Yellow
"Hermione, I swear I'll sue you for every Galleon you don't have if your goddamn cat eats Bill!"
"Oh, for pity's sake, Fred!" Hermione exclaimed, frustrated with the endless complaining.
"I still can't fucking believe you've given your pet canary my name."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Bill. Look at it preen with all the attention it's getting. I'd feel flattered if I were you."
"You would, George."
"That's the first canary I've ever seen… preen," remarked Hermione with a bit of awe.
"Biggest bloody canary, too," Bill muttered.
"Are you sure that thing's a canary?" Harry asked with a great amount of doubt in his voice.
"Of course it is! I got it for them and I know what I bought!" Ron piped up, indignant.
"Err –" Hermione tried to interrupt.
"Don't bother, 'Mione. We don't really care what it is; we like it all the same," George said confidently as he put his hand amiably on Hermione's shoulders. "Just keep bloody Crookshanks away from our yellow mascot here."
The cat hissed from behind one of the shelves it had hid behind after eyeing Bill the canary with a predatory gleam in his amber eyes.
"Mascot?" asked Ron with even more glee.
"Sure. We've needed one for ages but just couldn't decide on anything. This is perfect," reassured George.
Now it was Ron who was preening.
"What if it's a witch or wizard in Animagus form, trying to steal their secrets?" Harry leaned over to Bill and asked worriedly.
"I don't give a shit; I just don't want their fucking mascot, who is a canary, to be named after me," Bill griped.
Fred nudged Bill in the ribs, earning himself a slap upside the head.
"Oi! First of all, Harry, you're bloody paranoid but we've checked it all the same, mate. And Bill, shove off. We didn't name it after you; there's plenty of Bills in the world."
Bill just scoffed, hoping that the sly, hungry look Hermione's cat sported would be satisfied with the early demise of Bill the canary.
A few weeks later…
"Oi, Fred! You haven't been feeding Bill properly. He's shrunk!" Ron called out from the shop into the back where Fred, George and Hermione were trying to perfect a faulty recipe.
"I swear mate, sometimes our little brother is dumber than a rock. Can't he fucking tell that that's not Bill?" Fred asked, irritated.
Hermione had the decency to blush. Crooks had sunk his sharp little claws into poor Bill after all…
"That's the reason we chose to get another canary, remember?" George supplied helpfully.
Fred muttered some obscenities and Hermione's face got redder but she kept quiet.
George sighed and cursed his twin's newfound taste for bossy bookworms with glossy curls that owned pet Nargles.
A/N: Since there seemed to be some confusion over the ending… I edited this story a bit and hopefully it's clearer. In case I failed at that, too – Crookshanks does end up eating Bill the canary (to Bill's joy) because Hermione starts spending a lot of time at the shop, helping the twins… and lending Fred a hand in the bedroom department a good deal, too ;)
Ron, being the oblivious twit that he is, does not realize that that is not the canary he got them but a replacement.
And a big apology to all those who were kind enough to review!