DarkC
-KMC THREAD KILLER-
 Gender: Male
Location: Cacapoopoopeepeeshire. |
Author's Note: Friday afternoon, it's been a while. Might as well post what I have.
The light morning breeze playfully ruffled Harry’s hair as he stepped outside; it was cool but not chilly. It was going to be a glorious day. He could already see the decorating job on the front lawn that the girls had done. No longer was it mud saturated and unkempt; the lawn was a plush, rich green and gave a sense of comfort and home.
He took a second to admire the neatness of one of the trimmed shrubs, which had been painstakingly cut to resemble a dragon. One on the opposite side had lopsided words carved out of it: “GOD BLESS”.
Hermione emerged from the passageway to the backyard, looking quite weary, but brightened when she saw Harry. “Ooh, you have to see it, Harry. It looks splendid.”
“Never short of modesty, eh, Hermione?” Harry said, slightly bemused by her mood swing, but allowing himself to be dragged to the backyard all the same.
The backyard would be the site of the wedding itself. Harry could not help but admire the creativity and thoughtfulness that had been committed to make such a simple backyard look so elegant and magnificent. Flowers were everywhere, a dazzling kaleidoscope of reds, pinks, and fiery oranges to complement the Weasley’s hair color and forget-me-not blues.
The seats were straight, comfortably padded mahogany; Ginny was slumped against one of them, looking rather weary.
“H – Hi, Harry.” She said, barely stifling a huge yawn.
“Hey.” He said, shifting slightly uncomfortably. “Erm…you did a great job on the decor.”
“Thanks!” she said, grinning wearily and slumping down on one of the pews. “Although I got up early just to work on it. Maybe I should’ve stayed in bed.”
Hermione snorted derisively, teetering on the spot not a little ashamedly. “I got about three hours of sleep last night, going to fetch Harry like that.”
‘You could go now if you like,” Harry suggested. “I could always come up and rouse you later.”
Both the girls laughed.
“What?” said Harry confusedly.
Hermione gave him a rueful smirk. “Don’t try and rouse a girl from her beauty sleep, the results are quite unpleasant.”
Harry, in question, glanced quickly at Ginny for confirmation. She nodded and beamed. “I would have had the scars to prove it, but Madam Pomfrey is quite a talented healer.”
That was more than enough to convince Harry.
“Well,” he shrugged. “I don’t mind if you fall asleep during the party, but Fleur will probably get peevish to say the least if you start snoring.”
Ginny and Hermione glanced together. “Oh, we’ll brew a little something up for that, don’t you worry.” Ginny yawned.
And they shooed Harry off.
**
Harry hadn’t seen much of the front yard and the dirt road leading to the Burrow, but it was apparent who had taken the time to decorate after seeing the numerous statues up close. Surely enough, it proved to be several dozen gnomes, literally frozen. They were arranged to take cheerful, welcoming postures and even their lips were pulled back in a forced smile, yet one of them glared at Harry fiercely as if he alone were responsible for their nasty ordeal. Harry grinned wolfishly at it.
Not only were they arranged along the side of the road all in their unique poses, they were also enchanted to sparkle brightly. From above, it would have looked like a crude landing strip for an aeroplane.
“Like them, Harry?” a voice from behind Harry called cheerfully.
“Very much so.” He said. George clapped his shoulder and called Fred over, another five or so frozen gnomes dragging from his hands.
“Blimey, you’ve grown. Rip your pajamas overnight, have you?”
Harry laughed. “Not exactly. How’s the joke shop doing?”
“Very well, thank you.” Fred said cheerfully, dropping his burdens and blithely ignoring the muffled curses from within. “We’re expanding even more on the Defense Against the Dark Arts products, they’ve been a huge success!”
“Remember those Decoy Detonators?” George said. “We’re currently modifying some to make the walkers do various useful things.”
“We have a fire spurting model, shoots up to ten feet…”
“There’s a ice sheet model, splendid if you want to slow down nasties behind you…”
“And for plain mischief, a walking dungbomb with a blast radius of about fifteen feet.” Fred finished, smiling hugely.
Harry chortled. “Brilliant, I have to buy me a few of the dungbombs.”
“Anything, any amount is free. For you, at least.” Fred growled.
“We’re just harvesting the galleons in,” George shrugged. “Made a lot this past year, nearly enough to pay you back, four times over.”
“Four thousand galleons?” Harry said, eyes widening. “That’s even more than Quality Quidditch Supplies makes annually.”
“I know!” Fred said brightly. “Zonkos has already offered to sell us their premises. Seven times!”
“A Hogsmeade branch would just eat up money at the moment, though.” said George ruefully. “We’ll buy it once Hogwarts opens up again.”
“If it opens again.” Harry said quietly.
The mood shifted suddenly as if a large rain cloud had randomly decided to drop in several feet above the boy’s heads.
Fred looked Harry in the eye. “It will.” he said firmly.
Harry nodded.
”We’d better hurry up and finish with the decorations, Harry,” George said, picking up the frozen gnomes and squinting up ahead. “Look, some of your guests are already arriving.”
Harry looked and saw that he was right. A man and his daughter walked towards them, the girl with a long mane of dirty blonde hair. Behind them strode a tall woman and a boy with a mop of brown hair.
“Neville and Luna, if I’m not mistaken.” Fred said. “And their families. Shall we greet them?”
George unceremoniously tossed the gnomes aside and vanished them with a wave of his wand. “Let’s give ‘em a nice welcoming party, then. I got a few of those Ice Sheet Detonators in my pocket – “
“No, George.”
“Oh, all right, have it your own way.”
The twins started striding off at a brisk pace.
“So you two have finally started to see sense?” Harry asked, smiling slightly. “Not apparating every ten seconds, I see.”
The twins laughed.
“We would, but there’s an anti-apparating charm on a mile radius around the house.” Fred said, grinning sheepishly.
Midway out, Luna and Neville broke out into a light jog.
“Hello, Harry.” Luna said, smiling at him and hugging him quickly.
“Have a good birthday so far?” Neville smiled cheerfully, shaking Harry’s hand and patting his back.
“Very much so.” George said, showing his teeth in a big smile. Harry kicked him in the shin, and turned back to his other friends. “Very much so.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Luna beamed at him. “Oh, here’s your birthday gift. I wrapped it myself.”
“Here’s mine, too.” Neville said. “Any others arrived yet?”
Harry shook his head. “You guys are the first ones.”
Luna smiled. “That’s because we came early.”
Harry shouldered their presents. “Well, come on then…what about your dad and your gran?”
“They’re fine.” Luna and Neville said simultaneously.
Harry shifted the presents, one under his arm and one over his shoulder. Neville’s was light, long and narrow, while Luna’s was smaller, more square, and very heavy.
“Blimey, what did you get me, Luna?” Harry gasped. “It’d better not be a giant rock or dragon dung or what have you…”
She laughed. “No, of course not. I think you’ll like it. I mean, it doesn’t smell or do anything dangerous.”
“Whatever it is, it’s really heavy.”
Fred brandished his wand. “I’ll shall deal with that.” He said grandly.
Luna’s gift rose up and glided for about three seconds before crashing to the gravel.
“Fred!” George and Harry said loudly.
“Oh, dear.” Fred said. “Well, how was I supposed to know that it required substantial more effort for heavier objects?”
“It doesn’t.” George snarled. “Ron levitated a mountain troll’s club in his first year, if I recall rightly. You probably just lost your concentration.”
Fred laughed nervously. “Well, as long as it’s not broken…”
Luna heaved it up and listened to its contents. “Oh, I don’t think it is,” she said lightly. “It is rather hard, after all. If you want, Harry, I can tote this for you until we reach the Weasley’s.”
“We’re already there.” Neville pointed out, staring nervously at the frozen gnomes glowering at everyone. Harry noticed that one was trying particularly hard to make an obscene hand gesture at Fred, but lacked the space. “Er, can we sort of move on?”
“Oh, ignore them, the frozen little nasties.” Fred said jauntily. “They had it coming to them in the first place. One of them hurled a pebble through my window. Repairable, of course, but highly inconvenient. Especially if you’re deeply asleep at the time.”
“And two of them were somehow intelligent enough to set up a makeshift tripwire that got me.” George said darkly.
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KMC Community Forums
Feb 10th, 2006 11:10 PM
Nice thing going here, Dark.
