The Potion Princess

Skiving Snackboxes

"I don't think this is a good idea."

The three of them stared down at the piece of candy. It was an extrememly unappetizing yellow, the color of mustard, and it was still occasionally bubbling even though it had cooled hours ago. Audra doesn't really think anything that looks like that is safe to ingest. "Is it supposed to look like that?"

George looks a little worried. She doesn't blame them, considering that they're self testing, and even if it does work, the whole point was to make them sick. "I have no idea," Audra stares down at the page helplessly. There's no description of what the finished product should look like, just a scribble of calculations and ingredients that Audra had made up over the summer. It was an entirely original creation, and there was no telling what it might do. "I don't know if these are right, it's trial and error and there's nothing to compare it to. I don't even know if the antidote works! And if it doesn't, I'm not sure I know how to fix it."

"Well," Fred says, and before either of them could stop him he scoops a piece of candy up and pops it into his mouth. It stains his hands. "Better figure it out."

The good news was that the skiving snackboxes worked. The bad news was that the antidote didn't, which Fred had made very clear over the past three modified batches he managed to choke down between getting sick. The three of them had spent the past two hours watching him get sick and cleaning up, until he was pale and most definitely running a very high fever. He had fallen asleep finally, tossing and turning as he mumbled. Now Mrs, Weasley was hovering over her son, clucking her tongue and rearranging the sheets. "Well," She says finally, staring down at him anxiously. "He's going to be in for a miserable few days, but he should be better soon."

George and Audra waited until they heard her footsteps on the stairs before rushing to the closet and dumping the papers back out onto the floor, staring down at all the math and theories and possible side affects. "Okay," He tapped each one, then stared over at her exasperatedly. "We can fix it?"

Audra looked down at the paper covered floor helplessly, remembering all the long hours of the night she had spent creating the perfect recipe. Or what was supposed to be perfect. "Yeah," She said, voice thin. "We can fix it."

As it turned out, they could fix it.

Sort of.

It involved a lot of swearing, and math, and some trial and error. George almost cut his hand off, and Audra caught her sleeve on fire, and Fred got sick about five more times before falling back asleep. But finally, right when they were about to give up and condemn Fred to a weekend full of awful, it seemed that they calculated things right.

"Here." Audra shook Fred awake and helped him sit up, raising the glass to his lips. His hand trembles when he took it, and she wonders how sick she really made him. Certainly more than he had admitted to. "It's slow acting, and it won't even come close to what we need for the joke shop, but if you drink one dose now and a few more through the night, you should be find by morning."

He grimaces, making a face at her. "It's disgusting."

"Maybe that'll teach you not to test products before I tell you that you can." She lets him lay back against the pillows, and he smiles at her, tired and pale. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He pulls the covers up to his shouders, shivering. "You did your best. It's not your fault."

Fred falls asleep soon after, and Audra pulls a chair over to the side of his bed so she can keep watch over him. He had promised her that she was fine, but she still wanted to keep watch in case she had screwed up the potion. Again.

"He's going to be fine." George repeated, staring at her exasperatedly from her place on the bed. He had told her that he was perfectly capable of taking care of his brother, but since it was her mistake, she told him she was going to stay and look after both of them until it was all fixed. "We do stuff like this all the time. There's been all kinds of negative reactions with the stuff that we don't tell you about."

"There has?" She whipped around, surprised.

"How do you think we know when we need to change ignredients? We're not just making you change it for fun." He laid back onto the pillows and stared at her. Audra supposed she knew that, really, it was just that it was a different matter to hear about sores or fevers or splitting headaches and another thing entirely to witness it. "It's all in the pursuit of science."

"You're going to get yourselves killed." She said it with a dull sort of horror, because recently any thought of the twins being anything less than safe makes her upset.

"He's going to fine. Trust me." George passes by the bed and makes his way to the window, taking out a ciagarette and leaning outside so the smell of smoke doesn't linger. She's not sure when he started doing that. "I'd be okay with it, you know."

"Okay with what?"

He stared at her, then back out the window. "If you guys ever.." He waved his hand in a gesture that was clearly supposed to encompass all the complicated feelings that Audra has, and that he was entirely fine with whatever consequences may come of it. "You know, like, actually got your shit together."

Audra rolled her eyes and contemplated throwing something at him. "Well, thanks for your blessing, but I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why not?" He was such a boy, over there acting like he can't see what a dangerous field of land mines they'd be walking through if Audra and Fred even tried that. No matter how much she may want to. "You're crazy about him. He's crazy about you."

"Maybe if we make it through all of this." This. What exactly did that mean? The summer? Her spying for the Order? The war? She doesn't know. "It's not fair otherwise."

George shrugs, blowing smoke out of his mouth. "If you say so."

"Audra," There was a hand on her shoulder, and someone's voice was whispering in her ear. She batted them away, turning deeper into the chair, trying to go back to sleep. "Audra, wake up."

She shoots awake, jumping at the sound, and realized she had fallen asleep in her chair for who knows how long. She runs her hands through her hair quickly, then looks over at Fred, horrified. "Your medicine! You needed the last dose hours ago!"

"George got it for me. We actually do this all the time, he's very much used to it." She leaned over to feel his forehead, relieved to see that his fever had gone down. Fred propped himself up on one elbow and left. "I'm all better."

And miraculously, he was. He wasn't pale anymore, and all of his words made sense. Audra sank back into the chair, relieved. She's not entirely sure she ever really believed that that potion wasn't going to kill him. "You are not sleeping in that chair."

Audra raised an eye brow at him. "Where exactly do you want me to sleep? The floor?"

"Come on." He moves over to give her room on the bed and looks at her expectantly. "I'm not sick. You're tired. Get in the bed. Unless you'd rather share with George?"

She hesitated. It's not like they hadn't fallen asleep together before, but that was always in common rooms and during camps outs, or when nightly discussions around the Order table ran too long. It wouldn't even be the first time they slept in the same bed together, really, but that was back from when they didn't have this mess of feelings between them. Crawling into bed with him tonight would be an entirely different level of intimate, where they would have to fall asleep to the sound of each other's breathing and brush hands and wake up to each other's faces. The feelings she has are already intense and confusing, does she really need to add to them?

But he's still looking over at her expectantly, with an expresison on his face that looks a little like a challenge. And Audra's never been good at turning down a challenge.