Chapter 7

Travelling by Floo was a novel experience. I had been half-afraid that I'd stutter like Harry had—or would—and come spilling out of a random fireplace somewhere but the journey from the Leaky Cauldron to the Burrow went exactly as planned.

Before Hogwarts had finished for the year and the notes banning the practice of magic over the holidays had been handed out, Bill had asked if I'd like to visit his family for a few days. I dithered over it for a short while but had eventually agreed. The arrangement that Bill had proposed was that I would make my way to the Leaky Cauldron via muggle transport—buses around London weren't that expensive, fortunately—and the Weasleys would meet me there and bring me the rest of the way using the Floo network.

Despite the anxiety that surfaced every time I had to find my own way to anywhere, I made it to the Leaky Cauldron in plenty of time. There, I met Bill, Charlie and an older man that they introduced as their father. Mr Weasley was as enthusiastic to meet someone who'd grown up around Muggles as he'd been in the books and had plied me with questions over a mug of Butterbeer that Bill had ordered before he had a chance to stop him.

It was honestly a bit refeshing—if a tad stressful—to be the one explaining things and answering questions instead of listening to explanations and asking questions. My general knowledge was sufficiently broad that I could field most of Mr Weasley's questions about cars, planes, telephones and the postal service. When Bill started tapping his wristwatch, I promised to tell Mr Weasley about the internet once we got to the Burrow. I was genuinely interested in discussing it with him as I had a few ideas for creating such a network magically that I wanted to get his opinion on.

The Floo had roared in my ears and forced me to screw my eyes shut as it spun around me. When the sound died away and I opened my eyes, I was in the Burrow.

The Weasley kitchen was cluttered and untidy. Books were strewn across the table, clothes hung off pieces of furniture and stacks of dishes stood by the sink. But the whole place was spotlessly clean. The room was warm and messy, it gave a sense of being lived-in and welcoming.

To be truly honest, I hadn't ever expected to set foot in the Burrow. My plan, such as it was, had mainly involved keeping as passive a role as possible until the events of canon had been played out. I planned on fighting if need be but even then I had only ever pictured myself staying with the Order in Hogwarts or Grimmauld Place. My mind had leapt a bit too far ahead, it seemed, and had skimmed over the intervening years in Hogwarts entirely. Living in the moment had never been a talent of mine.

Bill, Charlie and Arthur Weasley stepped out of the fireplace behind me. With four people moving about in the kitchen enough noise was created to draw the attention of Molly Weasley, who arrived in the room with a young girl trailing after her and chattering away.

"Arthur! You said you'd be back almost an hour ago. If it weren't for the clock I'd have started calling out a search party for you," Mrs Weasley said, glaring briefly at her husband before softening and pulling him into a hug. "Really dear, you could at least have Floo'd a message if you'd gotten delayed."

"My apologies, Molly," Mr Weasley said, pulling away a bit sheepishly. "Poe had quite a lot to say about the workings of air-oh-playings and I lost track of time. I'll be more considerate in future."

"No harm done, I wasn't putting dinner on the table for another few hours anyway," Mrs Weasley said, turning towards me with a smile. In spite of myself, I nearly took a step back.

As friendly and generous as Molly Weasley could be, I couldn't forget that she'd killed Bellatrix Lestrange with a Stunning spell so powerful it stopped her heart. A non-verbal Stunning spell at that. Drawing Mrs Weasley's anger—or worse, her hatred—was something to avoid at all costs, just below trying to duel Voldemort one-on-one.

"Poe, dear, it's a pleasure to meet you. Bill and Charlie have told us about you."

"I'm Ginny," the girl—now identified as Ginny, as if I needed the confirmation—"and is it true you hexed Bill and Charlie at once?"

I grinned at that. Midway through the last term, I'd managed to catch Bill with a Tongue-Tying Curse, dodge Charlie's follow-up and hit him with the same spell. While they were both unable to speak, I successfully encased them both in solid ice. Of course, once they thawed they got their revenge by ganging up on me to tie me in ropes and hang me from the ceiling for ten minutes while they got hot drinks. Bill had told me afterwards that it was the second year in a row that he'd wound up frozen solid.

"Thank you for having me, Mrs Weasley," I said, careful not to stutter. "And yes, Ginny, I did manage to get them both at once. Not sure they'll let me pull it off again."

"If you continue to improve like that we'll hand you off to the twins when we get back," Bill said, grinning as he sat on the edge of the table. "Either you'll keep them under control or they'll keep you too busy to keep bothering us. A win-win situation."

"Unless they form an alliance," Charlie added. A moment later, he and Bill had identical expressions of horror on their faces.

I was pretty sure I was grinning like the cat that got the canary. I heard Ginny snickering behind her hands while her parents shook their heads in exasperation.

The Burrow would probably wear on me after a while. With so many extremely-social people around it was inevitable. But, for the moment, it was good to be around friendly people.

—tN—tN—tN—

As a guest in her house, Mrs Weasley was quite insistent on refusing to let me help with the housework, even as I felt obligated to do something to earn my keep during my stay. We reached a compromise whereby I went with Arthur to his sort through his collection of 'muggle artefacts'. I didn't feel like I was contributing much but it gave me another chance to talk with Mr Weasley so I went along with it.

In spite of Mr Weasley's portrayal in the books as an eccentric with little understanding of how the Muggle world worked, I found him to be an intelligent and inquisitive man of considerable passion. In a different world, he would have been a rather benign example of a mad scientist. I'm sure you know the type, they're the ones that do things 'just to see what would happen' and then get worried when the consequences spiral out of their control.

That may be a tad unfair of me, not to mention a bit of a stretch of the metaphor. His canon experiments had rarely gone too badly wrong. Even the Ford Angelia had only gone astray after it had been stolen and pushed to its limits by a pair of inexperienced young wizards.

Therefore, my first few hours on my first full day in the Burrow was spent having a delightful discussion about muggle computers.

"So you're saying that inside those boxes are little blocks called See Pee Yous? And inside those are little cards with thousands of little switches made of metal that it uses to calculate things very fast?" Mr Weasley said, jotting down notes onto a labelled diagram of a basic computer.

"That's roughly it, Mr Weasley. It's more complicated than that and I can't remember the specifics of how or why that works, but that is the gist of it," I said, reaching over to correct 'fatherboard' to 'motherboard'.

"Truly remarkable... And this has to do with the Thinkernet you were talking about yesterday?"

"Yes. You see, one computer by itself can accomplish a lot, but you can accomplish a lot more but putting lots of computers together. If I remember correctly, the internet grew from a muggle military project. The problem they had was that they were storing lots of information on computers that they couldn't risk falling into enemy hands. But they also couldn't risk letting it be destroyed.

"So what they did was, they put computers in several other places and let them talk to each other—"

"Like with a tellyphone?"

"Yes, a lot like that. Except that computers use a code made out of flashes of electricity in order to communicate a lot faster than sound. So by putting several computers together, they could store part of the information on each one. If anyone in any of the sites needed a piece of information that wasn't stored there, the computer on site would ask the computer that did have the information to pass it on. And there were passwords that you needed to have before you could access the information to keep it secure. Does that all make sense?"

"Yes... Yes, I think it does!" Mr Weasley said, beaming at the acquisition of new knowledge. "And you say that you want to make something like this using magic?"

"Sort of. It's looking a lot like it'll take advanced magic for it to work though," I said, adjusting myself to sit more comfortably.

"What was the general idea you had in mind? I must admit that my own knowledge has its limits, but I can probably point you in the right direction."

"Okay, what I had in mind to start with was a set of books. The idea I had was that you could connect the books magically so that any of the books could show you anything written in any of the other books. I read about something called a Protean Charm that looks like it could be useful, but I don't think it'll be enough by itself."

Mr Weasley put aside his notebook for a moment and stroked his chin, apparently deep in thought.

"Yes, I think I can see the sort of thing you're talking about. It definitely seems like it could be useful, but you'd have to be careful. If you used the spell on a book written by somebody else then you could be pulled up on copyright violation if the publishers got wind of it. You may be able to argue that you aren't really copying the book, just making notes of it or viewing it from a distance, but it could be a tough sell."

I frowned at that. I hadn't given too much thought to the legal side of some of my ideas but of course Mr Weasley—as an employee of the Ministry of Magic—would think of problems like that. I actually conceived of the idea as means of passing notes between people, a bit like a pen-and-paper (or quill-and-parchment) version of a discussion forum. But if it could be abused as Mr Weasley said then there could be problems. I made a note of the issue in my own notebook and moved onto the next item I wanted to get Mr Weasley's perspective on.

"Okay, leaving that for the moment, how viable do you think it'd be to create a set of watches that carry peoples' voices to each other over long distances?"

"Like a portable Fellytone?"

"Exactly!"

—tN—tN—tN—

If it had been a bit unnerving to meet with Bill and Charlie, it was downright unsettling to sit around the same dinner table as Ron, Ginny and the twins. Percy was there as well of course but he didn't get quite the same level of attention in the books and films as the others did so talking with him didn't induce quite the same effect.

To be honest, Percy was quite pleasant to talk with. He was the closest to me in age and was eager to talk about going to Hogwarts next year. While he had been a bit disapproving when Bill and Charlie had regaled the table with the tales of our various practice duels he'd eventually come to the conclusion that if it was part of a study session overseen by a prefect then it was probably okay.

"I've heard that Transfiguration is quite difficult, is that true?" he asked in between mouthfuls of food.

"Transfiguration is quite heavy on the theory side of things, there are a lot more formulae and rules to bear in mind than in Charms," I said, explaining as best I could. "It's all consistent though and Professor McGonagall is good at explaining things. I know she has a reputation for being strict but she's pretty reasonable and willing to help you if you're having trouble and ask her for help. I think she'd be more annoyed if you were struggling and didn't ask for help, to be honest."

"I see, I see. What about Potions? Bill and Charlie always complain about Professor Snape, but he can't be that bad, can he?"

"Professor Snape is..." I hesitated, trying to measure my words and not sound too much older than I appeared. "He isn't a very good teacher. He's undoubtedly very skilled in his subject and is quick to recognise where a potion has been brewed wrong and how to avoid repeating the mistake but he... Doesn't seem to like teaching. I've heard that he wants the Defence Against the Dark Arts post, so maybe that's it but he never seems happy in class.

"He's quick to mock and point out the mistakes of students but almost never gives out praise except to his own house. Actually, that's another thing. He tends to be heavily biased in favour of Slytherin and against Gryffindor. If a Slytherin messes around in class they'll be warned at most or ignored. A Gryffindor student will be singled out, mocked, baited, then assigned a detention and docked points. He's very miserly with points too.

"I'm not that sure his teaching method is a very good one either. Practical lessons usually consist of him putting a recipe up on the board and then waiting for someone to make a mistake to point it out to everyone. The theory lessons consist of lectures and random quizzes. Which, like I said before, are quite heavily biased. I've tried asking questions in class before but he just ignored them or docked points or..."

I trailed off when I realised that the entire table was listening to my rant. The awkward silence was broken by an embarrassed cough from Mr Weasley.

"My apologies, Bill, Charlie, I thought you were just exaggerating."

"If only," Charlie said, snorting. "If anything, Poe's underselling it. Snape doesn't like Poe, but he doesn't dislike Poe either."

"Poe doesn't make mistakes and keeps their head down in class outside of those few incidents with the questions," Bill said, taking over. "Students who haven't sought help outside of class or who aren't able to keep themselves as quiet have a much harder time."

"That does sound a bit worrying," Mrs Weasley said, frowning. "But there's plenty more at Hogwarts beyond that one class so there's no need to get into a fuss about it. Now, tell me about what happened to Professor Babic again. She couldn't seriously have picked a fight with a statue, could she?"

Bill took up the story of the senile Defence teacher's last day, leaving the subject of Snape behind. Inside, I was wondering if I'd inadvertently caused a change in the course of events. If the Weasleys hadn't been aware of the extent of Snape's teaching practices before and raised a fuss now... But no, I doubted anything would come of it.

I resolved to try and slip a letter of warning to Dumbledore regardless.

—tN—tN—tN—

Ron Weasley was far from being a Death Eater, but he wasn't a terribly pleasant person to be around either. Admittedly that may have just been me being overly-sensitive, but I wasn't fond of people who only seemed to talk about Quidditch.

Ron liked to talk about the Chudley Cannons, about the games he'd been to, heard about, read about, wanted to watch. I could respect his passion and the depth of his knowledge of his sport, but it made it very difficult for me to spend any time with him without snapping. And I didn't want to do that to the Weasleys, not when they were so kind to me overall.

Also, it had occurred to me after the third time that Ron had struck up a one-sided conversation about Quidditch that there may be more to Ron's apparent obsession than one-dimensionality. I was a young student that had earned the respect of Ron's cool older brothers. Who had managed to beat them both in a duel, apparently. I talked to Mr Weasley about strange muggle things for hours and seemed to enjoy it. I'd done what Bill and Charlie had failed to do and made his parents take the stories about Snape seriously.

I was—in short—a Muggle-born who nonetheless seemed vastly more competent and capable than him. And, just as he'd done when he'd first been confronted with the prospect of a conversation alone with Harry Potter, he defaulted to his area of expertise, to Quidditch. And that was something I could sympathise with.

Unfortunately, it didn't actually make it any easier to keep my temper in check through the umpteenth iteration of how cool the Chudley Cannons were.

—tN—tN—tN—

I was rescued from the conversation by the arrival of the twins.

Mid-sentence, Ron faltered then leapt up from where he sat and backed out of the room, whimpering all the way with his eyes fixed on some spot over my shoulder.

Knowing as I did about Ron's arachnophobia, I could make an educated guess about what I would find behind me, though I drew my wand just to be safe. Sure enough, the wall behind me was adorned by a series of eight-legged shadows that were slowly growing in size. Looking around a bit more, I found one of the twins hiding behind a pile of laundry, a bunch of paper spiders on sticks in one hand and a mirror in the other.

His cover blown and his intended target out of the room, he stowed the items he'd used to torment his younger brother, clambered to his feet and came over to join me on the couch. The other twin slipped in the other side of me while I was looking the other way, nearly earning himself a poke in the eye when I turned suddenly.

"Hey, be careful where you wave that stick around, won't you!" the second twin said, leaning back and waving his hand in front of his face in an overly-dramatic manner.

"You're a polaroid one, aren't you, drawing your wand just to deal with some ickle spiders?" the first twin added, waving a paper spider in front of me to see if I'd react.

I forced myself not to respond by setting it on fire or turning it into an actual spider. I could probably get away with the magic—from a legal perspective, at least—but it would be an overreaction. While I was relieved to be free of the mindless Quidditch prattle, I was still wound up from it and the twins were doing a good job of provoking me. I wasn't too happy with their abuse of their brother's phobia either.

I settled for just saying "Polaroid?" in as deadpan a tone as I could manage.

"You know, like Mad-Eye Moody," the first twin said.

"Means you're scared of nothing and keep blowing stuff up at random," the other one added in a hushed tone, as if delivering bad news.

"Oh, you mean 'paranoid'. I thought you were calling me a camera," I said, counting down slowly from a hundred in my head. By the time I reached the mid-seventies I was feeling a bit less likely to lash out.

"Ah, what an easy mistake to make with someone so flashy and—" The first one broke off and looked expectantly at his twin, who seemed to fumble for words for a moment before continuing.

"Someone as flashy and useful as you?"

"What kind of insult is 'useful'? Couldn't you come up with something better?" the first one said, clearly barely keeping from groaning.

"Hey, you didn't give me any time to think of anything better. Besides, 'flashy'? Isn't that a compliment too?"

The bickering twins were a sharp reminder that Fred and George were not yet the smooth double act that they'd been in canon. I'd make the case that they weren't a smooth anything yet. In spite of myself, I found that I was smiling, my tension disappearing.

"Do you mind introducing yourselves, please? I can't remember which of you is which," I said, interrupting their argument.

Breaking off their spat immediately, they sprouted identical grins—everything about them was identical—and started speaking together again with much more success.

"My apologies, honoured guest—"

"—for forcing you to watch our squabbles. To your right is—"

"—the most handsome Fred Weasley and to your left is—"

"—his smarter twin, George Weasley."

They stopped, clearly proud of themselves for pulling off their little performance properly this time. I thought for a moment, then took a gamble.

"The first one that spoke, the one on my right, is actually George and the second one, standing to my left, is Fred, right?"

Their smiles crumpled, confirming my guess. In spite of myself, I was grinning properly. It wasn't very nice of me to feel good about outsmarting a pair of eight-year-olds but it was better than losing my temper and trying to hex them.

"Here, sit down. You'll be at Hogwarts in a few years, right? I've heard a few stories and learnt a few things that you might find useful."

Bill and Charlie had been right to fear an alliance. I'd have to thank them for the idea somehow.

—tN—tN—tN—

I wasn't entirely convinced that magic hadn't been used to persuade my carers to let me stay with the Weasleys but whatever Mr Weasley had done, it had its limits.

It was just as well, really. At the end of my fifth and last day in the Burrow, I was beginning to feel a bit strained to keep civil. Bill and Charlie were as easy to talk to as ever and Percy had proved to be quite friendly—if a bit eager. The twins were on their way to swearing eternal loyalty to me and even Ron had agreed to keep the Quidditch talk to a minimum after I got the twins to swear off using his fear of spiders against him and let him beat me a few times at chess. I hadn't spoken as much with Ginny except to answer a barrage of questions about duelling and flying lessons at Hogwarts.

Arthur and I had a few other chats during my stay and each of us had acquired a great many pages of notes from each other. We considered it a mutually beneficial association. Molly was busy most of the time amd hadn't said much to me aside from a few discreet inquiries about how I was treated at the home. I thought I defused whatever worries she had but a part of me still worried that I'd return from Hogwarts to find that they'd been visited by an angry witch seeking to rectify whatever deficiencies she found. It was a bit heartwarming that she cared. It was a bit aggravating to have to find polite ways of turning down extra portions at every meal.

After waving goodbye to them all and agreeing to keep in touch—somehow—I stepped after Arthur through the Floo to the Leaky Cauldron. Once he was sure I'd come through the Network okay, he wished me the best of luck and Apparated away, presumably to work.

I intended to catch a bus back to the home immediately but Albus Dumbledore had other plans.