Games Children Play
"Fred! George!" Percy went tearing through the house, looking for his twin brothers, panic rising in his throat. "Where are you?"
He looked in the pantry, but all the cereal boxes were still intact. He looked in the living room, but all the couch cushions were in their places.
No, they hadn't touched anything in the living room either.
Where could they be?
It had been over fifteen minutes. FIFTEEN minutes, and there wasn't ANY sign of Fred or George in the whole house. Percy was supposed to be playing with them, but when he'd said, "Let's play hide and seek," and then snuck off to read his latest Chuddley Cannons fan mag… actually, it was Bill's that had been nicked by Charley when Bill flooed off to his friend's house for lunch, and then Percy had swiped it off Charley's writing desk when he was out flying his broom in the backyard.
There was this really cool article in there about the new gears and shifting mechanisms on the new Clean Sweep 50 A… and then he'd heard a crash and realized that fifteen minutes had turned into an hour and he had no idea what Fred and George had been doing, or what they'd broken, or where they were, and his poor little heart was tick, tick, ticking inside of him like a time bomb every second that he couldn't find them.
He passed Ginny and Ron in the hall, grimacing and the giggles as they ran by with their mother trailing behind him. "Everything alright, Percy?" she asked when he turned away from her. "How are your brothers doing?"
"Err, we're playing Hide-and-Seek," Percy said. "I think their winning."
His mum smiled at him affectionately. "You're doing a great job, Percy. Just keep them occupied so the house will stay clean until dinner. Remember, we're having guests over." She hurried after the two smaller children who had made their way into the kitchen, yelling, "Snack! Snack!"
Poor Percy's heart couldn't take much more of this. At least he hadn't lied about what was going on, but he was going to be in big trouble if he didn't find Fred and George RIGHT NOW.
He grumbled about how Bill must be having a grand time with his friend, and how Charley must be really fast on that broom by now, wishing he could be anywhere but looking in the toilet for his brothers. They'd found Ron in there once, so he might as well give it a go. He slammed the lid down in relief. No potty water boys.
Why did Mum and Dad always stick the twins with HIM?
"Fred?" he called out upstairs. "George?"
Percy looked in his room. He looked in Charley's room. He even looked in Ron and Ginny's room, under the crib and in their closet full of blankets and fresh nappies. Then, because he was getting desperate, he snuck a peak in Bill's room, but everything looked normal, which meant that Fred and George hadn't been in there since yesterday.
Where could they be?
Then he heard a faint giggling sound. Then another loud crash. The sounds were coming from Fred and George's room and Percy got very, very scared. Last time he'd heard that kind of sound, they'd blown their beds to smithereens with accidental magic.
He crept up to the door of the twins' room and cracked it open. He pushed the door open a bit more and stood there in the hall, gawking at what he found.
Fred and George were both hanging upside down from the top rails of the bunk bed. They'd taken everything they owned and dumped it on the upper bed and were taking turns hurling it at a large, poorly-drawn bullseye target drawn with sidewalk chalk on the floor.
Bam!
There went the Hogwarts train set.
"Aww, Fred. You only got it in the yellow. That's ten points. I can beat that!" George said. Then he saw Percy. "Oi!"
"Wha… what are you doing in here?" Percy couldn't believe the mess of toys all over the room.
"We're playing," Fred said simply.
"Yeah, and you were supposed to be playing with us. We should tell Mum how you left us alone for HOURS all day," George said with a glint in his eye.
"Err, no, no," Percy said. "I'll play with you. How about another round of Hide-and-Seek?"
Fred and George looked at each other and giggled. "No, we already did that. And Hopscotch, and Bullseye, and now I think we should play something else. Something funner!"
"Like what?" Percy asked. He wracked his brain as to what they could do in Fred and George's room so it would be the only messy room in the house.
But he was too slow. George ran up to him and slapped him on the arm. "Tag! You're it!" He and Fred scrammed out of the room laughing and giggling.
Percy heard another crash from downstairs, which sounded specifically like an entire shelf of books being dumped onto the floor. Oh no. There went the Living Room!