Mischief Managed
Chapter One
Requiring a job is a somewhat depressing thing. It brings laughter, humiliation, and desperation to a soul, all in the space of five minutes, Mira was becoming an expert on being in such a position. The jobs in America for wizards and witches were few, especially for people under the age of thirty. You were either a young entrapaneur or you were a waitress in a bar. Not that Mira would have minded being a waitress, it was just that there were none that Mira could stand working in, she had a few, well, standards that had to be met. She refused to work in a place that required her to give her supervisor favors, she refused to strip, and she wanted her co-workers mostly sober. Some of her friends said that such standards took the fun out of it.
Mira had pooled all of her money and bought herself a portkey to England. Her parents told her that she would have no more luck in England, but Mira was distracted by the whole England part of it. There Ministry was much more organized, and their country was not suffering from a depression. And it was England, the source of all magic. If nothing else Mira would work in a Muggle bar just to be there.
Getting the Portkey had been interesting. She had borrowed money, filched it, spent time cleaning one sketchy potions lab, walked a few nasty wizarding dogs, and babysat a wildly magical two year old for three weeks. The torture of all of those activities put her at one hundred fifty three galleons. One forty one galleon portkey later Mira found herself, rather disheveled in Diagon Alley, with an army surplus backpack hanging from an arm that quite felt like linguini.
She trekked down the street and found herself in front of an inn? - A pub perhaps? - called the Leaky Cauldron. Noticing that the rest of her body was falling into that same feeling quite akin to pasta. Her tired legs brought her to the door which opened of its own accord. Lovely. She thought wickedly. The place was full? - Empty? - There were people in it, but she wasn't sure if they were employees on break or people hanging about doing absolutely nothing. Mira made her way to the front desk, or what she assumed was the front desk. It was large, and at one point in its life might have been a gleaming oak desk worthy for a king, but now it was a beat up, ruddy, chipped, molding hunk of wood sitting at the front of one of the oddest bars Mira had ever been in.
"Hey, I need a room for a week." Mira said with a yawn. The man behind the desk looked at her if she was batty.
"Yew fro'm'erica?" He asked, leaning out of hole created by the desks shadow, pushing his face out into the light. At first Mira thought he'd been splattered by a horrid potion in his youth. A few seconds later there was a flicker and he was a normal looking boy, Mira would later find out that the boy was actually almost thirty years old.
"Yea, sure…" Mira wasn't sure if she should have answered that question.
"Yew from Minesooata?" The boy asked with a grin. Mira glared, she had grown up in Minnesota but had attended school in Salem. No one usually noticed her accent anymore, the last few weeks with her parents must have rubbed off on her.
"Yea, could I get my room key?" She asked, trying not to bite her bottom lip, it was a terrible habit and made for bad kissing. Her linguini-like legs shifted under her weight.
"Yaaaaah, suuuuuuuuuure doll. Fifty fer the week, hundred if ya break anything. Room ten. Up tha' flight of stairs an to the righ', have a nice stay at the leaky." He said as he slipped her a key and leaned back into the dark of the corner. The antique key was a cold weight in her hand, a feeling that would usually have reminded her of some of the muggle horror shows she had seen at home, but at the moment she was far to exhausted.
The room was dank, and later she would notice that it shook periodically, but at the moment she was stripping off her green corduroy pants and overlarge sweatshirt. The hot pink bra came off from under her ill-fitting, worn blue shirt and she crawled into the bed clothed thus. As an afterthought she set her wand to go off at seven the next morning.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An angry beeping awoke her, and Mira responded in kind. One arm flung up and out of the cocoon that she slept in and landed with a loud bang on the nightstand. The fiercely yelling wand clattered to the floor and rolled across the floor with the speed of a mouse. The violent beeping continued to get louder and one of her neighbors began banging on the wall opposite her. With many curses flying out of her mouth Mira clambered out of her bed, cursing as her foot caught in the web of her bedding and she hit the floor, wincing as blood flooded the inside of her mouth.
Eventually she made it the three feet from her bed to the wall. "Finite Incantantum." She muttered and rolled onto her back, glaring at her ceiling. What a cliché way to wake up. She thought. In all the stories crummy wakeups lead to wonderful days full of magic and glorious men.
She climbed to her feet and teetered a bit as the room shuddered. Her gray green eyes widened as she looked to the window. She opened said window by shoving her shoulder against the divider. It popped open with a crack that would entice one to think that the side of the building had fallen apart. Mira's head popped out of the window and she looked down. If anyone had looked they would have seen a girl with a head full of brown curls, looking at the sidewalk like women looked at lovers who've betrayed them.
"The subway!" She shrieked. "I had to pick the one wizarding hotel on top of the fricking subway." she continued to rage around the closet like hotel room as she looked for her bag. She found it under her bed and between the nightstand. Her shampoo had popped in its plastic bag, which was why her mother had made her put it in the muggle contraption. And for one of the many times in her life she was thankful for the muggles.
The shower was a three foot by three foot wide, and five foot tall box. "I'm going to have to crouch…" The realization hit her slowly, almost like a complex mystery, when the twists and turns have finally all come together. "Alrighty then." Mira said as she pulled off her t-shirt. She was only five foot four, so for the most part the shower wasn't too awful, she laughed at the thought of her almost seven foot father showering in such a tiny space. The worst part of the experience was bending backwards to get all of the soap out of the front of her hair.
When she emerged from her tiny cubicle Mira felt that may be the day wouldn't be so awful. She was wrong. It was completely awful. She walked the furthest from the leaky cauldron and started on one side of the street and decided she would finish on the other side. This meant she started with the smaller stores, thinking a personal owner would be more likely to hire her than a corporate. Ladies laughed at her in the charms shops, "honey, no one's hiring now, it's the middle of summer!" They all chortled as they shooed her out. She would wait for hours in one case to be looked at, snickered at, humiliated and sent on her way. It was one of the most trying times of her young life.
This went on for four days and Mira was beginning to think that she was going to have to make that floo call home, the one that most of the people in the world have to make, the one in which the child admits that they were stupid, wrong, and need to money to come home. Mira did not want to make that call, not that anyone ever does.
As she was walking back to the Leaky for lunch on the afternoon of the fifth day she was distracted by two red haired men handing out flyers on the street, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. "What in the world?" She muttered to herself as she crossed the street.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes
Bored with Zonko's?
Need something new for your archenemy?
We'll have it.
Opens in one Week!
"Okay, shockingly convenient, but okay." Mira shrugged and walked up to the taller of the two fire topped men. "Hey, I'm Mira." She said, ever the Minnesota nice girl she'd grown up as. The broad shouldered boy, for that is what she recognized him as, a boy about her age, smiled and shook her hand.
"Fred Weasley, it's nice to meet you Mira. What can I do for ye?" He asked, winking at his brother. Mira leaned against the wall behind her, attempting to give the illusion that she was at ease in this country, on a street corner, with a man who looked a bit wild around the edges.
"I'm in of a job, I was wondering if you where hiring." She said with a leisurely smile.
"So yer the gel who's been bothering all of the other shop owners then?" He asked with another smile. Mira blushed for a second before shrugging.
"If that's a bad thing then no, I've never bothered a shop owner in my life!" She cried with false bravado. "And I'm shocked that you could even think such things of me!" For a moment Fred really thought she was going to cry before a smirk graced her features, a smirk quite like Malfoys, only sexy. But then again according to George Malfoy's smirk was sexy…
"How old are ye?" he asked as he handed out another flyer.
"Twenty- one." She said with a wink.
"Yer not a day older than nineteen at most." It was Fred's turn to smirk. "I'll wager yer not even eighteen." This was were Mira protested.
"Hello! How would I have gotten here if I weren't!" She shrieked like the best of the Beverly Hills girls.
"Alright! Alright! Please don't abuse my eardrums woman! Yer hired, c'mon I'll show ye the place. And there is such a thing as illegal activity my friend." He was smirking again, using the smirk, which Mira did not know about, yet. But today was the day where more things were going to be added to the List of things Mira-Didn't-Want-to-Know-but-Now-Knows than any day in her history. In fact, the Weasleys were going add the most to that list than anyone else.
"Yes, well…when crossing the ocean I thought it would be wiser to do things, normally, legally…"
"Where's the fun in that?" He grinned like a wild woodsman and Mira began to question the logic behind working for the Weasleys, apart from the money. "Now this is the shop." They had walked into a room that would adequately be described as cavernous. The walls where a bright fuscia, and the shelves lime green. The register was set up and there were neon blue tables scattered across the room. There was just one thing off….
"Ah…Boss….Where's the product?" She asked in a scandalized tone. "I can't sell something that's not here!" She was slowly walking further into the room, rotating slowly in circles periodically. I've walked into a madhouse…these boys are absolutely bonkers.
"Yeah, it's in the back, we just got to set it out, and then after the first weeks sale talk to the providers- ye know, for the raw materials. All the charms and hexes and stuff we got to do ourselves. And hey, if we get lucky you can just manage most a the time, well, after we open that is. First weekend all three of us'll be down here working the floor." He seemed very pleased with himself. "Have ye ever managed a store? Er managed anything?" This though had just occurred to him, he'd have to demote her if she'd never done any leading.
"Ah…I was Quidditch captain, can't be worse than managing a store…Wait three of us! You need more than three employees! This place is huge! How are we going to make sure the product doesn't waltz out of here in little boys pockets? How are you going to stop a riot? Explain what everything does? What are we even selling? Have you thought this out properly? Had any business schooling? Done mathematics?" Her wild tirade may have continued id Fred and not picked her up.
"Captain is fine, now, the rooms not that big missy, it just looks big cause it's mostly empty. Now theft isn't anything to worry about, there are anti-theft charms-" He was walking to the back of the store, and for a millisecond Mira enjoyed her upside-down view of Fred's rear.
"Wait just a minute boss, my aunt owns a store and she's got them anti-theft charms and they only work half of the time in big crowds."
"Yes, well, Fred and I have modified them…No worries princess. Riots we'll stop with knockout powder-"
"Knockout powder? Is that an English thing cause they don't use it in the states."
"It's a Weasley twin thing. Now shut up. We sell prank assistants, school skipping aids…Anything Fred and I find amusing really."
"I thought you were Fred." Mira's brain was spinning as he set her down on a stool.
"I am, shut up. Of course we've though this out! We've been working on it since we were born. Why would we need schooling to run a joke shop? We graduated from Hogwarts…"
"No we didn't…Dumbledore just said we did. I'm George, yer our manager?" Now there were two redheads, standing next to each other, the new one, George was carrying a box.
"Hi, nice to meet you, ya'll need nametags…" She muttered the last part to herself.
"I trust George has now explained that most of this you will not understand until you've seen, experienced, and helped create these things yourself. These are our uniforms," he said with a grin as he opened the box of black t-shirts.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good?" Mira asked, looking at them in confusion.
"Mischief Managed!" They boys said at the same time. Mira suppressed a shudder.
"Do I want to know?" She asked with a yawn.
"It's a quote from the Mauraders map." They said together, as if that explained it. One of Mira's tree colored eyebrows rose of its own accord.
"It's a map of Hogwarts-"
"Created by the Marauders-"
"Who were the best pranksters in-"
"Hogwarts history."
"We owe them everything." The pair finished in unison.
"And what does this map do? No offense, anyone can draw a map, so what makes this map so wonderful?" She asked, understanding that the map did something, just not what.
"It shows everyone,"
"Everywhere,"
"And what they're doing."
"Within Hogwarts?" They both nodded enthusiastically. "Trippy, so you've pledged your allegiance to these, Marauders then?" Again the boys nodded. "Another question, what does this have to do with the shirt?" Both boys blanched.
"The password is 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Fred said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"And to erase it so that no one else can see you say 'Mischief Managed'." George said.
"And the general public knows this?"
"No! Are ye daft Woman!"
A/N: So I've always wondered about the Weasley twins…So I'm writing it. Any suggestions are welcome. And if anyone knows where to find a list of all the things the Weasley's have invented let me know?