Never Is Our Always

Headless Hats and Azkaban breakouts 5

(Third person)

"But, then again, having someone taller than you is really—" The common room was packed and full of shrieks of laughter and excitement; Fred and George were demonstrating their latest bit of joke shop merchandise. "Oh good god."

"Headless Hats!" George shouted, as Fred waved a pointed hat decorated with a fluffy pink feather at the watching students. "Two Galleons each, watch Fred, now!"

Fred swept the hat on to his head, beaming. For a second he merely looked rather stupid; then both hat and head vanished.

Several girls screamed, but everyone else was roaring with laughter.

"And off again!" George shouted, and Fred's hand groped for a moment in what seemed to be thin air over his shoulder; then his head reappeared as he swept the pink-feathered hat from it.

"How do those hats work, then?" Alice said, distracted from the conversation she was having with Katie from watching Fred and George closely.

"I mean, obviously it's some kind of Invisibility Spell, but it's rather clever to have extended the field of invisibility beyond the boundaries of the charmed object... I'd imagine the charm wouldn't have a very long life though." Katie responds.

"Maybe that's the point, you know?" Alice replies. "The charm fades completely so customers have to come and buy a new one.'

Fred's eyes scanned the room, he hoped to see Alice watching his dreams coming true with pushing the joke shop products into full swing, then, he saw her as she was talking and looking in Katie's direction; he smiles at his girlfriend before going back to his presentation with George.

Alice looked over at him, smiled, then went back into her conversation. A lightbulb went off in Fred's mind, George looked at him and they both grinned.

"Wanna try it on Minnie?" George grins.

"I was thinking exactly the same thing," Fred replies, they grin as they grabbed a hat and snuck off into the crowd, Alice was completely unaware of where they were as she was engrossed with her conversation.

"I'm just glad Umbridge didn't kick me off the team either, but then again, I was trying to break it up... boys can be— AH!" Alice yelps as Fred shoved the hat on her head, a lot of people screamed while Alice touched her face before she started laughing.

"Ta-da!" Fred and George wave their hands as Alice placed her hands on her hips, a heavy sigh left her lips as she shakes her head when Fred took it off her head, face becoming visible.

"Only for Two Galleons!" Alice told the crowd and they all burst into applause.

(Next morning)

(Minnie pov)

As the Daily Prophet arrived, Hermione smoothed it out, gazed for a moment at the front page and gave a yelp that caused everyone in the vicinity to stare at her.

"What?" Harry, me and Ron said together.

For answer she spread the newspaper on the table in front of us and pointed at ten black-and-white photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards' faces and the tenth, a witch's. Some of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

Antonin Dolohov, read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at us, convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.