Author's Note: Because when Gueneviere asked me how Brevity was going, I couldn't remember when my last update had been. Without further ado, I bring you some fun with Fred and George…and, next chapter, a return to your regularly scheduled angstfest.

Be forewarned; Brevity is beginning it's spiral into completion.

Thanks!

Menolly

Chapter Twelve: A Bit of Insight

Later that afternoon, there was a loud knock on the front door. Hermione and Lupin, where they were sitting at the kitchen table, looked up in some alarm, but Mrs. Granger moved forward to answer it immediately. "Mum," began Hermione, raising a warning hand. Lupin knew that after the Death Eater attacks, she felt far from comfortable with unexpected visitors, and he didn't blame her at all.

Mrs. Granger, however, ignored her. She pulled open the door, and a pair of very familiar, friendly voices greeted her immediately.

"Good afternoon," came a bright male voice from just outside. "Is this the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Granger?"

Hermione shrieked with delight, and was on her feet and at her mother's side before Lupin had a chance to blink. Mrs. Granger stepped aside to make way for her guests, and, freckled and beaming as always, Fred and George Weasley strode into the room.

"Hullo, Hermione, Remus," said Fred. "Did you miss us?"

"I expect they did," added George, "seeing as there aren't any other wizards or witches living in these parts. It must get mighty dull around here, come to think of it."

"We can't have that, can we?" asked Fred. "Never fear, my dears, Fred and George are here!"

Mrs. Granger coughed politely from over by the counter, and Fred and George both turned to look at her.

"Good gracious," exclaimed George, in mock horror, "where on earth are our manners? Mrs. Granger, I assume?"

"I'm George," said Fred, extending a hand towards her in greeting, "and this is my brother Fred."

"A pleasure to meet you, George," said Mrs. Granger, shaking Fred's hand.

"You too, of course!" agreed George. Mrs. Granger glanced at him, frowning in some uncertainty. Hermione, uncharacteristically, giggled.

"How are you?" Lupin asked George, shaking his hand and gesturing for him to take the chair to Lupin's left. "How are Molly and Arthur, and the others? Have you seen much of them?"

"No," said George, a bit sadly. "We've been out and about, you know, and there hasn't been a lot of time to check up on the family."

"We'd hoped you could tell us how they were," agreed Fred. "I guess if you've been cooped up here – sorry, Hermione – then you wouldn't know any more about it than we would, would you? Ah, well."

"We'd have heard, though," George said, "if anything was amiss, so I'm sure it's all well and good on the home front. Good of you to ask, Remus. I hear the two of you have been up to your necks in exciting happenings, though. You really do have all the luck."

"Hardly the word," muttered Lupin, raising his eyebrows at the inexhaustible twins. He couldn't help but be somewhat alarmed by the appearance of Fred and George. Although smiling merrily and speaking with their usual bombastic fervor, both of them looked very tired, and their faces were creased with worry lines, so that they bore more of a resemblance than ever to their kindly mother.

Hermione must have noticed the change as well. "Where have you been?" she asked, with a good deal of concern in her voice. "You look…well, you look really…" She seemed to be having trouble finding a word, and bit her lip, glancing at her mother as if for some sort of assistance. When none came, she let out an exasperated breath, and added, "Fred, your head is bleeding!"

Lupin glanced up at Fred, and saw that, indeed, there was a nasty looking cut right above Fred's eye that was still dripping blood. Raising his wand, Lupin murmured, "Sanus." Nothing happened. The cut continued to ooze blood.

"Yeah," muttered Fred, "I've tried that already. Didn't do me very much good, as you can see. It's not really all that painful." He rubbed at the wound with one finger as he spoke, and winced, giving the lie to his words.

Mrs. Granger was suddenly at his side, one of her hands running along the side of his forehead next to the cut. Fred blinked at her, startled, but she ignored him, and began plastering a gauze strip across his forehead. "Did no one ever teach you two how to use a band-aid?" she asked, exchanging a look with her daughter. "If you can't make the bleeding disappear, you can at least stop it from getting all over the floor, thank you."

George chuckled, as Fred awkwardly patted the bandage now plastered over his head. "We can see where Hermione gets her mothering ways, can't we, Fred?"

"I thought you said that your name was Fred," Mrs. Granger demanded of George.

"So," asked Lupin, a good quarter of an hour later, after Hermione and Mrs. Granger had provided them with tea and several more spare Muggle bandages, "what exactly happened?"

"You don't want to know," muttered Fred.
"Absolutely disastrous," agreed George, grimacing. "Embarrassing, to tell you the truth and we're no farther along with the Paolini mystery than we were when we started this ill-advised exploration."

"But," insisted Lupin doggedly, "you still haven't explained what it is you've been trying to do."

George shot a guilty look at Mrs. Granger, who let out a long sigh, and then rose from her seat at the table, clearing a couple of cups out of Fred and George's way as she did so. "This is all top secret, and I'm sure I'm not privileged enough to hear the details. I'll just go upstairs and amuse myself, shall I?"

Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but, before she'd even had a chance to speak, Mrs. Granger had left the room. They heard the sound of her bedroom door snapping shut, and Hermione turned on Fred and George with an indignant look.

"She's been through plenty lately, because of me, and because of the Order. Mum's certainly seen and heard enough to be allowed to know what's going on," she said hotly.

Fred shrugged. "I agree," he said simply, "but orders from the Order are…well…orders, you know. No, really," he added, when Hermione looked skeptical. "I know we're not one to pay much attention to figures of authority, but this stuff's serious."

"Nothing to joke around about here, I'm afraid," said George, with an uncharacteristically grim look on his face.

Lupin frowned.

"I think you'd better tell us exactly what's been going on, then," said Hermione calmly, after a moment's pause. "With all of the details, if you please. From the beginning."

George looked at Fred, who shook his head firmly, and said, "No, no, really. Be my guest."

"Okay," sighed George, "well, I guess the main point is that Fred and I have been conducting…covert investigations, if you will, at the Ministry of Magic."

"They were supposed to be covert, anyway," muttered Fred.

"We've been visiting dad at the Ministry for weeks, on and off, just so that we could get a look around," George continued. "Made sense, seeing as we're his sons, and all. Nobody could find anything particularly strange about us bringing him lunch in the afternoons; you know, innocent stuff like that. Well, last night, we figured it was just about time to make our real break in."

"I thought," interrupted Lupin, holding up a hand, "that Arthur and Charlie were responsible for tailing Ms. Paolini, not you two."

"Yeah, well, they were," agreed Fred, "but we figured that it was better if the two of us got into some sort of trouble, so that dad wouldn't lose his job, and subsequently his use to the Order." He looked irritated, and Lupin could imagine why. More than once, he'd wondered how exactly Arthur felt about all of the dangers he'd been through for the Order simply because he happened to be a Ministry official. Fred and George, no doubt, resented what they must consider the abuse of their father very highly. "We stayed behind after everybody else had closed up and gone home for the day, even the security guards. We just hung about in Dad's office for a bit, and then headed up to see if we couldn't get into that Paolini woman's rooms."

"Needless to say," said George, "we couldn't do that. We couldn't' so much as walk in. The moment we'd unlocked the door with that magical knife that Harry lent us, every single book on every single one of the shelves dive bombed us, so w couldn't even see where we were going."

"Awful maniacal witch must have charmed every single piece of furniture in her office," snarled Fred, "so that it would attack anybody who came too close, who didn't look like her. Not entirely sure how we got out of there so thankfully unharmed, to tell the truth. Stroke of pure luck, if you ask me."

Hermione tutted at them, drawing a surprised expression from George. "Well, that was stupid," she said, planting one hand on her hip. "Of course she was going to have the place jinxed, surely you must have been expecting something like that. No doubt if you'd waited a little bit longer and let your father and Charlie do what they were supposed to be doing, you wouldn't have run in to all the trouble."

Fred cast her a resentful look, while George completely ignored her.

"Wait a moment" said George, shaking his head. "We never said the whole thing was totally worthless. Just as we were running for the door, Fred managed to grab this." He reached into the pocket of his robes, and pulled out a small, sleek looking volume. Lupin leaned forward, and read on the cover, The Art of Memory, by Musetta Paolini.

"We reckon it'll help give us a bit of insight into how it is she's bewitching the Ministry to do her bidding," said Fred, smiling with some pride at the book in Lupin's hand. "Course, you're the Dark Arts expert around here, Remus, and no one could do better with that book than you could, so we figured we'd best bring it right over and put it into your keeping."

Lupin couldn't help but feel some genuine excitement as he stared down at the book. For all of the ill-advisedness of Fred's and George's trip into the Ministry, there was no doubt in his mind that this book would be the key to unraveling some of the mystery behind the apparent Death Eater takeover of the Ministry.

"Well," murmured Hermione, also looking at the book, "I mean, if this is one of her published works, then it's hardly something we couldn't get off the shelves at Flourish and Blotts. I can't see how it'll reveal anything the public doesn't already have easy access to."

"Ah," said George, "that's the trick, isn't it? This book isn't one of her best-selling pieces of memory mumbo jumbo. This, my dear Hermione, is the real deal."

"Yeah," agreed Fred, "I expect this is the place where she really keeps all of her good spells. George and I had a quick look at it ourselves, and we've never heard of anyone other than Albus Dumbledore doing anything this complex with memory modification before. Never fear, this is what we're looking for."

But, thought Lupin, biting his lip, if no one but Dumbledore has ever managed to work with spells like these, then what exactly does everyone expect me to do with it?

"Well," said Fred, glancing down at his watch, "I think it's time that George and I got going back to Headquarters. Wouldn't want to worry anyone, as we haven't been back since our botched break in."

"Do tell mum hello for us, if you see here, won't you?" added George. "Take care of yourselves, you two. And don't do anything that we wouldn't do!"

As they both raised their wands over their heads, Fred glanced at George, and asked, "What exactly would we not do, George?"

"Dunno," said George, with a shrug, and then both of them turned in a circle, and vanished into thin air.

Hermione put a hand on Lupin's forearm, taking his attention away from the book, which he still hadn't convinced himself to open. "Let's take it upstairs," she suggested, "so that we can look at it in better light."

Lupin wasn't sure he wanted to look at it at all. Half of him had absolutely no desire to know what kind of powerful magic they were up against, so that he'd still be able to harbor that little bit of hope that he held so dear.