January 2003

Monday morning, Ron was in the back room of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes testing out new skiving snackboxes. Madam Pomfrey figured out how to detect the old models, so Ron and George spent the better part of a year improving the illness-inducing potions. Their biggest difficulty was that didn't have access to many Hogwart's students. Without anyone to sneak the boxes in (and test whether Pomfrey could detect them), Ron and George were left to test them out themselves. So Ron took the fever potion, and Angelina used every diagnostic charm she could think of.

After nearly two hours, they were both frustrated. Angelina could still detect that the fever wasn't real, but Ron downed the antidote anyway and collapsed into a chair to drink a glass of water and think. One of the ingredients wasn't working right, and none of them could figure it out.

The charm at the door rang. George and Angelina can help them…they owe me that much for being the test subject this morning, Ron thought. He'd have to bribe Ginny or Harry or Neville to test things out the next time. In the past week alone, he'd tested out the nosebleed formula twice, the puking one four times, the fever one twice, the pink-eye formula once, and the fainting one twice. Damn pregnancy, giving Angelina a free pass.

It wasn't fair, really, to blame her. It was more fair to blame George. He somehow weaseled out of most of the testing by busying himself with inventory, accounting and the like. Although if Ron was honest with himself, he preferred the puking to the office work.

"Ronny-kins!" George's voice came from the front of the shop.

"Oi! Give me a few. Still recovering. You're the one puking when we test the pastilles on Wednesday!"

Ron leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes. The Fever Fancies had an awful hangover-like effect if you kept it in your system for more than a few minutes. They'd have to work on that, too.

A blonde head poked into the back room. "I just wanted to say hi while I was out delivering Quibblers—" She stopped and looked at the notes, potions and wrappers that littered the table. "You lot test these on yourselves?! Please tell me you don't let Angelina take a turn." Luna put a hand on Ron's forehead to test his temperature.

"Well, not while she's pregnant…"

Luna stared at Ron for a minute, her head cocked to the side. He closed his eyes. When he opened them (5 minutes later? 30 minutes later? His head ached), she was examining the parchment used to track the different formulas while muttering to herself.

"Drink your water," she said distractedly, and nudged a glass closer to him. He obeyed. She muttered some more, then looked at him. "Who did the initial calculations for this?"

"Calculations?"

"Yes, the Arithmancy calculations…it's the most precise way to develop a potion. Didn't you pay attention in 7th year…oh."

Ron laughed. "None of us have taken Arithmancy. Or 7th year potions. Well, maybe Angelina, but I doubt it. Anyway, it's mostly trial-and-error. George and F-Fred tested the original ones out on first years-"

Luna looked…well, not alarmed, but maybe concerned. "That sounds foolish. It's a wonder McGonagall didn't kick them out."

Ron put his head back on the table as Luna looked at the paper again. "You're not helpful here, Ron," he heard her say faintly. He really needed a Pepper-up. Or a nap. He nodded into the table, eyes closed. "Ronald." He was almost asleep. "Ron!"

"Wha?" he said, lifting his head.

"Come along, I'm going to have a word with your brother."

She took his arm and half-drug him to the front of the store., and placed him in front of George and Angelina. "This," Luna gestured to Ron, "is not helping. May I borrow him for a bit? I think I can solve your problem." She held up the parchment with the potions recipe. "Can I borrow these for the other formulas, too? I promise they'll come back."

"Um, those are proprietary…" said Angelina, looking confused.

"Yes, I'll be sure they'll only go to my house, then come right back. With proper calculations this time." She shot George a Look. George also looked confused.

Ron nodded, eyes still closed. His headache was getting worse.

George acquiesced. "Fine, just bring him back once you've fixed him up," he said, handing her a bundle of parchment.

"Alright." Luna took Ron's arm again to lead him out of the store. As they crossed the threshold she turned and motioned toward the wheelbarrow full of Quibblers outside the door. "Angelina, be a dear and re-load the paper machines at Olivianders, Fortescue's and the Cauldron, please? I've left the key on the box by your door."

Angelina still looked confused. "We have loads of stuff to do here, Luna. We can't just leave and do your work—"

"That's fine," replied Luna. "I'll just take Ronald to his mum then and explain what's happened then I'll be back for my papers."

George and Angelina looked at one another and had a wordless conversation. Ron smiled despite his headache. Luna sounded sweet and matter-of-fact, but she knew how Molly would react to the "product testing" stage of development. Especially if Ron came home from work in his current state.

"No, you go take care of Ronny-kins. Angie and I will take care of the Quibbler," George said with a sigh as Angelina nodded.

"Thank you so much! I promise I'll make it worth your while by fixing these calculations."

"And your boyfriend," added Angelina with a teasing glint in her eye. Ron's ears reddened.

"Yes, that, too, I suppose." Luna looked at him, then took his arm, and they apparated to the Lovegoods.

Luna led Ron to the couch and summoned a damp cloth for his eyes. He could hear her rummaging through the cabinets, then the sound of a mortar and pedestal.

"This is probably not as helpful as a proper potion, but it should do the trick," she said as she gave him a glass of water tinged with herbs.

"I usually just take a Pepper-up and a pain potion. Should've grabbed some from the shop."

"And what happens when they wear off?"

"George stuffs me in the Floo and I stumble up to my bedroom."

"Exactly." She watched him down the glass of herbed water, then refilled it. "Drink this, too. You're probably dehydrated."

"You know, when Muggles are dehydrated they put needles into their veins and pour water in."

"Sure they do." She looked concerned.

"And they use needles to inject pain potions right into their teeth."

"I think you need to lie down. I'm supposed to be the loony one," Luna said as she rubbed his back gently.

After drinking the second glass, Ron laid back down on the hideous pink couch and hoped Luna's mixture would work quickly. From beneath his cool cloth he could hear her rummaging around some more. He drifted off to sleep to the sound of her quill on the parchment.

When he opened his eyes, an hour had passed and his headache was gone. So was the heavy, sluggish feeling he got after product testing. Whatever Luna gave him worked. In the corner of the room, she was hunched over a large desk, surrounded by several books and ink-stained parchment. She muttered quietly to herself as she worked. She'd set a variety of dirigible plums along the window sill, and was wearing a tiara etched in runes. From outside, the sun poured into the room, glinting off of Luna's hair. She seemed to glow. Her jumper sleeves were pushed up and her wand was over her ear. There was a smudge of ink on her cheek. Ron thought she was adorable.

She hardly seemed to notice when Ron made his way across the room and peered over her shoulder. Luna had filled pages and pages with Arithmancy calculations and cross-references to the books on her desk. Leaned over her shoulder to look, wrapping his arms around her and breathing in the scent of her shampoo.

"Your brothers have good instincts on these things. It's quite remarkable, really," she said, half distracted. "It's a shame they never applied themselves. But I suppose sometimes too much schooling can make it harder to do things correctly."

"They applied themselves to what they wanted. Like torturing me. And the shop."

"Yes, but look how the formula improved after you joined in. And you only had 6th year potions, but you lot figured out how to refine it pretty well even without proper calculations."

Ron looked at the scribbled parchment she pushed toward him. None of it made sense, but he nodded anyway. "Pomfrey figured it out, though. So we're trying to make them less detectable."

Luna looked up at him, blinking as if seeing him for the first time. "Oh, you're feeling better! There's food in the cold pantry if you'd like it." She turned back to her work, flipping the pages of one of the books

Kissing her on the forehead, Ron thanked her ambled over to the pantry. Luna had half a loaf of bread, a small dish of goat cheese and a bowl of fruit. "I'll grab more food from my mum if I eat all of yours," he called over to her. Her head bobbed a few times, but he wasn't sure she heard him. Her quill continued to scratch on the parchment.

Ron slid a plate onto the desk next to her before settling back on the couch with his own lunch. Lacking anything else to read, he picked up a Quibbler from the table and flipped through it as he ate. He was halfway through an article titled: "Charmed Robots: The Secret to the Chudley Cannon's Next Season?" when Luna interrupted.

"You made me a plate!"

He looked up, and she was smiling ear to ear. "I reckoned you'd be hungry, too…"

"You shared food," she grinned back, as if she'd just won the Quidditch cup. Or whatever the Luna equivalent of that was. Ron shrugged and went back to his reading.

A few minutes later she interrupted him again. "I think it's finished. I gave you two options. The first one is like what you have now, with an active side of the candy, and the antidote. Of course, that produces more by-products, so it's going to be easier to detect, and Madam Pomfrey has already caught on to that. The other option is to have three parts. The first is the part that makes you sick, but there's a middle part you take after you get to the infirmary, or when you're on your way. It neutralizes some of the ingredients in the first part, so when Madam Pomfrey does her diagnostics, she won't figure out that it was induced. Then, later you take the third, which gets rid of the rest of the symptoms. The other problem you had was that no one took into account the effect of the sweets on the potions. You can't develop a potion separate from the carrier, because the carrier, the pastilles or nougat or fancy, changes how the potion is metabolized." She pulled different papers out of the stack and putting them in front of Ron, as if he understood. "So part of what the second piece does is counteract the flavoring and sugar. Finally, I don't think it's wise to make them in one piece. The ingredients can mix in the middle and give you unexpected results. Come to think of it, that's probably why you were so sick today, well, that and how long it was in your system. According to this, you only have about a half hour before you have to take the neutralizer or the antidote, or you start getting the symptoms for real."

Ron's eyes glazed over halfway through Luna's explanation. "Can you put that in proper English? So George and I can understand it?"

"Do either of you speak proper English?"

Ron raised his eyebrows at her and seh blinked back, saying "you're best off making it in 3 parts and keeping it from mixing. That'll buy you a few years before Pomfrey figures it out. I wrote down the potions on this one. A few will take longer to brew than before, but they'll be safer."

Ron looked at the new recipes in awe. "This is brilliant!" She'd solved in an hour what they'd been working on for weeks.

"You can get a lot done if you don't limit yourself to the way you're supposed to think. But you already know that, what with George and Fred..." She trailed off and started stacking parchment. "Oh, and before you test them, have Hermione or Ginny check my calculations because sometimes I make foolish mistakes when I get too excited." She shoved another stack of parchment toward Ron.

"After yesterday, I don't think Ginny is going to be very helpful."

"Oh, she's just pregnant." Luna continued to sort the papers as if she'd causally mentioned the temperature or what was for dinner.

Ron looked at her, mouth open. "She told you she's pregnant?!"

"I don't think she knows yet…" Luna stood to put the books back on the shelves.

"Luna!"

"Yes?"

"Uh, that's one of those things you have to explain. You can't just drop a bomb like that and move on."

"Okay." She continued re-shelving books.

Ron cleared his throat. "Luna?"

"Yes?"

"So what makes you think my sister is pregnant? The overall daft-ness? Let me tell you, it's nothing new. She's always been a prat."

"She's different. It's hard to explain, I just know when these things happen. I mean, part of it is her mood, but part is the size of her-"

"But you're sure?"

"No one can be fully sure of anything," she responded vaguely as she tidied up her desk.

Of course. Ron wasn't sure whether he should believe her or not, so he filed this in the 'wait and see' portion of his brain. That portion was getting larger every time he was with Luna.

When they returned to the shop, it was only half 12.

"Nice of ya to re-join us, Ron. Having a nooner today?" George grinned at the pair and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

Ron's ears got red again, but Luna seemed unaffected by (or unaware of) the teasing. She marched up to George and handed him the potions instructions she'd developed. He flipped through them, skeptical at first. But after the first one he flipped a bit faster. By the end he was excited.

"Three parts? Why didn't we think of that…it's brilliant!"

"That's what I told her," Ron said fondly.

"Ange!" George called into the back room. "Come see this!"

The couple huddled over the parchment for a few minutes, exclaiming over the changes to the formula.

"So, Lovegood, you want a job or something?" George asked after whispering with his wife.

"No, I'm okay. The Quibbler is quite busy," she said, looking up from the Pygmy Puff she was petting. "Thank you, by the way, for finishing the deliveries. It was helpful."

"He's serious, Luna," interjected Angelina, "I know he takes the Mickey, but this is a game-changer for us. We have other formulas you could look at…you could be a consultant or something, help us troubleshoot."

Luna shrugged her shoulders vaguely. "I suppose. If you need me, let me know. It was fun, like solving a mystery!"

"So what do we owe you for today?" George asked. "We'll pay you fair wages, you saved us heaps of work."

Luna looked at her feet and drummed her toes on the stone floor. "I don't like adding money into personal relationships…it tempts the nargles, you know."

Everyone stared at her, waiting for her to explain further. Instead she looked to Ron with a cheery grin. "You get off at 4 o'clock, right? I'll meet you then! And so she turned to grab her wheelbarrow and skipped out of the store.

"Barmy, that one," George muttered.

"But she's smart, too. I don't know what to make of her," Angelina added.

Ron couldn't help but agree.

A/N In my head cannon, Arithmancy is kind of math, but can also be applied like Chemistry to predict how potions/spells will work.