By the time that the Weasley's had been lead to the pool by Minnie, Harry, Joey, and Danny were already inside. The pool, which had taken the twins a good ten minutes to find, was an amazing sight to them all. Many people there had never even seen a pool, more accustomed to ponds and streams. They had never seen so much water contained in one place by man-made means. The size of an Olympic swimming pool, it had three diving boards in increasing sizes along the back as well as markers that showed the increasing depth of the pool. There were also two doors not including the one behind them. One was a storage closet with floats and noodles. Probably enough to bury the poor soul that tried to open the door. The other lead to a small room with showers and bathrooms. There was a rack full of towels against the far wall.
"This room smells overwhelmingly like salt." George commented as they were walking into the room in awe. Hermione was the only one acting normally, as she had seen many pools in her lifetime.
"It's a saltwater pool!" Joey shouted from across the room on top of the diving board. Danny shrieked as she was splashed with water from her sisters dive even though she was sitting on the side with only her legs on the side. Joey decided that Danny had been sitting on the side of the pool like a wimp for far too long. So instead of resurfacing after her dive, she swam over to her sister and pulled her into the pool by her legs. Danny's shriek of mixed fury and surprise made Mrs. Weasley jump and scared the rest of her family out of their stupor.
Harry climbed out of the shallow end of the pool and walked over to them. "If you guys don't want to swim, you don't have to. There's lawn chairs over there if you need them."
"Nonsense!" Fred said loudly, if only to hear his own voice echo in the large room. "Swim watching is for wimps and Slytherins!" George quickly nodded, throwing Ginny over his shoulder and jumping into the pool while screeching like an Indian despite Ginny and Mrs. Weasley's protests. Mr. Weasley calmed her down and encouraged her to follow Minnie. Who was leading them as well as Sirius and Remus over to the lawn chairs in the corner. Hermione and Ron stood for a moment watching Harry's sisters drowning each other and before finally listening to Harry and climbing down the steps and into the pool.
Ron was immediately sucked into the splash war that had been started by Ginny and the twins. Hermione, however, chose to stay by Harry. Partially because she wanted to talk to him, and another part because she wanted to keep an eye on him. She knew that he wasn't a very good swimmer and wanted to make sure he was okay.
"So what did you do yesterday?" She asked calmly. Hopefully this conversation could lead to her finding out more about Danny and Joey. They were still strangers to most of the people in the Order.
"Well, Joey dragged me out of the house to get new clothes. Because she thought that I looked like someone had tried to make laffytaffy out of me when she saw me in my muggle clothes." Harry said, making Hermione laugh. "And they have both decided that they are going to teach me French."
"Why French?" Hermione asked.
"Well they went to Beauxbaton's. So they learnt French there and that's the language that they mostly speak around the house." Harry said.
"Oh that's really interesting, I've always wanted to learn another language but I've never been able to with all of the time that school work takes up." Hermione said enthusiastically. "Your new glasses look very nice by the way."
"Thanks." He said smiling. "Joey made me get them specifically for my eyesight. I can see so much clearer than I could with the other glasses."
"That's great! That'll definitely come in handy when you're trying to take notes." Harry rolled his eyes at her constant reference to school work but Hermione didn't notice, watching Sirius and Remus laughing and talking to Minnie. "Did you do anything else?"
"Well, I learned the Joey apparently keeps a knife strapped to her leg. I got to learn that one during breakfast, kind of made it a little harder to swallow actually." Harry said, more to himself than to Hermione.
"Wait, she has a knife strapped to her leg?" Hermione asked skeptically. "Why would she ever feel the need to do that? Isn't her wand enough protection?"
"I don't know, maybe she just likes having a backup?" Harry shrugged, unconcerned, then went to break up the fight between the four youngest Weasleys before they mutually drowned each other. Not noticing the pensive look on Hermione's face.
Only two hours later, Mrs. Weasley finally announced that they had to go to bed if they wanted to get up early enough to go to Diagon Alley the next day for school supplies. All of the children climbed up the stairs. Taking a few minutes to make sure they were heading in the right direction. After showering and changing into pajamas, all the adults went to bed. Danny and Joey included.
However, one door opened quietly. Hermione quietly crept out of her room and walked down to the door which she knew belonged to Ron. Cringing each time the floor of the old house creaked. When she finally reached the room, she knocked quietly and waited for him to open the door. When a bleary eyed Ron finally appeared she quickly ran under his arm and into the room, closing the door behind her.
"We have to search the house." Hermione said quickly.
"What?" Ron said. He had clearly been right about to go to bed and was not yet awake enough to understand short, brief sentances.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "We have to search the house. Normally, I would find even the idea of this absolutely repulsive and it's completely intruding and rude but something Harry said before has me scared."
"Why, what did he say?" Ron asked, more alert now that there was a possibility of there being something wrong with Harry.
"He said that Joey keeps a knife strapped to her leg." What kind of sane witch needs a knife strapped to her leg when she has her wand?"
Ron looked at her confused for a moment before shaking his head. "Hermione, if they told Harry, then it's not like they're trying to hide that fact from them.
"But Ron," She said quickly. "What if this is a hint that she's a violent person? Of something ever happened to Harry because we didn't look into this then I know that I would never forgive myself."
"Well neither would I!" Ron said, seeming offended that she thought that he wouldn't care if he got hurt. "But that doesn't mean we can just go sneaking around their house! Have we switched places or something? I feel like you should be the one telling me not to do something this stupid."
Hermione took a deep breath before continuing. "I am not going to go digging through their stuff. I am going to look around. Neither of them can tell me I was doing anything wrong. I'll just say I was looking for the bathroom or something. This house is enough like a maze for that to be believable. Whether or not you come with me, I want to be sure that Harry is safe here. As sure as Dumbledore may be about this, he doesn't know Harry as well as we do Ron."
Ron hesitated for a moment before agree with her. Even though the twins seemed like they genuinely cared for Harry, they could be hiding a few things.
A few minutes later found them wandering around the house looking for anything that could be considered something to look into. When they finally decided that now might be a good time to start trying to find their way back to their rooms, they were stopped by something strange. When they looked down at the floor, they saw an eerie blue light creeping out of the crack underneath a closed door. They had looked inside of a few rooms when walking through the house, assured by the fact that they knew where the twin's rooms were and that they were in them. However, there was something about this door that was just begging to be opened.
"Maybe this is why Harry always ends up getting in so much trouble." Ron said. "I really want to find out what's behind this door now."
Hermione was looking around the dark hallway, only lit by the candle that they had taken from one of the hall tables. She was trying to see if any of the other doors had the same appearance as this one. When she saw that this was the only door she went to stand next to Ron in front of it. "Well than we might as well open it. Do you hear anybody coming?"
Both of them froze for a moment to listen. Suddenly, their eyes widened and they looked at each other in fear when they heard somebody walking down the hallway. They quickly noticed that it was more than one pair of feet hitting the carpet. They were about to rush into the room to hide, when they heard someone crash to the floor and heard two other people laughing quietly.
"Fred, George! What are you doing here! You should be asleep!" Hermione hissed into the darkness.
"You're one to talk!" George said quickly, Ginny pulling him up from the floor.
"Yea Hermione, what are you doing out and about at such an ungodly hour?" Fred said, waving his finger in her face. "I have half a mind to send you to your room without dinner!"
"Oh shut up you two." Ron said. "We were looking around to see if there was anything here that could hurt Harry."
Ginny looked at them strangely at this. "What, did you see Death Eaters jumping out of the loo?"
"No," Ron said spluttering. "But look at this." He said, gesturing to the strange blue light coming from behind the door.
"Hm." George said quietly. "Well that's just asking us to walk in."
"You can't just barge-"Hermione started berating them but was ignored as Fred tried to push open the door and found that it was tightly locked.
"Huh." He said quietly. "George." George silently handed him a bobby pin that he had been keeping in his pocket.
"You are far to well prepared for this." Hermione said quietly.
"Well who knows when you're going to need to break the rules Hermione." George said unabashedly. "It's always good to be prepared for wrongdoing."
She rolled her eyes while Fred attempted to pick the lock. "Huh. That's kind of weird." He said quietly.
"What?" Hermione asked quickly. "What's wrong?"
Everyone turned towards Fred. "This lock has spells on it. It can't be opened the muggle way or the magical way. The spells aren't that powerful though. I guess they didn't think anybody would be trying to get in here. If they both know what's in here they wouldn't have had to break in. Alohomora would probably work, but we can't use magic or mum will get a letter expelling us."
"Actually," Ginny said from the back of the group. "We wouldn't. I was talking with Danny earlier and she said the wards around the house are strong enough that the ministry wouldn't know if we used magic."
Fred and George both perked up at this. "So, we can open the door with magic and nothing will happen?" George asked.
"Yeah, as long as it's a simple spell." Ginny answered. "She said that the wards aren't strong enough to block the ministry if you use a really strong spell, but if it's a simple one then they won't be able to detect it."
At this, they all turned and looked at the door for a moment before George whipped out his wand and cast the spell. The ominous click of the door gave them all chills before they stepped into the room.
Eww, cliffhanger. Now you guys must hate me. I'm going to try and get the next chapter up soon I promise!