A Dungbomb of Foreboding

Minerva McGonagall was having a disappointing day.

She tried to be philosophical about it: one lived through a very large number of days, if one was lucky, and it was a matter of simple probability that not every day would live up to expectations.

It was rare, however, for the first day of term to be a disappointment. In fact, Minerva couldn't remember the last time it had happened. Normally, she looked forward to welcoming back her Gryffindor family and to helping the newly-Sorted students get settled in. She made a point of teaching first-year Gryffindors on the first morning, whenever it could be managed.

For Minerva, the first day of lessons in September was always a time of hope, of excitement.

It was not, as a general rule, a time of odiferous explosions in the Gryffindor Common Room. Today, unfortunately, had been an exception.

Minerva placed her teacup and saucer back on the table beside her, letting out a long sigh. She glanced at the clock as she did so and let out another, longer sigh.

He was late. It was bad enough that Minerva had had to give detention to one of her own prefects - one of her own, Gryffindor prefects, on the first day of lessons! - but quite another thing for him to turn up late.

She had barely entertained the thought of giving it all up as a bad job and running herself a bath, when a subdued knock sounded at her door. As the wards allowed the door to open itself immediately, she assumed it must be her charge for the evening.

"Sorry I'm late, Professor," puffed the student as he entered the office, red-faced and short of breath, "I -"

"Sit down, please, Mr. Weasley," interrupted Minerva, indicating a stiff-backed chair that faced hers. She did not add a snappish comment about not wasting further time with flimsy excuses; he looked contrite enough to satisfy her sense of justice, and berating him further would not improve her mood, or his.

"Have a chocolate digestive,"she offered as he took his seat.

Bill eyed her warily, as though fearing that the biscuits might be tainted, but accepted one nonetheless.

With a wave of her wand, Minerva summoned a willow-patterned teapot, teacup and saucer, which poured out a cup for Bill without spilling a drop. The only evidence of the strain on her nerves was the slight clattering noise it made when she guided the cup and saucer to rest on the table beside Bill.

"Now," said Minerva, settling back infinitesimally in her chair, "you said you could explain this morning's disaster."

Bill sat up straighter, letting fall a few crumbs onto her carpet. Minerva closed her eyes for a moment, collecting her patience. When she opened them again, Bill was fixing his gaze to hers, eyes full of sincerity.

"Yes," he stammered, "yes, I can, you see -"

"Take your time," Minerva told him, carefully mixing a note of comfort into her stern tone. "I won't understand a word if you're this wound up. Have some tea, then tell me."

Bill seemed to notice the tea for the first time. He dutifully lifted both cup and saucer, sipping gingerly at the boiling liquid.

While he alternately blew at the surface and sipped, Minerva watched him. She had always been very fond of Bill Weasley, ever since his second year, when he had stood up to a much larger fifth-year who had been bullying Bill's best friend, Eric Wood. Bill had a solid set of values and an innate sense of justice, two things she admired in any person and had been amazed to find in a twelve-year-old. Now sixteen years old, Bill was adopting his own style, letting his hair curl over his collar as though he'd like to grow it long but didn't quite dare. He had a great deal of self-confidence, fed by his talent in Charms, among other subjects. Instead of swaggering about, though, Bill had used his stature among the students to make a lot of friends and to serve as a positive example for his fellow Gryffindors.

He'd served as a positive example, that was, until now.

Bill's brother Charlie was such a different boy. Two years younger, Charlie, now beginning his fourth year, was already recognised school-wide as a star Seeker. In his one year on the Gryffindor side so far, Charlie had flattened every other Seeker he'd met, catching the Snitch in a record-breaking five seconds in last year's Final. It was inevitable that she would be choosing him as Quidditch Captain next year, if he continued to play with the same zeal and skill. Charlie shared his brother's positive character traits, but showed almost no interest at all in his studies, except in Care of Magical Creatures. He marks were abysmal in most other subjects, and his essays for Transfigurations always demonstrated the reason: She could tell Charlie had a very good mind, but he simply wouldn't put in any effort.

Bill interrupted Minerva's reflection, then, by saying, "It's to do with my brother Percy, you see."

Percy was the newest arrival from the Weasley clan. Minerva had known the parents, Molly and Arthur, very well when they'd worked together in the Order of the Phoenix, years earlier. She still thought of them as very dear friends, although they now saw each other so rarely that she had not had a chance to meet any of the children until they'd come to Hogwarts. Nevertheless, Minerva knew that the children's characters spoke for the values instilled as Molly and Arthur had raised them.

Minerva knew that Molly and Arthur had three more boys and a girl, in addition to their three sons already at Hogwarts. Young Ronald would be arriving the same year as Harry Potter. So many of Minerva's thoughts still went back to that poor boy, who had been nothing more than a bundle of blankets last time she'd seen him, left alone on a doorstep in Surrey.

She took a sip of tea to mask blinking away the tear that wanted to form in her eye. It still made her so sad, thinking of that poor, special boy, living alone with those awful Muggles. She knew Albus had his reasons, but she thought it horribly cruel.

It was not her matter, however, to dwell on Harry Potter's fate tonight. It was Bill Weasley's fate that was in her hands, and possibly that of his younger brother.

"Don't tell me Percy caused that explosion?" challenged Minerva incredulously.

"No!" answered Bill in an odd manner that was sort of a cough, or a laugh. "No, tricks like that are ... well, they're not precisely Percy's style."

Minerva nodded. "A bit serious, isn't he?"

Bill's mouth broke into a surprisingly disarming grin. "'Serious' would be a forty-year-old wizard with Percy's personality. On an eleven-year-old, it's plain odd."

Minerva allowed herself to crack a bit of a smirk, sharing the joke.

"And you should have seen him at eight, for that matter," mumbled Bill, clearly continuing to amuse himself.

"You say the explosion was planned?" interjected Minerva quickly, wrongfooting Bill immediately.

"Er, yes, Professor," he admitted, then protested, "but it's not what you think!"

Minerva sipped her tea again, unblinking as she watched him squirm. When he hadn't spoken again a long moment later, she prodded him with, "Yes, well, then what is it, Mr. Weasley?"

Bill blinked and dropped his gaze into his tea. For a moment, she had the odd sense that he was trying to read the leaves, like that old crackpot Sybill was still allowed to teach them.

"It's ... well, it's like I said, Percy's always been so serious, it's sort of creepy." He raised his eyes again, peering out from under his overlong fringe, beseeching. If the fault lay neither with Bill nor with his brother Percy, she wondered whom he was trying to protect.

Minerva nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"To me and Charlie, it's creepy, that is," he amended. "The younger ones, though ... they think it's funny to wind him up for it.

"You should have seen him, since he got his letter, strutting around the house, lecturing Fred and George and Ron and Ginny about how a magical education is a big responsibility, and he intended to apply himself in his studies, to accept this invitation with the full gravity of the honour it was, that sort of thing. That's really how he talks, Professor! Like I said - creepy."

Bill shook his head a bit, possibly chuckling to himself as he dipped the last of his chocolate digestive in his tea, slurping the crumbs from his fingers.

Minerva raised an eyebrow at him over her own teacup. To her, it was refreshing to hear of a young student having such a mature outlook as he approached studying magic formally for the first time.

Clearly catching her glare, Bill coughed once and put his cup back down. "I know you probably think he has the right idea," Bill protested immediately, and a bit unnervingly, "but you don't know Percy like we do. He's always been a bit, well, pompous. Anything he can use to lord over the younger ones, he will. It's not even necessarily that he thought all those things, it was only his way of being superior. He knew it, and more to the point, Fred and George knew it."

"Fred and George - they're the identical twins, aren't they?"

Bill nodded. "They're nine this year, so they'll be getting here in a couple more years, if they don't blow themselves up first, of course."

At the mention of blowing things up, Minerva sat up a bit straighter. It seemed Bill was finally getting to the point.

"My brothers - Fred and George - they're brilliant, I think. Really smart. Ingenious, really. And that's what makes them sort of scary, because anything they think is tedious ... they tend to find a way to make it more entertaining. That goes for people, too, and you can probably imagine, Percy gets to 'entertain' them a lot."

Minerva took another sip of her tea. She had a pretty good idea where this was going, now.

"Professor, what happened this morning was, Fred and George had planted Dungbombs in the pockets of Percy's school robes. They were meant to go off during his first lesson, but Mum found out what they'd done and owled to order me to intervene. I stopped him in the Common Room and warned him, and tried to dispose of the Dungbombs quietly, so Percy wouldn't get in trouble, either - he's a right prat sometimes, but he is my little brother, and I want him to have fun here. Only -"

"Yes, I think I remember what happened next, Mr. Weasley," Minerva finished for him. "No need to elaborate."

Bill's shoulders slumped. It was clear he was waiting for his sentence, and expecting it to be heavy.

"Well," she said, placing her empty teacup down on the table beside her, "I will be owling your mother about this. As you know, Dungbombs and other novelty joke items are expressly forbidden anywhere in the castle or on the grounds."

As he nodded miserably, Bill's shoulders slumped yet further.

Minerva raised herself to her feet. "Mr. Weasley, it seems clear to me that you bear no blame in this matter. In fact, I owe you my thanks: your brother's first lesson this morning was with me."

Bill looked up, his long, fiery fringe falling aside to reveal gratefully shining eyes. "You mean ... I'm not in trouble?"

"No, Mr. Weasley. I will restore the House Points I took away this morning, and no punishment will come to you, nor to your brother."

Bill grinned broadly. "Thank you, Professor!" he said, jumping up from his seat.

"Not to worry," replied Minerva. "But next time - Merlin forfend there is a 'next time' - please tell me if you learn about any dangerous materials in a student's possession. I know how to deactivate them."

With a sheepish shrug, Bill made his way to the door, waved goodnight, and left.

Minerva sat down at her desk and pulled out a sheet of parchment. Dear Molly, she wrote, then paused.

Pulling her wand from her sleeve, she waved it in the general direction of the Entrance Hall. She couldn't see the rubies that fell back into the hourglass, but a light humming in her fingertips told her the points had been added.

She dearly hoped Gryffindor could win the House Cup this year. From what Bill said about his younger brothers, those twins, she had a feeling Gryffindor would be losing a very large number of points in future years.

In any case, she would try and keep her optimism about the first day of term. At least she had one more of those, before Bill's twin brothers would be arriving.

Minerva poured herself another cup of tea, lifted it to her lips, and inhaled the fragrant steam. Today hadn't been as disappointing as it could have been, after all, and she could take some small comfort in that.