As luck would have it, before Molly had the chance to punish the twins, a large brown owl swooped into the house through an open window. It went straight to her, holding out a talon on which was strapped a piece of parchment. She removed it, read it, and was visibly calm when she folded it back up.
"What happened?" Fred asked, trying to get into a discussion long enough to make his mother forget the punishment she'd been thinking up.
"Half the Order is accounted for, at least," Molly said. "Sirius and Lupin are staying at Grimauld Place for a while, making sure they know what's going on. Most of the others are staying where they are for the moment, but a few are coming here this evening."
"Who's coming?" George asked. One could see why he and Fred would be curious - if nothing else, at least one person was certain to be fair game.
"Moody and Professor McGonagall," Molly explained. "I expect ALL of you to behave properly, understand?"
The other teenagers nodded their heads. The twins, however, grew wide-eyed, and looks of scheming tainted the effect. They hadn't yet pulled anything on Moody, possibly because they valued their lives, but there was a first time for everything. Their take on McGonagall was along the same lines. Hands down, this was going to be an experience.
---
When Minerva McGonagall arrived at the Burrow at six that evening, she was unsurprised by the general look of chaos the place had. Slightly more surprising was the sight of Hermione Granger chasing a cat that seemed to have something gnome-like in its mouth, but McGonagall understood cats better than most people so this wasn't lost on her. She knocked on the front door thrice, and nearly fainted when it opened. The fact that Luna Lovegood opened the door had nothing to do with this - McGonagall had been responsible for putting her with the group in the first place. Instead, it was the sight of Fred and George Weasley trying to catch a herd of guinea pigs and failing.
"Hello, Professor McGonagall," Luna chirped, being uncharacteristically polite.
"What in the world is going on in here?" McGonagall asked, incredulous.
"My brothers turned the family heirlooms into guinea pigs and set a dozen gnomes loose in the house," Ginny Weasley said, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
"And your mother's reaction?"
"Panic, but a letter explaining what was going on with people came the second before she could hex them into oblivion."
"And would one of you care to explain why Miss Granger is chasing a cat?" McGonagall realized that she was speaking to the two girls who would know what was going on, and there had to be an explanation somewhere.
"Fred and George trained her cat to catch gnomes," Luna chirped, "at least that's what she thinks happened. She's going to catch the cat before she tries to kill them."
"Ah, Minerva," Molly Weasley said, "good to see you."
"The same to you, Molly," McGonagall said, silently placing a few protective spells on herself. She had spent six and a half years dealing with the Weasley twins, and had as much a fear as anyone of the damage they would do in this situation.
A loud CRASH indicated that Tonks had finally come downstairs. She had taken on the younger girls' project of trying to turn the attic into proper living space, believing it to be safer than trying to catch guinea pigs. Unfortunantely, she hadn't accounted for assorted things that Fred and George had placed up there at some point in the past, including something that seemed to be a punching telescope. She was off-balance as she gave up, so it was only natural that she would go crashing into a lamp.
"There is something up there," she gasped as she tried to get on her feet. "I don't know what it is, but I have a good idea who put it up there and I certainly know what it does."
Fred and George did a double take. "Ah, the telescope that was never meant to work," Fred remembered. "We're real sorry about that one; it was meant for Percy but we never could get it to go off when we wanted to..."
"A punching telescope?" Molly screamed. "You could have warned someone!"
"Mum, if we'd warned someone, the effect would've been lost," George said, trying to defend the project.
"I'm not going to punish you two," Molly said, and everyone stared at her. "No, you victimized someone who is perfectly capable of dealing with you herself. She decides what you get for this, not me."
"In that case," Tonks said, unsure of her new power, "you'd better tell Hermione why her cat's using a gnome as a chew toy. It might also help if you found that herd of guinea pigs..."
Fred and George looked at each other as though they had just been given death sentences. Hermione was a by-the-book sort of girl, but she'd still kill them over the cat affair. And as for the guinea pigs... Something told them that using magic to find them was off limits. It would not end well.
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A/N: Hopefully I cleared up the question I got a lot with the last chapter, which was along the lines of, 'Where's the rest of the Order?'. Keep reviewing! A huge thanks goes to sick-at-heartxx (I did get that right, didn't I?) for pointing out the brilliance of the guinea pigs and the gnomes.