Chapter 4 – The Weasley's Surprise
Harry and Ron followed Hermione and Ginny down Diagon alley until they reached a small shabby building at one end of Diagon alley that Harry had never seen before. The building was green, most of the paint had come off and it looked very old, as if it might collapse at any moment, any muggle building like this would have fallen down, or been knocked down years ago, this however was a magical building so it was likely it would never fall down. Harry saw Mr. & Mrs. Weasley standing outside, hand in hand and looking very proud. "What do you think, Harry?" asked Mrs. Weasley "What do I think of what, Mrs. Weasley?" asked Harry looking confused. Mrs. Weasley waved her hand in the direction of the building, Harry looked up to see the sign that read 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'. Harry suddenly realized with a jolt that this was Fred and George's joke shop they had been planning for all of last year. Harry turned to Ron "Did you know-" and stopped short when he saw Ron grinning at him mischievously, "We kept it as a surprise. It's not much at the moment but Fred and George have already sold loads of stuff. Pretty soon they'll be able to move to a bigger building."
"It wasn't what I wanted them to be doing, I was hoping they would go and work for the Ministry, but, Fred and George like practical jokes, and after I found out there was such a high demand for their products I thought, what the hell!" Mrs Weasley explained to Harry.
"Right." Said Harry looking slightly shocked at Mrs Weasley's language, "Can we go have a look inside?" asked Harry eagerly.
"Of course, Fred and George would kill me if you didn't." Said Ron, already heading for the door.
Harry and Ron stepped through the door, as they did so a rather large spider landed on Harry's head "Ahh!" he yelled throwing it to the floor, then something unusual happened, it burst into a firework display that formed itself into 'welcome' in several different colours that changed a few times before disappearing with a *pop*. "That happens every time someone new walks in, it's getting annoying but the look on their faces when a spider lands on their head; priceless." "Yeah, you should have seen Ron's face." Said Fred coming up behind them. "Crapping himself he was." Said George appearing next to Ron. "Anyway Harry what do you think?" Harry looked around the room; on each wall of the room were several shelves from the high ceiling to the wood panelled floor, each shelf was piled full of jars containing many jokes some of which were labelled "It's amazing, how long have you been doing this? You've been at home a lot of the time I was there." "Yeah, to stop you wondering where we were going all day we had some 'inside' help." Said George "Hello Harry!" said another voice, coming out of a storeroom. Harry turned to see who the voice belonged to, "Charlie! So you're the inside help!" "Yep, also these two." said Charlie, gesturing back towards the room he had been in, Harry noticed two more red-headed boys enter out of the door, they spotted Harry and waved, it was Bill and Percy. "Percy!" exclaimed Harry in surprise, "What are you doing here? I would have thought you'd be at the Ministry, a year or so ago you wouldn't have left." "Yes, well, ahem, that was back when I was, um, well an amateur." Said Percy, looking much redder around the ears than he normally did, the same as Ron did when he got embarrassed, "And then of course there's the current 'situation'." He was of course referring to Voldemort. "So why are you working here, aren't you needed at the ministry?" asked Harry, trying to sound interested. "Well, in fact, no I'm not because well..." hesitated Percy "He quit!" Piped in Bill. Harry's eyes widened in surprise, "You quit? Why? I thought you loved your job." "Well I used to love my job, that was until my bosses son, the dark lord's servant decided to kill his father, leaving me with Professor Lockhart as my boss." Harry gave an involuntary shudder; Lockhart had been the worst defence against the dark arts teacher he had ever had. "And not to mention the current situation, it had me so stressed so I decided I could do with a few laughs so I came here and ended up helping Fred and George." "Yeah, I wish he hadn't," groaned Fred hearing the last sentence of their conversation. He swiftly moved out the way as Percy launched a 'rib- tickling remembrall' in his direction. "Well Harry I best get back to work, have a look around, find one thing you like and it's yours; a souvenir from the Weasley's for your birthday." Said Percy and began putting jars on the shelf behind him.
Harry wandered around the room; he stopped under a set of shelves labelled 'Magical Mayhem Makers; Hours of Fantastic Fun!' He scanned the jars, one caught his eye probably because it was bigger than the rest and had glittery writing that read, INCREDIBLE INVISABLE INSECTS. Harry took the jar down, peered inside and almost dropped the jar; there were many different kinds of insects, all of them looked very real but none of them were moving. Harry could see many different species, some magical and some not; huge black spiders, Harry suspected they could be tarantulas though he had never seen one; scorpions still with the tail but it looked as if the sting had been severed off. The only magical one Harry recognised were the small, sapphire blue Billywig's, Harry had never seen one as they are very fast and hard to see, their stings had also been removed.
Ron, who had been talking with Bill, Percy and Charlie, came over to see what Harry had his nose in; he walked up behind Harry and looked over his shoulder, "Oh! Those things are great, Fred and George told me about them."
"What do they do?" ask Harry giving his friend a quizzical look.
"Here watch." Ron plucked a Billywig out of the jar dropped in on the floor and stamped on it, it made a squelch that made Harry feel so sick he had the close his eyes so as not to see the remains of the Billywig. "What did you do that for Ron you sick goit."
"Look and I'll show you." Replied Ron. Harry opened his eyes and saw...nothing. Where Ron had been standing there was just, air. "Where are you?" asked Harry, looking around the shop, which now had several people in it looking in jars and laughing.
"I'm standing about a foot away from you." Said Ron's voice loudly coming from, well about a foot in front of him. Harry stuck out his arm and felt it collide with something solid; Ron's chest. "Ooof," came Ron's voice sounding a little weak, "I didn't mean for you to hit me."
"So these things," said Harry peering back into the jar, "make you invisible?"
"Thank you Captain Obvious," Came Ron's sarcastic reply, suddenly popping back into view, he was clutching his chest. "Each insect has a timer, for how long you are invisible for, the Billywigs are the shortest with a timer of about a minute, the spiders are the longest, they last for about an hour, then there is a different insect for every ten minutes starting from one to sixty."
"So how long does this one last?" asked Harry pulling a scorpion out.
"Half an hour," replied Ron "that, the spiders and the Billywigs are the most popular, that's why there are a lot of them. Oh and I forgot to tell you but how long they last for is on the underneath." Harry shook his head and gave his friend a 'now you tell me' look. Ron headed towards the room Harry had seen Percy emerge from. He looked around the room for Percy and caught sight of some red hair behind a stack of boxes and walked over to them, "Hey Percy." Said Harry arriving at the other side of the boxes. A head poked around the side of the boxes, but it wasn't Percy, "Oh sorry Charlie I was looking for Percy, have you seen him?" said Harry looking slightly embarrassed.
"Yeah, I think I saw him in the back room helping Fred and George with something." Said Charlie screwing up his face and looking as if he was trying to remember where he had seen Percy last.
"Thanks Charlie" said Harry and jogged over to the door he had seen Percy emerge from earlier and pushed it open. What he saw beyond the door almost made him fall over. Instead of a small room as it looked like from the outside, it deceived the eyes like a lot of wizarding tents do. The room could have quite easily fitted two full-size Quidditch pitch's inside, with room spare. Harry looked around with his mouth hanging open; Ron was standing nearby watching him with an expression of amusement displayed on his face. There were many cauldrons of all different shapes, sizes, colours and smells. Harry walked over to the nearest one, which was labelled "The Weasley's Every Smell Stink Bombs" and was sprouting lime green smoke. Harry took a whiff of the smoke and recoiled, his hand clutched to his mouth, he thought he was going to be sick, which was quite obviously the smell of the smoke; it smelt of every bad thing in the world, sweaty feet and armpits, dog 'droppings' and old peoples homes, all combined into one. Harry turned to Ron still clutching his mouth and tried say, "Remind me never to buy these," but all that came out was "Rehmin e devr oo boy theez."
Ron gave Harry a weak thumbs up, indicating he had understood Harry, when clearly he hadn't. Ron motioned for Harry to follow him; Harry nodded and followed Ron into a room with many computers and flashing lights and hundreds of displays each with a label with the products name and how long is left before it's ready. Harry looked at the one closest to him. It was the stink bombs, he looked at the timer, it had 10 seconds left, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then it emitted a loud, high-pitched beeping. From a door behind him Fred emerged coved from head to toe in black soot and dust, there was a ring of white where he had been wearing goggles. He grinned when he saw Ron and Harry, Ron gave him a quizzical look as he rushed over to stop the stink bomb mixture from overflowing, "What a mess that would be." Harry muttered to Ron. Ron was about to reply when George came through the same door, "Hurry Fred the 'Devious Dragons' are going to go off again unless we seal their mouths! Oh, hey you two. Ron, mum is looking for you, she's waiting outside. See you on the train!" He called as Harry and Ron disappeared through the door. When they entered back into the main shop they noticed it had gotten really busy. It was mainly Hogwarts students filling up on jokes and pranks for the upcoming year. Harry recognised some of them including his own Gryffindor roommates, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan with their heads buried in a box of rib-tickling rememberalls, he caught a few words of their conversation as they passed that included "Neville, replace, fits of laughter." Harry assumed they were planning on replacing Neville's rememberall with one of the rib-ticklers. When they reached the front door they found Mrs Weasley, standing tapping her foot and her arms folded over her chest. "Come on boys, we're going to be late, we still have to get your school stuff. It's ten o'clock!"
They hurried out of the door and back into Diagon Alley.
They all had to hurry to keep up with Mrs Weasley as she strode along at an incredible speed for a woman of her height.
They raced along Diagon Alley; occasionally ducking into shops where they got the stuff they would need for the up-coming year. When they reached Kings Cross they were all panting heavily from rushing from shop to shop with bags that were steadily gaining weight, (Hermione had discovered one of the twins had put a 'Heavy Weight Chew' in one of Ron's shopping bags.) Harry glanced up at the large clock on the wall, they had made it on time, they still had 15 minutes left. Suddenly Harry noticed that the second hand had stopped moving. He turned to Ron, "What's the time?" he asked, panicked. After he had spoken the words a green ray of light had shot out from his hand and landed on Ron's dark sweatshirt. As he and Ron watched transfixed it jumbled it's self around until it had formed 11:57:03. Harry followed the light and found it was coming from his ring; the serpent was shining a bright emerald green. Suddenly Harry realized; the train was about to leave, he quickly organised them getting through the barrier then ran through himself. He caught up to Ron and Hermione who were just about to enter their usual compartment. They settles themselves down then Ron spoke ' I think you had better tell us about the ring Harry.'
Harry and Ron followed Hermione and Ginny down Diagon alley until they reached a small shabby building at one end of Diagon alley that Harry had never seen before. The building was green, most of the paint had come off and it looked very old, as if it might collapse at any moment, any muggle building like this would have fallen down, or been knocked down years ago, this however was a magical building so it was likely it would never fall down. Harry saw Mr. & Mrs. Weasley standing outside, hand in hand and looking very proud. "What do you think, Harry?" asked Mrs. Weasley "What do I think of what, Mrs. Weasley?" asked Harry looking confused. Mrs. Weasley waved her hand in the direction of the building, Harry looked up to see the sign that read 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'. Harry suddenly realized with a jolt that this was Fred and George's joke shop they had been planning for all of last year. Harry turned to Ron "Did you know-" and stopped short when he saw Ron grinning at him mischievously, "We kept it as a surprise. It's not much at the moment but Fred and George have already sold loads of stuff. Pretty soon they'll be able to move to a bigger building."
"It wasn't what I wanted them to be doing, I was hoping they would go and work for the Ministry, but, Fred and George like practical jokes, and after I found out there was such a high demand for their products I thought, what the hell!" Mrs Weasley explained to Harry.
"Right." Said Harry looking slightly shocked at Mrs Weasley's language, "Can we go have a look inside?" asked Harry eagerly.
"Of course, Fred and George would kill me if you didn't." Said Ron, already heading for the door.
Harry and Ron stepped through the door, as they did so a rather large spider landed on Harry's head "Ahh!" he yelled throwing it to the floor, then something unusual happened, it burst into a firework display that formed itself into 'welcome' in several different colours that changed a few times before disappearing with a *pop*. "That happens every time someone new walks in, it's getting annoying but the look on their faces when a spider lands on their head; priceless." "Yeah, you should have seen Ron's face." Said Fred coming up behind them. "Crapping himself he was." Said George appearing next to Ron. "Anyway Harry what do you think?" Harry looked around the room; on each wall of the room were several shelves from the high ceiling to the wood panelled floor, each shelf was piled full of jars containing many jokes some of which were labelled "It's amazing, how long have you been doing this? You've been at home a lot of the time I was there." "Yeah, to stop you wondering where we were going all day we had some 'inside' help." Said George "Hello Harry!" said another voice, coming out of a storeroom. Harry turned to see who the voice belonged to, "Charlie! So you're the inside help!" "Yep, also these two." said Charlie, gesturing back towards the room he had been in, Harry noticed two more red-headed boys enter out of the door, they spotted Harry and waved, it was Bill and Percy. "Percy!" exclaimed Harry in surprise, "What are you doing here? I would have thought you'd be at the Ministry, a year or so ago you wouldn't have left." "Yes, well, ahem, that was back when I was, um, well an amateur." Said Percy, looking much redder around the ears than he normally did, the same as Ron did when he got embarrassed, "And then of course there's the current 'situation'." He was of course referring to Voldemort. "So why are you working here, aren't you needed at the ministry?" asked Harry, trying to sound interested. "Well, in fact, no I'm not because well..." hesitated Percy "He quit!" Piped in Bill. Harry's eyes widened in surprise, "You quit? Why? I thought you loved your job." "Well I used to love my job, that was until my bosses son, the dark lord's servant decided to kill his father, leaving me with Professor Lockhart as my boss." Harry gave an involuntary shudder; Lockhart had been the worst defence against the dark arts teacher he had ever had. "And not to mention the current situation, it had me so stressed so I decided I could do with a few laughs so I came here and ended up helping Fred and George." "Yeah, I wish he hadn't," groaned Fred hearing the last sentence of their conversation. He swiftly moved out the way as Percy launched a 'rib- tickling remembrall' in his direction. "Well Harry I best get back to work, have a look around, find one thing you like and it's yours; a souvenir from the Weasley's for your birthday." Said Percy and began putting jars on the shelf behind him.
Harry wandered around the room; he stopped under a set of shelves labelled 'Magical Mayhem Makers; Hours of Fantastic Fun!' He scanned the jars, one caught his eye probably because it was bigger than the rest and had glittery writing that read, INCREDIBLE INVISABLE INSECTS. Harry took the jar down, peered inside and almost dropped the jar; there were many different kinds of insects, all of them looked very real but none of them were moving. Harry could see many different species, some magical and some not; huge black spiders, Harry suspected they could be tarantulas though he had never seen one; scorpions still with the tail but it looked as if the sting had been severed off. The only magical one Harry recognised were the small, sapphire blue Billywig's, Harry had never seen one as they are very fast and hard to see, their stings had also been removed.
Ron, who had been talking with Bill, Percy and Charlie, came over to see what Harry had his nose in; he walked up behind Harry and looked over his shoulder, "Oh! Those things are great, Fred and George told me about them."
"What do they do?" ask Harry giving his friend a quizzical look.
"Here watch." Ron plucked a Billywig out of the jar dropped in on the floor and stamped on it, it made a squelch that made Harry feel so sick he had the close his eyes so as not to see the remains of the Billywig. "What did you do that for Ron you sick goit."
"Look and I'll show you." Replied Ron. Harry opened his eyes and saw...nothing. Where Ron had been standing there was just, air. "Where are you?" asked Harry, looking around the shop, which now had several people in it looking in jars and laughing.
"I'm standing about a foot away from you." Said Ron's voice loudly coming from, well about a foot in front of him. Harry stuck out his arm and felt it collide with something solid; Ron's chest. "Ooof," came Ron's voice sounding a little weak, "I didn't mean for you to hit me."
"So these things," said Harry peering back into the jar, "make you invisible?"
"Thank you Captain Obvious," Came Ron's sarcastic reply, suddenly popping back into view, he was clutching his chest. "Each insect has a timer, for how long you are invisible for, the Billywigs are the shortest with a timer of about a minute, the spiders are the longest, they last for about an hour, then there is a different insect for every ten minutes starting from one to sixty."
"So how long does this one last?" asked Harry pulling a scorpion out.
"Half an hour," replied Ron "that, the spiders and the Billywigs are the most popular, that's why there are a lot of them. Oh and I forgot to tell you but how long they last for is on the underneath." Harry shook his head and gave his friend a 'now you tell me' look. Ron headed towards the room Harry had seen Percy emerge from. He looked around the room for Percy and caught sight of some red hair behind a stack of boxes and walked over to them, "Hey Percy." Said Harry arriving at the other side of the boxes. A head poked around the side of the boxes, but it wasn't Percy, "Oh sorry Charlie I was looking for Percy, have you seen him?" said Harry looking slightly embarrassed.
"Yeah, I think I saw him in the back room helping Fred and George with something." Said Charlie screwing up his face and looking as if he was trying to remember where he had seen Percy last.
"Thanks Charlie" said Harry and jogged over to the door he had seen Percy emerge from earlier and pushed it open. What he saw beyond the door almost made him fall over. Instead of a small room as it looked like from the outside, it deceived the eyes like a lot of wizarding tents do. The room could have quite easily fitted two full-size Quidditch pitch's inside, with room spare. Harry looked around with his mouth hanging open; Ron was standing nearby watching him with an expression of amusement displayed on his face. There were many cauldrons of all different shapes, sizes, colours and smells. Harry walked over to the nearest one, which was labelled "The Weasley's Every Smell Stink Bombs" and was sprouting lime green smoke. Harry took a whiff of the smoke and recoiled, his hand clutched to his mouth, he thought he was going to be sick, which was quite obviously the smell of the smoke; it smelt of every bad thing in the world, sweaty feet and armpits, dog 'droppings' and old peoples homes, all combined into one. Harry turned to Ron still clutching his mouth and tried say, "Remind me never to buy these," but all that came out was "Rehmin e devr oo boy theez."
Ron gave Harry a weak thumbs up, indicating he had understood Harry, when clearly he hadn't. Ron motioned for Harry to follow him; Harry nodded and followed Ron into a room with many computers and flashing lights and hundreds of displays each with a label with the products name and how long is left before it's ready. Harry looked at the one closest to him. It was the stink bombs, he looked at the timer, it had 10 seconds left, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then it emitted a loud, high-pitched beeping. From a door behind him Fred emerged coved from head to toe in black soot and dust, there was a ring of white where he had been wearing goggles. He grinned when he saw Ron and Harry, Ron gave him a quizzical look as he rushed over to stop the stink bomb mixture from overflowing, "What a mess that would be." Harry muttered to Ron. Ron was about to reply when George came through the same door, "Hurry Fred the 'Devious Dragons' are going to go off again unless we seal their mouths! Oh, hey you two. Ron, mum is looking for you, she's waiting outside. See you on the train!" He called as Harry and Ron disappeared through the door. When they entered back into the main shop they noticed it had gotten really busy. It was mainly Hogwarts students filling up on jokes and pranks for the upcoming year. Harry recognised some of them including his own Gryffindor roommates, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan with their heads buried in a box of rib-tickling rememberalls, he caught a few words of their conversation as they passed that included "Neville, replace, fits of laughter." Harry assumed they were planning on replacing Neville's rememberall with one of the rib-ticklers. When they reached the front door they found Mrs Weasley, standing tapping her foot and her arms folded over her chest. "Come on boys, we're going to be late, we still have to get your school stuff. It's ten o'clock!"
They hurried out of the door and back into Diagon Alley.
They all had to hurry to keep up with Mrs Weasley as she strode along at an incredible speed for a woman of her height.
They raced along Diagon Alley; occasionally ducking into shops where they got the stuff they would need for the up-coming year. When they reached Kings Cross they were all panting heavily from rushing from shop to shop with bags that were steadily gaining weight, (Hermione had discovered one of the twins had put a 'Heavy Weight Chew' in one of Ron's shopping bags.) Harry glanced up at the large clock on the wall, they had made it on time, they still had 15 minutes left. Suddenly Harry noticed that the second hand had stopped moving. He turned to Ron, "What's the time?" he asked, panicked. After he had spoken the words a green ray of light had shot out from his hand and landed on Ron's dark sweatshirt. As he and Ron watched transfixed it jumbled it's self around until it had formed 11:57:03. Harry followed the light and found it was coming from his ring; the serpent was shining a bright emerald green. Suddenly Harry realized; the train was about to leave, he quickly organised them getting through the barrier then ran through himself. He caught up to Ron and Hermione who were just about to enter their usual compartment. They settles themselves down then Ron spoke ' I think you had better tell us about the ring Harry.'