The blanket had been thrown out of the chair sixteen times before they admitted it wasn’t much of a test.
Adrian could lift it, move it clear of the seat, and lower it onto their cushions.
Cedric could do the same with increasing precision, and even Fred’s attempts had stopped sending the loose end trailing across the table.
None of that helped when they put their wands away.
George sat on the chair.
Nothing happened.
He shifted his weight, stood, and sat again with considerably more enthusiasm.
From the table, Fred watched him over the top of their notes.
“Perhaps it doesn’t like you.”
George held out a hand without getting up.
Fred passed him the parchment, and they returned to the problem that had occupied most of their free afternoons since the end of January.
The spell still needed someone to cast it.
They had managed to make the quill react to movement, but a seat was proving less cooperative.
Their early attempts either did nothing or activated when somebody leaned on the chair back, which had sent the blanket sliding onto the floor before anyone was ready.
Adrian crossed out another line.
“We’re trying to make one thing do too much.”
Cedric looked up from the reference book.
Adrian turned the notebook toward him and pointed at the separate sections they had written beneath the drawing.
“The seat starts it.
But after that, the magic needs to stay with whoever’s sitting there.
Otherwise we’re just moving furniture.”
George stopped rocking the chair.
Fred reached across the table for a fresh sheet.
For the next fortnight, the reading room filled with books, abandoned diagrams, and the smell of damp wool drying near the fire.
The chair stayed on the floor.
That became the first rule they could reliably satisfy.
After that came a series of less impressive successes.
The blanket rose only when its weight settled properly onto the seat.
A bag dropped carelessly across one corner no longer set it off.
The lifting effect stayed with their makeshift passenger after it moved beyond the chair.
The slow descent took longest.
Adrian found it easier to maintain than to leave behind.
While he held his wand and concentrated, he could feel exactly what he wanted the magic to do.
Persuading the effect to continue after he stepped away required a kind of patience he was beginning to resent.
Cedric proved better at that part.
He spent an evening adjusting the final movement while the others watched their weighted blanket drift down from above the cleared floor.
When it finally descended without anyone guiding it, George forgot to write down the time.
Fred noticed.
“Oh, now you stop taking notes.”
George pushed the watch into his hand.
“Again, then.”
They repeated it until the witch in the corridor announced that if they missed supper, they were not bringing food back to her room.
By the following Saturday, the chair could send their blanket upward and forward, then lower it gently several feet beyond the seat.
They moved the landing area, changed the weight inside the roll, and discovered three more reasons not to let Fred declare something finished.
He endured this badly until Adrian pointed out that somebody would eventually have to sit on it.
Then he became extremely interested in the results.
Fred volunteered first.
“I’m lighter than George.”
“You are not.”
“I’ve had a difficult week.”
Cedric ignored both of them and checked the space between the chair and the padded area they had cleared.
Adrian had already examined the enchantment twice, but he went through it again while George moved a book from the edge of the table.
The protection had to take hold before the launch.
If it didn’t, nothing happened.
They had also persuaded the spell to refuse a launch when a solid obstruction stood too close overhead.
Adrian lowered his wand.
“Ready.”
Fred approached the chair, stopped, and looked at the seat.
George smiled.
“Having second thoughts?”
Fred sat down.
The chair remained exactly where it was.
Fred did not.
He shot upward with a startled yelp, his feet swinging clear of the table before the lifting force eased and left him drifting toward the padded floor.
For a moment, he stared down at them with both hands spread.
Then he started laughing.
George lost control almost immediately.
Adrian backed away to watch the descent, grinning as Fred’s robes billowed around him.
It looked wonderfully undignified.
Fred tried to straighten his legs, which turned him slightly, and he came down sitting sideways across the cushions.
Cedric knelt beside him.
“Did anything hurt?”
Fred shook his head, still laughing, and pointed at the chair.
“George.”
“Get off the cushions, then.”
Adrian tested it after them.
Knowing what would happen did remarkably little to prepare him for the instant when the seat disappeared beneath him.
His stomach lurched, the room dropped away, and then he was floating forward with an involuntary laugh escaping his mouth.
He tried to look composed.
George’s expression told him how that was going.
The landing was soft enough that Adrian barely felt it.
From the floor, he looked back at the chair.
The memory of the film no longer seemed particularly important.
This was theirs now, and he wanted to see it happen to somebody who had no idea what was coming.
Cedric took the final turn.
He managed not to shout, but his attempt to keep hold of the chair lasted just long enough to make Fred fold over the table.
They chose Rook.
Avery remained tempting, but Rook had continued finding reasons to stop Beatrice in corridors, and Adrian remembered him standing between Cedric and the fight outside Transfiguration.
He also had a habit of arriving late to lunch and dropping into the same place beside two other older Slytherins.
George watched that part.
Cedric measured the likely path with his eyes during breakfast, then made them change the planned direction.
“Across the end,” he murmured, pointing with his spoon.
“Not through the candles.”
Adrian nodded.
They wanted an audience.
They did not want a collision with a candelabrum.
Fred supplied the distraction while Adrian placed the enchantment on the chosen section of bench before lunch.
It was awkward work, done under the pretence of searching for something beneath the table, and Adrian emerged with dust on one knee and a strong suspicion that anybody watching closely would have known he was up to something.
Nobody stopped him.
They took seats at the nearby end of the Hufflepuff table.
George barely touched his lunch.
Cedric ate with the concentration of someone determined to behave normally.
Adrian kept catching himself looking toward the doors.
Rook set his gloves beside his plate and sat, still talking to the boy next to him.
He had barely settled when an invisible tug whisked him backward from the bench.
His hands reached for the table, but his feet had already cleared its edge.
Then he shot upward.
His unfinished sentence became a shout as he sailed over the tabletop, robes flapping around his legs.
At the top of the arc, the magic caught and steadied him, leaving him to drift slowly toward the students opposite.
One of them looked up with a fork halfway to his mouth.
“Move your plate!”
One girl snatched her plate to her chest.
Another student pulled a serving dish out of the way.
“Move!” Rook shouted.
The boy below him attempted to stand, caught his robe beneath his own shoe, and sat back down just as Rook descended gently across his lap.
The protection softened the contact.
It did nothing for either boy’s dignity.
Rook’s heel settled into a platter of roast potatoes.
His elbow knocked over a jug of gravy, and the boy underneath him began pushing at his shoulder while demanding that he get off.
Across the Hall, people rose to see.
Fred made a noise Adrian had never heard from him before.
George had both hands over his face.
Adrian tried to breathe and failed.
Rook struggled upright, dripping gravy from one cuff, while his unwilling landing place shoved the empty jug away and swore at him.
At the staff table, McGonagall stood.
Snape was already moving.
Cedric caught Adrian’s sleeve beneath the table.
Adrian looked down at his plate, shoulders shaking so hard that the attempt was useless.
They did not make it out of the Great Hall unnoticed.
“Mr.
Weasley.
Mr.
Weasley.
Mr.
Diggory.
Mr.
Clarke.”
McGonagall’s voice stopped all four of them near the doors.
Fred’s smile vanished.
George looked suddenly interested in the stonework.
Cedric closed his eyes for half a second before turning around.
Snape stood beside McGonagall with one hand folded into his robes.
His attention moved over them slowly, lingering on Adrian.
McGonagall waited until the last of the nearby students had passed.
Rook has just been thrown across the Slytherin table by an enchantment placed on the bench where he was sitting.”
Fred frowned as though hearing this for the first time.
“That sounds unpleasant.”
George’s mouth twitched.
Snape looked at him.
“You appeared devastated.”
George managed to straighten his face.
McGonagall ignored that.
“Did any of you see anyone interfering with that bench before lunch?”
Cedric shook his head.
“No, Professor.”
Adrian did the same.
Fred glanced briefly at George before answering.
“Can’t say I did.”
“Nor me.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed.
“Curious.”
Nobody helped him.
“You were all watching Mr.
Rook rather closely,” he continued.
Adrian shifted his weight.
“A lot of people were once he started flying.”
“I was referring to before that.”
Fred opened his mouth, thought better of whatever had been coming, and looked towards the doors instead.
McGonagall’s gaze sharpened.
“If any of you know how that enchantment came to be there, this would be an excellent moment to say so.”
Silence.
Cedric looked genuinely uncomfortable.
George inspected his sleeve.
Adrian kept his face neutral.
Snape’s attention settled on him again.
“Nothing to contribute, Mr.
Clarke?”
Adrian considered the question.
“Not really, Professor.”
Snape’s expression suggested he found the answer exactly as convincing as Adrian expected.
McGonagall let the silence stretch a little longer before speaking.
“I cannot punish students on suspicion alone.
That does not mean I am incapable of recognising suspicious behaviour when I see it.”
Fred nodded solemnly.
George elbowed him before the nod became theatrical.
“If something similar happens again,” McGonagall continued, “I expect all four of you to remember this conversation.”
“Yes, Professor,” Cedric said.
The others followed a moment later.
Snape stepped aside, though not before giving Adrian one final look.
“Go.”
They went.
None of them spoke until they had turned the corner.
Cedric was the first to stop.
“That was too close.”
Fred glanced back towards the Great Hall.
“They don’t know.”
“They suspect.”
George shrugged.
“Different problem.”
Adrian looked at him.
“Not by much.”
Fred started walking again.
“Still worked.”
Cedric muttered something under his breath and followed.
The first request came before they reached their afternoon lesson.
Maisie caught them near the stairs.
“Was that yours?”
Fred’s expression became blank with suspicious speed.
“Was what?”
The first request came before they reached their afternoon lesson.
Maisie caught them near the stairs.
“Was that yours?”
Fred’s expression became blank with suspicious speed.
“Was what?”
She looked at George, who was still occasionally laughing.
“I want one.”
That stopped them.
Adrian glanced toward Cedric.
“For what?”
“My brother comes to breakfast and sits on my bag if I don’t move it quickly enough.” She shifted her books.
“How much?”
They had spent weeks thinking about how to make somebody leave a seat.
None of them had spent much time thinking about payment.
Fred recovered first.
“How big’s your brother?”
“Fred,” Cedric said.
“I’m asking.”
George pulled him aside before negotiations could proceed.
Adrian stayed with Maisie, explaining that they had only just finished it and weren’t ready to promise anything.
She accepted that with a nod.
“Tell me when you are.”
By supper, four more people had asked.
One of them had been sitting beside Rook.
They started small.
That was George’s phrase, and for the first few days it was accurate.
Their first version used removable seat pads supplied by the buyers.
Adrian placed the enchantment on the pad itself, giving the customer something they could carry into the Great Hall, a common room or anywhere else with enough room for the victim to land safely.
The pad stayed behind.
The person sitting on it received the launch and the temporary protection.
Cedric insisted that every buyer see a demonstration first, while Adrian explained the important part: clear space, one activation, and no putting one beneath somebody near stairs, fireplaces or anything sharp.
Fred collected two Sickles for each one.
George kept track of who had paid, who had collected and who was still waiting.
When Fred promised three for an afternoon Adrian would be spending with Kettleburn, Cedric took the list from him and changed the date.
Fred complained until George asked which part of the enchantment he intended to finish himself.
The seat pads worked, but they were obvious.
That led to the second version.
Adrian managed to shrink the enchanted surface down to a small adhesive square that could be pressed beneath a chair, onto a bench or anywhere else somebody was likely to put their weight on it.
Once triggered, the square exhausted the enchantment and could simply be peeled away.
Fred held the first finished one between two fingers.
“We need a name.”
“Launch tabs,” Cedric suggested.
Fred looked offended.
George turned the little square over in his hand.
“Bum-Bouncers.”
Fred’s expression changed immediately.
Adrian closed his eyes.
Cedric sighed.
“Of course.”
“Bum-Bouncers,” Fred repeated, delighted.
“That’s going on the list.”
Their first earnings lay in a small tin on the reading-room table.
Adrian opened it twice that evening.
He had earned money before, in another life, but there was something particularly satisfying about coins that existed because four eleven-year-olds had persuaded furniture to throw people.
Cedric eventually counted the money into four equal shares.
Fred watched him separate the last stack.
“You’re taking yours, then?”
Cedric pushed one of the piles towards him.
“I’ve done just as much work.”
George laughed and pocketed his share.
They sold to anyone who wanted one.
Beatrice brought a Slytherin fourth-year who listened carefully, watched George demonstrate, and paid without arguing.
Owen introduced two Ravenclaws who spent longer asking about the enchantment than deciding where to use it.
Hufflepuffs arrived in pairs, and Gryffindors tended to bring an audience.
The only refusals were Avery and the boys who had helped him in the corridor.
Rook sent somebody else.
George noticed him waiting beyond the reading-room passage and returned the money.
“No.”
The messenger glanced toward the doorway.
“He said—”
“We heard him perfectly well at lunch,” Fred said.
“Off you go.”
They were less absolute with people they merely disliked.
When a Slytherin boy who had once kicked Adrian’s bag came looking for a seat pad, Adrian quoted him four Sickles.
The boy glanced down at George’s notebook.
“It says three.”
Adrian waited.
The boy looked at him, looked at the notebook again, then put four Sickles on the table.
Beatrice watched him leave from her place beside the window.
“He shouldn’t have kicked my bag.”
Her eyes moved to George.
George added the sale to the ledger without comment.
The second week brought the first returning customers.
It also brought stories.
A Ravenclaw prefect had drifted slowly across a common-room table while trying to continue telling everyone to quieten down.
A Gryffindor had just picked up the jam when the Bum-Bouncer launched him over two startled second-years, and somehow managed to land with the jar still clutched in both hands.
Maisie’s brother had risen with her bag still beneath him, which she regarded as an excellent result.
By then, almost everyone wanted the smaller version.
The original seat pads still worked, but the adhesive Bum-Bouncers could be tucked beneath a chair or bench and peeled away after use.
They were easier to carry, easier to hide and, unfortunately for everyone else, much harder to notice before sitting down.
Soon the stories became less reliable.
Someone claimed that three students had been launched at once.
Another insisted that a boy had floated all the way down a staircase.
Adrian heard that one from a first-year who swore she had seen it, despite describing an effect their enchantment simply could not produce.
Fred suggested letting her advertise for them.
Cedric, who was checking George’s order list, told him they were not calling rumours advertising.
The fear spread faster than the Bum-Bouncers themselves.
Students began running their hands beneath chairs, checking the undersides of benches and eyeing any small scrap stuck to the furniture.
Most of what they found was chewing gum, old labels or nothing at all, which did very little to calm anyone down.
One afternoon, Adrian watched two older boys stand beside an empty sofa, each insisting the other sit first.
Neither did.
Filch began prodding unattended furniture with a stick.
Mrs Norris watched from a windowsill while he inspected a perfectly ordinary armchair, then climbed onto it herself the moment he turned away.
Adrian made it halfway to the library before he trusted himself to laugh.
Rook stopped sitting at the end of the Slytherin table.
Avery began checking beneath his bench even though they had never put anything there.
That might have been Adrian’s favourite part.
The professors’ first announcement came after a girl drifted across the Great Hall with a piece of toast still in her hand and landed softly against the edge of another table.
Her shoe came down in somebody’s breakfast.
McGonagall found the spent Bum-Bouncer beneath the bench and held the little adhesive square between two fingers while informing the Hall that deliberately enchanting school furniture would result in punishment.
For two days, orders slowed.
Then somebody asked George whether the warning applied if the enchantment was attached to something the customer owned.
George stared at him for several seconds before writing down the order.
By the end of February, Flitwick had begun checking beneath his chair before climbing onto it.
He did it discreetly the first time.
The second time, Fred noticed.
Adrian heard the sharp breath beside him and knew George had seen it as well.
Flitwick paused with one hand on the chair.
“Is there something particularly fascinating about my desk this afternoon, Mr.
Weasley?”
Fred lowered his eyes to his textbook.
“No, Professor.”
Flitwick inspected the underside of the chair once more before sitting.
Adrian kept his attention firmly on his own book.
Sprout was less amused when three students refused to sit down for a common-room meeting.
Madam Pince began inspecting chairs whenever somebody laughed between the shelves.
At dinner, Adrian once saw McGonagall glance beneath her seat before sitting and immediately found something else to look at when her eyes rose towards the student tables.
The prank itself lasted only a few seconds.
The suspicion it created lasted all day.
Lessons started late.
Meals were interrupted.
Students accused one another because a chair looked slightly different from yesterday.
One boy knocked over his own soup while checking beneath the bench and demanded to know who had put a Bum-Bouncer there.
Nobody had.
Sprout collected Adrian and Cedric after Herbology.
Fred and George were already waiting in the empty classroom when they arrived, standing beside a desk covered with confiscated seat pads.
McGonagall stood behind the desk.
Flitwick was examining one of the pads, and Snape waited near the door.
George looked at Adrian.
Adrian looked at the collection.
There were more than he had expected.
“How many have you sold?” McGonagall asked.
George reached into his bag.
Fred closed his eyes.
“You’ve brought the book,” he muttered.
“We’ve got orders in it.”
“Gentlemen.”
George handed it over.
McGonagall read the first page, turned it, and continued.
Sprout watched Cedric, who stood very straight beside Adrian.
At last, McGonagall set the notebook down.
“You were told that these disturbances were to stop.”
Adrian shifted his weight.
“We made sure the landing couldn’t hurt them.”
Snape’s lip curled.
“And naturally, Clarke, the absence of broken bones satisfied every standard you possess.”
Adrian kept his reply behind his teeth.
Flitwick placed the pad he had been examining beside the others.
“The supporting effect is quite carefully arranged,” he said.
“That does not make descending onto somebody else acceptable.
Several students have been frightened, and others have had their belongings spoiled.”
“We thought people would use them with more room,” Cedric said.
McGonagall looked at him.
“After your own demonstration in the Great Hall?”
Cedric’s face coloured.
No one offered an answer.
Sprout stepped away from the window.
“Students are now afraid to sit down in their own common rooms.
I spent part of yesterday assuring a first-year that her bed had not been enchanted.”
Fred stared at the floor.
Adrian could see the effort it took him.
Snape noticed as well.
“Do you find that amusing, Weasley?”
Fred’s expression sobered.
“No, sir.”
“I suggest you make certain.”
McGonagall closed the notebook.
“There will be no further sales.
You will return the money for every unfinished order, provide Professor Flitwick with the names of those still holding an active enchantment, and assist him in removing them.”
George nodded once.
She continued with the detentions and point deductions.
Adrian listened, feeling the business shrink steadily around him.
When she mentioned letters home, he glanced toward Sprout.
Her expression made it clear that this part was settled too.
Snape moved closer to the desk and looked at the list.
“How enterprising.
Though I see your impartiality did not extend to every customer.”
Adrian knew which names were missing.
“We weren’t selling them to Avery.”
“Your permission was not being sought.”
“Or Rook.”
“Adrian,” Sprout said.
He stopped.
McGonagall waited until he faced her again.
“If either boy is troubling you, you will report it.
You will not answer by making the castle uninhabitable.”
That nearly finished Fred.
George pressed his shoe down on his brother’s foot.
McGonagall’s eyes moved to them.
“Another evening can be arranged.”
Both twins became very still.
Collecting the remaining pads took most of the following week.
Some students surrendered them cheerfully.
Others complained that they hadn’t used theirs yet.
One Ravenclaw offered George extra money to overlook an order, then discovered Flitwick standing behind him.
Adrian carried the returned pads while Cedric checked names against the list.
Fred spent an entire afternoon apologising without once managing to sound sorry.
The enchantments disappeared.
The suspicion did not.
On Friday, they crossed the entrance hall with the last bundle and found Rook standing beside his usual armchair.
He watched them approach.
“Finished, then?”
Adrian adjusted the bundle in his arms.
Rook smiled and pulled the cushion from the chair.
He examined the seat.
Then the back.
Finally, he lowered himself with both hands gripping the arms, ready to spring up again.
Nothing happened.
Fred kept walking until they reached the corridor.
Then he leaned against the wall and began laughing.
George joined him, and after a moment Cedric gave up trying not to.
Adrian looked back once.
Rook was still sitting stiffly, as though the chair might be waiting for him to relax.