Queen of the Night: Years 1-3

by awalkerlifeforme

Tara Nox was born in Godric's Hollow nine months before Harry Potter. For a year of infancy they were like siblings, until Voldemort attacked. Tara's family was forced to flee to America while Harry was sent to live with the Dursley's. Now, nine years later, Tara returns to befriend the boy that doesn't remember her, and more importantly, to protect him from the evils to come.

21. The Burrow

For a moment, I was absolutely sure that Harry was going to lose his mind. He never thought that anything that I did was that brilliant. Of course, he was probably right, considering most of the things that I did were enough to get us kicked out of Hogwarts or get our wands snapped. Not that he could say anything. His plans were usually just as stupid as mine were. And he was definitely the reason that I'd gotten half of the points taken away from Gryffindor and half of my detentions.

Still though, this one was on me. As I hung out towards the window, Ron, Fred, and George began switching places. Fred hopped into the driver's seat and George crammed into the passenger seat with me. Ron hopped in the back. We needed enough room for everyone. Harry's jaw was still hanging open as we all smiled at him. He was probably still trying to determine whether or not this was a dream.

"Tara!" Harry finally hissed at me. "This is your brilliant plan?" he asked, motioning around us.

Grinning madly at him, I nodded. He looked absolutely besides himself in surprise. "And it's pretty brilliant, isn't it?" I asked him with a very haughty laugh to my voice.

Harry stared at me for a moment before seemingly finally realizing that it wasn't just me outside of his window. "Ron!" he breathed, creeping a little closer to the window so that we could all talk through the bars. "Ron, how did you... What the - ?"

He was clearly going to exhaust him by trying to figure out what had just happened. "Stop talking," I told Harry. His mouth snapped shut. "We're helping you, you twit. I knew that if we wanted to get you out of there, I needed some help. So, I recruited the best people that I knew, who wouldn't mind breaking the rules. The car was their idea."

Harry's mouth fell open as the full impact of what he was seeing hit him. He glanced out of the window and I backed off slightly so that he could take everything in. It wasn't exactly an easy sight to understand. Ron was leaning out of the back window of the old turquoise car, and I was leaning out of the front of the car, which was parked in midair. Grinning at Harry from the front seats were Fred and George, who were both clearly perfectly fine with helping us essentially break the law.

"All right, Harry?" George asked.

Before Harry got the chance to answer, Ron spoke. "What's been going on? Tara told us a little bit about what happened, but it didn't make sense." I turned a glare on Ron. It made perfect sense. "Why haven't you been answering my letters? I've asked you to stay about twelve times, and then Dad came home and said you'd got an official warning for using magic in front of Muggles -"

"It wasn't us," Harry immediately cut in. I smiled at him. "And how did he know?"

Ron shrugged and I awkwardly sat still. We really shouldn't have been talking out here. "He works for the Ministry. You know we're not supposed to do spells outside school -" Ron tried to argue again.

"You should talk," Harry said, motioning to the floating car.

The three Weasley's all shook their heads. "Oh, this doesn't count. We're only borrowing this. It's Dad's, we didn't enchant it," Ron told Harry, who was nodding absentmindedly, although I was sure that he was completely lost. "But doing magic in front of those Muggles you live with -"

"I already told you what happened!" I hissed at Ron, interrupting him.

Ron turned to me, his face paling for a moment, before he finally seemed to regain his ability to speak. "Well it didn't really make sense," he told me, his voice cracking slightly from nerves.

Turning back at him, I rolled my eyes. "You're useless," I snapped.

"I got you here!" he barked back at me.

Shrugging my shoulders at him, I shook my head. "Technically the car was Fred and George's idea," I said. Both twins smiled proudly. But as I looked back at Harry I realized that we were really pushing our luck. We had to get him out of here before Vermin woke up and saw this. "And this is ridiculous. We can talk later. Come on, let's get him out," I told them.

Harry seemed as exasperated with this as we were. "I told you, I didn't - but it'll take too long to explain now. Look, can you tell them at Hogwarts that the Dursley's have locked me up and won't let me come back, and obviously I can't magic myself out, because the Ministry will think that's the second spell I've done in three days, so -"

"Stop gibbering," Ron said, interrupting Harry. He stared at us curiously. There was no way that he was missing the Hogwarts Express or shopping in Diagon Alley. "We've come to take you home with us."

Harry's jaw dropped and I rolled my eyes. He couldn't seriously have thought that we would come here just to chat and then leave without him, simply letting him stew in his misery for the next six months? I knew why the Sorting Hat had never considered Ravenclaw for Harry. He got halfway decent marks, but he could be such a twit.

"Don't be stupid," I snapped at him. His gaze turned to me in surprise. "You really think that people don't know? I told Mom and Dad about what happened but they said that we should wait it out. Now, I'm not letting you remain like this for the next month, so we took things into our own hands," I said, motioning around me.

It was a great plan. I didn't see how people thought that I ever had bad plans. Harry sighed at me and shook his head. "You're going to get -"

"Expelled," I answered for him. I'd heard that enough times from Hermione and other people. One of these days I probably would be, but that day was not today. "Yes, yes, I know," I said, waving him off.

Harry didn't look any more convinced by my lack of concern towards the situation. "But you can't magic me out either -" Harry started before being interrupted.

This time it was Ron that interrupted Harry. "We don't need to," he said, jerking his head toward the front seat and grinning. "You forget who I've got with me."

Fred and George stuck their heads out and smiled at Harry. I laughed at the twins, unable to believe that they were really willing to get in this much trouble with their parents for us. "Tie that around the bars," Fred ordered, throwing the end of a rope to Harry.

I moved out of the way so that Harry could catch it. He didn't look convinced, but did as the twins ordered him. "If the Dursley's wake up, I'm dead," Harry said as he tied the rope tightly around a bar. He kept glancing back nervously at the door to his room. I knew that he was petrified that Vermin would hear us any moment now and come to kill him.

Hopefully we would be long gone before Vermin ever even realized that Harry was gone. Fred revved up the car so that we could pull the bars free from the window. "Relax. It'll be fine," I said, reaching through the bars to squeeze Harry's hand reassuringly.

"Don't worry," Fred added before grabbing the back of my shorts and yanking me backwards. "Stand back," he warned the both of us.

Moving back into the car, I took a seat back in the chair and nodded. Fred motioned for us to buckle up and we all did so. Harry moved back into the shadows next to Hedwig. I was very impressed that the owl had managed to keep still and silent. Ron was next to me and he laid an arm over my chest, keeping me in place in case something happened. I sucked in a breath and glanced over at my house. It looked like my parents were both asleep, and I hoped that they were still the heavy sleepers that they'd always been.

Fred slowly began to move the car away from the window and I braced for the impact. We moved forward slowly until the car met the resistance of the rope. We had gone as far as we could do. George told his brother to step on it and I listened as the engine revved louder and louder. The bars were creaking and I groaned, feeling like at any moment someone would hear us and we'd be done for. The bars gave a rusty creak, and suddenly, with a crunching noise, the bars were pulled clean out of the window. We all lurched forward at the sudden movement and I found myself very grateful that Ron had his arm over me.

The four of us all panted for a moment and kept the car steady. Once we were sure that no one had heard, I motioned for Fred to put the car back in drive. Fred drove straight up in the air to get the bars untangled from the rose bush. In the distance I could Harry ran back to the window. Ron and I leaned out of the car and began tugging at the bars as quickly as we could. They seemed to be much heavier than they looked. It was moments like these that I really wished that I could use the Levitating Charm. It would have made things so much easier.

Panting, Ron and I finally managed to hoist them up into the car. Harry was standing at the window, anxiously watching us. I could tell that he was trying to listen for any noise. But it seemed that no one had heard the noise. It was something that I was extremely grateful for. I couldn't imagine the look on Mom or Dad's face if they saw us doing this. Mom would probably holler herself hoarse, but Dad might laugh. When we had finally managed to get the bars safely in the back seat with Ron and I, we motioned for Fred to reverse the car as close as possible to Harry's window.

The entire thing had taken almost five minutes, but we'd had to be very careful and very quiet. My arms were still stinging from lifting the bars as Ron leaned towards Harry. "Get in," he ordered.

Harry hesitated at the window and I groaned. I was going to kill him. "But all my Hogwarts stuff - my wand - my broomstick -" he started.

Smacking a hand to my forehead, I realized that this rescue had just gotten a lot harder. I'd completely forgotten that Harry would need his things. We couldn't waste the money to buy him all new things. And no one would be able to afford to buy him a new broom. Although, the Nimbus Two Thousand One had just come out... Wrong time for this, Tara. No, all of his things were downstairs. And there were two locks in our way, no to mention some very easily perturbed Dursley's.

"Where is it?" Ron asked.

"Locked in the cupboard under the stairs, and I can't get out of this room -"

"No problem," George interrupted from his place in the front passenger seat. He began to move and Fred began to move behind him. "Out of the way, Harry," they said.

I moved forward so that I could go with them. We only needed one person in the car to make sure that the car held still and we weren't getting caught. "I know where it is. I'll help you guys," I said to the twins.

They both nodded at me and I watched as Fred and George climbed through the window first. They were almost catlike in their motions and I was very impressed. They were so big that it seemed almost strange to see them move like they were classically trained ballet dancers. Once they were through, Fred and George stood at the window and offered me a hand. Being so small, I tucked myself through the window of the car and placed one leg on the windowsill. Fred grabbed one hand and yanked me from the car. George helped me pull myself into the small window and I was extremely grateful that I was so small.

My height had kept me from whacking my head on the top of the window, which I knew would have led me into a loud stream of profanities. Wobbling slightly from the shaky car, I let the boys help me down into Harry's room. They barely let me catch my balance before walking over towards the door. I smiled at the sight of George pulling an ordinary hairpin from his pocket and leaning down in front of the door. He placed the pin inside and began wiggling it around.

Laughing softly, I made sure to keep my voice down. The Dursley's were on the other end of the house, but I didn't want to risk waking them up. "I should have figured that you two would know how to pick a lock," I said.

George glanced over at me and smiled, briefly distracting himself from the lock. "You really thought that we relied on magic all of the time?" he asked.

Being from a Pureblood family, I had actually thought that they always relied on magic. But it was nice to see that the boys could manage practically, too. "Of course not. You can't legally do magic yet," I reasoned. They both tapped their noses and nodded. "And the Muggles do actually know what they're doing from time to time," I mumbled.

Muggles could be a major pain, but they had some pretty neat ideas. Fred leaned over to Harry and I. "A lot of wizards think it's a waste of time, knowing this sort of Muggle trick, but we feel they're skills worth learning, even if they are a bit slow," he said.

Harry nodded and I could tell that he was very impressed with what the twins were demonstrating. "What other Muggle tricks do you know?" I asked them curiously.

Fred sent me a little smile that told me that I would end up wishing that I hadn't asked. "All in good time, my dear," he teased. There was a small click on George's end of the door and the three of us looked up. George gave a little push and the door swung open.

The twins didn't even bother smiling at each other. Probably for the best. We needed to get out of here as soon as possible. Every moment that we spent here, we were getting closer to being discovered. "So we'll get your trunk - you grab anything you need from your room and hand it out to Ron," George whispered to Harry.

He nodded at them and I moved forward with the twins. "I'll show you two where it is," I said. They both nodded and motioned me ahead of them. "Get everything up here together," I told Harry.

"Okay. Watch out for the bottom stair - it creaks," Harry warned, even though I already knew that.

"Come on. Follow me and be quiet," I told Fred and George.

Just as we left the room I could see Harry carrying things from the room and tossing them into the car, passing the more delicate items to Ron. I knew that the car would be a disaster, since we really didn't have time to pack anything away, but it would be able to carry everything. As we crept down the hallway, I kept in between Fred and George. Their hands were on my back and I held a hand out to their torsos, pulling them with me. The three of us were careful going down the hallway and I motioned for them to jump the last stair.

We weren't as quiet as I would have liked to be. George managed the jump without a problem. He landed on the bottom and motioned for us to follow. Fred followed, stumbling slightly but managing quietly. Of course, I had gone from the Burrow without shoes, not wanting to alert Ginny that we were doing something very stupid. I went to jump but my sweaty feet slid slightly on the tile floor. I slipped and made a small squeak, but Fred and George were able to catch me, steadying me quickly.

The three of us didn't dare move. We all stood in complete silence and in the exact positions that I'd been in when I'd slipped. Fred had an arm around my waist and George had a grip on my arms. We must have been still for at least two minutes before finally relaxing, realizing that if we had woken someone up, they'd gone back to sleep. The only thing that I'd heard was a snore from Vermin. Once we had recovered, I pulled the twins over to the cupboard that Harry used to use as a bedroom.

Grabbing Fred to stop him from walking any further, I motioned to the small area through the darkness. "In here?" Fred whispered to me, coming to stand in front of the door.

"Yes," I whispered, not wanting to say anything else and risk alerting the Dursley's.

Fred and George both stood at the door and began fiddling with the lock. They were using the same pin that they had used in Harry's room. I stood back, knowing that I would be of no assistance. The only thing that I could use those pins for was to pin back my hair for a Quidditch game. They fiddled with it for a few minutes before I heard the small lock engage. I hadn't heard a peep from either Ron or Harry upstairs, and I hadn't heard anything from the Dursley's since Vermin's snore.

Just as I'd thought, all of Harry's things were lined up in the old cupboard. "Here, stuff everything inside," I whispered, grabbing Harry's trunk and moving it out into the kitchen hallway with George's help.

They did as I ordered and we tried to move as quickly as possible. His wand was the first thing that we moved and we were very careful to not have it do anything as I moved it. The last thing that I wanted to do was break the wand or accidentally make it do something. We couldn't afford another letter from the Ministry of Magic. We were careful moving the telescopes and brass scales, too. They were easily broken. I supposed that someone could fix it, but I didn't want the Dursley's to hear the crack. The books took up most of the room and we had to shove them into the trunk. There was no charm on his and it meant that we had to be careful with the small room inside. It also meant that it would weigh a hell of a lot when we started to actually move it.

We grabbed all of his robes and stuffed them inside. He had more than I thought that he did. He had four sets of robes for the day, his winter cloak, and the set of Quidditch robes. I was going to hit him when we got upstairs. He had way too many clothes. His gloves and Quidditch pads went inside, too, tucking them against the sides of the trunk. I sighed. This was much easier when we were allowed to make noise and had a Bottomless Charm placed on the trunk. We stuffed Harry's hat inside and I was sure that we'd ruined it. His cauldron and crystal phials proved to be the hardest things to jam into the little room that we had left. Once we had gotten everything inside, Fred and George had me sit on the top as they shoved it closed.

Panting from the quick movements, Fred and George stood on either end of the trunk. With me counting down to three on my fingers, I motioned for them to raise it up. They groaned at the weight and nodded at me to walk. I shut the cupboard door softly before dashing back over to the boys. George was going backwards and Fred was walking him forward. To keep Fred from having to speak too loudly, I stood behind George and wrapped my fingers around his belt loop, leading him through the house. We had just reached the staircase when Harry came bounding down them to help us heave the trunk upstairs. Once more, Vermin coughed.

He stood between the twins and lifted from the bottom. It didn't seem to help. They boys were still panting as we slowly moved up the stairs. As I saw Fred losing his grip, I moved next to him and helped lift. Yeah, definitely heavy. At last, panting, we reached the landing. Walking in somewhat like a waddle, we carried the trunk through Harry's room and dropped it at the open window. Fred climbed back into the car to pull the trunk with Ron, and I went with him. Fred grabbed my hand and pulled me into the car. Once I was in, we opened the door in the backseat for the trunk, urging Ron a little closer to the house.

As Fred and I positioned ourselves right at the edge of the bench in the backseat, Ron held onto our shirts to ensure that we wouldn't fall. Harry and George heaved the trunk onto his desk and pushed from the bedroom side. Inch by inch, the trunk slid through the window. Vermin coughed again and I sucked in a breath. I did not want him to wake up anytime soon. The trunk was halfway into the car, Fred and I backing to the other corner of the car to pull it across the bench and onto the floor.

"A bit more," Fred panted, yanking at the edge of the trunk. It seemed to have gotten stuck where it was. "One good push," he called the two still inside the bedroom.

They both stepped back and counted to themselves. Harry and George moved at the same time and threw their shoulders against the trunk. Thankfully it slid completely out of the window into the back seat of the car. Fred and I moved into the corner and shoved the trunk to the floor so that Harry, Ron, and I could sit in the backseat once we were ready to leave. It fell onto my foot and opened my mouth to scream. Fred saw my pain and clapped a hand over my mouth. My eyes watered and I breathed heavily in pain. Once I was sure that I wouldn't yell, I nodded to Fred to let me go.

He did so and I nodded at him, thanking him for not letting me scream. George and Harry both looked like they felt terrible for making the trunk fall on my foot. Fred and I rearranged everything in the back of the car to ensure that there was enough room. Once we were sure that we had enough room for us, we rearranged ourselves. Ron hopped into the backseat and Fred hopped into the driver's seat. We nodded for George and Harry, letting them know that we were good on our end.

"That everything?" I asked Harry, leaning towards the window, being careful with the open door.

Harry glanced around the room and nodded. "Yes, I think so," Harry said.

"Okay, let's go," George whispered.

He hopped up onto the windowsill and pushed himself out. The passenger door was open and George pulled himself through. Once he had seated himself, he closed the door and nodded for Harry to come through. We all nodded for Harry to come through once George was seated. But as Harry got one foot onto the windowsill, there was a sudden loud screech from behind him, loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood. It was followed immediately by the thunder of Vermin's voice.

"That ruddy owl!" he shouted.

We had very little time to correct this. They only lived a few rooms down. "Get your damn owl!" I barked at Harry.

"I've forgotten Hedwig!" he yelled in horror.

We were no longer worried about being quiet. Harry tore himself off of the windowsill and it was almost funny the way that he stumbled back across the room to grab Hedwig. But I was far too nervous to actually think that any of this was funny. Harry darted back across the room as the landing light clicked on. They would be here any second. The locked door was the only thing that we had in his way. Harry snatched up Hedwig's cage, dashed to the window, and passed it out to Ron. Ron was bringing it into the car, tossing it against the other side. Hedwig screeched her indignation at this but we ignored her.

We all were shouting for him to hurry up. It didn't matter that we were quiet. Vermin already knew that he was awake and doing something he shouldn't have been doing. We had to get out of here before he could stop us. Harry took a step back and pulled himself up onto the chest of drawers. He was scrambling towards the window when the thing that we wanted least to happen, happened. Vermin hammered on the unlocked door as hard as Hagrid had a year ago, and it crashed open.

"Move!" I howled.

For a split second, Vermin stood framed in the doorway. Harry was frozen on top of the dresser. But, at my shout of panic, he shoved himself forward. Vermin let out a bellow like an angry bull and dived at Harry. We had him halfway through the open door when we were unable to grab him any further without risking either dropping him or hurting him. Fred, George, Ron, and I all grabbed Harry around the arms and torso, yanking him into the car and pulling as hard as we could, no longer concerned with hurting him. Vermin was not helping our case. He had grabbed Harry by the ankle.

"Petunia!" Vermin roared. "He's getting away! He's getting away!"

Cringing slightly, I found myself slightly concerned that he was going to wake up my parents. Whatever. I'd find an excuse for my actions. Everyone was tugging back and forth, desperate to get Harry into the car before Vermin got backup from Horse-Face and Dudley. Giving him one, last, hard tug, we yanked Harry out of Vermin's grasp. Harry's leg slid free and we yanked Harry into the car. Fred and George leaped into the front seat and Harry collapsed on top of me. Ron had fallen to the floor. Harry leaned up for a moment to slam the door shut.

Trying to gather my breath from Harry knocking the wind out of me in the fall, I shouted up to Fred. "Drive, drive!"

"Put your foot down, Fred!" Ron yelled from the floor, and the car shot suddenly toward the moon. It was right then that I realized that the sudden jerk from Harry had brought Vermin toppling out of the window. He now looked very shocked, laying in the rose bush, staring up at the car as we flew away.

We were all thrown backwards at the sudden movement. Ron was still sitting on the floor, probably very uncomfortable from being on top of all of Harry's things, Hedwig looked absolutely furious at the turn of events, Fred and George were laughing and giving each other high-fives in front seat, and Harry and I were staring at each other. I knew that Harry couldn't believe it. After four days he was free. He rolled down the window, the night air whipping his hair, and looked back at the shrinking rooftops of Privet Drive. I glanced back with him. Horse-Face and Dudley were all hanging, dumbstruck, out of Harry's window. Vermin was glaring up at the car.

"See you next summer!" Harry yelled.

That was all that it took. The five of us all dissolved into fits of laughter. The next few minutes were filled with the five of us trying to rearrange ourselves. We shoved Harry's things into the back of the car, out of our way. I offered Ron my hand so that he could get out of being crammed in between the seats. Fred went to driving back to the Burrow as George began flicking at the trusty hairpin. Harry settled back in his seat, grinning from ear to ear and I took the seat in between him and Ron.

Once we had left Little Whinging, I glanced over at Harry. He was still smiling madly. My worries about explaining this to Mom and Dad went out the window. "I told you that I had a plan," I told him, still slightly breathless from the chase.

"That was one of the worst plans I've ever seen," Harry told me.

Laughing softly, I shook my head and leaned over him, wrapping my arms around his neck. "But it worked!" I howled in excitement!

My plans - as well laid out as they could be - could end up going pretty badly. With the exception of Vermin probably having back problem for the rest of his life, this plan had gone pretty well. "Thank you, all of you," Harry said to us.

The lights from Little Whinging vanished as we flew up through the clouds. The sun would probably be rising by the time that we got back to the Burrow. "You're welcome. Come on, Harry," I teased, rocking him back and forth. "It's been too long since we all did something that could get us either expelled or killed."

We all smiled at each other as we continued driving through the clouds. "Let Hedwig out. She can fly behind us. She hasn't had a chance to stretch her wings for ages," Harry told Ron.

From the front seat, George handed the hairpin to Ron. I watched as he leaned over the chair and I smiled. As much as Ron and the twins liked to rag on each other, it was pretty obvious that they were very close to each other. How else would have Ron known how to use the hairpin? He didn't know how to use anything like that. It was a few moments later that the cage popped open. Hedwig soared joyfully out of the window to glide alongside us like a ghost.

Smiling softly at Hedwig, I let my hand drift out of the window, gently fluttering over her wings. She hooted at me playfully and I smiled, retracting my hand, closing the window, and resting in the seat. "So - what's the story, Harry?" Ron asked impatiently. "What's been happening? Tara only told us part of what happened."

Turning over to him, I whopped him over the back of the head with one of Harry's books. He cringed in pain but said nothing back to me. "Excuse you! I didn't want your parents hearing what we were talking about!" I shouted at him.

Exchanging a look with Harry, I nodded at him. We had to tell them everything. Perhaps it would help if Harry and I told them together. We could fill in the little holes in each other's story. Harry told them all about Dobby and I interjected with saying that I'd tried to trace him, unfortunately I'd been unsuccessful. I'd had to recount to Harry my story from the House-Elf Placement Agency. We'd also told them the warning that he'd given Harry and I and everything that we'd been able to figure about it. Harry had also repeated the fiasco of the violet pudding. There was a long, shocked silence when he had finished.

The only noise that could be heard was the rumbling of the engine for a long while. Harry and I looked at each other, both sighing. Somehow it always ended up being us. "Very fishy," Fred said finally.

"Definitely dodgy," George agreed.

Glaring at the two of them, I debated on whacking them. But I didn't want them to get a little scared and crash the car into something. So I settled for complaining. "Why does no one ever listen when I tell the stories?" I growled.

George turned back to me. "Because no one ever trusts that you're telling us the truth. You could have been playing a prank on us," he said. Well, George wasn't driving. Leaning up, I smacked him over the back of the head, earning laughs from Fred and Ron. "Ow!" George shouted, covering the back of his head with his hand.

He looked like he was about to turn around and yell at me, but his courage failed when he saw just how serious I was. This could be extremely dangerous! "Of course I was serious, you twit!" I barked at him.

Gulping heavily, George flushed and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Only trying to answer your question," he mumbled before turning back to look at Harry. "So he wouldn't even tell you two who's supposed to be plotting all this stuff?"

The two of us exchanged a look with each other. I nodded for him to explain. "I don't think he could. I told you, every time he got close to letting something slip, he started banging his head against the wall." Fred and George looked at each other from the front seat and I raised my eyebrows. Did they know something about this? "What, you think he was lying to us?" Harry asked.

"Well, put it this way - house-elves have got powerful magic of their own, but they can't usually use it without their master's permission," Fred said. I nodded at them. I'd never really known how house-elf's did magic, considering that I'd never seen one with a wand. "I reckon old Dobby was sent to stop you coming back to Hogwarts. Someone's idea of a joke. Can you think of anyone at school with a grudge against you?" Fred asked.

"Yes," Harry and Ron said together, instantly.

The three of us exchanged a look with each other. Draco Malfoy... Of course. Old family. Rich. Pureblood. They must have had a house-elf. And someone with a grudge match against Harry and I that wouldn't want us to come back? Definitely him. Not to mention he knew that Harry and I had savior complexes. He knew that we would stay home if something horrible were to happen to others at our hands. Not only that, but he'd hinted towards Voldemort. And he knew that Harry and I were sensitive to that topic.

How could I have really fallen for Dobby's words? Of course it was just a stupid joke that Malfoy had pulled. Something that had come very close to doing a lot of damage. "I can't believe that I didn't even think of that..." I muttered, shattering the silence.

Fred leaned backwards towards me and flicked the tip of my nose. "We might be just a touch smarter than you," he told me as I batted his hand away.

"Please," I snapped, unwilling to believe it.

They were smart, the twins, but I would never admit to them that they were smarter than me. That was never going to happen. Fred and George laughed at me. "Don't worry, Tara. It'll be our little secret," Fred offered.

Turning back to the twins, I glared at them. "Shut up," I snarled.

Interrupting our pointless argument, Harry put in, "Draco Malfoy. He hates us." He pointed back and forth between the two of us.

"Draco Malfoy?" George asked, turning around. The three of us raised a brow at him. He sounded confused. I could have sworn that he knew who Malfoy was. "Not Lucius Malfoy's son?"

Glancing up to the twins, who looked very confused, I asked, "I thought you two knew him?"

"No," Fred and George said together.

That was when I realized that they had seen him before, he'd come up to the Gryffindor table countless times to mess with us, but they'd never known who he was. They'd just thought that he was some obnoxious underclassmen Slytherin. "Must be, it's not a very common name, is it?" Harry asked.

I nodded at them. I was absolutely positive that Lucius had been what Dad had called Malfoy's father last year. "It is his son. I met Lucius in Twilfitt and Tatting's last year before the start of the school year. They look exactly alike. Some woman named Narcissa is his mother," I said.

Fred and George exchanged a look with each other as I thought back to what had happened between the two of us a few days prior. When I'd been in Diagon Alley the other day I'd thrown my drink on Malfoy. That was definitely enough to make him pretty angry with me. He already hated Harry. That would have given him a reason to try and keep us away from Hogwarts. Of course... It was my temper that had gotten us all into so much trouble. Malfoy was probably laughing at my stupidity as we spoke.

Slapping a hand to my forehead, I easily drew the attention of the other four in the car. "Of course he would have done something like that after what I did!" I yelped.

"What did you do?" Ron asked.

Blushing slightly, I smiled at Ron. I had a feeling that he hated Malfoy even more than Harry did. "He was in the Leaky Cauldron with me a while back and annoying me so I took my drink and threw it on him," I explained simply.

Fred laughed so hard that the entire car surged to the side. We all screamed and shouted at Fred to steady the car out again. Once he had, the car was silent with laughter for a little while. Hedwig had tapped her beak on the window to make sure that we were all alright. After tossing her a treat to apologize for the scare, she flew off again. Harry and Ron were still laughing and gasping for air. I certainly hadn't been good to Malfoy. I'd broken his nose and dumped a drink on him in the span of a year.

We certainly weren't the prized friendship that everyone should hope for. The car finally managed to calm down. "You threw a drink on him?" Harry asked me disbelievingly.

"Yeah," I said, nodding at him. "He annoyed me."

I didn't want to admit that he had been telling me that Malfoy had been telling me that Cedric would never come to care for someone like me. "Nice!" Ron said, giving me a high-five.

I laughed softly and thanked him. It definitely made me feel better having people with me. And Ron was always good to have a laugh with. Especially if you wanted to forget about something. That was not a conversation that I really wanted to have with anyone. I didn't need people - particularly ones that I really didn't like - telling me that I had no chance with Cedric Diggory. I already knew that. I just didn't want someone else to tell me that.

Harry leaned over to me, laughing at me and wrapping an arm over my shoulder. "You're hysterical," he said through a laugh.

Smiling brightly, I flipped my hair over my shoulder. "Thank you, I try," I said teasingly. "I wish that you all could have seen it." The actual dumping of the drink, not the conversation that led up to it.

"We wish that we could have seen it, too," Harry told me before glancing up to Fred and George in the front seat. "Why were you asking about Lucius Malfoy?" he asked the twins.

"I've heard Dad talking about him. He was a big supporter of You-Know-Who," George said.

Honestly, I couldn't find myself surprised that Lucius Malfoy supported Voldemort. He seemed like an awful man. "And when You-Know-Who disappeared," Fred said, craning around to look at Harry and I, "Lucius Malfoy came back saying he'd never meant any of it. Load of dung - Dad reckons he was right in You-Know-Who's inner circle."

Again, it wasn't something that surprised me. Mom and Dad had told me the stories about Lucius Malfoy and his family all of the time. Mostly because they hated them. Apparently the Malfoy's had been instituting the superiority of pure blood for hundreds of years. Dad had told me the rumor that someone would never find a Malfoy at the scene of the crime, though their fingerprints might be all over the guilty wand. To me, it made them cowards. They couldn't chose to be loyal to a side, good or bad. They went wherever they would be deemed strong. Malfoy had proven that point by his compulsion to have Crabbe and Goyle with him whenever he wanted to confront someone.

But that didn't mean that they were doing it voluntarily. As much as I hated Malfoy, I didn't want to believe that anyone was guilty unless it could be proven. "Could he have been under the Imperius Curse?" I asked.

Harry looked confused as to what the Imperius Curse was, but he would learn soon enough. Ron flinched slightly. "Plenty of people said that they were, but he said that he was terrified of him. He was too scared to say no," Fred explained.

Nodding slowly, I sighed. Unfortunately, that happened to some good families. They were too petrified him of to stand up to him, like Lily and James Potter had. "That's what most people said. Of course, they were only saying it to keep themselves out of Azkaban," I muttered.

George tapped his nose. "Exactly. But Dad always thought that Malfoy really was a supporter. Came back to our side right after. They were some of the first to do so," he said.

"I don't know whether the Malfoy's own a house-elf..." Harry trailed off.

"Well, whoever owns him will be an old wizarding family, and they'll be rich," Fred put it.

That definitely matched up with Malfoy and his family. "Sounds like the Malfoy's," I said.

We were all nodding along, trying to understand why Malfoy would go through such lengths to keep Harry and I out of school. Maybe they were thinking of it more as a joke. "Why doesn't your family own one, Tara?" George asked, distracting me from my thoughts.

My parents would rather do everything themselves than ever get us a house-elf. Particularly Mom. "Mom absolutely refuses to have a house-elf in the house," I told the boys. They all raised their brows and turned to me. "She thinks that it's all slave labor, and she doesn't want anyone working for us that won't accept payment, which house-elf's don't."

I almost felt bad for saying it. The Weasley's would love to have a house-elf but didn't have the money. We had the money, but Mom would never allow a slave in the house. "Yeah, Mum's always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing. But all we've got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors and castles and places like that; you wouldn't catch one in our house," George muttered.

Of all of the sad things that he had said, I hadn't even heard most of them. I'd stopped listening when he'd mentioned the ghoul in the attic. "Since when did you have a ghoul in the attic?" I asked them.

Ron glanced over at me. "Always. You never heard it at night?" he asked.

I did remember hearing moans and groans and sometimes things that sounded like pots and pans clattering. There was even the occasional thing that sounded like an explosion. But I'd never thought that it was a ghoul doing that. "I thought that it was you two doing something that you shouldn't have been!" I shouted at Fred and George.

They both laughed and winked at me. I couldn't imagine the amount of times that I'd heard the ghoul doing something only to think that it was one of the twins doing some new stupid thing. I had always thought that they were planning pranks. Half of the time that I'd heard the ghoul making noise I'd thought that they were staying up past their bedtimes. Not that they probably didn't stay up past their bedtimes anyways. I almost thought about asking if I could see the ghoul, but I decided to stay quiet and not ask.

For a long time everyone in the car was silent. My thoughts slowly turned from the ghoul in their attic onto the fact that we had been so stupid to believe that Dobby's warning had been serious. Of course Malfoy had done something like that. He hated us and would do anything to keep us out of Hogwarts. I only made it worse with every time that I said or did something extremely rude to him. Not that he didn't deserve it. But now I finally got the payback that I had probably been asking for, for a long time.

He knew how sensitive Harry and I were to something happening. He knew that we couldn't keep to ourselves. He would know that if something came and warned us about something bad happening at Hogwarts it would either bother us to the point that we wouldn't go, or it would keep us awake at all hours of the night and end up somehow getting us in trouble if we broke the rules - which I was sure that we would. Judging by the fact that Malfoy usually had the best of everything since his family was rolling in wizard gold; I could just see Malfoy strutting around a large manor house. Sending the family servant to stop Harry and I from going back to Hogwarts also sounded exactly like the sort of thing Malfoy would do. How had we even taken Dobby seriously for a moment?

Finally I decided that someone would have to say something. "So maybe this whole thing was just a joke from Malfoy..." I trailed off, exchanging a look with Harry. "He knows that we're still antsy from everything last year, and this would be the perfect way to mess with us," I tried to reason with him.

Harry nodded at me. He seemed to be wanting to think that Malfoy would do something like this, but trying very hard to convince himself otherwise. "I can't believe he'd do something like that," Harry muttered.

Glancing over at Harry, I narrowed my eyes. "Honestly you can't see Malfoy doing something like this?" I asked him.

Harry looked out of the window for a moment. "Well..." His voice faltered and he looked back over at me. "Yes, I can."

Distracting us from the conversation about Malfoy, Ron spoke. "I'm glad we came to get you, anyway. I was getting really worried when you didn't answer any of my letters. I thought it was Errol's fault at first -" Ron said until Harry spoke over him.

"Who's Errol?" Harry asked.

He was a Great Grey Owl that was just a few years old. He very greatly resembled a molting feather duster. He was absolutely pathetic for a bird that was only a few years old. He had such poor eyesight that it frequently caused him to hit objects in flight. He'd run into our windows at home at least three times over the summer. Once had knocked him out for over a day. I'd told Ron in my next letter that he should stop sending Errol all of the distance to my home, and to just keep Dai until he was ready to send me a letter. I knew that Dai liked hanging around at the Weasley's house. They had that huge field that he could flutter around in.

Unfortunately when we were at home, Dai had to hang around in the house most of the time. He could only fly around when I was asking him to send a letter. We couldn't even let him hang out with Hedwig most of the time because the Dursley's had been so cruel to lock her up for the summer. I knew that Dai would be thrilled to see Hedwig once we got him out to the Burrow.

"Our owl," Ron finally said. They could live an extremely long time and I had a feeling that Errol was around ten. Still young for a Great Grey. "He's ancient. It wouldn't be the first time he'd collapsed on a delivery. So then I tried to borrow Hermes -"

"Who?" Harry interrupted.

I rolled my eyes at him. Hermes was a sweet little bird, but he was Percy's, and somehow he had become just as uppity as Percy could be. "The owl Mum and Dad bought Percy when he was made Prefect," Fred informed Harry.

"But Percy wouldn't lend him to me. Said he needed him," Ron explained.

My eyebrows furrowed. Was Percy really doing his schoolwork already? Or perhaps he was talking to that girl that he liked... I'd found out through threatening him to tell the twins that he had a crush on a girl named Penelope Clearwater. All I knew was that she was a Ravenclaw Prefect. She had long, curly, blonde hair and loved Quidditch. She wasn't on her team. That was about all I knew about her. I was reasonably sure that she would be a Sixth Year this year.

"Percy's been acting very oddly this summer," George said, frowning, drawing my attention over to him. "And he has been sending a lot of letters and spending a load of time shut up in his room. I mean, there's only so many times you can polish a Prefect badge." Ron and I snorted at the thought. "You're driving too far west, Fred," George added, pointing at a compass on the dashboard.

Fred twiddled the steering wheel and the car rocked gently to the east. I noticed Hedwig alter her flight path ahead of us. Owls really were the strangest creatures. But I was still so curious to hear what had been happening to Percy this summer. He was always somewhat distant with us, not that I was really shocked. He was the oldest and had better things to be doing than hanging around us. I was just so curious to know where he'd gotten his personality. Bill was apparently serious but also had a good joking manner about him, Charlie had been an incredible Quidditch player and he was friendly, Fred and George were both huge goofballs, Ron had a great sense of humor, and Ginny loved to laugh.

So where did Percy make any sense in the equation of the Weasley's? Perhaps it was better that I didn't know. "Did you even bother asking him what he's been doing?" I asked the Weasley's, curious if they'd tried.

George looked back at me. "It's Percy. What in Merlin's name could he possibly be doing?" he asked me.

"He's a sixteen year old boy," I pointed out.

It didn't seem to have any effect on them. "What's that got to do with anything?" Fred asked, looking at me in the rear view mirror.

I rolled my eyes at them. I glanced back at Harry and Ron, but they looked just as lost. I supposed that they would have never thought that there was any chance that Percy could have a girlfriend or something like that. "Nothing. Never mind," I said, waving the twins off.

"So, does your dad know you've got the car?" Harry asked, probably already knowing the answer. I was grateful that someone had changed the conversation from Percy. He'd tell them in their own time.

The air became very awkward. "Er, no," Ron said, rubbing the back of his neck. "He had to work tonight. Hopefully we'll be able to get it back in the garage without Mum noticing we flew it," he told Harry.

Had Mr. Weasley gone back to work? I hadn't even noticed. Perhaps Ginny and I had been talking a little louder and longer than I'd thought that we were. "What does your dad do at the Ministry of Magic, anyway?" Harry asked.

"He works in the most boring department. The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office," Ron explained.

That probably wasn't the most boring department in the Ministry of Magic. There were lots of boring ones that I could think of. There was the Improper Use of Magic Office, which really just annoyed everyone. They were the reasons that Harry and I had gotten the letter about Dobby's spell. Evidently they couldn't even do their jobs correctly. There was also the Obliviator Headquarters. That seemed like a depressing job. There was the Pest Advisory Board and Office of Misinformation. There was also the International Magical Trading Standards Body. That couldn't be amusing. All of the departments in the Department of Magical Transportation sounded boring.

There were much more boring offices that Mr. Weasley could have worked for. Perhaps it was just because Ron didn't find Muggles at all interesting. "The what?" Harry asked.

I smiled. He would be like an alien in this world for a long time. "It's all to do with bewitching things that are Muggle-made, you know, in case they end up back in a Muggle shop or house. Like, last year, some old witch died and her tea set was sold to an antiques shop. This Muggle woman bought it, took it home, and tried to serve her friends tea in it. It was a nightmare. Dad was working overtime for weeks," Ron explained.

"What happened?" Harry asked curiously.

"The teapot went berserk and squirted boiling tea all over the place and one man ended up in the hospital with the sugar tongs clamped to his nose. Dad was going frantic - it's only him and an old warlock called Perkins in the office - and they had to do Memory Charms and all sorts of stuff to cover it up," Ron said.

Harry and I exchanged a look before I burst out laughing. Sometimes we just had to feel so bad for Muggles. Stupid things were happening to them all the time that were probably the fault of wizards. Half of the time that bridges and buildings came down were because wizards were getting into fights. Most poisons and diseases were from wizards messing around with things that they really shouldn't have been meddling with. It was why most wizarding hospitals had Muggle wings for mishaps.

"That's hysterical," I said once I'd calmed down.

"That's what we said, too," George told me.

It seemed that Harry was the only one that didn't think that the teacup incident had been the slightest bit funny. "But your dad - this car -" he tried to ask.

Fred laughed at Harry's bumbling. "Yeah, Dad's crazy about everything to do with Muggles; our shed's full of Muggle stuff. He takes it apart, puts spells on it, and puts it back together again. If he raided our house he'd have to put himself under arrest. It drives Mum mad," he explained.

They did have quite a few Muggle things in their house. Of course, everything had charms and spells placed on them so that they were magical. "That's the main road," George said, peering down through the windshield. "We'll be there in ten minutes. Just as well, it's getting light," he said.

Glancing out of the front windshield, I nodded. The sun looked gorgeous. I'd always lived in the suburbs or in the city. Always in places that Muggles were crowded around. It was times like these that I wished that I lived out in the country. Somewhere like this or Cedric's house. Close enough to London, but still with lots of coverage from the Muggles. A faint pinkish glow was visible along the horizon to the east. Fred brought the car lower. We could just barely see the village that they lived near. It was a cute little thing. Nothing like Little Whinging and Surrey - where there were always people and traffic.

"We're a little way outside the village. Ottery St. Catchpole," George said.

The four of us looked around. It was probably just a little bit before six in the morning. Mr. Weasley had clearly taken out the clock in the Muggle car. There was no way of knowing. And I didn't have my Muggle watch. Fred gradually took the car lower and lower. We weren't that far off of the road anymore. The Burrow could just be seen over the edge of the trees. Harry seemed to be focusing on not dying when the car hits the ground. The edge of a brilliant red sun was now gleaming through the trees.

"Touchdown!" Fred chirped as, with a slight bump, we hit the ground.

The car rolled forward slightly into the garage and I smiled. It didn't look like anyone had even realized that we had been gone. I was sure that I'd have to figure out something to tell my parents about how Harry had escaped the Dursley's, but I had time. Of course, it certainly wouldn't be easy to explain if Vermin went next door and started to shout at my parents for the flying car. Perhaps they'd just be grateful that Harry was gone for the entire year. It seemed like they should have been.

Once the car finally came to a stop I looked out of the window. Hedwig was hanging around on the fence, probably looking to go find Errol. We had landed next to a tumbledown garage in a small part of the yard. I'd never really bothered to look at Ron's house. So I glanced up and took a real look at it for the first time. It looked as though it had once been a large stone pigpen, but extra rooms had been added here and there until it was several stories high and so crooked it looked as though it were held up by magic. Of course, it was. Mrs. Weasley had done it when they'd first moved in and had added to it as the kids were born. Four or five chimneys were perched on top of the red roof.

For a moment I wondered what this house would have been like when Charlie and Bill had lived here, too. It must have been a disaster. It was crowded enough now. A lopsided sign stuck in the ground near the entrance read, The Burrow. I smiled, wondering who had come up with the name in the first place. Around the front door lay a jumble of rubber boots and a very rusty cauldron. I rolled my eyes. They'd told me that Ron had accidentally spilled some vile potion in it when he was younger. Several fat brown chickens were pecking their way around the yard.

Glancing over at Ron, I saw that he was watching Harry nervously. Harry's house was technically nicer, but the magic and love here was so far past Number Four, Privet Drive. "It's not much," Ron said awkwardly.

Harry was looking all around the house. "It's wonderful," Harry said happily. Ron's ears turned pink and I saw the twins exchange a smile. With a quick motion from the twins, we got out of the car.

As we tiptoed into the front yard of the house, Fred spoke. "Now, we'll go upstairs really quietly and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast. Then, Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, 'Mum, look who turned up in the night!' and she'll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car."

That was an absolutely terrible idea. If he'd come through the fireplace - the only way that he could have come - she would have heard it. "You know she's going to figure out that we did something," I told him.

Fred leaned over to me and wrapped an arm over my shoulder. "Not if you and Ginny keep your mouths shut," he said.

"Oh, come on, I appear one day and then the next day Harry magically appears?" I asked him, trying to make him see the light.

George whacked me over the back of the head and I groaned, stomping down on his foot. We were both trying to bite back shouting at the other. "Zip it. Mum loves Harry. She'll forget it," George argued.

"Right," Ron said, leading us along. "Come on, Harry, I sleep at the - at the top -"

Ron had gone a nasty greenish color, his eyes fixed on the house. The other four of us wheeled around to see what the problem was. Unfortunately, I already knew what the problem was. Mrs. Weasley was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger. But that wasn't what made my face completely drain of color. Right behind her, marching just as angrily, stood my mother. Bile immediately rose in my throat as I shoved Fred's arm off of me.

The twins had never met my mother before, at least, not for a long time, but they clearly sniffed the danger in the air. Harry and Ron both looked horrified. "Ah," Fred groaned.

"Oh, dear," George said.

The two women came to a halt in front of us. Sensing that I should speak before the yelling started, I moved forward. "Hello, Mom!" I chirped brightly. Her straight face told me that I wasn't getting out of this one unscathed. "Isn't it great that Harry showed up here?" I asked happily, motioning back to the stunned boy.

"It's wonderful," Mom growled, very little emotion other than anger in her voice.

Guiltily, I smiled at her. "Do I have to come home now?" I asked quietly.

She shook her head at me. Probably for the best, I could avoid a large and loud argument. "Oh no. You'll be staying here for the next few weeks and doing whatever Mrs. Weasley needs you to do, without complaint," she told me. I nodded, figuring that it was fair. "You'll come home on the weekends though, correct?" Mom asked.

"Correct," I immediately said, knowing that I was getting off easily.

"Next time I tell you to wait, do so," Mom warned me.

My face heated up slightly as I nodded at her. "Yes, ma'am," I said.

She fluffed out her hair and turned to Mrs. Weasley. She must have come straight from bed. She was wearing her pajamas and her hair was ruffled. "Now then... I'll be on my way. Thank you for letting me know what's happened, Molly. In the meantime I think I'll go laugh at Vernon and Petunia as they try to fix that window," she said.

Both Harry and I had to try and stop ourselves from laughing. We knew that this was too serious of a situation to laugh. Mrs. Weasley smiled at my mother. "You and Marcus must have dinner with us tonight. You're more than welcome to stay a few nights yourself," she said.

Mom smiled at her. "We would like that. Perhaps in a week or so?" she offered. Mrs. Weasley nodded her agreement at her. "Marcus and I are quite busy at the Ministry. Seems that no one there has their head screwed on straight," she complained.

Mrs. Weasley sighed at her, and I immediately knew that this was a problem. I'd heard Mom and Dad complaining about the Ministry, and I'd heard Mrs. Weasley complain to Mr. Weasley. He seemed to frequently complain to his wife. As much as they loved their jobs, they did not enjoy having to work for the Ministry. I'd heard it time and time again. It was the same way with the Muggle world. As much as they wanted to love working in the government, they hated their governments, too.

"You must speak to Arthur about that someday," Mrs. Weasley told Mom, distracting me from my thoughts.

Mom nodded at her, gently laying her arm over Mrs. Weasley's shoulder. "I will. Thank you for keeping after Tara. We're just so busy, I feel awful having her at the house by herself so much," Mom said, shooting me a slightly guilty look. I smiled at her. We had years together. One busy summer wouldn't hurt. "Plus I doubt that Vernon and Petunia will want to be seeing her much."

Both Harry and I exchanged a small smile with my mother. They didn't like ever seeing us, nevertheless after the stunt that we had just pulled. "Not a worry, Julia. Tara is a pleasure," Mrs. Weasley said, smiling back at me.

I smiled brightly at her. She had become like a second mother to me over the summer, after all of the time that I had spent with the Weasley's. "And she will continue to be a pleasure. Yes?" Mom asked, turning back to me with a warning glare. I nodded at her quickly. I'd done enough bad things this summer. I was going to act properly for the rest of the summer. Mom looked back at Mrs. Weasley. "Then I'll be on my way. Behave yourself, Tara. Good to see you, Harry," she said.

Smiling at her, I very nearly scoffed. Half of the time I got the feeling that she liked Harry more than she liked me. But she was just irritated with me breaking so many rules within a very short span of time. Mom walked over and gave Harry a quick hug. He smiled at her and thanked her for letting Dumbledore and Hagrid know what had happened to him. She gave Ron a hug as well, telling him that he would have to come by the house at some point, that way he could really meet the Dursley's, too. She very quickly hugged the twins as well, giving Fred a lingering gaze. I couldn't quite figure out why. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek - and a warning to behave - before Apparating back home.

Once she had gone, we turned back to Mrs. Weasley. I had gotten away somewhat unscathed, but now the Weasley's had to deal with the wrath of their mother. Mrs. Weasley came storming up to us and came to a halt in front of us. Her hands were still on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next. She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of the pocket. Now that Mom was gone, things seemed to have gotten tense again.

"So," she said.

Clearly the boys still thought that they might get out of this without having to own up to what Mom had probably already told Mrs. Weasley what had happened. "Morning, Mum," George said, in what he clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.

He didn't get much farther than that. "Have you any idea how worried I've been?" Mrs. Weasley asked in a deadly whisper.

George: decided to give it another try. "Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to -"

All three of Mrs. Weasley's sons were taller than she was, but they cowered as her rage broke over them. "Beds empty! No note!" Harry and I took a step backwards, very frightened for the three redheaded boys. "Car gone - could have crashed - out of my mind with worry. Did you care? Never, as long as I've lived - you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy -"

"Perfect Percy," Fred muttered.

His comment did not go unheard or appreciated by Mrs. Weasley. "You could do with taking a leaf out of Percy's book!" Mrs. Weasley shouted, stomping up to us and prodding a finger in Fred's chest. He had never looked quite so terrified. "You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job -"

The entire barrage of shouting and screaming and blaming seemed to go on for hours. Harry and I stood a few feet back as they continued to yell at each other. More like Mrs. Weasley would yell and the boys might try to get in a word before she would yell over them again. Harry and I kept glancing at each other, wondering if we should do something, but I knew that we were both a little too scared to do that. So we stood awkwardly and watched. Mrs. Weasley had shouted herself hoarse before she turned on Harry and I, both of us backing away slightly.

The angry glare faded from her face and she smiled. Fred, George, and Ron looked shocked. "I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, dear," she said before turning on me. "And Tara, your mother must come by more often." I nodded brightly at her, glad not to have any of her wrath directed at me. "Come in and have some breakfast."

There was a shocked silence as she turned and walked back into the house. We all stood and stared at each other. No one knew what to do for a moment. Harry and I, after shooting a nervous glance at Ron, who nodded encouragingly, followed her. We walked into the house and I ensured to stand close to Harry. The closer that I stood to him, the less likely Mrs. Weasley was to take out her anger on me. It was obvious that no one else was awake yet. Ginny and Percy were nowhere to be found. Mr. Weasley was probably still at work.

Mrs. Weasley led us through the house quietly. The kitchen was small and rather cramped. I hadn't really ever been in it. They usually had us eat in the dining room where there was more room. There was a scrubbed wooden table and chairs in the middle. There were seven seats, enough for room for all of them, but I assumed that they didn't eat here very often. Harry sat down on the edge of his seat. He took the seat in the middle of the table, Ron on one side and me on the other. Fred and George were across from us. Harry was looking around. He had never been in a real wizard house before. Mine was decorated mostly as a Muggle house to disguise us.

There were two clocks on the wall and I smiled at them both. One seemed to just be for Mrs. Weasley, mounted right over the sink. It had only one hand and no numbers at all. Written around the edge were things like time to make tea, time to feed the chickens, and you're late. The other was clearly the one for the family. It was on the wall just outside of the kitchen, facing the living room. It had nine hands on it that looked more like spoons. Each one had a picture of one of the Weasley's. There were labels like garden, school, home, work, dentist, Quidditch, lost, prison, hospital, traveling, and mortal peril. I got a particularly good chuckle out of mortal peril and prison.

All of the hands were pointing to wherever the people were. The hands with Ginny, Percy, and Mrs. Weasley's faces were all pointing to home. The hands with Charlie, Bill, and Mr. Weasley's faces were all pointing to work. The hands with Fred, George, and Ron's faces were currently resting on lost. I was only staring at the clock for a moment before they changed to home with most of the other hands.

Smiling slightly, I turned and looked around at the rest of the kitchen. Books were stacked three deep on the mantelpiece and I laughed. We had some of the same books, not that Mom ever actually looked at them. She was a miserable cook. Mrs. Weasley had Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts - It's Magic! The radio was playing softly in the background, probably trying not to wake Ginny and Percy up. Apparently the Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck, was coming up. I rolled my eyes. She wasn't half-bad, but she certainly wasn't my style.

Personally, I liked Blodwyn Bludd, a vampire with a bass-baritone voice. Lorcan d'Eath was pretty good, too, a part-vampire singer. They tended to have the best voices. Spellbound were really good, but they seemed to always have something terrible happening to them. Because of Mom I liked the Hobgoblins, but they had retired before I was old enough to actually hear them play. I did hear the old recordings though. And, of course, the Weird Sisters. They were probably the most famous wizarding rock band.

It was rather funny having Mom and Dad have to attempt to explain to me why they were the Weird Sisters, if their band was all-male. I still didn't really understand it. I was trying to tune out Celestina Warbeck as Mrs. Weasley was clattering around the kitchen, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, throwing dirty looks at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she would mutter something about how she didn't know what they had been thinking of, and how she couldn't believe it.

"I don't blame you, dear," she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. "Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we'd come and get you ourselves if you hadn't written back to Ron by Friday. But really," she said as she added three fried eggs to his plate, "flying an illegal car halfway across the country - anyone could have seen you. I'm sure that they dragged you into it, Tara," Mrs. Weasley said to me.

She tipped five sausages and two fried eggs onto my plate. It was far more than I could eat, but I smiled at her. She made the best food. "Yes, Mrs. Weasley," I said as I took a bite of the sausages.

"Tara!" Fred, George, and Ron all hissed at me as their mother walked away.

Once she was gone, I turned back to them with my fork pointed towards them. "I've got my own mother to deal with, zip it!" I barked at the other three.

The quick banter had gone unnoticed by Mrs. Weasley. She was standing in the kitchen and finishing up her chores. I noticed that she'd given Fred, George, and Ron far less than she had with Harry and I. She'd be irritated with them for a few days before she got over it. She flicked her wand casually at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves, clinking gently in the background. I scoffed, wondering why Mom made me do the dishes if there was a spell to do them for her.

"It was cloudy, Mum!" Fred argued towards her earlier comment that anyone could have seen us.

Mrs. Weasley did not appreciate that comment. "You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" she snapped.

Fred's courage faltered for a moment, so George decided to step in. "They were starving him, Mum!" he tried to reason.

"And you!" she added to her other son.

They both faltered at this comment. Harry and I grinned down at our plates. Fred and George were too tough about everything - they had to be with half of the pranks that they pulled - but they were nothing compared to their mother. Of course, for a witch that wasn't even five feet tall, she was quite intimidating. I certainly didn't want to be on her bad side. Her expression softened slightly as she started cutting Harry and I bread and buttering it for us.

Thanking her softly, I took the bread and swallowed it quickly. Bread would always be one of my favorite foods. I noticed that she also had coffee in the house, something that she was currently handing me. She never had coffee otherwise. She must have gotten it with it in mind that I would be here. I almost felt bad for causing her such a panic. But I couldn't leave Harry the way that he had been. At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, red-headed figure in a long nightdress. I smiled at Ginny, who hadn't looked up yet.

"Mummy, have you seen my jumper?" Ginny called.

"Yes, dear, it was on the cat," Mrs. Weasley called back.

My eyebrows rose. I wasn't aware that they even had a cat. Of course, there were certainly enough places for a cat to hide in this house. Ginny finally glanced up and spotted us. She looked over at me and I smiled at her. She smiled back but her gaze quickly turned away from me and locked onto Harry. Her eyes widened and she took a step backwards.

Harry smiled at her, unaware of her fright. "Hello," he told her happily. Fred, George, and I all laughed as she gave a small squeal, and ran out again. Ron rolled his eyes. Harry turned to Ron. "What did I do?" he asked worriedly.

"Ginny," Ron said in an undertone to Harry. He rolled his eyes again. "My sister. She's been talking about you all summer."

"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry," Fred said with a grin.

It was very obvious that they boys were going to start teasing Harry about Ginny, but they caught their mother's eye and bent their faces over their plates without another word. I almost laughed. I was pretty sure that Harry and I could have spoken without getting yelled at, but I didn't really want to test that. So we all ate in silence. Nothing more was said until all five plates were clean, which took a surprisingly short time. I knew that Harry had been starving, and the others were boys. They were like Muggle trash compactors. Between the three Weasley boys and Harry, they'd easily been able to finish what I hadn't.

"Blimey, I'm tired," Fred yawned, setting down his knife and fork at last. "I think I'll go to bed and -"

"You will not," Mrs. Weasley snapped. The movement stopped on all ends of the table. "It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again -"

"Oh, Mum -" George interrupted.

He didn't get much farther than that. "And you two," she said, glaring at Ron and Fred. They both groaned at her but nodded anyways, sensing that a fight would not have been a good idea. "You can go up to bed, dear," she added to Harry. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car." She finally turned to me. "Would you mind helping them, Tara?"

Standing, I gave her a smile. I'd told Mom that I wouldn't argue, and I wouldn't. De-gnoming was annoying, but I'd manage. I'd only had to do it a few times before. "Not a problem," I told her.

I found myself very grateful when Harry said, "I'll help them. I've never seen a de-gnoming -"

"That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work." Harry didn't seem to mind. I knew that he didn't want to be alone and he didn't want us to have to suffer because we'd tried to save him. Mrs. Weasley shifted over and started looking through a large stack of books. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject."

Turning my head over to Fred and George, they both nodded. I couldn't believe that she read him. She pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. George groaned. "Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden."

It didn't make a bit of a difference. She was still looking at it lovingly. I'd never actually finished one of his books before. Half of the books were about himself. And the parts that were actually useful seemed like they were written by someone else. Break with a Banshee was half about his own wondrous childhood accomplishments. Gadding with Ghouls mostly seemed like a fairy tale. Holidays with Hags had quite a bit about how he enjoyed spending his own holidays. I hadn't even bothered trying to read Marauding with Monsters, Traveling with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, or Year with the Yeti. Half of his book, Wanderings with Werewolves were about how cruel he was towards lycanthropes. I'd been furious for weeks after reading his backwards thinking.

Magical Me - his autobiography - was the absolute worst. A thousand pages of him bragging about himself. It was somewhere in its twentieth - or something like that - week atop the bestseller list. Showed how much the Daily Prophet knew. They had all been on the clearance shelves in the States, and I'd been waiting on Mom and Dad, the only reason that I'd even bothered trying to read them.

Harry and I looked at the cover of Mrs. Weasley's book. Written across it in fancy gold letters was Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests. I rolled my eyes. There was a big photograph on the front of a very good-looking wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. I'd never actually looked at him before. He was attractive, but he was a twit. Obviously the book was meant to draw in witches, as the man in the picture kept winking cheekily up at us all. Mrs. Weasley beamed down at him.

"Oh, he is marvelous. He knows his household pests, all right, it's a wonderful book..." Mrs. Weasley trailed off.

"Mum fancies him," Fred said, in a very audible whisper.

Mrs. Weasley turned back to him and glared, although she still seemed mostly enamored with the picture. "Don't be so ridiculous, Fred." Her cheeks were rather pink. "All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it."

We decided to leave Mrs. Weasley to her fawning over the book. As we walked out, I looked over at Harry, ensuring that the others could hear me. "Lockhart is a nutter. He claims to have done all these incredible things himself, but most people in the States think that he's more of a fiction writer than anything else. His books sell terribly overseas," I told him.

Harry nodded at me, but it was Fred that spoke. "They do?" he asked, sounding very surprised.

Of course. The books were always bestsellers in England. "Yeah. Mom and Dad hate him. So do the professors at Hogwarts. That's what they said. I think he was a few years behind them in Hogwarts. They always say how irritating that he was for a Second Year in their Seventh Year," I told them.

"Mum loves him," Fred put in.

"Most English witches do," I muttered.

Honestly, I couldn't understand why. He was a cow. Yawning and grumbling, the Weasley's slouched outside, hunched over themselves. Harry and I were behind them. We made our way outside and I basked in the warm air. The garden was large and took up most of the field. Probably why they had such a gnome problem. Harry was grinning brightly. Probably because it looked nothing like the Dursley's garden.

There were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting badly. The only thing that bothered me about that was the fact that I did not want something getting up and biting me. There were some scary plants and animals in the Wizarding World. I'd probably always hold a grudge against Devil's Snare. There were also gnarled trees all around the walls of the house, and surrounding the garden. A large hedge separated the garden from the rest of the field. Plants were spilling from every flower bed, and I was desperate to put them in a little more order. Although the big green pond made me smile. It was full of frogs. I loved frogs.

But I had a feeling that these weren't friendly. Harry was walking next to me with Ron on his other side. The twins were trudging angrily ahead of us. "Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as we crossed the lawn.

Grimacing slightly, I shook my head. The gnomes that people put in their gardens were adorable. They were always pudgy with nice long pants on that were tucked into boots. Usually they were wearing some type of coat that was buckled in the middle. For whatever reason, the Muggles always made them overweight. Gnomes were actually quite thin, with bones poking out of them. And they seemed to always be wearing a pointed hat, usually red. It made them look a little like Santa Claus.

Ron's voice distracted me from my thoughts about garden gnomes. "Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," Ron said, bent over with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods..."

Harry was staring at Ron like he'd lost his mind. "Gnomes are horrible, Harry," I told him.

He glanced over at me as if to ask why they were so bad, but he was about to find out. Ron had clearly just found one. There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. "This is a gnome," he said grimly.

"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" the gnome squealed.

Its voice was horribly high-pitched. This seemed to be a younger one. And it was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. They looked a tiny bit like gargoyles to me. This one was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. One eye was bigger than the other, but they were both beady and black. It only wore something that looked a touch like a collared shirt. The feet was huge and kicking angrily as Ron led it over to the hedge.

This one was just under a foot tall. It looked like the ones in North America. That was mostly where they were found, and Northern Europe. Exactly where we were. They liked worms and roots, exactly why they kept hanging out in the Weasley garden. Ron held it at arm's length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down. The gnome continued to shout. Of course, they only really ever told people to get off of them.

"This is what you have to do," Ron said, demonstrating to Harry. He raised the gnome above his head and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry's face, Ron added, "It doesn't hurt them - you've just got to make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnomeholes."

Harry still looked totally lost. He actually looked like he felt terrible for the little things, despite how ugly they were. I knew how he felt. When I was a kid I'd told my parents that we shouldn't do that. I'd learned the hard way that we had to. A gnome had bitten me on the finger and I'd bled so badly that they'd had to take me to St. Dorrin's. It had not been a fun day for me. Ron finally let go of the gnome's ankles: It flew twenty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge.

It was not a particularly impressive throw. Maybe Ron would be a Quidditch player, but he would not be a Chaser or Beater. "They're horrible. Trust me when I say that you don't want them in your yard," I reassured Harry before turning towards Ron. "Ron, you have a weak arm," I teased.

"Let's see you do better!" Ron shouted at me, affronted.

Chuckling loudly, the twins made their way over to us. Fred and George both had gnomes in their hands. "She's right. Pitiful. I bet I can get mine beyond that stump," Fred said.

This was the way that we had to do de-gnoming. It was a dreadfully boring task if we didn't have some fun with it. For a while, Harry watched us. Fred was right. He'd gotten his gnome beyond the stump. Not by much thought. Of course, his had been extremely heavy. It looked like one that had found a few too many worms. George had gotten his just past Fred's, and the two had quickly gotten into a competition on who could throw the furthest. Ron had some halfway-decent throws, but none that compared to his brother's. Currently I had the furthest throw, just a few feet past where George's last gnome had landed.

It had taken a while for Harry to finally give it a try. I'd laughed very hard when Harry had learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge. Fred and I watched closely, betting on whether the gnome would get out of his grip or bite him. I'd won, having bet on it biting him. After only a few seconds, the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry's finger and he had a very hard job shaking it off. We were all laughing at Harry until he managed to shake the thing off and give it a hard throw over the hedge.

It went a whopping distance, going just past where my throw had been. I growled at him. It had taken me three gnomes to get it that far. Harry didn't notice, he was nursing the wound. I walked over to him and nudged his shoulder. "Told you not to take pity on them. Nice throw," I added when he glared at me.

"Wow, Harry. That must've been fifty feet," Ron said.

We spent a long time clearing gnome after gnome. Harry still had the strongest throw. I'd come close twice, but I hadn't passed him yet. Harry hadn't been able to throw as far as he had the first time since we'd started. We figured that it was because he was shaking his arm so hard. Finally I grabbed the gnome that had been evading me for nearly ten minutes. It kept running back and forth in between the trees but Fred and I had finally managed to head it off and I'd captured the little thing.

It had put up a good fight. It was thrashing back and forth. Clearly this one was younger. It still had the spunk that the older ones didn't. I held it upside down and quickly made my way to the hedge. I could see the teeth on this one and I really didn't want to get bitten. I began to whip the gnome around ten - fifteen - twenty times, hoping that this one wouldn't make its way back for a long time. Finally I let go and watched as it went soaring past where Harry's impressive first throw had landed. I stepped back and smiled, wiping a bead of sweat away.

The boys had their hands over their eyes, watching the throw. They were all very clearly impressed with the last one. I was, too. "Merlin, Tara," Fred muttered.

Laughing at him, I made my way back over to the twins, leaning up against Fred. It was boiling out by now, and we'd been out here for hours. "How many of these damn things do you guys have?" I asked.

"Way too many," Fred answered me honestly. I couldn't even imagine how they did this every few weeks. "How do you throw so far?"

"Marcus Nox. Professional Quidditch Chaser," I said flatly.

The five of us stood in silence for a little while, taking a few minutes off. It was only when Mrs. Weasley shouted at us to get back to work that we did. Fred, George, Ron, Harry, and I worked together well. The twins would chase them out of the gnome holes, making sure that they wouldn't be able to dive back into another one, while Ron would grab them. Harry and I would take them from there, chucking them over the hedge. But it didn't take the gnomes long to realize that we had formed a plan. That was when the frenzy started, gnomes running left and right. We had to cease the plan and move forward with just grabbing them and throwing. The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

"See, they're not too bright," George said, seizing five or six gnomes at once. I was very impressed how he grabbed them all and managed not to get bitten. "The moment they know the de-gnoming's going on they storm up to have a look. You'd think they'd have learned by now just to stay put."

That was how gnomes worked. For whatever reason, they always came back. Perhaps it was because of the food that they had here in the garden. Or perhaps it was just because they thought that this was funny. Thankfully the gnomes finally seemed to realize that they were fighting a losing battle. They stopped running and crawled out of their holes, trying to bite our ankles as they walked. We had to be careful to ensure that they wouldn't. Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.

They walked through the hedge, slowly disappearing from our eyes. "They'll be back," Ron said as we all watched the gnomes disappear into the hedge on the other side of the field. "They love it here. Dad's too soft with them; he thinks they're funny..."

My head snapped over to him. "How could anyone like these things?" I asked.

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "It's a mystery to us," he told me.

"How long will it be before they come back?" I asked curiously.

The boys exchanged a shrug. This must have been nothing abnormal. I wondered what they did with the gnomes while the kids were at Hogwarts. "Not long. A few weeks maybe," George told me.

At least the gnomes were done with. I dropped into the garden with Fred next to me. He was laying heavily on me and I whopped him over the head, trying to get him off of me. It didn't work. The twins turned it into a dog pile. Harry and Ron stood and laughed as Fred and George pinned me down, sitting on me. I cried out in frustration, desperate for them to let go of me, but they didn't. Fred grabbed at my sides, tickling me, as George held down my arms and legs. I was about to bite Fred's hand, that was lingering at my neck, when the front door slammed.

That was enough to stop the movement. Ron and George straightened up. "He's back! Dad's home!" George said, getting off of me. Fred sprung up quickly as well, running off so that I couldn't chase them.

Rolling my eyes at the twins, I allowed Ron and Harry to help me up. I hit both of them, angry that they hadn't even tried to help. After laughing together for a moment, we hurried through the garden and back into the house. Mr. Weasley was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his eyes closed. I smiled softly at him. He looked absolutely exhausted. I couldn't imagine how tiring it was to work all through the day, come home for a few hours, and then be forced to go back to work all night and into the next afternoon. Hopefully he would have a few days off. He was wearing long green robes, which were dusty and travel-worn.

"What a night," he mumbled, groping for the teapot as we all sat down around him. "Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned."

I'd heard that Mundungus Fletcher was not a pleasant man. Mom and Dad both didn't like him. Mr. Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed. "Find anything, Dad?" Fred asked eagerly.

Leaning over to him, I kept my voice low. "Hoping to find a new pranking device?" I whispered.

He looked over at me and grinned, swatting me on the nose. I groaned at him and punched his stomach, earning a small groan from him. "You know us too well," Fred said, fighting to get his breath back.

"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle," Mr. Weasley yawned. Both Fred and George looked disappointed at the news. "There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that's the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness."

Harry and I both looked at each other at the ferret news. What could someone possibly have done to a ferret? "Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" George asked.

To laugh at Muggles, probably. "Just Muggle-baiting," Mr. Weasley sighed, confirming my thoughts. "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it. Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking. They'll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face. But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe -"

"Like cars, for instance?" Mrs. Weasley roared. She had suddenly appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Mr. Weasley's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife.

The kids all tried to hide fits of laughter. "C-cars, Molly, dear?" Mr. Weasley asked weakly.

"Yes, Arthur, cars," Mrs. Weasley said, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to make it fly."

Mr. Weasley blinked. "Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if - er - he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth. There's a loophole in the law, you'll find. As long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't -"

"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" Mrs. Weasley shouted. We all laughed down into our laps. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"

"Harry?" Mr. Weasley asked blankly. "Harry who?" He looked around, saw Harry, and jumped. "Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about -"

He didn't get a chance to say anything more to Harry. "Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night and dragged poor Tara with them!" Mrs. Weasley shouted. I exchanged a wicked grin with the Weasley boys, who were all glaring at me. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

Mr. Weasley did not take the news as Mrs. Weasley had expected. "Did you really?" he asked eagerly. "Did it go all right? I - I mean," he faltered as sparks flew from Mrs. Weasley's eyes, "that - that was very wrong, boys - very wrong indeed..."

The shouting from Mrs. Weasley and weak argues from Mr. Weasley flew through the house. Fred and George slowly slipped from the room, trying not to remind their mother that she was angry with them, too. "Let's leave them to it," Ron muttered to Harry and I, as Mrs. Weasley swelled like a bullfrog. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."

I'd never actually given his bedroom a good look. The first time that I'd been in it was last night, and I hadn't really been looking around. Normally we spent all of our time in the living room, or the twin's room, or I was with Ginny in her room. We slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. It always made me nervous that the staircase was going to collapse. On the third landing, Ginny's door stood ajar. I glanced over just in time to catch sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring at Harry before it closed with a snap.

I smiled to myself. She had a huge crush on Harry. I kept telling her that it might work out, also telling her that I'd give her any information on Harry that she wanted to know. Within reason, that is. "Ginny. You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally," Ron said.

I nodded at him. She was usually a chatterbox. "I'll be in there in a little while, Ginny!" I shouted to the younger girl. I only got a small squeak in reply.

Yesterday I'd promised her that we would spend time together, and I wanted to honor that. We climbed two more flights until they reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying Ronald's Room. It made me laugh. I couldn't imagine anyone actually calling him Ronald, other than his mother, when she was angry. Harry and I stepped in. Harry's head almost touched the sloping ceiling, I still had nearly six inches of clearance. Hell, I was shorter than Ginny. Even Hermione towered over me. Perhaps one day I'd actually be the size of a normal human being. I was one of the shortest First Years, last year.

Ron's room was like walking into a furnace. Nearly everything in Ron's room seemed to be a violent shade of orange: the bedspread, the walls, even the ceiling. My eyes took a moment to adjust. It had been nighttime, and the lights had been off, the last time that I'd been in here. The sun was streaming through the window right now. It took me a moment to realize that Ron had covered nearly every inch of the shabby wallpaper with posters of the same seven witches and wizards, all wearing bright orange robes, carrying broomsticks, and waving energetically.

It was the Chudley Cannons. I rolled my eyes at him. Of course, I had things for the Stars all over my room back on Privet Drive. "Your Quidditch team?" Harry asked.

Ron nodded. "The Chudley Cannons," he said, pointing at the orange bedspread, which was emblazoned with two giant black C's and a speeding cannonball. "Ninth in the league."

"Because they suck!" I yelled at him.

Harry grinned as Ron glared at me. It was one of the areas that we did not see eye-to-eye on. "They are not that bad," Ron argued with me.

"Yes they are," I argued back.

The States were currently ranked in the fifth place. Not the best, and not good enough to earn a spot at the Quidditch World Cup, but they were certainly better than the Cannons. Ron blushed. "Okay, so maybe the States are a little better..." he muttered.

"A lot," I put in.

"Shut up, Tara," Ron bit back bashfully.

We both smiled at each other before I went to rooting through his things. Mom and Dad had always told me that I was nosy. Ron's school spell books were stacked untidily in a corner, next to a pile of comics that I rolled my eyes at. He must have talked about these with Dean. He liked The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, too. Ron's magic wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill, next to his fat gray rat, Scabbers, who was snoozing in a patch of sun.

If his fat stomach hadn't have been moving, I would have thought that he was dead. Harry and I stepped over a pack of Self-Shuffling playing cards on the floor and looked out of the tiny window. In the field far below I could see a gang of gnomes sneaking one by one back through the Weasley's hedge. Laughing softly, I turned away. They hadn't even been gone for a few hours. Then Harry and I turned to look at Ron, who was watching us almost nervously, as though waiting for our opinions.

"It's a bit small. Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic; he's always banging on the pipes and groaning..." Ron said quickly.

"I really thought that was the twins making one of their new inventions," I muttered to myself.

And I really had. Of course, some of those noises probably were the twins. Ginny was right across from them. But Harry, grinning widely, said, "This is the best house I've ever been in." Ron's ears went pink as we settled onto the bed, playing with the Self-Shuffling cards. I'd never seen Ron look so proud.

A/N: Next time... Tara spends some quality time at the Burrow and heads to Diagon Alley to get her new schoolbooks. I know the next one doesn't sound that thrilling, but I'll make it fun, I promise! Thanks so much for the follows and favorites! Please review! Until next time -A