Fred and George's lesson with Percy came the next day. Dudley has friends stayed in the common room to wait for them to return.

They could hear Fred moaning even outside the portrait hole.

"Sounds like it went well," Dean said with a grin.

The twins had identical faces like thunder.

"How was it?" Ron asked, innocently.

"He's even worse than before," Fred said, throwing himself down into an armchair. "George and I planned a nice, little welcome-to-Hogwarts surprise for our dear brother."

Dudley smirked, he had a vague idea what sort of surprise the twins were planning.

"Dungbombs, ton-tongue toffees, a fake room and a cunningly disguised batch of Dr. Fillibuster's best no-heat wet-start fireworks," Fred clarified.

Dudley and Dean laughed.

"Well ... he was a nightmare. First, he made us empty our pockets," Fred said.

"In front of everybody," added George.

"Well, of course we had a cursed fanged frisbee there as a decoy—we're not stupid," Fred said. "We knew he'd search us."

"That cost us five points," George sounded shocked that Percy had dared take points from them. "But what's five points for a good cause?"

"Well, a few hours before, we rigged his desk to set off about a dozen dung bombs as soon as he opened it," Fred said. "But he knew what we were planning."

"Or, he's spent, what, 15 ... 16 years living with you?" Hermione pointed out.

"He cast some sort of charm—I expect he picked it up at the Ministry, detected them right away," Fred said.

"Vanished them," George said. "He's quite the wizard, old Perce—got rid of them all with a wave of his wand."

"Three galleons each," Fred said, mournfully. "Gone in a blink of an eye."

"Well, never mind, we also had transifured some Dr. Fillibuster's fireworks to look just like troll finger bones ..." George continued.

"Which we knew we were going to use in today's class. Imagine, the class popping a troll finger bone in their potion, only for it to go off."

"He was wise to it," Fred said. "Got a House Elf to remove all the potion supplies he'd prepared and brought in fresh ones!"

Dudley, Dean, Neville and Ron laughed. Hermione looked smug.

"So, why are you so angry?" Hermione asked. "Just because he was wise to you?"

"Nah, that we respected, didn't we, Fred?"

"Yeah, seems Percy's grew quite a few brains since working for the Mnistry. We'll need to step up our game in the future."

"No, but what really crossed the line was when he tried to get us to call him 'Professor Weasley'" said George.

"We had that too," said Ron.

"Yeah, well, naturally we refused," Fred said. "Then he had the nerve to put us in detention—his own brothers!" He looked so outraged at this that Dudley had to laugh.

"That's not the worse of it—when we naturally refused his offer of a detention," said George. "He then had the nerve to write to our mother!"

"He didn't!" Ron gasped.

"Yep," Fred said. "Dictated the letter as he wrote it out."

"Dear Mother," George mimicked. "I regret that I must write home to you about the appaling behavior shown by Fred and George during my class ... well, you know Percy. It was ponpous and long-winded. Dobbed us right in it, didn't he Fred?"

"We're expecting a howler any time," said Fred. "And a yelling at over Christmas."

Ron was smirking—he clearly found the twins' woes to be extremely amusing.

Snape was back during their next class, but Dudley expected that he would see Percy again the next time Snape needed time off. The class was the usual—Snape putting instructions on the board and then prowling the classroom criticising the Gryffindors. "I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Perce," Ron muttered in a very low voice.

Dudley's other classes went as normal. Muggle Studies had become a little bit harder—they were studying muggle politics, something Dudley had zero interest in. He didn't even know who the muggle prime minister was. Somehow, he didn't think he was going to waltz through the class the way he had last year.

Hermione had given the subject up, so Dudley, much to Ernie Macmillan's annoyance, had been invited to join Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot. Both were friendly girls, Susan was a keen quidditch fan, whilse Hannah Abbott was a big fan of music. She had a Weird Sisters necklace, who were apparently a popular wizard rock band. Dudley didn't listen to much music—noone in his dorm did, and his parents listened to older, 60s and 70s music which Dudley found boring. Hannah recommended he listen to some Weird Sisters records and become a fan too.

In Defence Against the Dark Arts, Moody put them all under the imperius curse to see if they could shrug it off. He made Dean Thomas hop around the classroom whilst singing the national anthem, Lavender Brown imitate a squirrel and Neville do a number of impressive gymnastics. Dudley ended up hopping on a desk and doing a jig. Nobody in the class managed to shrug it off and they all had extra homework.

Meanwhile Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, had them writing weekly essays on the goblin rebellions of the eighteenth century. Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked. Professor Flitwick had asked them to read three extra books in preparation for their lesson on Summoning Charms.

Even Hagrid was adding to their workload. The Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace given that nobody had yet discovered what they ate. Hagrid was delighted, and as part of their "project," suggested that they come down to his hut on alternate evenings to observe the skrewts and make notes on their extraordinary behavior.

Dudley was one of the only students who actually liked the Skrewts, but even he didn't want to come down to the huts on evenings. He already had too much to do.

After one Care of Magical Creatures lesson, they arrived in the entrance hall, they found themselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students congregated there, all milling around a large sign that had been erected at the foot of the marble staircase. Dean, the tallest of the group, stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front of them and read the sign aloud:

TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT

THE DELEGATIONS FROM BEAUXBATONS AND DURMSTRANG WILL BE ARRIVING AT 6 O'CLOCK ON FRIDAY THE 30TH OF OCTOBER. LESSONS WILL END HALF AN HOUR EARLY-

"Brilliant!" said Dudley. "It's Potions last thing on Friday! Snape won't have time to poison us all!"

STUDENTS WILL RETURN THEIR BAGS AND BOOKS TO THEIR DORMITORIES AND ASSEMBLE IN FRONT OF THE CASTLE TO GREET OUR GUESTS BEFORE THE WELCOMING FEAST.

"Only a week away!" they heard Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff say, emerging from the crowd, his eyes gleaming. "I wonder if Cedric knows? Think I'll go and tell him..."

"Cedric?" said Ron blankly as Ernie hurried off.

"Diggory," said Dudley. "He must be entering the tournament."

"That idiot, Hogwarts champion?" said Ron as they pushed their way through the chattering crowd toward the staircase.

"He's not an idiot," said Hermione. "I've heard he's a really good student - and he's a prefect."

She spoke as though this settled the matter.