"WHO'S IDEA WAS THIS?" HARPER ASKED, when she, Fred, George and Ron sneaked out of the Burrow in the middle of the night.

"Yours," the three brothers simultaneously said.

It had been her idea, but the more they executed it, the worse the idea seemed to get. They could only hope Molly wouldn't find out or they were so screwed.

"Are we sure this is going to work?" she asked, as the four of them got into the car.

"Sure," George said confidently. "I just have to do this," he pushed on a button and the car started to hover in the air, "and this," he continued while pushing another button and as Harper glanced outside into the old mirror that stood in the garage, she saw that the car had turned invisible. "I don't think it's normal in the Muggle world to see a flying car, am I right, Harp?" George finished, turning her head to look at her, as the car flew out of the garage.

"Watch out for that tree!" Harper cried, and Fred, who sat on next to George, jammed the wheel just in time and Harper slammed into the side of the car, Ron falling against her. The three of them glared at George, who just sheepishly smiled.

"What's this?" Ron asked, taking the map that laid at their feet.

"That's a map!" Harper said, looking over his shoulder. "We are here," she added, pointing at the map, "and Harry lives in Privet Drive, which should be right . . . here!"

"Blimey," Ron muttered, seeing the distance between them and Private Drive, "let's hope the night is long enough."

• ✧ •

AFTER THREE WRONG TURNS AND A NEAR death experience, the four of them were relieved to finally see Harry's house. Harper opened her window and stuck her head out, noticing bars in front of his window.

"Did they put bars in front of his window?" she questioned, her voice edged with fury.

"What?" Ron said, leaning closer to her and glancing out of the window. "Blimey."

George made the car hover next to the window and Harper extended her arm to knock on Harry's window. He had been laying on his bed, but as soon as he saw her, he jumped up and opened his window.

"Guys, what are you doing here?" he asked, staring at the flying car before looking at the Weasley brothers and Harper.

"Rescuing you of course," Ron said, as matter of factly.

"Quick, pack your things and we'll get you out of here!" Harper whispered, not wanting to wake the Dursleys up.

While Harry was packing his trunk, Harper leaned in between Fred and George.

"Have you guys any idea how to break the bars in front of his window?"

"Harp, you underestimate us," Fred said.

"Yeah," George added, "when did we ever not have a plan to break something?"

George took a rope and a hook and attacked them to each other. Then, Fred clasped the hook around the bars

"It'll make a lot of noise," Fred warned Harry. "Once the bars are gone, we have to be fast."

Harper nodded and glanced at Harry. "You ready?"

Harry closed his trunk. "I am."

Harper signaled George, who let the car fly away from the window. A loud bang was heard as the bars broke from the window. Harry quickly put his trunk in the back before handing Hedwig's cage to Harper. She handed it to Ron before turning back to Harry to offer him her hand.

At that moment, Harry's door slammed open and Vernon stormed in. Harry grabbed Harper's hand and she pulled him into the car but not before Vernon was able to grab his legs.

"Oh no!" the man said. "I'm not letting you go!"

"Let me go!" Harry yelled.

"Don't let him go!" Ron exclaimed.

"Fred, I need backup!" Harper said, as she herself was almost dangling out of the car window.

Fred reached over and took Harry's other arm. Together they managed to pull Harry in and into Harper's arms.

"I missed you," she said.

Harry smiled. "I missed you too, Harp."

• ✧ •

THE FIVE OF THEM ARRIVED BACK AT THE Burrow just before dawn. They parked the car back in the garage before sneaking across the garden to the back door.

"It's not much," Ron said, as he saw Harry staring at the house, "but it's home."

"It's wonderful," Harry replied, his eyes still wide and a smile on his lips.

"Okay," Fred said as they sneaked through the garden. "Ron, take Harry with you to your room and wait for Mum to call you. Then, you can come bounding downstairs going 'Mum, look who turned up in the night!' and she'll be pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car."

"Right," Ron replied. "Come one Harry, I'll sleep right at the—at the top." Ron had gone a nasty greenish color, his eyes fixed on the house. Harper followed his gaze and her eyes widened.

Molly was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger.

"Ah," Fred said, paling.

"Oh, dear," George continued, looking not that good either.

"We're doomed," Harper finished.

Molly came to a halt in front of them, her hands on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next. She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of the pocket.

"So," she began.

"Morning, Mum," George said, in what he clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.

"Have you any idea how worried I've been?" Molly said in a deadly whisper.

"Sorry, Molly," Harper started, "but see, we had to—"

"Beds empty! No note! Car gone—could have crashed—out of my mind with worry—did you care?— never, as long as I've lived—you wait until Arthur comes home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy—"

"Perfect Percy," Harper could hear Fred mutter and unfortunately for him, Molly heard him too.

"YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" Molly yelled while prodding a finger in Fred's chest. "You could have died—you could have been seen! You could have lost Arthur's job—"

"It was my fault, Molly," Harper interrupted her while stepping forward. "I was really worried about my brother. I hadn't heard from him all summer. I felt lonely without him, you know, since I can't see him during summer," she ended in a quiet voice and looked down, trying to look sad.

Molly sighed. "We'll see what Arthur has to say about all of this, now, get inside before any of you get a cold."

She turned to Harry, her face kind and gentle. "I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, dear. Come in and have some breakfast."

They quietly followed her inside and sat down around the table. Harper took some bread and looked up when Ginny stormed down the stairs. She gave a small squeal when she saw Harry and ran back upstairs.

"Ginny," Ron said in an undertone to Harry. "My sister. She's been talking about you all summer. It's really annoying actually."

"Yeah," Fred added. "She'll be wanting your autograph, Harry." He stopped abruptly when he caught his mother's eye and bent his face over his plate without another word. Nothing more was said until all five plates were clean, which took a surprisingly short time.

"Blimey, I'm tired," Fred said. "Let's go to bed, Harp, you can sleep with us since Ginny won't be shutting up to you about Harry."

Harper yawned. "Thanks, I'll just—"

"You will not," Molly snapped. "It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again."

"Oh Mum," Fred, George and Ron groaned.

She glared and them before turning to Harry. "You can go up to bed, dear, you didn't ask them to fly that wretched car."

"I'll help them," Harry interrupted her. "I've never seen a de-gnoming."

"That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work," Molly said. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject." And she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. Ron, Fred, George and Harper groaned, knowing what would come next.

"Mum," George groaned, "we know how to de-gnome the garden."

Molly had been talking about Lockhart for weeks now, Harper had read all about him in Ron's frustrating letters. 'She's going mad,' he had said.

Molly ignored him and beamed down at Harry. "Oh, he's marvelous! He knows his household pets, all right, it's a wonderful book . . ."

"Mum fancies him," Fred said in a very audible whisper.

"Don't be so ridiculous, Fred," Molly said, her cheeks rather pink. "All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out and expect it."

The five of them heade into the garden, yawning and grumbling. Harper walked towards the right side of the garden and picked up a gnome by its ankles.

"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" It squealed.

She raised the gnome above her head and started to swing it in great circles. She let go of the gnome's ankles: it flew fifty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge.

"Wow Harper," Fred appeared next to her. "That must have been fifty feet . . . when George and I graduate at Hogwarts, you should consider becoming a Beater."

Harper grinned. "To be honest, you're not the first one to suggest that."

He grinned back. "That means it's true."

Harper shrugged. "I don't know, I like being a Chaser."

After half an hour, all the gnomes were gone, for now.

"They'll be back," Ron said. "They love it here. . . Dad's too soft with them; he thinks they're funny . . ."

Just then, the front door slammed.

"He's back!" George exclaimed. "Dad's home!"

The five of them hurried through the garden and back into the house. Arthur was slumped in a kitchen chair with his eyes closed, leaning on his hand.

"What a night," he mumbled groping for a teapot as they all sat down around him. "Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned . . ."

Arthur took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

"Find anything, Dad?" Fred asked eagerly.

"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle," Arthur yawned. "There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning, about some extremely odd ferrets, but that's the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness . . ."

"Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" George asked.

"Just muggle-baiting," Arthur sighed. "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so that they can never find it when they need it . . . Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their keys keep shrinking—they'll insist they keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face . . . But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe . . ."

"LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?"

Molly had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword.

Arthur's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife. "C-cars, Molly, dear?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars," Molly repeated, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really, he was enchanting it to make it fly."

Arthur blinked.

"Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if—er—he maybe would have done better, um, tell his wife the truth . . . There's a loophole in the law, you'll find . . . As long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't . . ."

"Arthur Weasley!" Molly shouted angrily. "You made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law! Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"

"Harry?" Arthur repeated blankly. "Harry who?"

He looked around, saw Harry and jumped up.

"Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron told us so much about . . ."

"Your sons and Harper flew that car to Harry's house and back last night!" Molly yelled. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

"Did you really?" Arthur asked eagerly. "Did it go alright? I-I mean," he faltered as sparks flew from Molly's eyes, "that—that was very wrong, boys, and girl," he added, eying Harper "—very wrong indeed . . ."

"Let's leave them to it," Ron whispered to the Potter siblings. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."

The three of them slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. On the third landing, a door stood ajar. Harper just caught a pair of bright brown eyes staring at Harry before it closed with a snap.

"Ginny," Ron explained to Harry. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally . . ."

They climbed two more flights until we reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying RONALD'S ROOM.

He opened the door and Harry and Harper followed him inside. His room was full of pictures and posters of his Quidditch Team; The Chudley Cannons.

"It's a bit small," Ron apologized. "Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic; he's always banging on the pipes and groaning . . ."

But Harry grinned widely. "This is the best house I've ever been in."

Ron's ears went pink and Harper let out a laugh.

That's my brother.

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May 30th 2022
I hope you enjoy it & tell me what you think of it! :)