Boom!

"What was that explosion?" asked Harry.

"It came from James' room!" answered Albus as he peeked his head out of his room to make sure no debris had escaped his brother's room and scurried across the hall to James' room.

"Figures." And with a roll of the eyes, Harry marched up the stairs to see what kind of trouble James had caused.

"So what's the damage?" I don't know dad. He won't open the door."

"Come on James, it can't be worse than the rat spleens on fire experiment you pulled last month," Harry said as he sighed and looked up at the unmistakably obvious red splat on the ceiling.

"Hey, where is everybody?" Ginny called. Albus and Harry had been too preoccupied with the situation at hand and didn't notice her arrive home.

"We're upstairs, honey. James-"

Harry was drowned out by Albus' non-understandable gibberish of, "Mum mum mum mum! ."

"Slower please," demanded Ginny.

Out of breath from his rant, Albus took a deep breath and explained what he just said to his mother with over-exaggerated slowness, "James. Locked. Himself. In. His. Room. Because. He. Did. Something. Really. Really. Bad."

"I see," responded Ginny as she produced her wand from her coat pocket and pointed it at the door, "James, you better unlock this door right this instant or I will do it for you. And if I do that, there is no way that you are ever getting that new racing broom." Harry shuddered as he remembered the Howler Ginny's mother sent Ron in their second year. Harry could tell that Ginny had inherited her mother's temper.

"Fine, fine, fine! I'm opening the door, but promise you'll let me explain before you jump to conclusions," pleaded James. As the doorknob clicked, everyone braced himself for the worst and walked cautiously into James' room. But to everyone's surprise, there was no evidence of disaster to be found. By no means was James' room clean as there was still the usual stench of dirty clothes and past experiments gone wrong.

"James, not that we're not happy to see no obvious damage, but what did you do?" questioned Harry. This puzzled even Albus who understood his brother more than anyone. James could do a lot worse and was never afraid to open the door to his parents.

"Mom, you remember those earrings you gave Lily last month?" asked James.

"Yes, I believe so."

"Well, I was bored and went into Lily's room to bother her but I had forgotten she was at her friends'. But when I was there, I found a "Make Your Own Chocolate Bar" kit. Well, I sorta took it," James explained.

"First, James you shouldn't steal from your little sister. She's only nine. And second, how do my earrings tie into this?" demanded James' mother.

"I'm getting to that. So I opened up the box to make sure Lily hadn't already used it and I realized that the mold for the chocolate looked like a gold bar. A gold bar is so much cooler than chocolate so I grabbed something gold and ran off to my room. I dropped the jewelry into the pot and turned up the heat to try and melt it down. And then I saw the card that had been attached to the earrings. It was from Mom telling Lily these were her earrings that she wore to the Yule Ball in her 4th year. By that time it was too late to save them." James stated as he held up a deformed piece of gold.

"James!" Ginny said accusingly.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I thought they were just another of Lily's girly stuff." James said defensively.

Harry said comfortingly, "Honey I'm sorry. I knew how much those meant to you."

"It's okay, Dean Thomas gave them to me, but we obviously broke up ages ago," Ginny explained.

"So, I'm not in trouble?" James asked hopefully.

"Just clean up the mess and we'll see," Ginny said. Ginny and Harry turned their backs to go downstairs as James pulled out his wand.

As if they had eyes on the back of their head, Ginny and Harry said simultaneously, "By hand."

James groaned, "Do they really enforce the Statue of Secrecy anymore?"

Ginny said, "Just ask your father, he had a hearing before the Wizengamot."

"You know full well that the Patronus Charm was necessary and it was only before the Wizengamot because it was me." Harry said.

"Shh, what James doesn't know won't hurt him." Ginny whispered with a smirk across her face as she turned around to check if James had heard what his father had said. Just as Harry laid a foot on the ground floor of the house, yet another boom was heard.

"What happened now?" yelled Ginny.

"I let Albus wave around my wand and he broke my toy car! Make him replace it!" James called back.

"Maybe now you'll learn something about destruction of property," Ginny said matter-of-factly and with that she pulled on her coat and left, slamming the door behind her.

"Albus, James, that reminds me, we have to go buy your new school supplies, your letters came this morning." Harry said.

"Our letters came and you didn't tell us?" complained James.

"Someone was too busy making trouble and forgot to check the mail," said Harry.

"Oops, sorry Dad." Harry handed each of them their official Hogwarts letter emblazoned with the Hogwarts crest depicting the four houses.

"Can I have an owl?" asked Albus.

"We'll see," answered Harry.

"I'm getting a wand for sure! Finally, I get my very own wand!" called Albus. "Can we ask Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron to come too?"

"Of course, I'm sure they need new school books too."

"That makes it official, tomorrow we go to Diagon Alley!"