PART TWO

Most of the family was asleep, except for a extremely worried Molly Weasley who had been nervously sitting at the kitchen table awaiting their arrival and staring at the family clock. The clock was enchanted to give the disposition of the entire Weasley family. Where it used to indicate “at work”, “at school” or the like, its hands with all of the Weasley clan’s names on them were all quite ominously pointing towards “mortal peril” and had been for the better part of a year, since the wizarding war erupted anew. She welcomed Harry’s arrival with a sigh of relief and tears in her eyes. Harry was nearly smothered by the fierce hug afforded to him by Molly when he walked through the door. She tightened her grip even more when Arthur briefly told her what had happened in Privet Drive and it was only with some reluctance that she finally let go of Harry. Arthur suggested that Harry had been through a lot that evening and that he should belatedly go to bed. A very weary Harry agreed and set off for some sleep. As Harry climbed the stairs towards Ron’s room, Molly called out “Harry dear, happy birthday. Try to get some rest won’t you, as we do have quite a lovely day planned for you to celebrate.”

Harry nodded in tired submission and quietly entered Ron’s room to find the occupant snoring away obliviously. Harry smiled a genuine smile for the first time in weeks, and fell exhausted into the spare bed, falling asleep in seconds.

Late the following morning, Harry was woken by the laughter and good natured ribbing of his friends who, despite Molly Weasley’s stern threats to leave Harry alone to sleep-in or else, could not contain themselves and wanted to wish Harry a happy birthday on his special day. The Weasley twins, Fred and George bounced on the end of Harry’s bed chanting get up get up get up and Hermione rushed through the open doorway to give Harry a hug. Harry reached for his glasses by the bedside and sat up to see his friends through his sleep filled eyes. Beaming radiant smiles back at him were the twins, Ron, Hermione, and now sitting on the edge of the bed, Ginny.

“Come on you lot” said Fred after several minutes of good natured jesting at Harry’s expense. “Let’s let sleeping beauty wake up and get himself organised”

“Yeah Potter, get dressed and we’ll see you in the backyard for a game of Quidditch” George added.

and with that, the red headed twins apparated out of the room with a loud pop.

Hermione caught the look between Harry and Ginny and discretely ushered Ron out of the room, leaving the recent lovers alone again.

“Ginny, I….” began Harry. Ginny put a finger to Harry’s lips, hushing him instantly.

“Now’s not the time” said Ginny sadly, “but we do need to talk soon. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the summer. See you downstairs when you’re ready.” Ginny leaned over and gave Harry a quick kiss on the lips and with that, Ginny swept out of the room leaving Harry alone. A little later on, a suitably dressed and refreshed Harry wandered downstairs to find party preparations in full swing.

“Morning Harry dear,” waved Mrs Weasley, who was the queen bee in the hive of activity in the kitchen. Dishes and utensils flew around the kitchen at the flick of her wand and a sumptuous feast was obviously soon in the offering. Harry knew better than to interrupt Mrs Weasley’s concentration when she was cooking and headed towards the rear of the house where he heard the shouts of delight coming from a game of backyard Quidditch.

Fred, Ron, and two Gryffindors in Harry’s year, Neville and Seamus were on one team. George, Hermione, Ginny and (don’t call her Nymphadora) Tonks were on the opposing side. Much to the consternation of the predominantly boys team, George and the girls were winning handsomely. Laughter frequently rang out as the combatants flew on their brooms at high speed around the yard. As Harry watched smiling, Neville reached out tentatively for the quaffle and inadvertently fell off his broom, landing with an audible thump on the ground.

Harry saw that Luna Lovegood was sitting under an old oak tree nearby, making a daisy turn different colours of the rainbow with waves of her wand and seemingly oblivious to the game going on around her. Inexplicably draped across her shoulders was a rather large, and presumably dead ferret. However, Harry was used to “Loony” Lovegood wearing a range of bizarre outfits and thought little more of her strange fur wrap.

“Um, Hi Luna” said Harry cheerfully.

“Up Yours” came the sharp reply.

“Errrrr, what did you say?” replied a clearly stunned Harry.

“Oh, Hi Harry” said Luna in a somewhat dreamy fashion. “It wasn’t me who said that. It’s my Jarvy” she said, pointing her wand up to the ferret, which had now lifted its head and started eying Harry off suspiciously.

“Your what?” asked a perplexed Harry. The magical world just kept getting stranger and stranger he thought.

“A Jarvy. They can speak a bit, but this one tends to just insult people. As if I didn’t have enough friends as it is….” Luna replied in her disturbingly frank manner.

“Looooooser” piped up the Jarvy, with unfortunate timing.

“Errrrr, well that’s nice Luna” Harry said, not really meaning it. “I guess I’ll see you at the party”

and with a shrug of his shoulders, Harry headed over towards the group of wizards standing near the large table that the Weasleys has set up just outside from the kitchen. It was lavished with edible goodies and decorations. Fred and George had obviously supplied some goods from their wildly successful joke shop, as the punch bowl periodically belched out ominous, multicoloured mushroom clouds and somewhat regretably, soon after Arthur had rather absentmindedly reached for a sweet from a bowl he had a sudden explosive nosebleed. The quidditch game was called to a temporary halt so that George and Fred could administer the antidote to their patented and very popular NoseBleed Nougat. They had to use their wands to scourgify! the bloodstains off Arthur’s shirtfront before their mother caught them red handed. Molly’s wrath was well documented and the twins avoided it at all costs, but not always successfully.

Hagrid was there, handing out party hats to the other guests, who included Remus Lupin, Mad-Eye Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mundungus Fletcher and much to Harry’s surprise, Rita Skeeter. Harry walked over and was warmly welcomed by most of the adult wizards. However, Moody had been set off by the nougat fiasco and was busy lecturing a captive Remus and Rita on basic security techniques. Harry angled away towards Hagrid to avoid the worst of Moody’s lecture and Mung too, wisely melted into the background, eying off the silverware with a lick of his lips.

“Constant vigilance!” roared Moody. “Can’t you see that that could have been a poisonous toffee sent by You-Know-Who himself?”

“Easy Alastor” soothed Lupin. “It was nothing but a harmless prank by Fred or George”.

“There is nothing harmless about it at all, when we could be under attack at anytime, just like Potter was last night” exclaimed a worked up Moody, whose magical eye had begun spinning wildly in a 360 degree search for non-existent enemies.

“Careful with that thing Alastor” said Rita, dripping with sarcasm. “You’re likely to put someone’s eye out….other than your own of course”.

“You’ll lose more than an eye if I had my way” growled Moody.

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall at your place sometime Moody”, purred Rita. “I imagine that it would be most entertaining, what with you cursing any living thing that got within 100 feet of your place. Ding dong, good evening sir, it’s the Mormons come to bless your house….zappppp …..aarrrrrggghhhhhh !!! I can just see it now” she smirked.

“Fly on the wall ? Ha!, that’s a good one coming from an unregistered animagus whose transformation is into a bloody bug!” replied Moody, his face turning redder with each retort.

“Better an unregistered animagus than an officially registered and well documented pain in the butt, Alastor sweetie” purred Rita, her eyes flashing wickedly at the verbal sparring.

“A pain in the butt I may be missy, but the day will come when I am proven right and you will be surely sorry that you didn’t listen to my advice” snarled Moody.

“Darling, even a broken watch is correct twice a day, so just you keep up with the excessive paranoia, won’t you?” Rita said acidly.

Lupin coughed to disguise his chuckle and the usually stoic Shacklebolt broke out into a sly grin. Behind Moody, Harry snorted a mouthful of his recently acquired butterbeer out of his nose and went into a coughing fit, getting a bone jarring whack on the back from Hagrid for his trouble.

Lupin was fairly sure that he could see small wisps of steam coming from Moody’s ears, and in a timely intervention, pointed out to everyone that the birthday cake was about to arrive. From the kitchen, Molly magically floated the cake across the yard and onto the centre of the table.

“Take your seats please” she sung out, and all of the guests made their way over to the table for the party.

The cake was large and oval, in the shape of a Quidditch pitch. Enchanted players made out of icing flew around the arena, chasing a tiny chocolate quaffle and bludgers. One of the players, an obvious facsimile of Harry, had the number 17 on his back (for his 17th birthday Molly explained) and flew around repeatedly catching and letting go the tiny gold snitch. The icing around the edges was in the form of a little crowd of thousands which, like the crowds from some of the Olympic opening ceremonies, repeatedly held up little sign boards which when joined together spelled out Happy Birthday Harry. The three goal posts at each end of the edible quidditch pitch served as the candles and periodically shot up multicoloured flames like mini flame throwers.

Hagrid moved his rather large frame around the table, handing out a mishmash of gaudily coloured and very unattractive party hats to the guests from a telescoped column of hats he carried around in his enormous hands. Not wishing to offend his friend by refusing one of the awful hats, Harry reluctantly accepted his and placed it on his head, only to almost immediately feel the quite disturbing sensation that something that was surely gnawing on his scalp. Harry quickly whipped off his hat and received a bite on his fingers from the hat, which now seemed to have sharp little fangs.

“What the ?” Harry cried out in alarm, as he shook the hat off his bleeding hand onto the table. The hat quickly turned into a small, evil looking lizard, which immediately dove into the birthday cake and became the new 4th goal post at one end of the quidditch pitch. Whilst the incredulous guests looked on, the goal post quickly snapped at an enchanted icing figure which flew too close and bit it clean in half before resuming its original position as an innocent looking goalpost.

“Oh dear, I’d wondered where’d I’d put that thing” Hagrid apologised, as he snatched the goalpost out of the cake and placed it in his pocket. “It’s a Transylvanian chameleon, it is” explained Hagrid. “Little blighters can disguise themselves as almost anything, but they can get a bit snappy. Carnivorous ye see. I must’ve left him near the party hats before I left home and he hid inside them. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, really tho”

“******** !” said the ferret around Luna’s neck, which caused George, who was sitting next to it, to laugh and accidentally snort back one of his candies, causing him to choke. George grasped his throat, leant back on his chair and fell to the ground, his face turning redder by the second.

“Oh Fred, stop acting the fool and get up” demanded Molly Weasley, who was tending to Harry’s wound.

“I’m Fred” said the other Weasley twin, “and I don’t think that he’s fooling around”.

“Actually, I think he’s choking to death” said Luna in her usual frank manner, “Bye Fred, it was nice knowing you,” she said with tears welling up in her huge, already sad eyes.

As a now worried Molly frantically reached inside her cooking apron for her wand, Luna leaned over the now bluish George to grasp his hand and give it a reassuring pat as he lay dying. However, she accidentally caused the Jarvy to slip off from around her neck and several kilograms of trash talking ferret landed squarely on George’s upper abdomen, just below his ribs, and the resulting upward pressure drove the air from his lungs and forced the offending lolly out of his blocked windpipe. It shot out of George’s mouth onto the grass and was quickly eaten by the Jarvy which had scurried under Luna's chair. George finally gasped in a lungful of air, the colour quickly returning to his face. The subsequent hugs and tears of his distraught mother quickly turned his face red again, but at least this time it was not going to be a near-fatal condition, unless one really can die of embarrassment.

“Ahem, well, a toast” said Arthur, trying to get the festivities back on track when the commotion subsided. “To Harry – we wish him, well, a somewhat happy birthday and here’s hoping for many more to come”.

“Here, here” chorused the group, except for Luna who bluntly pronounced “Unless Voldemort kills him first”, much to the collective horror of the party goers.

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence Luna, but I have some thoughts on that” Harry chuckled. “And now that I’m finally of age, here’s what I plan to do about Voldemort.”

The whole group expectantly drew up to the table and focussed intently on Harry, who said “Well firstly, I’m going to……”

And as the Jarvy enthusiastically scavenged around the table for more food scraps, insulting anyone too mean to drop him a tidbit, Harrry started to outline his very clever plan.

THE END

Durro

P.S. It was too large to post as one story.