The Potion Princess

The Weasley Twins

There is someone else in the room with her.

She can feel it, even though their footsteps are covered by the bubbling of the potion and any lurking shadows are shrouded by the steam clouding above her cauldron.  It's dark, down here in the dungeons, and the greenish glow sometimes turns the light of the lantern into monsters lurking in the corners.  Audra knows that she gets paranoid this deep into the basement of Hogwarts, but with the whispers of her parents warning her that the great Sirius Black was on his way to Hogwarts and the previous year being marred with the giant serpent on the loose, she is smart enough to know that it is better to feel a little silly over getting spooked rather than take any chances.  Even at fourteen, Audra knows better than most of her classmates about what one human can do to another.

"Hello?"  Her voice echoes back to her, timid and tired and so small, but it is the best she can do.  Audra does not consider herself a brave girl, but she does have an arsenal of hexes and curses that her older brothers had drilled into her head.  When she holds her wand out and points it towards the dark hallway, her hand does not shake.  "I know someone's there."

It's annoying her a bit now, really.  And she knows its might be a bit stupid, to get annoyed at what might just be a rat scurrying across the floor, and she knows it might be even stupider to try and threaten Sirius Black or an innocent professor, but damn it, it's quickly approaching time to move on to the next step of her potion.  She's the youngest student ever to make it into Snape's advance placement potions, which she takes along with the required fourth year curriculum, and he likes to give her extra assignments on the side.  Horribly difficult, incredibly complicated, OWL level potions whose ingredients have to be added at exactly the right moment to achieve optimal results.  "Listen, whoever you are, you've got five seconds to step into the light or I'm going to start throwing random scorching spells into every corner of the room."

She tosses her head back, standing with her chin tilted up.  It was a pose her mother took when she was letting someone know exactly how dangerous she was, that she was more than just a housewife, and that there would be no mention of her sister in association with her, thank you very much.  Audra was hoping that right now it would make her look like someone not be messed with.  "Five."  She pointed her wand at the doorway without aiming and slashed down, making a charred mark appear across the wall.

"Merlin's beard, woman!"  There was a series of yelps and shouts, and then a bang as a wand accidently fired, followed by flashes of red and a cloud of dust.  When it cleared, the Weasley twins sprawled across the dungeon floor, robes smoking.  "We just wanted to talk!"

"Talk?"  She felt bad, honestly, but they didn't appear to have been hurt.  She wasn't exactly fond of the Weasley twins, or Gryffindors in general for that matter, and none of them had ever showed any interest in her.  That being said, the Weasley family had always been perfectly polite to her, no matter what opinion her father had of them.  She didn't want to turn one of their arms to charcoal.  "You lurked around in the dark just to talk?"

"Well, we.."  One of them started, trailed off, and then broke into a grin.  "Well, we were just going to talk, but we weren't at dinner and Percy said that sometimes you come down here to practice the potions, approved by Snape, of course, Percy wouldn't allow rule breaking,"

"And then when we got here you were all alone in the dark, and you looked like someone that would be fun to scare."  The other twin looked up from the ground sheepishly, wearing an identical grin.  She thinks it's George, Fred never seems to feel guilty.  "We were just going to make you jump."

"But then you nearly hexed us into bloody oblivion, didn't you?"  Fred didn't seem concerned by it, or angry.  Instead he was looking at the burned mark like it had raised his opinion of her by a great deal.  "What spell was that, anyways?"

"Why would I tell you?"  Her tone was sharp, and she winced a bit, feeling the formerly friendly feeling change back to their normal wariness.  She would have thought that after four years of being in class together they'd be able to make it through a conversation, but apparently all the opinions that had been shoved down their throats were more important than a few good memories.  Still, she could try to be polite.  "You said you wanted to talk?"  And then, because she had gotten dangerously close to falling behind on her potion, snapped her fingers at Fred and pointed at her beetles, motioning for him to grind them up.

"Yeah.  See, George and I," She felt a momentary thrill that she had gotten it right.  "have a proposition for you."

"We need potions."  There was a shared glance, during which she was sure they were trying to decide how much to tell her.  "And we want you to make them."

"Why?"  She added the crushed beetles, then the bobuter pus, and stirred seven times before ladling it into a set of vials.  "And what's in it for me?"

"I'm sure we can arrange something."  Fred held out his hand, like they were going to shake on it and the whole thing would be settled.

"What would you be able to give me?  If you could afford to pay someone for potions, I'm sure you'd be wearing robes that actually fit."  She plucked at the sleeve of his robe, where it was clear that it was too short in the arm.   George laughed, a quick, scathing bark that cut off as soon as it started.  Fred's cheeks turned red, and then withdrew his arm, like he couldn't believe he had actually been about to touch her.

"We're good friends to have, Audra."  He wasn't joking this time.  "You help us.  And down the road, when there's a time you need our services, well,"  He grinned, but it wasn't a nice one.  This was the Weasley that sneaks snakes into the Slytherin dorm room, who fills their ink wells with some acidic potion that makes them break into boils.  The ones who always manage to find you when they want, no matter where you are, no matter how hard you try to hide.  They were nice guys, the Weasley twins, but they had a mean streak that every Slytherin knew to watch out for.  If she said yes, she'd never get truth serums snuck into her butterbeer or have her pillow stuffed with spiders.  If she said no...  "There's going to be a time when you need someone like us on your side."

"Someone to do my dirty work?" 

"Something like that."  This time it was George who held out a hand for her to shake.  This time, she took it.