Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, the big chunks in bold are direct from the book. Some other parts are from the books too.
Fred and George moodily followed their mum inside. They'd just saved 'The-Boy-Who-Lived' from starvation! This wasn't fair. The last thing they expected to see when they stalked into the kitchen was an amused looking Katherine, sitting comfortably at their table and nibbling at some bread. They stared at her.
"Hi," she greeted, Mrs Weasley, preoccupied cooking and being furious, said nothing about her being there. The twins continued to stare, she continued to nibble her bread as she eyed them curiously, "You flew and illegal car last night I hear."
"I'm mildly worried about how calm she seems," George mumbled to his brother, who nodded mutely.
"Conversations normally go to ways boys," Katherine commented.
"What are you doing here?" Fred demanded as the two of them finally sat down as well.
"I arranged with your mum to come of sometime during the Summer, convincing my dad turned out easier than expected," Katherine explained, "So I wrote to your mum and we were planning to surprise you, but when I got here she was in hysterics. So, surprise."
"I'm worried," Fred said decidedly, George nodded.
"Shouldn't you be angrier?" he asked curiously, Katherine smirked and the twins shivered at the delighted evil look she was giving them.
"You'd think so wouldn't you?" she replied mildly, though still smirking, "But, as it turns out, when your mum's angry she likes to talk. When she's angry at you two she tells some very interesting stories."
Fred and George paled, more because of the evil way she said than at the idea that their mum had been telling stories about them. Katherine continued to smirk as she slowly ate the food and, before they could come up with an awesome response, Mrs Weasley made herself more understandable.
"I don't blame you, dear," she assured Harry, while Katherine watched amusedly as numerous sausages fell onto his plate, "Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we we're saying we'd come and get you ourselves if you hadn't written back to Ron by Friday. But really, flying an illegal car halfway across the country – anyone could have seen you –"
She flicked her wand casually at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves, clinking gently in the background.
"It was cloudy, Mum!" said Fred.
"You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" Mrs Weasley snapped.
"They were starving him, Mum!" said George.
"And you!" said Mrs Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started cutting Harry bread and buttering it for him. Katherine just watched in amusement, the Burrow was so different to her own house.
At that moment there Ginny came into the room, Katherine opened her mouth to say hello, but Ginny gave a small squeal, and ran back out of the kitchen.
"Ginny," said Ron in an undertone to Harry. "My sister. She's been talking about you all summer."
"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry," Fred said with a grin, but he caught his mother's eye and bent his face over his plate without another word.
Nothing more was said until all the plates were clear of food, which, from what she'd been told and what she'd seen, actually took a little longer than most Weasley meals. They boys did love their food, particularly Ron.
"Blimey, I'm tired," yawned Fred, setting down his knife and fork at last, Katherine bit back a snort, "I think I'll go to bed and —"
"You will not," snapped Mrs Weasley. "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 —"
"And you two," she said, glaring at Ron and Fred. "You can go up to bed, dears," she added to Harry and Katherine. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car —"
But Harry quickly interrupted with, "I'll help Ron. I've never seen a de-gnoming —"
"That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work," said Mrs Weasley. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject —"
And she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. George groaned. Katherine cocked her head to the side.
"Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden —"
Katherine peeked at the cover of the book Mrs Weasley was looking at. Written across it in fancy gold letters were the words Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests. There was a big photograph on the front of a very good-looking wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. She recognised Gilderoy Lockhart, who kept winking cheekily up at them all. Mrs Weasley beamed down at him and Katherine raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, he is marvellous," she said. "He knows his household pests, all right, it's a wonderful book…"
"Mum fancies him," said Fred, in a very audible whisper.
"Don't be so ridiculous, Fred," said Mrs Weasley, her cheeks 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."
"I'm coming to," Katherine announced, quickly following Harry and the grumbling red-heads.
Katherine loved the garden at The Burrow, probably just because she was used to the well groomed garden at her house that was regularly pruned and stuff, by professionals. The Weasley's garden was nothing like that — there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting — but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, magical plants spilling from every flower bed, and a big green pond full of frogs.
"Come to help us in our time of need?" Fred asked as Katherine walked along with them.
"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Katherine replied, leaning over the pond to see the frogs better, "You've done this before right? It can't be that hard."
"Hey, Kat, you've never de-gnomed have you?" George asked suspiciously, Katherine looked up at him and shrugged.
"No," she replied lightly, "Never needed to, my father hires people to clean the yard so it's hard for them to hide. That aside they'd be far from welcome and if my father found them, they'd probably get it a bit worse than this."
"Cheerful," Fred snorted, "Well, no slacking off for you, grab one and throw 'em."
Katherine rolled her eyes but didn't argue, actually a little excited at the idea of getting to try something new. It was easy enough to do, watching the Weasley's and listening to them talking it wasn't hard to work out how to do a de-gnoming. Unfortunately Katherine got distracted at one point, Harry threw one of the gnomes nearly fifty feet, and the gnome she'd just picked up took the opportunity to sink its teeth into her hand.
"OW! Dammit!" Katherine yelled, droping the gnome on it's head as she investigated her hand, "It bit me."
"You sound offended," Fred chuckled, but then he caught sight of Katherine glaring after the gnome. The glare she was giving it was similar to one at she gave when she was about to pull her wand of someone. He discretely nudged George, who'd been saying something to the other two, and pointed at her.
"Kat," George said carefully, even as Fred raised an eyebrow at him, "That's, kind of what they do…"
"Not to me," Katherine growled, "It bloody hurt."
Then, without any warning, Katherine leapt at the gnome that had bitten her, which was running around giggling gleefully. In an odd show of unrestrained ferocity she slammed the poor creature into the ground before violently throwing it across the field. Fred and George watched it fly across the grass before it joined the other gnomes that'd already been through.
"Bloody…bite me will you," they heard Katherine grumbling as she stormed around the yard, throwing the gnomes very violently now.
"She's insane," Fred said conversationally, George laughed easily.
"Better not let her hear you saying that," he warned with a grin.
"I can hear you," Katherine called over to them. The twins just laughed as they continued through their chore.
Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.
"They'll be back," said Ron as they 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…"
Just then, the front door slammed.
"He's back!" said George. "Dad's home!"
They 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. He was a thin man, going bald, but the little hair he had was as red as any of his children's. He was wearing long green robes, which were dusty and travel-worn.
"What a night," he mumbled, groping for the teapot as they 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…"
Mr Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed.
"Find anything, Dad?" said Fred eagerly.
"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle," yawned Mr Weasley. "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…"
"Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" said George.
"Just Muggle-baiting," sighed Mr Weasley. "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 had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Mr Weasley's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife.
"C-cars, Molly, dear?"
"Yes, Arthur, cars," said Mrs Weasley, 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!" shouted Mrs Weasley. "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?" said Mr Weasley 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 —"
"Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night!" shouted Mrs Weasley. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"
"Did you really?" said Mr Weasley 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…"
"Let's leave them to it," Ron muttered to Harry as Mrs Weasley swelled like a bullfrog. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."
Katherine and the twins remained in the kitchen, the twins were too terrified that moving would attract their mothers' attention and turn her fury onto them. Katherine, however, was quite comfortable, sitting on the bench and swinging her legs lazily. It wasn't that she enjoyed seeing Mrs Weasley yelling at people, she just enjoyed seeing Fred and George in a state of terror. She wasn't cruel, it was just undeniably funny. After a while of listening to Mrs Weasley yelling, and Mr Weasley feebly trying to make excuses the two adults turned on their sons.
"Katherine?" was the first thing out of Mr Weasley's mouth.
"Hi, Mr Weasley," Katherine greeted cheerfully, highly amused by the shock of expression on his face.
"Hello, right, boys," Mr Weasley announced, turning to look sternly at the twins, "It was a very poorly thought out plan to go gallivanting over the country in a flying car. I want your word you won't do it again."
"Sorry dad," the twins sighed, then they both put their right hand over their heart and their left hand in the air, announcing in clear voices, "We solemnly swear to never fly an illegal car over the country again."
Katherine thought this was an oddly muggle thing to do, though she didn't miss the reference to the Marauders map. Mr Weasley didn't seem to question the action though and merely nodded.
"Be happy that's all your getting," Mrs Weasley growled, "Now get upstairs! I swear if we didn't have guests…" She trialed of threateningly.
"Yes mum!" Fred and George nodded, running upstairs without question and dragging Katherine up with them.
"That was a lucky escape," George sighed, collapsing onto his bed. Fred did the same, except with Katherine sitting at the foot of his bed.
"Yeah, totally not fair though," Fred whined, "I mean, it was a good thing we got him out when we did. There were bars on the window for Merlin's sake!"
"Really?" Katherine frowned, that was beyond odd.
"Wait, you just accept there are bars on the window?" George asked sceptically, raising an eyebrow at her.
"Sure," Katherine shrugged, "You two may be skilled liars but we rarely lie to each other, and I doubt you'd start with something as extreme as bars on someone's window."
"Aw, you really trust us, don't you?" Fred asked cheekily, lightly poking her in the side with his foot.
"Do you want to keep that foot?" Katherine asked conversationally, raising a challenging eyebrow. Fred grinned at her, but retracted his foot. The trio sat in comfortable silence for a moment, then…
"So, how fast did the car go?"
Life at the Burrow was pretty much the same as Katherine remembered it, even with the addition of Harry. There was constantly something going on, be it the minor explosions from the twins rooms – some of which the twins weren't even in their room for, which worried Katherine slightly – or the sudden clumsiness of Ginny whenever she and Harry were in the same room.
Katherine, due to her tendency to wake up earlier than everyone else, often spent the morning sketching from one of the windows. She'd also adopted a fairly regular habit of bursting, unannounced, into the twins' room. Mostly because very rarely did anyone else want to risk losing their eyebrows, and partly because she was rather used to them being around and tended to get a little bored.
Of course, Katherine's early wake ups meant she was already in the kitchen when the Hogwarts letters arrived. She smiled at Mrs Weasley as she accepted her letter and scanned over it, just as the twins abled into the room in their pyjamas and were handed their letters. Katherine read over hers, frowning at the amount of Lockhart books on the list. She looked towards the twins, both scanning over their lists. Once Fred had finished his own list he peered over at Harry's.
"You've been told to get all Lockhart's books, too!" he said. "The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan — bet it's a witch."
At this point, Fred caught his mother's eye and quickly busied himself with the marmalade.
"That lot won't come cheap," said George, with a quick look at his parents. "Lockhart's books are really expensive…"
Katherine frowned, there was a point. Lockhart books were expensive, Lockhart himself was plain annoying. She'd been to a couple of book signings and any respect she may have had for the man had gone out the window as soon as she met him in person.
"Oh well, we can get stuff second hand," George shrugged, "That's what we normally do."
"Yeah, and Lockhart's a right moron anyway," Fred pointed out.
"You don't know the half of it," Katherine chuckled, "Well, at least we only have to buy the books, the information in there is correct, even if there written by a moron."
"That seems contradictory," Fred replied.
"Oh, big words Fred?" Katherine teased, "Have you been reading up?"
"I will get you," Fred warned, only to join in laughing with Katherine and George.
The rest of the day was spent playing Quidditch and idly chatting, after dinner Katherine was sitting in the boys room again, playing with the Snitch she'd caught in second year.
"So, what are we going to do this year?" George asked, opening the window to get some of the smoke out. Katherine didn't bother asking what the smoking pile was supposed to be.
"The Professors will start getting more serious," Katherine answered, "Its OWLs next year and I've been told the teachers start getting on our cases about it a year early."
"Well that's stupid," Fred sighed, "Who wants to worry about exams a year early?"
"You realise your mum will kill you if you don't get at least a few OWLs each?" Katherine pointed out idly.
"We'll make it through," Fred shrugged.
"So, you planning to get an O in all your subjects?" George asked with a smirk.
"That's practically impossible," Katherine replied, "And I thought you disliked talking about school?"
"Fair point," George shrugged, "And you know Fred's going to…"
Before he could finish Fred leapt forewarned and grabbed the Snitch before Katherine grabbed it again. Tumbling to the floor he held up his hand triumphantly and yelled, "Success!"
"Really?" Katherine asked, looking down at him with a smile, "You know, I think you should stick to being a Beater."
"Is that an insult?" Fred demanded, "I have your Snitch you know?"
"Yes, and you should give it back," Katherine replied, standing up and stretching, "I'm gonna head to bed."
"Katty!" the twins whined.
"You want some cheese with that?" Katherine asked with a raised eyebrow, "Now give back the Snitch, it's important."
"Why?" George asked, "You're not even supposed to have it."
"Yeah, well, a slingshot probably isn't considered an ideal thing to carry around either," Katherine shrugged, grabbing the Snitch Fred had released and tucking it in her pocket.
"You still carry that around?" Fred questioned, looking surprised and a little confused.
"Course, it's very useful," Katherine nodded, heading for the door, "Its right up there with important things like my sketch book and my mirror."
"Aw, that's so sweet," Fred grinned, Katherine rolled her eyes.
"Make sure you get some sleep guys," she said, "Shopping tomorrow."
"Oh, the joy," George sighed, "Think I'd rather stay here."
"Cheer up, I'm sure you'll find something decent to entertain yourselves with," Katherine replied, closing the door behind her. She made her way up to Ginny's room and smiled at her. Ginny smiled back, gently stroking Tenebris.
"Been hanging out with the twins?" she asked with a smile.
"Yeah, you ok?" Katherine asked, trying to fight back a smirk. She blatantly refused to fall to the same level as the twins and start taunting her about Harry, but it was funny. This was going to be harder than she thought.
"Err, yeah, I'm fine," Ginny blushed slightly, but seemed more relaxed with the knowledge that Harry Potter wasn't around, "So, how did the flying go?"
"It was good," Katherine nodded with a smile, "Fred got hit in the head with an apple and Harry caught every single one they through for him. He's a brilliant Seeker."
"Fred shouldn't be getting hit in the head if he's Beater!" Ginny exclaimed, sounding horrified.
"Ron threw it at him when he wasn't looking," Katherine laughed, "I think he suspects me, probably because I almost fell off my broom trying not to laugh. Sorry you couldn't join."
"It's ok, they never let me join," Ginny sighed, laying down in bed as Tenebris took off to go hunting.
"Yeah, well I think that's silly," Katherine replied, "Seems to me that Weasley's are naturally good flyers."
"What about Percy?"
"I don't know," Katherine frowned, "Charlie says he used to play with them when he was younger, and he wasn't that bad before he got Prefect. I think he's just not the pest person to be in a position of power."
"Maybe, so long as he doesn't give me a hard time while I'm at school," Ginny shrugged, which looked odd as she was lying down, Katherine snorted.
"You're worried about Percy giving you a hard time?" she asked, shaking her head, "I'd be more worried about the twins. Even if you weren't the person they planned the prank for, other people have a tendency to get pulled into it."
"I guess you're right," Ginny laughed, "I just can't wait to get to Hogwarts finally."
"Yeah, it's brilliant," Katherine grinned, "Anyway, night, we have to go to Diagon Alley tomorrow."
"I can't wait," Ginny sighed, rolling over and cuddling up to her pillow, quietly singing, "Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts."
Katherine smiled, with yet another Weasley this year would definitely be interesting.
Short chapter, sorry. Hope everyone's enjoying this and don't forget that you can give me any ideas you think would be fun!
R&R!