Chapter Text
Fred and George Weasley were best known for the pranks they loved to play. And generally, that was how they liked it.
But now was not one of those times. Now they needed someone to listen to them.
It had all started the day they got on the Hogwarts Express. They had seen an extremely small boy with a Hogwarts trunk on the muggle side of the platform. They had been happy when their mum helped him find his way through since he had been alone.
When they had seen him struggling to get his trunk up on the train they had gone to help him. That was when they learned his name. Harry Potter.
It just couldn’t be. Everyone in the magical world knew his name. Everyone had been told stories about how he was a great hero and was learning all kinds of magic while traveling all over the world, or so it said in the books. But most of all the papers always reported just how loved and protected he had been.
But that just couldn’t be true. Harry was far too small. He had been alone with no clue as to how to get onto the platform. And when they had offered to help him he had seemed confused but also grateful, like no one had ever offered him such a thing.
After the train had left Fred and George had gone to talk with Percy. They knew he would have an idea about what to do to help the small boy. Percy could be a bit of a prat but they knew he would do the right thing, so long as it fell within the rules, and helping a student with a troubled home life was actually encouraged. They knew it was a problem, but at 13 they weren’t sure how to go about it.
Percy had told them to try speaking with the professors about their concerns, and if that didn’t work they could write to the Office of Child Welfare (OCW) at the Ministry. He said that if they had any evidence then they should send it directly to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE) so they could investigate.
After discussing it they had decided to write to the OCW first and just report their suspicions. They would need to spend a bit more time with Harry and get a bit more information from him before they could involve anybody else. They knew they were going to need more than just their suspicions to get the teachers to pay attention.
For a while they left things in the hands of the OCW, but it didn’t seem like they had done anything.
Everything changed after Harry had been put on the quidditch team. That gave them a much better excuse to talk to him. It allowed them to get much closer to him than they had been previously. And in doing so they saw far more than they ever expected.
Harry was always the last to leave the changing room as he always made up some excuse not to shower with them and Oliver. It really wasn't a big deal, there were separate stalls, but Harry had always avoided it. Oliver had suggested that it might be because he was so much smaller and was embarrassed because he was scrawny, but the twins hadn’t agreed.
The two of them had slipped back one evening after practice. They had wanted to talk to Harry, but upon seeing the layers of scars on harry’s back when he had quietly stepped out of the shower with a towel around his waist, they couldn’t make a sound. Their minds just couldn’t comprehend anyone doing that to someone so small.
They never managed to bring themselves to talk to Harry about it, not to say they didn’t try, they did at least once a week, but just couldn’t do it. They didn’t want to hurt Harry by making him relive what had happened by telling them. They also weren’t sure if he would even want to tell them. Their friend was just so hurt, and they didn’t know how to help.
After that they started feeling out the professors. That had not gone anything like they had thought.
None of them would listen.
The teachers would be all concern and interest until they mentioned Harry. As soon as they said Harry Potter the teachers would brush them off, some told them not to joke about such things, and some even laughed before sobering to scold them for starting rumours about Harry’s family like that. It didn’t matter what they did, none of the teachers were willing to help, they had even gone to Dumbledore but he had just told them not to make up stories like that and that he had monitored Harry’s home life so knew it wasn't true. They even wrote to the school governors and got the same responses.
By the time they had finally accepted that none of the staff were going to do anything to help it was Christmas. After that they started writing to the DMLE and to OCW once again, but they never heard anything back, from them at least. They had been called up into the Headmasters office and been shouted at by their mother in February. Apparently the DMLE and OCW had contacted the Headmaster and then he had told their mother. They tried to explain to their mother but she had refused to listen. Instead they were informed they were going to be serving 2 weeks of detention at school and then would be grounded for 2 weeks at the beginning of summer.
Finally they accepted that adults were useless, not that they hadn’t already suspected that, now they just had the proof.
And that was when the twins decided it was time to take matters into their own hands.