Meddlesome Mirrors by pepperama



Summary: George’s new invention is about to blow open a few secrets.
Rating: PG-13 starstarstarstarhalf-star
Categories: Alternate Universe, Post-DH/AB
Characters: None
Genres: None
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 2012.07.26
Updated: 2012.08.07


Meddlesome Mirrors by pepperama
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Author's Notes:

Monday
* * * * * *

“George! Your stupid Frisbees keep biting me when I try to stack them!” Ginny called up the set of stairs tucked in the back of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. No reply. She huffed, and sucked a wounded finger on her right hand, shaking out her left to try and dispell the prickly feelings coming from the teeth marks now etched into her skin. “George!” she yelled, louder this time, “Is there a bin I could put them in instead? They’re not going to stay all stacked up on the shelves anyway!” Still no reply. “For Merlin’s sake,” she huffed to herself, and started stomping up the stairs. “Why they don’t just put those damn things in packages…”

The front door to the shop squawked behind her. “We’re not open just…” Ginny spun on the stair tread, “George? I thought you were upstairs,” she pointed her thumb over her shoulder.

“Just popped out to the post office.” He wiggled his eyebrows and hefted up the cardboard box he was carrying.

“I thought you got things delivered to the shop.”

“I do.”

“Then why…?”

“The muggle post office.”

Ginny came back down the stairs, curiosity peaked.

“That’s some sort of muggle thing in there then? What are you doing with it?” Ginny squinted her eyes at the box, then went up on her tiptoes to see if she could read the label, but George hefted it out of her reach, dancing around her to the stairwell.

“Ah-ah, littlest sister, keep your prying little sneak eyes out. This is top secret stuff.” Ginny’s eyebrows arched up in clear disbelief. George smirked at her and winked. “As the Muggles say, a magician never reveals his secrets.” He started up the stairs with a dramatic, sweeping flourish. Something–several things–rattled around in the box. George looked down, momentarily alarmed, and then shrugged and threw another cheeky grin over his shoulder at Ginny. Ginny rolled her eyes behind his back. “I saw that,” he said over his shoulder. She glared at his retreating back.

“George!” He jumped a little. Ginny smirked in satisfaction. “The fanged Frisbees are feasting on my fingers and they won’t stay on the shelves, is there some other way I can display them without loosing any appendages?”

“That was some nice alliteration you had going…”

“George!”

“Right, er… you were stacking them? They go in the bin between the trick wands and the quibbling quaffles. Didn’t I tell you to put them in there?” he asked, balancing the box partially on the railing.

“No.”

“Oh. Well, put them in there. And hurry it up, we open in,” he glanced at the clock, “seventeen minutes.”

With that, George hustled himself and his mystery package upstairs and pulled the door closed behind him, sealing himself off in his flat.

Ginny turned back to the store, still strewn with half empty boxes of unshelved items, and blew a clump of hair that had fallen out of its clip away from her face. Her eyes settled on the swaying stack of Frisbees she had made, all of the little buggers gnawing at the air, and brought her finger to her mouth again without thinking.

“I am really not getting paid enough for this,” she grumbled, moving towards the pile of plastic torture devices so that she could get them into their stupid little bin and finish up the rest of the restocking.



Later on Monday
* * * * * *

“Neville!” Ginny called, winding her way between the tables at the Leaky Cauldron. She ran her hand over her brow to wick away some of the sweat accumulated there. Thank Merlin there were climate charms in here, even just the walk from her brother’s shop to the pub had her feeling like a roast in her mother’s Aga.

“Hey, Neville!” she called again, sidestepping a tipsy middle-aged wizard holding up an empty tankard.

Neville didn’t seem to hear her. He was sitting at a table close to the back of the pub, staring off into space and fiddling with the chips on the plate in front of him. Ginny came up next to him and nabbed one of his chips, popping it into her mouth and plopping down in the chair next to him.

“What are we looking at then?” she asked, stealing another wedge of potato goodness. Neville’s head whipped over to face her, his eyes wide and a flush quickly flooding his face and neck.

“Ginny!” he exclaimed. Yup, he clearly hadn’t noticed her at all. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing around his thick neck. He ran a hand through his sand blonde hair, pulling it up and scrunching it between his fingers in the process, a habit she thinks he picked up from Harry, same as Ron. “What’re you doing here?”

Ginny sat back in the creaky wood chair and narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s very nice, first you ignore me, now I get ‘what’re you doing here?’”

Neville’s eyes widened in alarm. He always took her so seriously, even after all their years of friendship. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! I was just… and then you…” Ginny had pulled her lips under her teeth and the corners of her mouth turned up. Her shoulders were shaking in her attempt not to laugh. “… Are joking,” he finished, covering his eyes with his hand and scrunching it together to massage his face. This habit was all his own and would sometimes result in him inadvertently smearing half of his face with dirt and compost.

“I just got off at the shop of horrors,” Ginny told him.

“I thought you liked all that stuff.”

“I do. It’s just a quantities thing. One decoy detonator: great fun. Forty-odd going off in rapid succession after a kid trips into the display? Really, really not fun. It’s basically just an entire day of being chewed on and snapped at and having everything you touch explode. And things you don’t touch explode. I don’t know how George does it. Plus some of the parents of these kids are so ridiculous. Everything is too dangerous for their precious little so and so, who’s, you know, actually a fourteen year old little snot that Hermione had to detain about ten times last term for trying to blow up other people’s personal belongings,” Ginny huffed. “Anyway…” She looked over at Neville and he was staring out into space again, but nodding his head as if he were following along. The fact that she had stopped talking and he was still nodding rather gave him away, however.

She poked him. He looked over at her, instantly sheepish.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Eh, that’s alright. I was just whinging anyway. What are we looking at again? You didn’t answer me before.”

“Nothing! I was just… nothing. I —“

“Sorry I’m late!” Harry interrupted, flopping down heavily in the chair across from them. His eyes landed on her. “Ginny! Hi.” His hand raked through his hair the same way Neville had done a minute ago. “How are you?”

“Oh you know, battered, bruised, bitten, and well on my way to going deaf,“ she replied with a saccharine smile.

“Typical day at the office then?” Harry laughed, leaning forward over the table.

Ginny snuck another chip from Neville and stuffed it into her mouth to distract her from the bubbly feeling rising up from her chest at the sound of his laugh. You’d think after all of these years she’d be past this stupid girlish, giggly crush stuff. Clearly it was never going to happen. She wasn’t sure she even wanted it to anymore. They were good friends and that was plenty. Really.

It was.

“Nev, this is the plant I was telling you about,“ Harry started, opening his dragon skin messenger bag and pulling out a vial containing a deep green, thorny cutting. “We found it in the step-mother’s apartment and no one in the department knew what the heck it was. This is the only cutting we got, it lashed out pretty violently when we took it and started seeping this foul smelling yellowish liquid, so none of us were too keen on getting near it again. I thought I’d see if you knew what it was before we gave it to Monroe for testing.“ He handed the vial over and Neville held it up to the light to examine its contents.

Harry looked back over at Ginny. “How’s George doing?”

“He’s doing better, I think. He was in good spirits today. He’s bought some kind of Muggle things but he won’t tell me what they are or what he’s planning to do with them, the git. It’s really frustrating.”

Harry chuckled in response.

“Well, I’m starving, do you want anything? I’m going to go try and flag down Hannah.” Ginny asked, standing up. Neville’s head snapped to her as she finished speaking. “You want something too, Neville? I can just give her all of our orders. It’s getting packed.”

“Wha–oh, yeah. Er, can I just get another butterbeer?” Neville asked, looking flustered as he turned back to studying the plant. Ginny looked over to Harry.

“Butterbeer sounds good, and a shepherd’s pie?”

“Two butterbeers and an order of shepherd’s pie, coming right up.” She saluted the men and squeezed off into the fast forming dinner crowd.

Hannah was rounding the bar with an empty tray held up over her head when Ginny caught up with her. “Hannah!”

“Hey Ginny! I can’t really talk right now, Christina didn’t come in again, I keep telling Tom to just fire her already but he says she makes too good of an impression on the customers. Meaning she’s stacked, of course. What can I do you for?” All of this tumbled out of Hannah’s mouth at lightning speed.

“Three butterbeers, an order of shepherd’s pie and some fish and chips, please.”

“Is that all for you?” Hannah stared incredulously at Ginny as she slid two tankards of mead down the bar.

“No! Harry and Neville, too, we’ve got a table in the back.”

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t’ve had to come up here to order,” Hannah started, but Ginny waved her off. Hannah turned to the gap behind the bar that opened to the kitchen and slid the order card through.

“No worries, I kind of gate crashed on Harry and Neville anyway, gives them some time to talk about me behind my back.”

Hannah laughed as she grabbed the two plates of steaming food that had appeared behind her and placed them in front of an older couple at the other end of the bar.

“Neville’s fine by the way, you can see him when you bring us our food,” Ginny teased, leaning over the bar, when Hannah came back to her side. Hannah’s face flushed instantly.

“Shut it, you,” she hissed. A table full of men in dress robes waved at Hannah from a few tables away. “I’ve got to go.”

“Right,” Ginny said as Hannah came around the bar, “Oh and Hannah?”

“Hmm?”

“If that’s what it takes to get job security around here, I’d say you’re pretty much set.” Hannah swatted at Ginny with her towel and snorted, then rushed off to see to her customers.

Ginny weaved her way back through the throng to where she had left her friends.

“I’m not sure, with such a small cutting, it could be a lot of things,” Neville was explaining to Harry. “There are a variety of plants that secrete serum or pus like that when they’re cut, and there’s nothing particularly remarkable about it’s appearance. Did it have any flowers? Anything in particular?”

Ginny quietly snuck back into her seat, unnoticed by her two friends.

“No, it was just stalk-y-vine-things like that and some leaves.”

“What did the leaves look like? You really should’ve included one in your sample, you know.”

“I don’t know, they looked like leaves,“ Harry sighed. “Thanks anyway, I’ll just wait and see what Monroe can tell us. I just really want to close this thing and move on.”

“Yeah, I’m glad to be done with that and back in a greenhouse again, where things make sense.”

“Maybe to you they do. Magical plants are just bizarre. I’ve nearly been killed by enough of them to know.” Harry put his bag down against his chair legs and straightened up, finally noticing Ginny.

“You’re back! How long have you been sitting there?” Harry asked, surprised.

“A bit.”

“Sorry. We were just talking about this case and… anyway. Did you catch Hannah?”

“Yup, our orders are in. Her co-worker never showed up so she’s running around like crazy, though.”

“Is it Christina again?” Neville asked. “Hannah said she was over two hours late last night.”

“How often do you come in here Neville?” Harry asked, looking sidelong at Ginny. She grinned back.

“I don’t… it’s just, you know, I’m not really good at the cooking and it’s convenient to work and stuff, so…”

“Uh huh,” grunted Harry

“And you appreciate the service,” Ginny added. Neville blushed. “Honestly, Neville, you should just ask her to dinner or something.”

“That’s not, I don’t, really, Ginny, you don’t…”

“Who’s got the shepherd’s pie?” Hannah asked, appearing behind Neville, who jumped in his chair and turned white.

“Over here.” Harry indicated himself. “Thanks, that was fast,” he said as Hannah passed out the butterbeers and then placed his plate on the table before him.

“Fish and chips are mine, thank you Hannah,” Ginny said, sitting back to give Hannah room to put her plate down.

“No problem, you guys. You sure you don’t want anything else? Neville?” Hannah asked.

“I-“ Neville’s voice cracked and his face was suddenly red again, “I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Shout if you need anything, then,” Hannah said, hurrying off to a nearby table.

“Harry, you and Ron are covering me on Saturday, right?” Ginny asked as they tucked into their food.

“Yeah. Has George found anyone yet?”

“No. Not yet. To be honest, I’m not sure he’s even been trying very hard. I know he tried to get Verity to come back but she decided to stay in Germany, I guess. I don’t think her family’s too keen on moving back, even now, after everything…”

“Yeah,” said Neville, “I don’t really blame them.”

“Well he’s going to have to find someone. After you sweep the pitch with the other players at your trial, he’s not going to have you to bother much longer,” Harry said.

Ginny beamed at him.

“We’ll see,” she said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence anyway.”


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