A Sirius Summer

4th August 1995

Breakfast the following morning was a quiet affair. Ron was still cross at Harry for abandoning him, Mrs Weasley was cross with Sirius for standing against her, and everyone else seemed too wary of Mrs Weasley's wrath to speak more than a few words. As the last of the plates cleared, they were all escorted up to the first floor into a drawing room and handed various cleaning products before being given orders to clear everything Dark from the room.

Harry looked around the room confused. While he could boast the highest DADA scores in his year for four years running, he doubted he had the experience to identify let alone deal with any possible Dark objects that may be hidden in the room. It didn't seem to bother any of the others who were pulling items off the shelves with abandon, stuffing them into sacks before liberally spraying down the now empty surface with Warbecks All Surface Scourigrifer (Cleans ten times as well as your wand!). Harry dubiously joined in, wondering what exactly made the small silver ornamental hippogriffs that adorned the mantelpiece dark.

The first piece of entertainment had come when Ron had pulled out a pair of dark purple robes from the blanket box under the window, which immediately tried to strangle him. It took the combined effort of Mrs Weasley, Ginny and Tonks to restrain them. When Harry rushed over to help, the robes lay docile in his arms.

"Well it is not that surprising considering your grandmother." Mrs Weasley sniffed as she pointed to the bag she wanted Harry to deposit the robes in. Harry did as he was told, opening his mouth to ask what she meant, but Mrs Weasley had already turned to make sure Ron was alright, fussing over him and suggesting that it was a good time for a tea break.

Once they had all been revitalised by a cup of tea, they turned their attentions to a closet at the back of the room that had apparently been infested with a nest of doxies. They were all given a can of doxicide and told to spray liberally when the nest was disturbed. Harry took his position at the far side of the room, joined by the twins who had grins on their faces

"Alright Harry," Fred whispered, giving him a nudge and handing over a small bag. "Make sure you get a few in here, we will take it from there."

"We want to experiment with doxy venom for our skiving snackboxes" George muttered in Harry's other ear at his questioning face.

"What are..?" Harry began to ask but was quickly shushed by the twins.

"Later, we don't want certain ears overhearing." Fred hissed, nodding his head towards Hermione and Ron who were looking at them with expressions of disapproval and jealousy. Harry sighed; it seemed his best friends had yet to get over the room situation from yesterday. Though he couldn't blame Fred and George. Ron had never quite been able to keep a secret, and if he found out that the twins had been experimenting with restricted substances it was almost certain that Mrs Weasley would find out within a day.

The closet opened and doxies started to fly. Harry was vaguely reminded of that time in second year when Lockhart released a cage of pixies into the classroom. He liberally sprayed the small fairy like creatures, making sure to stuff a few in the small sack that he had hidden by the sofa. As he subdued a particularly large and vicious doxy, narrowly missing being bitten, Hermione came up to him, deftly picking the doxy up by its wings and placing it into one of the large collection bags the others had been using.

"Harry you need to be careful" She said, during a lull in the chaos. "You are already in so much trouble, you shouldn't be getting into whatever schemes the twins are concocting. It could seriously harm your Hogwarts career"

"Hermione, its the twins, they may cause a bit of trouble, but its nothing bad" Harry protested. He knew she meant well, but her adherence to the rules was sometimes frustrating.