Double Dog Dare! -- Episode 27
Catherine , 16 July 2002

Jason finished his recital of events, his memory having been enhanced by a few spells tossed his way by the twins.

By this time he had progressed well beyond shock, his own internal schockmeter having been, he suspected, burned out for good. He stared blankly at his wizard cousins, shaking his head a few times, as if that might help him to understand everything he'd seen so far this day.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked, scratching the toe of a tennis shoe into the dirt of Molly Weasley's garden. "Or would I just be in the way?" He wasn't sure which would be worse -- facing the danger, whatever it was, head-on, or sitting in somebody else's backyard while your life, and several other things, was being decided without your input.

Gred and Forge looked at each other for a moment. Then they nodded.

"Right," said Fred. "You're coming with us. But first we have to teach you a few things, like how to Apparate."

"Apparate?"

"Yeah, Apparate," replied George. "It's the quickest way to get from one place to another, though I wouldn't try doing it long-distance unless I knew exactly where I was going. You've done it yourself, though you never knew it."

Suddenly, thanks to the memory spells, Jason remembered the fall -- or almost-fall -- in St. Odilio's. Plus the time he ended up on the water tower. And when he got out from under a traffic jam underneath his high school team's basket and over to the other end of the basketball court holding the ball, without taking a single step in between.

He remembered the feeling he had -- something he couldn't quite put into words; he'd tried not to examine it too closely, because it unnerved him and it didn't fit in with his view of how things should be. Now, he actively sought out the memory, the sensation, trying to make it happen on purpose.

"You mean," he said hesitantly, "like this?"

And he shimmered slightly and flickered out, only to flicker back into existence ten feet away, next to Molly's garden rake propped up against the fence.

"Exactly," beamed the twins, who raced over to pat him on the back -- quietly, in case the grownups were listening.

"We'll make a wizard of you yet," said George. "Now, here's what we'll do first..."

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The grownups' meeting continued, long enough for Fred and George to teach Jason some other useful spells -- the Jelly-Legs Hex, the Shrinking Spell ("We learned that one from Professor Chance a couple of years ago," Fred said feelingly), and even a secret one, the Pyroflatulus, that Fred and George had been perfecting for months. They soon had flames erupting from each other's behinds, which were quickly stifled by Flame-Freezing Charms.

"All right, then," said Fred, his robes still smouldering slightly. He took out a quill and what looked to Jason to be letter paper from a pocket of his robes, scribbled a message, then set it down on the wrought-iron loveseat by the door.

"That bit's taken care of," he said, turning to his brother and cousin. "Let's join hands and Apparate -- this way we'll all end up together."

The three of them vanished in a twinkling.

Fifteen minutes later, Molly was horrified to find the note they had left behind.