"Step right up ladies and gents, see the latest and greatest in Weasley's wizard wheezes. Miracle mirth, you slip it right in anyone's bath and it can give even the sourest old prune a funny bone. Also comes in "Insanity" with laughing, long lasting, heat seeking bubbles guaranteed for four solid hours of laughter. At the victim's expense of course."
As soon as the ginger twins stopped talking, a crowd swarmed around the table they were standing on for added volume, screaming orders like they were brokers on black Friday. Harry and Ron stood back, surveying the selection of trick candies.
"I could give Umbridge a lot worse than a few screaming bubbles," Harry muttered darkly, holding his still blistering hand." Snape could do with some of their miracle bath too."
"It's rubbish," Ron declared. "They gave some to Mum and the bubbles ended up chasing them; had to drink a freezing potion to get away. Besides, only girls take baths."
Harry rather thought that Ron was talking out of bitterness. He was still bitter that Fred and George fed him an entire box of ton tongue toffees and didn't tell him until his tongue was size of a blue whale. And the fact that they tested their jelly slugs on him, only to have Ron be the one to find that they were not, in fact jelly. But most off all, the fact that they had refused to give him any samples or discounts that they had given Harry, unless it was to test the product on him. But Harry didn't say anything. Somehow, not surprisingly, "Insanity" seemed to going twice as fast as the other. Harry shuddered and determined that now would definitely not be the time to start taking baths. Hermione appeared somewhere near the door, glancing around before finally noticing Harry and making her way towards the back. As always, the crowd was thick as glue. Everyone wanted the latest Weasley Wizard Wheezes to amaze, or more likely terrorize, their friends and enemies. Fred and George had really outdone themselves this year and it seemed business was better than ever. There was chocolate that turned you into an armchair, a pillowcase that could turn hair blue, quills that turned into giant turkeys, spider cookies that multiplied and scurried about in your stomach, musical bonbons that wouldn't stop singing for hours after you'd eaten them and much more. Hermione was still trying to get past a group of Ravenclaw girls standing directly in her way.
"Excuse me," She tried, but they were so busy ogling the Weasley twins that no one seemed to notice her. A second later, the shortest in the group turned around and scoffed.
"Granger, is that you? I hardly recognize you without the Hagrid hair. What, do you two not share a stylist anymore?"
This was all the excuse Hermione needed to give the whole group a rather forceful shove right into a love potion display, causing all the girls to become instantly smitten with a display mannequin who was wearing a headless hat and a pair of extendable ears.
"That's probably the closest that any of them will come to a boyfriend," Hermione declared, adjusting her coat as she finally caught up to Harry and Ron. Ron let out a small chuckle to disguise the fact that he very much doubted the 1.7 meter, 8 and a half stone part-time model would have trouble getting a boyfriend. Harry had no time for laughing at Ravenclaws.
"Did you get it?" He asked nervously, eyes skimming her for any place she could have hidden a thick book. She surprised everyone by taking off her hat and shaking out a book at least the size of an encyclopedia tome,
"Blimey Hermione, doesn't that hurt?"
"No Ron, I regularly walk about with five pounds on my head. And yes Harry, I did get it."
The latter took it from her and looked at it reverently before slipping it into his bag.
"Why'd you need that anyway?"
The book was hundreds of pages on end of the most powerful defensive and offensive spells known to wizard kind and Ron was asking him, the boy being hunted by the most powerful wizard ever, why he wanted it. Ron was his best mate but honestly, sometimes he wondered.
"Come on," Harry said, masterfully avoiding the question by refusing to answer it. "We have a DA meeting in twenty minutes."
The three of them pressed their way back through the crowd and towards the door. The boy who lived and his mate made it successfully through the door but just as Hermione had clasped the handled in one mitten, the twins appeared with a crack at her side.
"Hermione, don't forget…"
"…to sneak something from that box we gave…"
"…into our favorite brother's tea…"
"...or pumpkin juice..."
"...or cauldron cakes..."
"...or Shepherd's pie."
"We need them tested before we start selling them next quarter."
She fixed them with her most withering stare, glaringly ineffective to the siblings who had seen much worse, and smoothed her hair down under her hat.
"Honestly, you-know-who is on the rise, Dumbledore gone, the Ministry is one whisper away from taking Harry to Azkaban and all you can think about is transfiguring Ron's head into a radish. I'm starting to wonder about you two."
"How long do you reckon it'll take?"
"The first paper of hers he tries to copy, you'll be able to chop him up and use him in soup."
"Although we probably shouldn't…"
"No, that's probably not advisable."