Y/n's POV:
I spun faster and faster, elbows tucked tightly to my sides, blurred fireplaces flashing past him, until I started to feel sick and closed my eyes. Then, when at last I felt myself slowing down, I threw out my hands and came to a halt in time to prevent himself from falling face forward out of the Weasleys' kitchen fire.
"Did he eat it?" said Fred excitedly, holding out a hand to pull me to my feet and George pulling Harry to his feet.
"Yeah," said Harry, straightening up. "What was it?"
"Ton-Tongue Toffee," said Fred brightly. "George and I invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer...."
The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter; I looked around and saw that Ron and George were sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with two red-haired people I had seen a few times before, I knew immediately who they were: Bill and Charlie, the two eldest Weasley brothers.
"How're you doing, Y/n?" said the nearer of the two, grinning at him and holding his arms, in which I ran to him and pulled him into a hug.
"I'm good Charlie." I said. He worked with dragons in Romania so I haven't seen him in ages. Charlie was built like Ron, shorter and stockier than Percy and the twins, who were all long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned; his arms were muscular, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it.
Bill got to his feet, smiling, and also embraced me in a hug. The two Weasley brothers introduced themselves to Harry Bill came as something of a surprise. I knew that he worked for the wizarding bank, Gringotts, and that Bill had been Head Boy at Hogwarts; I had always imagined Bill to be an older version of Percy when the twins described him in first year: fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around. However, Bill was - there was no other word for it - cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill's clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that I recognized his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide.
Before any of us could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr.Weasley appeared out of thin air at George's shoulder. He was looking angrier than I had ever seen him.
"That wasn't funny Fred!" he shouted. "What on earth did you give that Muggle boy?"
"I didn't give him anything," said Fred, with another evil grin and a wink at me. I just dropped it....It was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to."
"You dropped it on purpose!" roared Mr.Weasley. "You knew he'd eat it, you knew he was on a diet -"
"How big did his tongue get?" George asked eagerly.
"It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!"
Harry, me and the Weasleys roared with laughter again.
"It isn't funny!" Mr.Weasley shouted. "That sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard-Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons"
"We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!" said Fred indignantly.
"No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git,"said George. "Isn't he, Harry?"
"Yeah, he is, Mr.Weasley," said Harry earnestly.
"That's not the point!" raged Mr.Weasley. "You wait until I tell your mother -"
"Tell me what?" said a voice behind them.
Mrs.Weasley had just entered the kitchen. She was a short, plump woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were presently narrowed with suspicion
"Oh hello, Harry, y/n dear," she said, spotting us and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. "Tell me what, Arthur?"
Mr.Weasley hesitated. I could tell that, however angry he was with Fred and George, he hadn't really intended to tell Mrs.Weasley what happened. There was a silence, while Mr.Weasley eyed his wife nervously. Then two girls appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs.Weasley. One, with very bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth, was Harry's and Ron's friend, Hermione Granger. The other, who was small and red-haired, was Ron's younger sister, Ginny. Both of them smiled at Harry and me, we both grinned back, which made Ginny go scarlet - she had been very taken with Harry ever since his first visit to the Burrow. I pulled the two girls into a large hug before turning our attention to Mrs.Weasley.
"Tell me what, Arthur?" Mrs.Weasley repeated, in a dangerous sort of voice.
"It's nothing, Molly," mumbled Mr.Weasley, "Fred and George just - but I've had words with them -"
"What have they done this time?" said Mrs.Weasley. "If it's got anything to do with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes -"
"Why don't you show Harry where he's sleeping, Ron?" said Hermione from the doorway.
"He knows where he's sleeping," said Ron, "in my room, he slept there last -"
"We can all go," said Hermione pointedly.
"Oh," said Ron, cottoning on. "Right."
"Yeah, we'll come too," said George.
"You stay where you are!" snarled Mrs.Weasley.
Harry and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and me, Hermione, and Ginny set off along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zigzagged through the house to the upper stories.
"What are Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" Harry asked as they climbed.
Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione didn't.
"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's room," said Ron quietly. "Great long price lists for stuff they've invented. Joke stuff, you know."
"Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I'd always knew they'd been inventing all that..." I added
"We've been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things," said Ginny. "We thought they just liked the noise."
"Only, most of the stuff - well, all of it, really - was a bit dangerous," said Ron, "and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren't allowed to make any more of it, and burned all the order forms....She's furious at them anyway. They didn't get as many O.W.L.s as she expected."
"And then there was this big row," Ginny said, "because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop."
Just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression.
"Hi, Percy," I said.
"Oh hello, Y/n," said Percy. "I was wondering who was making all the noise. I'm trying to work in here, you know I've got a report to finish for the office - and it's rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs."
"We're not thundering, "said Ron irritably. "We're walking. Sorry if we've disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic."
"What are you working on?" said Harry.
"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," said Percy smugly "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin - leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year -"
"That'll change the world, that report will," said Ron. "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."
Percy went slightly pink.
"You might sneer, Ron," he said heatedly, "but unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products that seriously endanger"
"Yeah, yeah, all right," said Ron, and he started off upstairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As Harry, Hermione, and Ginny followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them. It sounded as though Mr.Weasley had told Mrs.Weasley about the toffees.
The room at the top of the house where Ron slept looked much as it had the last time that Harry and I had come to stay: the same posters of Ron's favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping ceiling, and the fish tank on the windowsill, which had previously held frog spawn, now contained one extremely large frog. Ron's old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, but instead there was the tiny gray owl that had delivered Ron's letter to Harry in Privet Drive. It was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering madly.
"Shut up, Pig," said Ron, edging his way between two of the four beds that had been squeezed into the room. "Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill and Charlie are in their room," he told Harry. "Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he's got to work."
I wasn't really listening, I zoned out focusing in a slight tingling in my face. My hand passed over my scars and I wanted to check. I stood up and headed to the door.
"Where are you going y/n?" Hermione asked.
"The bathroom, I'll be back" I said before exiting the room.
I wandered down the stairs to one of the two bathrooms in the house. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I leaned against the door and slid down it, my head fell into my hands and I felt tears trickle down my cheeks. I looked up at the mirror at my scars, each one showed more pain, then I glanced at my arms which were full of scars, some faded and some still red from my last transformation. Each scar has a story behind it. Every transformation had created more scars that would never go away.
"I'm sick of it" I whispered to the mirror. "I'm a monster, how will the twins react if they found out?" I asked myself.
"What if they leave me? What if they expose me to everyone? What if they think I'm horrible?" I asked myself. "No y/n. Don't think that, they won't find out" I reassured myself. I looked up at the mirror at my puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.
"I think they've stopped arguing," I said to myself. "I should go help her"
I nodded and gave one last glance at the mirror. I left the bathroom and went back downstairs to find Mrs.Weasley alone in the kitchen, looking extremely bad-tempered.
"Need any help Mrs.Weasley" I said carefully. She turned around and her face relaxed a bit.
"That would be lovely y/n dear" she smiled. "And please call me Molly"
"No problem Mrs Wea- Molly" I stuttered before I went to the counter and peeled some potatoes.
Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny all came down the stairs to probably help. Molly turned to them.
"We're eating out in the garden," she said when they came in. "There's just not room for twelve people in here. Could you take the plates outside, girls? Bill and Charlie are setting up the tables. Knives and forks, please, you two," she said to Ron and Harry, the third and forth years all grabbed what they were asked to and piled out of the front door. Molly had pointed her wand a little more vigorously than she had intended at a pile of potatoes in the sink, which shot out of their skins so fast that they ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.
"Oh for heaven's sake," she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes. "Those two!" she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard, and I knew she meant Fred and George.
"I don't know what's going to happen to them, I really don't. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can...."
Molly slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand tip as she stirred.
"It's not as though they haven't got brains," she continued irritably, taking the saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, "but they're wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they'll be in real trouble.
I've had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they're going, they'll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office. I don't know where we went wrong with them," said Molly, putting down her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. "It's been the same for years, one thing after another, and they won't listen to - OH NOT AGAIN!"
She had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and turned into a giant rubber mouse.
"One of their fake wands again!" she shouted. "How many times have I told them not to leave them lying around?"
She grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove was smoking.
"Molly, they'll be okay. I'll keep an eye on them" I said to her.
"Thank you y/n. Please just make sure they don't do anything stupid with their products." She said pulling me into a hug. "The twins are very lucky to have you y/n"
"I won't Molly. And I'm lucky I have them too." I replied.
"Thank you for your help y/n. You can go outside and help out there"
I nodded and headed outside to see and hear a very loud crashing noise was coming from the other side of the house. The source of the commotion was revealed as I entered the garden, and saw that Bill and Charlie both had their wands out, and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other's out of the air. Fred and George were cheering, Ginny was laughing, and Hermione was hovering near the hedge, apparently torn between amusement and anxiety.
Bill's table caught Charlie's with a huge bang and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy's head poking out of a window on the second floor.
"Will you keep it down?!" he bellowed.
"Sorry, Perce," said Bill, grinning. "How're the cauldron bottoms coming on?" Clearly making fun of his brothers work.
"Very badly," said Percy peevishly, and he slammed the window shut. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg and conjured tablecloths from nowhere.
Fred and George made their way over to me and slung their arms over my shoulders and rested their chins on my head. They were both smiling but Fred's smile dropped, he saw my puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.
"Are you okay y/n/n?" Fred asked.
"Umm yeah." I hesitated to reply.
"It looks like you've been crying" George said.
"Yeah, I banged my toe on a table and it really hurt" I lied. The twins believed me and sat down and started to chat.
By seven o'clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Molly's excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, me, Harry, and Hermione were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky. I listened rather than talked as i helped myself to chicken and ham pie, boiled potatoes, and salad.
At the far end of the table, Percy was telling his father all about his report on cauldron bottoms.
"I've told Mr.Crouch that I'll have it ready by Tuesday," Percy was saying pompously. "That's a bit sooner than he expected it, but I like to keep on top of things. I think he'll be grateful I've done it in good time, I mean, its extremely busy in our department just now, what with all the arrangements for the World Cup. We're just not getting the support we need from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Ludo Bagman -"
"I like Ludo," said Mr.Weasley mildly. "He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup.
I did him a bit of a favor: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble - a lawnmower with unnatural powers - I smoothed the whole thing over."
"Oh Bagman's likable enough, of course," said Percy dismissively, "but how he ever got to be Head of Department...when I compare him to Mr.Crouch!
I can't see Mr.Crouch losing a member of our department and not trying to find out what's happened to them. You realize Bertha Jorkins has been missing for over a month now? Went on holiday to Albania and never came back?"
"Yes, I was asking Ludo about that," said Mr. Weasley, frowning. "He says Bertha's gotten lost plenty of times before now - though must say, if it was someone in my department, I'd be worried...."
"Oh Bertha's hopeless, all right," said Percy. "I hear she's been shunted from department to department for years, much more trouble than she's worth...but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her.
Mr.Crouch has been taking a personal interest, she worked in our department at one time, you know, and I think Mr.Crouch was quite fond of her - but Bagman just keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead of Albania." I rolled my eyes and turned back to the conversations on my end of the table.
Next to Mrs. Weasley, me, Fred, George, and Charlie were all talking spiritedly about the World Cup.
"It's got to be Ireland," said Charlie thickly, through a mouthful of potato. "They flattened Peru in the semifinals."
"Bulgaria has got Viktor Krum, though," said Fred.
"Krum's one decent player, Ireland has got seven," I said shortly. "I wish England had got through. That was embarrassing, that was."
"What happened?" Asked Harry eagerly.
"Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten," I replied gloomily. "Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg."
Mr.Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their homemade strawberry ice cream, and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. I was feeling extremely well fed and at peace with the world as we watched several gnomes sprinting through the rosebushes, laughing madly and closely pursued by Crookshanks
"Look at the time," Mrs.Weasley said suddenly, checking her wristwatch. "You really should be in bed, the whole lot of you you'll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. Harry, y/n if you leave your school list out, I'll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. I'm getting everyone else's. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time."
"Wow - hope it does this time!" said Harry enthusiastically.
"Well, I certainly don't," said Percy sanctimoniously. "I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days."
"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" said Fred.
"That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" said Percy, going very red in the face. "It was nothing personal!"
"It was," Fred whispered to me as we got up from the table. "We sent it"
I giggled slightly before me and Fred walked inside nearly hand in hand. Fred's face was red and had a sheepish smile on his face.
"Good night y/n/n" Fred said to me.
"Goodnight Freddie" I replied. Fred smiled before he kissed the back of my hand and turned into Ron's room.
Butterflies flied around my stomach. It wasn't much but he just kissed my hand. I smiled as I walked into Ginny's room where she and Hermione were getting ready for bed.
"What are you so happy about y/n?" Ginny asked.
"Fred kissed my hand" I replied as I changed out of my clothes and into my pyjamas.
"That boy is head over heels with you" Hermione piped up.
"Whatever. We're just friends" I retaliated. I laid down on my mattress and fell asleep with a smile on my face.
Word count- 3500
A/n- Sorry for the long chapter today. I'm sorry if it's bad but Wednesdays part should be good. This was sort off a filler chapter. Thank you for 50 reads! Have a great day :)