A Simply Wonderful Birthday

A Simply Marvelous Birthday

"Pppphhhhhizz..." Harry heard, and felt a sharp prick on his neck a moment later. Then, quite suddenly, he saw an explosion of light, with reds, greens and purples flooding the space in front of his eyes. The color rose up and spread out in a wonderful fireworks display. He didn't hear anything other than the fireworks, not even his own curses.

All too soon, it seemed to Harry, the show was over. The boy stood there in shock for a moment, then slowly turned around. "What on bloody Earth was that?" he asked in astonishment to the redheaded fiends in front of him.

"You like?" one of them asked. Harry opened his mouth to respond that he had very much enjoyed it but was hopelessly muddled as to what exactly it was when the other boy in front of him broke in.

"Our latest invention--"

"--just out!--"

"--Weasley's Wholly Holy Cow Dart Fireworks! --"

"--Amazing, isn't it? --"

"--We can't wait--"

"--to try one out on--"

"--Dumbledore!"

Harry stared at them, still shocked and his neck still stinging from their newest invention. "Why is it called cow?"

Fred chuckled. "Well, first of all--"

"--they make you say 'holy cow'!" George grinned.

"--and second of all, they leave a cow-shaped mark--"

"--on the place where they touch the skin!"

Harry looked thoughtful. "Did I say 'holy cow'?" he wondered aloud.

"You betcha!" The twins cracked up. Fred bent over clutching his side, and George leaned his head back and slapped his hand on his leg while they howled. "And a whole lot of other things, too!" they added in between roars of laughter.

Harry blushed. "But I don't remember saying a thing!" he protested.

"Yes, well, you wouldn't. The person it's done to doesn't know that he's saying anything, but we've tried it on a whole bunch of people now and they definitely do say stuff -- and interesting stuff it is, too! " The twins snickered, and resumed laughing.

"But-- wait-- you said it also leaves a mark--do I have one?"

"Yup," They chortled. When Harry turned around, they checked the back of his neck to be sure and nodded approvingly at the sight. "Red, but that'll soon fade. You've got a nice outline, with cow-spots and all!"

They held up a mirror, and when he saw the impression, he found that he didn't mind the prank all that much. In fact, Harry decided, it was kind of cool.

"So, you're going to shoot one at Dumbledore when he comes in?" he suddenly thought to ask the mischief-makers.

"Yup! He walks in and we shout 'Surprise!' and throw confetti at him along with everyone else. The difference is, we also throw one of these little darts at him. The darts crumble into dust upon touching the person, and all that's left as evidence is the victim cursing with huge eyes and a cow where the dart hit!" Fred explained eagerly and alone, since George had gone off to unobtrusively plant more Ton-Tongue Toffees in the candy bowls.

Harry looked around the Room of Requirement lavishly and somewhat garishly decorated for Dumbledore's 147th birthday (or, to be more accurate, what he claimed was his 147th birthday.) The cerulean-colored banners were a nice touch, after all, Harry decided, just like Hermione had predicted, and the orange-red balloons enchanted to pop all at once when the Headmaster entered the room looked good, too.

As Harry gazed around the room filled with happy anticipation, he saw the door open and Dumbledore arrive with a sweep of his robe. The balloons popped all together in a lovely loud chorus and the students tossed small bits of colored paper at their headmaster, while Fred Weasley shot a dart at Dumbledore's left bicep, inconspicuous as ever.

Dumbledore's eyes had widened and his mouth had stretched into an enormous grin when he walked in and saw the crowd and Happy Birthday signs. He had jumped when the balloons had popped, and then, to everyone's (but Fred's, George's, and Harry's) shock and amusement, the respected professor began to curse.

"By Luna Lovegood's Lemon Drops! Bloody Blasted Acid Pops! Merlin's Murderous Melon-Flavored Markers! Holy Cow! Holy holy holy cow!"

Harry howled with laughter, George and Fred actually collapsed holding their sides and gasping for air while they guffawed, and the rest of the onlookers, though confused at Dumbledore's seemingly random reaction and abominable language, also made a ruckus with their amused screeches.

Abruptly, Dumbledore was silent. He grabbed his arm where the dart had hit him and with a lopsided grin looked directly at the Weasley twins. He glared good-naturedly for a long moment before he turned back to the crowd as a whole. "Say, let's get this party started!" the famous wizard exclaimed loudly, and the magical stereo immediately started playing This is How a Heart Breaks, to everyone's unrestrained delight.

Later on, as Harry and Ginny snuggled and kissed in a dark corner conveniently thought of and provided by the Room of Requirement, they heard shrieks and then hysterical laughter, sounding interestingly like the people laughing had something the matter with their tongues.

"Look at you!" They heard.

"Ha! Look at you! If only you could see yourself!"

The couple broke off their kiss to breathe and to see what the commotion was about. To their amazement, they saw that nearly everyone was sporting three- to ten-foot long tongues and laughing and pointing at their neighbor's ridiculous tongue. Professor Dumbledore's, Ginny gleefully pointed out to Harry, appeared to be about nine feet long, a deep blue color, and currently involved in twisting Hermione's black hair ribbon out of her hair from across the room.

"Hey!" Harry shouted to the throng. "What do you all say to a game of Ton-Tongue Toffee tag?"

"Yeah!" the group shouted enthusiastically.

Harry grabbed two toffees from the table, stuck one in his mouth and one in Ginny's, and set off to acquire some victims with his rapidly stretching tongue.

After a long game in which Ginny tagged Harry first, Harry tagged Ginny, and then the two of them lashed out at other people, the headmaster restored all of their tongues to their proper sizes. Dumbledore then announced that some birthday cake would be, in his own words, "Lemon-drop-alicious."

"Dobby!" Harry called, and Dobby appeared with an enormous round yellow lemon drop-flavored cake, to Dumbledore's happy surprise.

147 candles on the cake broke out in song when Dumbledore set eyes on the cake, and sang "Happy Birthday" first in English, then Russian, then Spanish, then Hebrew, and then in Flemish. They would probably have kept on going, had Dumbledore not blown them out in the middle of their Flemish rendition.

Upon blowing them out, however, lemon drops the size of golf balls began to hail down onto the crowd. Hermione barely had enough time to realize that she'd made the spell a bit too strong before one of them struck her on the head and she toppled over. Although Ron, Harry, and Ginny were nearby, they did not notice her fall. Ron took no notice because he himself was out cold with a lump the size of a starry yellow Easter egg on his head, Harry didn't see because he had already jumped on his broom and was at the time zipping around the room, dodging the bludgers--er, candies, and Ginny did not notice because she was gaping at Dumbledore. Dumbledore had lifted the front hem of his robe to form a sort of net and was jumping around like a jumping bean trying to ensure that the candies landed neatly in his robe and not on his head, while at the same time screaming, "Score!" every time one landed in the proper place. Ginny noticed that he had amassed quite a large number of drops for such a short time, and that Harry had at last been knocked off his broom and had landed smack in the center of the birthday cake, lying there limp as a rag doll, before she herself was thumped unconscious.

Eons later, (although to those lying on the floor, it seemed like only a few moments,) Dumbledore had polished off the last of the candies in the room and was beginning to feel bored. He would have devoured the cake, too, but the sight of Harry's sweaty head lying in it was enough to convince even Dumbledore that he could do without it.

The professor looked around the room at the unconscious celebrants and at the tables laden and nearly creaking with food, (much of it, he was sure, enchanted,) when his eyes fell upon the whipped cream cans under the table supporting the mutilated cake. He figured that these were probably untouched magic-wise, grabbed a can, and sprayed it on the person nearest him, who happened to be Harry, and then moved around the room spraying everybody in sight. He chuckled as they all sat up and started giggling and twisting around. At first, he thought that they must be giggling at the thought of what an interesting and unusual birthday party this had turned out to be, but he didn't know what to make of the twisting until he sprayed the Weasley twins.

As the whipped cream hit Fred in the nose and George in the ear, the two of them leaped up and started laughing and twisting like the others. George immediately realized what had happened and informed Dumbledore, in between peals of laughter, that he had picked to wrong can of whipped cream to fool around with.

"That--" Gasp! "--is tickling--" Gasp! "--whipped cream!" he managed to choke out before lapsing back into laughter interspersed with hiccups. Fred continued, "The only cure--" Gasp! Chuckle! Hic! "--is to dump those five-gallon buckets of mango-strawberry slush on the affected people's heads!" Gasp!

Dumbledore looked a bit taken aback at this, but as he looked around the room at the chuckling, giggling, laughing, and just plain guffawing students, he realized that it was his only choice.

He raced over to the drinks table and grabbed the enormous containers of slush. Turning to the crowd, he raised the containers high in front of him. Slowly, he tipped them more and more, and watched the juice drip down onto the heads of the cackling teenagers twisting in front of him.