The OWL Results
Harry
OH MERLIN!
The shriek was so high-pitched that Harry's brain hurt immensely, so sharply that he doubled over in his chair with his hands covering his head.
No need to shout so loudly, Sera! Adrian yelled back.
Shut up for a minute, both of you. Jéricho ordered.
"You alright, baby?" Lily rose from her chair, her forehead furrowed in concern. They were sitting at the breakfast table, and everyone was staring at Harry, who blushed furiously. "I'm fine. Sorry."
My OWL results are here! Sera exclaimed.
Mine too. Cedric chimed in.
Same here. Adrian and Jéricho said.
As if on cue, a school owl appeared on the window and tapped on it. Harry felt like dying with nerves as his mother yelled, "Your results, Harry!"
"I know, mum," Harry snapped. He strode towards the window and fumbled with removing the envelope from the owl's legs with shaking hands. Just as he managed to detach his results, Sirius and Jéricho entered through the floo, followed by Sera, Cedric, and Adrian, who were all pale with anticipation.
"What are you waiting for? Open them!" Charles urged.
Harry refrained from strangling his brother as he did just that, dreading what was on the paper inside...
Ordinary Wizarding Level Results
Pass Grades Fail Grades
Outstanding (O) Poor (P)
Exceeds Expectations (E) Dreadful (D)
Acceptable (A) Troll (T)
Harry James Potter has achieved:
Astronomy ----- D
Care of Magical Creatures ----- O
Charms ----- O
Defense Against the Dark Arts ----- O
Ancient Runes ----- O
Herbology ----- E
History of Magic ----- E
Potions ----- O
Transfiguration ----- O
Ancient Studies ---- A
Dueling ---- O
Spell-Craft ---- E
Warding ---- O
Harry read it again and again. His results were... fine. Great, actually. He'd always known he'd Astronomy, but he'd expected an E in Ancient Studies...
"Oh my..." Lily breathed as she read Harry's result over his shoulder. "This is brilliant, Harry!"
Suddenly, it was snatched from his hand by none other than Adrian, who slipped him his. Adrian's result was nice enough, too. He had O's in Runes, Arithmancy, Dueling, Care, and Potions; E's in Herbology, DADA, Charms, and Transfiguration; an A in Astronomy, and a fail in History.
Harry had left Arithmancy after third year, not being able to handle it. He was failing in it; not very great with numbers. Charles had taken it up, and he was brilliant, something he always seemed awfully pleased with.
Sera also did great, and so did Jéricho. They both had O's in Potions and Transfiguration, while E's in Ancient Studies and Arithmancy. Sera had gotten an O in her Healing exam, Herbology and Charms, and an E in Runes and Astronomy, while Jéricho had O's in Muggle Studies, DADA, and Runes, and Astronomy. Cedric had a failing grade in Divination, E's in DADA, Charms, and Transfiguration, an A in Astronomy, and O's in Muggle Studies and Care.
Their grades were all great, and congratulations were being thrown around the room. Last year, Sera, Jéricho, Cedric, and Harry were prefects, and Cedric was the Quidditch Captain. The surprise (or maybe not) was, though...
"YES!" James, Sirius, Harry, and Jéricho yelled in unison.
Harry and Jéricho had been made Quidditch Captains of their respective teams! Gleaming new scarlet and blue badges lay on their open palms.
"I'm so proud of you!" Lily cried.
James grinned. "You're getting a firebolt, Harry."
Harry gasped. "No way!"
"Yep, and you're getting one too, Jéricho," Sirius said.
Jéricho fell on his father. "Thank you, thank you!"
Sirius just laughed.
Charles
Charles frowned. "What is it?"
"A toffee." Fred shrugged. "We have a left-over..."
"No thanks," Charles cringed. "I'm not eating anything you guys offer."
George smirked. "Okay, fine. This is a Ton-Tongue Toffee. Fred and I invented them, and we’ve been looking for someone to test them on all summer. . . .”
The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter; Charles looked around and saw that Ron and Fred were sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with two red-haired people Charles recognized immediately: Bill and Charlie, the two eldest Weasley brothers.
“How’re you doing, Charles?” said the nearer of the two, grinning at him and holding out a large hand, which Charles shook, feeling calluses and blisters under his fingers. This was Charlie, who worked with dragons in Romania. Charlie was built like the twins, shorter and stockier than Percy and Ron, who were both long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned; his arms were muscular, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it.
Bill got to his feet, smiling, and also shook Charles’ hand. Charles had only met him once, and he had been surprised. He knew that Bill worked for the wizarding bank, Gringotts, and that Bill had been Head Boy at Hogwarts; but he was not an older version of Percy, fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around...
Instead, Bill was - there was no other word for it - cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill’s clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that Charles recognized his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide.
He was the Weasley brother that Sirius liked very much, too, though that did not come as a surprise. Sirius had influenced little Bill a lot when he'd been younger, and Bill had, therefore, followed in his footsteps.
There was a faint popping noise, and Mr. Weasley appeared out of thin air at George’s shoulder. He was looking angrier than Charles 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.”
"What happened?" Charles asked, missing out. Hermione sighed, who was standing near him. Charles had just appeared. "They have a muggle neighbor not far away, and he's a bit of a bully... The twins gave him a ton-tongue toffee."
“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!”
Charles and the Weasleys roared with laughter again, and even Hermione giggled.
“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, Ron, Hermione?”
“Yeah, he is,” intoned Ron and Hermione 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, Charles, dear,” she said, spotting him and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. “Tell me what, Arthur?”
Mr. Weasley hesitated. Charles 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 a girl appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs. Weasley. It was Ginny, Ron’s sister. She smiled at Charles, who grinned back. She was not taken with him anymore.
“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 Charles where he’s sleeping, Ron?” Hermione asked.
“He knows where he’s sleeping,” said Ron, “in my room, he slept there last -”
“We can all go,” Ginny said pointedly.
“Oh,” said Ron, cottoning on. “Right.”
“Yeah, we’ll come too,” said George.
“You stay where you are!” snarled Mrs. Weasley.
Charles, Hermione, and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and they 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?” Charles 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.”
“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,” Charles greeted.
“Oh hello, Charles,” 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,” Ginny scowled irritably. “We’re walking. Sorry if we’ve disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic.”
“What are you working on?” Charles asked.
“A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation,” Percy said 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,” Ron said. “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,” Ron huffed, and he started upstairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As Charles, 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 Charles 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 Regulus' letter to them at the train. It was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering madly.
“Shut up, Pig,” Ron said, 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 Charles. “Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he’s got to work.”
“Er - why are you calling that owl Pig?” Charles asked Ron.
“Because he’s being stupid,” said Ginny. “Its proper name is Pigwidgeon.”
“Yeah, and that’s not a stupid name at all,” Ron bit back sarcastically. “Ginny named him,” he explained to Charles. “Reckons it’s sweet. 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. Charles 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?" Charles asked Hermione now.
"Out in the garden, I expect," she said. “He likes chasing gnomes. He’s never seen any before.”
"Percy’s enjoying work, then?" Charles asked casually, sitting down on one of the beds and watching the Chudley Cannons zooming in and out of the posters on the ceiling.
"Enjoying it?" said Ron darkly. "I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He’s obsessed. Just don’t get him onto the subject of his boss. According to Mr. Crouch . . . as I was saying to Mr. Crouch . . . Mr. Crouch is of the opinion . . . Mr. Crouch was telling me . . . They’ll be announcing their engagement any day now."
"Have you had a good summer, Charles?" asked Hermione.
Charles nodded. "Yeah. Harry and Ech got new firebolts on making Quidditch Captains and Prefects again, and on getting great OWLs."
"Oh, I almost forgot!" Hermione exclaimed. "How'd they do?"
"Harry's got twelve OWLs." Charles smiled. "Eight O's. Three E's. An A. He only failed Astronomy, which he wasn't planning on taking, anyway."
"That's brilliant!" Ron whistled. "He wants to be an Auror, yeah?"
"Yeah, I guess..."
"And what about-?" Ron began, but at a look from Hermione, he fell silent. Charles knew Ron had been about to ask about Regulus. Discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea, not only because she was a Slytherin, but also because it was a very big secret. Nobody but themselves, the Prowlers, Charles' parents, Sirius, Remus, McGonagall, and Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence.
“I think they’ve stopped arguing,” Hermione said, to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking suspiciously from Ron to Charles. “Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?”
“Yeah, all right,” Ron agreed. The four of them left Ron’s room and went back downstairs to find Mrs. Weasley alone in the kitchen, looking extremely bad-tempered.
“We’re eating out in the garden,” she said when they came in. “There’s just not room for so many people in here. Could you take the plates outside, girls? Bill and Charlie are setting up the tables. Knives and forks, please, you two,” she said to Ron and Charles, pointing her wand a little more vigorously than she had intended at a pile of potatoes in the sink, which shot out of their skins so fast that they ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes. “Those two!” she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard, and Charles knew she meant Fred and George. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to them, I really don’t. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can...”
Mrs. Weasley slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand tip as she stirred.
“It’s not as though they haven’t got brains,” she continued irritably, taking the saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, “but they’re wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they’ll be in real trouble. I’ve had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they’re going, they’ll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office.”
Mrs. Weasley jabbed her wand at the cutlery drawer, which shot open. Charles and Ron both jumped out of the way as several knives soared out of it, flew across the kitchen, and began chopping the potatoes, which had just been tipped back into the sink by the dustpan.
“I don’t know where we went wrong with them,” Mrs. Weasley continued, putting down her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. “It’s been the same for years, one thing after another, and they won’t listen to — OH NOT AGAIN!”
She had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and turned into a giant rubber mouse.
“One of their fake wands again!” she shouted. “How many times have I told them not to leave them lying around?”
She grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove was smoking.
“C’mon,” Ron said hurriedly to Charles, seizing a handful of cutlery from the open drawer, “let’s go and help Bill and Charlie.”
They left Mrs. Weasley and headed out the back door into the yard.
They had only gone a few paces when Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, Crookshanks, came pelting out of the garden, bottle-brush tail held high in the air, chasing what looked like a muddy potato on legs. Charles recognized it instantly as a gnome. Barely ten inches high, its horny little feet pattered very fast as it sprinted across the yard and dived headlong into one of the Wellington boots that lay scattered around the door. The gnome could be heard giggling madly as Crookshanks inserted a paw into the boot, trying to reach it.
Meanwhile, a very loud crashing noise was coming from the other side of the house. The source of the commotion was revealed as they entered the garden and saw that Bill and Charlie both had their wands out and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other out of the air. Fred and George were cheering, Ginny was laughing, and Hermione was hovering near the hedge, apparently torn between amusement and anxiety.
Bill’s table caught Charlie’s with a huge bang and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy’s head poking out of a window on the second floor.
“Will you keep it down?!” he bellowed.
“Sorry, Perce,” Bill grinned. “How’re the cauldron bottoms coming on?”
“Very badly,” said Percy peevishly, and he slammed the window shut. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg and conjured tablecloths.
By seven o’clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Mrs. Weasley’s excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, Charles, and Hermione were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky.
"Your parents or siblings aren't joining us for dinner, then?" Mrs. Weasley inquired of Charles as he helped himself to chicken and ham pie, boiled potatoes, and salad.
"No," Charles replied, "Dad has some work to do, Effie's gone with Harry to the Greengrass Manor, and Monty's at home with mum, who's busy with something."
Mrs. Weasley nodded.
At the far end of the table, Percy was telling his father all about his report on cauldron bottoms.
“I’ve told Mr. Crouch that I’ll have it ready by Tuesday,” Percy was saying pompously. “That’s a bit sooner than he expected it, but I like to keep on top of things. I think he’ll be grateful I’ve done it in good time, I mean, it’s extremely busy in our department just now, what with all the arrangements for the World Cup. We’re just not getting the support we need from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Ludo Bagman -”
“I like Ludo,” said Mr. Weasley mildly. “He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favor: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble - a lawnmower with unnatural powers - I smoothed the whole thing over.”
“Oh Bagman’s likable enough, of course,” said Percy dismissively, “but how he ever got to be Head of Department... when I compare him to Mr. Crouch! I can’t see Mr. Crouch losing a member of our department and not trying to find out what’s happened to them. Do you realize Bertha Jorkins has been missing for over a month now? Went on holiday to Albania and never came back?”
“Yes, I was asking Ludo about that,” Mr. Weasley frowned. “He says Bertha’s gotten lost plenty of times before now - though I must say, if it was someone in my department, I’d be worried...”
“Oh Bertha’s hopeless, all right,” said Percy. “I hear she’s been shunted from department to department for years, much more trouble than she’s worth... but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her. Mr. Crouch has been taking a personal interest, she worked in our department at one time, you know, and I think Mr. Crouch was quite fond of her - but Bagman just keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead. However,” Percy heaved an impressive sigh and took a deep swig of elderflower wine, “we’ve got quite enough on our plates at the Department of International Magical Cooperation without trying to find members of other departments too. As you know, we’ve got another big event to organize right after the World Cup.”
Percy cleared his throat significantly and looked down toward the end of the table where Charles, Ron, and Hermione were sitting. “You know the one I’m talking about, Father.” He raised his voice slightly. “The top-secret one.”
Ron rolled his eyes and muttered to Charles and Hermione, “He’s been trying to get us to ask what that event is ever since he started work. Probably an exhibition of thick-bottomed cauldrons.”
In the middle of the table, Mrs. Weasley was arguing with Bill about his earring, which seemed to be a recent acquisition.
"... with a horrible great fang on it. Really, Bill, what do they say at the bank?"
"Mum, no one at the bank gives a damn how I dress as long as I bring home plenty of treasure," said Bill patiently.
"And your hair’s getting silly, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, fingering her wand lovingly. “I wish you’d let me give it a trim..."
"I like it," Ginny praised, who was sitting beside Bill. “You’re so old-fashioned, Mum. Anyway, it’s nowhere near as long as Professor Dumbledore’s... Nearing Sirius', more like...”
Next to Mrs. Weasley, Fred, George, and Charlie were all talking spiritedly about the World Cup.
"It’s got to be Ireland," Charlie said thickly, through a mouthful of potato. "They flattened Peru in the semifinals."
"Bulgaria has got Viktor Krum, though," said Fred.
"Krum’s one decent player, Ireland has got seven," Charlie said shortly. “I wish England had got through. That was embarrassing, that was."
"What happened?" Hermione asked, joining in.
Charles frowned gloomily. "Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten. Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg."
Mr. Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their homemade strawberry ice cream, and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Charles was feeling extremely well-fed and at peace with the world as he watched several gnomes sprinting through the rose bushes, laughing madly and closely pursued by Crookshanks.
Ron looked carefully up the table to check that the rest of the family were all busy talking, then he said very quietly to Charles, “So, have you heard from Regulus lately?”
Hermione looked around, listening closely.
“Yeah,” Charles answered softly, “twice. He seems okay. Living with Sirius in their ancestral home.”
“Look at the time,” Mrs. Weasley said suddenly, checking her wristwatch. “You really should be in bed, the whole lot of you - you’ll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. Hermione, if you leave your school list out, I’ll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. I’m getting everyone else’s, except Charles who already has his. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time.”
“Hope it does this time, too!” Charles grinned enthusiastically.
Charles was going to go to the World Cup with the Weasleys this time, but would meet up with his family there, because he had wanted to go with Hermione and Ron. His parents had been reluctant but had agreed. The Blacks, Potters, Remus, and the Tonks would be going together, and the Diggorys would be with the Lovegoods.
“Well, I certainly don’t,” Percy said sanctimoniously. “I shudder to think what the state of my intray would be if I was away from work for five days.”
“Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?” Fred asked.
“That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!” said Percy, going very red in the face. “It was nothing personal!”
“It was,” Fred whispered to Charles as they got up from the table. “We sent it.”