It was Severus and Lily's first year anniversary, and the two had been looking forward to a relaxing weekend in Devon, near the seashore, where they could celebrate their first year of marriage. They had made arrangements with Molly Weasley for Harry to spend the weekend there, so he could get to play with Ron and the other members of the Weasley clan. Harry didn't mind at all, he had been best friends with Ron since they went to the Auror daycare together and they'd tried to climb the same tree and fell down and scraped their knees bloody and had to be fixed up by Severus. Since then, Ron and Harry had made regular playdates over each other's houses and Molly had assured the Snapes that it'd be no trouble at all to watch Harry for the weekend. "What's one more in my house?" she had laughed.

Harry loved it at the Weasleys, there was always something interesting going on there, and ever so many kids to play with and get into mischief with also. Of course, the usual mischief makers were the irrepressible twins, Fred and George, who had a talent for trouble like none other. Their father Arthur called them "Loki's Children" and prayed that he would survive the twins' rise to adulthood. Harry, who had a pretty good sense of humor, and was in general a good sport, did not mind if they played silly pranks on him, unlike Ron, who hated it when they teased him over his fear of spiders, and Ginny, who was easily frightened and cried at half their pranks.

The first night Harry was at the Burrow, Molly made them go out to watch Percy and Charley, who was almost graduated from Hogwarts, de-gnome the garden. Charley was a big bluff teenager, always smiling, and he called over to Harry, "Hey, watch this, little snake!" and he grabbed a nasty yellow stinky gnome by the foot and swung it around three times and then sent it flying across the field. Harry was called "little snake" because of his fondness for wearing clothing with snakes on them. "Bet you'll be in Slytherin like your dad," predicted the older boy, when Harry had asked him what House he would get put in.

Harry was glad to hear that, since he loved his adopted father very much, and wanted to be just like Sev when he was grown. He clapped his hands and yelled, "Go, Charley!" when the gnome was knocked head over heels. "Do it again, Charley!"

"Yeah, do it again!" Ron yelled, looking at his brother with utter adoration. Charley was always happy to read stories or take Ron and Harry on outings to the park or down to the small pond or into the little woodland that bordered the Burrow. He was patient and calm and never sought to belittle his brother or Harry or say they were pains the way Percy did sometimes.

Percy, not to be outdone, grabbed two smaller gnomes and banged their heads together and chucked them into a stand of oak trees. "Take that, you mangy things!" he cried, dusting off his hands. "And stay out of our garden!"

Harry and Ron cheered enthusiastically and wished they were old enough to de-gnome the garden like the big boys. But the gnomes were too quick and some of them were vicious and would bite when cornered, so Harry and Ron were forbidden to go near them.

Ginny wandered outside and spotted them, she was just two and tagged along after Ron and Harry everywhere. Harry didn't mind, but Ron thought she was a pest and sometimes told her to leave them alone. But Ginny was stubborn and she never listened to her brother. "Hawwy, Ronnie, play wif me!"

Ron took one look at his red-haired sister and groaned. She was dressed in a cute one-piece romper, pink with little kittens all over it, her silky hair in a cute bow. "Not now, Ginny. We're watching Charley and Percy fight the gnomes."

Ginny put her thumb in her mouth and hovered near Harry, watching for a bit as well. But she didn't like the gnomes, their ugly dried-up faces with their bent noses and scraggly yellow teeth frightened her. She shook a finger at them and said, "Bad! Bad gnomies! Get out of Mummy's garden!" Then she stamped her foot. "NOW!" she screeched on the top of her lungs and all of her brothers and Harry flinched and covered their ears.

Apparently, the gnomes didn't care for Ginny's shrill banshee wail either, for they burrowed into the earth lickety-split and quickly moved out of range of the little girl's voice, much to everyone's relief. "Gnomies all gone?" she asked Ron.

"Uh huh. You scream too loud, Gin." Ron complained.

"My ears hurt," Harry agreed, for she had been right next to him when she had screamed.

But Charley and Percy were full of praise for their little sister, and declared her first-rate. Charley even carried her about on his shoulders for a bit, until she asked to be put down. "Play wif Ronnie and Hawwy now," declared the princess of the Weasley clan, and her brother set her down.

She toddled over to the three-year-olds and said imperiously, "Play dollies now?"

Ron shook his head. "No! Dolls is for girls, silly!"

Ginny looked like she was about to cry then. Harry knew if Ginny started crying it would bring Mrs. Weasley, and rather than have that happen, he said, "Okay, Gin. We can play dragons and dolls." He still had Smokey, his purple stuffed dragon, and he didn't mind playing with Ginny every once in awhile, so long as he could make up the stories about the dragon and the dolls.

Ron stared at Harry as if he'd turned blue with pink spots. "Harry! I don't wanna play with her! I wanna play Hogwarts Express."

"We can. After." Harry said agreeably.

Ron scowled sulkily. But he knew if he didn't play with Ginny then he would be forced to play by himself, and he didn't want that either. So he reluctantly agreed to play with the little girl.

Twenty minutes later, Molly came into Ron's bedroom, which he shared with the twins, and picked up Ginny and put her down for a nap. Ron was happy then, for now he could play runaway train and other games with Harry.

Later on in the evening, after a ham and cheese casserole for supper, Molly gave Ron and Harry a bath and then had Arthur read to them before putting them to bed. That first night, Harry slept like the dead, only waking once in the middle of the night to use the potty, and the next morning he woke eager for some new adventures.

But that Saturday, Charley wanted to go and play Quidditch with his friends and Percy was reading a new book on enchantments he'd borrowed from the library, so that left Fred and George and Ron to play with Harry. The twins were nearly six, and playing pretend no longer satisfied them. "Let's go and do something fun," said Fred.

"Like what?" Harry asked, he could tell it was Fred because of the F on his shirt. Molly had tagged all their shirts that way so she could recognize her sons, and the charm couldn't be fooled, even if the twins tried to switch shirts.

"Something different," said George, scratching his head.

"Like making a slug potion?" Ron guessed.

"No. We did-"

"-that already. Besides, Mum took our-"

"-potions kit away after we put chopped beetles in her stew," Fred told them, smirking.

Harry wrinkled his nose. "Yuck! Did she eat it?"

Both twins nodded, their blue eyes twinkling. "Before she knew what was in it," snickered George.

"Was Mum mad?" Ron wanted to know.

"Uh .. .yeah. She made us-"

"-stand in the corner for seven minutes and-"

"-smacked our bums. Oww!" they chorused. Then they grinned like mischievous monkeys. "But it was worth it, to see our mum eat bugs."

Harry didn't think his mother would like it if he did that to her. He knew for sure his daddy wouldn't like it at all, and he resolved to never do that to his parents, because he didn't want to get a time-out and a smack. "You wanna draw?" he asked them, because he hadn't made a new picture for his art wall in a week.

But the twins weren't in the mood to do anything so tame as making pictures. "Later," said George, looking questioningly at his twin. "Fred, do you know where Dad put the box of wizard crackers?"

His twin considered for a moment. Then he nodded. "Uh huh. I saw him put it on the top of the closet."

George sighed. "Oh no! How can we get it down?"

"Dunno."

George looked thoughtful, his clever brain kicking into mischief mode. "I know! Ron can stand on top of me and get it." He gazed at his small brother earnestly. "Right, Ronnie?"

"But George, Dad put them there ‘cause you can't play with them. ‘Member?" Ron reminded his brother uneasily. "He said we weren't to touch them, or else."

"Or else what?" Harry asked.

"Or else we'd get spanked," Fred explained.

Harry was puzzled. "What's that?"

"You don't know?" Ron asked, surprised.

"Haven't you ever-"

"Gotten spanked, Harry?" asked Fred.

"No, least I don' think so."

George whistled. "Lucky. A spanking's when your mum-"

"-or dad smacks your bum hard a lot of times, till you cry." Fred finished.

Harry gaped at them. "Your mum did that to you?" He couldn't quite picture kind Molly who always called him a "sweet little lad" and hugged him, hitting her sons hard enough to make them cry.

The twins nodded, wincing.

"They was bad," Ron chimed in. "They touched Mum's wand."

Harry shivered. He knew all too well how bad that was. He'd picked up Severus's wand once and ended up in time-out for a whole eight minutes and got yelled at and smacked on the hand.

The twins shrugged. "That was last year. We were just little kids then," George snorted.

"You is still a little kid, Georgie," Harry reminded.

"No we're not!" shouted Fred. "You and Ronnie are little, we're almost grown-up."

Ron sniffled. "I wanna be a grown-up."

Fred eyed his little brother. "Okay. Then help us get the crackers from the closet."

Ron hesitated. He didn't want to get in trouble with his mother or father, but neither did he want his brothers to think he was a little baby. He was tired of being too little to do anything. "Okay."

Harry shook his head. "Ron, you're gonna get in trouble."

"Only if Mum finds out." Ron said.

The twins led the way to the closet near the door, and opened it. There, on a shelf high above their heads, was a box with colorful pictures on it.

"There it is!" said George, with all the awe of a religious man seeing a holy icon for the first time. "But we need-"

"-the chair from Percy's room." Fred said.

The twins ran off to get Percy's desk chair from his room and brought it back to stand in front of the closet. Then Fred climbed up on the chair and George picked up Ron and put him on Fred's shoulders. Then Ron was tall enough to reach the box of colorful wizard crackers.

He carefully took them down and lowered them into George's hands, muttering, "Georgie, we are going to be in so much trouble if Mummy finds out."

His brother looked a little alarmed, but then he shrugged and said, "Only if you tell, Ronnie. An' you won't, right?"

Ron knew better than to act like a little tattletale, his brothers wouldn't stand for it, and would make his life miserable, so he just nodded. "No, I ain't a big mouth."

George turned to Harry. "You won't say nothing, will ya, Harry? Otherwise Mum might spank you too for helpin' us."

Harry shook his head rapidly. He had no wish to experience a spanking from Mrs. Weasley or anyone else for that matter!

"Okay, then. Let's hurry up and get outside b'fore she sees." Fred said. "I'll put the chair back, and Ronnie, you get a blanket from your room t'hide the cracker box. Then you go outside with Harry and we'll meet you."

The younger boys obeyed without questioning and went outside to await further orders from the two mischievous scamps.

After a few minutes, they heard the back door slam and the twins appeared on the walk. They beckoned to the little boys to follow them and they went towards the woods at the edge of the uncleared field that bordered the Weasley land. Beyond the garden was a large field full of tall grass and weeds and rocks, the perfect place to play pretend in a jungle, like Mowgli and Bagheera and Shere Khan in "The Jungle Book", Harry thought. He would have to tell Ron and the twins about that story, they'd probably never heard of it, since it was a Muggle book.

The twins led them nearly to the edge of the field, where there was a cleared plot of dirt. It was here where their older brothers practiced battle spells, like the Fire Charm, under the supervision of their father. Fred unwrapped the box of crackers and set it down in the middle of the space. Then he opened the box and began to divide up the different kinds of crackers, splitting them evenly with his twin.

"I'll go first," George stated. "I saw Dad light these here a lot." He opened a small covered bowl.

Inside was a burning piece of wood, and George carefully touched the end of the cracker to the fiery part of the wood. The cracker caught immediately and George backed the other kids away as the cracker began to hiss and sputter.

The fire traveled down the thin fuse and then the cracker exploded with a loud POP!

Ron and Harry jumped a bit, but the cracker wasn't really too loud.

George lit off several more and then moved onto the big ones, which made an even bigger pop and shot up in the air a little.

"Wicked!" Ron cheered, clapping.

"Yay!" Harry said, grinning.

Some of the crackers shot off colorful sparks and jets of light, but the best and biggest one was a Dragon Cracker. It not only made a loud KA-BOOM! It also flew high in the air and exploded into a green dragon shape.

"Oooh!" shrilled the three-year-olds as they saw the dragon appear out of the smoke.

"My turn!" Fred ordered, and then he began lighting off several with the ember of wood as well.

Only he tried lighting off too many and the resulting bangs made everyone's ears hurt.

Harry put his hands over his ears, whimpering, "Too loud, Freddy! My ears hurt."

"Sorry. Lemme try this one. It's a sphinx." Fred drew out one of the biggest crackers and lit the fuse.

The sphinx exploded and showered Ron and Harry with little hot sparks.

The two boys started crying, for they hadn't been expecting to get burnt when they had agreed to watch the twins shoot off the crackers.

Then too, the resulting noise and the glittering golden sphinx high in the air, made Molly glance out the kitchen window, to see what on earth was making such a racket. She couldn't miss the golden sphinx hovering in the air and she gasped in horror, for she recognized that particular firecracker. Arthur had shot almost all of them off when it was Bill's birthday.

"Merciful Merlin!" she gasped. "They're shooting off wizard crackers!" Her heart nearly leaped out of her throat, imagining the field full of dry grass catching fire from a stray spark and going up like an oil-soaked lantern wick. She didn't even pause to think, she simply Apparated to where the sphinx was outlined in the sky.

The children were so busy admiring the glittering sphinx that they didn't even realize Molly was among them until they heard her cry, in a voice that was a mixture of horror and fury, "What the bloody blazes are y'doing, playing with fire, Frederick and George Weasley?"

George dropped the last two crackers he'd been holding, trying to look innocent, and Fred backed away, his blue eyes wide, as Molly advanced upon them, her face grim as death. "Mum, we were just havin' a bit of fun!"

"Fun!" the angry witch exclaimed. "FUN! You could have set the woods and this field on fire, young man! And burned yourselves and Ron and Harry to cinders. You've been extremely naughty and careless and I'm ashamed of you both! How in Merlin's name did you get the crackers, boys?" She waved her wand and the crackers vanished and so did the ember of wood.

The twins cried out in dismay and exchanged worried glances.

Then Ron, who had a rather nasty burn on his arm, tugged on Molly's apron and said, "Mummy, my arm hurts."

Molly looked down at her youngest son, and the burnt limb he held out for inspection, it was red though not very large. Even so, it stung quite badly and Ron was crying softly. "Oh sweet heavens, Ronnie! What happened?"

"Umm . . .the fire light burned me," replied the three-year-old honestly. "Harry too."

Molly was horrified. "Harry, did you get burnt too?"

Harry nodded and showed her his own arm, which had also gotten singed. "But it was an accident, Mrs. Molly." An accident was what a lot of people went to his dad's office to get fixed from.

"That's as may be, but those two little rascals are in serious trouble." She shot her twins a very disapproving look and they hung their heads and looked down at their feet.

"We're sorry, Mum!" they pleaded, knowing full well it wouldn't do any good.

"Are you now? Humph! You're going to be a lot sorrier when I get through with you. March straight to your room, lads! Quick, now!"

The twins obeyed and then Molly scooped up both Harry and Ron and Apparated inside the house with them. "Okay, luv, let's fix you up," she said to Harry, who was sniffling and wishing his daddy were here to make him feel better.

Molly quickly summoned some burn salve and some sticking bandages and proceeded to soothe away the dreadful sting left by the burns. Harry thought she did almost as good a job as his dad and felt much better afterwards. Then she did the same for Ron. "There! How's that, better?"

"Yes, Mummy." Ron answered respectfully.

"Good." She hugged both little ones to her, relieved beyond words that neither of them had sustained serious injuries. She would have never forgiven herself if either had been grievously hurt. "Now, go and play, while I deal with those two naughty little imps."

She picked up a wooden spoon from the counter and stuck it into her apron pocket with a grim yet saddened look on her face. She disliked spanking her children, but occasionally felt that such a punishment was necessary to teach them right from wrong, especially in this case.

Ron gulped. "You gonna spank them, Mum?"

"Yes, I am, and then they're going to stay in their room all day and go to bed early too. And when your father comes home, he's going to have a long talk with them as well."

She headed off towards the upstairs loft.

Ron and Harry remained frozen in the kitchen.

"Uh oh!" Harry swallowed hard.

They could hear Molly lecturing from the loft.

" . . .could have died! Or been burnt to a crisp . . .when will you learn not to touch what doesn't belong to you? . . .What were you thinking? . . .Fun! Playing with fire isn't fun, young man, it's very very bad! Your dad and I have told you over and over never ever to set anything on fire . . .If the field had caught fire you could have all died and our house might've burned to the ground! You've behaved like naughty reckless little monsters and I'm very upset with you both! Very upset!"

They heard the twins apologizing again.

"Sorry won't keep you from getting a sound spanking on your bare backside with my spoon, George Michael Weasley. Or you either Frederick," she said sternly. "And you can both stay in your room for the rest of the day and go to bed early after supper."

"No! No, Mum, please!" the twins pleaded. "We'll never do it again! Promise!"

"I certainly hope not. Now come here."

More protests, to no avail, followed, and then the next sound Harry heard was a sharp crack and a little boy wailing loudly.

Five minutes later, Molly came back down the stairs, looking tired and strangely sad, leaving two very unhappy sobbing mischievous children behind in the loft room. She had spanked both twins soundly, giving them six smacks apiece with her infamous spoon, and even though she knew it was richly deserved, she felt like an ogress.

She returned to making dinner with a vengeance and vegetables and meat began to chop themselves up on the counter in a frenzy, and a pot of broth and spices stirred itself swiftly. "Those two are going to drive me up a wall and then some, by Merlin's ever-loving wand!"

Harry exchanged glances with Ron, and the two crept off down the hall to the den to color in one of Ron's magical coloring books, where the pictures moved when you finished coloring the picture with the erasable crayons. They could still hear Fred and George sobbing above them, and Harry thanked Merlin that Molly hadn't decided to wallop him with that spoon. He vowed solemnly to never ever play with any kind of fire or wizard crackers ever.

When Arthur, Percy, and Charley got home, the twins got another lecture and also grounded for a week from their father, and Arthur made sure the box of wizard crackers was hidden away where no curious or mischievous scamp could find them.

They all ate Molly's tasty beef stew for supper, though Fred and George ate their standing up in a corner, since naughty boys didn't get to eat with the rest of the family, and their bottoms were sore as well.

That night, when Molly came to tuck them all into bed, she read them a story about a bad little boy who played with matches and nearly burned down the whole forest, as a cautionary tale. Harry fell asleep with Smokey clutched to his chest and promised the stuffed dragon that he would never ever be as bad as the twins, because if their new house burned down they would have to move in with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and that was just as bad, if not worse, than getting spanked with a spoon.

But that was the worst thing that happened all weekend, and Harry enjoyed the rest of his stay at the Burrow. When Severus and Lily came to get him, he cried and begged them to let him stay one more day.

"Didn't you miss us, scamp?" asked Lily, tickling him under the chin.

"Yeah, but I like playing over here, Mum." Harry whined. "At home I got no one to play with ‘cept Smokey." He heaved a huge sigh. "I wish I had a little brother or a sister to play with."

"You can borrow Ginny," Ron offered quickly. "Then Mum will get me a puppy."

"Ronald!" Molly exclaimed. "You don't really mean that."

"Do too, Mum. I'd rather have a puppy than Ginny. She's a royal pain in the bum!" Ron said honestly.

The two Snapes chuckled at the little boy's forthright attitude, then Sev bent and scooped up Harry. "C'mon, scamp. Let's go home. I've got a surprise for you."

Harry quit whining. "A surprise? What is it?"

"You'll see, when we get home." Severus promised. "Thank you, Molly, for watching him."

"Anytime, Sev. He's very well-behaved, you know."

Severus looked pleased. "Glad to hear it. I think he's finally growing out of the tantrum stage."

Then they Apparated away back to Aspen Avenue, where they gave Harry his surprise, a toddler's potions kit, so now he could practice making potions with his mother and father, both of whom were geniuses at that particular subject.