WRITTEN FOR QLFC SEASON 9, ROUND 7
TEAM: Holyhead Harpies, Chaser 2
PROMPT: Whoops! A potion gone wrong
4. (word) invisible
8. (creature) Demiguise
13. (character) Seamus Finnegan
WORD COUNT: 1573
Title source: Smoke and Mirrors by Imagine Dragons
AN: Finally! An opportunity to write something light-hearted! Nothing more and nothing less than pure crack. Fourth wall? Never heard of her.
That Comes Crashing Down on Me
"I still don't understand why you hired him," Harry said to George as they walked toward the back room of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.
"He met all of our hiring criteria," George answered breezily.
Harry frowned minutely. "You do know that he's a disaster at potions, causes frequent explosions, and is certifiably insane, right?"
George rolled his eyes impatiently. "I just said that he met all of our hiring criteria. Try to keep up, Harry."
"And I suddenly regret so very many things," Harry sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "Why did I ever waive my right to make executive decisions?"
George smacked the back of his head. "Quit whinging so we can get this meeting started."
Harry grimaced but followed George as he pushed open the door and stepped into the laboratory that was connected to the back room.
"Gentlemen! Welcome!"
Seamus Finnegan looked more or less like how Harry expected him to. His sandy hair was blackened with soot, his eyebrows were mostly singed off, and his smile gave off a distinctly maniacal vibe. The only difference to the way he commonly appeared at Hogwarts was that the young Irishman now donned a pair of oversized safety goggles, which caused his overall appearance to closely resemble a rather charred insect.
"Seamus," Harry replied nervously, nodding his head in greeting.
George's greeting, meanwhile, was much more exuberant. "Seamus, my good fellow! How are you?"
"Swell, George!"
"Jolly good," George cried.
Harry rolled his eyes at their antics and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Can we get a move on? I canceled lunch with my wife for this."
"As your majesty wishes." Seamus bowed, sweeping his arm grandly to the side, gesturing to a lone cauldron. "May I present the latest of a long string of brilliant ideas?"
Harry coughed discreetly while George looked on in interest.
"What are we looking at, mate?" George asked.
"Answer me this," Seamus said, keeping with his flamboyant, presentational tone."What has been our biggest customer draw? Besides our fantastic products, obviously."
George tilted his head in consideration. "Well, there was that time when we set up a brewing station so people could watch us work."
Harry nodded reluctantly in agreement. "Customers were oddly intrigued by watching the process. I even got a note from Minerva saying that interest in Potions had boomed that year."
"And why did we stop?" Seamus asked leadingly.
"Because we got disgustingly dirty and it took up too much store space."
"Bingo!" Seamus exclaimed. "Now, what if we could have a smaller potioneer that was also invisible to the human eye?"
Harry's head dropped into his hands, not liking where this was going. "I swear to Merlin that I will blackmail George into firing you if you suggest we cover a dwarf with my invisibility cloak."
Seamus looked extremely affronted at this suggestion. "Ye of little faith! Give me some credit, Potter. We work at a joke shop, not a bank."
"You, Finnegan." Harry corrected tiredly. "You work at a joke shop. I just have some weird fringe association that I can't bring myself to cut off."
Seamus harrumphed. "Fine. I work at a joke shop. Thus, it is my pleasure to introduce Dougal the Third!"
For several moments, nothing happened. Harry and George looked around expectantly, but there was worryingly little evidence that Seamus was not just an undiagnosed schizophrenic.
"I said, it's my pleasure to introduce Dougal the Third!"
"Seamus, it's okay if you want to tell us about an imaginary friend," Harry consoled gently, "Though I do have to question your naming choices."
"He's not imaginary!" Seamus insisted. "Dougal! Get your hairy arse out here!"
Suddenly, a long-haired, large-eyed creature materialized in front of them, perched atop a tall stool. It resembled a cross between a sloth and a small ape, and had white hair and a long, swishy tail.
George looked ready to burst with glee, but Harry just stared blankly. "Seamus… is that a bloody Demiguise?"
"Yes. His name is Dougal," Seamus declared proudly. "His grandfather belonged to Newt Scamander himself."
Harry nodded slowly. "And how did you… meet Dougal?"
Seamus waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it."
Harry grimaced. "Well, I shall ask no further questions for the sake of plausible deniability."
"It's nothing illegal," Seamus scoffed. "Well, probably."
"You're not making me feel any better, Finnegan."
Semus coughed. "Well, anyway. Dougal will be able to man our in-store potion station. As a demonstration, I have him currently brewing a potion of invisibility."
George spoke up tentatively. "Speaking of Dougal… where exactly is he?"
Seamus spun around in panic, finding an empty stool and an abandoned workstation.
"No," he moaned. "We had the whole routine down! The potion is so close to being finished! Why is he still going off script?"
George peered into the cauldron, observing the silvery wisps being emitted from the brew. "It just needs a skin sample from the intended user, then it's pretty much ready to be sold. Maybe Dougal decided it was done for now?"
Harry's eyes bugged out. "A skin sample?"
"Oh, it's nothing like what you're thinking, I'm sure," George reassured him. "Just an itty bit. We shed skin all the time, so even just rubbing your fingers together over the cauldron for a minute should be enough. Thankfully, there's a bit of leeway with the potion, so it'll work for a few people if it happens to get contaminated with multiple samples."
Suddenly, Dougal reappeared with a small vial of white, dandruff-like powder. Which, come to think of it, probably was just dandruff.
"Dougal…" Seamus muttered carefully. "Where did you get that from?"
Dougal raised a bony finger and pointed outward.
"What?!" Seamus exclaimed. "You got it from the reader?! You know we're not supposed to cross the fourth wall!"
"Oh no," Harry muttered, while George just looked on delightedly at the ensuing chaos.
Dougal began to tip the vial into the cauldron, much to Seamus's and Harry's dawning horrors.
"No!" Seamus lunged, attempting to knock the sample out of Dougal's hand, but the Demiguise used its precognitive sight to easily dodge him, swiftly emptying the vial into the now finished potion.
Unfortunately, Seamus couldn't stop his forward momentum and crashed into the cauldron, sending the silvery liquid flying across the room.
"Seamus!" Harry shouted, turning to his business partner. "George, fire him!"
George was laughing so hard that tears filled his eyes, but managed to shake his head in denial.
Seamus sat up groggily, blinking a few times until clarity returned to his eyes. "Wha' happened?"
"You fell," Harry deadpanned. "And knocked over the potion. And… oh bloody hell, where's the reader?!"
"The potion must have gotten on them and turned them invisible," George observed. "It was, after all, their skin that went into it."
Harry closed his eyes and counted to ten, letting out a deep breath. "Fantastic. Absolutely bloody fantastic. Now we don't even know if they're still reading."
By this point, Seamus had recovered and perched himself on the stool that Dougal, now conspicuously absent, once occupied.
"Oh my god," Seamus said. "If there's a story being told, but there's no one there to hear it, is there even a story at all?"
"Wha–"
"No, he's got a point, Harry," George interjected. "What's the point of all this if there's no one to read about it?"
"Okay, I've had enough," Harry decided. "I'm going to visit my wife and spend the rest of my lunch break in peace, away from you insane morons."
He twisted in place and Disapparated away from the store.
"Hey!" Seamus cried. "We won't let this insult stand, will we George?"
George shrugged. "I don't know if we really have a leg to stand on in this argument."
Seamus looked alarmed. "What happened to your leg?"
"What?" George furrowed his eyebrows. "No, it's a figure of speech. It me–"
"You don't have a leg?!" Seamus shrieked, seemingly ignoring George's explanation. "Oh my god, is this because the reader is gone?"
"Invisibile, Seamus," George corrected. "Not gone."
"But how do you know that?" Seamus insisted. "The reader could be gone, and that means the story is gone too, and if the story's gone, then we must be gone too! WHAT ARE WE?!"
George grabbed Seamus's shoulders, shaking him until Seamus stopped screaming.
"Deep breaths, mate. Nice, big, deep breaths."
Seamus took this as an instruction to hyperventilate even harder, gripping George's forearms as he panted.
"George," Seamus whispered.
"Yeah, mate?"
"It was nice knowing you in the time we had," Seamus said mournfully. "But our story's over now."
George rolled his eyes. "Seamus, you really need to stop getting high before you come to work."
"Goodbye, George."
Seamus smiled softly as his body went limp in George's arms and slowly dissolved into dust.
George sighed and wiped his hands off on his trousers. He straightened up and peered outward. "Seamus was right about one thing. I don't truly know if you're really gone or if you're invisible and still there. But if you are there, then I just want to tell you not to worry about Seamus. He pulls something like this every other week and clocks in the next day like nothing happened. He'll be fine."
George chuckled to himself. "If you're not still there, then I probably look like a right nutter talking to myself like this. Oh, well. Bye now."
AN: Beta'd by my fellow Harpies, gingerdream and MissyAndTheDocs
