Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: this is for two challenges at once – the object challenge (I think the real name is Meet The Muggles, but I'm not sure) and the challenge in which you work on something you're bad at. There will be one if not two more chapters to this one, which is going to be longer than I expected. If you have any suggestions for damage the twins could do with an iPod, put it in your review.
The twins couldn't have been in more trouble. After a particularly bad incident involving fireworks, most of their personal possessions had been confiscated for the rest of the summer. This would not have been so bad if it had been the middle of August instead of the middle of June. Leaving those two up to their own devices for ten weeks was the worst thing anyone could do to their family members, as it turned out.
Admittedly, they still had some of their things. Out of all their talents, finding proper hiding places was one of the most frequently used. So long as no one went rummaging around in their wardrobe, they were safe, and a person would have to be crazy to mess with their wardrobe in the first place. Unfortunately, their more entertaining items weren't in the wardrobe at all. One of them had decided to hide the stash of fireworks in their little sister's bureau, which would have been fine if the fireworks hadn't blown up the bureau.
Among the more interesting items they still had was a small stash of normal money, which they had obtained in various ways over the years. It was rather like an emergency fund for them, since their mother would wring their necks if she saw them having it converted. But the idea of using it in its current form hadn't yet occurred to them.
Then, at the end of the third week of June, it did. "I'm desperate," George muttered after digging through the wardrobe in his and Fred's bedroom and finding nothing interesting. "All we've got left is our little stash of Muggle money in the pockets of my best school robe and a handful of fireworks in Mum's wedding china."
"I wouldn't risk the fireworks if I were you, George," Fred said as he darted into the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him. "Mum's on the warpath again on account of that blasted feline that keeps turning up and eating the herb garden."
"She was the idiot who thought catnip would keep squirrels away," George said under his breath. "Any ideas on something to do? I'm bored out of my mind at the moment."
"Say," Fred suggested, "what if we use the money for its intended purpose?"
"And how exactly are we going to do that?" George asked. "If we go farther than a mile from the house, Mum'll kill us. Plus that, we don't even have that much money."
"I wasn't discussing the purchase of a new item at a shop," Fred said excitedly. "In fact, I'm thinking of the opposite of that. A family not far from us is having a rummage sale tomorrow morning, and who knows what we could come up with."
George thought it was a brilliant idea, and the plan was set. The next morning, the twins slipped out of the house, telling the rest of the family that they were going for a walk. No one had any idea what they were up to, which was how they liked it.
"I wonder what this does," George said a minute or two after he and Fred arrived at the rummage sale. He was going through a box of electronics, and the item in question was a turquoise iPod.
"It's a music player," the woman who was having the rummage sale said after fully taking in George's comment. "My son says turquoise is too girly, but he left his music on it still the same. Look, since you seem interested, I'll charge you half price for it."
Fred noticed what was going on, checked out the iPod, and handed over the five pounds that it cost. "I think we had a good raid of the rummage sale," he said as he and George walked home, the iPod tucked safely in the back pocket of his jeans. "A new object to annoy the family with, and twenty pounds to spare."