HIDDEN BLACK

✧IT'S JUST THAT THERE'S SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT HER!✧

"PERCY'S ENJOYING WORK, then?" Harry asked.

"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?"

Food parcels?

"Yeah, thanks a lot," said Harry. "They saved my life, those cakes."

What, was his family starving him? From what she could tell and from what she heard, he was treated like a prince. Then again, that information had come from Malfoy, and she knew he wasn't to be trusted.

"And have you heard from -?" Ron began, but stopped. Now Lyra was the one to be suspicious, but tried not to focus on it.

"I think they've stopped arguing," said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment. "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 bad-tempered.

"We're eating out in the garden," she said when they came in. "There's just not room for twelve 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 Lyra could only guess she was talking about 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 trouble as they possibly can. . . . "

Ginny pulled Lyra out of the room, following Granger.

A very loud crashing noise was came from the other side of the house as soon as the girls stepped in the garden. Bill and Charlie both had their wands out, and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other's out of the air. Fred and George were cheering, Ginny and Lyra started laughing, and Granger was hovering near the hedge, apparently torn between amusement and anxiety.

Bill's table caught Charlie's with a huge bang and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy's head poking out of a window on the second floor.

"Will you keep it down?!" he bellowed.

"Sorry, Perce," said Bill, grinning. "How're the cauldron bottoms coming on?"

"Very badly," said Percy peevishly, and he slammed the window shut. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg and conjured tablecloths from nowhere.

By seven o'clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Mrs. Weasley's excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, Lyra, Harry, and Granger were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky. Even with her mother's freshly baked pasteries and snacks, she couldn't deny that the food tasted amazing, and new why Ginny always talked about it. 

"So," said Ginny as she finished piling on some boiled potatoes on her plate, "How much do you know about the Quidditch World Cup?"

"Absolutely nothing," Lyra responded bluntly after swallowing, "But I think it's Ireland and Bulgaria playing right?"