patreon.com/palevolt100 _Read early chapters of up to chapter 104
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"Like your family?"
Henry was not entirely sure whether to be amused or simply lost for words. The red-headed Celtic Weasleys, starting to like the House of Windsor.
There was something almost cosmically ironic in that.
It was, after all, more or less common knowledge that the Weasley family's red hair carried its own historical meaning. Native British stock, Celtic, essentially, untouched by Roman cultural influence.
Ireland and Scotland were modern geographical labels; in the deeper sense, the people were all Celtic.
And the Celts, whatever their considerable virtues, had suffered for their want of political organisation.
They had been humiliated first by Caesar and the Roman legions, and then by the Anglo-Saxons who came later to the British Isles. England itself took its name from the Angles, a Germanic people whom Rome had once regarded as tribal barbarians in the northern forests.
Rome had crumbled, but Roman culture, carrying Latin and Christianity with it, had spread across the continent regardless.
Then came 1066. William the Conqueror crossed from Normandy to press his claim as heir to Edward the Confessor, killed King Harold at Hastings, and remade England in the process.
The Celts had found an opportunity in that moment: many had followed William into England, glad enough to see the Anglo-Saxon order that had oppressed them brought down.
Armand Malfoy had come to England with William the Conqueror and been rewarded for his service.
Ron's mother, Molly Weasley née Prewett, descended from a Norman French noble family, just as the Malfoys did.
The French nobles had cemented alliances with the Scottish nobility through marriage, building support for the conquest by other means.
For the Malfoys, they were the descendants of conquerors. For the Weasleys, they were the descendants of those who had chosen correctly at a critical moment and shed the label of the defeated by siding with the winning side.
Where the Weasleys saw themselves as native Britannia, they regarded the Malfoys as French outsiders who had never entirely stopped being foreign.
Ron's contempt for the Malfoys was not purely a matter of Slytherin allegiances or Death Eater associations, it carried beneath it the older, quieter weight of "what were you doing coming here in the first place?"
As for the widespread assumption that the Malfoys' wealth gave them a natural social superiority over the Weasleys, that had always struck Henry as considerably more complicated than it appeared.
Wealth and status were not the same thing, in any country. The Malfoys were undeniably rich, rich enough to buy their way out of most difficulties.
But Arthur Weasley, mild and perpetually distracted as he might seem, was the head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects.
Which meant, in practice, that whether any given magical item constituted a misuse of Muggle artefacts was largely a question of what Arthur Weasley decided it was.
If he said you had misused it, you had misused it.
In any case, the twins themselves, like most young wizards, had little particular awareness of these historical currents, and that was entirely normal.
A love of history, especially the history of magic, was not exactly a common trait at Hogwarts.
By the time the third pot of tea was on the table, Fred and George had fully taken over, transforming the plain tablecloth into what amounted to an impromptu product showcase for Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.
"First, you have to understand who you're buying for," George said, holding up one finger with the gravity of a professor delivering a foundational principle. "Some people need functional pranks. Some people respond better to pure psychological disruption."
"Percy, for instance," Fred said warmly, with the expression of a man who has given his older brother a great deal of thought. "Last year we gave him a Screaming Quill. Every time he tried to write an essay, the quill screamed in his own voice: 'I cannot write any more—'"
"He chased us for three months," George reported.
"But he used it until the ink ran out," Fred added immediately, with obvious pride.
The two of them sat back and looked satisfied.
Henry lifted his teacup and listened attentively from behind the rising steam.
"For your grandmother and great-grandmother," George said, his tone shifting to something more considered, "you'd want to avoid anything too intense. You don't want to frighten the elderly."
"You're absolutely right," Henry agreed. "Of course, I also have two younger brothers. One is nine and the other is five."
The twins' eyes lit up simultaneously.
"Nine and five!" George brought his hand down on the table. "That is precisely the ideal age for receiving magical pranks."
"Have they ever encountered the magical world before?" Fred asked.
"Not yet."
"Perfect!" Fred's enthusiasm nearly toppled the teapot. "Completely unsuspecting! A natural experiment—"
George's foot found his shin.
Fred cleared his throat with great dignity. "For your brothers specifically, we recommend the approach we use with Ron." He reached into his pocket and produced a biscuit, setting it on the table. "Care to try one?"
Henry picked it up, raised it to his lips, looked at the twins' expressions of barely contained anticipation, and set it back down.
"Some kind of prank product, I'd imagine?" he said, with a slight smile.
"A Slytherin through and through," George said, giving him a thumbs up.
The approval in his expression was, Henry thought, genuine, the particular approval one extends to someone who has demonstrated that they are not, after all, entirely gullible.
"Canary Creams," Fred announced, clapping his hands together. "Our latest development. Eating one will transform the person into a canary. Well, in theory. The formula isn't entirely perfected yet, so at present it only grows feathers on the arms, which fall off naturally after about a minute."
"Have you tested them?" Henry asked.
"Your Highness," George said, with great warmth, "you are charmingly innocent."
"You tested them on Ron," Henry said.
"Naturally," Fred agreed.
There was a brief, comfortable silence in which the depths of fraternal affection were understood by all parties.
"Our suggestion for your brothers, then, is a bag of Canary Creams each." Fred pushed the bag across the table. "Now, any other recipients?"
"Yes, my grandmother," Henry said. "She's sixty-five, very fond of corgis, enjoys walking in the garden, loves a proper afternoon tea. She has no patience for extravagance or ostentation."