Title: Beware of Potions

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Summary: Fred and George create a new product in the summer before their 6th year, but when one of them samples it, they find that it has far different effects than they'd hoped for.

Author's Note: This story takes place during the summer before Fred and George's 6th year.

Chapter One

Molly Weasley was fairly happy with how the day had been turning out. The key aspect to note in that sentence though, had been the use of past tense when describing the day. Up until the time just before everyone would sit down for dinner, the house had only experienced its usual amount of noise. The ghoul upstairs, Ron, along with Harry and Hermione who were visiting for the summer, the nonexistent sound of Percy and Ginny reading were all she'd heard so far that day. In fact, there were two people that she had not heard from at all since breakfast, and they were her twin sons. She was a bit worried about what they were doing in their room, but decided to leave well enough alone.

She wasn't the only one who was appreciating the silence that was emanating from Fred and George's room. Percy silently congratulated himself on placing the silencing charm all around their room right after breakfast that morning as he flipped to a new chapter in his book on cauldrons. Unfortunately, the silencing charms didn't stop the slight vibrations coming from the wall separating their room from his. He shook his head as another one rippled through, thinking about what type of ridiculous "product" they were designing.

The product that the twins were creating, or had been at least, was a complex piece of magic. If done correctly, they would have been able to create a drink that was similar to muggle soda (they had spent hours drilling Hermione on the subject) that would put the drinker in a state of extreme happiness and elation for about an hour before the spellwork faded away.

Unfortunately though, the spell would not be able to be performed until they got back to Hogwarts, due to the underage magic restrictions. The twins highly doubted that they would be able to talk Percy, who was the only of-age wizard who wasn't an adult in the house to perform the spell for them. So for right now, all they had to work on was the potion… the extremely complex and somewhat dangerous potion.

They were currently on attempt five of making the potion. The first try had almost been disastrous due to George's accidentally dropping all of the bat wings into the potion at once instead of over the space of ten minutes. The small explosion from that accident had caused several items that were hanging on the walls to fall down. The second and third tries had failed because they were still revising their invented potion recipe. Thankfully, only the third attempt caused a minor explosion. The fourth attempt had nearly burned a hole through the floor which would have seeped downstairs had one of the twins not wandlessly banished the potion.

"What do you think?" George asked, looking through a stack of notes that they had compiled when coming up with the idea during History of Magic at the end of the last school year. "A bit more of the flobberworm?"

Fred nodded while stirring and then said, "Yeah, but not too much – soda's a liquid, not a sludge."

Adding a bit in at a time, the two boys looked in on the potion and then back at the notes. "Maybe some jobberknoll feathers, for the memory?" Fred suggested, and a moment later, three were thrown into the bubbling concoction.

This last attempt was the closest to what they had anticipated though, and both were ready to call it good enough. It didn't help that they had been arguing all morning and all afternoon about what ingredients to add or change in order to make the potion work. Both sat down on opposite beds and examined their work. Due to how the ingredients reacted, there ended up being only enough of the potion for one consumer, and they desperately wanted to know if it worked.

"Did we add some of the lovage leaves?" George asked, knowing that if they hadn't, that it was too late by now to do it.

"Two of them, I think they were the only two we had left," Fred commented. "And we remembered the peppermint?"

"One sprig. I hope Mum doesn't notice it's gone missing."

"Or that Percy doesn't notice that we took his koi scales," Fred added to the list of things they had 'borrowed' in order to make the potion.

"Yep, all ten of them."

Fred paused and asked, "You put all ten in? We only needed one tenth a scale…"

The two shared a dubious look at the potion before George shrugged and said, "Well, what's the worst that can happen?"

"Who knows at this point?" Fred asked wearily. "Should we go ahead and try it?"

"I dunno Fred… the way we figured it… I don't think it'll work if it's not combined with the spell," George replied, sounding just as tired.

"Oh please don't tell me that we wasted the whole day on a potion of which we have no idea of how it works."

"I'm just as curious as you, but still…" George started, looking at the small vial of potion that was leaning against the cauldron stand in the middle of the floor. "Even so, there's only enough for one of us, who'll try it?"

"Ah, there's your curiosity back," Fred jested, smiling. "We could play that game that the muggles do… how did it go? Paper and scissors and rock?"

"Rock, paper, scissors. Dad went on about it for about two hours last week – how on earth I'll ever forget it is beyond me."

"Should have gone to sleep like I did."

"Yeah but mum gave me that tea…" George said, leaning back further. "I could use some now though."

"Alright, let's go then. Winner drinks it?" Fred said, and George nodded. Both held their fists out and on the count of three they revealed what they had.

"Rock."

"Paper."

"Paper wraps rock, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. So I win!" Fred exclaimed, reaching forward to grab the vial of orangish potion. He uncorked it and raised it up, saying "cheers."

George just rolled his eyes as his brother downed the potion in one gulp, though he was actually watching Fred closely. Last year they had tried something like this, and both of them had gotten sick from it. It had taken a lot of effort to refrain from visiting the infirmary, but they had ended up missing a day's worth of classes which they later paid for in detention. After that, they had both taken to studying their potions texts a bit more closely and really looking at possible outcomes of a mixture before trying it.

Fred set the vial down after swallowing the potion and looked at George. For a split second, both of them seemed worried about what would happen, but then Fred shook his head and smiled.

"Well, there's one good thing about it…" Fred said after a moment.

"What's that?" George asked.

"It tastes good. Like cake…" Fred said, looking at the vial.

"Flobberworm tastes like cake? I'll have to remember that. So how do you feel then?"

"No difference. Maybe it just takes a bit? I guess we'll find out though," Fred replied, sitting down on his bed and gathering their notes into a slightly more organized pile, trying to pull out the recipe that they had just used. As George was putting away a few ingredients, Fred tucked the recipe along with a few notes into his Potions textbook.

Both of them paused what they were doing as they heard the distinct voice of their mother calling everyone down for dinner. They smiled and opened the door, careful to hide the contents of their room from Percy, who walked by a moment later, peering in curiously. He was not to be deterred though.

"What have you two been doing all day?" Percy asked, squinting to look at them in an untrusting way.

"Nothing Perfect Percy, nothing at all…" George answered.

"Unless you count doing nothing as being something, then we were doing something," Fred added.

"But that would be the same as doing nothing," George replied.

"True… so honestly Perce, we were doing absolutely nothing."

Percy peered above their shoulders and saw the empty cauldron and said, "You've been brewing potions in there, haven't you!"

"No," the twins said together.

"Mum will find out."

"I'm sure she will," George started.

"Yeah, because you'll tell her."

"You sneaky little – "

"Mum!" Percy shouted.

George and Fred both rolled their eyes and before they knew it, their mother was standing on the stair landing with the three of them.

"What are you three doing? I said that dinner was done… oh Percy, what is it?" She asked, seeing the accusatory look that her third eldest was sending the twins.

"They were brewing potions again," Percy stated, with the air of one who had just caught a few criminals that had great bounties on their heads.

Molly looked into the twin's room and saw the cauldron and exclaimed, "You're not inventing your own potions again, are you!"

Fred and George just looked at each other and then at the floor.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous that is! You could blow up the entire house!" Their mum shouted at them, with Percy smirking in the background. "And what if those potions were poisonous? You could kill us all!"

Fred and George just looked between each other again and George started to say, "Now mum… do you honestly think we're that – "

"You're not testing these stupid things on yourselves are you?" She asked, glaring at both of them.

Fred grabbed the handle behind him and shut the door to their bedroom before moving to walk downstairs, the others following him. Their mother was still glaring at them.

"Of course we didn't test that one on both of us," Fred said as if it would be ridiculous to think otherwise.

Molly just sighed and said, "Well that's good, because you could honestly hurt yourselves if you did." She glanced over at the packed table that now also housed her husband and sighed. Halfway to the table though, she stopped and stood straight up again.

"Wait a minute… both of you? What does that mean?" Molly asked dangerously, pointing a finger at them menacingly.

Fred and George shared a look before George started with the explanation of their decision.

"Well, we only really had enough of the potion for one person…"

"And we didn't want it to go to waste…"

"So we did that thing that Dad showed us all last week…"

"Rock, paper, scissors."

"That's it. Fred won."

"And we decided that the winner would drink the potion."

"So that's what he did." George finished, both of them looking proud of themselves at their reasonable decision-making skills.

Their mum looked like she was about ready to rip her hair out of her head. "And what exactly is this potion supposed to do?"

"Well, we're not really sure…" Fred started. If at all possible, it looked like their mum grew even angrier at Fred's answer. Before she could say a word though, her husband spoke up.

"You boys made a potion, one of you drank it, and you have no idea what it will do?" Arthur asked from across the room. The four younger children snickered at them, sensing the trouble they were in.

"Well… kind of. It's supposed to be combined with a spell, but since we're not allowed, we figured we'd just see what the potion did," George explained.

"And what was it supposed to do?" Their father asked.

"Make the drinker of the potion, after the spell'd been performed on it, extremely happy for a bit, until the potion faded," Fred answered.

George nodded and added to Fred's answer, "We were trying to make it look similar to those muggle fizzy drinks that Hermione told us about, but it was hard to get the right effect and have it look a certain way."

At this, Hermione felt the need to extend her potion-making knowledge to them. "You were trying to make a mood-altering potion and spell? And make it into such a specific consistency?"

"Yes," they both replied.

"You did this with a potion and spell that you two created?"

"Yes."

"And then you only consumed half of the 'finished product' that you were making?"

"Yes."

Hermione just rolled her eyes at them and looked back at the table, shaking her head.

"Oh, what now?" Ron asked, eyeing her exasperated expression.

"Mood-altering potions are some of the hardest potions to brew, let alone invent. And the fact that you didn't even use all of it means that it's probably very unstable, which could completely change the desired effect of the potion," She shook her head again and, after noticing that only a few members of her impromptu audience understood, looked at the twins. "To put it bluntly, you're both idiots."

"That was a bit harsh," George said, and Fred put his hand over his heart with a hurt expression.

"You don't understand! People have been seriously hurt by experimental potions, and even killed! And neither of you really has a mastery in potions!" Hermione exclaimed, shocked that they would act so flippantly about something that could have killed them if even the slightest mistake was made.

"She does present a valid point," Fred said, giving in at the irate expression on the young witch's face.

George nodded, looking at his twin. "But on the bright side – it seems our attempts were in vain anyways. Nothing's happened to him."

"And you should be very grateful that nothing has happened to him!" Molly shouted at them. "Neither of you seem to grasp what could have happened. He could have drunk something poisonous and died!"

Arthur stood up and came forward to stand next to Molly. "Boys, I want you to go up to your room right now and bring down any and every potion making item that you own," their father ordered them, looking at them with clear disappointment in their decisions.

The twins didn't move for a moment before George asked, "But what about dinner?"

"You two obviously don't care about your health, so I doubt that missing dinner tonight will be much of a loss. Now go before I go up there!" Molly threatened them. The twins could understand their parents' anger enough not to glare at them as they walked back upstairs, which was smart on their behalf.

Molly continued to mutter angrily as she dished up food to everyone about how idiotic the twins' behavior was. Her mutterings only grew louder as Percy began to agree with her and add his own opinions.

Meanwhile, Fred and George were standing in their room and looking at the rather large mess that they had made that day. They hadn't had much to eat for breakfast since they were usually too tired to do much in the morning, and they had spent all day working on that blasted potion, so they hadn't gotten lunch. Both of them were seriously regretting their mum's knowledge about the incident to include the testing of the product.

"Do you want to get ingredients and vials and such into a box, and I'll clean this stuff up?" Fred asked.

George looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Maybe that potion is affecting you. You actually want to clean up this mess?"

"I'd rather it be done before they get done with dinner, that way mum and the rest won't find another reason to be angry at us."

"Good point…" George conceded. "Maybe she'll relent enough to let us have some dinner. It smelled really good."

Fred nodded and looked longingly at the door. To him, it was cruel and unusual punishment to be deprived of his mother's cooking, especially when you could smell it all the way to the twins' room.

With that, the two got to work. Fred cleaned out all the spilled potion globs on the floor, while George gathered everything together in a box. Neither boy spoke as he worked, hoping to finish soon enough that they could appease their mother.

A few minutes later they heard a knock at their door. Nervously, George opened the door to let their father in.

"Have you gotten everything cleaned up and put away?" Arthur asked them, still looking at them with the same expression that he'd worn when he'd told them to clean out their room.

They both nodded and George pointed to a few boxes filled with the potions supplies that they were apt to use. He waved his wand, sending them off to another location in the house, and said, "I'm sorry to do this, really, I am. But I don't think either of you really understands how dangerous this is. The fact that you would test these things on yourselves, without even alerting anyone, worries me more than I like to think about. I really hope you two can learn from this, for once."

Arthur's expression as he said this did not make the boys feel any better about the situation. He was normally the parent to take their side or at least quietly cheer them on somewhat behind their mother's back. It was plain to see though, that even without his speech a moment ago, the man was quite disappointed.

With that, he pulled the door shut behind him and left them alone in their room. George sat down on his bed and watched as Fred walked over and collapsed on the other bed. When the door had opened, it had brought more of the smell of dinner, making them even hungrier than they were before. Neither boy felt inclined to go ask for anything though, not wanting to push their mother.

They sat in silence, and no more than five minutes had passed before George heard his brother's breathing steady out, signaling that he was asleep. George just shook his head and rolled over, shutting off the light as he did so.

Author's Note

There are a couple events in here that may not line up quite right with how JK wrote her books (such as Percy's being home) and I apologize now for anything that may be inaccurate. I've lost my HP books, so whatever info I need, I am finding from the HP wikis or lexicon. Other reasons might just be because it worked out better for my story to have something be slightly different (gotta love fanfiction!).

Thank you for reading! If you like it (or if you don't, I don't mind) please leave a review and let me know what you think. I am very open to suggestions!