As soon as the four of them entered the room, a loud buzzing filled their ears. Hermione wrinkled her nose.
"Oh, I don't like the sound of that."
"I don't like the look or the sound," Ginny agreed.
The room was much like the rest of what Hermione had already seen – gray, gloomy, and dusty. The ceiling was high, and up in one corner opposite from the bed there hung from the ceiling a faintly sparkling mass that she recognized from Magical Species and Sprites of Cornwall. Like a great wasps nest, it glittered gold in the dim light, and one electric blue pixie head was just visible poking out of the bottom.
"Right," said George, hefting a large wrought iron cage. "This is what mum left us to stuff them in, I reckon it'll do. I don't fancy putting my hands on them though, I've heard they're awfully strong little buggers."
"They are," Hermione agreed. "Cornish pixies can lift up to sixty times their own weight, you know. I remember them hanging Neville on the candelabra second year."
"No, I didn't know," said Ginny, while Fred laughed.
"Well, anyway," said George, "Fred and I can use magic, at least, so that'll help. You two, though, I think brooms are going to be your best bet."
"Damn." Ginny frowned. "I forgot we can't use magic."
"Brooms?" Hermione asked incredulously. "What, we're supposed to bat them?"
The pixie nest seemed to buzz louder at these words.
"It won't hurt them," Fred said bracingly. "Like you said, they're tough. We'll try to help you, eh, George?"
George nodded, unlatching the cage and setting it on the handsome but dusty teak nightstand. "It's like de-gnoming a garden, don't worry about the pixies."
Ginny threw her hair over her shoulder. "Let's get this over with."
Fred raised his wand and flicked it. "Accio Bluebottles."
There was a whistling sound, and a few seconds later two dusty brooms sailed through the door and came to hang, still, in the air next to Hermione and Ginny. Hermione thought she could see her broom quivering, like it hadn't been ridden in ages and was eager to please whoever had brought it out of its grim closet. She thought of what Harry would say about broom maltreatment, and her heart panged.
The pixie nest was definitely buzzing louder now. A few had come out of the nest to see what all the commotion was, and Hermione could see a pair of them chattering to each other. One darted abruptly back into the entrance, and at this, Fred raised his wand to the door.
"Colloportus!"
It slammed shut and locked. Fred moved to stand in front of it, wand held aloft. George moved to stand by the cage.
"Bat this way," he advised.
Hermione grabbed her broom out of the air and gripped the handle, eyeing the nest apprehensively, remembering the absolute pandemonium that had overtaken Gilderoy Lockhart's classroom almost three years ago. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder at Fred, only to find him already looking at her. She held his eyes, but she could feel a slight warmth bloom on her cheeks.
"Now, I want a nice clean game, all of you," he said, and winked at her again. She had just noticed that despite being a light orange, his eyelashes were uncommonly thick, when there was a loud WHUSH behind her, and she turned to find that George had disintegrated the pixie nest into a cloud of dust and sparkles.
The sound was like a thousand hornets filling the room, and out of the dust they came soaring. They got to Ginny first, and out of the corner of her eye Hermione could see her take a swing at them like the broom was a baseball bat. Three pixies, knocked off-kilter, soared across the room towards George. How exactly he dealt with them Hermione didn't see, because she had her own problems to deal with.
She had a brief moment to size up the four pixies flying towards her, take aim, and swing. She felt the flat of the broom connect, and two pixies went in the direction of the cage, while one was merely knocked to the ground, befuddled. As she watched, George zoomed the three towards himself and directed them into the cage. In fact, George seemed to be acting as a human magnet, summoning charms flying from his wand and ensnaring pixies in every which way. However, she noticed that they didn't always work; some of the heftier pixies were able to fly out of the pull.
She also realized what had become of the fourth pixie as she felt a sharp tug on the back of her head.
"Ouch!"
Scowling, she spun around to try and find it, but no sooner had she turned than five more flew towards her.
Meanwhile, the once-handsome bedroom was undergoing its own siege. There had to be at least fifty pixies, Hermione thought, and at least twenty of them were darting about the room, tearing the hangings, riding the chandelier, and upending the writing desk, from which several bottles of ink had already smashed. Setting her jaw and wishing sourly for her wand, Hermione batted away with the Bluebottle, enduring tug after tug on her hair.
Soon they were all sweating. Most of the smaller pixies had been rounded up, but fifteen or so of the older, hardier variety were still flitting around the room.
"Got anything better than a Summoning Charm, George?" Ginny called, dancing around to keep her hair out of a pixie's reach.
"Nothing that'd work from this vantage point," he yelled back. A particularly irritating pixie was prancing around him with its tongue out. "Fred?"
"Ouch!" Hermione whipped around and batted with her broom, just missing the pixie continuously assaulting her hair. It had just stuck its thumbs in its ears when Fred pointed his wand.
"Medio Exime!"
Her hair blew straight back in a powerful blast of wind, and the pixie rocketed helplessly across the room on a beam of blue-white light, where George snatched it out of the air.
"Brilliant!" she panted, massaging her scalp tenderly.
"Much better than a summoning charm," George concluded, sticking his wand in his back pocket. "C'mere Ginny, Hermione."
They joined him by the nightstand, and Fred shot pixies across the room at them in great gusts for the next fifteen minutes until every last one had been caught.
"Finally!" George panted, slamming the cage shut. "Colloportus."
The small padlock glowed briefly white and then faded, locking the pixies securely inside, all of them clamoring like a bunch of budgies.
Fred walked over from the door, pushing his hair, dark red with sweat, off his forehead. Wand in his fist, he leaned down to have a look, where he was promptly greeted by a blown raspberry.
"Blimey, they're like tiny little Peeves, aren't they?" he said grimly. "They'd be rather cute little imps if they weren't so ornery."
"I think we wore them out, though," Hermione said, watching some of the younger, smaller pixies sit down on the floor of the cage. "They'll have to rest soon if they want to be able to fly much for the rest of the day. I think Ginny and I knocked a rather lot of pixie dust off of them."
"Definitely," George said, catching Fred's eye. Hermione narrowed her own, but before she could say anything, Ginny broke in.
"Blimey, that was harder than I thought it'd be. D'you reckon mum is back yet? I could go for lunch."
"I think it's too early for that," Fred said, sticking his wand in his pocket. "Give it another hour. We should probably get cleaned up anyway, we all look like we've just endured a rather brutal Quidditch practice."
"Yeah, well, get ready, because I doubt that Angelina's going to be much better than Wood," George said darkly, hoisting the cage off of the nightstand.
"Oh, is she Captain this year?" Ginny asked happily. "That's wonderful to hear."
"Yes, well, we'll see," said Fred. "I expect to be worked like a carthorse, but maybe it'll be good for me. It's our last year, after all. Why should anything change now?" He directed his wand at the door. "Alohamora."
It sprung open. Hermione stopped and looked around the room. The spilled ink had soaked into the fine carpet, the torn curtains were hanging asunder, and the room generally looked like a bull elephant had been set loose within it. A golden dust was settling out of the air, covering the chaos in a fine layer of glitter.
"Shouldn't we clean up? Even if we did take care of the nest, I doubt your mum will be too pleased if we leave it in this state –"
"George and I can come back up and get it after lunch. Mum'll probably have something else for the two of you anyway."
She nodded reluctantly, and the four of them turned and trooped down the stairs.
As they descended, George holding tightly to the lightly humming cage, a thought occurred to Hermione.
She turned to Fred, who was walking beside her. "Where'd that spell come from, anyway? I've never heard of exime being used with that companion article."
"What, back there?" he shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. "Made it up."
She furrowed her brow. "Made it up? Just then?"
"Yes, Hermione," he said, one corner of his mouth turned up in his familiar, mischievous half-smile. "Don't tell me you've never invented a spell, a clever witch like yourself."
She blushed and opened her mouth, but he just laughed. "You should try it. You'd be brilliant at it."
It was Hermione's initial instinct to ask Fred if he had read Hex Creation and Its Hazards, or heard of Edgardo Aiza, the nineteenth century wizard who had been experimenting and accidentally turned himself into a rock. Something stopped her, however, and she swallowed the lecture in her throat with a firm resolve to deliver it some other time, some other time when he hadn't just called her brilliant.
Dinner that night was a crowded affair. In addition to the six Weasleys and Hermione, Kingsley, McGonagall, Lupin, Sirius, Tonks, Hestia Jones, and two other Order members, introduced as Emmeline Vance and Sturgis Podmore , had all squeezed in around the scrubbed wooden table in the basement. Mrs. Weasley had made several large shepherd's pies that were passed eagerly around. It had been a dreary day outside the walls of Grimmauld Place, and anyone that had been on duty had come in with a damp cloak and wet feet.
It was very strange, Hermione thought, dishing herself out some potatoes, to be sitting around a table with one current professor, one former professor, the Ministry's most wanted, and half a dozen Ministry workers. It was even stranger to know that so many competent people were still working under Fudge, and it was just that that the conversation turned to as they ate.
"We did wonder for a bit about the Imperius Curse, but Mad-Eye and Dumbledore agree that that's not very likely," Kingsley was saying. "Fudge seems determined to close his eyes."
"It's ridiculous," Emmeline Vance sniffed. "Have any of you been reading the Daily Prophet?"
Professor McGonagall made a noise like the hiss of an angry cat. "Oh, yes. We were just talking about that this morning. A shameful attempt to discredit Potter. Cowardly, in fact."
"Yes," Kingsley agreed glumly, "but it's working. People don't want to believe he's back, Minerva. It's much easier to accept that Harry's head has gotten a little too big than to face what it would mean if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returned."
McGonagall tutted loudly, and Sirius shook his head.
Fred, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up until that point, spoke up from Hermione's right.
"He's been back for weeks now. How come we haven't seen any strange deaths, or heard of anybody disappearing?"
Ginny, from across the table, caught Hermione's eye and glanced at Mrs. Weasley. Her face, Hermione saw, had become wooden, and she was chewing extremely slowly, her eyes fixed on Fred.
"He's laying low," Lupin answered. Hermione noticed for the first time that he alone wasn't eating anything. "For right now, he's operating in secrecy. Unfortunately for him, the people that do know he's back is the group that did the most against him last time."
"Wouldn't it be better, though, if the entire wizarding world knew to be on the lookout? If the Ministry was doing its job and spreading information instead of making it sound like Harry's gone 'round the twist?"
"Of course it would be," Lupin said earnestly, "but right now it's all we've got. And better the Order and Dumbledore know than anyone else, we've got information that others don't, about what his plans are, what he's after –"
Mrs. Weasley cleared her throat and stood up, snatching the flagon off the table in front of her.
"More pumpkin juice, anyone?"
Her point was made; after Hestia's glass was refilled, Lupin said no more.
"It's too bad, really," Ron said later, as they washed the dishes. "I really think Sirius and Lupin would give us a lot more information if it wasn't for mum."
"Don't worry too much about it, little brother," said George, directing the dried plates back into the cupboard with his wand. "We'll find out more tomorrow."
"What's tomorrow?" Hermione asked.
"First big Order meeting since you've gotten here," said Fred, leaning down conspiratorially, up to his elbows in soap suds. "Dumbledore, Snape, Mad-Eye, they're all going to be here. Oh, and you'll get to meet Mundungus. Definitely going to break out the Ears."
"I don't think it's right," she said reprovingly. "Obviously, your mum doesn't want us having details for a reason –"
"It's beyond details, Hermione," Ginny said earnestly, while Ron nodded. "If she had it her way, we wouldn't know anything. Why that is, I don't know, but you deserve to know what's going on."
"I don't like betraying her trust," Hermione said, crossing her arms. "She's having me here for the summer with all of you, I'd hate to jeopardize that."
"Hermione," Fred said, frowning, "no one wants you to jeopardize that, but she's got to realize that this is our fight too, and we all want to know what's going on. And I know that you do too, even if you don't admit it."
"I do admit it!" she said, stung. "I just think we should be very cautious."
"We will be," Fred promised. "And if she does bust us, George and I will take the blame, won't we?"
"Definitely," George agreed. "We're very desensitized to mum's yelling by now."
"Kind of you," Ron yawned, shelving the last goblet and closing the cupboard. "Ready to turn in?"
"We'll take the blame off of Hermione", Fred corrected him delicately. "Never said anything about you. But yes, it's that time of night. Shall we go up together?"
The adults were still in the basement kitchen as they trudged up the stairs. The elf heads looked even eerier than before, cutting strange shadows on the wall. Hermione shuddered and looked at the ground instead.
When they reached the second landing, Crookshanks came tumbling out of her room, pawing at his string, and batted it at Fred's feet, who beamed.
"Ruddy brilliant, aren't you?" he asked, squatting down on his heels to roll the spool across the floor. "Look at him go."
Crookshanks had pounced artfully, tossing it up into the air.
George laughed. "We should tell mum to set him loose on the doxies."
"You should take him in your room with you tonight, though, Hermione," Ron said seriously. "And I forgot to ask, but did you close your door at night?"
"Yes," she said bemusedly. "Why?"
"Kreacher," he said grimly. "Haven't met him yet, have you? Trust me, he's a right little horror, you don't want to wake up to him prowling around your room."
Hermione rolled her eyes, catching Crookshanks as he leapt into her arms. "You could be a little kinder, Ron."
Fred shook his head. "He's right Hermione, you should lock it, although I'm pretty sure Crookshanks could look after himself if you wanted to leave him to roam about."
"He can stay with me tonight," she decided, scratching the gingery tufts behind his ears.
"Let me know if you need another trinket, won't you?" Fred said to the cat, who looked up at him with benevolent yellow eyes and gave a deep throaty purr. He grinned and had reached out to stroke his back when Hermione noticed something.
"You're all sparkly, Fred, what –" she trailed off, brushing her fingers along his arm.
He looked up at her very fast, and their eyes met for a split second that felt like much, much longer.
They both drew their hands back quickly, and she was half-aware of him taking a step backwards, looking very awkward, his hand moving seemingly unconsciously to the place her fingers had just been.
"Well, goodnight," said Ginny. Hermione hoped that she was imagining the eyebrow raise in her friend's voice.
"Goodnight, you lot." She smiled at them and then quickly stepped over the threshold and closed the door, throwing the deadbolt.
She let out a deep breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and let Crookshanks spring out of her arms and onto the floor. She was very sure of several things all at once. One, Fred had gone back to the upstairs bedroom, and he and George had done more with that pixie dust than just clean it up, which they could have done with a wave of their wands. Secondly, making eye contact with him at such close proximity had definitely made her stomach leap in a way that was rather alarming. And thirdly, her fingertips were tingling where she had touched his skin.
"It's the pixie dust," she told herself firmly as she turned down her bedcovers. "It's the pixie dust."
She made a mental note to look up the effects of pixie dust in the morning, because, she reluctantly admitted to herself as she turned out the light, she wasn't sure that tingling was one of them.