Junoesque ✿George Weasley✿

93.

The potion was bubbling and crying for its next set of ingredients. Bottles were empty and corks were spewed across the floorboards, their use gone and would probably be recycled by Molly for her cleaning potions. The stench had thankfully faded from the concoctions many layers of pickled toad, newt's spleen and things that Blair had never used or touched in real life before. Its simmering aroma had near no scent at all and allowed her to shut the windows in the room, shutting out the cold air that chilled her to the bone. Having to bundle up in a coat and scarf while inside The Burrow with a roaring fire in the living room downstairs was starting to become ridiculous.

But the potion was far from done. The addition of the Seafold bark that George had snatched for her would need to disintegrate and mix in with the other ingredients. That would take a month before the other eight ingredients would need to be added before the potion would be ready for testing (Blair hoped they would be testing it on something other than a human). 

Standing up from the floor, Blair stretched her arms above her head and sighed in a form of relief. It was nothing compared to the satisfaction she'd feel when it would be finished, but getting this far with the potion brought her some sense of accomplishment. She grabbed her wand off the floor and carefully levitated the cauldron into the corner of the room where it wouldn't be tipped over accidentally. The worst case scenario would be George stumbling in and knocking the entire thing over the floor, where it would sink through the floorboards and drop on pieces of furniture on the floor below. Blair would have to start all over again and buy even more ingredients that weren't working out to be cheap at all. So the corner was its safest place until it would simmer and she could then follow the last steps from her father's book.

In her free time, Blair had read her father's notes in his twelfth year Potions textbook from cover to cover. Most of the recipes he had added to only improved them slightly, but there were particular ones that he had been able to twist completely and make them into a completely different potion. She was amazed at how intelligent her father must have been in order to know that his changes would be successful in his work. She found herself admiring his ability to put things together with what seems like just a single thought of 'how could this be better? More deadly? More powerful?' 

Along with the textbook, she had also been looking through the photo album she had picked up from the house. Sometimes when she was waiting for George to get back from a late night Order mission, she would wait up for him while looking through the moving pictures of her mother and very scarce her father. Her mother was mesmerising with her light hair and dark eyes while her father was stone-like and always so far off. He stared into the camera in the one picture he was in with heavy bags under his electric eyes; tired and in another world of his own. Blair guessed she had inherited the latter to some extent.

"How's it going?" George's voice made Blair turn around to see his handkerchief-covered face poking cautiously through the doorway.

"You can take that off. It's finally passed its stage of smelling like Freddie's sock draw in here," Blair pulled off her coat and adjusted the scarf around her neck. George stepped further into the room when he saw the lid over the cauldron in the corner and untied the handkerchief from around his nose and mouth. He inhaled deeply and sighed in relief, smelling only the gingerbread candle that had been lit on the nightstand.

"Thank Merlin," he shoved the cloth into his pocket and stepped forward to be next to Blair. "Have you finished for the day, then?"

"Finished for the month, actually. The Seafold has to fester before I can add anything else."

"What's next to add, then?"

"The skinned toad."

"Ah."