I'm really sorry for not posting anything for so long! Learning French ready to go on exchange has been taking up a ridiculous amount of my time. But I know where I'm being hosted now! I'm going to be staying with a family in Grenoble, in the southeast of France. Only seven weeks to go now and I can't wait!

Anyway, I got a PM a few days ago telling me that the fourth season of Hetalia has been dubbed (so go and watch it! It's okay, I'll wait.) and asking me to write more PruHun. That made my entire day, you have no idea. So this story is, of course, a PruHun, but it's also my first Gakuen AU so please bear with me if I get it a bit wrong at first.

Oh, and to anyone waiting for a new chapter of For Queen and Country: it's coming! I swear! I haven't even slightly abandoned it but I can only do so much at once. I have more inspiration for this at the moment, but as soon as I have a spare moment I'll get the next chapter up.

Hetalia isn't mine and all that jazz, consider it disclaimed. This intro is going on for far too long. Please enjoy Indefinite Articles, dedicated to the amazing Trinity237.

Monday 21st November, 7:54 PM - My awesome lair (okay, bedroom).

Let me just start by saying that it wasn't my fault. It was just one of those unfortunate happenstances that life comes up with every now and then, because life clearly spends its time plotting how best to screw me over. If anything, it was Francis and Antonio's fault. Come to think of it, a lot of the crap that happens to me is their fault. Could they not have stopped giggling for thirty seconds? Just thirty freaking seconds? Is that really too much to ask?

Okay, so it was my so-called best friends' fault that there was a tiny little knock on the door in the middle of my fourth period physics class. Everyone looked up (because no-one needs much of an excuse to stop thinking about vectors and scalars and whatever) and saw Lili Zwingli sheepishly poke her head into the classroom.

Lili is easily the most adorable kid in Gakuen High. Not kidding. I've seen them all and she's the cutest. The only person that might've beaten her on the huggability meter was Feliciano, but he's in our year so he's too old now. But then, the only person who truly gets to find out just how huggable she is is her older brother, Vash. Anyone who tries to make a move, even an innocent one, will understand just how he earned his sharpshooting trophies. Don't ask me why he's so overprotective - there's rumours that she's got some kind of chronic illness, she's actually adopted, all sorts. Maybe Vash is just neurotic. I wouldn't expect anything less from someone who sits in front of me in maths and uses four different calculators at once.

"Gilbert Beillschmidt?"

Maybe it was that moment that I knew I was in trouble. If not, I certainly did after I caught her eye and she said, "Headmaster Rome wants to see you."

When Headmaster Rome wants to see someone, it isn't usually for tea and biscuits.

There were a few catcalls and 'ooh Gil, you're in trouble's as I stood up and headed for the door. I ignored them. Every instinct was shouting at me to turn around and make some snide comment about how being expelled would be far more convenient for my schedule, but I just couldn't bring myself to. I knew what this was about.

Francis and Antonio would have hell to pay.

Why they even bother to book concerts on school days I have no idea. It's just begging for trouble. But the thing is that bands don't play in our city very often - especially ones worth listening to - and Tony had managed to score tickets. It was one of those radio things - you know, be the fifth caller and win - and there's something ridiculously lucky about my crazy Spanish friend. He's the sort of person who could wander across a motorway piss-drunk and blindfolded and not only come out safely on the other side, but also avoid causing any kind of major traffic pile-up and, on a good day, find fifty bucks along the way. Needless to say, he won the tickets. And needlesser to say, we had no choice but to skip school and go.

If it's not their fault, it's my parents'. The Carriedos instantly understood the seriousness of the situation and wrote Tony a permission note, because the Carriedos are awesome people who deserve nice things. The Bonnefoys are never there when I'm at Francis's, but they either care a lot or very little about him because he turned up at school with a note and signature scrawled on the back of a Starbuck's receipt.

My parents, of course, weren't as awesome. According to them, I didn't deserve to go. I needed to stop shirking responsibility and put some effort in at school. It all turned into this massive great lecture and when I called Ludwig in as a witness for the defence, he mumbled something about having homework and sort of slinked off to his room. Okay, first off, I do not shirk responsibility! None of it that matters, anyway. So what if I let a couple of tiny, pointless things slide by? They should be praising my independent thinking and ability to prioritise! I could do everything if I wanted to, and do it so well Yao and Kiku and all the other crazy-smart kids would weep tears of jealousy. I just don't want to. Doesn't mean I should have to miss any concerts over it.

But they shouted me down, so I had no choice but to sneak out and call in sick myself. I had hoped that my idiotic friends' giggling hadn't been audible over the phone but I had a bad feeling I was about to be proved wrong.

It was awesome, though. One of the best concerts I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of concerts. Besides, I'd bet half the people there were skipping school. It went hours over time and had about fifteen encores (like I said, awesome), so by the time we left it was too late and we were too hyped up to drive around dropping everyone off. We all crashed on Tony's couch and he drove us to school this morning. So now we're all really sleepy and slightly more hungover than we expected, but believe me when I say it was so worth it.

I reached the door to the headmaster's office and knocked. A voice with a vaguely Italian accent chirped, "Come in!"

Headmaster Rome is the sort of person that could make gem-encrusted ceremonial regalia look casual. Even the students he's punished can't help but like him. He cracks dirty jokes in assemblies and makes fun of the other teachers, but they all respect him too much to complain. He's kind of invincible. If I took a gun into that office with me and shot right at his head, I'd half expect him to catch the bullet without even flinching and raise his eyebrow at me so forcefully I'd faint right there and then.

To paraphrase, he's pretty cool as far as head teachers go.

I smiled as confidently as I could. It would be seriously unawesome to admit everything if this was just about my timetable or something. "You called, sir?"

"Gilbert Beillschmidt. Excellent. Sit down, please."

I did. Rome's face was impossible to read. He wasn't even blinking.

"Tell me, where were you yesterday?"

Shit. "I was at home."

"Why?"

"I had a migraine."

"Do you have any sisters?"

That caught me off guard. "Um... no?"

"Then I'd be really very interested to know who the girls giggling at the other end of the phone were, Beillschmidt."

Sisters? But it was... Oh, this was too good. I managed to keep a straight face, staring Rome levelly in the eye, but believe me when I say that it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Francis and Antonio were going to be hearing about this for a very long time.

"Don't strain yourself trying to make up excuses. I called your parents after you hung up. They were very surprised to learn of your migraine."

Again, shit.

"They have a theory that you might have been at a certain concert, Gilbert. Is this true?"

Sticking to my lie was a very attractive concept. I ran a few scenarios in my head and failed to find a non-fatal outcome in any of them. "Yes, sir."

Rome folded his arms and leant back in his chair, sighing. I shifted uncomfortably. I can disappoint mean teachers and feel nothing, but the problem with cool teachers is that disappointing them makes you feel like a terrible person. Making him angry was like falling out with that one awesome, vaguely inappropriate uncle that makes family gatherings worth going to.

"Well," he said eventually, "what are we going to do with you?"

"Let me off on account of my sharp wit, charming smile and general awesomeness?"

"I could do that," mused Rome, "or I could give you more time off school. Yes, that's obviously what you want. How about you take the day of The Gakuen High Official Christmas Party off and go to as many concerts as you like?"

And that was right where shit got real.

The Gakuen High Official Christmas Party is kind of a big deal. In fact, it's such a big deal that every single word has to be capitalised and underlined, even when spoken. It's planned and fundraised from about June and never fails to be just about the best thing to happen to any student all year. Last year they somehow managed to get permission to cover the whole hall in six inches of actual snow. (Which made dancing a bit harder than they expected, but the snowball fights were awesome.) It's serious business. Anyone who skips it becomes an automatic social outcast, but that's for their own good; no-one in their right mind would miss something like The Gakuen High Official Christmas Party. It's just not done.

I expected a long string of detentions. I even expected suspension. But this... this was just unthinkable.

"You're kidding."

"I'm perfectly serious," he said. He was actually smiling! Bastard. I take it back, he isn't awesome at all. "Maybe it'll make you think twice about truanting in the future."

"But sir!" I was desperate now. Visions of the party were flickering in front of my eyes, threatening to go out like a happy, dancing candle trodden into the dirt and stamped on by Rome's malicious, unfeeling leather shoes. "You can't do this! I only skipped one day of school, sir. Just one day. I know I don't have the world's cleanest record, but I've never done anything really bad! I've never hurt anyone! Please, sir. Please. I'll do anything."

He regarded me with steady, appraising eyes. I would've fallen to my knees but the desk was in the way, so I settled instead for chanelling my inner baby panda and trying to look as helpless and innocent as I could.

"Perhaps," he said at last. My heart soared. "Perhaps I could offer some other options. Truanting shows a general lack of dedication to the school environment. There might be another, more constructive way of remedying that."

I waited on tenterhooks while he let the silence stretch out. It was all for dramatic effect, of course; I wrote the book on dramatic effect.

"Either you miss The Gakuen High Official Christmas Party, or you join a school club and enrich the student community."

I breathed out slowly. A school club. That didn't sound so bad. I could do that. "Which club?"

"Most of them are already full," he said. "Only three of them actively need members. The orchestra, I believe, is one of them."

Not an option. The only instrument I played was guitar and besides, my stupid cousin Roderich was in the orchestra. Have I told you about my stupid cousin Roderich yet? No? Well, he's stupid, and he's my cousin. He's a couple of months older than me and acts like he's in his mid-sixties. His favourite band is the Vienna Philharmonic, for Christ's sake. He's off in Austria doing something musical at the moment so I don't have to put up with him until he decides to show his face back here again. He basically exists to piss me off and give my parents someone to compare me to. I wouldn't share a single trait with Roderich Edelstein if you paid me, but according to them he's more mature, he has better manners, he's neater, he has a respectable girlfriend... Elizabeta Héderváry, respectable? I know she pretends to be these days, but honestly, I'm more likely to turn into a respectable young woman than she is.

"Not the orchestra?" said Rome, correctly interpreting the look of disgust on my face. "What about the contemporary dance club?"

Yeah. Right. I could totally imagine myself twirling around a stage in a tutu. Clearly my calling in life. What's more, I could totally imagine what Francis and Antonio would say if they caught wind of the slightest hint that I'd even considered joining the contemporary dance club. They might be my best friends, but those two are brutal.

"Well," said Rome, "if you don't like that one either, then there's only the newspaper left."

I blinked. "Gakuen High has a newspaper?"

"It's called the Gakuen Gazette. But honestly, it's not doing very well at the moment. If sales don't pick up soon then I'm going to have to axe it. The school can't keep paying for printing when there's no money coming back in."

Well. That sounded okay. I wouldn't have chosen it, but a failing newspaper that no-one even read couldn't be hard to run, could it? With any luck, the club would be disbanded before I had to do anything at all. Reporting wasn't even that bad. Francis and Antonio might laugh for a lunch break or two, but it was certainly better than orchestra or dancing. "Okay," I said. "I'll join that one."

Rome turned on his computer monitor, clicked a few times and tapped in my name. "Sure?" he asked. I nodded, and he pressed enter. "Congratulations, Gilbert. You're officially a journalist."

"Right," I said, "thanks. Can I go to the party now, then?"

"Not so fast. You've only completed part one of your punishment."

"Part one? What do you mean, part one?"

"I said you had to join a club and enrich the student community. You haven't done much enriching yet, have you?"

"Alright then, how am I meant to do this enriching?"

"In the context of the Gazette..." Rome swivelled his eyes skywards and thought for a moment. "Yes. Yes, I think that's fair."

"What's fair?"

He looked back at me and leant forwards across the desk, a hint of something oddly mischievous in his face. "It's like I said. The Gazette is failing. It was never hugely popular, but now most of the club members have either graduated or quit. It's using more money than it's making. Your punishment, Gilbert Beillschmidt, is to remedy that situation."

I stared back at him, confused. "What?"

"I hereby grant you the position of editor-in-chief of the Gakuen Gazette. If you manage to sell enough copies before Christmas to make the newspaper self-sufficient, then you may attend The Gakuen High Official Christmas Party. If you fail, you're banned. Simple as that."

I protested, of course. I had no experience running newspapers ("Well here's a good place to start."), I'd barely even read a newspaper ("Then you'd better pick one up on your way home, hadn't you?"), this whole idea was completely ridiculous and doomed to fail and there had to be a better way ("You could just not go to the party. I don't mind."). But this is Headmaster Rome we're talking about. He's just one of those obnoxious people that always - always - gets their way.

Please review! I'd love to hear what you think.