Who: Fabian and Gideon Prewett, guest starring Ron, cameos by the rest of the Weasley clan What: Tall tales from the Prewett twins Where: The Burrow What: Sometime in late 2018 Warnings: Mentions of Death Eater doings and canon-typical violence, up to and including murder
"I have never heard a human being make such horrific noises. Are you sure we're not murdering him? Remind me, Fabs, did they all do this and you wiped my memory afterwards? It was a pact, wasn't it?"
Ron, not quite a newborn, but still very small, continued to give voice to his displeasure with the state of things.
Fabian looked at the squalling infant and shrugged. "Don't look at me. I don't have to know this sort of thing. I'm not responsible for breeding the next generation of Prewetts. But no, I recall Bill and Charlie and Percy all being better behaved than this, or at least quieter about it when they weren't." Fabian leaned down to Ron and stage-whispered, "If you're doing something rotten, don't tell your parents."
"Words to live by… Hold on a bit," said Gideon, "he settled right down when you spoke to him. Guess it's time for the Uncle Fabian Story Hour. Shall I leave you to it?" Gideon moved towards the door with an exaggerated tip-toe walk.
Fabian gave his twin an exaggerated look of shock. "What? You don't want to correct me?" He took up baby Ron from the basket where he was lying and started dandling him on his knee, holding his head up carefully. "A long time ago in a city far far away, called London, there were some very nasty people called Death Eaters and two very put-upon uncles who had to stop them from doing some bad things to innocent people ..."
"It couldn't've got worse, you say? Oh, it did. Like your Uncle Fabian just told you, he'd lost his broom and was dangling from my arm while I steered with my knees and hung on so we wouldn't lose both of our rides at altitude. The Death Eater got a shot off first, and I took a stunner to the shoulder. Meanwhile Fabian froze the air in front of him and he hit a sheet of ice like it was a brick wall. Sadly, by that time I'd dropped him, as I was near to passing out from the stunner and the blood loss. So I did the only thing I could, which was use my good arm to throw my broom like a javelin at Fabian and hope he caught it, and then caught me…"
"I did catch him, and managed not to dislocate either of our shoulders." Fabian winced at the memory. "I scraped both legs up pretty badly though, and ruined my boots on the shingles of the house I almost crashed into. And Gideon nearly broke his wand. Though fortunately Mr Ollivander managed to repair it on the QT, and I'm not sure Uncle Justin noticed he had mine the next day at work while I got his fixed."
"So, I pull the paper out of the mug's detective's pocket and I showed it to your Uncle. 'What does this say, to you?' He lets me know it reminds him we have dinner with your dad and mum and your older brothers Wednesday next. 'Perfect', I tell him. It doesn't work on Wizards, you see. So we walk into this West Yorkshire Police Station and we tell 'em we're there for a prisoner transfer. It reeks of sweat and polyjuice, because of course it would. We tell 'em we're here to collect the prisoner and flash 'em the psychic paper."
"I cannot believe you actually invented that paper from the muggle viddy," Fabian interjected.
"You told me to," replied Gideon. "As I was telling you, Ron, the paper worked, and they grumbled, and we said 'could be worse, you could be us', and I really meant it, but they had no way of knowing. Anyroad, we go the prisoner and he didn't recognize us and Fabian had to go back and get his umbrella, which had his wand hidden in it, from the station. Which is how I came to be face-to-face with two officers who looked exactly like the two mugs that Fabs and I had subdued earlier.
"Which is," Fabian said, "how we discovered that polyjuice affects apparent mass but not actual mass, and why your two uncles are glad that polyjuice holds longer on wizards than it does on half-giants. Also how I lost my second best work shirt and got second-degree burns, which Molly was gracious enough to fix for me after we delivered Professor McGonagall's messenger, and the message, back to Hogwarts for her."
Gideon nodded. "It was cold that night, too. Seeing that slip of a girl beating down two Death Eaters will be a memory I cherish until I die. Eventually one of them apparated away, leaving his companion to our mercies. This was early on, and we ended up not having anything to do with our new prisoner, so we fed him the last of Hagrid's polyjuice potion and stuffed him back into jail to be dealt with by the authorities in the morning."
Fabian shrugged. "Still probably nicer than what happened to him when his boss got hold of him."
Ron burbled and farted in reply.
"And of course it was the opening night of your grandmother's ballet, with every dancer and orchestra member in the entire school in the stage, the wings, and the pit below. And your grandmother and grandfather and half the Ministry in the audience, plus foreign dignitary. And they all know us, so if we bugger it up, we will never be able to go home again and will have to come live with you and your mum and dad instead. On the other hand if we don't get this bomb out of the Clarinda Macmillan Avery Theatre, nobody is going to live to banish us from Prewett House, so." Fabian put up his hands, and was promptly rewarded by Gideon putting baby Ron into them.
"Worse for me," Gideon adds, "I was in a tuxedo. I was supposed to be there with some poor girl who Mother hoped would tickle my fancy. I told her I was going to the men's room and didn't come back and the upshot is that she's now convinced I fancy blokes, but we had to find that bomb right then. Luckily, we'd spent a lot of time in the Avery and we knew all the cupboards, hidey-holes, and lighting platforms. We split up. I searched the public areas--the lobby, the bar, the lounge, while Fabian checked backstage and under the stage. It was crazy, but at least we could use our wands to search fast. Time was running out, and we were pretty frantic by that point. It was Fabian who figured out where the bomb had to be. Sure enough, we saw it in the rafters, with someone crouching next to it. We couldn't use magic, we'd start a panic. So we climbed after him."
"Bastard popped out when we got about two thirds of the way up, so we never did know which of them it was. But he dropped the damned thing first in a way designed to cause maximum panic." Fabian scowled at the memory. "So I went jumping out to catch it like a fool, and thank goodness your Uncle knows how to catch a rope and swing with it--you'll enjoy playtimes on the tree fort with ropes like we did one of these years--so he caught me so I didn't land in the middle of the stage. And the layer of the curtain scenery he brought down wasn't needed until the next act, so it worked out all right for the production. But I had to get out of there with the bomb, so I apparated out to Ynys Dewi and tossed the thing into the Irish Sea. And went home wet and bedraggled for my trouble, missing Mum's premiere, for which I caught hell, while your other uncle went back to his date."
Gideon looked sheepish. "That wasn't as successful as the bomb. She saw I was disheveled and breathing hard and she jumped to conclusions. Mother was very disappointed."
"Another one? Alright, Ron, just one more. Try to pay attention. It was last spring, and the Merfolk who live in the Boating Pond at Regent's Park, which is deeper than it seems, and connects to the Fleet, made a fuss about a body that turned up in the water. They wanted to return it to us, we wanted on of our own back, and we later heard that the Death Eaters wanted it to very publicly found.
"That's how your Uncle Fabian and I ended up dosed up on Gillyweed and swimming up the Fleet to get the body. Dad would have been proud; it was a real diplomatic mission. They have strange underwater ideas about dead bodies. Other than the fact that I think Fabian is now Godfather to a pod of young squid, it was really pretty routine until we got stopped by two muggle constables who wanted to know why we were pulling a body out of Fleet Mouth."
"Fortunately I didn't go with my first instinct because that would have been unfair to the dead bloke and his kin," Fabian admitted. "Also I'm not sure I could have done it wandless and silently. Instead I ended up throwing the sound of a scream up on the bridge, and one of them ran up to check on it, and your other uncle and I got the jump on the poor sod who was left. I got three broken fingers for my trouble but your uncle stunned him and we got away with the remains. Then we saw them safely to where one of ours could find them and make sure the family knew without causing a panic amongst Muggles."
Which was when Molly came back with Fred and George, who were no longer blue and yellow, just red from all the scrubbing their parents had done to get all the Playful Pigments out of their hair, which was also its proper shade again. "I don't know how they could have done it," Fabian told Molly, shaking his head. "They're going to be worse than we were when they get older."
"I know," Molly said, and went into the kitchen to give the twins a treat for putting up with their bath without too much protest. Arthur took Ron and sighed at the stench of his diaper.
And while the pair of adult Weasleys were preoccupied with their three youngest offspring, Bill, Charlie, and Percy snuck out from behind the kitchen door and tiptoed past their uncles. Fabian lifted a finger to his lips in solidarity.
Gideon stifled a laugh and ruffled Charlie's hair as he went past to escape up the stairs.