Red Currant Rum

Red Currant Rum

"Do you remember that time the Slytherins charmed our alcohol?" Fred and George, who had been passing the kitchen doorway of Grimmauld Place froze at the sound of Sirius Black's voice speaking the words 'Slytherin' and 'alcohol' in the same sentence.

"Vaguely. I think I passed out," Remus replied.

"Yes. You fell asleep in the gravy. Or was it pudding?"

"Pudding. Chocolate pudding. I woke up with chocolate in my hair."

"You know what we never figured out? What charm the Slytherins used to compel us to drink that alcohol."

"Not that you or James ever needed much persuasion to drink alcohol."

"That's true."

"What I've never figured out is why there weren't more charms on the Firewhisky. You know, like something to turn our skin different colors. That sort of thing."

"Or poison."

"Don't be ridiculous. Slytherins aren't that malicious. Maybe they were trying to be subtle?"

"Or they're just stupid."

"One of the Head Boys was Slytherin when we were there. They aren't all stupid."

"Moony, you're too nice for your own good. Slytherins are either stupid, evil, or both."

"So you say."

"I do indeed." Fred and George exchanged significant glances and crept up the creaky stairs as quietly as they could. Once in the bedroom, Fred shut the door and turned to his twin.

"Charmed alcohol? How come we never thought of that?"

"Because it's not usually necessary to charm alcohol. Teenagers are drawn to it like dementers to happiness," George pointed out reasonably. Fred made a face at the comparison.

"Yes, well. What do you say we charm some alcohol? Only, we'll add a little something extra to it." The twins shared an mischievous grin.

*******

Two days later found Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny dashing out the door to catch the train back to Hogwarts, all expect maybe Hermione wishing the winter holidays had lasted just a few days more.

"Where did you put the rum, Fred?" George asked, less than an hour after the younger teens had left.

"I hid it behind the potion bottles in the study, why?"

"Because the potion bottles aren't there. And neither is the alcohol." Fred gave his twin a horrified look.

"George, do you realize who those potion bottles belong to?"

"Snape?"

"No. Hermione."

*******

"What's this?" Hermione murmured as she pulled an unfamiliar potion bottle out of her trunk. She shrugged and moved as though to set it down next to her trunk.

She frowned in confusion a moment later when she realized that she'd instead uncorked it and was raising it to her lips. She sniffed the contents.

Fruity. With the faintest hint of molasses. Before she could stop herself, Hermione took a tentative sip.

Now, if she were in her right mind, Hermione would never have drunk an unknown liquid.

But she was not in her right mind - especially fifteen minutes later - but rather under the influence of a compulsion spell. It wasn't long after she stumbled into the Common Room that the compulsion spell latched onto someone.

"Hermione?" Harry asked uncertainly, when his friend literally tripped into the Common Room looking suspiciously flushed and giddy.

"Harry! Harry, you must try this," she told him earnestly and thrust a potion bottle under his noise. Harry recognized the smell of rum immediately, but that wasn't enough to stop him from doing as she'd asked.

*******

Dear Ron.

We think Hermione may have accidentally taken one of our, shall we say, untested products. We recommend you remove it from her possession immediately as we don't know what the side effects might be.

Whatever you do, resist any temptation to drink it. We would very much like to get at least some of it back.

Cheers,

Gred and Forge

*******

"Harry? Hermione?" Ron asked, entering the Common Room.

"Not here," Seamus told him absently from his chair by the fire. Ron frowned, and retreated back to the boys' dormitory to retrieve the Marauder's Map.

Ron was surprised to see they where in one of the empty classrooms on the Second Floor.

*******

" 'Arry, that is not a butter-fee," Hermione slurred, and added antennas to the glowing green image of a rather lopsided butterfly floating in the air before the two inebriated teens with her own glowing pink lines.

Harry giggled and gave the butterfly yellow glasses.

Hermione frowned and shook her wand at her fellow drunk. The sparks that shot out of the end from the careless gesture narrowly missed Harry's noise.

"Butter-fills dun wear glasses." Harry nodded his head emphatically and opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the classroom door opening.

They greeted Ron with wide-eyed looks of trepidation, but relaxed upon seeing that they hadn't been caught by a professor.

"Uh, hi. What are you two doing in here?" Ron asked, looking around the dusty classroom before focusing his frown on the glowing doodle hanging in the air between his friends.

The reactions he received to this question made him even more suspicious. Hermione hunched over, as though trying to hide an object from his sight, and Harry just grinned at him like an idiot.

"Hermione," Harry began slowly, "found some really good rum."

"Rum??" Ron demanded, aghast. They'd been drinking and hadn't invited him?

"Yes. It was a present from a house elf, wasn't it Mione?" Hermione shook her head, and Ron could have sworn he heard her mutter 'pixies.'

"Er, Hermione? Where did you... find the rum?"

"Trink."

"Huh?"

"Trink." Ron turned his confused gaze on Harry.

"Trunk," he translated before turning his focus back to the red snitch he was drawing.

"Bugger. 'Mione, listen. That's one of Fred and George's untested products." He approached his friend cautiously. He'd never seen Hermione drunk, and didn't know what to expect. "You need to give me the rum." Hermione responded by clutching the bottle tightly against her chest and shaking her head vigorously.

"Nuh uh. 'S mine," she protested, backing away from him. Ron had never been the most patient person, though you wouldn't have thought so considering how much patience chess-playing required.

Hermione shrieked when Ron lunged at her.

She beat her fist angrily against his chest when he held the alcohol out of her reach.

Harry laughed when Ron tried to drink the alcohol and there was nothing left in the bottle.

Ron shook his head, trying to clear it of the spell. Temptation my arse, he thought furiously. Bewitched alcohol! What were they thinking? He handed the empty bottle back to the seething Hermione, who cradled it against her as though it were a baby.

"C'mon my drunken friends. Let's get you two back to the Common Room."

*******

It is not an easy task getting two drunk teens to go anywhere. Hermione frequently stopped walking to stand staring angrily at a wall, muttering to herself all the while. Twice she'd stopped to deduct house points from portraits. Ron couldn't help but compare her to Snape.

Harry was distracted just as easily, and would often run off chasing lint. One time the lint turned out to be Mrs. Norris and Ron quickly herded them onto a moving staircase to escape.

As they approached Gryffindor Tower, Harry ran ahead, and Hermione lagged behind. Ron grabbed her wrist and pulled her along, ignoring her angry protests - he could barely understand her anyways.

They found Harry entertaining the Fat Lady with, by this point unrecognizable, glowing doodles. He managed to kiss the portrait goodnight before Ron dragged him through the portrait hole.

*******

Hermione stormed up the stairs to the girls' dormitories the moment they entered the Common Room. With a very vague explanation, Ron sent Parvati after her to make sure she was alright. Then he conned Seamus into helping him get Harry upstairs.

Seamus grabbed Harry wrist as he reached for the fire.

"You don't want to be touching that Harry." Harry blinked at him.

"Pretty."

"Yeah, the fire's pretty. Now let's get you upstairs." Ron caught his friend when his balance finally gave way as he stood up. With Seamus on one side and Ron on the other, they were easily able to haul the shorter boy up the stairs and dump him on his bed.

*******

Two things confused Harry upon waking the following morning. One was the glowing doodles floating in the air around him, and the second was the fact that the canopy of his bed seemed much closer than normal.

He quickly discovered the reason for the latter when he tried to get out of bed.

He was floating.

*******

The students of Hogwarts were confused by two things upon leaving their Common Rooms the first morning back to school after the winter holidays. One was the glowing doodles floating in the air in numerous corridors, and the second was the strange way Hermione Granger and Harry Potter were walking.

Those familiar with the muggle world compared it to astronauts walking on the moon.

Both Hermione Granger and Harry Potter discovered that morning that paper was not necessary for artistic expression, and heavy textbooks could be used as something other than just sources of information or boredom. They could, for example, be used to keep one from floating around like a balloon.

*******

Fred and George, unfortunately, did not get any of the alcohol returned to them. Fortunately, they were saved from Hermione's wrath by the unexpected side effect of neither accidental test subject remembering anything of that night after their first sip of the enhanced Red Currant Rum.

And what of the empty bottle, you ask? It had disappeared somewhere on the journey between the empty classroom and the Gryffindor Common Room. Interestingly, Mr. Filch discovered as similar bottle - though he didn't know of this similarity - behind Mrs. Norris' food dish the same morning those mysterious glowing doodles had appeared in the corridors.