"Come on, boy, jump!" yelled Derek, who looked slightly annoyed for some
reason.
Harry had just started on using wandless magic to enhance his physical strength.
He took a run, bent his knees slightly, and jumped off the ground, waving his hand slightly as he flew, to lengthen the distance with magic, and concentrating on his breathing and his heart rate the way Derek had showed him to reduce strain.
Harry landed lightly fifteen feet away on his feet, but Derek hardly looked impressed. In fact, Derek wasn't looking his usual cheerful self at all; he was wearing a somber expression, and his eyes lacked their usual light and cheer.
"What's wrong, Derek?" asked Harry, coming closer.
Another thing Derek had taught Harry was to control his anger and rage, and work on his sympathy towards others. He had also taught Harry to utilize his anger for good purposes, and that calm fighting was always better than frenzied, no matter what. He had showed him that having feelings for people wasn't a bad thing.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked again softly.
"Today's yeh're last lesson, but Ah-Ah really don't wan't yeh tae go, yeh've been mah best student, and I really like yah, Harry. . . ."
He suddenly approached Harry and embraced him. Harry felt tears growing in the corners of his eyes as he hugged his mentor back for what seemed like an endless amount of time, until Derek said, "Yeh've learned all Ah have tae teach, and Ah hope that yeh will on'y use mah learnings for good and not evil.
"And one thing before you go back to yeh're own world, don't ever, ever tell anybody about what we've learned the last year and a half. It's a secret, but if you tell anyone, even Dumbledore, than there is a chance that Voldemort will learn it, he still has a connection with you, and tha's the last thing we want. You're the world's secret weapon, and we can't lose yeh, Harry.
"Yer world is missin' yeh, Harry, and Ah'll send yeh back now. Yeh'll wake up in the Order of the Phoenix' headquarters."
Derek waved his hands, yelled, "G'bye, Harry!" and vanished from sight as Harry's world turned black and he fell unconscious. . . .
* * *
"MUM, MUM, HE'S HERE! HARRY'S HERE!"
Harry woke up slowly to the loud voice that was shouting happily. He sat up on his bed and looked around. Where was he? Then it sunk into him: He had been sent back to the Order's headquarters, so he must be in Grimmuald Place.
He wondered who had shouted, but before long a ginger head appeared in the doorway . . . a ginger head that only could belong to his best friend, Ron Weasley.
"Harry!" Ron cried running forward. "What happened to you? Where've you been the past week? We've been so worried! Mum and the girls were going spare! Even Fred and George were worried when the popped by a couple days— "
"HARRY!" a voice suddenly shrieked. "Harry! You're back! Where were you?" It was Hermione, and she had a strange glow in her eyes as though about to cry and laugh at the same time.
"Harry, what happened? We've been going mad! Gone for a week, oh, and Dumbledore came and said that the house was empty, and that you've disappeared, and we've been so worried about you, and— "
Ron cut her back off.
"You've grown a lot, Harry, what happened all of a sudden? And— " he felt Harry's arm and looked at his undershirt that was sticking to him in sweat and outlining his body neatly. "—what happened that you're so muscly all of a sudden?"
"Well I— "
Harry broke off uncomfortably, just remembering what Derek had told him before he had left, 'don't ever, ever, tell anybody about what we've learned the last year and a half.'
"Yes?" asked Hermione and Ron in one breath.
"I-I, nothing happened — nothing at all," he finished rather lamely.
"Er — right," said Ron in a voice that suggested completely that he knew that something had happened, and Hermione was looking at him with her eyes squinted slightly, as though trying to read his mind. Harry mentally took his head in his hands and buried them between his knees; how long would it have to stay like this? But he already knew the answer.
* * *
Ginny had popped into the room to see what was happening, and she let out a huge sigh when she saw Harry sitting there safely. Harry smiled and shook his head.
"Hi, Ginny,"
"Harry, where've you been? What happened to you?"
"Well, my uncle and Dudley were going to a play and they invited me along, and I really wanted to go, I don't know why, and then . . ."
He relayed the whole story to them, about how somebody had hit him over the head and how he had woken up on the beach. The only part he didn't tell them (mainly because he didn't want Ginny to hear it) was the part where Lord Voldemort had tortured him. Of course he left out the part with his training and instead used it to create a good cover story for how he had gotten out of that world.
"How long have I been gone?" Harry asked with a slight frown.
"A week and a bit," answered Ron, "Mum's doing her nut on you, when they told her the news she fainted."
CRACK!
Fred and George, Ron's elder twin brothers, just Apparated into Harry's bedroom.
"Yeah," said Fred conversationally, "the whole floor shook, d'you remember?"
Yeah, I — "
But an explosion of noise came from behind him, and Ron suddenly ducked behind the bed so they wouldn't see him laughing,
"WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, FRED WEASLEY! Oh, Harry, you're here, that's wonderful! HOW DARE YOU TALK LIKE THAT ABOUT YOUR MOTHER? ONE MORE TIME, FRED WEASLEY, AND I'LL MAKE YOU — "
But her voice was suddenly drowned out by even louder shrieks from a portrait down the stairway.
"FILTHY MUDBLOODS, BESMIRCHING THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS! VILE CREATURES OF DIRT! DIRTY BLOOD TRAITIORS — !
"Can't we do something about that portrait, Mrs. Weasley?" asked Harry tiredly.
"We've been trying to for the past few weeks, but we've hadn't had any luck." She answered, having to yell slightly even though Fred and George had left quickly and slammed the door behind them.
"Maybe you could just Vanish the whole wall," said Hermione.
"We've thought of that, but Mrs. Black seems to have put a spell on it resisting all other spells that we've tried."
"Why don't we just burn it off, or something?" asked Ron.
"You know what," said Mr. Weasley, who had just entered the room, carrying some toast on a tray, "that's a good idea. Why don't we try that, Molly?"
They tiptoed into the hallway and Mrs. Weasley pulled out her wand and pointed it at Mrs. Black's portrait. "Lacarnum inflam— "
A small and ugly body suddenly dove in front of her. "Kreacher must not let them destroy my mistress!"
Kreacher knocked Mrs. Weasley's wand out of her hand and picked it up. Suddenly Harry let out a yell of rage,
"You! You killed Sirius! I'll, I'll—" All Harry's training momentarily disappeared. He reached for his wand and jabbed it violently at Kreacher. There was a bang like a small bomb and Kreacher was blasted against the wall. Harry stepped over to his limp body and placed a foot on Kreacher's scrawny neck. Pathetic thing . . . thought Harry.
He raised his wand. All the people around him tensed, weaklings, they just don't want to see me kill him! Harry found himself thinking angrily.
Harry's eyes were bloodshot and everything was in a red mist of rage. White hot anger like he had never known before licked his insides. He brought down his wand—
"No Harry, you can't!" screamed Hermione from far away. Harry looked up. The rage that had just flared up in him had been quenched when Hermione shouted his name. Harry got up and left the hall without another word. As he shut the door he heard a crackling of fire and screeches from Mrs. Black's portrait.
Harry went into the kitchen breathing hard like he had just run a marathon. He looked around; here was where Kreature had told him Sirius was not in Grimmuald Place. . . . The thought of Kreature still alive and moving while Sirius was gone brought back his anger. . . Harry suddenly felt angry . . . no . . . worse than that. He pulled out his wand and moved to open the door to the hallway.
His training suddenly overtook him, and with an immense, if brief, inner battle, Harry moved away his hand and sheathed his wand inside his belt.
* * *
The next morning Harry woke up very late. Ron was already gone, and Harry was alone in the room. Finneas Nigellus's portrait on the wall was empty but making small scuffling sounds like he was snoring.
Ron's voice sounded from the stairs, "Harry, come on downstairs! We're having a late breakfast, so if you come now you might catch the end."
Harry quickly threw on jeans and a T-shirt and walked down the stairs. Pausing to check that Kreacher was not there — so as not to arouse his anger — he walked into the hallway and unconsciously shifted into a quiet walk that Derek had taught him, but realized that it was unnecessary; all around the curtains of Mrs. Black's portrait was black and sooty, and Mrs. Black herself had been burned out.
"Hey, Harry," said Ron as he entered the kitchen, "Mum said we're going to Diagon Alley to get our stuff, and then we're going to see Fred and George after breakfast, so as soon as you finish eating we can go!"
Harry nodded briefly and turned his attention to his breakfast. After over a year of special dieting, real food had an almost unreal, godly taste to it.
"Calm down, Harry," said Ron, "it's like you haven't eaten anything for a year,"
"I'm done," Harry announced ten minutes later.
"Oh good," said Mrs. Weasley, who had just entered the kitchen, "We must get going, we have to get you r— " she pointed to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, "— books from a different shop, Flourish and Blotts don't stock the books you'll need for your new classes, but Ginny needs her books from Flourish and Blotts, and they're across the alley from each other. Oh and we have to go to Gringotts to make a deposit! We also have to visit Fred and George, then I have a meeting with the Order here, and you four must be out of the house while it goes on."
Standing in the hall by dirty, snake sided fireplaces with large pots of Floo powder, Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys all took turns taking a handful of the magical grains, throwing them into the fire, and yelling, "Diagon Alley".
Harry tumbled out in a fireplace in Flourish and Blotts, followed closely by Ron and Ginny. Hermione was already dusting herself off.
When the last person, Mrs. Weasley, clambered out, she and Ginny went off to look in the sections she would need, so Hermione went to the Apothecary to get Potions ingredients while Ron went to Quality Quidditch Supplies.
Harry went outside and had a look around; he was finally back where he belonged at long last. He looked around for several minutes, taking in all the sights and smells of the Alley, when Ron came running and calling his name.
"Harry, you've got to come and have a look at this!" he panted. "Come on!"
Hermione was just leaving, and they caught up with her, and Ron dragged them into Quality Quidditch Supplies.
"Look at this!"
Harry came up to a group of wizards crowding around a sign. Ron, being the tallest, read it for them:
LIGHTNINGBOLT
The new state-of-the-art broomstick, the Lightningbolt, sports a fine-
lined, oak handle, treated with a diamond polish for hardness and
shape. Each birch twig in the broomtail has been honed to perfection,
giving the Lightningbolt unprecedented balance, precision, and a
record winning speed of two hundred and twenty miles an hour in eight
seconds of acceleration.
They stood there for a few minutes just gazing at the broom. Harry had never seen a more sleek and beautiful broom. The perfectly straight handle was a deep, shining brown with gold designs embossed on it. Stamped on its handle was a gold serial number. The twigs at the end of it were so neatly aligned that it looked like one shining piece of birch wood. The Lightningbolt was floating in a glass display case, which Harry was sure had an Unbreakable Charm on it.
"Wow," said Harry. Ron nodded his head fervently, gazing at the broom as in a dream.
"Really you two," broke in Hermione sniffily, "are you going to sit there all day or go and buy our books, because I can see Ginny and your mum coming from Flourish and Blotts."
"Wha — oh-oh, yeah, we're coming. . . ." said Ron vaguely.
"Hmph!" said Hermione.
They met Mrs. Weasley at the entrance of Quality Quidditch Supplies and proceeded straight to the other bookshop, called the Borders. It was situated on the border between the Muggle world and Diagon Alley, and its back entrance was another way to get into the Muggle world.
They left the shop after half an hour, which Harry considered a lot of time, given they only had to buy two or three new books each.
"Come on!" said Ron as they left. "Let's go see Fred and George in their shop. It's down this end anyway!"
Harry saw where Ron had pointed. A large sign hung over a tall shop saying WEASLEYS' WIZARDING WHEEZES. There was a large crowd pushing to get in. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny made their way through the crowd, but Mrs. Weasley hung outside, talking to someone under a veil.
After a few minutes Harry managed to enter the shop. It was huge. At the back wall a small stage had been set up. Fred and George waved at them jovially from it.
Fred winked, "Hey Harry! Come up here with us!" Harry began walking to the stage. It was taking a lot of time; Harry had been walking for a minute and had only gone a couple of yards. He looked up at Fred and George, who smiled and winked again. "Hurry up, Harry! What's taking so long?"
Harry suddenly noticed something: when he wasn't walking, he was drifting backwards! He began walking, making no headway, then it clicked. The floor was moving backwards! He broke into a run, but the floor sped up with him. Fred winked again.
"Well," Harry panted, "stop it and I'll get up there!"
"Oh, fine," said George.
Suddenly Harry lurched forward! The floor was now zooming toward the stage! Harry was going to crash! He braced himself. Suddenly Harry's feet stuck to the floor and it stopped moving. His legs buckled from the sudden stop, and his head missed smashing into the stage by three inches. Fred was now laughing so hard that he was slumped on the floor, while George was holding his sides and shaking with mirth. Harry's broke into a smile in spite of himself. He clambered onto the stage.
"Hello," said George, "Took a long time to get here," said Fred, "Did you get lost, or something?"
"Watch this, Harry," said George. He pulled out a large silver microphone. "Attention!" he yelled, "All of you here have come just in time to see our newest invention. . . Morphjuice! Simply take a drink and concentrate on which animal you would like to become, and bam! Up to three hours of it! Magical animals included!"
Harry looked at Hermione, who said to Fred and George, "Isn't that very dangerous?"
"Of course not." said Fred, leaving it at that.
"You know something," said George, steering the subject out of these dangerous waters, "one good thing about this place is the security. You can't Apparate in here without triggering about ten alarms, the only way in is through the front doors. It helps a lot against break-ins. And the fireplaces over there," George pointed to a row of fireplaces, "have invisible walls in the stacks, so if you floo into them you'd get a real surprise. . . ."
Ron clambered onto the stage.
"Hi Harry, look at this," he held up a withered looking plant, "we're— "
"— Not sure what it does, exactly. But can you come and help us figure it out." said Fred unexpectedly.
"How did you — what — that's exactly what I was gonna say — how did you know!?" Ron nearly shouted.
"Don't worry, little bro," said Fred, "I've only learned how to read minds . . . just kidding of course, but we invented a neat little thing to read minds with. This thing is an Occlumens — look. . . ."
He held up a small round object that was shimmering and changing color constantly. "This little thing can read your thoughts and project them into the user's mind. We aren't selling any of course . . . bit dangerous. . . ."
"We've been developing them since our second year, you know, but we managed to finish it up last year. That's how we always were able to complete a sentence together without mistakes and stuff.
"Oh, and by the way, that plant was just a test item that accidentally got put on a shelf. We were testing poisons on it for our Snackboxes, so we could poison the kids — I mean — nothing,"
But George was smiling slightly, so Harry shook his head in amazement and went with Ron went to look around the sweets section of the store. He found it quickly; it was the biggest part and crowded more than the rest of the store was.
Floating over the area was a poster of a boy with a bag of Nosebleed Nougat and a bloody nose that kept bleeding and stopping as he ate the other end of the chew.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked over to the section. It was loaded with stuff like Weasleys' Bouncing Bazooka, great purple wads of gum that bounced around in your mouth as they were chewed, big sucking candies that changed their taste every thirty seconds, and Weasley's Wonderful Wish, which allowed the eater to wish for any type of food and make it appear, and more things like that.
Fred and George let them buy all their stuff half off, ("Family discount for the three of you," George had said) but the three of them left with money bags considerably lighter than those that they had entered with.
* * *
Harry had just started on using wandless magic to enhance his physical strength.
He took a run, bent his knees slightly, and jumped off the ground, waving his hand slightly as he flew, to lengthen the distance with magic, and concentrating on his breathing and his heart rate the way Derek had showed him to reduce strain.
Harry landed lightly fifteen feet away on his feet, but Derek hardly looked impressed. In fact, Derek wasn't looking his usual cheerful self at all; he was wearing a somber expression, and his eyes lacked their usual light and cheer.
"What's wrong, Derek?" asked Harry, coming closer.
Another thing Derek had taught Harry was to control his anger and rage, and work on his sympathy towards others. He had also taught Harry to utilize his anger for good purposes, and that calm fighting was always better than frenzied, no matter what. He had showed him that having feelings for people wasn't a bad thing.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked again softly.
"Today's yeh're last lesson, but Ah-Ah really don't wan't yeh tae go, yeh've been mah best student, and I really like yah, Harry. . . ."
He suddenly approached Harry and embraced him. Harry felt tears growing in the corners of his eyes as he hugged his mentor back for what seemed like an endless amount of time, until Derek said, "Yeh've learned all Ah have tae teach, and Ah hope that yeh will on'y use mah learnings for good and not evil.
"And one thing before you go back to yeh're own world, don't ever, ever tell anybody about what we've learned the last year and a half. It's a secret, but if you tell anyone, even Dumbledore, than there is a chance that Voldemort will learn it, he still has a connection with you, and tha's the last thing we want. You're the world's secret weapon, and we can't lose yeh, Harry.
"Yer world is missin' yeh, Harry, and Ah'll send yeh back now. Yeh'll wake up in the Order of the Phoenix' headquarters."
Derek waved his hands, yelled, "G'bye, Harry!" and vanished from sight as Harry's world turned black and he fell unconscious. . . .
* * *
"MUM, MUM, HE'S HERE! HARRY'S HERE!"
Harry woke up slowly to the loud voice that was shouting happily. He sat up on his bed and looked around. Where was he? Then it sunk into him: He had been sent back to the Order's headquarters, so he must be in Grimmuald Place.
He wondered who had shouted, but before long a ginger head appeared in the doorway . . . a ginger head that only could belong to his best friend, Ron Weasley.
"Harry!" Ron cried running forward. "What happened to you? Where've you been the past week? We've been so worried! Mum and the girls were going spare! Even Fred and George were worried when the popped by a couple days— "
"HARRY!" a voice suddenly shrieked. "Harry! You're back! Where were you?" It was Hermione, and she had a strange glow in her eyes as though about to cry and laugh at the same time.
"Harry, what happened? We've been going mad! Gone for a week, oh, and Dumbledore came and said that the house was empty, and that you've disappeared, and we've been so worried about you, and— "
Ron cut her back off.
"You've grown a lot, Harry, what happened all of a sudden? And— " he felt Harry's arm and looked at his undershirt that was sticking to him in sweat and outlining his body neatly. "—what happened that you're so muscly all of a sudden?"
"Well I— "
Harry broke off uncomfortably, just remembering what Derek had told him before he had left, 'don't ever, ever, tell anybody about what we've learned the last year and a half.'
"Yes?" asked Hermione and Ron in one breath.
"I-I, nothing happened — nothing at all," he finished rather lamely.
"Er — right," said Ron in a voice that suggested completely that he knew that something had happened, and Hermione was looking at him with her eyes squinted slightly, as though trying to read his mind. Harry mentally took his head in his hands and buried them between his knees; how long would it have to stay like this? But he already knew the answer.
* * *
Ginny had popped into the room to see what was happening, and she let out a huge sigh when she saw Harry sitting there safely. Harry smiled and shook his head.
"Hi, Ginny,"
"Harry, where've you been? What happened to you?"
"Well, my uncle and Dudley were going to a play and they invited me along, and I really wanted to go, I don't know why, and then . . ."
He relayed the whole story to them, about how somebody had hit him over the head and how he had woken up on the beach. The only part he didn't tell them (mainly because he didn't want Ginny to hear it) was the part where Lord Voldemort had tortured him. Of course he left out the part with his training and instead used it to create a good cover story for how he had gotten out of that world.
"How long have I been gone?" Harry asked with a slight frown.
"A week and a bit," answered Ron, "Mum's doing her nut on you, when they told her the news she fainted."
CRACK!
Fred and George, Ron's elder twin brothers, just Apparated into Harry's bedroom.
"Yeah," said Fred conversationally, "the whole floor shook, d'you remember?"
Yeah, I — "
But an explosion of noise came from behind him, and Ron suddenly ducked behind the bed so they wouldn't see him laughing,
"WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, FRED WEASLEY! Oh, Harry, you're here, that's wonderful! HOW DARE YOU TALK LIKE THAT ABOUT YOUR MOTHER? ONE MORE TIME, FRED WEASLEY, AND I'LL MAKE YOU — "
But her voice was suddenly drowned out by even louder shrieks from a portrait down the stairway.
"FILTHY MUDBLOODS, BESMIRCHING THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS! VILE CREATURES OF DIRT! DIRTY BLOOD TRAITIORS — !
"Can't we do something about that portrait, Mrs. Weasley?" asked Harry tiredly.
"We've been trying to for the past few weeks, but we've hadn't had any luck." She answered, having to yell slightly even though Fred and George had left quickly and slammed the door behind them.
"Maybe you could just Vanish the whole wall," said Hermione.
"We've thought of that, but Mrs. Black seems to have put a spell on it resisting all other spells that we've tried."
"Why don't we just burn it off, or something?" asked Ron.
"You know what," said Mr. Weasley, who had just entered the room, carrying some toast on a tray, "that's a good idea. Why don't we try that, Molly?"
They tiptoed into the hallway and Mrs. Weasley pulled out her wand and pointed it at Mrs. Black's portrait. "Lacarnum inflam— "
A small and ugly body suddenly dove in front of her. "Kreacher must not let them destroy my mistress!"
Kreacher knocked Mrs. Weasley's wand out of her hand and picked it up. Suddenly Harry let out a yell of rage,
"You! You killed Sirius! I'll, I'll—" All Harry's training momentarily disappeared. He reached for his wand and jabbed it violently at Kreacher. There was a bang like a small bomb and Kreacher was blasted against the wall. Harry stepped over to his limp body and placed a foot on Kreacher's scrawny neck. Pathetic thing . . . thought Harry.
He raised his wand. All the people around him tensed, weaklings, they just don't want to see me kill him! Harry found himself thinking angrily.
Harry's eyes were bloodshot and everything was in a red mist of rage. White hot anger like he had never known before licked his insides. He brought down his wand—
"No Harry, you can't!" screamed Hermione from far away. Harry looked up. The rage that had just flared up in him had been quenched when Hermione shouted his name. Harry got up and left the hall without another word. As he shut the door he heard a crackling of fire and screeches from Mrs. Black's portrait.
Harry went into the kitchen breathing hard like he had just run a marathon. He looked around; here was where Kreature had told him Sirius was not in Grimmuald Place. . . . The thought of Kreature still alive and moving while Sirius was gone brought back his anger. . . Harry suddenly felt angry . . . no . . . worse than that. He pulled out his wand and moved to open the door to the hallway.
His training suddenly overtook him, and with an immense, if brief, inner battle, Harry moved away his hand and sheathed his wand inside his belt.
* * *
The next morning Harry woke up very late. Ron was already gone, and Harry was alone in the room. Finneas Nigellus's portrait on the wall was empty but making small scuffling sounds like he was snoring.
Ron's voice sounded from the stairs, "Harry, come on downstairs! We're having a late breakfast, so if you come now you might catch the end."
Harry quickly threw on jeans and a T-shirt and walked down the stairs. Pausing to check that Kreacher was not there — so as not to arouse his anger — he walked into the hallway and unconsciously shifted into a quiet walk that Derek had taught him, but realized that it was unnecessary; all around the curtains of Mrs. Black's portrait was black and sooty, and Mrs. Black herself had been burned out.
"Hey, Harry," said Ron as he entered the kitchen, "Mum said we're going to Diagon Alley to get our stuff, and then we're going to see Fred and George after breakfast, so as soon as you finish eating we can go!"
Harry nodded briefly and turned his attention to his breakfast. After over a year of special dieting, real food had an almost unreal, godly taste to it.
"Calm down, Harry," said Ron, "it's like you haven't eaten anything for a year,"
"I'm done," Harry announced ten minutes later.
"Oh good," said Mrs. Weasley, who had just entered the kitchen, "We must get going, we have to get you r— " she pointed to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, "— books from a different shop, Flourish and Blotts don't stock the books you'll need for your new classes, but Ginny needs her books from Flourish and Blotts, and they're across the alley from each other. Oh and we have to go to Gringotts to make a deposit! We also have to visit Fred and George, then I have a meeting with the Order here, and you four must be out of the house while it goes on."
Standing in the hall by dirty, snake sided fireplaces with large pots of Floo powder, Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys all took turns taking a handful of the magical grains, throwing them into the fire, and yelling, "Diagon Alley".
Harry tumbled out in a fireplace in Flourish and Blotts, followed closely by Ron and Ginny. Hermione was already dusting herself off.
When the last person, Mrs. Weasley, clambered out, she and Ginny went off to look in the sections she would need, so Hermione went to the Apothecary to get Potions ingredients while Ron went to Quality Quidditch Supplies.
Harry went outside and had a look around; he was finally back where he belonged at long last. He looked around for several minutes, taking in all the sights and smells of the Alley, when Ron came running and calling his name.
"Harry, you've got to come and have a look at this!" he panted. "Come on!"
Hermione was just leaving, and they caught up with her, and Ron dragged them into Quality Quidditch Supplies.
"Look at this!"
Harry came up to a group of wizards crowding around a sign. Ron, being the tallest, read it for them:
LIGHTNINGBOLT
The new state-of-the-art broomstick, the Lightningbolt, sports a fine-
lined, oak handle, treated with a diamond polish for hardness and
shape. Each birch twig in the broomtail has been honed to perfection,
giving the Lightningbolt unprecedented balance, precision, and a
record winning speed of two hundred and twenty miles an hour in eight
seconds of acceleration.
They stood there for a few minutes just gazing at the broom. Harry had never seen a more sleek and beautiful broom. The perfectly straight handle was a deep, shining brown with gold designs embossed on it. Stamped on its handle was a gold serial number. The twigs at the end of it were so neatly aligned that it looked like one shining piece of birch wood. The Lightningbolt was floating in a glass display case, which Harry was sure had an Unbreakable Charm on it.
"Wow," said Harry. Ron nodded his head fervently, gazing at the broom as in a dream.
"Really you two," broke in Hermione sniffily, "are you going to sit there all day or go and buy our books, because I can see Ginny and your mum coming from Flourish and Blotts."
"Wha — oh-oh, yeah, we're coming. . . ." said Ron vaguely.
"Hmph!" said Hermione.
They met Mrs. Weasley at the entrance of Quality Quidditch Supplies and proceeded straight to the other bookshop, called the Borders. It was situated on the border between the Muggle world and Diagon Alley, and its back entrance was another way to get into the Muggle world.
They left the shop after half an hour, which Harry considered a lot of time, given they only had to buy two or three new books each.
"Come on!" said Ron as they left. "Let's go see Fred and George in their shop. It's down this end anyway!"
Harry saw where Ron had pointed. A large sign hung over a tall shop saying WEASLEYS' WIZARDING WHEEZES. There was a large crowd pushing to get in. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny made their way through the crowd, but Mrs. Weasley hung outside, talking to someone under a veil.
After a few minutes Harry managed to enter the shop. It was huge. At the back wall a small stage had been set up. Fred and George waved at them jovially from it.
Fred winked, "Hey Harry! Come up here with us!" Harry began walking to the stage. It was taking a lot of time; Harry had been walking for a minute and had only gone a couple of yards. He looked up at Fred and George, who smiled and winked again. "Hurry up, Harry! What's taking so long?"
Harry suddenly noticed something: when he wasn't walking, he was drifting backwards! He began walking, making no headway, then it clicked. The floor was moving backwards! He broke into a run, but the floor sped up with him. Fred winked again.
"Well," Harry panted, "stop it and I'll get up there!"
"Oh, fine," said George.
Suddenly Harry lurched forward! The floor was now zooming toward the stage! Harry was going to crash! He braced himself. Suddenly Harry's feet stuck to the floor and it stopped moving. His legs buckled from the sudden stop, and his head missed smashing into the stage by three inches. Fred was now laughing so hard that he was slumped on the floor, while George was holding his sides and shaking with mirth. Harry's broke into a smile in spite of himself. He clambered onto the stage.
"Hello," said George, "Took a long time to get here," said Fred, "Did you get lost, or something?"
"Watch this, Harry," said George. He pulled out a large silver microphone. "Attention!" he yelled, "All of you here have come just in time to see our newest invention. . . Morphjuice! Simply take a drink and concentrate on which animal you would like to become, and bam! Up to three hours of it! Magical animals included!"
Harry looked at Hermione, who said to Fred and George, "Isn't that very dangerous?"
"Of course not." said Fred, leaving it at that.
"You know something," said George, steering the subject out of these dangerous waters, "one good thing about this place is the security. You can't Apparate in here without triggering about ten alarms, the only way in is through the front doors. It helps a lot against break-ins. And the fireplaces over there," George pointed to a row of fireplaces, "have invisible walls in the stacks, so if you floo into them you'd get a real surprise. . . ."
Ron clambered onto the stage.
"Hi Harry, look at this," he held up a withered looking plant, "we're— "
"— Not sure what it does, exactly. But can you come and help us figure it out." said Fred unexpectedly.
"How did you — what — that's exactly what I was gonna say — how did you know!?" Ron nearly shouted.
"Don't worry, little bro," said Fred, "I've only learned how to read minds . . . just kidding of course, but we invented a neat little thing to read minds with. This thing is an Occlumens — look. . . ."
He held up a small round object that was shimmering and changing color constantly. "This little thing can read your thoughts and project them into the user's mind. We aren't selling any of course . . . bit dangerous. . . ."
"We've been developing them since our second year, you know, but we managed to finish it up last year. That's how we always were able to complete a sentence together without mistakes and stuff.
"Oh, and by the way, that plant was just a test item that accidentally got put on a shelf. We were testing poisons on it for our Snackboxes, so we could poison the kids — I mean — nothing,"
But George was smiling slightly, so Harry shook his head in amazement and went with Ron went to look around the sweets section of the store. He found it quickly; it was the biggest part and crowded more than the rest of the store was.
Floating over the area was a poster of a boy with a bag of Nosebleed Nougat and a bloody nose that kept bleeding and stopping as he ate the other end of the chew.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked over to the section. It was loaded with stuff like Weasleys' Bouncing Bazooka, great purple wads of gum that bounced around in your mouth as they were chewed, big sucking candies that changed their taste every thirty seconds, and Weasley's Wonderful Wish, which allowed the eater to wish for any type of food and make it appear, and more things like that.
Fred and George let them buy all their stuff half off, ("Family discount for the three of you," George had said) but the three of them left with money bags considerably lighter than those that they had entered with.
* * *