Woohoo! The next installment to my wonderfully progressing story. Unfortunately the I may not be able to write for a week or so, because guess what, Jill's going backpacking! Hope this keeps you happy.

Disclaimer: The only things I hold to my name are a pair of dirty socks and the voices in my head. And Harry Potter is not one of the voices in my head. If you can't figure out that I don't own Harry, you must have failed Kindergarten.

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"I'll see you in two weeks!" shouted Hermione to her parents, waving as the small blue Chevy drove out of sight. As soon as it was gone, she sighed and hitched up her backpack, moaning about the relatively low amount of comfort the bag provided. She moseyed her way through the crowd of people standing in the ticket linein front of King's Cross, heading in the direction of the station map, but before she could reach the signpost a shout of laughter issued from down the hall. Hermione grinned, knowing in a heartbeat that it could have come from no other than Ronald Weasley.

Sure enough, as she rounded the corner, she sighted a flash of red mixed with a blur of purple lying on the ground. As far as she could tell, Ron and Muffles were participating in a vicious chicken fight, with Harry egging on his dog and George and Fred cheering on their brother.

"C'mon, boy, sic him!" yelled Harry, pointing to the struggling redhead on the ground.

"Go, Ronniekins, he's just a bloody dog! You can take him!" cried George, wincing as the purple opponent pounced onto Ron's back.

A panting Ron attempted to pin the wriggling fuzzball to the ground, but the latter was too quick: in a flash of fuschia he had his opponent down and began viciously licking him with a great pink tongue.

Hermione walked up to the battling duo unnoticed, bent down next to Ron and asked, "Finally quelled your natural urges for the day?"

He looked up at her wide-eyed in surprise, before grimacing and swatting at the Muffles, since the dog had slobbered on his nose. "Hermione! When did you get here?" asked Ron.

"Thirty seconds ago. You do realize the train leaves in three minutes, right?"

"It does? Shit!" exclaimed the youngest Weasley present, as he shoved Muffles off him and grabbed his backpack off the ground. Hermione offered a hand and pulled him up, marveling at how much he had grown (again). She guessed he was near 6'2" by now.

Their other companions had managed to reserve a compartment on the train by the time Hermione and Ron made it on, which turned out to be just in time. Ron had just barely stepped onto the train when the doors began to creak closed, meeting in the middle and catching a zipper on his backpack in the process. He struggled with the door for thirty seconds before giving an almighty yank, sending himself careening onto the floor and earning himself giggles from Hermione. He glared at her and made his way into the compartment, sitting down in a huff onto a strategically-placed Whoopee Cushion.

A man five compartments down was suddenly awoken by an undoubtably rude nosie, the hysterical mirth of four teenagers and one outraged yell, and he sat up quickly enough to bump his head against a shelf. The commotion lasted for about five minutes, much to his chargin, and he was about to go complain to the conductor when the noise stopped abruptly, accompanied by a flash of light. The man grumbled about rudeness and imaturity before rolling over and falling back into unconciousness.

A triumphant Ron stood above his other four companions, who had all suddenly had their mouths sewn shut, in a completely painless way of course. Ron smirked at his victims' helplessness, remembering the time he had first come across the Riveting Hex. He had been researching something insignificant for Potions, come across "1001 Ways to Shut People Up," and the rest, they say, is history. Or, rather, they don't say, because their lips were sewn together.

Ron was rudely awakened from his reminiscing by twin blurs of red leaping across the compartment, and only his Quidditch reflexes saved him from what probably would have been a very ugly encounter. Fred and George crashed into an empty seat because of Ron's sudden shift and, like a pair of bulls, this only made them even more enraged. Ron quickly took the hint as Harry and Hermione's eyes began to sparkle threateningly, and reversed the spell as quickly as he could.

The two hours on the train ride from London to Dover were quickly eaten up by Exploding Snap, Bertie Botts' eating contests (seeing who could endure the worst flavors the longest before spitting them gracelessly out the window), and listening to stories of how thoroughly boring everyone's summers had been. By the time the train reached the next station, everyone was doubled over laughing at Fred's recount of Ginny's reaction when she woke up to find multicolored muskrats having a pow-wow around her head one morning. Fred swore (on his grandmother's grave) that it had had nothing to do with him, but, as Ron pointed out, both of their grandmothers were still alive and kicking.

Still spitting out random giggles, the group stood up to pull down the bulging backpacks from the luggage racks-- at the exact same moment the train decided to throw on the brakes. Two backpacks and five people were thrown unceremoniously against the wall, ending up in a far worse predicament than Fred and George had been in only hours before.

Muffles had somehow escaped the fiasco and began tugging at Harry's shirt, digging his claws into Fred's back in an attempt to stop his master from squashing everyone else flat.

Hermione, weighing the least out of everyone present, had, of course, wound up on the bottom of the doggy pile. All of her appendages were completely numb and her chest was about to cave in as she cursed the laws of the one called Murphy. One by one she could feel the gargantuan boys lift themselves off of her wiry form. Finally it was only George crushing her into oblivion, and suddenly she felt extreme pity for the chicken he had sat on earlier (Ron had told them all about it on the ride over). She waited for about five seconds for him to get off her, but as soon as she realized he wasn't moving, she looked down at him. He was gazing intently up at her, his head resting in her lap, and she quirked an eyebrow in his direction.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"Mm…nothing, Hermione dear. I just never realized they had mountains in this part of England."

It took a while for the impact of this comment to hit, but hit hard it did; for George, that is. Days later he could be heard complaining about the prominent bruise that had decided to spread over his entire right shoulder. She shoved him off herself and grabbed her backpack before shooting out the door, muttering about perverts.

George could barely contain his grin, although it came out as more of a grimace as he clutched his wounded arm. That had totally been worth it.

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Haha, dirty, dirty George. For anyone who didn't understand the law/Murphy thing, it's what some people call Murphy's Law, or the tendency for something to always happen, like if you forget to bring a magazine to a doctor's appointment you'll have to wait forever and if you do bring one you'll wait for about five minutes. Hope that helps.