Three days later, Ginny finally caved and let Fawkes apologize for real. It was a big bump in their otherwise mostly smooth friendship so far. But things were good between the two of them again after they made up with each other.

Fawkes still didn’t understand why they needed clothes when they had magic, but that was okay. It seems it would just have to remain an unexplained mystery to him.

The summer passed quickly.

Fred and George were hard at work with the money Ginny had given them preparing for the school year.

Fred and George had taken Ginny to get her money out of Gringotts without their parents knowing about it. She felt a little odd sneaking around for it, but Fred and George were adamant that Molly couldn’t find out about what they were doing no matter what. And that if Dad found out that Molly would too in short order.

It seemed to have worked, Fred and George disappearing into their rooms near constantly to work on brewing and enchanting their products. She had tried out all of their products out of curiosity when she checked in on them occasionally. They were all rather interesting. There was a candy with two sides. One made you sick, so you could leave class to go to the hospital wing. And the other side was a cure that you could swallow to be completely cured in an instant.

Another grew your tongue to absurd lengths. Ginny’s grew so long after she took it that she’d been able to pick it up and slap George with it like a slobbery whip as he laughed at her from nearby. The overblown tongue smacking him in the face sure changed his tune. That one had taken ten minutes to wear off, and Fred and George discovered much to their chagrin that Ginny had no problem at all using her six foot long tongue sticking out from her mouth as a weapon to punish them for not telling her what the candy did beforehand.

“Blimey,” Fred said as he took out his wand and cast a cleaning spell on all three of them to get rid of the slobber she’d covered them all with.

“Maybe we should decrease the length of the tongue candies a bit, George. You were bloody brutal with that thing, Ginny.”

“Welsh,” Ginny said around her massive tongue that was shrinking like a pink snake slithering upwards from the floor into her mouth.

“Thatsh what you getsh,” She said, “No warninsh at allsh. Didnsh exshpect me ta turnsh it around onsh you, didsh you?”

Ginny’s tongue had shrunk to dangle at her collarbone and was shrinking faster and faster. After another second it went into her mouth and with a final burst went into her head. Ginny stumbled back a bit from the sudden momentum on her head as the tongue shot into her skull before stabilizing a bit. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

“I don’t know though. It could be a feature,” She said, “What if you could shoot it out like a frog tongue? That could be fun.”

The twins shot looks at each other.

“She has a point, George.”

“Yes, that would be a good one to look into after school’s over. But for these ones we should shrink the length so people don’t go crazy like our Sis here.”

Ginny shrugged, “If you didn’t want me to use the tongue whip, then you shouldn’t have given me the tongue whip.”

“Point taken. Hence shrinking the length so there are no… ‘tongue whips’ for anyone to be using.”

“Not that anyone else would probably think to do that,” George added, “You didn’t even hesitate Ginny, just went right for it.”

“Well it worked, didn’t it?” Ginny said, “Now you know to make them shorter now.”

“Yep. Ah, adjusting the formula again will be such a pain…” Fred groaned.

“Can I have some of the old kind?” Ginny asked, “I want to have a tongue whip battle with Alexa and Jack. If they agree.”

“Sure, Sis,” George said in defeat, “We made nine already before you came in. Go on and take them, just never throw that thing our way again.”

“Okay!” Ginny said brightly as they handed her a little bag of wrapped up rainbow candies, “Thanks! Do you have an idea of what you’re going to call them?”

“Ton-Tongue Toffees was what we were thinking.”

“That’s a pretty good one. Good luck making more and making the tongues shorter. ”

— — —

“Go ahead! Eat the suspicious candy, Olivia! It’s totally normal and nothing will happen if you eat it.”

Olivia peered suspiciously down at the rainbow candy as Ginny watched her eagerly.

“What is this?” She asked suspiciously, “Nothing bad is it?”

“No! It’s just sooooo sweet and flavorful. I thought you’d want to try some.”

“Where’d you get this?”

“It’s a secret. Just try it.”

Ginny held her straight face as Olivia cautiously unwrapped the candy and placed it in her mouth. She shifted it to her cheek.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Hm. Shugary, but not thatsh good. Where’s the trick? Oh Waitsh, whash happening?!”

Ginny started giggling as Olivia’s tongue started elongating as sliding out of her mouth like a floppy pink worm until it was dragging on the floor of Sirius’ house.

“Ugh! Grosth!” Olivia said, “GHINNY! I’ll getsh you!”

Olivia started chasing after Ginny, and almost tripped over her long tongue that started tangling with her legs. Olivia stumbled into the wall for a moment before reaching down and picking up her slimy tongue from the ground. Olivia whipped it around her neck in a circle until it looked like a long fleshy scarf. Ginny howled with laughter and pointed at Olivia with tears coming out of her eyes at the sight.

“GRAAAA!” Olivia shouted as she chased Ginny with her tongue scarf flopping up and down as she chased after Ginny.

Ginny had been laughing so hard that she had a stitch in her side and so Olivia caught her quickly.

“GRRRR!” Olivia said, “I’m gonna ticklsh you! Merthilesth revenge!”

Olivia started tickling Ginny’s ribcage, sending her to the floor under the relentless assault. Olivia kept on her onslaught of merciless tickles and pokes into Ginny’s side until Ginny could hardly breathe as she lay on the floor. Seeing Ginny’s state, the older girl finally stepped back, her tongue scarf still wrapped around her neck and her mouth forced partially open from the pink thing emerging from it. Ginny lay there spasming and taking big breaths as her uncontrollable laughter kept on going even after Olivia stopped. Eventually she went still and uncurled slightly.

“Wash ish thish thing anyway?” Olivia asked as Ginny stood to her feet, “How long beforsh it goesh away?”

“Ten… ten minutes,” Ginny said, still taking deep breaths to recover, “Nice… nice scarf.”

Olivia struck a pose with her hip cocked to the side and flicked her hair back dramatically with her hand and affected a haughty tone, “Ish the heightsh of fashion thesh daysh, I’ll havsh you know. Shetting the trendsh and all that.”

Olivia returned to her normal tone and went back to standing normally, “Howdsh you get thesh anyway? I’ve never heardsh of a candy like thish.”

“Fred and George made them,” Ginny said, “They’re going to try to sell them at Hogwarts.”

There were only two more weeks until school started, so Ginny figured it would be fine to tell Olivia about it. Fred and George were all finished making everything and were just working on packaging it all up and trying to finalize what prices they would want to sell them for.

“Really? Huh, Intereshting. Have you shried them?”

“Yeah, I used my tongue as a whip to smack Fred and George around with when they surprised me with it. It worked pretty well.”

“Hmmmm,” Olivia said while looking down at her tongue scarf thoughtfully, “A whip you shay? We’ve Shtill got Shome time left. I’ll have to try itsh out for myshelf.”

Ginny’s eyes widened as she realized her mistake. She wasn’t safe yet! She started running as Olivia started uncurling her scarf from around her neck and running after Ginny.

Ginny felt the wet tongue strike her back and slide down between her shoulder blades as Olivia tossed it at her. Ginny just barely managed to dodge away before Olivia’s next overhand strike with her tongue came after her.

“Gah!” Olivia swore behind her, “It touchsh the floor! Sho grosh!”

“Ha ha!” Ginny mocked, “That’s what you get for missing me!”

“Oh we shtill got a few more minutsh,” Olivia threatened, “Just you watchsh. You’re gonna getsh it now!”

Ginny was fully gross by the time that Olivia’s tongue slithered back into her mouth and became normal again.

Olivia worked her jaw, opening and closing it for a few seconds experimentally as it fully shrunk down to a normal size.

“Huh,” She said, “How about that.”

Olivia looked at Ginny who looked like she’d been dunked in a vat of sticky slime after failing to dodge Olivia’s tongue strikes for minutes of relentless assault, leaving her coated in saliva.

“You’re gross,” Olivia stated flatly.

“And whose fault is that?” Ginny said as she stood there, dripping thick globs of saliva onto the floor from the hems of her robes. She raised an arm and shook a glob from it where it was clinging to her hand.

“Yours!” Olivia answered cheerfully.

Ginny shot Olivia her puppy dog eyed begging look and gestured to herself.

“Nope! You’ll have to convince someone else and explain to them how you got like this,” Olivia said cheerfully, “I’m sure you’ll think of something. I’ll have to go talk to Fred and George. I might want to buy some of those for myself. Get in early before they run out of stock.”

Olivia started walking off and with a single charm and flick of her wand cleaned herself completely off.

Ginny looked back down at herself. Maybe she should go outside and find some mud to roll around in. Maybe that would help cover her tracks so people wouldn’t ask her any more in depth questions…

The plan worked flawlessly. After going outside and rolling around like a pig in the mud for a few minutes, Ginny was brown from head to toe. As embarrassing as it was, she did made some oinking sounds once she was fully covered in the mud. Hey, she was curious! And alone, there was no one around to judge her. Maybe the pigs had a point, you couldn’t know unless you tested it. After she was done oinking and verified that no, covering yourself in mud did not make you feel amazing like it seemed to do for the pigs, she went back up to the front door. The mud just made her feel wet and filthy, not pleasant at all. Ginny knocked loudly on the door to Sirius’ house and didn’t walk back inside, as filthy as she was.

Molly came to answer the door.

“Ginny? Oh, what in the world,” Molly fussed, “What are you even doing playing outside by yourself? What were you even doing?”

“I was pretending to be a pig,” Ginny said, “I didn’t realize until I was done that I’m not very good at cleaning magic.”

“You do just the oddest things sometimes, Ginny. Well, you ought to focus on that cleaning magic with how often you get dirty,” Molly scolded, “Scourgify!” She chanted as she pointed her wand at Ginny.

It cleaned off about half of the mud caked onto Ginny’s whole body.

“Scourgify!”

“Scourgify!”

“Scourgify!”

Finally after that last charm, Ginny was sparkling clean, her skin even a bit raw from being deep scrubbed by the magic.

“Thanks, Mom,” Ginny said, “I’ll practice my cleaning charms when I’m back at school, I promise.”

Molly huffed in exasperation, but there was a bit of amusement in her eyes.

“I’d ask you to not get dirty at all, but I think we both know that’s impossible with all the antics you’ve been getting up to this summer. You’d be washing clothes all day if not for my spells.”

“I know, thanks Mom. Magic really is convenient isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes. Now no more playing outside. I thought you were spending some time with Olivia? You can play outside plenty when we’re at home.”

“Yes, Mom.”

They went back into the house and Ginny internally celebrated her victory. Yes, her excuse had worked perfectly!

Wait, maybe rolling around like a pig in the mud was even more embarrassing than telling people about the ton-tongue toffee?

Oh no.

It would probably be fine.

Hopefully.