Chapter 22: Harry And The Burrow

I watched Harry as he took in the look of our house. Suddenly, I felt self conscious. True, Harry didn't live in a mansion, but his house was much nicer than mine. Mine was simply a round stone house that had floors and rooms stacked up and added on top. We have strong enchantments in place to hold it up. I thought that Harry would find the look of my home positively dreadful. But instead, he looked positively fascinated.

"It's not much." I said, looking at Harry.

"It's wonderful ," said Harry, sounding as if it was next to Hogwarts.

We got out of the car and looked around.

"Now, we'll go upstairs really quietly, and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast Then, Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, Mum, look who turned up in the night!'and she'll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car." said Fred.

That was the plan? Now I knew we were going to die.

"Right. I said, rolling my eyes. "Come on, Harry, I sleep at the - at the top-"

I felt my heart drop down to my stomach. My mouth went dry, I couldn't speak another word. All I could do was point.

Mum was marching across the yard, looking like she was about to maul us like a bloody bear. There was nothing but anger written all over her face.

"Ah..."said Fred, nervously.

"Oh, dear." said George.

She stopped in front of us, hands on her hips, looking as if she was going to hex us

"So..." she said.

"Morning, Mum..." said George in a chipper voice that didn't quell Mum's anger, not even a little bit.

"Have you any idea how worried I've been?" Mum whispered with a deadly tone

"Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to-"

Mum started ranting and throwing up her arms. "Beds empty! No note! Car gone! Could have crashed! Out of my mind with worry - did you care? - never, as long as I've lived - you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy -"

"Perfect Percy." muttered Fred.

"YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" exploded Mum, poking her finger in Fred's chest. "You could have died , you could have been seen , you could have lost your father his job!"

It seemed like she lectured the twins for days. Then, she turned on Harry, who jumped and backed away.

"I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, dear," she said in a calm voice, like she hadn't spent the past ten minutes shouting at the top of her lungs. "Come in and have some breakfast."

She turned and walked back into the house. Harry looked at me lost on what to do. I just nodded and followed behind her.

Harry sat down on the edge of his seat, looking around, taking in the room.

The clock on the wall opposite him had only one hand and no numbers. It was a clock that Mum had to let her know where we were at all times, as well as things to do like time to make tea, time to feed the chickens , and you're late .

Mum started on breakfast, all the while throwing dirty looks at my brothers and I as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she muttered things like "don't know what you were thinking of," and " never would have believed it."

"I don't blame you , dear," she said to Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. "Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we'd come and get you ourselves if you hadn't written back to Ron by Friday. But really, flying an illegal car halfway across the country - anyone could have seen you-"

She continued piling food onto Harry's plate. I guess he appeared underfed to her. I remembered when one of Charlie's friends came here and he was real skinny. She wouldn't let him leave the table until he ate about five servings of food. Said he looked peaky.

"It was cloudy , Mum!" said Fred.

"You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" yelled Mum.

"They were starving him, Mum!" said George.

"And you!"

Suddenly, we heard a small squeak near the stairs. Ginny had came down. She stared wide eyed at Harry, who smiled at her. She jumped and then bolted up the steps.

"Ginny, my sister." I said, rolling my eyes at her silly behavior. "She's been talking about you all summer."

"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry." Fred said with a grin. Mum glared at him harshly and he wiped the grin right off his face.

"Blimey, I'm tired," yawned Fred, pretending to be sleepy "I think I'll go to bed and-"

"You will not," snapped Mun. "It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again!"

"Oh, Mum!"

"And you two," she said, glaring at George and I.

"You can go up to bed, dear," she said sweetly to Harry. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car."

"I'll help Ron. I've never seen a de-gnoming!"he said, excitedly.

"That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work." said Mum. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject."

All of us but Harry groaned.

"Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden!" I said.

I moaned as Mum for out her stupid Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests book. There was a big photograph on the front of a wizard whom witches considered handsome for some odd reason. I thought he looked like a bloody prat.

"Oh, he is marvelous!" she said. "He knows his household pests, all right, it's a wonderful book..."

"Mum fancies him," whispered Fred to Harry.

"All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it." said Mum in a huff.

We went outside and stood , searching for gnomes.

"Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know." said Harry.

"Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes. I said laughing. "Like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods."

I peeked in Mum's peony bush and found what I was looking for. I grasped the little bugger and held his ugly ass up for Harry to see. " This is a gnome."

"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" squealed the gnome.

It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. I held it at arm's length as it tried to kick me with its horny little feet. I grasped it by its ankles.

"This is what you have to do," I said. raising the gnome above my head. I swung it around and around, laughing at the shocked look on Harry's face.

"It doesn't hurt them, you've just got to make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnome holes." I said, turning him faster and faster. Then, I let go of the gnome's ankle, sending it flying twenty feet into the air and landing with a thud in the field over the hedge.

"Pitiful." spat Fred. "I bet I can get mine beyond that stump."

Soon, we had made it into a competition. Seeing how far we could pitch them. Normally this was a dreadfully boring chore, but now, it seemed like more of a highlight.

Soon, we heard the front door slam.

"He's back!" said George. "Dad's home!"

We hurried through the garden and back into the house.

Dad was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his eyes closed. He looked completely exhausted. I felt bad for him. And even worse because I knew Mum was going to bring up what we did, possibly exhausting him even more.

"What a night," he mumbled, as Mum poured him a cup of tea. "Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned."

Dad took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

"Find anything, Dad?" asked Fred.

"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle." said Dad, yawning. "There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that's the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness..."

"Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" said George.

"Just Muggle-baiting."said Dad "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it... Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking - they'll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face... But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe-"

"LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?"

Mum had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Dad's eyes jerked open. He stared innocently at Mum

"C-cars, Molly, dear?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars." said Mum, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to make it fly!"

Dad looked like the muggle expression Hermione told me about. Something about catching a light with a deer.

"Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if - er - he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth." Dad stuttered. "There's a loophole in the law, you'll find... As long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't-"

"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" shouted Mum. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"

"Harry? Harry who?"

He looked around, saw Harry, and jumped.

"Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about-"

"Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night!" continued Mum "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

"Did you really?" said Dad eagerly. "Did it go all right? I - I mean," he changed his tune when he saw Mum's death stare. "that - that was very wrong, boys - very wrong indeed..."

"Let's leave them to it." I whispered to Harry as Mum looked prepared to give another lecture. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."

We slipped out the kitchen and up the stairs. When we got near Ginny's room, we could see her big brown eyes peeking out. She took look at Harry, and shut the door.

"Ginny." I said. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally."

It was true. One of Ginny's favorite hobbies was talking. And she wasn't any about who she spoke to or what she said. But for some reason, Harry made her clam up.

Kind of relaxing to have some silence from girl talk.

Finally we made it to my room, which was under the attic. Harry stepped in after me and looled around at my poster filled walls. Everything in my room was orange. From the walls, to my bedsheets.

"Your Quidditch team?" said Harry.

"The Chudley Cannons." I said proudly. "Ninth in the league."

I looked over at Harry as he was looking at one of the quidditch players fly across my poster.

"It's a bit small." I said, kind of feeling embarrassed about my room. "Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic. He's always banging on the pipes and groaning. "

Harry beamed at me."This is the best house I've ever been in."

I couldn't help but smile. And appreciate my house even more.

It really was a great house.