J. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Before any of them could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr. Weasley appeared out of thin air at George’s shoulder. He was looking angrier than Harry had ever seen him.

“That wasn’t funny, Fred!” he shouted. “What on earth did you give that Muggle boy?”

“I didn’t give him anything,” said Fred, with another evil grin. I just dropped it… It was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to.”

“You dropped it on purpose!” roared Mr. Weasley. “You knew he’d eat it, you knew he was on a diet—”

“How big did his tongue get?” George asked eagerly.

“It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!”

Harry and the Weasleys roared with laughter again.

“It isn’t funny!” Mr. Weasley shouted. “That sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons—”

“We didn’t give it to him because he’s a Muggle!” said Fred indignantly.

“No, we gave it to him because he’s a great bullying git,” said George. “Isn’t he, Harry?”

“Yeah, he is, Mr. Weasley,” said Harry earnestly.

“That’s not the point!” raged Mr. Weasley. “You wait until I tell your mother—”

“Tell me what?” said a voice behind them.

Mrs. Weasley had just entered the kitchen. She was a short, plump woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were presently narrowed with suspicion.

“Oh hello, Harry, dear,” she said, spotting him and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. “Tell me what, Arthur?”

Mr. Weasley hesitated. Harry could tell that, however angry he was with Fred and George, he hadn’t really intended to tell Mrs. Weasley what had happened. There was a silence, while Mr. Weasley eyed his wife nervously. Then two girls appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs. Weasley. One, with very bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth, was Harry’s and Ron’s friend, Hermione Granger. The other, who was small and red haired, was Ron’s younger sister, Ginny. Both of them smiled at Harry, who grinned back, which made Ginny go scarlet—she had been very taken with Harry ever since his first visit to the Burrow.

“Tell me what, Arthur?” Mrs. Weasley repeated, in a dangerous sort of voice.

“It’s nothing, Molly,” mumbled Mr. Weasley, “Fred and George just—but I’ve had words with them—”

“What have they done this time?” said Mrs. Weasley. “If it’s got anything to do with Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes—”

“Why don’t you show Harry where he’s sleeping, Ron?” said Hermione from the doorway.

“He knows where he’s sleeping,” said Ron, “in my room, he slept there last—”

“We can all go,” said Hermione pointedly.

“Oh,” said Ron, cottoning on. “Right.”

“Yeah, we’ll come too,” said George.

“You stay where you are!” snarled Mrs. Weasley.

Harry and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and they, Hermione, and Ginny set off along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zigzagged through the house to the upper stories.

“What are Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?” Harry asked as they climbed.

Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione didn’t.

“Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George’s room,” said Ron quietly. “Great long price lists for stuff they’ve invented. Joke stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I never knew they’d been inventing all that…”

“We’ve been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things,” said Ginny. “We thought they just liked the noise.”

“Only, most of the stuff—well, all of it, really—was a bit dangerous,” said Ron, “and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren’t allowed to make any more of it, and burned all the order forms… She’s furious at them anyway. They didn’t get as many O.W.L.s as she expected.”

O.W.L.s were Ordinary Wizarding Levels, the examinations Hogwarts students took at the age of fifteen.

“And then there was this big row,” Ginny said, “because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop.”

Just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression.

“Hi, Percy,” said Harry.

“Oh hello, Harry,” said Percy. “I was wondering who was making all the noise. I’m trying to work in here, you know I’ve got a report to finish for the office—and it’s rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs.”

“We’re not thundering,” said Ron irritably. “We’re walking. Sorry if we’ve disturbed the top secret workings of the Ministry of Magic.”

“What are you working on?” said Harry.

“A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation,” said Percy smugly. “We’re trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin—leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year—”

“That’ll change the world, that report will,” said Ron. “Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks.”

Percy went slightly pink.

“You might sneer, Ron,” he said heatedly, “but unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow bottomed products that seriously endanger—”

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” said Ron, and he started off upstairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As Harry, Hermione, and Ginny followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them. It sounded as though Mr. Weasley had told Mrs. Weasley about the toffees.

The room at the top of the house where Ron slept looked much as it had the last time that Harry had come to stay: the same posters of Ron’s favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping ceiling, and the fish tank on the windowsill, which had previously held frog spawn, now contained one extremely large frog. Ron’s old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, but instead there was the tiny gray owl that had delivered Ron’s letter to Harry in Privet Drive. It was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering madly.

“Shut up, Pig,” said Ron, edging his way between two of the four beds that had been squeezed into the room. “Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill and Charlie are in their room,” he told Harry. “Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he’s got to work.”

“Er—why are you calling that owl Pig?” Harry asked Ron.

“Because he’s being stupid,” said Ginny, “Its proper name is Pigwidgeon.”

“Yeah, and that’s not a stupid name at all,” said Ron sarcastically. “Ginny named him,” he explained to Harry. “She reckons it’s sweet. And I tried to change it, but it was too late, he won’t answer to anything else. So now he’s Pig. I’ve got to keep him up here because he annoys Errol and Hermes. He annoys me too, come to that.”

Pigwidgeon zoomed happily around his cage, hooting shrilly. Harry knew Ron too well to take him seriously. He had moaned continually about his old rat, Scabbers, but had been most upset when Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, appeared to have eaten him.

“Where’s Crookshanks?” Harry asked Hermione now.