Every bone in Amisty's body was aching for her to run.
To run far, far away from the seething mother in front of her. But, sadly, her feet seemed to stuck to the ground.
Mrs. Weasley's piercing brown eyes glowered at them, burning into their faces and sending shivers down their spines.
Amisty couldn't help but shift her gaze down to the ground.
"So," She placed her hands on her hips, voice eerily calm.
"Morning, Mum!" George offered, a forced grin on his face as he struggled to remain calm under her withering glare.
"Have you any idea how worried I've been?" She asked, still in that same, shockingly quiet voice.
"Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to --" Fred started, shaking.
He couldn't continue as her calm aura cracked.
"Beds empty! No note!" She shouted, "Car gone -- could have crashed -- out of my mind with worry -- did you car? -- never, as long as I've lived -- you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy --"
"Perfect Percy," Fred grumbled, earning a warning nudge from Amisty who swiftly leaped backward when Mrs. Weasley replied.
"YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" She yelled, jabbing him in the chest with her finger. "You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job --"
Amisty thought the shouting would never cease.
She had backed away to Harry's side, the two of them exchanging shocked, green gazes.
"I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, Amisty. Come in and have some breakfast," She turned to them, suddenly calm, and then walked away toward the house.
The two looked at each other warily, then to Ron, who nodded, before following after her with hesitant steps.
The kitchen was just as cozy as what the exterior of the house portrayed.
Amisty looked around in wonder, her ears catching the ticking of a clock and the voice of a singing witch.
Mrs. Weasley was cooking away at the stove, the pans clinking and clattering as she glared at her sons every-so-often.
There were little snippets of her mutterings Amisty could catch, like "don't know what you were thinking of," or "never would have believed it." Though she was too distracted by the lovely smell wafting from the pan to be bothered by it.
"I don't blame you," She told them as she dropped a heaping serving of sausages onto their plates, "Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we'd come and get you ourselves if you hadn't written back to Ron by Friday. But really flying an illegal car halfway across the country -- anyone could have seen you --"
With a quick flick of her wand the dishes in the sink started to wash themselves, to Amisty's awe.
"It was cloudy, Mum!" Fred protested.
"You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" Mrs. Weasley shot back, glaring daggers at him.
"They were starving him, Mum!" George persisted.
"And you!" She snapped, handing a buttered roll to both Harry and Amisty.
She took it gratefully, scarfing down the food in seconds only for her plate to be filled up once again.
Eyes alight, she looked up at the smiling face of Mrs. Weasley, who gave her a small wink as she nudged another egg onto her plate.
Footsteps made her turn, getting the attention of everyone else at the table, and a small figure appeared in the kitchen.
Ron's sister. She let out a quiet yelp before running off.
"Ginny. My sister. She's been talking about you all summer," Ron whispered softly to Harry.
Amisty couldn't help but hear it, a teasing smile worming its way onto her face as she poked him with her elbow. He glared at her, though his grin betrayed his true feelings.
"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry," Fred added, until Mrs. Weasley sent him a pointed look and he shut his mouth.
Breakfast was finished in silence.
"Blimey, I'm tired. I think I'll to bed and --" Fred yawned.
"You will not. It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again --" Mrs. Weasley interrupted.
"Oh, Mum --" He stared.
"And you two," Her glare shifted to Ron and George, who both flinched, "You can go up to bed, dears. You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car --" She turned to Amisty and Harry with a gentle smile.
"I'll help Ron. I've never seen a de-gnoming --" Harry started, with Amisty nodding next to him.
She was still bursting with energy.
"That's very sweet of you, but it's dull work," She replied, turning around and tugging out a large book from the mantel. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject --"
"Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden," George groaned, not pleased at all with her choice of reading material.
Amisty got up slightly from her seat, reading the curved gold letters of the title. Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests.
The cover had a photograph, a moving one, of a blonde-haired blue eyed wizard winking jauntily up at them.
Amisty raised an eyebrow. Sure, he wasn't the worst looking but the arrogant tilt of his lips gave her a bad feeling.
"Oh, he is marvelous. He knows all his household pests, alright, it's a wonderful book..." Mrs. Weasley gazed off dreamily.
"Mum fancies him," Fred whispered in a volume that wasn't much of a whisper after all.
Amisty fought down her grin, biting down on her cheek.
"Don't be so ridiculous, Fred. Alright, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it," Mrs. Weasley replied, her pinks tinged with a soft pink.
The brothers got to their feet, wiping tiredness from their eyes and Amisty and Harry followed after them.
As they walked outside to the garden, she took the time to inspect her surroundings.
Twisted and knotted trees lined the edge of the garden, flowers and plants of all kinds spilling from flowerbeds and flooding the air with their own unique scents.
The grass almost came up to her knees, with weeds everywhere and a green pond settled in the corner.
"Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry commented as they walked, his gaze darting around.
"Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes, like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods..." Ron replied, his voice slightly muffled as he leaned over into a peony bush.
After a loud struggle, he straightened up with a strange, horrid looking creature squirming in his grasp.
Amisty, not expecting it, leaped back in a mixture of surprise and horror, earning a chuckle from George and Fred. To which she returned with a glare equal to Mrs. Weasleys.
"This is a gnome," Ron grumbled, holding the thing far away by the ankles.
"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" The gnome shouted, thrashing out with its stubby arms and legs at his captor.
"This is what you have to do," He lifted the gnome above his head and swung it around before adding, "It doesn't hurt them -- you've just got to make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnomeholes."
And with that he let go, sending the creature high up in the air and into the field beyond the hedge, it's yell growing fainter and fainter as it went.
"Pitiful. I bet I can get mine beyond that stump," Fred scorned.
Amisty set to work, wincing every time she let them go.
"Aw, c'mon, you can do better than that!" George jabbed her with his elbow, throwing his catch far off into the distance.
She rolled her eyes, flinging her most recent victim just as far.
"Happy now?" She asked sarcastically, looking up at him with crossed arms.
"Knew you had it in you," The redhead replied, grinning.
A whizzing sound reached her ears and she spun around, spotting a disheveled looking Harry and a gnome shooting off in the distance.
"Wow, Harry -- that must've been fifty feet..." Ron watched in wonder, his mouth slightly open.
"See, they're not too bright. The moment they know the de-gnoming's going on they storm up to have a look. You'd think they'd have learned by now to just stay put," George snatched up six at once and hurling them over the hedge.
Once the garden had been cleared, Amisty scrambled up to peer over the hedge, the only one having to do so being the shortest of the bunch.
In a slow, dragging line, the gnomes trudged off behind the other hedge across the field.
"They'll be back They love it here... Dad's too soft with them; he thinks they're funny..." Ron watched after them.
Amisty nearly leaped out of her skin when the front door slammed. Instead, her feet settled on letting her fall to the ground.
"Woah, woah, careful there," Harry laughed, steadying her as she stumbled on her landing.
"Thanks," She replied, her own laugh escaping her lips.
"He's back! Dad's home!" George exclaimed, bolting back to the house with the rest of them on his tail.
Mr. Weasley was sitting in a kitchen chair, his eyes partially closed as he slouched back. They gathered around in the empty chairs.
"What a night. Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned..." He murmured, pouring himself some tea before taking a deep gulp.
"Find anything, Dad?" Fred asked excitedly, leaning against the table with his arms crossed.
"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle. There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away from questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that's the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness..." Mr. Weasley replied, his exhaustion evident in his voice and multiple yawns.
"Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" George asked.
"Just Muggle-baiting. Sell them 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 key keeps 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 --" Mr. Weasley sighed, shaking his head, only to shoot up as his wife appeared at the doorway.
"LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?" She yelled, brandishing around a long poker.
"C-cars, Molly, dear?" He stammered guiltily, not quite meeting her furious brown gaze.
"Yes, Arthur, cars," She replied. "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."
"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 --" He started.
"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law! Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry and Amisty arrived this morning in the car you weren't intended to fly!" Mrs. Weasley shot back.
"Who?" He asked, blinking in confusion before glancing around the table.
His gaze caught sight of the two newcomers.
Amisty waved, fighting down her smile for the sake of the furious woman in the doorway.
"Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about you! Oh, and you must be Amisty --" He extended his hand for them to shake only to be interrupted by Mrs. Weasley yet again.
"Your sons flew that car to Harry and Amisty's homes and back last night! What have you got to say about that, eh?" Mrs. Weasley snarled.
"Did it really? Did it go alright?" He asked hopefully, only to stumble over his words once he caught his wife's gaze. "I -- I mean, that -- that was very wrong, boys -- very wrong indeed..."
"Let's leave them to it. Come on, I'll show you my bedroom," Ron whispered to the two of them.
They left the kitchen with quiet steps and walked up a long, winding staircase. Once they reached the third floor, with a vague sense of deja vu, Amisty felt the familiar feeling of being watched.
She looked around, catching sight of a pair of brown eyes looking up at her from a doorway.
With a little wave, she smiled slightly. The eyes blinked, and a hand waved before the door clicked shut.
"Ginny. You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally --" Ron explained as they set back to scaling two more flights.
The door ahead of them had a worn sign hanging off of it. Ronald's Room.
They walked in.