19/11/24

It was a medium sized garden with muggle plants on one side and magical plants on the other with two green houses at the back of the garden.

There were some weeds here and there coming through the crack on the patio and a line of ants marching along a mini wall off to the side.

There was also a man-made beehive and some bees in the muggle plant's corner.

"What's that?" Ron asked pointing to the box where the bees were buzzing around.

"That's our bee hive," Harry said stopping Mr Weasley from going over to examine it. "That's where we get our honey and beeswax to make candles from."

"Have you seen them dance yet Harry?" Annie said grinning.

"Dance?" the wizards asked wondering how an insect with six legs, four wings, and two antennae can dance."

"Not with my own eyes from these bees," Harry said nodding to the hive. "But I've seen videos from documentaries. It looks fun."

"Bees dance to show other bees where flowers are growing so they can get nectar to make honey." Elisa explained.

Deciding to leave the bees be, attention went to getting the tables ready for dinner when Remus returns.

...

Once he had with 8 tubes of milk chocolate Smarties, Hermione elected herself to be the one to sort the sweets out into different colours – not trusting the others to not steel any.

While that was happening, Elisa and Annie were sitting the wizards down and tying handkerchief's around their eyes.

"Is this how Muggles usually do test's then?" Arthur asked bouncing with excitement.

"It depends on the kind of test," Elisa explained as she tied his handkerchief. "This is a 'Blind Test' so the testee needs to have their eyes closed, or covered, so they don't interfere with the results."

"How can your eyes interfere with tests involving food?" Ron asked from where he was, already blindfolded.

"You'd be surprised," Jack said from where he was doing Bill. "There have been some tests where the eyes of the testee tricked their mind by thinking a raspberry flavoured pudding, was instead blueberry."

"How?" they Weasley's and Neville asked confused.

"Because the person running the test added some drops of blue food dye to it, and they grew up making the connection that blue things are blueberry flavoured." Jack explained.

"However," Elisa continued moving on to Ginny. "Once they closed their eyes and tried again, they could tell it was raspberry because the colour didn't interfere."

"The Smarties are ready!" Hermione called out from the kitchen "Will we do this one by one or shall I bring them all out at once?"

"I think one by one will be best," Harry said thinking. "That way we can be sure they all have the same colour as they're trying them and giving their scores."

"Scores?" Ron asked frowning.

"Yes Ron, scores," Jack replied. "We are asking you to give scores on what smarties you think are best, remember?"

"I think scores out of 5 would be easiest," Hermione said coming out with the first plate "With 5 being the best and 1 being the worst. Are they sucking the sweets or eating them?"

"I say suck for the first few minutes, to get the flavour off and then they can eat them." Jack said trying to steal some only to be knocked away.

"And of course," Harry said ignoring them "We won't tell you what plate was what colour until the test is over."

"Are you ready?" Hermione asked setting the plate down.

"YES!" the wizards said reaching out blindly for the plate and picking up a single smartie each.

Once they had finished the plate was removed and they were asked to silently hold up their hand and give their rating, to which Harry noted it down.

"Next colour," Hermione said coming back with another plate.

And this went on until all colours and all scores are written up.

"Ok so it seems according to these blind wizards," Harry said calculating scores and averages, while said wizards took off their blindfolds "The best colour was number 6 and that was..." he paused for tention as everyone looked on wondering. "Orange coloured smarties."

"I guess everyone has their own opinion and own favourite coloured sweet," Jack said shrugging and finally taking some from each plate and feeding them into his mouth.

"Green got second place," Harry continued.

"Told ya!" Annie said smiling.

"Then blue and red together. Next came yellow, then purple, next comes pink, and finally brown."

"Are we all happy now?" Bunny asked coming over seeing they were done. "Can we focus on getting dinner made?"

"Excuse me, but this was an important and very scientific-y investigation," Jack said flicking his head (and hair) back and pushing up invisible glasses, Harry's clipboard snatched into his arms for extra effect.

"If you say so mate," Bunny said rolling his eyes and going back in to get the cutlery.

o0o

A short time later dinner which was a muggle made barbecue was being served, Mr Weasley looking over Sirius' shoulder as he manned the grill to see how it was done.

Over at the table there was a dish of big fat sausages, a burger for everybody, and clippings of salad containing lettuce, cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, grapes, and baby radishes, and a dish of homemade roasted potatoes.

Also on the table were ketchup, a variety of other sauses, and salt and pepper.

As the last of the burgers were done, Sirius and Mr Weasley came over to join everyone at the table where Ron was complaining on how Percy was fanning over some guy called Mr Crouch.

"If Mr Crouch is as much a stuck up stick in the mud you're making him out to be," Jack said after swallowing his previous bite of meat. "I can understand why Percy is being like that."

"I'd still rather have Ludo Bagman as my boss than Crouch." Fred commented from his seat.

"Who's he?" Harry asked picking out some more salad and another sausage.

"He's the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports," Fred explained. "Used to play for Quidditch for England when he was younger. He was the best Beater the Wimbourne Wasps ever had."

"Wait... 'Sports' " Elisa asked pausing in her salad as she heard this. "With an 'S'? You mean there's more than just Quidditch in the Wizarding world?"

"I know, can you believe it?" Jack said picking up on (and adding his dash of) the slight sarcasm. "All this time we were forced to play this highly dangerous game and we could have tried something else."

"Hey no one forced you to do anything," George said pointing to Jack.

"McGonagall did." Jack and Harry said together telling the story of how they got onto the house team.

At the other end of the table, Charlie, Bill, Annie and Mr Weasley were talking about the odds on the game.

"It's gotta be Ireland," Charlie said confidently his mouth stuffed with his burger and its bun. "They flattened Peru in the semi-finals."

"Bulgaria have got Krum though," Bill said trying to ignore his brother's eating habits.

"Krum's one decent player, Ireland have got seven," Charlie said confidently. "It is a shame England didn't make it. That was embarrassing that was."

"What happened?" Annie asked helping herself to some left over smartiees.

"Went down to Transalvania, 390 to 10!" Charlie said gloomily.

"Well to be fair, the Muggles who play Football for England aren't that great either. They've only won the Football World Cup once and that was way back in 1966." Annie said trying to cheer the second eldest Weasley up.

"So we suck at Quidditch and 'Football'?" he asked before planting his face onto the table, where his father reached over and rubbed his back comfortingly.

"Wales and Scotland lost their matches too," he added carrying on the conversation. "To Uganda and Luxembourg."

"Well they probably had more chance to train because the weather in their countries are better to fly in." Annie said arguing her point.

"What Brittan needs is a place where Quddichers can go and train in whenever they want. And maybe have spells to activate different kinds of weather.

'Like one spell can make it a fair sunny day, and another and it become rainy but still fair and so on. And the whole thing in built inside a building or at least has a retractable roof so the outside weather doesn't interfere."

"That's a good idea Annie," Mr Weasley said, still comforting Charlie. "But one of the points of Quidditch is to adapt to the change in weather should it change while you're playing."

"But if you don't know how to adapt to it – because you've never tried it – you won't be able to do so and there for will... lose." she said whispering the last word.

While they were disusing this, Remus was lighting candles as it was starting to get dark, while Sirius was getting out tube of ice cream and handing out bowels to everyone.

Elisa needed to stop Annie from using up all the chocolate sauce, but couldn't resist an extra scoop.

After some more discussions and wondering on what the match might bring, Tooth called to everyone it was time for bed.

"If you kids leave your Hogwarts lists with me I can get everything for you," Remus said kindly. "I'm going to Diagonally tomorrow anyway for some things. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time."

"What!? Five days?" Tooth said sounding panicky.

"The game only ends when the Snitch is caught remember," Jack said smiling and helping Elisa up. "Which means they were either pathetic Seekers or they were trying to make it go on for longer so their Chasers can get more scores."

"I hope it does this time," Harry said grinning.

"Well I don't," Tooth said starting to pace around and fiddle with her fingers "I have a 24/7 job. Just spending one day away could be catastrophic!"

"You don't have to come if you think it's going to be like that," Sirius said trying to calm her down, with Sandy also trying to help. "I can watch the pups myself, with Mr Weasley of course."

"No, no I want to come," she said calming down. "My job can be done away from home, but it's easier to be home to do it."

"If you're sure," he said before starting to tidy up the table with everyone doing their part to help.

Once it was cleared everyone went to bed all excited for the next day.

AN: Sorry for the late update already -_-

I just couldn't get this right, and I had other things on my mind.

Either way I hope you like this.

Note - the only one not going is Lupin, and Percy will join them there as he does in the books.