'Remember old Fleur Delacour?' said George. 'She's got a job at Gringotts to eempwve 'er Eeenglish -'

'And Bill's been giving her a lot of private lessons,' sniggered Fred.

'Charlie's in the Order, too,' said George, 'but he's still in Romania. Dumbledore wants as many foreign wizards brought in as possible, so Charlie's trying to make contacts on his days off.'

'Couldn't Percy do that?' Harry asked. The last he had heard, the third Weasley brother was working in the Department of International Magical Co-operation at the Ministry of Magic.

At Harry's words, all the Weasleys and Hermione exchanged darkly significant looks.

'Whatever you do, don't mention Percy in front of Mum and Dad,' Ron told Harry in a tense voice.

'Boys,' Mr Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, 'your mother's right, you're supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you've come of age -'

'None of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!' Mrs Weasley raged at the twins as she slammed a fresh flagon of Butterbeer on to the table, and spilling almost as much again. 'Bill didn't feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn't charm everything he met! Percy -'

She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden.

'You've got to have a reward for this!' said Mrs Weasley fondly. 'How about a nice new set of dress robes?'

'We've already bought him some,' said Fred sourly, who looked as though he sincerely regretted this generosity.

'Or a new cauldron, Charlies old one's rusting through, or a new rat, you always liked Scabbers -'

'I'm not laughing,' said Harry. Ron blinked. 'It's a brilliant idea! It'd be really cool if you got on the team! I've never seen you play Keeper, are you good?'

'I'm not bad,' said Ron, who looked immensely relieved at Harry's reaction. 'Charlie, Fred and George always made me Keep for them when they were training during the holidays.'