George's loud voice was filling the room. 

"Mum says get up, your breakfast is in the kitchen and then she needs us in the drawing room, there are loads more Doxys than she thought, and she's found a nest of dead Puffskeins under the sofa." 

I peered blearily up at him from under my blanket. Him and Fred were standing at the door, clearly having came back in from downstairs, and Terry was groaning underneath a heap of bedsheets. 

"Come on, Hopper, up you get." 

"Need the whole clan awake, Softpaw." 

Half an hour later, Terry and I, who had dressed and breakfasted very slowly and groggily, entered the drawing room last, which was a long, high-ceilinged room on the first floor with olive green walls covered in dirty tapestries. The carpet exhaled little clouds of dust every time someone put their foot on it and the long, moss green velvet curtains were buzzing as though swarming with invisible bees. It was around these that Mrs Weasley, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George were grouped, all looking rather peculiar as they had each tied a cloth over their nose and mouth. Each of them was also holding a large bottle of black liquid with a nozzle at the end. 

"Cover your faces and take a spray." Mrs Weasley said to me and Terry the moment she saw us, pointing to two more bottles of black liquid standing on a spindle-legged table. "It's Doxycide. I've never seen an infestation this bad - WHAT that house-elf's been doing for the last ten years -" 

Hermione's face was half concealed by a tea towel but I distinctly saw her throw a reproachful look at Mrs Weasley. 

"Kreacher's really old, he probably couldn't manage -" 

"You'd be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione." Sirius said, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be dead rats. "I've just been feeding Buckbeak." He added, in reply to my widened eyes and tilted head. "I keep him upstairs in my mother's bedroom. Anyway... this writing desk..." 

He dropped the bag of rats into an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which, I now noticed for the first time, was shaking slightly. 

"Look, it's Draco when Terry -" I whispered to Fred and George, and they both sniggered as Terry slapped at my upper arm in desperation to get me to shut up. 

"Well, Molly, I'm pretty sure this is a Boggart," Sirius said, peering through the keyhole, "but perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shufti at it before we let it out - knowing my mother, it could be something much worse." 

"Right you are, Sirius." Mrs Weasley said. 

They were both speaking in carefully light, polite voices that told me quite plainly that neither had forgotten their disagreement of the night before. 

A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails that had been triggered the previous night by yours truly. 

"I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!" Sirius said exasperatedly, hurrying out of the room. We heard him thundering down the stairs as Mrs Black's screeches echoed up through the house once more: 

"Stains of dishonour, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth..." 

"Close the door, please, Daisy." Mrs Weasley said. 

I took as much time as I dared to close the drawing-room door; I wanted to listen to what was going on downstairs. Sirius had obviously managed to shut the curtains over his mother's portrait because she had stopped screaming. I heard Sirius walking down the hall, then the clattering of the chain on the front door, and then a deep voice I recognised as Kingsley Shacklebolt's saying, "Hestia's just relieved me, so she's got Moody's Cloak now, thought I'd leave a report for Dumbledore..." 

Feeling Mrs Weasley's eyes on the back of my head, I regretfully closed the drawing-room door and rejoined the Doxy party. 

Mrs Weasley was bending over to check the page on Doxys in Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests, which was lying open on the sofa. 

"Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because Doxys bite and their teeth are poisonous. I've got a bottle of antidote here, but I'd rather nobody needed it." 

"Cool." I hissed to Terry, who was grinning across the room at Ron, who was aiming his hand at his head, forming it in the shape of a gun. 

Mrs Weasley straightened up, positioned herself squarely in front of the curtains, and beckoned us all forward. 

"When I say the word, start spraying immediately." She said. "They'll come flying out at us, I expect, but it says on the sprays one good squirt will paralyse them. When they're immobilized, just throw them in this bucket." 

She stepped carefully out of our line of fire, and raised her own spray. 

"All right - SQUIRT!" 

"Yes, Ma'am!" I hissed to Terry, and us two took a few seconds to start spraying, as we were doubling over in a fit of laughter. The twins fake-glared at us. 

"Oi, that's our mother you're referring to there, Softpaw!" 

I had been spraying only a few seconds when a fully-grown Doxy came soaring out of a fold in the material, shiny beetle-like wings whirring, tiny needle-sharp teeth bared, its fairy-like body covered with thick black hair and its four tiny fists clenched with fury. I caught it full in the face with a blast of Doxycide. It froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud THUNK, on to the worn carpet below. I picked it up and slid it into my pocket. 

"Fred, what are you doing?" Mrs Weasley said sharply. "Spray that at once and throw it away!" 

I looked round. Fred was holding a struggling Doxy between his forefinger and thumb. 

"Right-o." Fred said brightly, spraying the Doxy quickly in the face so that it fainted, but the moment Mrs Weasley's back was turned he pocketed it with a wink. 

Harry was looking between me and Fred. I smirked. 

"We want to experiment with Doxy venom for our Skiving Snackboxes." I told Harry under my breath. 

Deftly spraying two Doxys at once as they soared straight for his nose, Harry moved closer to me and the Insurgents, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "What are Skiving Snackboxes?" 

"Your sister keeping you in the dark, Harry?" Fred grinned. 

Harry huffed in my general direction as Terry and I snickered at him. 

"Range of sweets to make you ill." George whispered to him, keeping a wary eye on Mrs Weasley's back. "Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. Fred and I have been developing them this summer. They're double-ended, colour-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastilles, you throw up. Moment you've been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half -" 

"- 'Which restores you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom.' That's what we're putting in the adverts, anyway." Fred whispered, who had edged fully out of Mrs Weasley's line of vision and was now sweeping a few stray Doxys from the floor and adding them to his pocket. "But they still need a bit of work. At the moment our testers are having a bit of trouble stopping themselves puking long enough to swallow the purple end." 

"Testers?" 

"Us." I said, gesturing to Terry. "We've tried the Fainting Fancies - for some reason, it takes me a really long time to wake up, remember when I fainted for six hours, Harry -" 

"OH yeah... I wondered what weird shit you guys were up to this time..." 

"- We both tried the Nosebleed Nougat -" 

"My mum thought we'd been duelling." Terry said, as I remembered staying at his for a few nights in the summer. 

"Joke shop still on, then?" Harry muttered, pretending to be adjusting the nozzle on his spray. 

"Well, bro, we haven't had a chance to get premises yet." I said, dropping my voice even lower as Mrs Weasley mopped her brow with her scarf before returning to the attack. 

"So we're running it as a mail-order service at the moment. We put advertisements in the Daily Prophet last week." Fred said. 

"All thanks to you two, mate." George said. "But don't worry... Mum hasn't got a clue. She won't read the Daily Prophet any more, 'cause of it telling lies about yous and Dumbledore."

Harry and I grinned.

A sudden small, sharp shooting of pain struck me in the arm. I winced, glancing down at the Doxy hanging from my skin by its teeth. 

"Ouch." I said as I swayed on the spot. 

"Uh, Mum..." George said cautiously, holding his arms out. 

"Daisy?" Fred said, his voice growing louder as I swayed more obviously, the room spinning. "DAISY?" 

"Oh! Daisy!" Mrs Weasley noticed me and hurried over to the antidote on the table as I lost my footing, falling into George's outstretched arms. She hurried over to us with the small bottle, her brows furrowed in anxiety. "Hold her mouth open, Fred." 

Fred reached over and grabbed my jaw, pulling my lips apart as George held me up, Mrs Weasley tipping several drops of the antidote into my mouth. Within a few seconds, the room slowed and eventually stopped spinning. I cleared my throat as George helped me upright, shaking my head. 

"Come here, you wee fucker." I grabbed the Doxy that had bitten me, spraying it full in the face, and drop-kicked it across the room into the bucket. The room erupted into laughter. 

The de-Doxying of the curtains took most of the morning. It was past midday when Mrs Weasley finally removed her protective scarf, sank into a sagging armchair, and sprang up again with a cry of disgust, having sat on the bag of dead rats. The curtains were no longer buzzing; they hung limp and damp from the intensive spraying. At the foot of them unconscious Doxys lay crammed in the bucket beside a bowl of their black eggs, at which Crookshanks was now sniffing and Fred and George were shooting covetous looks. 

"I think we'll tackle THOSE after lunch." Mrs Weasley pointed at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece. They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages I could not understand and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what I was quite sure was blood. 

The clanging doorbell rang again. Everyone looked at Mrs Weasley. 

"Stay here." She said firmly, snatching up the bag of rats as Mrs Black's screeches started up again from down below. "I'll bring up some sandwiches." 

She left the room, closing the door carefully behind her. At once, everyone dashed over to the window to look down on the doorstep. We could see the top of an unkempt gingery head and a stack of precariously balanced cauldrons. 

"Mundungus!" Hermione said. "What's he brought all those cauldrons for?" 

"Probably looking for a safe place to keep them." Harry said.

"Isn't that what he was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing us? Picking up dodgy cauldrons?" I said. 

"Yeah, you're right!" Terry said, as the front door opened; Mundungus heaved his cauldrons through it and disappeared from view. "Blimey, your mum won't like that, Fred, George..." 

Fred and George crossed to the door and stood beside it, listening intently. Mrs Black's screaming had stopped. 

"Mundungus is talking to Sirius and Kingsley." Fred muttered, frowning with concentration. "Can't hear properly... d'you reckon we can risk the Extendable Ears?" 

"Might be worth it." George said. "I could sneak upstairs and get a pair -" 

But at that precise moment there was an explosion of sound from downstairs that rendered Extendable Ears quite unnecessary. All of us could hear exactly what Mrs Weasley was shouting at the top of her voice. 

"WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS!" 

"I love hearing Mum shouting at someone else," Fred said, with a satisfied smile on his face as he opened the door an inch or so to allow Mrs Weasley's voice to permeate the room better, "it makes such a nice change."

"- COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE, AS IF WE HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING STOLEN CAULDRONS INTO THE HOUSE -" 

"The idiots are letting her get into her stride." George said, shaking his head. "You've got to head her off early otherwise she builds up a head of steam and goes on for hours. And she's been dying to have a go at Mundungus ever since he sneaked off when he was supposed to be following you, Softpaw - and there goes Sirius's mum again." 

Mrs Weasley's voice was lost amid fresh shrieks and screams from the portraits in the hall. 

George made to shut the door to drown the noise, but before he could do so, a house-elf edged into the room. 

Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked. It looked very old. Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it and, though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, batlike ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery grey and its fleshy nose was large and rather snoutlike. 

The elf took absolutely no notice of me and the rest. Acting as though it could not see us, it shuffled hunchbacked, slowly and doggedly, towards the far end of the room, all the while muttering under its breath in a hoarse, deep voice like a bullfrog's. 

"...Smells like a drain and a criminal to boot, but she's no better, nasty old blood traitor with her brats messing up my mistress's house, oh, my poor mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they've let into her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh, the shame of it, Mudbloods and werewolves and traitors and thieves and half-breeds, poor old Kreacher, what can he do..." 

"Hello, Kreacher." Fred said very loudly, closing the door with a snap. 

The house-elf froze in his tracks, stopped muttering, and gave a very pronounced and very unconvincing start of surprise. 

"Kreacher did not see Young Master." He said, turning around and bowing to Fred. Still facing the carpet, he added, perfectly audibly, "Nasty little brat of a blood traitor it is." 

"Sorry?" George said. "Didn't catch that last bit." 

"What is this piece of shit?" I scoffed loudly to Terry, who was regarding Kreacher with a raised eyebrow. Hermione threw me a glance. 

"Kreacher said nothing," the elf said, with a second bow to George, adding in a clear undertone, "and there's its twin, unnatural little beasts they are." 

I burst out laughing. Terry joined me as I laughed at the creature, pointing at it. The elf straightened up, eyeing me malevolently, and apparently convinced that we could not hear him as he continued to mutter. 

"And there's a new boy and girl, Kreacher doesn't know their names. What are they doing here? Kreacher doesn't know..." 

"This is Daisy and Harry, Kreacher." Hermione said tentatively. "Daisy and Harry Potter." 

Kreacher's pale eyes widened and he muttered faster and more furiously than ever. 

"The Mudblood is talking to Kreacher as though she is my friend, if Kreacher's mistress saw him in such company, oh, what would she say -" 

"Don't call her a Mudblood!" Ron and Ginny said together, very angrily, just as I told him, very firmly and loudly, to 'shut the fuck up.' 

"It doesn't matter," Hermione whispered, "he's not in his right mind, he doesn't know what he's -" 

"Don't kid yourself, Hermione, he knows exactly what he's saying." Fred said, eyeing Kreacher with great dislike. 

Kreacher was still muttering, his eyes on me. 

"Is it true? Is it Daisy and Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scars, it must be true, those are the children who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how they did it -"

"Don't we all, Kreacher." Fred said. 

"What do you want, anyway?" George asked. 

Kreacher's huge eyes darted towards George. 

"Kreacher is cleaning." He said evasively. 

"A likely story." A voice said behind me. 

Sirius had come back; he was glowering at the elf from the doorway. The noise in the hall had abated; perhaps Mrs Weasley and Mundungus had moved their argument down into the kitchen. At the sight of Sirius, Kreacher flung himself into a ridiculously low bow that flattened his snoutlike nose on the floor. 

"Stand up straight." Sirius said impatiently. "Now, what are you up to?" 

"Kreacher is cleaning." The elf repeated. "Kreacher lives to serve the Noble House of Black -" 

"And it's getting blacker every day, it's filthy." Sirius said. 

"Master always liked his little joke." Kreacher said, bowing again, and continuing in an undertone, "Master was a nasty ungrateful swine who broke his mother's heart -" 

"My mother didn't have a heart, Kreacher." Sirius snapped. "She kept herself alive out of pure spite." 

Kreacher bowed again as he spoke. 

"Whatever Master says." He muttered furiously. "Master is not fit to wipe slime from his mother's boots, oh, my poor mistress, what would she say if she saw Kreacher serving him, how she hated him, what a disappointment he was -" 

"I asked you what you were up to." Sirius said coldly. "Every time you show up pretending to be cleaning, you sneak something off to your room so we can't throw it out." 

"Kreacher would never move anything from its proper place in Master's house," the elf said, then muttered very fast, "Mistress would never forgive Kreacher if the tapestry was thrown out, seven centuries it's been in the family, Kreacher must save it, Kreacher will not let Master and the blood traitors and the brats destroy it -" 

"I thought it might be that." Sirius said, casting a disdainful look at the opposite wall. "She'll have put another Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of it, I don't doubt, but if I can get rid of it I certainly will. Now go away, Kreacher." 

It seemed that Kreacher did not dare disobey a direct order; nevertheless, the look he gave Sirius as he shuffled out past him was full of deepest loathing and he muttered all the way out of the room. 

"- Comes back from Azkaban ordering Kreacher around, oh, my poor mistress, what would she say if she saw the house now, scum living in it, her treasures thrown out, she swore he was no son of hers and he's back, they say he's a murderer too -" 

"Keep muttering and I will be a murderer!" Sirius said irritably as he slammed the door shut on the elf. 

"Sirius, he's not right in the head." Hermione pleaded. "I don't think he realises we can hear him." 

"He's been alone too long," Sirius said, "taking mad orders from my mother's portrait and talking to himself, but he was always a foul little bastard." 

"If you could just set him free," Hermione said hopefully, "maybe -" 

"We can't set him free, he knows too much about the Order." Sirius said curtly. "And anyway, the shock would kill him. You suggest to him that he leaves this house, see how he takes it." 

Sirius walked across the room to where the tapestry Kreacher had been trying to protect hung the length of the wall. The others and I followed. 

The tapestry looked immensely old; it was faded and looked as though Doxys had gnawed it in places. Nevertheless, the golden thread with which it was embroidered still glinted brightly enough to show us a sprawling family tree dating back (as far as I could tell) to the Middle Ages. Large words at the very top of the tapestry read:

'The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black' 

'Toujours pur'

"You're not on here!" I said, after scanning the bottom of the tree. 

"I used to be there." Sirius said, pointing at a small, round, charred hole in the tapestry, rather like a cigarette burn. "My sweet old mother blasted me off after I ran away from home - Kreacher's quite fond of muttering the story under his breath." 

"You ran away from home?" Harry said. 

"When I was about sixteen." Sirius said. "I'd had enough." 

"Where did you go?" I asked, staring at him. 

"Your dad's place." Sirius said. "Your grandparents were really good about it; they sort of adopted me as a second son. Yeah, I camped out at your dad's in the school holidays, and when I was seventeen I got a place of my own. My Uncle Alphard had left me a decent bit of gold - he's been wiped off here, too, that's probably why - anyway, after that I looked after myself. I was always welcome at Mr and Mrs Potter's for Sunday lunch, though." 

"But... why did you...?" 

"Leave?" Sirius smiled bitterly and ran his fingers through his long, unkempt hair. "Because I hated the whole lot of them: my parents, with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal... my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them... that's him." 

Sirius jabbed a finger at the very bottom of the tree, at the name 'Regulus Black'. A date of death (some fifteen years previously) followed the date of birth. 

"He was younger than me," Sirius said, "and a much better son, as I was constantly reminded." 

"And he died?" I said. 

"Yeah." Sirius said. "Stupid idiot... he joined the Death Eaters." 

"You're kidding!" Harry said. 

"Come on, Harry, haven't you seen enough of this house to tell what kind of wizards my family were?" Sirius said testily. 

"Were - were your parents Death Eaters as well?" 

"No, no, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having pure-bloods in charge. They weren't alone, either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colours, who thought he had the right idea about things... They got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first." 

"Was he killed by an Auror?" I asked tentatively. 

"Oh, no." Sirius said. "No, he was murdered by Voldemort. Or on Voldemort's orders, more likely; I doubt Regulus was ever important enough to be killed by Voldemort in person. From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out. Well, you don't just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It's a lifetime of service or death." 

"Lunch." Mrs Weasley's voice said. 

She was holding her wand high in front of her, balancing a huge tray loaded with sandwiches and cake on its tip. She was very red in the face and still looked angry. The others moved over to her, eager for some food, but Harry and I remained with Sirius, who had bent closer to the tapestry. 

"I haven't looked at this for years. There's Phineas Nigellus... my great-great-grandfather, see? ... Least popular headmaster Hogwarts ever had ... and Araminta Meliflua ... cousin of my mother's ... tried to force through a Ministry Bill to make Muggle-hunting legal ... and dear Aunt Elladora ... she started the family tradition of beheading house-elves when they got too old to carry tea trays ... of course, any time the family produced someone halfway decent they were disowned. I see Tonks isn't on here. Maybe that's why Kreacher won't take orders from her - he's supposed to do whatever anyone in the family asks him -" 

"You and Tonks are related?" I asked, surprised. 

"Oh, yeah, her mother Andromeda was my favourite cousin." Sirius said, examining the tapestry closely. "No, Andromeda's not on here either, look -" 

He pointed to another small round burn mark between two names, Bellatrix and Narcissa. 

"Narcissa... that's Draco's mum." I said. "Terry's dating him now. How... how would she feel about that?" I asked Sirius cautiously. 

Sirius smiled grimly. "To be fair, Narcissa wasn't the worst of the bunch. Hard to tell, really, but I think she'd get over it if he gave her time. Can't say the same for that vile man she married, or her sister, for that matter." 

All three of us were quiet for a moment. 

"Right, lads, who's ready to fuckin' scoff some food?" I clapped my hands together, and Harry and Sirius followed me over to the rest of the group. 

~~~

Many of the objects in the glass-fronted cabinets seemed very reluctant to leave their dusty shelves. Sirius sustained a bad bite from a silver snuffbox; within seconds his bitten hand had developed an unpleasant crusty covering like a tough brown glove. 

"It's OK." He said, examining the hand with interest before tapping it lightly with his wand and restoring its skin to normal. "Must be Wartcap powder in there." 

He threw the box aside into the sack where we were depositing the debris from the cabinets; I wrapped my own hand carefully in a cloth moments later and snuck the box into my already Doxy-filled pocket. 

We found an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up my arm like a spider when I picked it up, and attempted to puncture my skin. Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and we all found ourselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy, until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut (I also took that); a heavy locket that none of us could open; a number of ancient seals; and, in a dusty box, an Order of Merlin, First Class, that had been awarded to Sirius's grandfather for 'services to the Ministry.' 

"It means he gave them a load of gold." Sirius said contemptuously, throwing the medal into the rubbish sack. 

Several times Kreacher sidled into the room and attempted to smuggle things away under his loincloth, muttering horrible curses every time we caught him at it. When Sirius wrestled a large golden ring bearing the Black crest from his grip, Kreacher actually burst into furious tears and left the room sobbing under his breath and calling Sirius names I had only ever used on my enemies. 

"It was my father's." Sirius said, throwing the ring into the sack. "Kreacher wasn't QUITE as devoted to him as to my mother, but I still caught him snogging a pair of my father's old trousers last week." 

~~~ 

Mrs Weasley kept us all working very hard over the next few days. The drawing room took three days to decontaminate. Finally, the only undesirable things left in it were the tapestry of the Black family tree, which resisted all our attempts to remove it from the wall, and the rattling writing desk. Mad-Eye had not dropped by Headquarters yet, so we could not be sure what was inside it. 

We moved from the drawing room to a dining room on the ground floor where we found spiders as large as saucers lurking in the dresser (Ron left the room hurriedly to make a cup of tea and did not return for an hour and a half). The china, which bore the Black crest and motto, was all thrown unceremoniously into a sack by Sirius, and the same fate met a set of old photographs in tarnished silver frames, all of whose occupants squealed shrilly as the glass covering them smashed. 

The doorbell rang several times a day, which was the cue for Sirius's mother to start shrieking again, and for me and the others to attempt to eavesdrop on the visitor, though we gleaned very little from the brief glimpses and snatches of conversation we were able to sneak before Mrs Weasley recalled us to our tasks. Snape flitted in and out of the house several times more, though to my relief we never came face to face; I also caught sight of Professor McGonagall, looking very odd in a Muggle dress and coat, and she also seemed too busy to linger. Sometimes, however, the visitors stayed to help. Tonks joined us for a memorable afternoon in which we found a murderous old ghoul lurking in an upstairs toilet, and Lupin and Emily, who were staying in the house with Sirius but who both left it for long periods to do mysterious work for the Order, helped us repair a grandfather clock that had developed the unpleasant habit of shooting heavy bolts at passers-by. Mundungus redeemed himself slightly in Mrs Weasley's eyes by rescuing Ron from an ancient set of purple robes that had tried to strangle him when he removed them from their wardrobe. 

I was having the time of my life; I was with the people I loved the most, with the exception of Dudley and Draco, and cleaning up this bizarre house was surprisingly fun. The twins, Terry, and I managed to collect many helpful items and creatures to aid us in our development attempts, Terry and I were hanging out lots, and the Insurgents were pranking as much as we could with the resources available to us. Sometimes Sirius and/or Emily would help out with the pranks, as Lupin watched on with his token half-amused, half-exasperated expression. 

"...Fat little half-breed, pudgy and -" 

"Shut the fuck up, Kreacher." Fred told the elf as we passed him one day. "Softpaw isn't fat or pudgy, she's deliciously curvaceous. And even if she was fat and pudgy, that gives you no right to insult her, and she'd still be hot as hell." 

I beamed. 

"Come here." Fred took my hand and pulled me into our dorm, glancing quickly around the room. It was empty; George and Terry were nowhere to be seen. 

Fred grinned and led me over to his bed. He gently pushed me down onto it, slowly crawling on top of me. 

"It's true. You are..." 

Fred kissed me; his lips moved slowly and passionately with mine, his tongue licking into my mouth. I moaned softly as our tongues danced together. 

"...So..." 

Fred kissed my neck, biting down on my shoulder. I shivered, giggling as he sucked a hickey into my skin. 

"...Deliciously..." 

Fred moved down my body, kissing down my chest, reaching my waist. He reached underneath my denim mini-skirt, tugging down my panties. He smirked up at me as I gasped quietly, reaching down to grab his hair. 

"...Curvaceous..." 

Fred's hands landed back on my body, running over my wide hips. He licked his lips, his eyes darkened, and tugged up my skirt. He lowered his head, and I threw mine back as his tongue made contact with me...