Author's Note: Guess who's back, b*tches.

(It's me! Lapis! Don't you remember me from... months... ago?)


"Look, no hands!" Fred used his legs to pull the front of the broom up so that it spun over his head, launching him into a backward somersault even as he kept his arms outstretched, an axis to spin around. This was the victorious position he finished in, arms open, hovering fifteen feet in the air looking down at his twin standing on the ground.

The Quaffle sailed past him and into the old goal hoop at the bottom of their garden.

"Oi!"

"Maybe try and keep your eye on the ball next time?" George said, picking the Quaffle up from the ground as it rolled back to him.

"Oh, come on. You should have been too busy admiring my skills to even chuck it in the first place."

"Sure, sure – except I was there when Charlie taught it you, and got it faster anyway." George threw the ball again and this time Fred darted to the right to catch it, securing it under his arm, and feeling the warm buzz of its magic against his ribs.

"As if!" Fred called indignantly, "I did it way before you!"

Then, suddenly, he felt the Quaffle dislodge sharply from his side, kicked through the loop of his arm and down. Before he could register what had happened, his little sister appeared below him, having plucked the ball from mid-air. She spun round to face him, grinning.

"Well, I got it before either of you, so there."

"So that's where our other broom was!" George exclaimed from the ground, "Give it back Ginny! And the Quaffle!"

When they were all around it was a lot easier to keep their baby sister away from brooms and flying balls. Bill was old enough that when he said something to her, she usually listened – even if she did huff and puff while she did it. Besides, they didn't have enough brooms for them all. When Bill, Charlie, Ron and the two of them played (Percy hadn't joined in Quidditch since he'd turned ten) there wasn't a free broom for her to commandeer. With the eldest two brothers abroad, however, Ginny had started taking liberties.

Fred put on his best Big Brother voice.

"Get back on the ground, Ginny. You don't even know how to fly properly."

She laughed coldly, with a somewhat unnerving look in her eye. "How would you know? You never let me play long enough to see."

Fred waited. This was an old battle, and one that had already been won more than once through intervention from the parents. They both agreed she was too small to be messing around with something as dangerous as Quidditch. He could see she knew where this was headed.

"Fine, have your stupid ball. I don't want to play with you anyway." She threw the Quaffle with alarming force directly at Fred's head. He ducked just in time to avoid decapitation and spun 180 degrees to see it shoot through the goal hoop. By the time he'd turned back around, she had touched down, and was thrusting the Cleansweep into George's chest.

"Ron wants to talk to you, by the way," she snapped, as she began storming indoors.

"About what?!" Fred called down.

"How am I supposed to know?" She shouted back without turning around, "No one here lets me in on anything." The door slammed shut behind her and they both took a second to let the harsh sound of it dissipate.

"Told you the good mood couldn't last forever." George swung a leg over his broom and kicked off, joining his twin in hovering in mid-air.

"It looked like she'd go all the way to the train," Fred lamented, putting his hand into his pocket, "what did we say, a Sickle?"

"It's not July yet – two Sickles. Don't make out you've forgotten." He held out his hand and Fred deposited the coins into his palm.

Bets between them were largely arbitrary. They usually pooled any money they had together anyway, but it kept things interesting to have a few wagers going on, and everyone else in their vicinity had learnt to stop betting against them. Even Ron didn't rise to the bait these days. As a result, they bet against each other instead, exchanging petty money on the outcomes. This one had resulted from a conversation about Ginny, who'd been almost insufferably giddy since they'd come home for the holidays. After eleven years of watching her older brothers embark on the journey to Hogwarts, she was finally old enough to board the train herself. Honestly, it had sort of crept up on them. It felt like they'd only started a year ago – Ron seemed hardly old enough, let alone Ginny. Speaking of their youngest brother…

"D'you wanna go see what Ron wants?"

"Probably after another chocoball, the great lump."

They ascended together, and followed the outside walls of The Burrow over the garage and round to Ron's bedroom window. Their brother was sitting on his bed, holding what looked like a letter in his hand. As they approached Fred saw that he was rolling one of the corners between his fingers over and over again, wearing the parchment out.

"Oi, Ronniekins!" he called, as they came to a stop on either side of the windowpane, "What's up?"

Ron leapt up from the bed, holding the letter out like a weapon as he whipped round to look at them.

"Stop doing that!" he shouted, half-relaxing when he saw it was them.

"You called us, Ronnie," George pointed out, moving aside so Ron could open his window wider to talk to them.

"I thought maybe you'd use the door!"

"Then you don't know us very well, do you?" Fred answered.

Ron opened his mouth as if to retort and then seemed to catch sight of the letter he was holding in his hand again. He stopped before he said a word and shook his head. Fred and George exchanged a look. Not only had he given up on arguing with them one exchange into a fight, but he'd let them call him Ronnie twice without comment. Something was really off.

"That another letter from Granger?" George asked. He rose a little to try and get a better look at the parchment but Ron threw it away from him and out of view.

"How come we didn't see it in the morning?" Fred asked, frowning, "Did you sneak it up here?"

They'd taken to enjoying her letters together, often stealing them from Errol before Ron even got to them. This had the dual value of entertaining them and irritating Ron. Fred hadn't actually thought Ron was capable of receiving mail without them knowing.

"It's Harry, isn't it?" George was looking at Ron with an assessing gaze.

Their little brother nodded.

"What, Harry's finally sent a letter?" Fred looked between Ron and George. "Why would he hide that?"

George shook his head. "No, he's written to Granger about Harry, and she's said something in this one about it. Right?"

"Yeah."

Oh. Course. As worried as their Mum was, she had been repeatedly telling them all to leave it alone. Bringing it up again over breakfast was a sure-fire path to getting roundly yelled at and then given a double quota of chores to keep them busy.

"She says the same thing as mum," Ron continued, like he'd been reading Fred's mind, "but it's been weeks. Those muggles could have done anything to him by now!" He picked up the letter again from the bed, and addressed it like the paper itself was contradicting him. "I need to do something."

There was a pause.

"Like what?" asked George. He'd leant up against the wall next to the window now, one elbow resting against it and his hand buried in his own red hair, tugging. Fred recognised the sign of stress and checked his own posture, a mirror image. He ran his other hand through his hair one last time before forcing himself to put both arms down by his sides, straightening up. George glanced at him for a fraction of a second and did the same.

"I don't know!" Ron almost wailed, pacing between them now, worrying the parchment with his fingers again "Go get him?"

The twins let out synchronised disbelieving snorts.

"And how are you going to do that?" George asked.

Ron looked up from the letter and then between them, throwing his arms up incredulously. "What, you can read my letters but you can't help me save Harry from his family?"

Fred looked at George. George looked at Fred.

"Two things," Fred began, directing the broom closer to the open window.

"Firstly, we haven't read that letter," and even as George said it, Fred whipped his hand out and pulled it from Ron's distractedly weak grip.

"Yet."

"Secondly," George continued loudly, drowning out Ron's frustrated yell.

"You can't call those muggles his family." Fred looked up from unfolding the letter to raise his eyebrows pointedly at Ron. Looking back down at the parchment, his eyes caught on
an underlined section:

Fred and George, I never said you had natural talent, you should take no compliments from my previous letter.

He felt the corner of his mouth pull up even as he continued addressing his little brother. This time he and George spoke as one, leaving no room for response or argument.

"We're family."

Fred watched Ron's face shift as he figured out that they were agreeing to help. He was maybe a little slow, their brother, but he managed to understand the important things.

"LUNCH!" They all started at the sound of Ginny's voice bouncing off the walls from the staircase behind Ron's door. The following series of stomping footsteps indicated that she had yet to cheer up. They all waited in silent agreement until the steps had faded away again.

"Still don't know how we're gonna do it though," Fred pointed out to Ron. He finished skim reading Granger's letter and held it out to his twin. George, however, didn't seem to be paying attention. His eyes were trained further away, towards the ground. Fred turned his broom to follow his brother's gaze, landing on the garage attached to the side of the house.

"I might have an idea," he said.


Hullo all, so good to see you again. Or I guess, if this is your first encounter with me, good to see you at all.
The unthinkable has happened. I've finished with uni and have actually written enough of this fic that I feel like I can start posting. I know. It's amazing.

Let me know in the comments what you're expecting/wanting from this book! How's it going so far? ;P