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You stirred the cauldron one final time as the steam from Amortentia rose in its characteristic spirals upwards and into oblivion. George, one half of the Weasley twins, sat across from you, the sheen of the potion dancing across his face. As if he knew he was being watched, he turned his eyes up to meet yours. Suddenly self-conscious you turned your focus back to the potion.
“It’s ready,” you said resolutely.
A smile formed on George’s face which then spread to yours. This was not your first attempt at brewing Amortentia. The potion itself was easy, but the specifics of the potion were far more complex, especially considering the fact that you and the Weasley twins intended to sell individual bottles of it to your peers at Hogwarts. If you three marketed it as an instantaneous love inducing potion that was guaranteed to last for twenty-four hours then it would have to be just that. The quality and consistency of the potions made and sold in the disused bathroom that you three called “The Shop” and the reputation you had among Hogwarts students mattered to all of you. Which was why you three personally tested each item that passed outside the bathroom. It was what happened after that you were not liable for, as each label indicated. You ladled the potion into one of the many glass vials that littered the bathroom floor, weighing it as you did.
“I have feeling this is the one,” George said as you passed the now filled vial to him, your hands brushing slightly.
You smiled at the famous Weasley twin optimism. Always the cautious one, you responded. “Let’s not jinx it.” But excitement crept into your voice as well.
You were an unlikely trio, you and the Weasley twins. They were so confident and committed 100% to everything. You, on the other hand, seemed overly conscious of everyone and everything. You spent days mulling over what to do before doing it. But you three complimented each other. Originally, it was your aptitude at potions that caught the attention of the twins, but it was you as a person that held George Weasley’s attention. After silently observing you in class for weeks the twins conducted what seemed to you to be a formal potion test and a job interview combined.
“Suppose,” Fred began, sliding beside you one day in the library.
What followed was a complicated “purely hypothetical,” George assured you, potion problem.
After getting over your initial shock of being spoken to by two people who had never spoken to you before, your mind busied to find the solution. Your quill flew across the piece of parchment in front of you as the twins exchanged knowing glances behind. You handed them the parchment, allowing your writings and diagrams to do the explaining. You watched their eyes scan the page before they both stood up and thanked you for your time. Thoroughly confused, you redirected your attention back to your work but were unable to completely get the new face of George Weasley out of your mind.
One day went by before you had another run-in with the twins. This time they overtook you in the hall while walking from one class to the other.
“It worked.” This was Fred again, you thought.
“Your potion that is,” George clarified on your right side, “deciding to add a leaf of peppermint was ingenious!”
“Gave it a refreshing taste too,” Fred mused.
“It stabilized the effects of the powdered root while-”
You broke in halfway through George’s sentence, “I thought the potion was ‘purely hypothetical,’” you stated using George words from a day earlier.
The twins broke out in broad smiles. “It was purely theoretical until you made it a reality,” George continued. At this point, you three had stopped walking and the twins faced you.
“We would like to formally offer you a position as head potion maker at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” the twins said in unison, looking at you in expectation as if they had just offered you the position of a lifetime.
Noting the confusion beginning to cloud your face, George chimed in. He told you about Fred and his entrepreneurial dreams, the unused bathroom on the sixth floor they had converted to a makeshift shop, and their wish for you to join them. You consulted the mental book of things you did and things you did not do in your mind and found this to be in the latter category. Despite this, you felt the exhilaration of doing something no one expected you to do, let alone you. After all, this would provide you with a place to meddle with potions outside the classroom. You had made up your mind.
Seeming to read your thoughts George extended his hand out for you to shake, “No one became great by following all the rules…”
And here you were in “The Shop,” sitting across from the boy who had convinced you nearly a year ago to do this very thing with him.
“Let’s go over it one more time,” you stated.
George rolled his eyes, a gesture that was both mocking and endowed with love. Your insistence on organization might drive the twins mad, but it was the reason they loved you as well. Potion making was painstakingly detailed and if something went wrong or right you three needed to know what and at what point in the potion making process it did.
“I, Gorge Weasley, am going to take Amortentia, administered to me by Y/N Y/L/N,” he said in posh English, drawing a smile from you. “I will then become infatuated with her and embarrass myself to the point of no return. During this time, Y/N will be writing meticulous details about how the potion performs while in my system and at midnight she will administer the cure.”
You were satisfied. This was the plan and having you become the person of George’s induced infatuation would allow you to control for the interpersonal problems that might arise if you set George on some unexpecting person. Fred, much to his dismay, would have to miss your escapades as he was currently cleaning the broomsticks of Slytherins’ Quidditch team after being fouled, one too many times, for “unnecessary roughness” last game.
“To us,” George said as he lifted the vial to you in a physical imitation of Cheers! before downing the potion with a wink. You stared fixedly at him for any sign of the potion taking effect.
“…George?” you questioned, studying his eyes for the undying infatuation it was meant to induce.
You loved his brown eyes you thought to yourself as you continued to study them. When the light hit them just right there seemed to be traces of gold in them. You had never had time to stare this long and could have spent the rest of your life doing it you silently concluded.
Pulling yourself out of your thoughts you asked again, “George?”
A smile crossed his face, “I just wanted to hear you say my name again.” It was hard to tell if this was George George or love potion George. He still, in spite of your best efforts, made you blush.
“Do you know what I smelled?” This question seemed more rhetorical than answerable by you. Holding your eyes all the while, he continued, “Rain, cardamom, and parchment.”
The air constricted around you as your memory of last week entered your consciousness. The two of you were walking down the outside corridors of the castle after an especially difficult examination. What had been a light sprinkle of rain that morning had turned into a downpour. You inhaled the fresh scent and turned to George.
“I love the rain,” you had to almost shout given the unrelenting droplets. “When I was younger, I use to run outside umbrellaless and barefoot and pretend I was dancing with the raindrops.” You were not sure what prompted the confession, but George had a way of disarming you.
“What made you stop?” George said using his right foot to peel off his left shoe and vice versa.
His intentions were not clear until he started pulling off his robe and vest. You grabbed hold of one sleeve trying to keep him under the stone corridor.
“What are you doing! People are going to see you!” you shouted frantically.
Outmaneuvering you, he ran out in the rain, leaving you holding his robe. “Come on, dance with me!” the Weasley twin said extending his hand towards you.
You looked along the corridor and in a moment of unbridled joy, you abandoned your textbooks next to his and danced with him, just like when you were younger. You knew the two of you looked mad but for a moment no one else existed, it was just George and you. His fiery red seemed to glow only brighter when wet and he moved his hand to push back a strand of yours. At that point, a professor rounded the corner, and gave you a lecture on propriety. Your jaw hurt that night in bed from smiling to much.
Just like in the rain that day it felt like no one else existed, it was just George and you. Even now you could smell the cardamom on your clothes. You wore a distilled version of the scent to mask the various smells you acquired when working on potions with the twins. And when you were not doing that you were reading: parchment. The potion had worked, George was infatuated with you. Your shoulders visibly relaxed because you knew that none of what he said was real, not in the same way love was. It was all but a byproduct of some brewed ingredients whose effects would fade away in twenty-four hours. You closed the journal that you used to keep records of the potions you made. Though the two of you had intentionally chosen a Saturday to avoid classes you still had some obligations. Before you could prop yourself up from your sitting position, George offered his hand to you. This was not a problem in and of itself until, once standing, he interlaced it with yours. His thumb began to move in half circle motions across the skin of your interlaced hand. This is what was to be expected from someone who ingested Amortentia. It will be easier to just let him hold your hand you reasoned. Your textbook had covered the effects a love potion has on the person who ingests it, but what about the person who administers it? Could you too attribute the rising blush in your face to magic or-.
“I love your hair that way,” George said, your eyes meeting.
Jolted out of your thoughts you touched it self-consciously, “It’s unruly.”
“That seems to be a matter of perspective,” he proclaimed, reaching to touch a piece of your hair.
Before he could follow through, you rounded the corner leading to the library. You had been given a piece of parchment by Professor Flitwick listing all the texts he needed before the next class session. As a tutor, it was part of your job description. You made your way down to the .100 section of the library with George closely behind you. You were of medium height, but the text you needed was impossible to reach; that is, without a little magic you thought, moving your hand towards your wand in your back pocket. The book was George’s height, however, and he effortlessly took the old text from its place and held it out. Your hands grazed as the book went from George to you and your heart skipped a beat resulting in the familiar feeling of . . . love rising from within you.
Love, George silently thought as the book passed from his hands to yours. When he was with you everything felt new to him and he wanted to experience the world all over again with you. He loved your hair and had the constant longing to thread his fingers through it. Right now, however, he wanted to kiss you. He wanted to kiss you slowly like he had all the time in the world to do it over and over again. Hearing your hushed “Thanks” under your breath he was reminded of his love for your voice. It was mellifluous, controlled, and interspersed with tonal inflections and perfectly timed pauses. You now had your back to him as you made your way further down the row.
“Do you think you can find this text for me?” you asked, showing him the parchment.
He noticed that the text was on the other end of the library. “Are you tired of me already?” he responded, feigning a hurt tone.
“I could never tire of you.” The speed with which you had said this and the conviction of how you said it startled the both of you.
He recovered, taking the parchment out of your hand and whispering in your ear as he passed, “You stole my line” before walking in the direction of the text you had tasked him to find. After being trailed by the suspicious librarian for half an hour, George returned to you, text in hand, and to the place you were now sitting. Noticing how you chewed your lips and the open text on your lap, George knew you had found something of interest. He doubted that his twin knew about your lip biting habit and smiled secretly to himself because he did. The lowering sun from the paneled window cast a long streak of light into the library, dividing the two of you.
George took a seat next to you, sitting as he usually did, his back pushed against the wall with one leg straight and the other bent. Heat radiated from his body contrasting greatly with the coolness of your skin, causing you to shiver slightly. George craned his head towards you. “Cold?” he asked. You shook your head as you caught George eyeing your skin and the goosebumps that dotted it. George’s back relaxed against the wall. “What are we reading?” The twins had a habit of using the plural pronoun to encompass the three of you. “What are WE doing?” “Where are WE going?” It made you inseparable from them, from George.
You picked up the first line of the poem, reading in a hushed whisper: “I loved you first: but afterwards your love…”
Halfway through, George angled his wand towards the poem and whispered a spell under his breath. Suddenly, two wispy figures stepped out of the page and reenacted the poem as you read aloud.
“Both of us, of the love which makes us one,” you finished.
The two figures dissolved into one another, leaving a spiral of white smoke behind.
You smiled up at George, “That was a nice touch.”
“Well, I’ve always been a visual learner.” You looked at him reprovingly before you both broke out in laughter. “Whose the poet?” he asked.
“Poetess,” you corrected, “Christina Rossetti. People thought she was a witch. They were right, of course.”
“With a poem called ‘Goblin Market,’ I could have guessed as much,” George followed.
“You know your Rossetti after all.”
“No,” George adopted the same correctional tone you had earlier, “you know your Rossetti and I love to listen to you.”
Heat rushed to your cheeks at his confession. You swiftly closed the text and bolted up from the place you two shared. It was a love potion induced confession and therefore did not count you reminded yourself. None of this counted. Despite this, you could not shake the sincerity with which he had said the line that, even moments after, made your stomach drop. This was a convincing love potion, you thought, it would be a bestseller.
You rounded another corridor, getting closer to Ravenclaw Tower and your destination, Professor Flitwick’s office. Your footsteps reverberated up and down the stone corridor, completely synced. It was George who broke the silence.
“You didn’t hear this from me but according to the map Hooch has been spending a lot of time in the infirmary,” he said insinuatingly. You knew about the romantic rumors swirling around Madam Hooch and Madam Pomfrey.
“She is probably checking up on Quidditch players like you who cannot seem to stay on their brooms,” you replied, refusing to indulge him.
“Ah, so you watch me during Gryffindor matches, I thought you didn’t like Quidditch.”
You gait slowed for a moment. “And I didn’t know you were interested in Madam Hooch in that way,” you retorted, smiling.
George began to walk backwards, facing you, “I do tend to fall for people who don’t know I exist.”
“Like who?”
“You, for example.” The comfortable back and forth you and George engaged in whenever you were together dissolved as you were reminded of the love potion that was still coursing through his body.
“For someone who doesn’t exist to me, I would find life without you a lonely existence,” you said.
The soft light from twilight streamed in from the arching windows you passed. Worn out from his constant potion induced confessions of love for you, you told him the truth or as much of it as you could. George may be unable to distinguish his true feelings for you from the feelings Amortentia told him to feel but you knew the truth of your own. Ever since George became part of your life you could not visualize a future without him in it. And that was why saying “I love you” or “I want you in my life now and forever” outside the dominions of your own mind was out of the question. Risking what you had for something more was not worth it. George had no retort for you just an “I agree” that was too quiet for you to hear. The echo of your footsteps once again filled the silence between you.
By the time you delivered the texts to Professor Flitwick and fulfilled your other obligations, darkness had descended on Hogwarts. Normally, you and the twins would meet in the Great Hall over dinner to discuss the shop and whatever else came to mind. Tonight, you wanted to be alone. However, you could not leave George and still monitor the effects of the potion, you two were bound together for the time being. You cast a simple time telling spell. Only a couple more hours of George being in love with you and then everything would go back to normal. Normal, you thought rather sadly. George saw a shadow pass over your face and immediately wanted to know the source of whatever was making you unhappy.
“What are you thinking?”
You looked up at him and took in his lopsided smile and brown eyes. “How I could get a pumpkin pastie without interacting with other people,” which was not the truth but was not a lie either.
“That is quite the conundrum,” George said, voice rising. “If only you knew someone who had experience breaking into the school kitchens.”
“Alas,” you said. Your eyes met, a silent conversation occurring. “No- no way.”
“Do you still have the slip that Professor Flitwick signed earlier?” George asked ignoring your previous statement.
“What are you planning, George Weasley?” your curiosity getting the better of you.
He bent down towards you, face inches away from yours, “A heist.”
You walked tentatively behind George taking the stairs downwards towards the kitchens. Just as you were about to turn around, the two of you reached the entrance of the kitchens: a painting of a bowl of fruit.
Noticing your concern, George reached down and gave your hand a reassuring squeeze, “We’ll be in and out,” he said.
“This is a bad idea."
“Only if we get caught.” George ticked the oil painted pear, revealing the staff of house elves who were in charge of preparing all the meals at Hogwarts. George strode in with the utmost surety. “Excuse me but Professor Flitwick has been waiting for his special order for nearly an hour now.”
The head elf grimaced and approached the both of you. “I never received such an order,” he said, seeming to catch the two of you in your lie.
With great theatrics, George looked like he was on the verge of tears. “’Never received such an order!’ Professor Flitwick entrusted me with this and now-,” he fell back on you, chest heaving.
“There, there,” you said trying not to laugh, “it can’t be helped.”
After a couple more minutes of George's sobbing, the elf had obviously had enough. “Do you have the order with you?”
George immediately turned around. “Of course, of course,” he showed the house elf the slip Flitwick had signed earlier and snatched it away before he had time to inspect it more closely. “As for the order, the professor would like six pumpkin pasties, two sticky toffee puddings, and one half of a treacle tart, please.”
“That’s a lot for one person,” grumbled the house elf as he went off to collect the items. If he knew you were lying he didn’t seem to care. In no time, the elf deposited a sealed platter in George’s hands. “The platter will reappear in the kitchens once all the food is removed,” the elf reiterated, his back already turned.
“Thank you,” the two of you said in hurried unison.
Though it was after curfew the two of you had no problem getting back to the shop thanks to the Marauder’s Map. You stood in front of the portrait that concealed the shop from unwelcome customers.
“Password?” the portrait asked.
George sighed, “Fred Weasley is a handsome devil.” Fred had been in charge of this week’s password evidently.
The portrait began to rotate, revealing the shop. Once inside you two sat in the same positions you had earlier that morning. George opened the platter with flare and the smell of spices and caramelized sugar filled the air. The pumpkin pastie was still warm when you bit into it.
“We make a good team,” George remarked bringing a spoonful of toffee pudding to his mouth.
“The sobbing was-”
“obviously the only reason we got away with it,” George interrupted. You two burst out in laughter.
George continued to mock his theatrics in the kitchens which left you breathless from laughing. He loved the way you laughed and he loved to make you laugh. The moonlight from the windows gave you an ethereal glow and all he could do was stare at you.
You finally regained your composure only to come face to face with George who was staring at you with a small grin on his face.
“What?" you asked.
“Can I kiss you?”
You had all but forgotten that George was still under the influence of a love potion. The same adrenaline you had felt in the kitchens began to circulate throughout your body once more, but you would not take advantage of a potion induced kiss. You reached over to the cure you had bottled that morning.
Holding the vial of liquid in your hands you extended it outwards to George. “If you still want to kiss me after you take this then you can,” you said.
The potion had worked perfectly, almost too perfectly. The ethics of selling a love potion of this potency crossed your mind but the infatuation it induced could never compare to real love and that would be obvious to any person after a few days.
“You promise?” George said as he began to bring the cure up to his mouth.
“Promise.” He downed the cure in one fluid motion.
Time seemed to constrict around the two of you. “I would still like to kiss you,” he said.
The cure had not worked, you thought. You began to mentally review how you brewed the cure. You were sure you had done it right. When you looked up again, George was holding a raven feather in between you two, the key ingredient to Amortentia. Without it, the potion was just colored liquid.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sudden realization crossed your face which gave way to disbelief.
“The problem is not with the cure, but with the initial potion itself,” George said, his free hand moving to his neck.
“You knew! You knew!” you exclaimed, voice fraught with emotion. “You knew this whole time that the potion was defective and just went along with it?” You began to recollect what had happened since the morning. The times he held your hand or the conversation you had en route to Flitwick’s office. He knew. That sole fact left you feeling unmoored.
“When I was handing you the ingredients for the potion the other day I unintentionally held on to this,” he twirled the feather again, “I didn’t notice till this morning and by then it was too late,” he said in an effort to explain.
“You could have told me!” you exclaimed.
“My mistake may have been unintentionally, but I’m glad I did it.” Before you had time to challenge his statement he continued, “I want you to know that everything I did to today, I did intentionally. I don’t need a love potion to be in love with you.”
And there it was: the truth. You locked eyes with him. “If you didn’t reciprocate I could blame it all on the love potion,” he said quietly.
George, you realized, what just like you: hopelessly in love. “I love you too,” you replied. It was the only thing left to say.
He moved closer to you, his face inches away from yours. “Can I kiss you?” he said. This time you said yes. Even from a sitting position, you had to crane your neck upwards to meet him. His right hand ran up the bottom of your hair while his left cupped your cheek and then your lips meet. It was soft and where George tasted rain, cardamom, and parchment you tasted sun, cinnamon, and polish. A smile widened across your face.
George pulled away for a minute “I can’t kiss you when your smiling,” he said softly while trying to control his own smile.
He kissed you again and this one was just like the first: perfect. When you parted for the second time a comfortable silence overtook the forgotten room.
“You have bewitched me,” George said. “Because, you know, I’m kissing a witch,” he said, as if clarification was needed.
“Is that the best you can come up with?”
“We have plenty of time to try out others . . . Spellbound.” He kissed you again.
“Charmed.” And again.
“Cursed.” And again.