meant to be (2)

5

After listening to Ginny talking about nothing but how cute and pretty and handsome Harry was for hours I decided to go down and check on the boys in the garden.

Just when I went down the front door snapped open and a very tired looking Mr. Weasley came through the door.

"Hello Mr. Weasley!" I exclaimed, but he just threw me a tired smile.

"He's back!" I heard George shout. "Dad's home!"

The four boys came crashing through the door all
at once, welcoming him.

Mr Weasley was now slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his eyes closed. He was a thin man, going bald, but the little hair he had was as red as any of his children's. He was wearing long green robes which were dusty and travelworn.

"What a night." he mumbled, groping for the teapot as we all sat down around him. "Nine raids! Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned..."

Mr Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

"Find anything, Dad?" asked Fred eagerly.

"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and bitin kete." yawned Mr Weasley. "There was some pretty nasty stuff  wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness..."

"Why would anyone bother making door-keys shrink" asked George.

"Just Muggle-baiting" sighed Mr Weasley. "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it ... Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking - they'll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face... but the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe-"

"LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?" Mrs Weasley had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Mr Weasley's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife.

"C-cars, Molly, dear?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars." said Mrs Weasley, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to make it fly!"

Mr Weasley blinked. Judging by the look on his face, he was trying to find a logical excuse.

"Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if, er, he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth... There's a loophole in the law, you'll find... as long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't-" he said finally.

"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" shouted Mrs Weasley. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed!
And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you werent intending to fly!"

"Harry?" said Mr Weasley blankly. "Harry who"

He looked around, saw Harry, who was sitting to my right and his and my arm were brushing against each other, and jumped.

"Good Lord, is it Harry Potter?Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about-" he said extremely excited. I grimaced at him as I noticed that he was quite embarrassed by Mr. Weasley's reaction.

"Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night! And they even dragged poor Julie and Mason along with them!" shouted Mrs Weasley. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

"Did you really?" said Mr Weasley eagerly. I couldn't help but chuckle quietly. This obviously was not what Mrs Weasley wanted to hear. "Did it go all right? I-I mean" he faltered, as sparks flew from Mrs Weasley's eyes, "that-that was very wrong, boys - very wrong indeed..!"

"Let's leave them to it" Ron muttered to Harry and I, as Mrs Weasley swelled like a bullfrog. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom!"

We slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which zigzagged its wayup through the house. On the third landing a door stood open and it closed with a snap. I just caught sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring.

"Cinny." said Ron. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy, she never shuts up normally-"

They're actually so stupid.

We climbed two more flights until we reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying 'Ronald's Room'.

I stepped in, my head almost touching the sloping ceiling, and blinked. It was like walking into a furnace: nearly everything in Ron's room seemed to be a violent shade of orange: the bedspread, the walls, even the ceiling.

Then I realised that Ron had covered nearly every inch of the shabby wallpaper with posters of the same seven witches and wizards, all wearing bright orange robes, carrying broomsticks and waving energetically.

"Your Quidditch team?" said Harry.

"What else would it be?" I mocked Harry, who ignored me.

"The Chudley Cannons!" said Ron, pointing at the orange bedspread, which was emblazoned with two giant black C and a speeding cannonball. "Ninth in the league!"

Ron's school spellbooks were stacked untidily in a corne next to a pile of comics which all seemed to feature Il Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle.

Ron's magic wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frogspawn on the windor sill, next to his fat grey rat, Scabbers, who was snoozing in patch of sun.

I stepped over a pack of Self-Shuffling playing on the floor and looked out of the tiny window. In the below I could see a gang of gnomes sneaking, one by one, back through the Weasleys hedge.

Then I turned to look at Ron, who was watching Harry almost nervously, as though waiting for his opinion.

"It's a bit small." said Ron quickly. "Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic, he's always banging on the pipes and groaning ..."

But Harry, grinning widel and said, "This is the best house I've ever been in."

I couldn't help but smile when Ron's ears went pink.