Several weeks passed. Christmas was marked by a small display of fireworks by the twins, no more and no less. An uneasy silence took over the Burrow, followed by a sense of impending doom. No one took this harder than Tonks, who somehow seemed at peace and yet very, very worried. She took to pacing around aimlessly and saying very crypitic things, which was unnerving at best and downright terrifying at worst.

Tension and fear grew in the house until one day in mid-January, when an owl came bearing a day-old Daily Prophet. The only reason for the appearance of the newspaper, everyone figured, was because someone else in the Order thought they needed to see it - and they were right. The long-awaited storm had come in the form of ten or so escaped prisoners. After reading the news of this dreadful event, everyone gathered in the sitting room, each responding in their own way.

"Guess we really are doomed," Fred muttered after taking in the news.

"Right on," George added. "I believe it's time to locate that bucket list we made last summer and do as much of it as we can."

"Bucket list?" Hermione was bemused, but also a little on-edge.

"What, you've never heard of that sort of thing?" Fred asked incredulously. "George and I got the idea in some book we flipped through last year."

"A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die," George explained. "And we didn't make ours last summer, Fred - Christmas Eve, if I remember right."

The twins disappeared for a few moments, then returned with a rather long piece of parchment. "What were we thinking?" Fred asked George as he unrolled the list. "Half of this is stuff that requires our lifespans to be a lot longer than they seem to be."

"In that case," George replied, "we focus on the fun things. Here's a really clever one - the destruction of the shed."

"I don't believe we're fatalistic enough to try that, at least not yet. Now this, however, is an option." The item Fred's finger was on read 'get Hermione to approve of something we do', and he knew it would take a long time to pull that off. Still, two clever seventeen-year-old boys against one by-the-book fifteen-year-old girl is a fairer match than most people realize.

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Fred and George's unveiling of their bucket list spawned an unexpected result - everyone else, at least all the other teenagers, figured making such a list might be brilliant. Several hours later (by now about mid-afternoon), the three girls sat on boxes in the attic, making their lists.

"Let me see," Ginny said, grabbing Luna's piece of parchment and reading it intently. "Oooh, this is good! 'Thing seven - kiss a boy.' How innocent ARE you?"

"I don't exactly see every half-decent boy that crosses my path as an option, if that's what you mean," Luna replied, blissfully oblivious.

"I don't see every half-decent boy that crosses my path as an option," Ginny said defensively. "Just the ones close enough to my age that I could get them. It'd be my luck that of all the guys in that category, I have to really be after the only one who doesn't see me..."

Hermione sent Ginny a warning glance, knowing where the conversation was headed. It was one thing for Ginny to defend her tecniques for finding boys, and it would be quite another if she brought up that sore subject. "Ginny, do you really believe that there's a boy at school that doesn't see you?" Hermione asked, trying to make the conversation light again.

"You know what I mean," Ginny muttered, smirking a little. "Trust me, you know exactly what I mean. And for the moment, Luna, you don't, and Hermione will probably kill me if I even start explaining the tangled mess known as liking the one guy I can't get. Just don't ask, okay?"

"I wasn't really interested," Luna chirped. "I'd like it a lot better if you didn't try to turn my relative innocence into a joke, though."

"Not a problem," Ginny smiled.

A sound vaguely reminiscent of the explosion of a small bomb, which seemed to be coming from downstairs, sent the girls flying to see what had happened...

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A/N: teaser at the end for the next chapter. Now I HAVE to update at some point in the near future. Reviews are very welcome, as are suggestions.