Phoenix Black X Bill Weasley

Harry's Questions

For a few minutes there was silence but for the chink of plates and cutlery and the scraping of chairs as everyone settled down to their food. Then Mrs. Weasley turned to Sirius and said,

"I’ve been meaning to tell you, there’s something trapped in that writing desk in the drawing room, it keeps rattling and shaking. Of course, it could justbe a boggart, but I thought we ought to ask Alastor to have a look at it before we let it out."

"Whatever you like," Sirius said indifferently.

"The curtains in there are full of doxies too," Mrs. Weasley went on. "I thought we might try and tackle them tomorrow."

"I look forward to it," Sirius said the sarcasm clear in his voice. Opposite Harry, Tonks was entertaining Hermione and Ginny by transforming her nose between mouthfuls. Screwing up her eyes each time, her nose swelled to a beaklike protuberance like Snape’s, shrank to something resembling a button mushroom, and then sprouted a great deal of hair from each nostril. Hermione and Ginny started requesting their favorite noses.

"Do that one like a pig snout, Tonks" Tonks obliged before looking at Phoenix and smirking.

"You know I'm not the only person at this table that can do that" The kids all looked around confused "Come on Nix, your turn"

"Pass" Phoenix said shaking her head.

"Please for me" Tonks said pouting as Phoenix shook her head but changed her hair to a bright purple along with her eyes before changing them back to their usual black and grey.

"You suit purple hair" Bill whispered to her before turning back to his father. Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Remus were having an intense discussion about goblins. "They’re not giving anything away yet," Bill said. "I still can’t work out whether they believe he’s back or not. ’Course, they might prefer not to take sides at all. Keep out of it."

"I’m sure they’d never go over to You-Know-Who," Mr. Weasley said, shaking his head. "They’ve suffered losses too. Remember that goblin family he murdered last time, somewhere near Nottingham?"

"I think it depends what they’re offered," Remus said. "And I’m not talking about gold; if they’re offered freedoms we’ve been denying them for centuries they’re going to be tempted. Have you still not had any luck with Ragnok, Bill?"

"He’s feeling pretty anti-wizard at the moment," Bill said. "He hasn’t stopped raging about the Bagman business, he reckons the Ministry did a cover-up, those goblins never got their gold from him, you know"

A gale of laughter from the middle of the table drowned the rest of Bill’s words. Fred, George, Ron, and Mundungus were rolling around in their seats.

"and then," choked Mundungus, tears running down his face, "and then, if you’ll believe it, ’e says to me, ’e says, ‘ ’ere, Dung, where didja get all them toads from? ’Cos some son of a Bludger’s gone and nicked all mine!’ And I says, ‘Nicked all your toads, Will, what next? So you’ll be wanting some more, then?’ And if you’ll believe me, lads, the gormless gargoyle buys all ’is own toads back orf me for twice what ’e paid in the first place"

"I don’t think we need to hear any more of your business dealings, thank you very much, Mundungus," Mrs. Weasley said sharply, as Ron slumped forward onto the table, howling with laughter.

"Beg pardon, Molly," Mundungus said at once, wiping his eyes and winking at Harry. "But, you know, Will nicked ’em orf Warty Harris in the first place so I wasn’t really doing nothing wrong"

"I don’t know where you learned about right and wrong, Mundungus, but you seem to have missed a few crucial lessons," Mrs. Weasley said coldly. Fred and George buried their faces in their goblets of butterbeer; George was hiccuping. For some reason, Mrs. Weasley threw a very nasty look at Sirius before getting to her feet and going to fetch a large rhubarb crumble for pudding. Three helpings of rhubarb crumble and custard later Mr. Weasley was leaning back in his chair, looking replete and relaxed, Tonks was yawning widely, her nose now back to normal, Phoenix was playing with Bill's hand under the table in her lap and Ginny, who had lured Crookshanks out from under the dresser, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling butterbeer corks for him to chase.