DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of the characters involved here, I would definetly not be fussing around with my bloody student loans as much as I am. Everything belongs to JK Rowling.
"Boys! I hope you're not misbehaving back there!" The sound of their mothers voice echoed from the kitchen to the front room where the twins sat cross-legged, intensely concentrated on the thing that lay between them. They both jumped at the sound of it, grinning guiltily and jumping to their feet.
"Of course not!" Fred called back loudly, "when do we ever?" he said winking at his brother.
"Yeah mum, how could you possibly think such a thing?" George laughed, joining in easily.
They turned their attention back to the contraption on the rug behind them. It was lying in many little bits and pieces, with screws and unidentifiable metal pieces scattered deliberately around it. Fred took out his brand new wand - they had both only just bought them the day before - and gave the piece closest to him a careful tap. Nothing happened.
"Y'know, I think we may have damaged this beyond repair little brother." Fred spoke lightly, although there was a note of almost unnoticeable panic in his voice. Almost.
"Do NOT call me little brother, I hate that. Why don't we just try and put it back together again? That way we can just stick it back in the shed and Dad need never know," replied George, picking up a screw and examining it closely. "How hard can it be, we took it apart easily enough, right?"
An hour later the boys sat back against the sofa legs, exhausted. George turned to face his brother and groaned. "We're done for. We really are."
The other boy lowered his arm from where it had been covering his eyes, and glared at the thing on the floor. "It was so easy to take apart! We followed the instructions *almost* exactly, so I don't see why it should be so damned difficult to put back together again…"
They had resorted, in the end, to simply gluing the larger pieces together and placing as many screws and smaller bits on it as possible to try and make it look vaguely the shape it had before they had decided to take it apart.
"Maybe this isn't such a bad thing, I mean I know Dad will kill us but I don't think Mum will mind quite as much. She hates Dad fiddling around with all these daft things anyway."
"Maybe…" George still sounded unconvinced. He scratched his head and frowned. "Do you think it looks like it did to start with?"
"Positively identical." Fred said with a smile , brimming with confidence, before looking at the sad metal mess on the rug which was still dripping glue and sporting random nuts and bolts on every surface. He looked back at George, and they both burst out laughing. "Ah well," he said, wiping his eyes, "it's the best we're going to get I think. Lets just shove it in the back of the shed and hope Dad doesn't want it any time soon."
"I think you're right. Come on, lets go see if Mums finished making dinner, I'm starved."
It was almost a week later when the twins heard their Dad head down to the shed after dinner, giving them plenty of time to make a quick exit up to their room and secure the door. They stood with their ears against the door, sniggering quietly and trying to hear their Dad's next words.
"Molly, have you seen my new bike anywhere?"