Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling.
AN: Written for rahskala on LJ, for the prompt "kitchen, hermione/weasley twins".
---------------------------------------------------------------
"What are you two doing?"
Hermione glanced around the kitchen in one part amusement and two parts exasperation. Every counter surface was covered in a substance that looked remarkably like that multicoloured gloop that was used in that one scene in Hook. And standing in the middle of the kitchen, themselves covered in the stuff, were Fred and George. They looked down in shame for exactly 0.5 of a second before staring at her with large, Cheshire cat grins.
"Creating!" They intoned together, before shaking the gloop off their hands for it to land on the floor with a resounding splat, or more like a squish, really.
Hermione sighed and crossed her arms. "I can see that; what I want to know is why you're creating here rather than, oh, I don't know, in the back room in your shop? Or even your own kitchen?"
Fred grinned, and if Hermione was being honest with herself (and she always was), the grin was just slightly...intriguing. "Well you see,..."
"...we wanted to make something unique,"
"...for Bill and Fleur's wedding present!" Fred finished with a flourish of his still partially glooped-up hands.
"But why are you doing it here. Wouldn't you rather work somewhere where you don't have to worry about anyone getting in your way? "
George shook his head, a sad little frown on his face. "Alas, dear Hermione, we cannot work in our shop right now. Our last experimental sweet sort of started...multiplying. We decided to just ward the room so the bloody thing can't grow past the room until we figure out how to fix it."
"And our kitchen is full of dirty dishes and yet more experiments. So," Fred jumped in, "in order to create the perfect wedding gift for our esteemed elder brother, we needed somewhere else to work our genius. Home sounded like a good idea to us!"
Hermione uncrossed her arms and removed her wand from its holster. "Well come on then. I'll help you get this cleaned up before Mrs. Weasley gets home. Honestly, you'd think you two liked getting yelled at."
Fred and George unearthed their wands from under a pile of bright pink and blue gloop, and managed to wipe at least most of it off said wands. A few scourgifys later and they were quick to realize that it seemed to be doing absolutely nothing. The gloop was still exactly where it had been before Hermione, Fred and George had tried cleaning it awake. The twin's faces had shown their early confusion, but now they were showing plain old curiousity – which somehow worried Hermione even more than their confusion.
"Well, if scourgify isn't working, we could always try evanesco. Something has to work to get rid of this mess; you couldn't have made it magic-proof, could you?"
Fred and George glanced at each other, and then looked back at Hermione shaking their heads.
"No, the combination of potions and spells shouldn't have resulted in the stuff being magic-proof. Now, cleaning proof...yes, the Bundimun secretion most likely reacted with the..."
"...pomegranate and Re'em blood to form a solution that will resist all cleaning spells; of course! A cleaning solution might work to get rid of the stuff, but we would be here for quite a while doing it that way. Evanesco should work, though. I doubt it'd be vanish-proof."
Hermione pushed up the sleeves of her jumper, and handing George her wand to hold, she quickly swept her hair up into a loose, messy ponytail. "Well, let's give it a try, and if it doesn't work, we'll just have to do it by hand. I am not leaving this mess for your mother to deal with. You are both just lucky that no one else is home right now."
"Why is that, anyway?" George asked, as they all shot a vanishing spell at a section of the kitchen. "Dad's at work, Mum is out in Diagon Alley with Gin-Gin, but where's ickle Ronnikins?"
Hermione stared at the gloop on the counters as she answered. "He, he's at Grimmauld with Harry. I just came to get some parchment and quills out of my trunk... Fred, George? I think it may be vanish resistant after all."
The twins looked resignedly at their creation, which after a few vanishing charms actually looked rather more – clumped together – than it had been before. "We have no idea what reacted together to have that happen."
Hermione walked over to the counter closest to her and reached out to pick up a clump of bright orange gloop, but stayed her hand, looking back over her shoulder towards the twins. "I'm assuming that because neither of you panicked about having it on your hands and arms, that it is safe to touch?"
George nodded. "Oh, definitely. There was nothing used that is poisonous or harmful on its own, or in reaction with anything else. Spell resistant, obviously, but not harmful."
Picking up a handful of the orange gloop, Hermione was surprised to find that what had once been almost a liquid in looks and texture, was now rather like something she had held before...
"Play-Doh!"
"Huh?"
"This stuff; it resembles a muggle toy called Play-Doh. It's this squishy substance that you can mould into different shapes, and then either replace the dough back in its container to use again, or let the shape you made harden and have a figurine. This gloop reminds me of it."
Slowly, she began shaping the accidental Play-Doh gloop into a stick person – cylinders for legs, arms and body, and a small sphere for the head. Using a fingernail, she carved two eyes and a small into the sphere. Smiling, she looked up at the twins – and gasped. The little stick figure in her hand had begun pushing down on her fingers in order to make her let it go, and she dropped it onto the counter. It picked itself up and started walking, though quite wobbly, around. All three stared at the little doughy figure in surprise. Quickly, Fred picked up some blue dough and formed a crude cat. Within seconds, its tail was waving and it was squirming in his hand to be let down.
"Blimey," George breathed. "It has to be a reaction between the ingredients we used that form the bases for Invigoration draughts and Animation solutions. This is fantastic!"
"What were you trying to make for Bill and Fleur anyway, that uses all those kinds of ingredients?"
Fred snickered. "Uh, well, we were actually trying to make them sweets that would increase stamina, refresh the person and release inhibitions. Bill probably would have enjoyed them."
Hermione rolled her eyes and lobbed a hunk of the Play-Doh gloop at his head. Fred just grinned at her, and threw a handful of purple gloop back at her. She spluttered as it landed in her hair and glared. "Oh, you are just asking for it, you are." Fred managed to duck the next flying hunk, though, and it hit George square in the face. Soon, laughing, shrieks and flying Play-Doh gloop filled the air. The counters ended up being mostly cleaned off, but Hermione, the twins and the floor were covered.
"Stop! Stop!" Hermione eventually yelled, and collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs, holding her sides laughing. "We really do need to clean this place up. I wonder if this stuff will dissolve in water."
The twins shrugged and picked up their wands. "Only one way..."
"...to find out!"
"Aguamenti!" they intoned together. Surprisingly enough, the gloop did begin to dissolve as the streams of water hit it. Sighing in relief, Hermione joined in and they made quick work of cleaning the floor and the left over bits of gloop on the counters. They scrapped as much of the stuff off themselves as they could and set it on the kitchen table near the stick-figure person and cat – which had eventually stopped moving. It seemed whatever made them animate only lasted so long. The twins sat down and immediately began pulling colours together and playing with the gloop. Hermione hesitated for only a moment before joining them at the table.
"You know," she said, squishing some yellow into the shape of a star, "You should figure out how this happened, and sell it in your store. It's not a prank, but it would make a great toy. You could call it, um, Dynamic Dough, or something."
Fred and George looked at each other and broke into grins.
"Hermione, you're..."
"...a genius!"
Hermione blushed slightly and started forming a sun out of mixed yellow and orange, only to jump when she heard a crash and cursing come from the direction of the floo.
"Hermione?!" She cringed slightly when she realized just how long it had taken her to just get some parchment and quills from her trunk.
"I'm in the kitchen, Harry."
Harry and Ron both rounded the corner, stopping in the doorway in shock at the sight of Hermione sitting at the kitchen table with Fred and George, covered in coloured gunk and that same gunk walking, flying and glittering from different spots on the table.
"Bloody hell," Ron exclaimed, "where'd all this coloured stuff come from?"
Hermione couldn't stop herself from giggling, and after managing to get Harry and Ron to join them at the table pushed some of the newly named Dynamic Dough in front of them.
"Well you see," she said, making a stick lady to join the stick man Harry was already making, "when I got here I heard the explosion from the kitchen. When I came in to see what happened, your brothers were standing there, covered head to toe in this stuff..."
Harry appreciated the Play-Doh comparison, and Ron couldn't help but laugh when Hermione mentioned hitting both Fred and George in the face with the Dough; by the time Hermione herded Ron and Harry back through the floo to Grimmauld because she was 'completely filthy and needed a shower, desperately', and the twins left for their shop, there was a little multi-coloured house with eleven little stick figures running around it on the kitchen table, which Ginny found hilarious and Mrs. Weasley just confusing when they arrived back to the Burrow not even ten minutes later.