Ron-Weasly book 2

Our whole company poured out of the car.

"It's not much" I said modestly. It definitely does not reach the full-fledged menorahs of the old magical families. Besides, we don't have a magic source. There's a ley line nearby, of course, but it's pretty weak.

"Great!" Harry exclaimed enthusiastically.

"Now go upstairs. Everyone go to their beds. Just very, very quiet! Otherwise, Mom will wake up and make a scene." Fred commanded. "Mom will call for breakfast at 9. Ron, you'll run downstairs and cheerfully shout, "Look, Mom, who showed up last night!" She'll be happy, and no one will notice that we took the car.

"Okay," I agreed. "Come on, Harry," I called to my friend, who was staring at the house in fascination. "I'm on the move sl..."

Choking, I fell silent and my face turned green: the lights were on in the windows of the "Burrow", and my mother was approaching us from the porch, scattering the chickens. A small, plump woman with the kindest face, now resembling a saber-toothed tiger.

Fred gasped.

"Oh, my God," George blurted out.

Mom came up to us and stopped, putting her hands on her hips and looking from one guilty face to another. She was wearing a flowered apron with a magic wand sticking out of the pocket.

"Well?" she demanded menacingly.

"Good morning, Mommy" George said it in what seemed to him a cheerful, contented voice.

"Don't you understand how worried I was?" Mom whispered furiously.

"I'm sorry, Mom, but we had to..."

The three of us were almost a head taller than our mother, but we were mortally afraid of her anger.

"Empty beds! No note! The car has disappeared! They could have been in a traffic accident! I'm almost crazy with worry! You don't think about anyone but yourself! I can't remember how long I've been alive! Just wait, the father will come. The older brothers had never done anything like this, not Bill, not Charlie, not Percy...

"...our good boy," Fred ended his mother's angry tirade. "I WISH I COULD LEARN SOMETHING FROM PERCY." Mom exclaimed, pointing her finger at Fred's chest. "You could have died, you could have been seen, your father could lose his job because of you... Well, it's unlikely about work. Although he's considered a nutcase for collecting all sorts of junk, he's the only one in the Ministry of Magic who knows anything about Muggle technology. After all, he is well versed in Muggle technology and helps the ministry with the enchantment of official vehicles.

Mom's anger seemed to have no end. And, only hoarsely, she turned to Harry, who backed away from her in fear. I thought he was used to shouting. With such relatives, but he was also afraid of our mother.

"Welcome, dear Harry. Come in, we'll have breakfast now." Mom smiled warmly and with these words hurried back into the house. Phew, it seems to have worked out. Harry gave me a questioning look, I nodded encouragingly, and he followed my mom.

Our kitchen is small and quite cramped. In the middle is a scrubbed wooden table surrounded by chairs. Sometimes we sit down to eat in the garden, but for now we can fit in here. Harry sat on the edge of the nearest chair and looked around. He had never been to a wizard's house before.

On the opposite wall was a single-hand clock, enchanted by Dad after the wedding. At that time, he wanted to become an apprentice to artefactors, but he became interested in Muggles. And the magic war was going on then, and the masters were not up to recruiting new students. Instead of numbers, there were inscriptions on the watch face: "Tea time", "Time to feed the chickens", "Lateness" and the like. On the mantelpiece are stacks of my mother's books: "Conjure yourself a cheese!", "Charms used in baking", "How to cook a feast in one second. Miraculous magic!" There was an old radio on the wall behind the sink, which started talking again. The announcer announced:

"The Hour of the Magicians. We begin the performance of the famous singer, the fortune teller Celestina Warlock."

"Mom loves her. And they broadcast important news of the magical world on the radio. But Muggle televisions haven't caught on. Illusions are much more spectacular, but we don't like that."

Mom was fussing over the stove, preparing breakfast: she threw sausages into the pan and, in between, shot menacing glances at us, saying:

"I don't know what you were thinking... I would never have believed it... I don't blame you, my boy." She assured Harry, flicking eight small sausages onto his plate. "Arthur and I were very worried about you. We decided just last night to come get you if there's no reply to Ron's last letter by Friday. But think about it: flying halfway across the country in an illegal car! Surely someone noticed! You've flown through a non-magical world. Yes, since Harry lives in the Muggle part of Britain, he had to travel through Muggle space. Well, at least the car has an invisibility and eye-avoidance system. And the night was dark.

Mom added a three-egg glaze to the sausages. Then she touched the dirty dishes in the sink with her magic wand, and it began to wash itself, tinkling slightly. It is necessary to learn this spell by the way. Mom refuses to teach us how to cook, she says it's a wife's responsibility and there's nothing to take away her hobby.

"It was low cloud..." Fred mumbled.

"They don't talk while eating." Mom called my brother to order.

"They were starving him!" George tried to distract Mom.

"That applies to you too." the mother did not calm down. But she didn't look so threatening as she buttered Harry's bread. Yeah. My friend looks like a starving man. And given Mom's belief that a man should eat properly, a friend will be fattened. Maybe even give him some muscle-building potions. Suddenly, a distracting circumstance invaded the kitchen in the form of our sister, dressed in a long nightgown. Damn, I should have warned her. Jeanie gave a little cry and ran out of the kitchen.

"This is Ginny, my sister." I whispered to Harry. "She's been talking about you all summer. She's going to ask for your autograph. He smiled and joked. But when he met his mother's gaze, he looked down at his plate again. No one else said a word. We were silent until the plates were empty, which happened pretty quickly.

"Oh, how tired I am" George yawned sweetly, putting his knife and fork on his plate. "I'm going to get some sleep..."

"No, you're not going," Granny cut him off. "You didn't sleep all night because of your own stupidity. Go to the garden, it's time to expel the dwarves. They're all over the place again."

"But Mom..."

"And both of you will go" She looked at Fred (he has a green badge pinned on his tank top, and George has a red one.) and me and added, turning to Harry: "And you, my boy, go upstairs and rest. You didn't ask them to follow you in that wretched car."

"Can I go with Ron? I want to see how the dwarves are expelled. I've never seen it before." Harry hurried to say.

"You're a very kind boy, Harry, but kicking out dwarves is a boring job. Let's see what Lockhart says about this." Mom took a heavy volume from the mantelpiece. It's starting again...

"But we know how to expel them." George protested.

On the cover of the book was written in beautiful gold letters: "Gilderoy Lockhart. Household pests. The Reference book". There was also a large photograph of the author: a pretty face framed by blond curls, bright blue eyes. His face was lively, and his eyes twinkled merrily, if not cheekily. The reference is good, but here is the author... I just want to punch him in his face, but Mom likes him.

"Oh, he's beautiful!" The mother exclaimed. "And how does he know his subject — household pests. It's a wonderful book..."

"Mom loves him." Fred whispered loudly.

"Don't be silly." Mom said, turning pink. "Well, if you know better than Lockhart how to make a garden safer, go ahead and work. And if even one dwarf remains, take the blame on yourself.

Yawning and grumbling, my brothers and I trudged into the garden. Harry followed us. The garden was large and neglected. There were too many weeds, the lawn was not mowed, but the stone fence was overshadowed by the gnarled, gnarled branches of old trees, flowers that mom grows for potions, and a small pond overgrown with green duckweed is full of frogs. They walked across the lawn to the flower bed.

"Muggles have dwarves too." Harry told me.

"Very similar to ours! I've seen them" I ducked headfirst into a bush and said. "Small, fat, Santa Claus-like, fishing rod in hand. Ours wear trousers and shirts. They're also running around the garden with shovels and picks."

The bush twitched, there was the sound of a desperate struggle, and I straightened up, holding the dwarf aloft in one hand.

"He's a real dwarf," I said solemnly.

"Twist me! Spin it!" A small creature that slightly resembled a human was screaming. The dwarf was small, wearing blue trousers and a checkered shirt. With kylo in one hand. I held him at arm's length, and he squirmed, trying to kick me with a foot as hard as flint. I deftly grabbed his ankles and turned him upside down.

"Try to do the same." I said to Harry and, holding the gnome high, began to spin it with a flourish ("Twist me!"— shouted the dwarf), like a lasso. When I saw the horror in Harry's face, I added: "It won't hurt him. Only his head will spin, and he will not be able to find his way back to his burrow."

With these words, I let go of my ankles, the dwarf flew about five meters, and crashed somewhere behind a hedge.

"Too close!" Fred appreciated. "I bet I can get mine to that stump over there. Harry decided to throw his first dwarf over the hedge without promotion. But the latter, sensing the weakness of the newly-minted dwarf persecutor, managed to sink his razor-sharp teeth into Harry's finger. It wasn't so easy to peel it off.

"He was a nice dwarf," One of the brothers noticed, "He could have flown ten meters away. Soon, the air was filled with a cloud of flying dwarves."

"Our dwarves are a bit silly." George noticed, grabbing five of them at once. "When they hear that the expulsion has begun, they come to the surface. No, to get deeper into the burrows." Soon, two dozen exiles crowded into the field, and they walked away in a long line, hunching their shoulders.

"They'll be back," I said, watching the dwarves disappear one by one into the hedgerows at the other end of the field. They like it here. My father is so kind to them, he says they're funny."

The whole garden was devoured by contagion. And my father is against a radical solution to the problem. The front door slammed in the house.

"It's the father!" George exclaimed. "Returned from work."

The dwarves were forgotten, and we ran through the garden to the house. My father was sitting wearily in the kitchen chair, taking off his glasses and squeezing his eyes shut. He was thin, with a short haircut, but his hair was also bright red. He was wearing a green robe, worn and dusty from constant travel. Dad spent the whole week running around on night raids. I had a snack at home and ran to work.

"What a night it was," he said softly, reaching for the kettle. We sat around him. Even Harry was curious about what he had to say. "Nine challenges. Nine! Old Mundungus Fletcher tried to curse me when my back was turned..." My father took a long sip of tea and sighed.

"Were there any interesting cases, Dad?" Fred asked curiously.

"Just a few melting keys, plus a biting cauldron." My father replied with a yawn. There was one very unpleasant substance. "But it's not in our department. And there were also exceptionally strange ground squirrels, and Prudsmert was called in for questioning. Thank God, the gophers are under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Experimental Magic..."

"I don't understand, who wants to waste time on melting keys?" George asked his father.

"There are still fans of annoying Muggles," Mr. Weasley sighed. "They will sell such a key to a muggle, and the key will disappear. The Muggle is looking for him, looking for him, but the key has disappeared through the ground. And there are no guilty parties. Muggles don't report things missing, they don't want to admit that there are melting keys. They say they lost it. They'll put up with anything to ignore magic, even if it's happening right under their noses. You can't even imagine what our people conjure."

"FOR EXAMPLE, CARS?!"

The mother entered the kitchen, holding a long poker in her hand like a sword. The father opened his eyes wide and stared guiltily at his wife. Yeah, I forgot that she didn't know about the additional functions of the car.

"W-what kind of cars, dear Molly?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars." Her mother's eyes were sparkling. "Imagine a magician who bought an old wreck and told his wife that he would take it apart just to understand the device. But in fact, he uses a spell of volatility on her. And please, you can fly to the ends of the earth in this car."

Dad blinked and launched into an explanation. You see, darling, you're about to realize that this wizard didn't break the law one bit. Although, of course... uh... it would have been better if he had told his wife the truth... There is a clause in the law... if the wizard had no intention of flying in the non-magical world, the fact that the car acquired volatility does not mean..."

"Arthur Weasley, you wrote this law yourself, and of course you inserted this clause carefully!" Mrs. Weasley was thundering. "So that you can safely mess around in your shed with all these Muggle nonsense! mom never shared her husband's love for the technology of ordinary people. Yes, that's understandable. She's been working intermittently. To make it work, you need to enchant it specifically. And it's not a fact that something won't fail at the most inopportune moment. "So, for your information, Harry flew to us this morning in the very car that was not intended for flights! Across an entire non-magical land!"

"Harry?" Mr. Weasley said, not understanding anything. "Which Harry?"

He looked around the kitchen, saw my friend, and jumped in surprise.

"Oh my God!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's Harry Potter. "Happy to see you! Ron has told us so much about you..."

"Your sons flew this car to Little Whinging last night and brought their friend. What do you say to that?" Her mother's voice grew stronger.

"Did you really fly there? And quite successfully?" My father asked with genuine delight. "I... I..." he broke off: fiery sparks were already flying from his mother's eyes. Of course, boys, this is very, very wrong..."

Mom started to swell up like a big American frog. It's time to go. I tugged at my friend's shirt sleeve.

"We have nothing else to do here." I whispered to Harry. "Come on, I'll show you my room."