Just Say Yes || Fred Weasley

Chapter One Hundred and Nine

The next morning, Mrs Weasley accosted us in the hallway on our way out of the kitchen, a determined look on her face.
"George, go wake up your brother. You three, with me"
George grinned, disapparating before we could protest, the rest of us following Molly with a frown. As we passed the stairs, Hermione and Ginny joined the group, unable to escape Mrs Weasley's glare.
"Are we really back on cleaning duty?" I groaned quietly, leaning against Fred as we walked, "I'm so sick of it"
"There can't be that many rooms left, surely" he replied.
"I'm sure she'd find some" Lee muttered dully.

As we reached the room, we were passed some face coverings and a spray bottle filled with black liquid, George being treated the same as he returned with the boys.
"Cover your faces and take a spray," Mrs. Weasley said, pointing to three 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 frowned, "Kreacher's really old, he probably couldn't manage —"
"You'd be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione," said Sirius, 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 Harry's inquiring look. "I keep him upstairs in my mother's bedroom. Anyway . . . this writing desk . . ."
He dropped the bag of rats onto an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet that had been shaking in the corner of the room.
"Well, Molly, I'm pretty sure this is a boggart," said Sirius, peering through the keyhole, "but perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shifty at it before we let it out — knowing my mother it could be something much worse."
"Right you are, Sirius," said Mrs. Weasley.
"Why not ask Lupin? He taught boggarts at school" I suggested, shrugging when everyone turned to look at me, "What Neville told me - his was Snape"

The twins burst into laughter, Lee wheezing at their side.
"Poor Neville!" Ginny giggled.
A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails from Mrs Black's portrait.
"I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!" said Sirius exasperatedly, hurrying back out of the room.
"Stains of dishonor, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth . . ."
"Close the door, please, Harry," said Mrs. Weasley.
"Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because doxies bite and their teeth are poisonous. I've got a bottle of antidote here, but I'd rather nobody needed it."Mrs Weasley said once Harry closed the door, beckoning 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 paralyze them. When they're immobilized, just throw them in this bucket."
She stepped carefully out of the line of fire and raised her own spray. "All right — squirt!"
I started firing at once, turning to Lee, "I bet I can shoot more than you can"
"Bet fucking accepted" he grinned.
After a few minutes of piling doxies in our buckets, we were interrupted by Mrs Weasley's voice, "Fred, what are you doing? Spray that at once and throw it away!"
Confused, I looked to my left, having to hold in my laughter as I saw Fred 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.
"We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snack-boxes," George told Harry under his breath.
Harry moved closer to George and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "What are Skiving Snackboxes?"
"Range of sweets to make you ill," George whispered, 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. We've been developing them this summer. They're double-ended, color- 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," whispered Fred, who had edged over out of Mrs. Weasley's line of vision and was now sweeping a few stray doxies 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 puking long enough to swallow the purple end"
"Testers?"
"Us," Lee interrupted "We take it in turns pulling short straws. George did the Fainting Fancies — Fred tried the Nosebleed Nougat —"
"Mum thought we'd been dueling," said George.
"I'm yet to pull the short straw" I grinned smugly, spraying another three doxies in the face and adding them to my bucket.
"Joke shop still on, then?" Harry muttered, pretending to be adjusting the nozzle on his spray.
"Well, we haven't had a chance to get premises yet," said Fred, dropping his 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."
"But don't worry . . .Mum hasn't got a clue. She won't read the Daily Prophet anymore, 'cause of it telling lies about you and Dumbledore." George shrugged.
"We have been looking though - for a place, that is" I smiled, nudging Fred's arm, "We'll find one eventually"
"These two are picky as shit" Lee sniggered, gesturing to the twins, but turning it into a cough as Mrs Weasley looked over in our direction.