Percy Jackson and the Department of Mysteries [Book 5]

16) Percy Jackson's Guide to De-Doxying the Weird Curtains

"Close the door, please, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said, and Harry did as requested, glancing for a long moment out of the room.

Mrs. Weasley bent over a page of one of Lockhart's books, which I rolled my eyes at. Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests. I much preferred literature like Percy Jackson's Guide to Dealing with Narcissistic Professors and Percy Jackson's Guide to Dealing With Household Pests (AKA Ronald Weasley).

"Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because doxies bite and their teeth are poisonous," Mrs. Weasley peered down at the book. "I've got a bottle of antidote here, but I'd rather nobody needed it." She straightened and moved before the curtains, beckoning the rest of us to move with her. "When I say the word, start spraying immediately. They'll come flying out at us, I expect, but it says on the sprays one good squirt will paralyze them. When they're immobilized, just throw them in this bucket." She moved out of our line and fire and raised her own spray bottle. "All right — squirt."

Not gonna lie, I didn't squirt when she said squirt. I was too busy getting distracted by the look Fred and George shared. It was always scary when they shared a look.

A doxy shot out of a fold in the curtain at the others' spraying, it's beetle-like wings buzzing, it's thin, sharp teeth bared, it's fairylike body covered in black fur that I was very tempted to touch. Its fists were clenched in rage, and I sprayed it straight in the face.

"Fred, what are you doing?" Mrs. Weasley demanded, and I looked over to see him holding a doxy between his fingers. "Spray that at once and throw it away!"

"Right-o," Fred said cheerily, spraying the doxy in the face and pocketing it once Mrs. Weasley turned her back.

"We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snackboxes," George told Harry and me under his breath, noticing that we saw his brother pocket it.

"What are Skiving Snackboxes?" Harry asked, and I sprayed two doxies in the face. They slammed into each other and one rocketed towards Ron, who had to duck. He sent me a glare, and I promptly stuck my tongue out at him.

"Range of sweets to make you ill," George whispered, cautiously watching Mrs. Weasley to make sure she wasn't paying attention to us. "Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. Fred and I have been developing them this summer. They're double-ended, color-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastilles, you throw up. Moment you've been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half —"

"'— which restore you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom.' That's what we're putting in the adverts, anyway," Fred whispered, swiping a few stray doxies. "But they still need a bit of work. At the moment our testers are having a bit of trouble stopping puking long enough to swallow the purple end."

"Testers?" I asked. I hadn't heard anything about them having testers since I puked up a bird with their last candy.

"Us," Fred said. "We take it in turns. George did the Fainting Fancies — we both tried the Nosebleed Nougat —"

"Mum thought we'd been dueling," George grinned.

"Joke shop still on, then?" Harry adjusted the nozzle on his spray.

At the end of school year, after all the terrible things had gone down, Harry gave our winnings to the twins so they could pay for a joke shop. I was quite happy with that decision, because if I had taken the money, I would have cried. Then I probably would've tried to shove it down the garbage disposal, which would've gotten me on Hope's bad side. Don't get on her bad side.

"Well, we haven't had a chance to get premises yet," Fred said lowly, "so we're running it as a mail-order service at the moment. We put advertisements in the Daily Prophet last week."

"All thanks to you two," George said. "But don't worry... Mum hasn't got a clue. She won't read the Daily Prophet anymore, 'cause of it telling lies about you two and Dumbledore."

"Oh, remind me to look at the Daily Prophet later," I said. "I hope I made front page news."

***

De-doxying the curtains took up a majority of the morning (other than when I had to wrestle with Buckbeak because he was stomping and causing dust to fall on us and the doxies). It was after lunch when Mrs. Weasley finally pulled her protective scarf down, sank into the armchair, and sprung up in disgust when she sat on the bag of dead rats.

"I think that seat's taken," I noted.

"Thank you, Perseus," Mrs. Weasley sighed.

"You're welcome," I smiled.

Uhhhsugsusheh I forgot to post. I've got two minutes before twelve. Dang. Uhh. Spider-Man tomorrow, had pizza, watched the Percy Jackson movie with my mom, it's disgusting.......... Yeah. That's good enough.

Anyway, I hope you guys have had an enjoyable Thursday, and I'll see you Saturday CT. Love ya!