Title: All in the Name of Work
Prompt: Pepper Spray
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 743
A/N: none
...
All in the Name of Work
He wasn't sure if he had ever been in this much pain before. Even a stone wall crushing him in the final battle hadn't hurt this much.
He had never meant for it to go this far, and it had all started out so innocently. Well, as innocent as it can be when you're inventing the second wave of Skiving Snack Boxes.
They had done projectile vomiting, fevers, and nosebleeds, but now they wanted to come up with three more ailments they could sell along with their antidotes.
After a three hour long thinking session, George had decided to look into unexplained paralysis of the limbs and Fred had taken on head colds. After George had somehow managed to lose the ability to move both arms and legs at the same time and had to wait for Fred to come home after an evening out, Fred decided he had taken the better half of the deal.
So for the last few weeks he had been sporting varying degrees of sneezing, watery eyes, a running nose and the odd cough for good measure.
What he didn't expect from this was that Hermione would become concerned for his health and feel the need to take care of him.
This was the main reason for his current predicament. He had notice that the more ill he had seemed, the more caring Hermione had become. Not that she wasn't caring when he was well, it's just he got extra attention when he was 'suffering'.
He had yet to tell her that he wasn't actually suffering at all, in that he didn't feel ill, he just was a little tired of wiping his nose.
The small bottle of what he had heard being called 'Pepper Spray' had seemed so innocent and he had waved away the concerns for experimenting with it. It seemed perfect for what he wanted: it caused shortness of breath and stinging eyes which was what he was looking for for the main ingredient.
Expecting only a small amount of stinging in his eyes he had pointed the can at his face and squeezed the trigger.
Now he was rolling around, swearing to high heaven and banging his fists on the floor. He had never felt pain like it.
'Fred! What's wrong? What's happen-...' He heard Hermione stop at where he thought he had dropped the bottle. 'Oh, please tell me you did not squirt yourself with Pepper Spray.'
'Might... have...'
'But why would you-... it's just... are you insane?'
'I didn't know it would hurt this bloody much!'
'Oh, yes, because squirting yourself with something that only stings a little bit is perfectly sensible!'
'It's for work! I don't normally go around trying to give myself a cold, you know!'
'Oh, well if it's for work then that's perfectly accept-...'
If Fred hadn't been in the pain he was, he would be concerned that he just dropped himself in a huge pile of Hippogryff dung, but because he was still writhing in agony, he didn't care one bit.
'Are you saying that for the past four weeks I've been thinking you've been ill with a very bad cold that would not go and trying to make you feel better, when it's all been self inflicted?'
Fred crawled over to the sofa and sat back against it and tried to open his eyes. A very blurry shape - which he knew by the large mass of brown was Hermione - filled his vision.
'That might be the case, yes,' he said as he shut his eyes again.
'Right, well in which case I shall leave you to carry on with your experiments!'
She disappeared from his very blurry view.
'Wait! Hermione, please! You have to help me!'
'I do not!'
'Okay, I'm sorry! I'll make it up to you!'
'How?'
'I'll stop arsing around, tell you I really fancy you and take you out on a date instead of tricking you into caring for me.'
He waited for her response, his eyes still burning.
'I want flowers and chocolates on our first date and I want to go somewhere nice, you are not just going to take me to the pub!'
'Absolutely. Chocolates, flowers, somewhere posh.'
'Fine, apology accepted.'
'Thank you, now can you help me with this?'
'I'll try, but you might just have to sit it out.'
'Will you sit it out with me?'
'Well, seeing as though you asked nicely...'