Fred and George and the Toilers of Trouble (Year 1) ✔

Author Note: Enchantments

Hey, everyone! Hope you're enjoying the book!

I wanted to take a short break here, as I might do occasionally, to talk about my methods in writing this novel fifteen years ago. I first took on the task as a sort of riddle to solve in reverse: Knowing what we do about the story that takes place at Hogwarts from Harry Potter's point of view, what actions could've happened in the two years prior to motivate the events to come, so they are seen more like reactions? And, more importantly, how would I create Fred and George Weasley from scratch to make sure that they become the mischievous duo we know them to be in J.K. Rowling's books?

So you know, I am somewhat of a canon purist. When writing fanfiction, I want to stay within the confines of the original source material. That means Harry's books (1-7). From time to time, I may use a detail from the movies or from Pottermore in order to fill in a blank or two, but the architecture of my books is primarily OS-Canon (original source - only the books!), rather than JKR-Canon (anything J.K. Rowling could add in tweets, interviews, and on Pottermore), or WW-Canon (The wizarding world continuity canon, consisting of anything under the umbrella of Harry Potter related materials, games, apps, stage plays, and movies). As I said, my stories begin and end with OS-Canon. And, in fact, I included lots of Easter Eggs throughout the series for the Potterheads who might know the books as well as I do — or better! That way, the more times you have read Harry's books, the more you'll enjoy the story of Fred and George.

The reason I'm stopping here to talk about this is because I'm introducing a pretty big deviation to established canon in the next part by including a course at Hogwarts called "Enchantments", which is a class for those who cannot afford the "Charms" textbook. Although you might not care about staying true to canon, I wanted you all to know that I wouldn't do this unless I thought it was vital to the story.

My reasoning is two-fold:

The first is that I wanted to establish an innate desire in the Weasley twins to bend the rules in order to fit their needs, not simply because they want to cause trouble, but because they are unable to master the basic spells that nearly every other first year is learning in Charms, all due to being so poor that they cannot afford the required text. This reinforces how insufficient the twins feel as incoming students in comparison to their classmates, and encourages them to counterbalance this by figuring out how to make themselves equal with everyone else without changing who they are. It's the "Weasley" way, if you think about it. Without enough money to compete with fellow wizards, they do what they can to get by. Their mother had just taught them this lesson by supplementing items from their supply list with mediocre, homemade substitutes. By being forced to attend Enchantments, and to miss out on a proper education, Fred and George are compelled to get creative and start trusting in themselves to solve any problem. And that's exactly who we need them to be.

The second reason is that I wanted Professor Quirrell to be a part of their origin story. We know from later books that Professor Quirrell could have only been the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for one year, and it made a lot of readers conclude that he had just returned from his travels around the world. I liked to imagine that he had returned during Fred and George's first year, rather than Harry's. It is interesting knowing that Voldemort is living on the back of his head throughout the entire book, and I wanted to explore how an ethically compromised teacher could play a role in developing their mischievous nature – much of which will come out in the next two books (before Quirrell is burned up by Harry and left for dead). So instead of replacing Professor Burbage as the Muggle Studies teacher – or moving on to teach History of Magic (which was his goal by learning magical history during his travels), Quirrell takes up the teaching post for Enchantments until Professor Binns moves on (which we know will not happen).

My plan in all of this was to use Enchantments (and what we know about Quirrell and the story of Voldemort) to add tension and motivation to the life events of the twins, and to better push them toward who they will become. Since the story of Harry Potter was largely from Harry's perspective, I believed I was safe to stretch some of the established rules under the assumption that Harry really couldn't have known everything that was going on at Hogwarts while he was a student.

Now, back to the story!