(Eng) Weasleys, Pranks and other Curses

22

[Back at Hogwarts.]

My gaze lingered upon one after another until each one looked at me.
"This is the last time I'm going to ask you. You can leave now and forget you were ever here." Silence. "If you swear to keep my secret, that is binding. Do you understand?" Still silence. Everyone present cast nervous glances at each other. "You must answer me already," I insisted, and came a wave of approving sounds in response. "I repeat. I'm probably breaking half a dozen laws here. Worst case scenario, we not only get kicked out of Hogwarts, but face real consequences."

"By Merlin, Renard, get to the point. You do realize that none of us are going to leave." Fred propped himself up on the table with both hands and looked around as well. "Though you did surprise me, Maddie. Wouldn't have pegged you as such a risk taker."
He wasn't wrong about that. That Madeline Bell had wanted to join us had surprised me just as much.

"Are you kidding?" the girl squealed sharply. "This is the first time in my life I've been able to be a part of something like this! Do you think I'm going to turn that down?!"

Fred screwed up his face. What else could he say to that.

I passed the question on. "Ginny?"

"I'm so in. No one's going to believe I was in on this anyway if it gets out that Fred and George were in on it."

"Your father is going to be in real trouble," I reminded her, but Ginny rolled her eyes.

"He's already getting it from my brothers anyway. One Weasley more or less." She shrugged.

"All right." I sighed one last time. Then I guess it was time.

"And I don't get asked?" George crossed his arms and leaned against the table.

"You said yes first!" I hissed back tensely. "Or have you changed your mind?"

The twin really had the nerve to laugh at me. "All right, boss. No more objections."

I placed a coin in the middle between the five of us. "Everyone put their hand on it and then we promise to keep this secret." Since no one stirred, I began. I pressed my sweaty palm over the enchanted metal. "Come on."

George was next, then Maddie, Fred, and finally Ginny.

"I promise to keep the secret," we said in unison, and the coin under my hand bound us all to the promise. One by one we raised our hands, only George pausing a moment too long.

We both knew how damned obvious we were, but he had agreed that we weren't going to pursue this any further until we found a solution to my problem.

"Now will you show us what we had to go through all this fuss for?" demanded George.

So I lifted the suitcase, which I hadn't let out of my sight since we left London, onto the table. With a soft click it opened and four heads bent low over the table to see the great mystery.

As the mountains of paperwork were revealed, the general confusion was evident.

"If you had told me it was about essays, I would have turned the corner after all," Fred joked, trying to cover his disappointment.

"You're not on the team for your patience, that's for sure," remarked Maddie, who had picked up a surprising amount of self-confidence over the vacations.

"Oh yeah, and what's your forte? Are you going to bore the curse to death?"

"Hey!", I interrupted them both immediately. Fred had gone too far, I could tell, and gave him a dirty look. "Maddie is the only one here who studied up on the fog vulture over the days off. She's even been able to tell me things I didn't know. So don't act like that."