Michelle

Chapter Six

A Disastrous Dinner

Ron traipsed back to the house, hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He only jerked back to reality when he rammed into the post of the porch. Swearing, he rubbed the lump that was slowly forming on his forehead and hurried into the house.

"Sorry I'm late," he muttered as he sat down at the table. Everyone was crowded around it--Ginny, Paul, Harry, Hermione, Mrs. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, and now Michelle and Ron.

"That's okay," Mrs. Weasley said tartly. "We all heard you swearing outside, thank you very much, Ronald."

Michelle took one look at Ron and gasped, "Ronald!"

"What?" Ron asked, wearily, his stomach rumbling as he surveyed tonight's meal--mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, chicken, and apple pie that tantalized him most of all, the cinnamon-y smell tickling his nostrils as he sniffed it all in.

"Your head!" Michelle pointed to the lump that was now painfully throbbing on Ron's forehead.

"Oh...that...." Ron swore under his breath. "Um..."

"Here," Michelle said helpfully, whipping out her wand and pointing it at Ron's forehead; she waved it wildly and suddenly he felt his head become incredibly heavy.

"What...the hell?" he said, reaching up to feel his head; it had swelled to the size of a large watermelon. "Oh crap."

"Oh no!" Michelle squealed, clapping her hands over her mouth, her eyes filled with shock and fear. "What did I do? Oh no!"

Ginny and Harry snickered while Hermione looked on, torn between concern and amusement. Mrs. Weasley's eyes widened in shock and she turned to her husband, who was staring, dumbfounded, at Ron's swelling head.

"Fits his ego very well, doesn't it?" Harry muttered loudly to Ginny.

"It would fit yours better," Ron snarled back, his head growing larger every second.

Harry rolled his eyes and whispered something to Ginny, who laughed and shook her head.

"Harry, you are so bad," she teased.

"I try," Harry said, chuckling as he watched Ron, trying in vain to sit up straight but failing as the weight of his head held his upper half down.

"Ermph..." Ron said as he groped around with his wand while he laid his head on the table with a loud sigh. "Owww, this hurts..." he added in a moan, reaching up and rubbing the sore spot on his head that was now throbbing worse than ever.

"Oh no!" Michelle squealed again, fumbling in her robes for her wand; suddenly she remembered that it was on the floor, not in her robes, and dropped from her chair to her hands and knees, frantically searching for her wand.

By now, Ron's head was now the weight of an anvil (or at least it felt like it) and nearly as wide as he was long. Moaning helplessly, he looked up and saw Paul, Ginny, Harry, and Hermione shaking with silent laughter.

"'Mione..." he mumbled. "Don't you know a counter curse?"

Hermione grinned. "Um...no."

"You're some help."

"I try," Hermione said, echoing Harry's exact words a few minutes earlier.

"Copy-cat!" Ron muttered to himself furiously. As he couldn't turn his head, he said loudly, "Michelle? Have you found your wand yet?"

Mrs. Weasley giggled and waved her wand at her son; suddenly Ron felt his head lighten and shrink; it felt as if just his head were Apparting, not his whole body.

"Thanks, Mum," Ron said gratefully, removing his head from the table and sitting up straight. "Whew, that was weird...."

"I do say, that was quite strange," Paul said in his best English accent.

Ginny giggled girlishly and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "Yes, it was."

"Stranger than usual, for Ronald Bilius Weasley," Harry growled.

"Ha ha, very funny," Ron said sarcastically. His face burned with embarrassment and only then, when he turned to look at Michelle, did he realize that she was still searching for her wand on the floor.

"Found it!" Michelle called suddenly from the living room, and she came in, her wand held high, and sneezed just as she waved it at what she thought was Ron's oversized head but instead was really the bowl of mashed potatoes; they suddenly began to swell until the table crumpled under its weight. Everyone watched stupidly as the bowl expanded and the table legs turned to dust. Finally Mr. Weasley had some common sense to stand up, grab his wand, and try to shrink the bowl, but he was too late--the bowl had become so big that, suddenly, it burst; shards of colored porcelain and lumps of mashed potatoes flew everywhere, covering everyone instantly with potatoes and pieces of a bowl.

"Damn," Mr. Weasley sighed. "Should've gotten up quicker."

"Don't worry, dear," Mrs. Weasley consoled from underneath a particularly thick pile of mashed potatoes. "It could've been anyone's fault."

"Oh Mum!" Ginny cried. "There're mashed potatoes in the chicken!"

"Hell, there are mashed potatoes in my pants," Paul stated.

"I did so not need to know that," said the lump of white that was Hermione. "I so did not need to."

"I've got some in mine, too," Harry said, shaking his head so that potato flew in all directions and unveiled his raven-colored hair. Mischievously he added to Hermione, "Wanna see?"

"Eww, gross, no!" Hermione groaned. "Man, it'll take months to get all of this out of my hair!"

Ron wiped the potatoes from his cheeks and took a better look around the room; everything from the floor to the picture of Great Auntie Muriel on the ceiling was covered in white, giving someone who had just walked in the impression that it had snowed.

That someone was Charlie Weasley.

An hour later, after the kitchen and parts of the living room where returned to their original spotlessly clean state, the Weasleys (Potters, Grangers, Gilmores, and Withers included) all sat down at the table and grimaced, one by one, as Charlie sat down on Pigwidgeon.

"Where the bloody hell did this thing come from?" he demanded hotly, picking up the owl and throwing it at the window; a few centimeters from the glass it regained consciousness and began twittering anxiously before hitting the window and falling silent.

"No idea," Ron said.

"Well, it's your owl, Ronald," Mrs. Weasley said sternly, setting down a large bowl of chili. "Since Michelle"--she shot an angry glance at the girl who was nervously running her hands through her hair and looking at Ron--"managed to destroy my best"--she made a point of putting a particular emphasis on 'best'--"porcelain dish that my great-great-great grandmother"--she put particular emphasis on 'great-great-great grandmother', too--"gave to me, in person."

Ron knew that she was only doing this to make Michelle feel guilty and apologize, which produced a satisfying result, at least for Mrs. Weasley.

Michelle burst into tears and sobbed, "I'm sorry! I didn't know!! I didn't mean to do it!!!" She buried her face in her hands, crying loudly.

"Don't worry, Michelle," Ginny said comfortingly, placing an arm around her friend's shoulders. "Mum does that all the time to make us feel guilty."

"Darn right I do!" Mrs. Weasley replied grumpily, but she was considerably more pleasant to Michelle after that apology.

"I still can't believe that Michelle did that," Charlie chortled as he tucked into a particularly scrumptious bowl of chili.

"Oh...yeah...well, clumsy me," Michelle joked weakly, taking a spoonful of chili and slurping it down. "Very good soup, Mrs. Weasley, very good."
Mrs. Weasley beamed.