Hermoine stood beneath several hundred magically suspended potions volumes, her eyes narrowed and the tip of her tongue exploring tentatively the furthest boundary of the corner of her lips. She was wearing a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a loosely fitted henley tank, hunter green, half the buttons of which were casually undone. Her chestnut curls were contained in a messy bun, but for a stray lock flirting with her right cheek.
Behind her stood Harry, Fred, George, and Luna, attention set unwaveringly on the witch before them. A hushed silence held the room.
She closed her eyes, inhaled deliberately, and, just at the pinnacle of her breath, paused a full two minutes. The room stilled, and a symphony of forgotten ambient noises hushed altogether. With puzzled wonder, Harry noticed a mote of dust, shining in a rogue ray of mid-morning sun, suddenly halted mid-movement. All was calm.
Just then Hermione whispered the words, "amplia fines huius cameræ," her wand arm carefully tracing the outside contours of the potions lab, until finally resting on the workstation and cauldrons before them.
Just then, everything changed.
A low thunder shook the home, a trembling orchestra of movement. The scratch of stone against concrete, the stifled knock of beam encountering beam, the hushed shuffle of insulation shifting. The ceiling, which had until a moment ago bore the impossibly suspended potions text, was now bare, and every moment the chasm between floor and ceiling grew. Suddenly the wall to their right, shared with the brick exterior of No. 4 ½ Privet Drive, violently bent itself in half. It, too, grew at a steady rate, ten feet up, fifteen feet to the right, ten feet up, fifteen feet to the right. The shelving grew, too, with a life of its own, divorcing its movement from the angular slide of the wall. Each shelf duplicated, interval upon interval, now lining to waist height every floor of the ever expanding laboratory.
From the fibers of the wooden workstation sprung, as if organically, shoots of twigs tugged by time into tender limbs, and gradually into sturdy branches whose ever- aged bark gnarled into ancient boughs. They twisted and turned into the form of ladders, inch by inch spanning the gap between floors; offshoots rooted into the slats of wooden flooring. The right wall, hitherto covered from floor to ceiling with tightly arranged shelving, now towered above them, and as the distance between the dark stained flooring of the potions lab and the looming ceiling grew, so too did the potions inventory, interval upon interval, every shelf uniquely shaped, and tagged with a small brass plate at its center.
As the fourth floor stretched into existence, suddenly the far wall shifted backward, until they stood a solid twenty five feet from the workstation which was, just a moment before, an arm's length away. The sprouted fibers of the workstation continued to stir, as a thirsty vine in time-lapse, until nine more workstations grew, fibers twisting and turning, from gnarled knobs into sharp, precise corners. The stations sat perpendicular to the wall, spaced evenly, three on each of the four floors above. Upon the waist-high shelving to either side sprung copper candle mounts, and from each a pool of melted wax reconstituted itself, drip by drip, in reverse time, until lit candles warmly shone throughout the room at eighteen inch intervals. Near the wall, between the workstations and the shelving, pebbles turned to river stones, which piled themselves into loose rock formations, each of which began to knock and roll into place, emerging as if from the foundation of the home itself. On either side of each workstation, as the circular stone formations settled into place, a lively flame burst into view in their midst. Finally, the piercing ring of dull metal sounded throughout the room, as a dozen thick cauldrons fell clumsily into place.
A moment later, Hermione exhaled slowly, her shoulders relaxed, and she turned to face her spectators. A hint of pride commanded her features as she smiled and held out both her hands in playful presentation.
"Happy Birthday, Harry Potter."
"Brilliant." He replied, with wide eyes. "It's absolutely brilliant."
Luna, shining with affection and gratitude, tucked herself under Harry's right arm and inhaled slowly, taking in the majesty of the spell.
George stood rooted in uncharacteristically silence, overwhelmed with the clumsy luck of it all, eyes scanning the towering inventory and the rows of empty cauldrons. After a moment, he shook himself into belated awareness. "Brilliant, indeed! Of course we'll be fine occupying the third and fourth floors, leaving you the majority of the laboratory, Harry. What do you say, brother?"
Fred stood rooted in uncharacteristic silence, overwhelmed with the beauty of the witch before him, eyes never straying from her brown eyes and chestnut curls. He was captivated, and he hadn't heard a word.
"Brother?"
Just at that moment, their attention shifted to the drawing room, as the rush of flames alerted them to an arrival by floo.
Ron turned the corner with a determined expression, missing altogether the dramatic transition that had just unfolded. He stood just outside the open threshold to the potion's lab, nearly twelve feet from the others, who had gravitated toward the center of the room in awestruck wonder.
"Morning." He nodded at them in stunted greeting, his hands tucked into his pockets, his features stiff.
Without a moment's warning, he turned to Harry, eyes narrowed, and smirked.
Suddenly the air shifted, and Harry's wand was tugged violently out of his right pocket, flung as if by an invisible force in Ron's direction.
Just then, a number of things happened at once.
Hermione's eyes shot wide. Wand was still out on the heels of her expansion cast, she nimbly raised her wrist, whispered in an unknown dialect, and with a dramatic wave of her wand arm cast an invisible blanket of utter paralysis, suspending the movement of Harry's wand, mid-air, and overtaking Ron just a moment later.
Luna's features had sharpened as soon as she sensed the shifting air. Without a word her wand shot from behind her right ear into her right hand, and after a seamless and precise series of gestures Ron was bound tightly by what must have been a thousand golden chains, none broader than a thick thread of yarn, woven together in intricate braids. By these he was suspended mid-air. They tightened with terrible force at Ron's every movement.
Just as Hermione was whispering in some ancient tongue, precisely the same moment that Luna's wand shot from just behind her right ear, a flatish rectangular box of thin birchwood, three inches tall and nearly eighteen inches long, burst open in the drawing room. From it, with blinding speed, a blur of profound, impossible black shot across the room and wrapped itself with violent malice around Ron Weasley's jaw.
Luna closed the gap between them with furious purpose, shoved her wand directly and forcefully into Ron's right cheek, and spoke with alarming control.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Ron Weasley?"