l me what, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley repeated, in a dangerous sort of voice.
"It's nothing, Molly," mumbled Mr. Weasley, "Fred and George just - but I've had
words with them -"
"What have they done this time?" said Mrs. Weasley. "If it's got anything to do
with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes -"
"Why don't you show Harry where he's sleeping, Ron?" said Hermione from the
doorway.
36
"He knows where he's sleeping," said Ron, "in my room, he slept there last -"
"We can all go," said Hermione pointedly.
"Oh," said Ron, cottoning on. "Right."
"Yeah, we'll come too," said George.
"You stay where you are!" snarled Mrs. Weasley.
Harry and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and they, Hermione, and Ginny set off
along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zigzagged through the
house to the upper stories.
"What are Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" Harry asked as they climbed.
Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione didn't.
"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's
room," said Ron quietly. "Great long price lists for stuff they've invented. Joke
stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I
never knew they'd been inventing all that . . ."
"We've been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought
they were actually making things," said Ginny. "We thought they just liked the
noise."
"Only, most of the stuff - well, all of it, really - was a bit dangerous," said Ron,
"and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money,
and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren't allowed to make any more of
it, and burned all the order forms.... She's furious at them anyway. They didn't get
as many O.W.L.s as she expected."
O.W.L.s were Ordinary Wizarding Levels, the examinations Hogwarts students
took at the age of fifteen.
"And then there was this big row," Ginny said, "because Mum wants them to go
into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a
joke shop."
Just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing hornrimmed
glasses and a very annoyed expression.
"Hi, Percy," said Harry.
"Oh hello, Harry," said Percy. "I was wondering who was making all the noise.
I'm trying to work in here, you know I've got a report to finish for the office - and
it's rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the
stairs."
"We're not thundering, "said Ron irritably. "We're walking. Sorry if we've
37
disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic."
"What are you working on?" said Harry.
"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," said Percy
smugly. "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign
imports are just a shade too thin - leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost
three percent a year -"
"That'll change the world, that report will," said Ron. "Front page of the Daily
Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."
Percy went slightly pink.
"You might sneer, Ron," he said heatedly, "but unless some sort of international
law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallowbottomed
products that seriously endanger -"
"Yeah, yeah, all right," said Ron, and he started off upstairs again. Percy slammed
his bedroom door shut. As Harry, Hermione, and Ginny followed Ron up three
more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them. It sounded
as though Mr. Weasley had told Mrs. Weasley about the toffees.
The room at the top of the house where Ron slept looked much as it had the last
time that Harry had come to stay: the same posters of Ron's favorite Quidditch
team, the Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping
ceiling, and the fish tank on the windowsill, which had previously held frog
spawn, now contained one extremely large frog. Ron's old rat, Scabbers, was here
no more, but instead there was the tiny gray owl that had delivered Ron's letter to
Harry in Privet Drive. It was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering
madly.
"Shut up, Pig," said Ron, edging his way between two of the four beds that had
been squeezed into the room. "Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill
and Charlie are in their room," he told Harry. "Percy gets to keep his room all to
himself because he's got to work."
"Er - why are you calling that owl Pig?" Harry asked Ron.
"Because he's being stupid," said Ginny, "Its proper name is Pigwidgeon."
"Yeah, and that's not a stupid name at all," said Ron sarcastically. "Ginny named
him," he explained to Harry. "She reckons it's sweet. And I tried to change it, but it
was too late, he won't answer to anything else. So now he's Pig. I've got to keep
him up here because he annoys Errol and Hermes. He annoys me too, come to
that.
Pigwidgeon zoomed happily around his cage, hooting shrilly. Harry knew Ron too
well to take him seriously. He had moaned continually about his old rat, Scabbers,
but had been most upset when Hermione's cat, Crookshanks, appeared to have
38
eaten him.
"Where's Crookshanks?" Harry asked Hermione now.
"Out in the garden, I expect," she said. "He likes chasing gnomes. He's never seen
any before."
"Percy's enjoying work, then?" said Harry, sitting down on one of the beds and
watching the Chudley Cannons zooming in and out of the posters on the ceiling.
"Enjoying it?" said Ron darkly. "I don't reckon he'd come home if Dad didn't make
him. He's obsessed. Just don't get him onto the subject of his boss. According to
Mr. Crouch ... as I was saying to Mr. Crouch ... Mr. Crouch is of the opinion ...
Mr. Crouch was telling me ... They'll be announcing their engagement any day
now."
"Have you had a good summer, Harry?" said Hermione. "Did you get our food
parcels and everything?"
"Yeah, thanks a lot, " said Harry. "They saved my life, those cakes.
"And have you heard from -?" Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell
silent. Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had
been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic that
they were almost as concerned about Harry's godfather as he was. However,
discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but themselves and
Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his
innocence.
"I think they've stopped arguing," said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment,
because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry. "Shall we go down and
help your mum with dinner?"
"Yeah, all right," said Ron. The four of them left Ron's room and went back
downstairs to find Mrs. Weasley alone in the kitchen, looking extremely badtempered.
"We're eating out in the garden," she said when they came in. "There's just not
room for eleven people in here. Could you take the plates outside, girls? Bill and
Charlie are setting up the tables. Knives and forks, please, you two," she said to
Ron and Harry, pointing her wand a little more vigorously than she had intended
at a pile of potatoes in the sink, which shot out of their skins so fast that they
ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.
"Oh for heaven's sake," she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which
hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the
potatoes. "Those two!" she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a
cupboard, and Harry knew she meant Fred and George. I don't know what's going
to happen to them, I really don't. No ambition, unless you count making as much
39
trouble as they possibly can...."
Mrs. Weasley slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and
began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand
tip as she stirred.
"It's not as though they haven't got brains, she continued irritably, taking the
saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, "but
they're wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they'll be in
real trouble. I've had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put
together. If they carry on the way they're going, they'll end up in front of the
Improper Use of Magic Office."
Mrs. Weasley jabbed her wand at the cutlery drawer, which shot open. Harry and
Ron both jumped out of the way as several knives soared out of it, flew across the
kitchen, and began chopping the potatoes, which had just been tipped back into the
sink by the dustpan.
"I don't know where we went wrong with them," said Mrs. Weasley, putting down
her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. "It's been the same for
years, one thing after another, and they won't listen to - OH NOT AGAIN!"
She had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and
turned into a giant rubber mouse.
"One of their fake wands again!" she shouted. "How many times have I told them
not to leave them lying around?"
She grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove
was smoking.
"C'mon," Ron said hurriedly to Harry, seizing a handful of cutlery from the open
drawer, "let's go and help Bill and Charlie."
They left Mrs. Weasley and headed out the back door into the yard.
They had only gone a few paces when Hermione's bandy-legged ginger cat,
Crookshanks, came pelting out of the garden, bottle-brush tail held high in the air,
chasing what looked like a muddy potato on legs. Harry recognized it instantly as
a gnome. Barely ten inches high, its horny little feet pattered very fast as it
sprinted across the yard and dived headlong into one of the Wellington boots that
lay scattered around the door. Harry could hear the gnome giggling madly as
Crookshanks inserted a paw into the boot, trying to reach it. Meanwhile, a very
loud crashing noise was coming from the other side of the house. The source of
the commotion was r