Beautiful Misbehaviour | George Weasley

Chapter 12

Ginny hadn't been able to stay long, but Fred had stayed the night. During breakfast, Artemis had tried her best to keep her back and forth looks between the three to a minimum. She had resigned herself to leave the mystery as just that, a mystery. But that didn't make it any less intriguing.

After a breakfast filled with numerous jokes from both Lee and Fred, the two boys had disappeared out the back door to practice some duelling spell Artemis had never heard of, and Angelina had disappeared up the stairs.

Artemis sighed and resolved herself to another day of restocking her Essence of Dittany supply. The process took days and was nothing short of painstaking. At first, she'd been excited with the success, but after weeks of brewing it, she'd had more than her fill of the finicky plant.

She'd just finished setting out the glass bottles when her wand emitted the chime, signalling the end of the thirty minutes she had simmered the brew in a copper cauldron. The potion had taken on a translucent orange colour that confirmed it had been brewed correctly.

There had been many times where Artemis had stared down into the copper cauldron, only to find the mixture had gone putrid, and she'd had to start again. Not much was quite as disheartening as a failed potion, especially when the ingredients were so sparse.

Artemis glanced at the small basket at the edge of the brewing table where there were only a few stalks left. She knew they'd be short soon. She didn't want to think about what would happen when that day came.

She labelled the Essence of Dittany carefully, stoppering them with the dropper heads after each vessel was filled. She had only just finished when the door slammed open. The light shining through the opening was almost as jarring as the noise. Artemis jumped so hard the table shook. Thankfully, the bottles of Dittany were closed tightly enough that the jostling didn't cause any damage.

"Sweet Christ, Fred," Artemis pressed a hand to her beating heart, "I nearly smashed the whole batch of potion."

"Oh," he managed to look mildly chastised, but only just, "I was just checking if you wanted to join us for practice. Lee is tired of losing."

"Duelling practice?" Artemis collected the bottles and tucked most of them into the small wood crate she planned to give to Hestia when she visited next, "Fred, you've been on the other end of my wand. You know offensive spells and I don't mix."

"That's the point," Fred wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her out the door, "what you muggles say? Practice makes prefect?"

"Perfect, not prefect."

"Same thing. Perce always spent his time making up for his pigheadedness by wasting time on school."

"Ah, yes," Artemis said dryly, finally giving in and allowing him to lead her outside, "God forbid he cares about his studies."

Fred levelled her with a knowing look, "Doesn't it get on your nerves when Apollo - "

"Yes."

"I didn't even finish!" Fred crowed out a laugh.

"You didn't have to; he's a prat on his best day."

Lee was standing next to a practice dummy that they'd pulled from Merlin knew where. He rubbed his hands together and grinned at her, "All right, Williams. Let's have it."

"What exactly do you want me to do to it?"

"That's the fun of it, isn't it?" Fred grinned, "Reducto? Stupefy? Levicorpus?"

Artemis pointed her wand at the dummy, knowing full well what was about to happen, "Reducto."

It wasn't that Artemis was entirely inept at combat magic; she'd been in the DA, after all. But for some unknown reason, her offensive spells had always lacked the punch her peers summoned with gusto. The dummy reeled back but didn't go flying as it would with Potter or disintegrate as it would for Ginny.