Work Text:
"How about now?"
"No, Fred."
"...now?"
"George, don't you start."
Hermione's face was illuminated with a sickening green from the potion before her, her wand pointed at the very center as she made it stir itself with magic, the brew too volatile at this final stage for a stirring rod. She ignored the two freckled faces similarly lit hovering as closely as she would allow them. Every few years, the Ministry commissioned a potion from them on top of their own experiments, and this brew, meant to stand as an infallible assistance to pry out guilt from the hearts of the convicted, was proving difficult.
The little squelching noises in the background made her roll her eyes. Fred and George, her business partners, were using their suction cup shoes to lean over the line she'd drawn several feet away from her workbench. Their ridiculously long legs bent towards her at a forty-five degree angle, and the image of bopping them on their noses to send them careening backwards filled her mind, and she bit her lip to stop a laugh, before starting a countdown in her heavy rubber gloves on her hand squeaked as she slowly raised her hand, whispered numbers slipping from her lips, building the pressure in the room already filled with steam and fog, heavy shutters covering the windows.
Her private musings came true as a sudden pulse originating from the cauldron pushed the twins off balance, sending them skittering backwards away from the barrier she'd created. Identical in all ways, their thuds as they landed one after the other near the door to the lab matched.
Instead of laughing at their spectacle, she only absorbed it in the periphery, a rhythmic thudding beneath her feet growing louder as the temperature plummeted. The glass of the windows shuddered and threatened to crack under the force from the pulse in combination with a drop in temperature where Hermione stood. The barrier she'd drawn to keep the twins away from her while she worked began to frost at the edges, building a wall of shimmering, paper-thin ice like another wall in the middle of the room to separate them.
For a few moments, the ice was thin enough for the twins to hear Hermione's litany of "Oh no, oh no, oh no..." before the layer grew too thick for sound to pass through.
The explosion carried down from the attic. With one domino tipped, several began to fall and begin a chain of reactions that could not be stopped, now that it had begun.
Bill, one such domino in the carefully placed line, careened up the stairs to the loft of the private cottage where Weasley Wizard Wheezes products were tested. His dress shoes slapped loudly against the wooden staircase as he rushed towards the commotion, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up, stiffly at attention like the hackles of the wolf, whose DNA coursed through him.
"Hermione!" he yelled as he reached the final two steps, his long fingers brushing the handle, shocking him with a warning jolt of electricity for his trouble. He used the force of his landing to propel himself up again, this time shoving his hands into the gloves from his pockets, pulling on the door handle with all his might.
Nearly all the breath in his lungs rushed out, as if he'd been punched in the gut, as he watched his twin brothers slam their fists against the wall of ice thickening between them and Hermione's now floating form. The moon from the windows behind them created the illusion of water on the other side. Hermione's mouth moved frantically as she blasted spell after spell at the ice forming at all sides around her, now lining the walls behind her and ceiling above, as her feet were lifted slowly from the wooden floor. The potion still glittered maliciously in the center of her workbench, unaffected by what it had caused.
Bill joined the twins' efforts in breaking down the ice as he watched the witch on the other side start to turn blue, her mouth moving quickly now only because her teeth were chattering as if she'd eaten a barrel of Ice Mice.
Hermione's shaking feet sunk to the floor across from them, her body entirely blue now, even her hair from the roots to the tips, eyes blown wide enough that they could see the growing blue starting at the corners and seeping into the previously brown irises. She was shaking her head at them, motioning them to stand back away from the ice as she pressed her cold fingers to the barrier. Bill's heart clenched as he anticipated what she was going to do to free herself from what could be an icy tomb.
Her fist reeled back in slow motion, and Bill could see layers of ice forming over her clothes breaking as she moved her arm. He almost laughed in manic disbelief; how could the slight witch's fist break what six men's could not?
As her fingers, curled into a fist and moving to a blue so dark it looked black, collided with the wall a fissure ran through it. She did it again, and again, until the fissure was expanded into a crack taller than she was. Moving slowly, snow falling from her shoulders as the layers of ice around her body continually formed and were shattered by her movements, she used her bare hands to grasp either side of the cauldron and bring the bright green liquid over to what her fist had created.
From the other side of the room, the three Weasleys watched, transfixed on the slow motion movements of the witch on the other side throwing the contents of the cauldron she had worked so hard on for several weeks onto the ice trapping her. A sudden displacement of pressure temporarily deafened them as soon as the liquid broke through the ice. While their hearing recovered from the painful pop of their inner ears, each man brought their hands down and moved with jerky movements towards the crumpled form on the floor.
"Hermione?" Bill said, a shaky hand reaching for her as he crawled. The temperature of the room gave no indication there had been a near frozen witch on one side, a soft breeze flowing up from the lower levels where several windows were open to the night air.
The blue still tinted the ends of her fingers and the roots of her hair, but most of the color had left her body to be replaced by a healthier glow. Sounds echoed, but Bill heard her groan of pain clearly, the closer he got to her. He rested his fingertips against the crown of her head, feeling his fingers go numb from the cold almost immediately, but he moved forward to cradle her head in his hands, searching her body for injuries. Fred and George weren't far behind but held back to let their older brother reach her first.
"Which one of you tampered with the valerian root?" Hermione mumbled, each word spoken laboriously as she pushed herself up onto all fours, still shivering.
"Valerian root?" Fred asked, his voice ringing in everyone's ears.
George raised his wand to gently heal all of their eardrums, a spell he knew well after years of working with volatile ingredients. He winced guiltily as each person around him cried out in a moment's pain. "You didn't put any of that in the potion, Hermione."
Hermione lifted her head and searched each man's faces, her eyes blown wide. "Then who did?"