Flowers for Scabbers

Chapter Sixteen

What Happened During Hogwarts

Percy leaving home was an absolute nightmare coming to life, as Fred and George soon discovered.

Percy's potion levels were getting higher by the day and had gone from High to Ridiculously High in less than three weeks. His eyes had become permanently glassy and so blue they were almost transparent. It was pointless to even try and talk to him into seeing what was happening to him these days. He surely didn't 'feel' the potion anymore—he didn't look like he felt anything beyond sleep deprivation and a state of constant panic. Reasoning with him had become impossible. He couldn't see beyond the Minister's arse anymore. Every day, he stayed in the office, writing reports until the small bones in his hands broke. He was working so hard that it had become normal for them to find him passed out near the table. Whenever they'd throw water on his face to wake him up, he'd crack open his doll-like eyes and then mutter something about how he shouldn't be sleeping when there was so much work to do. It was like Percy had turned into an Inferi, like they'd Imperio-ed him into being a slave. He worked through everything, barely thinking about normal things like bathing, sleeping, and eating. It was like he was beyond all those things. Like he just existed to float aimlessly amongst all the things that he 'should' be doing.

Every day, Fred and George visited him at around lunch time just to take him back home for an hour—make sure he ate and showered. His hair was growing longer by the day. He had stubble and his eyes were glazed over all the time.

But there was only so much they could do. They had to go back to Hogwarts (not that they stayed there for long, George thought back with a smile.)

Before they'd gone, they'd enlisted Bill and Charlie to the task of finding someone else to take care of him. Charlie, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, had taken a year off from work to take care of his 'ailing brother'.

As if life wasn't stressful enough, their last year in Hogwarts was absolute shite. They'd plucked this cow straight out of the Ministry to frighten the masses with her powder pink robes and sickly-sweet threats. She was the size of a small, threatening plant (well, George wouldn't know which one, he was awful at Herbology) but there were tonnes of those soul-sucking buggers around! Every decree ole Umbridge had passed on had been reiterated to the point where it had become seared into their brains. It was like living in a prison. Fred and George knew that they couldn't actually stay there for long. Firstly, because they weren't going to listen to a toad bark orders at them all school year. And secondly, even though Charlie was around, they kept making up horrible scenarios about him working himself up to a heart attack and still deciding to pop into work right after 'that stupid thing had been sorted out.' It was enough to make you shudder just lying awake at night, thinking of someone that was slowly being poisoned by a potion you made.

They made heed into their quest of finding an antidote but when you had sixty-five ingredients in your potion? Well…

"Sixty-five ingredients?" Bill repeated, sickened. They'd had that conversation a couple of days after Percy left home, before he'd become a spineless Inferi with no will to suppress even his most basic urges. "How did you even get sixty-five potion ingredients? Do you even know what half these things combined with each other really do?"

Well, they'd never thought about it like that, but when Bill had asked him that, it sounded pretty bad.

"We stole the ingredients from that slimy git, Snape," George answered. "Um…alright, so we don't know how everything reacts with one another," he admitted. "But he's not dead, is he?"

"A ringing endorsement," Bill sarcastically replied. "You fed him sixty-five potion ingredients that have made him feel compelled to work twenty-four-seven? A potion that made him yell at dad about how ambitionless he is. But at least he's not dead, right?" he shook his head, sticking his hands into his pockets. "We need to go to someone in an apothecary to look over these. There's no sense in trying to do this by ourselves when-when his bloody life is on the line!"

"We can do that?" George looked surprised, and Bill looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

"Sixty-five," Bill echoed incredulously. "I wasn't even sure you'd be able to name sixty-five ingredients!" well, they didn't have to names of all of them, did they? Or what they actually do? Wasn't potion making a bit like making a nice warm soup? Sometimes, you chucked in things you weren't 100% sure about until it gave you the result you wanted!

"Oi, we're smarter than you, arsehole," Fred crossed his arms. "But we just don't show it off with badges."

"Uh huh," George nodded his head in agreement. "That's how nice we are that we don't rub it in your face."

"So modest," Bill rolled his eyes. But that was when they made the arrangements at the time to go see about the potion.

George had felt hopeful the first time they'd gone to the apothecary, especially when they found Audrey Brown stood behind the bench. Well, she was a real blast from the past. George shuddered just thinking about it. She was pleasant to them and asked them how they were getting on. She'd told them that funnily enough, she hadn't even gotten an O.W.L in Potions but she was making complex concoctions by the bucketful and selling them for cheap. But actually having the knack to sell them? Forget about it. She'd been trying to get a couple to buy a caffeine potion for ten minutes before they'd left, potionless. Do you want a discount? was the first thing she'd asked them. Well, yeah, ask the poor family if they wanted a discount. Real marketing right there. But she looked prettier than George remembered with her long lashes, dark hair and athletic built.

"Hello! We've…we've come to you about a potion," Bill stammered. "My name is Bill Weasley, and this is Fred and George. They've given one of our brothers a potion…that's been effecting my brother for two years…and they've made with-with sixty-five ingredients and…" he didn't seem to get over that sixty-five ingredient bollocks! Seriously? Did you just go to a chef and tell them that you had to sort out a dish that had sixty-five ingredients in it? They'd probably chuck it out of the window! "Well, it's a disaster and it'll probably kill him! Can you help us?"

"It won't kill him kill him," Fred whispered. "It's been two years since he's taken it." If a potion was going to kill their brother, it would've done it already. "Remember? It's the thing we've used on Percy when…"

"Percy? You're Percy's twin brothers!" Audrey realised. "Oh, I've not seen Percy in ages but… wait, do you mean…?" her eyes widened. "The thing that he's been given before? That thing that's been making him stay up until the wee hours of the morning, revising things that he knows that he already knows?" well, she was making him sound mental, but Fred nodded his head. "But that's…that's not possible! You'd have to have put in some really horrific things in it to even make it last as long as you have," her eyes snapped up in fright.

"Wait, did you say sixty-five ingredients?" Bill even had her saying it now. She looked visibly ill. "Wolfsbane, one of the most complex potions to ever make, only needs eight! And five of them are just variations of aconite!"

"I thought it was made with monkshood," George looked at Fred with a confused expression.

"I thought it was made with wolfsbane," Fred rubbed his neck.

"They're the same thing!" Audrey sighed deeply looking like she was about to have a panic attack. "Oh Godric, what have you done? Because Percy was a great mate before…before he'd stopped answering all of our owls and dropped off the face of the Earth." Her tone had gone cold. "I suppose that's your doing then?" she asked them. George felt heat rise to his cheeks and even Fred was flushing. "Sixty-five ingredients! It'll be easier to find a more effective cure for dragon pox!"

"We were just trying to help him," Fred whispered. "Can we make an antidote for him? Do you…do you think?"

When George had slid over the list of the ingredients they used, she looked like she was about to have an aneurysm.

"Oh Godric, where did you even get these? The first five ingredients alone shouldn't be mixed together! And the second eight are…" Audrey cocked her head to one side. "Does he sleep at all?" Bill shook his head. "Well, then I think I might've found out why! He'd need a Draught of Living Death just to have a nap! I'd be surprised if he gets more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time." She looked thoroughly disturbed. "This is…this is terrible."

Fred flinched. "Well, um…" he was rubbing his arm. "Can-can you make an antidote?" he asked again.

Audrey just stared at the ingredient list. "Do you what species of Whomping Willow leaves you've used? Or how much moonstone powder you've put in? And what about this? Something glowing yellow in a jar? Do you mean—"

"Species?" George didn't even know there was more than one! "And-and it's just a glowing yellow thing in a jar! How many of them can you actually…" he paused when he turned to see her display and noticed they had a lot of yellow glowing things in a jar. "Oh. I think it's the thing on the left…or maybe that bottom row…"

Audrey sighed deeply. "And you've said that-that it's still in him?" she paled.

Fred showed her the Potion Detector that at the time, had been blissfully just pointing towards 'High'. "Do you think that this thing could be broken?" he asked hopefully. "I mean it is second-hand and all…"

"Do you have any of his blood?" Audrey asked. Fred produced a vial containing a single, preserved drop. When she'd put it into her Potion Detector, the readings were just as appalling. She looked distraught. "Um…yes, well, maybe…" her voice had gone down to a whisper. "I'll run a potion level on it."

"We have a rat," George suddenly decided to mention. "We've given him the same potion and it's gone batty."

Audrey looked appalled. "Really now!" she clamped her hand over her mouth. "I don't condone animal cruelty!"

She didn't exactly have much hope for an antidote. She said that she'd try, but she wouldn't hold her breath. A couple of months later, Bill was on his near sixtieth attempt in brewing an antidote. Fred and George weren't having any luck either. Audrey looked worse every time they'd seen her. But they'd stopped asking Charlie for help after he'd made a fifth cauldron explode when trying to brew a successful potion. Who cared about cauldron bottom thickness when you had a fool like Charlie burning Percy's flat down, trying to brew a basic Cure for Boils for his icky back?

Well, they didn't really think it was hopeless per say but they didn't have much hope in the situation.

"What happens if we never find a cure, Freddy?" George had asked him once. They were trying to sleep in the Gryffindor dorm rooms. Lee and Seamus were snoring. But like they could sleep. What were they supposed to do?

"I guess we just tell mum and dad," Fred winced at the thought. They were still trying hard to try and find a cure for all of this, an antidote, a treatment plan, something to give to him that would make him less mad. "They'll be bloody livid about it, but-but… I suppose then we can all figure out what to do together. And if we can't-we can't help him, then… then I guess we just accept that this is what's happened to him now. Like he's ill with a disease or…"

George didn't like the sound of that, but it made sense. How long could they avoid being confronted about what they've done? He shuddered at the mere thought. "But Fred, he's…" he closed his eyes. "Sometimes, I think it'll be better if he's gone. He's not sleeping anymore," Charlie had been trying to give him some expensive sleeping potions and Percy barely slept more than an hour or two, he'd written most days. "It's like the potion is torturing him."

"So, what? We just put him down?" Fred raised an eyebrow at him. "Like he's some sort of animal? Or maybe we can just stick him in the Janus Thickey ward for the rest of his life." His hands were shaking.

George didn't think that that was the answer either, but he said nothing. Percy had sent back mum's jumper that year and it hurt her so much. She wouldn't stop crying about it. Everyone had this idea that Percy was a monster. But George felt like the real monster there. He never thought that this would happen to his brother.

Scabbers had become a shadow of a rat. He was bald and skeletal and hadn't slept in so long that his eyes were producing serious amounts of clear discharge. His paws had been mangled to the point of no return. He could barely get up even with assistance, and even being so ill, he still got on that blasted wheel a few times a day. George had taken it out but Scabbers just tried to climb over the cage in protest, crying and shrieking until George put the wheel back. His potion level registered as Toxic, and George could barely sleep without thinking about him.

He'd bought Scabbers a special formula for vitality and weight gain from a Hogsmeade shop instead of buying anything from Zonko's. He tried to use it on him, but Scabbers kept throwing up and being ill everywhere.

George had read about poisoning. He'd tried to pump his stomach of the toxin but that just made him weaker. It had been too long for it to really work. In a last-ditch effort, he'd gotten a healthy rat and started to take out some of Scabbers' poisoned blood, which was thick and sweet-smelling and replacing it with the healthy rat's blood. For a couple of days, Scabbers was almost back to normal and was healthier looking than he had been in weeks.

"But we're not going to be taking pints of Percy's blood and giving him some of ours now, would we?" Fred asked.

"No," George replied. He didn't think so. He'd taken so much blood out of Scabbers. He was practically pale and translucent looking before mock blood transfusion. He couldn't imagine consciously taking that much blood from Percy's body without getting dizzy. "But it's an idea!"

"You want to take out nearly half of Percy's body weight in blood and give him some of ours?" Fred reiterated.

"Well, um…we can share the burden," George stammered. Between them, they could spare a pint of blood each!

When George had written a letter to mention it to Audrey, she'd said that wizarding dialysis would do the same thing but it would eventually break the machine itself at some point from the amount of 'toxic substances that were in the potion'. That was reassuraing! But it was something, wasn't it?

George could imagine it now. Having to go tell their parents that they'd poisoned Percy with an ambition potion and that if he wasn't hooked to an expensive machine that cleaned out his blood on a regular basis, he might turn into a shriveled-up coot before his twentieth birthday! But even if they did, he'd eventually break the machine and…

By April, Charlie's letters were getting shorter and messier, which was giving both Fred and George a panic.

But the reality of the situation really clicked when George found Scabbers, who was now bald, thin and shaky, collapsed in his cage at one in the morning. "No, no, no," George's heart was racing in his chest as he pulled him out with shaky, sweaty hands. George had taken him out and started to do compressions with a finger until they felt like it might break off. "Fred!" George shrieked out, not caring if he woke up the rest of the blokes (unlikely as that was.

Fred snapped his eyes open, staring at George with a bleary expression. "What?" he noticed frail Scabbers in his hand.

"He's dying," George whispered. Fred looked genuinely green around the gills as he got up and went to see Scabbers. The rat looked nothing like he was before when they'd gotten him, cheeky and energetic. No, he felt like he was giving chest compressions to a rat they'd already been dissected and sewed back up, as if he were already gone.

"No, he…he can't be dying," Fred was shaking, trying not to meet George's eyes. "Can you do that any faster?"

Georg's finger felt like it might snap off. "No," he whispered. But felt himself relax when Scabbers started stirring and put him down into the cage. He watched, with a sickened expression, as a nearly dead Scabbers tried to climb onto his wheel with mangled paws and shiny, beady eyes. "Fred, look."

Fred was pale as a ghost, staring at the rat with teary eyes. "No," he said, his voice cracking. Then he put his head into his hands and started crying. His sobs were soft. "No, no, no, no…"

George felt stunned, staring at this poor battered animal that was obviously suffering. He felt like he should've let it die, because he couldn't really enjoy getting onto that wheel. He hadn't realised that he'd been crying either until he placed a hand on his cheek and felt just how wet it was. He could hear every heartbeat and every short, heart-wrenching sob that came out of Fred's mouth. He reached over to hold Fred, but it felt so foreign, him holding Fred, comforting Fred, when Fred had never needed it. Fred wrapped his arms around him as tightly as he could.

"We have to get out of here," Fred decided. They couldn't stay in school with a dying rat, not knowing exactly what was happening back at home with Charlie and Percy.

George nodded his head. "I…I-I know," he whispered. They needed to open the joke shop. They needed the money to pay for the dialysis machine. He'd pay for ten of them a month if he could if it would make Percy better. He'd realised how serious this was now, and it was a horrific, disgusting revelation. This potion wasn't just torturing Percy, it was killing him, really, really killing him and he probably didn't even know. "We have to see him."

"I'm scared," Fred admitted. George realised that he was too. When they'd left Percy, he was an absolute state. He could barely imagine how he must be now. George imagined Percy, running around the wheel, not caring where he was heading or if his legs could even take him there. Where was he going? He probably didn't know. But he had to get there.

The day after was their fireworks display. They'd almost forgotten about Percy and everything else about the potion until George went to pick up Scabbers' cage to take with him, still glowing from having have one-upped that cow, Umbridge. But the glow faded, and fear seized him up, knocking the breath straight out of his lungs.

Scabbers was dead.