Double Dog Dare! -- Episode 17
Vulgarweed, 2 March 2002

"Tea?" said Fred Weasley with a ridiculously exaggerated cheerfulness intended to signal to anyone in the room capable of identifying it. Only his twin and his Headmaster twinkled intelligently back. "Of course we have tea, Mum. I knew we were nearly out, so I picked some up when we were in town." He debated winking at his mother, and decided he couldn't risk it. She merely continued giving Addison DeWitt a studied glare of contempt.

But he had misinterpreted Dumbledore's twinkle. It had been, in fact, a twinkle of warning.

So he had no way of knowing that, when DeWitt took the humbly offered tea and drank it in a patronizingly grateful fashion, nodding to the young Weasley man as though he were a favored if delinquent house-elf, that they were only sealing themselves further into trouble. After all, in the shape of a helplessly flapping and crowing bantam-cock, DeWitt could neither reveal any more his shadowy intentions nor lift the spells that had sealed the house from all magical travel.

"Fred!" Arthur cried in horror. "Change him back! I'll be suspended! We'll be put on watch! You'll be expelled from Hogwarts!"

"He won't be expelled," said Dumbledore heavily. "He meant well. And I can lift these bindingsÑI'm only afraid it'll take far too long. And I am afraid that Hogwarts is no haven. Arthur, this should never have happened. Mafalda does not take vacations, and Sirius can only be in troubleÑand so, I believe, Severus and Viviane might be."

"We're not in trouble?" Fred asked.

"Not from me," Dumbledore said. "And not from the Ministry, I hope, when all is unraveled. May we all live to see it."

"Good! C'mere, Headmaster!" said George, tugging on his robesleeve, with intent to show him, for once and for all, their secret treasure.

"Um ... excuse me," Jason said weakly, garnering a sharp look from his mother who could bear to look up only briefly from the skirt where she hid her face. "What's going on?"

"I wish I knew," said Arthur helplessly. "Know this, though, Jason, since you must. The wizard world is at war, and even to us, things are not always what they seem."

"Oh. Well, I guess they wouldn't be, would they?"

Vera McCarthy suddenly stood up, her jaw set. "War? Arthur, Molly, whoever the rest of you say you are, this is really not funny anymore. I don't know how you managed to stage all of this, but I really don't appreciate your continuing to try and put one over on the stupid Americans. We may be uncultured, but we have feelings, and I think this joke has gone far enough."

The way Arthur looked at her, tired and worn and worried, chilled her to the bone. "This is no joke, Vera, and the only joke here is your unwillingness to accept what's happening right in front of you. If I could send you back to your own home safe and ignorant, I wouldÑin fact, if it weren't for Jason, I could. But your own son has one foot in our world and cannot return to innocence. I am sorry."

"ButÑ" Jason stammered. "There's got to be a mistake. I mean, I am NOT a wizard. I'm not! I broke my arm on my skateboard last summer. I flunked Algebra II big time. This girl I like thinks I'm slime ... .I mean, I can't do anything!" This last bit came out in a frustrated creak as he briefly grew a second pair of translucent hands to gesture with. He stopped midsqueal and clapped his corporeal hands over his face. "God, I'm sorry I fucked up everybody's vacation."

Vera turned yet another color, this one more in response to her son's language than his accidental minor magic.

Arthur, assuming the nobility he'd long wished to inherit with his name, shook Jason's hand with gravitas. "These things still happen to all of us, Jason. Being magical is yet another set of things to botch up, really."

Down in the basement, behind a secret door, and three knocks upon a concealed wall later, Albus Dumbledore couldn't help but sparkle as he gazed upon one of the most impressive magically-altered illegal Muggle Artifacts he had ever seen. It had once been something that strongly resembled a battered, rickety Muggle airplane of Ô20s vintage. George had already vaulted himself into the cockpit, and was fiddling with walls of lights and gauges and dials. A violent noise erupted from the rear, and Dumbledore nearly ducked until he realized the sustained exploding sound had rhythm and metre of a sort.

"Ain't she a beauty?" Fred grinned. "She has sonic speed capability. And she runs on strong black coffee and Muggle heavy metal music." He opened a tool box full of small plastic discs that glimmered in prisms when the light struck them. "We hid it in the Forbidden Forest for a whole year while we were working on it! We once lit out for Ireland to watch the Kenmare Kestrels beat the Ballycastle Bats and we got back in time to finish scraping the FungusGro potion out of Snape's cauldrons before he noticed we were gone and doubled our detention! And we only had this one Cannibal Corpse disc to get us there and back!"

"Almost as fast as Apparating!" George crowed. "And if you ask me, it's safer."

Dumbledore had his doubts about that. But he couldn't wait to fly in it like a bat out of hell to Hogwarts nonetheless.

"Fred, your...ah....cock Transfiguration..."

"My what?"

"DeWitt. How long before he changes back?"

"If no one does it for him, about three hours."

"Do you think your parents can handle him in that time."

"Yes, now that Dad knows he doesn't have to obey him."

"Then let's be off, my boys. I assume you can seat three?"