stick it to' Gryffindor, while also being merciful to Filch, and that's all I have to say about this."

They had all thought for a moment about this difficult ethical conundrum. Should they torture Gryffindor and Filch with treacle, or should they torture Gryffindor for potentially a slightly shorter time, in exchange for a kinder workload for Filch?

Addie had been the first of them to give an answer, "I agree with Adrian. Speaking as someone who has had to clean up quite a lot of messes, I don't want to be responsible for increasing his workload. I don't like him very much; he has always been quite unkind to me, but I don't see the point in going too far."

Cho, after several more moments of consideration, clearly aware of the fact that she was to be the deciding vote had agreed with Adrian and Addie, "I don't see much sense in just adding more work to his day. Fred and George Weasley already do enough to make his life hard."

"Oh alright," Neville had eventually acquiesced. "I would still like it to be noted that I think that we aren't going far enough, though."

"Noted," Cho had said.

This was how they had decided to add a dissipation solution to the treacle. It deemed it inedible in large quantities, but would ensure that it would dissipate after a certain point. They weren't entirely sure when that point was as they had struggled to understand what the book said (none of them were particularly good potions students).

Adrian ended up being the one to abundantly spread their concoction along every seat of the Gryffindor table. He had never been over to that part of the Great Hall before, and was disappointed to find that the seats were more comfortable than that of any other table. He initially thought that it was a case of 'the grass being greener', but after thoroughly examining the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, he was able to ascertain that the make and material of the Gryffindor seats was completely different. In a split-second decision, he added a gravellation charm to all the seats before adding the treacle, using the same spell found by Cho. That made the entire process far quicker and less tedious.

Addie was left with the task of spreading the treacle on the actual stairs. Her original task had involved doorknobs, but she had suggested that the far more villainous option was to leave everyone second guessing. She had therefore been tasked with applying treacle to every third doorknob that she came across.

Neville's only task was to put treacle in everyone's slippers in his dorm, including himself, before complaining of being unsteady on his feet in second period resulting in a visit to Madam Pomphrey. As predicted, his burn was so bad (it was green and oozing) that it required an overnight stay, thus freeing him from having to feign a reaction. He had never had much of a talent for acting.

The next morning, all arose early and made their way to breakfast using their normal routes in order to present themselves as being above suspicion. Cho, who usually took a route that crossed over with the route to the Gryffindor tower had fun feigning her disgust when she put her hand on the banister.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, "Is this tar? Or is it feces? Oh my god! I need to burn my clothes! Oh my god!"

Seeing the entirety of Gryffindor having to take the same route as she had with no forewarning that they were going to end up in a sticky situation was a joyful experience for her. It almost made up for her lack of a full night's sleep and having to put her hand in treacle.

It was made evident when Gryffindor sat down that they really were the intended adherers. Adrian was delighted to see them all squirming as they sat down, and not knowing until they stood up that they had sat in something, as treacle was not notoriously wet. Just sticky. Professor Snape, clearly wanting to prove a point, latched onto this moment to make a demonstrative point. He told the Gryffindor students that what they were saying was the "stuff of nonsense" before sitting down at the Gryffindor table and remarking that it was far more comfortable than he recalled the Slytherin table having been in his youth. He called on those who knew though, as he didn't want to be accused of not remembering properly, and a prefect from each of the other houses was called upon to try out the Gryffindor table after the seats had been cleaned. They all expressed their surprise at how privileged the Gryffindors were to have somewhere so comfortable to sit. Adrian, who knew very well that the charm was uncommon and unlikely to be even in the repertoire of any of the teachers rejoiced. That charm was not coming off any time soon.

"Silence!" Dumbledore thundered, not so calmly. "Because of this prank, which I should emphasise was incredibly careless and disappointing to hear about, plans for pudding tonight have changed."

Many of the students groaned. Treacle tart was a favourite of many of the students and they had been looking forward to it.

"Due to the treacle for treacle tart having been spread around the school, there will be no treacle tart."

Harry Potter was seen to shed just the slightest tear which most people thought to be an overreaction, but they supposed that he had had a hard life.

"The kitchens have informed me that there are plenty of apples however, so we will instead be having apple crumble. I am sure, with such a replacement, the loss of treacle tart will be less painful to you all."

Harry Potter was seen to look disgusted by his words. To him, clearly, there was no alternative to treacle tart. Apple crumble was a mere shadow of the delights that he had lost due to crimes perpetrated against Gryffindor, and more specifically him. How could someone do something like this to him? Hermione had shushed him.

"Not everything is about you, Harry," she said. "I'm sure this is about Quidditch."

The next morning, when he got out of bed, he was presented with treacle, just not in the way he had wanted it. Poor Neville got an especially bad quantity in his slippers, far greater than the rest of them. Presumably, as he had the last bed in the dorm, the perpetrator had decided to not waste any of the residue. Sadly, the crime was never solved. It was investigated by teachers and other members of staff. Portraits were asked, questions were asked about who had had access to the Gryffindor tower (which was decided to be everyone as people kept on sneaking their friends in), and Fred and George Weasley's guilty faces were decided to be more convincing than usual. Thus was the Abundance of 1992. A day that would go down in history as among the 38 greatest tragedies of Hogwarts, and to Harry Potter, it was one of the worst days that he had had at school.

A/N: Big news: I am officially out of the rut. Since I last uploaded, I have written about 16,000 words, and some of them are good. Apparently all I needed to get my momentum back was the stress of being back at university. Who knew? Not me at least. That means that as soon as I have finished uploading this story, which will take about two more months, the next story will be able to begin uploading immediately. That's at the current rate at least. Who knows what coursework will do to me.