Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes opened on the twelfth of July.
The premises were at 93 Diagon Alley — a corner property that had previously been a Quidditch supply shop of middling quality, which had closed in the chaos of the previous year and left a frontage that the twins had identified, assessed, and secured with the specific efficiency of people who had known what they wanted and had been waiting for the right vacancy. The exterior had been repainted in shades of gold and deep purple, which was not the palette of anything else on Diagon Alley and was, Ron suspected, intentional. There was a large animated sign above the door in which a caricature of Fred and George took turns pulling products out of a hat and appeared to surprise each other continuously. Neither of them had commissioned this. It had arrived on the premises the morning they moved in, accompanied by a note that said simply: opening gift — a Wulfhall production. He had made it in after his return from school, because the shop was going to need a sign and he had known for two years what it should look like.
He arrived at eleven, an hour after the doors opened.
The queue had been there since nine. He had seen it in the Prophet — Pemberton had run a small piece on the opening in the commercial section, the specific quality of coverage that was neither promotional nor dismissive but genuinely interested, which was the only kind of coverage Pemberton wrote. The queue had formed before Pemberton's piece ran and had been running on something else entirely, which was the reputation that the twins had been accumulating since their third year. You couldn't run seven years of technically sophisticated joke work on a school of several hundred people and have no one notice.
He went through the door.
The interior was — a lot.
The twins had organized the space with the specific logic of people who understood that their customers needed to find things accidentally. The shelving was deliberately non-linear: the layout forced you along paths that passed things you had not come for, and the things you had not come for were arranged to be difficult to walk past. The color scheme from the exterior continued inside — gold and purple, with accents of something between green and yellow that should not have worked and did. The ceiling was enchanted to cycle through a sequence of small demonstrations: a smoke ring that turned into a flock of canaries before dispersing; a miniature firework that left behind a smell of strawberries; a small weather system producing snow approximately eight feet above the floor, the flakes vanishing before they reached the shelves.
Fred was at the counter demonstrating something to a cluster of third-years. George was moving through the floor with the quality of someone running a system he had designed and was monitoring its first real stress test with the specific absorbed attention of an engineer watching their machinery in operation.
George looked up. Saw Ron. The expression he had was the one he had when something was doing what it was supposed to do and he was going to behave entirely normally about it. 'Oi,' he said. 'You're late.'
'I was here before eleven,' Ron said.
'We've been here since six,' George said, with the quality of someone who found this both absurd and entirely correct. He fell into step beside Ron. 'Go on, then. Take the tour.'
The Skiving Snackboxes were in the first bay: Fainting Fancies, Nosebleed Nougat, Puking Pastilles, Fever Fudge. The packaging was excellent — not the rushed presentation of people getting things to market quickly but the careful design of people who had had four years to think about what the product should look like and had made the most of it. Each box had the twin signature in miniature on the back corner, and the ingredient list was printed in type so small it required a magnifying glass, which was in itself a joke he recognized: the ingredients were entirely benign and the type was small to make the benignness apparent only to people who cared enough to look.
The Defense range occupied the second bay under a banner that said, simply: FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. Shield Hats. Decoy Detonators — a mechanism he had suggested in third year that the twins had developed into something considerably more refined than his initial concept, the small dark objects currently marching in formation around the display model and occasionally tumbling off the edge and righting themselves. Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder in graduated doses from the small sachets to a full tin that the label claimed was sufficient to occlude a Great Hall for approximately three minutes.
He picked up a Decoy Detonator. Turned it over in his hands.
George, beside him, was watching with the quality he had when he wanted an honest assessment and was waiting for it without asking for it directly.
'The self-righting is new,' Ron said.
'Fourth iteration,' George said. 'The third version ran into walls.'
'This one?'
'Navigates around.'
Ron set it back. 'The Darkness Powder dosing is right. Sachets are a better idea than I would have thought — easier to deploy under pressure than a tin.'
'That was Fred,' George said. 'He argued for the sachet format for two months. I thought the tin was more professional.' A pause. 'He was right.'
The third bay was what the sign above it called the Joke Core: the Extendable Ears in their various lengths, the Ton-Tongue Toffees with a dosage guide on the label that was itself a joke, the Canary Creams, the Reusable Hangman, the Self-Inking Quills that wrote in a different handwriting than the user's own. At the back of the bay, in a display case behind glass, what the label identified as Prototype Section: Items in Development, Not for Sale. He looked at these for a long time. Three of them he recognized the theory behind. One he did not, and he looked at it until he had a hypothesis, which he filed for a later conversation.
Fred appeared at his shoulder. 'Well?' he said, with the quality of someone who was not performing indifference and was actually asking.
Ron looked at the shop. The floor was full — not chaotically full but the correct kind of full, the specific density of people who were moving through a space with the quality of those who intended to buy something and had not yet decided what. The third-years at the counter were negotiating with a focused seriousness that suggested they had saved specifically for this. Two Hogwarts-age girls were examining the Extendable Ears with the quality of people conducting a technical evaluation. A man of approximately forty in Muggle clothes had picked up one of the Decoy Detonators and was looking at it with the specific expression of a person who had no context for what he was holding and was beginning to find this interesting.
'The Prototype Case is going to be a problem,' Ron said.
Fred's expression moved. 'What kind.'
'The kind where people see the things they can't buy and come back every week to see if they can buy them yet,' Ron said. 'You're going to need to manage the cadence of what moves out of prototype and onto the floor. If you move things too quickly, the case stops being interesting. If you don't move things at all, it becomes a display of your limitations.' He paused. 'One item per month. Never the one people are most visibly interested in. The second most.'
Fred looked at the Prototype Case. He had the expression he had when something had arrived that he was going to think about properly. 'Right,' he said. Then: 'You still own ten percent of this.'
'I know,' Ron said.
'Seems like you could do with a consulting role to go with it,' Fred said.
'That is the consulting role,' Ron said.
Fred looked at the shop — at the full floor, the excellent shelving, the animated sign visible through the window doing its continuous loop, the smell of something that was probably a test product from the prototype bay drifting occasionally through the air in a way that smelled like the inside of a very good bakery for no discernible reason. He had the quality he had in very rare moments, which was the quality of someone who had built something and was in the first day of it existing in the world and was receiving that without managing it.
'Good shop,' Ron said.
Fred looked at him. 'Good,' he said.