It was dark outside, except for the moon shinning down from behind thin clouds and the dim light from the kitchen windows. They had snuck outside after desert having spoken with significant looks at each other over their bread-and-butter pudding.
"If mum catches us"
"She won't. At least she won't as long as you keep your big mouth shut"
"Of course I will! But...we can't"
"Can't what? Bit scared, are ya"
"No"
Fred and George exchanged a grin, they were in their third year at Hogwarts now and were getting a bit too smart for their own good, in Ron's personal opinion. They had just had their double 13th birthday and were now in full swing of making their own spells and enchantments up from scratch. It was amazing really, especially now they had a thing called.
"Here, take one." George pulled the packet from his pocket, revealing a packet of cigarettes. They had seen Muggles with them and then somehow they had got their hands on a packet, Lee Gorden had helped out somehow, and then they had 'improved them', so to say, and offered Ron the chance to try them out before they got back to school.
Ron reached out a hand slowly as his older brothers watched and cautiously took one of the curious white, soft sticks, and then looked at it while Fred nudged his twin.
"Do you know what to do with it?" George asked with a laugh.
Ron didn't answer straight away, he had an inkling, but knew whatever he said they'd just laugh anyway.
"You light it." Fred told him with an annoying air of knowledge in his voice. "Here." he muttered a word to his wand and it lit up imediately with a flicker of a flame, which he held to the end of Ron's cigarette. "You have to inhale on it so it lights." he added after a long moment of Ron standing there, holding it with a slow look on his face. "This isn't the same as your turning a rat yellow spell, is it?" Ron asked warily, he'd never forget that day he had made a fool of himself. On the first day he had ever met Harry and Hermione as well! Oh what had Hermione really thought of him? Harry hadn't known any better, coming from a Muggle family...but.
George snickered and flicked out a cigarette for himself, leaning over the flame and sucking it in until the end lit and he drew back, looking at Ron with a smarmy grin who copied him immediately, making Fred chuckle as he pulled one out for himself.
"See! Now so hard now, is it"
"I thought..." Ron muttered, then shook his head, not bothering to continue. So, this was it, was it?
"And now you're smoking!" Fred nudged Ron with a grin. "Pity it's not a real one, these are charmed so they're filled only with chocolate, you know."