Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [4]

⚡️ Chapter 3 ⚡️

Vega, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny managed to avoid Mrs. Weasley's wrath, and they could hear the Weasley family matriarch yelling at her twin sons. Harry looked rather confused as to what had really just happened, aside from how hilarious it had been to see Dudley have such a long tongue.

"What are Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" Harry questioned, which caused both Ron and Ginny to laugh while Vega looked slightly amused. Hermione didn't seem much impressed as usual.

"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's room," Ron answered 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," Ginny said without blowing a fuse. "But we never thought they were actually making things. We thought they just liked the noise,"

"Only, most of the stuff – well, all of it, really – was a bit dangerous," Ron continued. "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,"

"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 horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression. For a moment, Vega wondered if Percy was just like the Bloody Mary, except he appeared out of nowhere whenever the words 'Ministry of Magic' were called out.

"Hi, Percy," Harry greeted.

"Oh, hello, Harry," Percy said. "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," Ron said irritably. "We're walking. Sorry if we've disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic,"

"What are you working on?" Harry asked.

"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," Percy replied smugly. "We're trying to standardise 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," Ron responded. "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks," Vega watched as Percy went slightly pink.

"You might sneer, Ron," Percy said heatedly. "But unless some sort of international law is imposed, we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products that seriously endanger –"

"Yeah, yeah, all right," Ron said, and he started off upstairs again.

Percy slammed his bedroom door shut, and as Vega, 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.

Finally, they arrived in Ron's furnace of a room. Just as last time, the whole of Ron's room was filled with the same posters of Ron's favourite Quidditch team – the Chudley Cannons.

There was a fish tank on the windowsill and now held an extremely large frog, in contrast to the frog spawn it held last time. Ron's old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, but instead there was the tiny grey called Pigwidgeon. He was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering madly.