Chapter 141: The Beginning of the Plan

Seriously, two mischievous brothers, Fred and George, had quite a show at the Dursleys. They sprinkled a handful of taffy on purpose, and Uncle Vernon's fat son, Dudley, couldn't resist picking one up and eating one.

Good guy, his tongue suddenly became a foot long, dangling outside, and it keeps getting longer! But his mother was very anxious.

"This is no joke, Fred!" Mr. Weasley couldn't help shouting at his twin sons, "What the hell did you feed that Muggle boy?"

"I didn't give him anything," Fred said with a smirk on his face. "I just accidentally spilled it on the ground... I can't blame him for telling him to pick it up and eat it himself."

"You spilled it on purpose!" roared Mr. Weasley. "You know he's going to eat it, you know he's losing weight—"

"How swollen is his sweetheart?" George asked eagerly.

"It swelled to more than four feet long before his parents let me shrink it!" Mr. Weasley said angrily.

Harry and the Weasley brothers laughed again.

"This is no joke!" cried Mr. Weasley. "This behavior seriously damages the relationship between wizards and Muggles! I have devoted my life to working against Muggle cruelty, and it turns out that my own son—"

"We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!" said Fred angrily.

"Yeah, we teased him because he was a bully," said George. "Didn't we, Harry?"

"Yes, that's what he is, Mr Weasley," said Harry seriously.

"That's not the problem!" said Mr. Weasley angrily. "Just wait, I'm going to tell your mother—"

"Tell me what?" came a voice behind them.

Mrs. Weasley happened to walk into the kitchen--she was a dumpy woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were now squinted and suspicious.

"Hi, Harry, dear." She saw Harry and greeted with a smile. Then she cast her eyes on her husband again, "Tell me, Arthur, what's the matter?"

Mr. Weasley hesitated.

Harry could see that, despite his anger at Fred and George, he had no real intention of telling Mrs Weasley about it. Mr. Weasley looked at his wife nervously, and no one spoke for a while.

Just then, three girls appeared at the kitchen door behind Mrs. Weasley.

One had very thick brown hair and two large front teeth, and it was Harry and Ron's good friend Hermione. And the other was small, red-haired, Ron's little sister, Ginny.

Both girls smiled at Harry, who smiled back at them, and Ginny blushed instantly - Ginny had been smitten with Harry since his first visit to the Burrow.

As for the last girl, her attention didn't seem to be on Harry's side, she just stood by the door, staring at the wall clock in the living room of The Burrow in a daze.

"Quickly, Arthur, what's the matter?" Mrs. Weasley asked again, in a slightly scary tone.

"It's nothing, Molly," said Mr. Weasley vaguely. "Fred and George just - I've already taught them -"

"What did they do this time?" said Mrs. Weasley angrily. "If it had something to do with Weasley's magic again—"

"Ron, shall we show Harry where he sleeps?" Hermione said from the door.

"He knows where he sleeps," said Ron, "in my room, he slept there last year—"

"Let's all go and see," said Hermione sternly.

"Oh," Ron understood now, "Okay."

"Miss Lovegood, would you like to come and see?" Hermione looked at the blond girl who was dazed beside her, and tugged on her sleeve hesitantly.

"Huh?" Luna tilted her head and nodded quickly, "Okay..."

"Right, we'll go too.

said George.

"You don't move!" Mrs. Weasley yelled.

Harry and Ron slipped cautiously sideways out of the kitchen, and joined Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, down narrow passages and up the rickety stairs.

The stairs turned left and right, leading to the upper floors.

While Harry was asking Ron and Ginny about what the Weasleys called "Weasley's magic tricks," Hermione was chatting cautiously with Luna.

"... Miss Lovegood, uh... Maca... I mean, isn't Maclean going to the Quidditch World Cup with you?"

In fact, Hermione had wanted to ask that question ever since Luna's father had sent her here.

"Maka?" Luna shook her head blankly, "He said he has a lot of things to do this holiday, so he should be still in school right now..."

"So..." Hermione hesitated, "Aren't you going to accompany him?"

"Why?" Luna asked strangely, "If he needs help, he will ask directly..."

"Oh...that's not what I meant..." Hermione pursed her lips, but in the end she didn't continue to ask.

She always didn't know how to communicate with this blonde girl who was in a trance all day long, and because of Maca, she couldn't tell.

"What's wrong with me..." Hermione scratched her messy hair, feeling that her heart was the same as her hair, and she couldn't straighten it no matter how she stroked it.

Soon, the day of the Quidditch World Cup arrived, and everyone was woken up one by one by Mrs. Weasley early in the morning.

Most of the kids looked dazed, but Luna was clearly the standout.

"Miss Lovegood, wake up..." Ginny shook Luna, who was sleeping next to her, while Hermione was dressing next to her.

"Hmm..." Luna half-opened her eyes, looked at Ginny and Hermione dimly, showing an innocent look, "What's wrong? Have all the Flobber caterpillars turned into butterflies?"

"Flobberworms don't cocoon," Hermione corrected subconsciously.

"Kamaka told me they would—" Luna muttered, raising her hand and rubbing her face like a kitten.

Hermione froze for a moment, but said nothing further.

Compared to Luna who was always in a daze and believed all kinds of bizarre rumors, Hermione was obviously much more sensitive to these little things.

On Harry's side, Mrs. Weasley had already entered the room.

"Time to go, Harry, dear," she whispered, walking over to wake Ron again.

Harry reached for his glasses and put them on, sitting up. It was still dark outside.

Ron muttered something indistinctly when he was awakened by her mother. At the foot of the bed, Harry saw two irregular shapes emerging from under the unkempt blankets.

"Why, is it time already?"

It turned out that it was Fred and George who had been chatting with them about the World Cup last night.

Everyone dressed in silence, too sleepy to talk. Then the four of them went downstairs into the kitchen, still yawning and stretching.

Mrs. Weasley was stirring the contents of a cauldron on the stove, and Mr. Weasley sat at the table, checking a large bundle of parchment tickets.

When the boys entered the kitchen, he lifted his head and spread his arms so they could see his clothes. He was wearing a jacket that looked like a golf jacket and a pair of very old jeans. The pants were a bit too big for him, and he tied them with a wide leather belt.

"How?" he asked eagerly. "We should keep our identity a secret when we go—do I look like a Muggle, Harry?"

"Like," Harry said with a smile, "it's pretty good."

"Why don't you see Bill and Charlie and Per-per-Percy?" said George, yawning again uncontrollably.

"Wouldn't they Apparate?" said Mrs. Weasley, setting the cauldron on the table and beginning to scoop porridge into bowls, "so they can sleep in for a while."

Harry knew that to apparate was to disappear from one place and reappear in another in the blink of an eye. However, he had never known a student at Hogwarts who could do this, and he knew it must be difficult.

"But..." Harry thought suddenly, "I'm sure Maca would have known it long ago."

However, Maca was always unexpected—he couldn't always use this spell well.

"So they're still sound asleep?" Fred asked angrily. "Why can't we Apparate too?"

"Because you're underage and haven't passed the exam." Mrs. Weasley shot back at him. "Where are those three girls?"

She turned and rushed out of the kitchen, and they heard her coming upstairs.

"A test to Apparate?" Harry asked.

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Weasley, stuffing the ticket carefully into the back pocket of his jeans, "the Department of Magical Transport fined two people one day for Apparating without a certificate. It's not an easy job, and if it's not done right, it's a nuisance. The two people I'm talking about ended up being separated."

Everyone at the table, except Harry, frowned and made faces.

"Oh - separation?" Harry asked.

"They dropped half of themselves," said Mr. Weasley, scooping up a generous amount of syrup and mixing it into his porridge, "so, of course, they were pinned there, unable to move on either side. ...will have to wait for the Incident Reversal Team to deal with this... Let me tell you, it means a lot of documentation! Because the Muggles saw the broken bodies they left behind..."

While Harry and the others were still scrambling to prepare breakfast in the Burrow, a sudden explosion broke the perennially silent wizard prison in Azkaban.

"Boom!" "Bang!"

A steel prison door that had been enchanted with protection fell to the ground, and a peaceful voice suddenly sounded amidst the dust.

"Come out, Bellatrix."