In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXXXVIII: The Melofors Jinx and Verdimillious

GEORGE:

The third D.A. meeting took place the night before Halloween. Lucy and Harry thought it would be fun to work on the Melofors Jinx, which trapped the victim's head in a pumpkin. Laughter filled the air as people smashed the pumpkins on their heads with various blasting spells, and Lucy and Harry darted around the room vanishing the pumpkin remains before someone could slip and crack their actual heads open rather than just their pumpkin helmets. Fred managed to hit Lucy with a Melofors Jinx once, as she darted past us. Her reaction was hilarious — she popped it off, chucked it as hard as she could at Fred, and hit the flying pumpkin with a Reductor Curse at the last second so orange goo splattered all over him.

That was great enough, but to make matters even better, Harry saw the whole thing. Lucy turned to him with a proud smile.

"Stop getting ahead of the curriculum, Lu, the Reductor Curse is for the next meeting," he said with a disapproving shake of his head. He was obviously trying not to laugh and nearly exploding in the process; his shoulders were shaking and the corners of his mouth were twitching.

Lucy obviously knew this, but she was far better at hiding her amusement. "Watch yourself, Potter, or you'll find yourself with a pumpkin for a head before you can say 'Happy Halloween.'"

"Allow me," I said, and with a flick of my wand, Harry's head disappeared inside a massive pumpkin. So massive, in fact, he started to topple from the weight of it.

Lucy laughed louder and louder the more he struggled to blast the pumpkin off. Fred's repeated whisper of "Fianto duri" after Harry's every attempt explained the unnatural resistance of the pumpkin to being blasted to pieces. Once he was in legitimate danger of falling over, though, Lucy — still cracking up — rushed to the rescue. She propped Harry up and wrestled the pumpkin off his head and tossed it our way, this time sending the orange splatter over me as well.

As soon as Harry was on his feet, my vision went black, and my surroundings smelled very strongly of pumpkin. I didn't even bother trying to blast it off, instead lunging in the direction of Fred. I successfully knocked us both to the ground, and our pumpkin helmets smashed against the floor, leaving us unharmed.

When I glanced up again, Lucy and Harry were still laughing. Really laughing. I hadn't even realized how long it had been since I had seen either one genuinely smiling, let alone laughing, let alone cracking up the way they were. Harry was still half-leaning against Lucy, who was doubled over with laughter. And the best part was that it wasn't even that funny. It was just fun. I think, for a moment, we all felt like kids again.

The rest of Dumbledore's Army seemed equally amused by our shenanigans, and once they stopped laughing, Lucy and Harry decided it was a good place to stop for the night.

Lucy was still giggling a bit as she rounded everyone up and motioned for us to sit in the cushions in the middle of the room. "Well, I think we can consider tonight a smashing success, don't you think?"

Her pun was met with both laughter and applause. A couple of people started firing questions her way — the loudest was Zacharias Smith asking if this was one of the spells she used back in August — but Harry held up his hands to silence everyone.

"Sorry, everyone, we can talk in a minute, but first, Hermione has an announcement."

Hermione immediately jumped up and started passing a basket around. She joined Harry and Lucy at the front of the room and held up a Galleon.

"You see the numerals around the edge of the coins? On real Galleons that's just a serial number referring to the goblin who cast the coin. On these fake coins, though, the numbers will change to reflect the time and date of the next meeting. The coins will grow hot when the date changes, so if you're carrying them in a pocket you'll be able to feel them. We take one each, and when Lucy and Harry set the date of the next meeting, Lucy will change the numbers on her coin, and because I've put a Protean Charm on them, they'll all change to mimic hers." When no one spoke, she looked to Lucy in a panic for a second and shifted uncomfortably as she looked back at the group. "Well, we, er, I thought it was a good idea. I mean, even if Umbridge asked us to turn out our pockets, there's nothing fishy about carrying a Galleon, is there? But, well, if you don't want to use them—"