Chapter 2. The offer
Fred and George entered the third floor of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
To any muggle this floor looked like any other hospital floor, except on this floor the first thing you heard was uncontrollable giggling, and instead of white coats, healers went about in lime green robes.
All the way to the back of the floor, there was a small sign that read 'potions room', it had an 'authorized personnel only' sign below. Fred and George looked around and walked in swiftly, they were seldomly stopped by rules after all.
The room's smells were dizzying, a perfect mix of pleasant and unpleasant from seemingly endless corridors of different sized cauldrons brewing. Most had self-stirring spoons, others had small canaries dropping in ingredients and banishing once completed the task. The whole place was strangely lit, one side, was bright and had windows that cast the sun in perfectly, while the other was almost pitch black. The sound of constants bubbling almost drowned the barely audible wireless playing a fast-paced song from the Weird Sisters in the back of the room.
In the centre of the room there was a huge table with what seemed like thousands of ingredients labelled out in small glass dishes and in the middle of this table was a huge cage full of little canaries. A little canary would fly out intermittently from the opened cage, pick up an ingredient and drop it in a cauldron before banishing with a pop. They stared in awe taking mental notes for their own production line.
"I knew I should have locked the door." Said a teasing voice from the back, startling them a bit.
In the far side of the room there was a simple table, a young pretty witch, around 19 years old sat oddly behind it, she had one foot on her chair, giving the boys a glance of her athletic looking leg in what looked like black tights underneath her lime green robe.
She was reading through what seemed like mountains of parchments. Her alabaster skin, red lips and blue-green eyes partially covered by her side-parted dark golden blond hair, which was currently up in a messy bun apparently held together by her ebony wand sticking up on top of her head.
"You're a sight for sore eyes Anna." Fred said smiling.
"Nice setup you got going here." George admired.
That made her look up and smile. "You like it?" Her figure suddenly banished into a white barn owl with her wand in its talons and flew across the room gracefully re-stretching back into a girl between them now with her pin straight hair down to the middle of her back, and wand in her hand.
"Still can't get used to that." Fred whispered almost to himself.
"I designed it myself, each morning I come in and conjure a canary for each ingredient needed to be added in the day, I task it a time of flight and a cauldron, once they serve their purpose they banish."
"Wicked." Fred and George said in unison.
Anna smiled, obviously proud of her work. "That way I can use the rest of my shift to do my trainee work and study."
A bell suddenly rang on top of some of the cauldrons.
"Oh! Ditannies are done." She waved her wand and the ringing cauldrons were levitated and sent to another section of the room where their contents were poured into already labelled vials.
"Does that mean you're free once you get off your shift?" Fred beamed.
"How would you like another part time job in the same vein as this?" George asked slyly.
"What? No." Truthfully she was still wary around the twins, she started walking away towards her table once more.
The twins dashed in front of her to stop her.
"Come on Anna, you're obviously brilliant at this and we need help for our store." Fred pleaded
"Pleeeease…" George said with puppy dog eyes.
"Guys I'm flattered, but I'm just too busy, you think this healer business is easy? See that row of cauldrons over there? I've been brewing antidotes for your messed-up potions all week." She pointed and a huge row with all sorts different coloured potions.
"Exactly, we need your help to test out our newest line of potions before selling them at our place." Fred explained.
"And we need your expertise, in case we mess up." George added quickly.
"I don't know…" Anna seemed doubtful.
"Think of it as pre-emptive healing, that way you won't have to treat any more patients coming in with side effects from our merchandise." George explained.
"Hence, you'll have less work." Fred quickly added.
"We'll also pay you." George emphasized.
"Handsomely." Fred added.
Anna stood silently, she didn't really need the money, she earned enough in the potions room to get her by on her own. She was drawn to the offer out of her own need to tinker with stuff.
"Fine, I'll consider it. My shift ends in twenty. Go to the waiting room and we can head to your place afterwards."