Author's Note: Of
course, all characters belong to the wonderful J.K.R. Only the plot is mine.
Chapter One
Graduation for Fred and George
It
was a warm and muggy morning just into the beginning of June. There were just four more days until the
students would have to board the Hogwarts Express and start on the ride
home. The exam results hadn't been
posted yet, but were sure to be at any moment.
Most of the children where taking advantage of there last few moments of
worry-free-time before the results where posted, by spending it outside in the
warm air. They didn't yet have to worry
about what their parents would say when they only got 45 on the Potions
exam.
Next to the lake, a large group had
formed (including Harry, Ron, and Hermione) around four people: Fred and George
Weasley, their friend Lee Jordan, and a talkative Hufflepuff first year, Kio
Levin, which no one but his friends paid any attention too whatsoever. He was short and skinny, with messy brown
hair, and small cloudy gray eyes; but to Fred and George, looked just like
every other first year. A victim.
"It tastes exactly
like chocolate éclair," Fred said to Kio, holding out a chocolate colored
candy, in the shape of a small fish.
Kio looked at it suspiciously, and licked his lips. He loved chocolate éclair. He had never had it at all before the feast
right after the sorting and hadn't had very much of it since, but gotten his
hands on as much as he could. He had
even paid a fourth year five galleons just for a small box of it when she went
to Hogsmeade. He wanted so it much but wasn't sure if he should believe the
three boys. The two that were identical
had identical looks of honesty on their faces, but everyone else seemed to be
sniggering a little too much. And their
friend, Lee Jordan, seemed to have a grin plastered to his face.
"We swear it does. Honest!"
George told Kio seeing the doubtful look on his face. "Look, I'll even try one," George offered,
picking up a fish from the corner of the box that looked just a little lighter
than the others to Harry. He whispered
this to Ron and Hermione, but before they could get a good look at the sweet,
George popped it into his mouth, chewed, swallowed and made a "yum-my!" noise,
rubbing his stomach, smiling.
This was
just too much for Kio; he quickly grabbed the four-centimeter long light brown
fish shaped candy out of George's out stretched hand, and shoved it into his
mouth, swallowing rather loudly. The
crowd gasped, and leaned forward, awaiting the side affect from the twins'
tasty treat. Nothing seemed to be
happening. Kio, seeing the excited look
on everyone's face, now knew it was a trick, and didn't say anything, also
waiting for something terrible to happen to him. When after two minutes still nothing had happened, he sighed
relieved.
"Golly I'm glad that nothing happened
to me. When I saw the looks on every
ones faces I knew for sure that is had to be a trick. I was so scared that I was going to explode or something, but I'm
glad that it was just an ordinary piece of candy. But you know boys; it doesn't really taste like chocolate éclair
very much. Maybe just a little, but
only a little bit, not 'nough to be called chocolate éclair or nothin'. It does taste good though. I like it a lot. You think that I could maybe buy a box or two from you, I would
fancy eating them on the train ride home.
Maybe I'll buy one for my mum too.
Gosh, she'd like 'em a ton. She
likes every kind of sweet, and her weight shows it too. She favors fudge, but I 'spect that she'd be
happy 'nough with some of this, though.
Why are you all looking at me like that? Is it really expensive or something like that?"
Sure enough, everyone was gaping at
Kio. Fred and George where looking
especially happy. "Told ya that it
would work, Lee," Fred said smirking at Lee, who stood wide-eyed with everyone
else. "Yeah, now where are our ten
galleons?" George asked, hand out stretched in Lee's direction. Lee reached into one of his robe's many
pockets, and pulled out a leather bag.
He picked ten galleons out of his bag and gave five to each twin, who
put their coins into a similar pouch and then into George's pocket.
"What was the bet?" asked Kio getting
scared. What had just happened that had
made Fred and George win the bet? What
had happened to him? He looked down at
his feet and was relieved to see feet there, not fins or hooves. His arms where still arms. He didn't have a single feather. Looking way up at the three boys, he
suddenly knew what was wrong. Everyone
seemed huge. He had shrunk!
"What
have you done to me?" Hollered Kio, but
didn't say anything else. When he had
talked, he had shrunk just a little bit more!
Horrified he started to run for the hospital wing, but realizing that it
would take hours to get there he stopped dead in his tracks, and sat down on
the grass, which even though it had just been trimmed short came up to his
shoulders.
"Brilliant, utterly brilliant!" Lee
Jordan told the twins once he was done being surprised. "What do you call them?"
"It's a great name, it took us all of
last night to come up with. We were
going to call them some stupid name, which I am too embarrassed to even say
aloud. But while we were sleeping last
night, at around three, I woke up and had the best name ever!" George replied excitedly.
"Shrinking Sardines! Great, isn't it?" Fred asked Jordan.
"Oh yeah, that isn't at all stupid!" smirked Malfoy who had just
joined the group along with his bodyguard friends Crabbe and Goyle.
Ron had just turned around and was surely going to say something
rude to Malfoy and get beat up, when Ginny ran to join the crowd, panting. "The
exam scores have been posted, and I passed every class! I thought that my
fourth year would be harder the way you guys talked about it last year!" Ginny said to Ron, Harry, and Hermione.
"I never said it was hard! And neither did Harry! You must be talking about Ron," Hermione
said. Harry knew that she must be mad
at Ron for something, because Harry had said something about how hard
the exams where last year, but he didn't want to get Hermione mad at him too,
so he said nothing.
"Did you look and see how many
N.E.W.T.S I got Ginny?" George asked his little sister ruffling her hair.
"No, I didn't look, why would I? But Harry got heaps of O.W.L.S." Ginny said,
smiling at Harry.
"So what
you're telling me is, you didn't slash couldn't even glance at my score, which
is just above yours, but you can go searching through everyone else's names,
looking for Harry's? And Potter isn't
exactly right next to Weasley now is it?" George said, trying to look angry, but not doing a very good job.
Ginny blushed a deep violet and
stuttered, "Well, I… and you… well you see… I thought…"
"Don't worry Ginny," Fred told her,
patting her on the back a little harder than was necessary, making the skinny
girl stumble slightly. "We all
know that you like Harry."
It had
seemed as though Ginny couldn't get any redder, but she did. And Harry felt himself getting pink in the
cheeks as well. "Shut it Fred," Harry
said pushing Fred just a little.
"What,
you want a fight, Potter?" George said sneering and looking terribly like
Malfoy, only with flaming red hair instead of light blond.
Harry
was surprised to see the twins looking truly angry, and backed away from them a
step. "Sorry, didn't know that you were
so touchy!" Harry muttered.
In an
instant Fred and George's sneer's turned to smiles and George said, "Don't
worry, we were just messing with your head.
You looked like we had just turned into a werewolf or something."
"No,
worse. You looked just like Malfoy,"
Harry whispered under his breath so only they could hear him. The twins smiled and said, "We wanted to
look stupid and the best way to do that is to act like Malfoy, glad to hear
that we did a good job. We are getting
better at this acting thing, don't you think?"
"Yeah. Well, let's go look and see the
results. I can't exactly imagine
getting 'heaps' of O.W.L.S. Especially
since Snape tries to fail me every chance that he gets."
As most
of the group started to walk back towards to school, a few of Kio's friends
could be seen crawling around on their hands and knees searching for their tiny
friend. The only problem being that
they were afraid that they might squash him.
They didn't even end up finding him for an hour. When they did, he was rushed to Madam
Pomfrey.
When
Harry had finally pushed his way though the crowd to look at his exam results
ten minutes later, he was disappointed to see that "heaps" in Ginny's head
weren't as many as he had hoped for.
Hermione
however was happy as ever. The lowest
grade she got was a 98 in Potions and that was 17 points lower than her next
lowest grade in Herbology. Ron had
managed well enough, but surely not as well as his mum would have liked, which
meant long days at the Weasley house for at least a little while.
Fred and
George had gotten surprisingly good marks.
Which seemed impossible. How had
they managed to scrape though every single class (with good grades) when they
were always up to something that they shouldn't be? Perhaps setting off dungbombs in the Potions room helped them in
some weird way. Maybe making all the
Slytherin brooms fly only when the rider was seated backwards, and then only
vertically had helped them in… Potions?
Whatever the way they had done it they had somehow manage to get more
detentions in the whole record of the school and still only get seven marks
less than Percy in N.E.W.T.S. These
boys were heroes. However they did it,
everyone was proud of them, and wished that they had had as much fun and yet
got such grades.
Harry looked
over to where Malfoy was standing and saw his eyes widen in astonishment and
mutter under his breath, "Oh man, Father's going to kill me. Good thing I go such a good mark in
Potions." This made Harry feel much
better. Malfoy must have really bad
grades to be worrying about what his father (who adored Malfoy and hated almost
everyone else) would do. Harry rushed
over to Ron and Hermione and said excited, "I think that Malfoy got some really
bad marks. He was saying how his dad is
going to kill him. Isn't that just great?"
"'Bout time
that Malfoy gets in trouble from his stupid dad. What a git. Both of
them!" Ron nearly shouted, causing a few people to look in their direction,
looks of annoyance on their faces.
"I guess that's
good. But I think that it is mean to
find pleasure in someone else's problems," Hermione sighed.
"Hermione,
what are you nuts?" Ron shouted again causing even more people to stare.
"Yeah
Hermione, this is Malfoy we're talking about, 'member?" Harry said a
little distressed that Hermione didn't share their pleasure of seeing Malfoy in
distress.
Hermione shook
her head and said, "Oh yes of course.
But Dra… Malfoy is still a person too, just like everyone else."
"You where
going to call him Draco, weren't you Hermione?" questioned Harry.
"You can't
call him Draco Hermione. It's against
the rules." Hermione looked confused.
"Hermione, you must understand.
Malfoy is our enemy. (As
is opposite of friend) If he started calling us by our first names… then
we would still call him Malfoy. You
only call your friends by their first names.
Unless you… You have a crush on him?"
Ron had hoped
that Hermione would blush to prove that she did like Malfoy; it would be fun to
tease her about it. But she didn't and
that meant that she didn't like him.
Ron thought sometimes that Hermione didn't like anyone. Not in that way at least. Hermione simply said, "Don't be silly Ron,
just because I said he is a person, that doesn't mean he is a nice person. Now I am going to go to the library if you want to come…"
"Why?" Harry
asked.
"Hermione,
there isn't any work left to do. Why in
the world are you going to the library for?" Ron asked clearly puzzled.
"I have to…
Well if you must know, I am going to do research on… Where Viktor is from. I'm going to go visit him again this summer,
and I want to know more about the land and history and stuff before I go. And at Hogwarts you can find out about
anything and everything. You guys want
to come along?"
"Well..." Ron started.
Harry
interrupted, "We'd love to Hermione.
Not like we have anything else to do anyway." He shot a stern glance in Ron's direction and started after
Hermione to the library. Hermione had never told them where he really lived and
he hoped that this would be the day that they would find out.
But, as luck
would have it, Hermione was very secretive about her information finding. Harry was hoping that she might slip and
start bragging in some way about finding some really neat information about wherever
Viktor was from, but nothing slipped.
Nothing that either Harry or Ron caught anyway.
So they left
Hermione in the library after having been in there for nearly two hours.
* *
* *
Finally
the last day of the school year came, for some gladly, but Harry, as always,
wasn't looking forward to it at all.
But Fred and George had all sorts of crazy plans and job ideas that they
would to until they made enough money to start their own joke shop. The only thing that Harry had to look
forward to was when he went to go visit the Weasley Family at the end of summer
break. In the afternoon they would
board the famous Hogwarts Express and ride to London. Harry almost hoped that the Dursley's wouldn't show up to pick
him up, and then maybe he could go home with Ron. He didn't really expect that to happen, but he could dream
couldn't he?
Late
that night Fred and George threw the biggest party Griffindor had ever
known. It bigger than when Griffindor
won their first game, and even bigger than when they one the house cup. It was just a little better than when
Griffindor one the Quidditch Cup in Harry's third year. People would remember it for years. Fred and George said that they needed to
leave everyone something to remember them by, and a huge party seemed like the
best, most fun way to have everyone remember them. Of course they said it wasn't just for their leaving but also
Katie, Angelina, and Alicia's. But no
one thought of it as anyone but Fred and George's. There were at least twenty people turned into four-foot dragons
before the word got around not to eat the cranberry pie. No one dared to touch the small chocolate
fish, which turned out to be just that, small chocolate fish. But many people were seen with brightly
colored hair from the candy that looked exactly like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor
Beans, called Gred Weasley's Every Color Beans. There could even be seen two or
three four-foot dragon's with bright pink hair.
It lasted all night and near all morning. No one even thought of going to bed until
nearly four A.M. The last ones up where
of course Fred and George themselves, who went to sleep at 6:30, but not in
their beds.
They were found at near noon when the first Griffindors to
awake decided that breakfast or lunch really would be a good idea, even though
they were still filled up on all the treats Fred and George had gotten from the
kitchen. By chance the first
Griffindors to awake where, Angelina, Katie, and Alicia. Now, these three girls had had many pranks
played on them by these two mischievous boys, and thought they would like to
repay them. Luckily there were still
some of the boys joke food laying around and the girls stuffed it into Fred and
George's open mouths. But, instead of
chewing and swallowing the treats, both boys started choking on them. The girls went frantic and started
screaming, but not very loudly, not really wanting to wake anyone up.
"Oh no! We just
killed Fred and George!" Katie cried
out, near to hysterics.
"Don't be silly," said Angelina said, trying to remain
calm. "You can't choke when you're
dead."
"But…but you can choke until you die!" Alicia muttered. She was not quite as calm
as Angelina, but surely not going into hysterics like Katie.
"They will be fine.
They… I'm sure it's nothing all that serious," Angelina said looking
like it would be a relief to go into hysterics, but at the same time
looking as if she wanted to kill Katie for acting up in such a way.
The girls shook the twins, trying to wake them up, but it
seemed like an impossible task. Would
they ever wake up? How could they still
be sleeping when they were near to coughing up their meal from last night?
Then, as suddenly as they had started, they boys stopped
coughing, and turned into sleeping four-foot dragons with bright green and
purple poked dots and florescent yellow hair.
The girls looked at each other and burst into laughter and ran to the
portrait and left for lunch.
When Fred and George
woke up an hour later, a group had formed around them, and were all laughing and
pointing. Fred looked at George and
burst into laughter, fire coming out of his mouth. Everyone in the room scattered.
George joined into the fire breathing laughter and before long the had
started fire to half of the common room.
Luckily Hermione was still level headed and started a raining charm,
putting out all of the flames, including Fred and George's.