Percy Jackson and the Heir of Slytherin [Book 2]

4) The Lockhart Books

I was woken up by a door slamming.

Before I could figure out what was going on, George shouted, "He's back! Dad's home!" Then Fred and George each took one of my arms and started carrying me towards the house.

I could hear Ron and Harry laughing while I just shook the sleep off and struggled against the twins. They just snickered and continued to drag me.

The twins dumped me in a chair beside Mr. Weasley and I glared at them.

Then I turned to look at their father. He had his eyes closed, glasses resting on his nose. He was thing and going bald. The hair he did have, however, was just as red as his children's. He had on long green robes that were dusty.

"What a night," he mumbled, reaching for a teapot. "Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned..."

He took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

"Find anything, Dad?" Fred asked eagerly.

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

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

"Just Muggle-baiting," Mr. Weasley sighed. "Sell then 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 keys keep 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 was holding a long poker like a sword. For a second I even thought she was wielding it correctly. Mr. Weasley's eyes jerked open and he stared at Mrs. Weasley.

"C-cars, Molly, dear?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars," Mrs. Weasley's eyes flashed. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all 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, "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—"

"Arthur Weasley, you made a loophole when you wrote that law!" Mrs. Weasley shouted. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry and Percy arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"

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

He looked around and jumped when he saw Harry.

"Good gods, is to Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about—"

"Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night!" Mrs. Weasley shouted. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

"Did you really?" Mr. Weasley said eagerly. "Did it go all right? I - I mean," Mrs. Weasley looked so mad at him even I was terrified, "That-that was very wrong, boys — very wrong indeed..."

"Let's leave them to it," Ron muttered to Harry and me. "Come on, Ill show you my bedroom."

We slipped through the kitchen and up a zigzag staircase. On the third floor, I saw Ginny peeking out at Harry. She quickly closed the door.