When the Egg Hits the Family

There was an almighty crash and Bill cringed as he heard his mother's voice screeching from the top floor of the Burrow.

"What on earth are you doing down there?"

"Right, I'm off, I wasn't here!" Charlie said as he sprinted out of the kitchen door.

"This wasn't my fault," Percy said, indignantly, "and mother knows I wouldn't have had anything to do with this. I'm not even covered in any of the vile stuff so she can't possibly blame m-"

A yellow blob of eggy goo landed with a splat on the front of Percy's pristine shirt. The twins snickered.

"Mummy's nearly here!" Ginny said, anxiously bouncing from one foot to the other. "She's going to be so cross and Daddy told us not to make her cross on her birthday."

"Why were you trying to explode all the eggs anyway?" Bill hissed at his twin brothers, yolk dripping down his face and eggshell sticking out of his hair.

Fred and George grinned and shrugged.

"We wanted to turn them into dragon eggs and hatch a dragon...Charlie was all for it," said Fred.

"Until it grew to the size of the stove and blew up," said George.

The hammering footsteps of their mother were only one flight away now and she was still screaming bloody murder. They needed to come up with a plan and fast.

They all looked to Ron.

His blue eyes bulged wide and he saw his mother's hand sliding down the banister. She was about to see what they had done to her kitchen, on her birthday, and all the mess that needed cleaning up...including her children.

He grabbed a plate, scraped the sizzling and pulverised egg from the front of the twins' jumpers and ran to meet his mother in the doorway, holding the plate up and beaming with pride.

"Happy Birthday Mummy! We made you scrambled eggs for your breakfast."

She froze, looked at the explosion of egg on the plate, then the state of her sons and daughter, then she whimpered on seeing the aftermath of underage cookery on her beautiful kitchen. Finally she looked back down at her youngest boy.

Bill, Percy, Fred, George and Ginny held their breaths. Ron was the only one of them who had ever managed to pull something like this off convincingly. He had to put in the performance of his life if they were going to escape the fury of Molly Weasley.

Ron lowered the plate and his eyes stared up at her. He stuck out his bottom lip a little way and frowned in that way that put a tiny crinkle at the top of his long nose. A piece of egg yolk dripped from his chin and splatted onto the floor just as Ron played his last card.

"You don't like it?"

"What?" their mother said as she shook off some of her shock and stooped to look little Ron in the eyes.

"It was my idea, you always make me eggs on my birthday."

Bill struggled to resist the urge to punch the air with his fist as he watched his mother melting and showering her precious Ronnie with praise before sharing it with the rest of them.

"Oh but, where's Charlie?"

Fred smirked.

"Can't cook can't he? He did say he'd do the washing up though, as his part of the present."

Everybody grinned and nodded.

It was always best to think your way out of problems in the Weasley household rather than to run away. Poor Charlie was never that inventive though.