Subplot

22 - Ron

As spring made its way towards summer, the upcoming OWLs wormed their way into everybody's thoughts until they dominated practically every conversation among fifth years. Students groaned and complained of nightmares. Teachers admonished them to revise. In the Gryffindor Common Room, books and parchments had replaced Gobstones and Exploding Snap cards, much to the amusement of the younger students. Revision tables circulated among students like evil rumours, and everybody suddenly was Hermione's best friend. Hermione had finally forbidden everybody to approach her earlier than eight thirty each night because she needed to keep some of her time to herself.

OWLs were the most basic qualifications of grown wizards and witches: If you had passed them, you were not considered entirely underage anymore. This meant you attained permission to perform certain spells outside school; if you did not want to go on to get your NEWTs, you could even leave school after getting your OWLs to take up some kind of apprenticeship. Of course, nobody really wanted to leave school early, because most prestige jobs required NEWTs, not to mention good OWL marks.

Each teacher had his or her own way of preparing students for the upcoming exams. Professor McGonagall had handed out a seemingly endless list of the Transfigurations as well as the theoretical chapters that she considered exam material. Flitwick gave his students good advice about their preparations, on some days four times per lesson, while Binns was boring as ever, probably oblivious to the fact that for once, students were trying to make sense of his soliloquies. Snape scared his students into studying by looking more evil than usual; kind Professor Sprout revised a lot of material in class; Professor Trelawney unnerved everybody by predicting their marks, not without contradicting herself now and then. Professor Varlerta had the most unusual method of preparation, Ron thought: Not only had she dedicated twelve whole lessons to revision, but she was making her students teach these lessons, something that would make up for half of their Defence Against the Dark Arts marks. The other half of the mark, she had said, would be given for their practical performance in the exams; they would be tested - and would receive marks - together with their practice partner.

Hermione was not amused. "Nobody has ever done such a thing before," she complained. "It doesn't seem fair to receive marks for somebody else's achievement."

Ron wondered if she was talking about good marks Harry might receive for her performance or about bad marks she might receive for him. He had asked Hermione why she did not complain to Varlerta about her unfair grading system. Hermione had given him a scowl. "She said if you really work with a practice partner, your partner's achievements are your achievements and the other way around. She said we have to learn to take responsibility for each other," she had replied darkly, probably put off by the fact that neither she nor Harry had ever really mastered Coaxing or any kind of audio magic very well

Ron had to concede that Varlerta's marking system was unusual, but it didn't worry him overly much: Whether at Coaxing or at Strengthening, his practice partner Parvati and he were fairly well on the same level. They had learned quite a few things from each other and were used to working spells together by now. If there was something he didn't know or couldn't do in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Parvati was the first person he asked, and she did the same with him. At first Ron had felt a bit uncomfortable about working so closely with a girl other than Hermione, what's more, a girl he didn't even fancy. Parvati had visibly minded it at first, too; probably she remembered the Yule Ball fiasco as well as her sister Padma. Over the year, however, their practice partnership had developed into just the thing that had been Varlerta's explicit intention: Two students who worked well together in her class due to the fact that their wands had the same core - two students who considered common progress a common goal.

Parvati had taught her revision lesson about Coaxing last week; now it was Ron's turn. For the student-prepared revision section, Varlerta had assigned each student a subject she considered best suitable for them. Hermione had opened the section with a brilliant, though not entirely comprehensible lesson about "Theories of Self-Enhancement - conventional and wandless Defence strategies." Lavender had done something on Meditation and the like, while Seamus had revised means of Strengthening others with them. Each of the students had seemed relatively confident and well-prepared as they stood in front of the class to teach for the first time in their lives.

Ron wondered if he would do just as well tomorrow. He had worked hard to compile the material for his lesson and to bring it into a form that would help the others understand him. Varlerta had found a subject for Ron that should fit him like a glove, namely "Objects, Strength and Willpower." The basic question of the lesson was how to get objects to do a witch's or wizard's will. It was only one of the revision subjects that did not mostly focus on the witches or wizards themselves, but on the inherent traits and structures of Ensouled and non-Ensouled objects they dealt with while doing magic. Ron had to admit he found his subject interesting. He had been forced to revise as well as research several texts which had to do with Coaxing and even Ensouling. Probably he knew more about his subject than even Hermione now; the question was, what would happen when he stood in front of the class? Somehow, he felt it would be a disastrous experience. He had worked hard, but probably not hard enough! His year mates would all look at him and expect him to be very smart and well-informed. Would they laugh at him if he made mistakes, betrayed severe gaps in his knowledge, or started babbling incoherently?

"You shouldn't worry about it too much," Harry said to him over lunch. Of course, Harry didn't have anything to worry about : It would be another two weeks until he would have to get in front of the class to revise his Classical Magical Defence for his fellow year mates. The subject was well chosen for Harry, Ron thought. While he had never gotten the knack for 'soft magic' such as Coaxing, Harry had Duelled successfully with the Dark Lord, something none of his year mates or even his teachers could claim. In winter, Varlerta had practiced simple spells of conventional Defence Magic with the fifth year Gryffindors, and of course, Harry had excelled in them. Ron, of course, was considered an Ensouler, so his subject should come natural to him. Ron himself wasn't so sure about this, though: The Bludger-To-Be still lay around motionlessly at the foot of Ron's four-poster, failing to show any signs of Ensouling in spite of Ron's occasional efforts. The Ensouled pawn was as ungovernable as ever, and Ron had started to wonder if its Ensouling had been anything more than a freak accident.

The next day, Ron packed his notes, his pawn, his and Harry's chess figures, his lifeless Bludger and even a Snitch Angelina had let him borrow. He would have liked to include Varlerta's Ford Anglia in his lesson, because the car would have been a great way to get his fellow students' attention, but Varlerta had thought it too much of a hassle to get Drifter into the classroom. She would bring her old "Morgan la sandbag" as demonstration material, she had told him. If that wasn't boring, he didn't know what was, Ron thought, but he didn't argue.

Then he was standing in front of the class. Varlerta had taken a seat in the back, surrendering the position of the teacher to him completely for this lesson. Of course, she would be taking notes, Ron thought. He shuffled around with his notes for one last time, cleared his throat and began by reading a passage out of a book to them:

"The magic we do is a means to control aspects of the world, to shape reality according to our needs, desires and abilities. While this can be said even of most non-magic action, the dimension of control and manipulation is more obvious in voluntary, purposeful magic." He skipped an irrelevant and wordy passage according to his thin, pencilled marks in the book and continued: "Attempts to control the world can be classified into attempts to manipulate people and objects. Manipulating people can be further classified into attempts to manipulate wizards or Muggles; magical ethics have to be taken into consideration, as many spells used to control people are considered Dark Magic. Manipulating objects is the far more frequent variety of magic; further distinction divides this class into dealing with Ensouled versus controlling lifeless objects."

Ron looked up from his book. Did his year mates still listen, or had he lost them already? The text he had read to them was not written to hold anyone's attention, but it made the basic classifications very clear. Ron saw Hermione nod and take notes; Harry nodded as well to show him he was still listening. He waited until Seamus and Dean had stopped talking - Varlerta was prodding them from behind with her wand; then he told the class in his own words:

"When we deal with people, we know they have their own will. If we use magic to make people - Muggles or wizards - do what they don't want to do, it's called Dark Magic. If we do something to people - something nice like healing them, or something not-so-nice like giving them Jelly Legs - the distinction is not always quite clear. It is uncertain whether someone's legs are part of their free will, or whether bodily parts count as objects in a certain way. Luckily, if we deal with dead and lifeless objects, there is no complicated distinction: They have no will of their own, so they might as well do our will. This means doing magic with them should be very easy. If I spell an object, my spell should succeed very well. However, as we all know, that is not always the case. There is gravity to consider, for example, or the power that makes a lock stay locked if we are not particularly talented for opening them." Here Ron shared a little grin with Hermione, whose Alohomora was legendary. It was nice to see how much attention Hermione paid to him while he was standing in front of the class like a teacher, Ron thought.

He went through some very basic Strength calculations - Hermione had helped him with the very basic Arithmancy he had needed for them - and demonstrated the use of "Morgan la sandbag" once more. Ron reminded the class that most of all, lifeless objects were lazy and change-resistant. Spells such as Levitating, Summoning and Banishing were used against the pull of gravity, while Transfigurating objects meant breaking an object's tie to its fixed form. "That's why Professor McGonagall uses animals in Transformation class so often," Ron said, proud that he had unearthed this particular piece of information. "As living beings, they are not quite as change-resistant as lifeless objects. It's easier to change them into something else then Transform dead objects into other dead objects. Of course, all animals turned into dead things have to be Transformed back after class; such is the international law against "Entrapment of Living Beings in Lifeless Forms."

Students took notes and asked him questions. They took him seriously, and if they asked something he didn't know, he could always forward the request to Professor Varlerta sitting in the back of the room. After all, standing in front of the class wasn't that bad, Ron thought, though he knew that the back of his robes were soaked with sweat. Luckily, no one had to come near him in this lesson.

Ron went on to remind his classmates of what Ensouled objects were, what they were used for and how they worked. He explained how the willpower of an Ensouler went into a suitable object, hopefully, inducing the object to function according to its purpose. Ron went on by showing them the fluttering Snitch which was trapped in a small cage so it could not get away. "Snitches and Bludgers," he said, "do not have to be particularly smart. The Bludgers are taught to be aggressive, while Snitch is taught to take flight. They need to be unpredictable, so they have to have some sort of free will. They are spelled so they won't leave the Quidditch pitch, but they do not have to know any rules. All that is important is that they virtually can't be influenced from the outside. If someone skilled in Coaxing could persuade a Snitch to come his way, there would be a lot of cheating on the pitch. The difficult thing about Ensouling Quidditch balls is to make sure they are impossible to tamper with, but they don't have to be made very smart. Chess figures are another matter altogether."

Ron set up the chess figures and gave them simple directions which resulted in the defeat of one of Harry's pawns. He had planned this particular sequence of moves to demonstrate how the chess figures argued with him a bit, but eventually did his will.

"An Ensouled object 'functioning according to its purpose,'" Ron explained, "that phrase tells us that the amount of free will and of knowledge an Ensouler installs into an object should be adapted to the particular use this kind of object finds in the wizarding world." He saw Hermione frown at this expression. She had recently started objecting against the term 'wizarding world', claiming it should be 'wizarding and witching world.' Ron went on: "Chess figures argue because they are supposed to argue. That's how most of us learn to play chess: They learn from their opponents, and because they listen to their chess figures, especially if the figures are well experienced. Of course, chessmen are also supposed to obey, because otherwise we could hardly play with them." He passed his anarchy pawn around class. His classmates handled the little figure with care; they knew it could get rather testy if treated without respect.

"This little thing hasn't learned the rules of chess, let alone obedience," Ron told the Gryffindors. When preparing his class, he had spend a lot of thought on whether or not he should make his failure to properly Ensoul the pawn the object of a public discussion. He had decided in its favour, because, as Professor Varlerta liked to say, it wasn't the failed attempts that counted, but the lessons one learned through trying. Now she gave him a warm smile across the classroom, encouraging him to say: "We do not know exactly how Ensouling works, or what makes it work properly. That's why I can't do it yet - it's nothing you can learn from a book, or even from somebody else. If someone asks you in an exam how Ensouling works, you can quote me on this."

Hermione was grinning to herself while frantically taking notes. Two seats to her left, Seamus was trying to free his quill from the aggressive clutch of the anarchy pawn. Ron took out the lifeless Bludger.

"Just so you see the difference, here is a Quidditch ball that should be Ensouled, but isn't yet. See how it shows no sign of a will of its own altogether."

With these words he threw the lifeless Bludger at Harry without warning. Of course, Harry with his Quidditch-sharpened reaction time neatly caught the Bludger and passed it back to Ron in the fraction of a second. Ron caught the ball as well, but before he could pass it to Lavender as intended, the Bludger suddenly gained its own momentum, left Ron's hands without being thrown, and speeded in direction of Seamus' face. Both Seamus and Dean dodged the Bludger, which speedily turned around to fly at Parvati. Parvati screamed, but threw herself to the floor before she was hit. The Bludger zoomed around the classroom a bit, causing a fair share of disorder, but before it could harm anyone, Harry, always the friend to be counted on, jumped on it and secured it by sitting on it.

Ron could hardly find enough breath to say anything at all. He saw Varlerta crawl out from under the table where a vicious Bludger attack had driven her. The teacher wiped her hair out of her face and took a few deep breaths. Then, obviously thinking Ron had planned the whole thing, she gave him two thumbs up. "A little dangerous, I concede, but a truly impressive demonstration, Ron," she told him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After she had heard what had happened, Professor McGonagall owled Mr. Pigmalgion immediately. Of course, the Ensouling expert had a busy schedule; it might be some time until he would have a chance to come to Hogwarts and scrutinise the Ensouled Bludger. For now, Angelina agreed to use the Bludger in Quidditch practice. The ball performed its fierce task admirably; Fred and George found nothing wrong with it altogether and thought keeping the ball off their team-mates an adequate effort. However, when Ron asked them about the Bludger after practice, he had the impression that his brothers would not meet his eyes. There was something the twins weren't telling him, he was quite sure about it.

Harry was adamant that they should visit Sirius that night and tell him about the extraordinary event. Hermione joined her two friends on this occasion, shedding her misgivings about missing out on a single hour of revision for once. The three went up to the Spellies' Lab expecting to find Sirius, Remus and Varlerta share a Butterbeer or two, something that seemed to happen a lot these days. With the three adults, Ron, Harry and Hermione found Ginny huddled on a stool on the side, a cup of steaming herbal tea cradled in her hands. Ginny's eyes were bloodshot and looked huge in her pale face. Ron's conscience gave a pang: She was lonely, he knew. None of the fourth year girls seemed to be a true friend for the only female Weasley child. Overburdened with revision and schoolwork, Ron, Harry and Hermione had recently neglected her. They had failed her when she needed them, it seemed. No wonder she was looking for people to spend her time with, even if that meant being the little Miss Tag-Along of a group of adults, and, worse, teachers.

Ron knew what had happened a couple of weeks ago, and he didn't approve at all of his little sister taking part in such dangerous outings. His mother had told him to look after Ginny, but Ginny seemed quite a handful to look after - first Tom Riddle's diary, now Varlerta, the drum set and a lethal fight with ten grown Death Eaters, not to mention her tendency to be unhappily in love. What would his hazard-attracting sister do next, Ron wondered. Neither Ginny nor Varlerta had so far told Molly Weasley about the events of that night; Ginny had implored Ron to keep his mouth shut, even in the presence of Fred and George, who were kept in the dark as well. Now Ron was Ginny's accomplice in this matter, likely to be skinned alive alongside of her once matters came to his mother's ears.

Lupin drew up chairs for the three revision-weary fifth years. "Great that you came," he remarked encouragingly. "Actually I would have asked Hermione to come over and help me with some Arithmancy problems tomorrow if you hadn't come over tonight."

"Sure, any time," Hermione replied, rubbing her cheeks with both hands. Ron noticed there were some dark shades under her eyes. "Where's the problem?" the girl asked when Lupin fetched his notes from the desk.

"It's about your correction of...." Lupin shuffled through the stack of dog-eared parchments "formula 22b. I know it ties in with Strength calculation 6, but I can't quite make sense of it." Lupin shrugged to acknowledge the fact that he had to ask the assistance of a fifteen-year-old girl for an Arithmantic problem.

Hermione sighed and took the piece of parchment Lupin handed her. "Can't it wait till tomorrow?" Varlerta complained. "Don't you see our valid OWL candidates are practically falling off their chairs with fatigue?"

"You think it will be better tomorrow?" Lupin asked with an apologetic grin. Then he turned to Hermione. "You will tell me if it's too much for you, will you?"

Ron knew that Hermione was likely to do no such thing, but did not comment when his friend said: "Of course. But I think I already know where the problem lies. You're unsure about this equation?" She pointed.

Lupin looked over her shoulder and nodded. "I'm not sure where this went." He pointed at some particular point in what Ron identified as a formula completely devoid of sense - at least to him it was.

"See equation 22a?" Hermione turned back a page in the loose pile of parchments. "This equals this, so I replaced it. See?" She pointed, then leaved forwards two pages. "Here this appears in Strength calculation 6. It's all correct." Hermione's look of 'I told you so' was something Ron knew well; it was nice to see her bestow it on someone else for a change.

Lupin stared at the parchment for a moment, then comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Hey, that's right!" he exclaimed and clapped a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "Now I understand. You know what? You're well on your way to enlighten this acolyte in your noble art. Let's work together for another year, and I'll feel like I'd never failed this subject. I wish I had had you for a teacher in my days."

Ron saw Hermione turn her face downwards so that her hair concealed her blush, something she did at times. Lupin meanwhile scribbled some notes on the margin of the parchment. He had taken on the duty of putting Hermione's changed formulas into practice, confident that it would help their ongoing search for the much-needed counter curse.

Sirius had meanwhile brought a few more bottles of Butterbeer. "What brings you three here tonight, then?" he asked the three fifth-years. Harry and Hermione let Ron talk first. "As Professor Varlerta may have told you already, I - I think I Ensouled my Bludger," he stammered. All faces in the round lit up. Sirius and Remus called out in surprise and slapped him on the shoulder. Varlerta only nodded; obviously, she had left it to Ron to tell Sirius about the event himself. Ginny gave her brother a broad grin. Of course, she already knew about it, but Ron still liked to see that his sister cared about whether or not he displayed any great powers.

"Do you have any idea what triggered the sudden Ensoulment in my class?" Varlerta asked.

Ron shook his head. "Beats me," he replied. "I threw the thing around at least thirty or forty times before. Suddenly the thing just exploded into motion. I found it rather scary, actually."

Varlerta grinned. "So did I." She turned to Lupin, Sirius and Ginny. "I jumped under the table. You should have seen it. I'm sure you would have had a good laugh."

"Never been one for Quidditch, have you?" Sirius teased her good-naturedly.

"Never," Varlerta replied with conviction.

When Hermione yawned ear splittingly, Lupin suggested that it was time for the students to go to bed. Rubbing her eyes, Varlerta announced that she would do the same, as she would have to rise as early as they.

On their way down the stairs, Hermione drew Harry into a conversation about the likeliness of Hawk Potion coming up in the Potions OWL exam. Ron turned his attention away from them, feeling he would have to scream if he heard the OWLs mentioned once more that day. Instead, he focussed on a quiet conversation Varlerta and Ginny were having right behind the three.

"I'm sorry, Professor Varlerta, but it's true," Ginny almost whispered. "He was awake when I came to get him that night, all dressed and ready to go. He did not seem surprised or shocked, just took his case and went with me. He had his case readily packed with loads of useful potions, too, as if he was waiting for something like that to happen."

"We all know that Snape usually stays up half the night, and that he likes to be prepared for emergencies. Your observances may not be anything more than a coincidence," Varlerta murmured. "It doesn't make sense to think he betrayed us to the Death Eaters. Sirius says he might just have wanted to show off, but that's a hell of a dangerous - excuse me, Ron, can I help you with anything?"

For her last words she exchanged her subdued tone for a far louder and harder one. Ron turned to her. "It's a free country," he retorted lamely, though he was embarrassed for being caught eavesdropping.

Varlerta snorted. "Sure, any time. Ron, I don't know how much you overheard, but this little controversy is NOT to be discussed with your classmates. Do you understand me?"

By now Harry and Hermione had noticed there was a bit of disagreement behind them. "Sure, Professor Varlerta," Ron answered, even though he knew he would tell Harry and Hermione about it as soon as he would get the chance. Luckily, they had just arrived at the landing where the Gryffindor students would have to go one way and Varlerta had to go another. Before leaving them, Varlerta gave Ron a slightly threatening look. "Sleep well, you four," she said to them and descended the stairs that led down to the Entrance Hall.

Ginny gave Ron another reproachful look, then started down the corridor. Hermione raised her eyebrows in a questioning way. "Tell you later," Ron mouthed.

Hermione and Harry nodded. "Pas devant...." sophisticated Hermione mouthed back and turned her eyes in Ginny's direction, who was dawdling to make sure the other three students caught up with her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next afternoon, while Ron, Hermione and Harry were sitting in the Common Room, brooding over a lengthy essay for Transfiguration, Fred and George approached them. They looked more subdued than normally and actually managed to attract the attention of the three working students in a polite way instead of just butting in.

"Harry, Ron, could we have a word?" Fred asked.

"In privacy?" George added, casting Hermione a sidelong glance.

Hermione frowned. "It's okay, why don't you just tell me to get lost for your convenience? I just love to get up and find a new chair in the middle of an essay just because I'm not trustworthy," she said with a touch of sarcasm. She gathered up her school things and left for another table.

George sighed. "Add another point to our score for offending her," he murmured. "Er, actually we came for...." He cast a helpless glance at Fred.

"What we wanted to say was...." Fred started, but did not continue his sentence either.

Ron felt his heart sink. His twin brothers were rarely lost for words. Quidditch, he thought. They have voted in secrecy to kick me out of the team, or maybe to kick out Harry and me?

"Actually we came here to apologise to you two," George suddenly said.

Apologise? Fred and George, apologise for anything at all? This was becoming more and more mysterious.

"We knew it was morally despicable not to tell you about it, but we wanted to finish our experiments first," Fred added with downcast eyes, a truly odd sight.

"Maybe you could make allowance for the zeal of two scientists," George suggested offhandedly.

"What experiments? What didn't you tell us? I have no idea what you're talking about," Harry replied weakly. He looked as confused as Ron.

"What we are trying to tell you," said George - "even though we'd rather not," added Fred - "in short, what we now recognise as our duty to tell you is that you two can only Ensoul stuff in cooperation," finished George.

"What?" said Harry with an air of someone who was still trying to make sense of the words he had heard.

"In cooperation? I don't think I get it," Ron replied. His brothers shared a look. Then Fred explained airily:

"We don't know why it is that way, but according to our experiments, an object has to pass into both of your hands to receive Ensouling. We ran a number of tests on you two and found out that the best way to achieve a thorough and adequate Ensoulment is to leave the object in question in Ron's hands for a while. Afterwards we let Harry handle it very briefly so the object can receive his personal spark of energy. Then we let Ron finish the Ensouling process with a final touch. Of course, objects have to be prepared for Ensoulment beforehand, for example by experts like us."

"I thank fate for small blessings," George added dryly. "If you two Ensouled every normal object that had been touched by both of you, the whole castle would be crawling and bristling with Ensouled objects. A truly horrible thought, if you take a moment to consider it."

Recalling the specific incidents, Ron realised that both the Bludger and the test pawn had accidentally been touched by both Harry and Ron in the order that Fred had described. He recovered mastery of his language before Harry did. "You experimented on us? You ran tests? Why?"

"The joke shop," Fred replied with a shrug. "How else do you think we could have produced the Wheeze Hand-Eating Stockings?"

Ron suddenly remembered his twin brothers' truly annoying Christmas surprise, the long stockings that punished you for grabbing your presents by trying to swallow you whole. Now that he thought about it, these stockings could never have been as ferocious as they were if they hadn't been Ensouled. How could he have missed that? Of course, the idea had never crossed his mind; he just accepted that Fred and George had a talent for inventing truly impossible things.

"You mean we had a hand in producing them?" Harry asked, looking curious rather than offended.

"Er, a foot, rather," George corrected. "Our method of production was a stroke of genius, actually. It took a while for us to perfect it. First we magically prepared the stockings for Ensouling and put a Disguise charm on them so they would look like ordinary socks. Then we smuggled them into Ron's sock drawer and waited until he had worn them two or three times."

"Then we took them out and gave them a good wash," Fred threw in.

"Yes, that was rather necessary," George conceded. "Afterwards we did some more magic on them and put them in Harry's sock drawer. We usually disguised them as mismatched socks then, because we've found out that the Ensoulment works best if Harry only touches the objects briefly, but does not wear them. Usually, he just stuffed the socks back into the drawer when he found out they were mismatched, which suited our purpose just fine. Then we repeated the same procedure once more with Ron, and bang, there were our Ensouled stockings."

"Well, we still had to take off the Disguise charm before they were marketable," Fred added.

Ron felt his head swim. "How in the world did you get such ideas?" he asked his twin brothers. "I mean, how did you know this would work?"

"We didn't," Fred grinned. "When you came to the Burrow last summer, Harry, we realised there were some strange things going on. You two must have Ensouled a couple of objects without meaning to - a fake wand, a quill and a self-stirring sauce pot. This awakened our curiosity."

"The sauce pot is still driving mum nuts, I think," George added as an afterthought.

"The quill gave us the idea for the Wheeze Auto-Misspell Quill we put in some of your Wheezebags last summer," Fred continued. "We didn't know why it worked, we just knew that our magic didn't work without you two, so we kept experimenting. It's all down to systematic and meticulous empirical research, you know - the true and honest graft of the scientist. Of course we could be sure that Harry had to have something to do with it, because we knew that you haven't been Ensouling stuff all your life, Ron, so...."

"Then came the business with the car, and the Ensouling expert and everything, so at last we knew what we were dealing with," George interrupted his brother. "We actually humbled ourselves to the extent of doing some background reading, which tells you a lot about how much this project meant to us. A few tests confirmed our suspicion that Ensouling is something both of you do together, though we have no idea why that is so. Of course, we wondered whether we should tell you what we knew...."

"....but the temptation was too high for us." Fred continued with a smile which betrayed confidence that Harry and Ron would understand. "The stockings turned out so well that we decided that we'd do another project, one more little thing before George and I leave this school forever and you two will be out of our reach. However, we came to formally apologise for keeping you two in the dark about your talents until now. We had our reasons, but admit that it wasn't the polite thing to do."

"No problem," Ron replied without conviction.

"A new project?" Harry's eyes lit up. "What are you making?"

"Entrepreneurs' secret, I'm afraid," Fred replied haughtily. "I can't tell you yet, but I assure you that you will recognise it as the work of our hands once you lay your eyes on it."

"The work of all of our hands," George added a little more thoughtfully.

"That's right! I want a share of your profits for my work!" Finally, Ron had recovered his speech.

"We will assign an adequate share of our stocks to both of you when we go on the market," George assured him businesslike. "Liquidating some of our limited capital to pay you two would be economically unwise at the moment."

Harry nodded. "That's fine, I don't want any money. Just show me how you do it - or rather, how we do it!"

Ron wouldn't have minded to receive a bit of money on the spot, but the news was so exciting that he didn't argue, so he shrugged in semi-agreement. "Shouldn't you two have been studying for your NEWTs in the time you spent on your joke projects and experiments?" he asked to get back at his elder brothers. He didn't really appreciate being a test person in their experiments and would have liked to be enlightened on the matter, not to mention asked, before they used him as a link in their production chain.

"Oh, that," Fred wiped Ron's reproach away with a shake of his hand. "It's enough if we get any at all just so it doesn't look too bad to mum. If you're self-employed, nobody asks about your school marks anymore."

Ron suddenly felt envy towards his elder brothers. They knew exactly what they wanted to do in life and had known it for years, while he had no idea what kind of profession he should choose and where his special talents lay. Of course, now he knew he was an Ensouler, but he wasn't a proper one: For some reasons Fred and George did not know, he needed Harry's 'spark of energy' to complete his work. Somehow, he wouldn't have minded to own his special talent all by himself, not to have to share it with his best friend.

Harry grinned at Ron. "I think it's excellent," he said happily. "Think of all the stuff we'll be able to do with that. Let's tell Hermione at once - and let's go and tell Professor McGonagall, and owl Mr. Pigmalgion tonight. They'll be excited, and I'm sure they'll get us cool things on which we can test our Ensouling method!"

"Er ... do you think there is any necessity to mention our names to Professor McGonagall in connection with this affair?" Fred asked with a trace of apprehension in his voice.

"Surely there is no reason for that," George said persuasively.

Ron swallowed a trace of disappointment, then he smiled back at Harry. "Yeah, let's go and tell them. We could ask Mr. Pigmalgion to send us a couple of Quidditch balls. We'll make the most ferocious Bludgers in the world!"