Part the Third, In Which Things Stop Being Quite So Funny

The jokes died down for a couple of days because big things were going on.

"It's Friday!" Ginny sang, a bit shrill for George's half-asleep ears but nevertheless justified.

"What about Friday?" Fred grumbled, his own ears probably more than half-asleep, but George was nudging him awake alongside Ginny now, just as excited.

"Friday, Friday," he repeated pointedly, and then Fred realized what was going on and jolted awake.

"Friday?"

"Friday!"

Shooing their sister out of their room, George and Fred got dressed and Apparated down to the dining room, where Lupin ended up walking straight into them as they appeared in his path.

"Whoa, whoa, what's the big to-do?" he said, catching himself against the stair railing.

"Bill's coming today!"

"Bill's back!"

"Home from Egypt!"

"Working here in England now!"

George had nearly forgotten he could Apparate - he'd forgotten a lot of things. Most of what he remembered were faint whispers of the odd dream he'd been having, and Bill. Bill. Soon he and Fred had filled their plates with food and were looking for a place to sit, anxious to get on with their day, going to be on edge until their oldest brother arrived.

Ginny was sitting at the end of the table closest to the window, no doubt hoping she'd be able to see outside and catch the first glimpse of him. Her hand was distractedly lifting toast to her mouth, and her bites were small and slow. Lupin had sat across the table from her, looking perplexed.

"Forgive me if this is a bit insensitive," he said, "but why exactly are you all so excited?"

"Bill's brilliant," Ginny gushed almost immediately.

George sat down next to Ginny, and Fred next to Lupin. "If I had to pick a favorite brother...well, I'd pick him," said Fred, gesturing across to George.

"But we don't really count for each other."

"So after that, it has to be Bill."

"But what makes him so special?" Lupin pressed.

"Dunno," said Fred. "Guess we've got most in common with him?"

"Yeah, the most we have in common with Charlie is red hair and Quidditch," George agreed. "But it's more than that, somehow."

"It's just some kind of...thing that makes him really, really swell," Ginny said, her eyes never leaving the window. "You ever meet someone like that? Where you just think they're brilliant and you don't have any idea why?"

"Moony!" called Sirius from the doorway. "Going to the kitchen, want some more tea?"

"Yes, thank you," said Lupin, smiling back at him for a moment before rejoining the conversation with a cough. "Er, I suppose maybe I have, yes."

"Well that's Bill," said Ginny. "You'll know it when you see him, I swear."

"I reckon if Bill weren't our brother, Ginny'd fancy him," Fred teased.

"He is our brother and you two still fancy him," she shot back, rounding on the two of them.

"Look, there he is!" Fred cried, pointing at the window. "Saw him first!"

"Oh, damn!" Ginny hissed, whirling around immediately, but George and Fred were just laughing - there was clearly no one there.

"Easy," they said together, smiling across the table at each other.

"Ooh, I hate you two sometimes. Or most times."

Sirius reappeared then with the tea, but he didn't sit down, just sort of hovered behind Lupin and eyed Fred and George in turn. It was making George feel a little uneasy so he said the first thing he could think of to break the silence.

"Done your sheets then, have you?"

Fred sniggered.

"Yes," said Sirius, looking torn between being unamused and quite amused indeed. "And your quilt, there?"

"Had to," said George, "after all that."

"What are you on about?" said Ginny, rolling her eyes.

Fred opened his mouth to explain, and George could see a spectacular lie forming on his lips, but the explanation wasn't necessary as their father bustled into the room with the announcement everyone was waiting for.

"Come on, you lot, your brother's here!"

"What?"

"Where?"

"How'd he get past?"

"Flooed in," he said, "by the master bedroom. Not too hard to do once Dumbledore had told him the Secret I suppose. Head on up, then, don't just leave him standing around with that poor hippogriff!"

But George was way ahead of his father - he reached across the table and took his brother's hand, and they Apparated up at once, leaving their irate sister in the dining room calling them cheaters. With a crack, George and then Fred rematerialized on the third floor in the doorway of the master bedroom, where their oldest brother was bowing to Buckbeak, trying to earn forgiveness for his intrusion. When he stood upright again, he noticed them, and flashed a grin.

"Oi, you two!"

"Oi!" they both cried, rushing to embrace him. It had been a couple years since they had seen Bill in the flesh, but he was still as amazing as ever. He was quite tall - he was so far the only one of them who had overtaken their father in height, though George supposed that Ron might do so fairly soon as well. His hair, though cut a little bit shorter, still sat in its ponytail at the base of his neck, and the dragon fang still glinted from his ear. He'd also done something that no other Weasley to George's knowledge had ever managed to do, which was tan - just the barest hint of freckles still across his cheekbones, most of them merging together and darkening his skin. In that moment, George was pretty sure he had the coolest brothers ever.

Well, if it weren't for Ron. And Percy. And maybe Charlie. But still.

"Out of my way!" yelped Ginny, finally having made it to the top of the stairs, and she elbowed past the two of them to cling to Bill in an enormous hug of her own. He was smiling more broadly now, and lifted her clean from the floor with a little swing that sent her giggling.

"Am I in time for breakfast?" he asked her.

"Absolutely!" said Ginny.

"Just be careful going down the stairs," Fred added.

"Wouldn't want to upset Sirius's mum."

"Just a portrait, but screams like the real thing!"

"And doesn't take kindly to a family of blood traitors holed up in her precious pureblood house."

Bill rolled his eyes. "How's that working out for Mum, then?"

"If you think Mum's bad, you should see Hermione - Ron's Muggleborn friend," said Fred.

"She's in a right state."

"Been looking through books for a week trying to find a way to undo a Permanent Sticking Charm."

"Says 'permanent' right in it, though, doesn't it?"

"Give your brother some space, you three," called their father from the top of the stairs. "I bet the boy's hungry."

So, reluctantly, George stepped out of Bill's way, and they followed eagerly on his heels back down to finish eating breakfast, with Ginny hovering right next to him and Fred and George just behind. For a moment Fred took his eyes from Bill and caught George's gaze instead, smiling a goofy, brilliant smile that George was sure matched the one on his own face.

Bill was here. And he had the best brothers ever.

Even Ron wasn't so bad.

-xxx-

Bill Weasley was staying at Number 12 until he could find a flat in the city, within a reasonable distance of Diagon Alley. They set him up in Ron's room - quite convenient having so many brothers, Remus imagined - but this still didn't mean that they could slow down on their cleaning process. A house as large as Number 12 had a lot of rooms where vicious pests could be taking up residence. Remus didn't mind the cleaning so much. None of the creatures that had crept in while the house had been in disrepair were particularly vicious, and even the scrub-and-wash actual cleaning part of the cleaning was oddly therapeutic. He'd be so worn at the end of the day that he wouldn't quite worry about staying the night in Sirius's room instead of his own - and secretly, he was glad that his reservations were fading. It was nice, to stay by someone through the night. He could even put up with Sirius's occasional snores.

It was mostly Sirius's complaining that he couldn't stand.

"If no one's sleeping there, why are we even cleaning that room?" he grumbled as he flung himself into a chair at lunchtime.

"The more people Dumbledore recruits for the Order, the more frequent and extensive our meetings are going to be," Remus reminded him. "You need to be a gracious host, and it's hard to do that if we can hear doxies thumping about upstairs and puffskeins scurrying around in the walls."

"Doxies?" said Sirius. "You haven't found doxies?"

"There might be some yet, in that drawing room."

Sirius stiffened up immediately, as he had every time someone had mentioned the drawing room. "Not even worth cleaning, that one," he said after a moment, scowling off into indeterminate space. "Doxies can have it."

Remus had opened his mouth to ask, for the tenth or twentieth time, just what was so bad about that drawing room, but a soft bell sounded from the vicinity of the front door - not the loud, clanging doorbell, but the ringing that told the occupants of the house that owls had arrived with the mail.

"Post's here," Sirius said.

"I'll get it, I suppose," said Remus, but he gave Sirius a look to ensure him that this drawing room business was not over.

As soon as Remus was fully out the door he felt it shrinking to nothing behind him. He took a few steps down the sidewalk to where the owls were perched - one right on top of a Muggle mailbox, ironically - and took the dozens of things they were carrying. Three copies of the Prophet - Sirius's, Hermione's, and one for the whole house; a slim packet of correspondence from Dumbledore for Remus himself, no doubt about that horrible werewolf situation with You-Know-Who; some sort of Ministry memo for Arthur; two letters from Harry, addressed to Ron and Hermione in an angry hand; several pieces of utter junk; and a small envelope, stained faintly lavender, that was conspicuous in its very inconspicuousness and that bore only the dainty letters WW. Remus tucked his own mail inside his robes and crossed back up to the reforming Number 12 examining this last oddity.

"Have my Prophet, Moony?" Sirius asked as he re-entered the house and crossed back to the dining room.

"Oh, yes, here," said Remus, handing it over but keeping his eyes fixed on the strange lavender envelope.

Sirius noticed it. "What's that there?"

"No idea," said Remus. "That's why it's so strange."

Sirius took it from him and studied it as well - and then a slow, excited grin stretched across his face.

"WW," said Sirius. "Surely this is for those brats and their bloody joke shop!"

"What?" said Remus.

"The twins, Moony," said Sirius. "They're opening a shop - Wizard Wheezes or somesuch, with Ws. They don't think anyone knows it, but I'd say everyone knows except their parents."

"And me," Remus said shortly, a bit embarrassed.

"Oh. Well, but still," said Sirius. "If people would bother to read the Prophet, they'd have seen the adverts here and there. They're taking orders up there, until they can open the shop proper. Right under their mother's nose, sneaky gits." Though he admonished them, the grin still hadn't left Sirius's face. "Very difficult to be sneaky in this house."

Remus was beginning to catch on, and allowed himself a small smile of his own. "It would be quite unfortunate for our young entrepreneurs if this letter ended up squealing on them, wouldn't it," he said.

"Squealing," said Sirius. "Oh, Moony, I've always liked the way you think."

"That's because it's actually thinking, unlike whatever it is you do," he deadpanned without hesitation. Sirius cuffed him on the back of the head, but then kissed him, soft and thick at the corner of his jawbone right behind his ear. They turned back to the letter, both of them smiling.

Now it was just a matter of which one of them could still cast an undetectable Spill-It Spell.

-xxx-

"I dunno, Fred, maybe we should just stick to the three we've already got and start selling them as-is."

Fred raised his head from where he'd been hunched over the toilet, making eye contact in the bathroom mirror with George where he stood at the door. "No good," he said, wiping his mouth. "It wouldn't be worth marketing as a whole Snackbox to just have three, we might as well just sell them individually."

"Then we just do that."

"Then only the Nosebleed Nougat would - " Fred stopped speaking, to retch into the toilet bowl once more. It had been like this for several minutes now and never had he had a long enough break to do more than speak a sentence or two to George. Fred was certain he wouldn't be able to get down the other half of the pastille for a while yet.

"Sell very well, oh, you're right," said George. "The Fainting Fancies aren't any good unless you've got a cohort - we need to remember to think in terms of individuals more often, you and I - and fevers just aren't very glamorous." He thought for a minute, the silence left by him not speaking filled with Fred's own heaves. "Guess puking isn't either, but it gets the job undeniably done."

Fred fought back the bile as hard as he could and took a deep, cleansing breath through his nose. It was now or never. Immediately he stuck out his hand to George, and George hastily slapped over the purple sweet - a bit slimy, as Fred had already tried to swallow it once. It tasted a bit sour, but in the way some sweets often were on the outside, and the puckering his face did in reaction to the flavor actually helped him a little in getting it down. At long last he felt the hard candy slip down his throat, and Fred coughed and sputtered a bit, but definitely stopped vomiting.

"Finally," George breathed.

"Yeah, you're doing the next one," Fred shot back. "Come on, I need some pumpkin juice or something to get this awful taste out of my mouth." He checked himself over in the mirror, casted a quick cleaning charm to the front of his shirt, fixed his hair, and then Apparated down to the kitchen along with George. His mother was there, working on an enormous roast that was to be their dinner, as well as the pretty Metamorphmagus called Tonks who'd been around lately, her hair a subdued violet - she'd clearly volunteered to help with the cooking and been soundly denied, and was now perched on a bit of counter that was far out of Molly Weasley's way. The smell of food so immediately after he'd been puking his guts out upstairs was kind of repulsive - he wasn't still sick, not after the recovery end of the Puking Pastille, but it did gross him out. Thankfully, George covered his revulsion.

"Rather a large amount of food, Mum, even for ten - eleven," he said, with a nod to Tonks. "Who's staying over this time?"

"Mister Shacklebolt is coming, and I think Emmeline Vance and a nephew of hers - d'you know him from Hogwarts?"

Fred thought for a moment, then frowned. "Connor Vance? The Hufflepuff?"

"That's him, yes. Lovely boy, quite charming."

"If by 'charming' you mean a simpering people-pleasing git, then yeah," George groaned. He raised an eyebrow to Fred, and the meaning was quite understood - they may be needing those Skiving Snackboxes themselves sooner rather than later.

"Oh, be nice."

"Then a rousing Order meeting after that, is it?"

She sputtered a bit. "W-w-why, of course not, Freddie - "

"George," said Fred, rolling his eyes and grinning at his brother.

" - no, no, you know the meetings haven't started yet, and - "

"Oh, Molly, are you really going to keep this charade up?" said Tonks suddenly, her hair brightening and going a bit pinker. "No reason for you lot to be holed up in here if we weren't having these meetings twice a week or more. And you two are of age, aren't you?"

"As if you couldn't tell, with the way they've been Apparating all about the place as if they own it, don't come crying to me when you splinch yourself something awful and end up with no ears with which to eavesdrop - " She seemed to realize suddenly that she hadn't continued to deny the existence of the Order meetings, and stopped talking, slumping back down over her cauldron with a twinge of defeat in her shoulders.

Somewhere between her last comment and his high-five to George, Fred got some brilliant idea about ears, but his thoughts - and everything else in the house, for that matter - were quite suddenly interrupted.

"Dearest Bill~!" crooned a sugary-sweet and impossibly loud voice from the room above them. It was a voice Fred faintly recognized, way in the back of his mind, but he couldn't quite place it. Even so, he was sure it should definitely not have been coming from upstairs. He and George popped upstairs with a crack, Tonks following behind them the normal way with a bit of stumbling at the top of the stairs.

"Eet 'as been only a few days, but already I am meesing you," the saccharine French accent continued on. "Eet ees so 'ard to go for so long not knowing where you weell be, weeth your seekret doeengs zat you weell not tell me of. I seenk about you and only you ev'ry night before I am sleeping, 'oping zat you are safe and coming to no 'arm, and zat you are seenking of me too."

Fred, George, and Hermione bustled into the dining room all at about the same time, to see that the source of the booming voice was a small, faintly purple slip of parchment, that had once been quite delicately folded but was now held, wide open to sing itself to the world, in their oldest brother's hands. Bill's face was blushing a dark crimson under his tanned skin, from embarrassment or fury or a potent mix of the two. He tried over and over to refold the letter, but it wouldn't close, and the message continued on.

"I seenk so many soughts of you, dearest. So strong and so 'umble, no need to show off 'ow you do such dangerous sings all of ze time. And oh, but you are 'umble about your looks too! So 'andsome, more zan I could be saying of your brozzers, clearly ze 'andsomest of all."

Fred, George and Hermione said it at once, throwing baffled looks at one another - Hermione looked quite miffed, but the two of them were grinning. "Fleur Delacour?"

It had to be! Fred had finally placed the voice, and there was no mistaking the Beauxbatons champion with her broken English and that horrendous vanity she exuded without even being aware of it. Bill had gotten a simpering, lilac-colored love note from Fleur Delacour.

Lupin and Sirius had come in now, and Tonks, and Ron, and the dining room was getting a bit crowded. Fred clamped his hands over his ears to drown it out - both the loud volume, and the increasingly sappy and mortifying endearments contained in the letter's text. He didn't think it would ever be over, but quite suddenly it was, with a grand "Your sweet French rose, Fleur~" and then a silence that left his ears ringing.

The silence didn't last long. Fred, George and Ron burst into endlessly amused guffaws in almost the same moment as the portrait of Walburga Black started shrieking in the hallway, clearly determined to be the only loud disembodied voice in the household. As Sirius and Lupin went to shut her up, taking Ron with them for help, Bill rounded on Fred and George.

"I can't believe you two!"

"Sorry, it's just it's so - "

"Hilarious -

"Ridiculous - "

"Dearest Beeelll," Fred howled, drawing out her accent to a parodical extreme, and their laughter only increased.

"You did this!"

"No, mate, I'm pretty sure Fleur did this - "

"Charmed my letter to read itself to the whole house, you wankers! It's just like something you two would do for a lark!"

It finally registered with Fred that Bill was truly serious, and he tried to rein in his laughter. "Now hang on, we haven't done at all."

"Not even touched the post today," said George. "Nothing in it for us."

"This is my - my personal business!" he hissed. "There's no way the letter just did this on its own! Fleur and I were trying to keep it a secret until we had it figured out for sure!"

"Bill, of all the people in this house to pull one on, we'd never pick you!" George insisted. "We've been looking forward to you getting here for weeks!"

"Hate to start a disagreement with you so soon!" Fred agreed.

"Just because you're of age doesn't mean you can start just doing whatever you please. Don't you think you should have outgrown these sorts of pranks by now?"

And that - pranks, combined with the way Lupin and Sirius had so quickly fled the scene when the letter was finished, the fact that Lupin usually checked the post - was the magic word. It suddenly clicked in Fred's head, and a second later he saw the light flicker on behind George's eyes as well.

"I can't believe you," Bill said again, his hot fury settling into a calm, harsher anger.

The same tone crept dangerously into Fred's voice, as he stared at the dining room door, where Hermione and Tonks were ducking sheepishly out away from the argument, and where Sirius and Lupin had made their exit a moment ago.

"Neither can I."

-xxx-

George sprawled on his back on their bed, frustratedly charming big splots of brightly colored paint onto their ceiling. They hit and splattered in time with Fred's feet frustratedly pacing the floor - red, cerulean, cream, acid green, magenta -

"This has gone too far," Fred growled.

"Said that already, haven't we?"

"Georgey, it's Bill. I can't think of many things in the world worse than Bill being mad at us."

"I know, Fred, we - "

"We've got to get them, though!" he said. "Don't you understand?"

"I do," said George, flicking yellow and ultramarine onto the ceiling. "But we've been talking over this since dinner and we still haven't come up with anything that's going to hit them as hard as this."

Fred sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough that his body rested against George's ribcage, a bit defeated. "We turn them on each other."

"That'd be like trying to turn me on you, Freddie," said George, resting his hand on Fred's, stopping with the paint. "Not going to happen in a million years."

"Then what? There isn't anyone here that's close enough to them to - "

"Sirius!" admonished a low, hissing voice in the hallway. "Will you please stop that?"

Falling silent instantly, George and Fred rose from the bed and crossed the room - Fred to the door, and George to the box in his trunk that had inside of it the pair of Matter-Mist Monocles they had bought on their last trip to Zonko's. As he crept back to the door as well, he passed one to Fred, and they peered straight through the solid wood of the door. Everything seemed like a grainy old black-and-white photo, but they could still see, without ever having to reveal that they were watching.

Apparently, what Lupin was telling Sirius to stop! was a light stabbing at his ribs, and he was squirming and choking back laughter as they passed George and Fred's room on their way up the stairs. Sirius was laughing, too, and clearly not letting up, until finally Lupin whisked his wand back in Sirius's direction. Above his head there appeared a thick, rolled-up newspaper, and it smacked Sirius soundly about his head of its own volition. Seemingly satisfied with the whine Sirius gave, Lupin turned over his shoulder to smile at his friend.

Sirius's reaction to this was to lean forward and give his "friend" a soft, almost sweet kiss on his lips.

Lupin started, hastily searching around to make sure no one had seen - for a moment he appeared to look straight at George, though he knew the door was blocking them from sight. But when he found no one who might catch them at it, Lupin kissed back, completely serious about it. Then, after a moment, they continued down the hallway and up the stairs, laughing at each other softly, and George and Fred watched after them as long as they could with their Monocles to their eyes. Neither of them gasped loudly to give their position away, or dropped the devices clatteringly to the floor in shock.

Really, they'd just had their suspicions confirmed.

"George," Fred murmured after a bit, when the couple in the hallway was finally gone. "I think we're going to have to start fighting dirty."

"Fred, old chap," said George, "we started fighting dirty the minute we pissed in their bed."