Chapter 4
Let's Roll
Dinner was a quick, quiet affair consisting of an enormous Italian Frittata, apple pie, and a slightly burned custard for dessert. Ginny burned her hand once on the hot dish Mrs. Weasley handed her at the beginning of dinner, subsequently dropping it, but Mrs. Weasley's spectacular levitation spell saved it. After that, nothing much happened of importance or interest, unless one counts Ron and Hermione bickering slightly over how much sugar was put into the custard, or Fred accidentally sitting on Pig (again).
As dinner finished, Mrs. Weasley forcefully propelled Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and the twins upstairs to pack for the excursion that lay ahead of them.
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Harry sailed into the air once more, landing squarely on the lid of his trunk, slamming it shut with an indignant wheeze from the trunk. He hurriedly bent down, snapping the latches shut with the satisfying click he had been striving for since he had began wresting with his trunk fifteen minutes ago. Ron and Hermione had long since disappeared into another room, and had stayed surprisingly quiet for the past three hours.
Probably snogging again… Harry thought, a grin forming on his features as he recalled the guilty look on their faces when they realized he had been watching them from the doorway as they kissed.
His thoughts were interrupted as Ron poked his head in, looking somewhat dazed.
"Hey Harry…" he said, sounding suspiciously dazed.
"You okay, Ron?" Harry inquired, trying his best to sound like he had absolutely no idea what had just taken place.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine," Ron stammered, his ears going red.
Harry did his best to hold back a huge grin. "You and Hermione were kissing, weren't you?" he inquired.
Ron shrugged, his whole face now going a bright red. "Yeah, so?" he asked defensively. "Not like you and Cho did… it wasn't wet…"
Harry grinned, but said nothing. Hermione didn't strike him as the kind of person that would sob her eyes out on someone's shoulder; as she had already demonstrated with Malfoy, she would tell someone exactly what she thought of them. She was a true Gryffindor… in most aspects. Brilliant, outgoing, perseverant… and, despite her huge intelligence, was never exactly afraid to bend or break the rules. And, in Ron's case, she was the best-looking, smartest, sweetest person this side of Antarctica.
Well, most of the time, anyway.
Hermione skipped into the room, looking happier than she had in days. She made for Ron, then, realizing Harry was sitting right beside him veered right, toward the single, smashed window overlooking the front of the Burrow, and peered out of it.
Ron looked at Harry, scandalized, and went to go join Hermione at the window. Harry, grinning huely, watched Hermione sneak a kiss, and as Ron's ears went red, got up and made his way up behind them.
The atmosphere between them was so syrupy, he could have sworn he could taste the sickeningly sweet taste of mushy love in the air.
Resisting the huge urge to gag, Harry, feeling slightly nauseous, rested his arms on Hermione and Rons' shoulders.
"So," he said loudly, cutting through the nausea-inducing looks that Ron and Hermione were giving each other, "How about those Cannons?"
Ron stared incredulously at Harry, then rolled his eyes. Hermione, on the other hand, blushed furiously and looked away.
"Ha… ha. I get thy point, oh foolish Potter," Ron said sourly, then laughed and said, "I guess this means no snogging for a while, eh, 'Mione?"
Hermione went an even darker shade of red and suddenly became oddly interested in her ancient steel car keys.
Ron muttered darkly about the injustice of the world, then turned to Harry.
"Well, let's throw our crud in the cars, shall we?"
Harry grinned. "Locomotor trunk," he intoned, pointing his wand at his own bulging trunk and lifting it onto the air. Ron followed suit, levitating his trunk and following Harry out the door, leaving Hermione alone in the room.
Hermione turned away from the window and went to the door, peeking around it cautiously. Seeing no one, she whispered, "You can come out now…"
There was a quiet swish from one corner of the room, and a mop of red hair was revealed as Ginny Wesley, her face tinged a bright pink, scrambled to her feet, having just watched her crush for the last five minutes, having been dragged into the room by Hermione.
"Well?" Hermione demanded curiously. "What's the plan?"
Ginny's brown eyes gleamed mischievously, and, leaning close to Hermione, began to whisper in a low tone.
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Harry surveyed Ron's brand new Mini Cooper, resisting the urge to roll his eyes in despair as his friend went on and on about the amazing usage of a 'cambulator'.
"And then, what it does is it mixes gas and air to produce an explosion!"
"Ron..."
"…and then the explosion drives the piston downwards, and the process is repeated all over again!"
"RON!!!"
"What, Harry?" Ron asked, disgruntled.
"It's a carburetor."
There was an embarrassed silence after this, and Ron muttered something indistinguishable, then began to grill Harry on his car choice.
"Blimey, Harry… I don't know how the bloody hell you could choose a scrap heap like that," he said loudly, pointing at the crushed and mangled fiberglass body that was Harry's car choice. All four windows of the car had been smashed in, and one of the former two taillights were missing. The remaining one was dangling by a green wire from its socket, swaying gently in the cool evening breeze. The whole body of the car had been battered as if by a raging bull; the whole front bumper and hood had been twisted and bent sideways, dangling from the car, barely attached.
In fact the only identifying marks on the car that weren't completely totaled were the lopsided front SS badge symbolic of the muscle Chevy lineup and the badging on the side that read, in graceful, flowing script, Camaro.
Harry looked smugly at Ron. "I got this for less than two thousand pounds."
Ron rolled his eyes. "I can see why; it's a useless junk heap!"
The dark eyebrow that shot into Harry's hair made Ron feel more than a bit disconcerted.
"Oh, really?"
Harry whipped out his wand; Ron flinched away, as if expecting to be cursed.
"Reparo Totalis!" Harry bellowed, flicking his wand at the totaled Camaro.
Immediately, the Camaro went into rewind. The bent and dinged sheet metal warped and popped as it stretched out over the reforming steel skeleton of the Camaro, smoothing out into not-so-perfect aerodynamic shape once more. The missing taillight reappeared out of nowhere, flashed once, then went out. The hood and front bumper forcefully twisted and popped back into place, and Ron was left gaping at a shining, brand new, dark blue '68 Camaro.
Harry grinned at Ron, who seemed a bit stunned, then sighed and looked at Harry, his face clearly contemplating his utter stupidity.
Harry's grin stretched even further as Ron struggled to find another fact to criticize, and found it in the trunk.
"And just how are you supposed to put your trunk in there, Harry?" Ron inquired.
He quailed beneath Harry's famed I-can't-believe-you're-so-stupid look.
"Ron," Harry said patiently, "There's a certain spell that can make a certain area LARGER than it really is…"
"Locomotor trunk!" Harry cried, and, popping open the trunk of the Camaro, slid it in with ease. The trunk slammed shut with a loud, mocking bang.
"Still don't believe me?"
Ron stared at his Mini, then raised his eyes to the heavens. "Why the bloody hell did I buy a MINI?"
Harry shrugged and helped him to cram his trunk into the rear hatch of his car, but even with the Enlarging Charm in place, just managed to get the hatch to close.
Ron sighed and looked around at Ginny's Supra and Hermione's similar two wrecks.
"Where'd they go?" he inquired, looking around for the girls as if expecting them to jump out at him.
The Full-Body-Bind hit both Harry and Ron hard, spinning them around and landing them facedown in the dirt.