HP Dual Masters and I had a blast in Hogwarts.

Chapter 323 Rescuing Fred and George

“We’ve brought a solution.” I pointed to the oddly shaped crucible bubbling in the corner, the eerie blue liquid corroding the stone bricks. “Scorpion Tail Butterfly scale powder can stabilize the molecular structure of potions, you see…”

Sirius snapped his fingers at the opportune moment, and the Scorpion-tailed Butterfly deftly passed through Severus's raised wand, its stinger lightly touching the surface of the liquid.

The boiling potion suddenly calmed down, and the deep blue turned into a pure silver-white.

Severus was practically pressed against the crucible, a flicker of surprise crossing his eyes beneath his hood.

“In exchange…” George began cautiously, and the twins exchanged a knowing glance, “we promise to clean this place even cleaner than your robes!”

Severus remained silent for a long time, then picked up a piece of falling scale with the tip of his wand.

When he finally spoke, there was a barely perceptible hint of approval in his voice: "Submit a report on the catalytic effect of scales on the moderating agent before tomorrow's morning class."

As he turned, his black robes billowed in the wind, but he stopped at the threshold. "As for you," he glanced at Sirius, "keep an eye on that butterfly and don't let it carve patterns on my cauldron."

The moment the door slammed shut, scorpion butterflies fluttered merrily around the twins. Fred suddenly pointed at Sirius and laughed, "The scales on your hair! They're shinier than Filch's wig now!"

As the iron gate slammed shut with a tremor, the silvery-purple afterimage of the scorpion-tailed butterfly pierced the darkness of the dungeon.

Fred exaggeratedly clutched his stomach, while George laughed so hard he pounded the wall. The twins' laughter bounced off the moldy stone wall.

Sirius frantically patted his hair, causing even more scales to fall, which looked like a handful of shimmering stardust in the candlelight.

"Enough!" I pressed my throbbing temples, and with a gentle wave of my wand at the mess on the ground, the sticky rags automatically wrung out, and the corroded, pitted ground shimmered and was restored to its original state.

“Fred Weasley, George Weasley—” I deliberately dragged out the last syllable, watching the twins' comical stiffening expressions, “Is this how you conduct Potions class without me around?”

George swallowed hard and nudged Fred secretly. "Ayers, you know Professor Snape was targeting us. Without you here to protect us today, we're in even worse shape."

“Targeted?” I raised an eyebrow at George, tapping my wand to straighten the crooked cauldron. “I remember last week you stuffed a biting dwarf puff into his robes?”

Before I could finish speaking, Fred couldn't hold back his laughter and quickly covered his mouth after being glared at by my sharp eyes.

Sirius leaned against the door as the Scorpion-tailed Butterfly used its stinger to carve crooked incantations into his notebook.

George scratched the back of his head, his ears turning red: "Well, I just wanted to try out my new invention! Who knew that dwarf Pu would make his home in Snape's hood..."

His voice grew softer and softer until it was finally drowned out by Fred's muffled laughter.

The candlelight in the cellar suddenly flickered, and a faint smell of wormwood drifted into the air—clearly, Severus was patrolling nearby.

"That's not the point." I unfolded the parchment, and the scorpion butterfly immediately perched obediently on the corner, using its stinger to draw a diagram of the potion's ingredients. "The ratio of the modifier cannot be more than three drops of snake tooth powder, and in your last experiment's records..."

I suddenly stopped, staring at the flamboyant words "Add two handfuls of sugar to increase the sweetness" on the parchment, my temples throbbing again.

Fred leaned closer and said matter-of-factly, "The book says that improving the taste counts as innovation! And with the added sugar as a modifier, at least people won't throw up after drinking it!"

Before he could finish speaking, the scorpion butterfly suddenly flapped its wings, and the scales it flung from its stinger precisely covered his mouth.

Sirius laughed so hard he could barely breathe, almost tearing his newly drawn potion notebook in half.

The scorpion butterfly landed on Fred's head, its antennae trembling uneasily, its stinger, covered in scales, still swaying gently.

Fred's eyes widened as he reached up to wipe the sticky stuff from his mouth, only to end up with a face full of white frost, looking like a clown covered in flour.

"Stop rubbing!" Sirius laughed, slamming his hand on the table, making the ink bottle shake. "That's sedative powder from a scorpion-tailed butterfly. Be careful your tongue goes numb if you keep moving!"

George barely managed to suppress his laughter, then pulled out a parchment and began to record: "Experiment log - March 17, sweetener triggered scorpion butterfly attack behavior, subject experienced facial stiffness complication."

I suppressed a laugh, pretending to look at them with a serious expression, while staring at the crucible bubbling with eerie bubbles.

The soothing agent, which should have been translucent, now had an eerie caramel color, with a few unmelted sugar cubes floating on its surface.

"According to the basic rules of potion making, the addition of any unapproved ingredient will result in—"

“A warning!” Fred protested incoherently, scales falling from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “But the rules don’t say you can’t improve the taste! Last week, some Slytherin guy added bay leaves to the sleeping potion, and Professor Snape even praised him for being creative!”

“You can do this in private, but you do it in Severus’ Potions class? Do you think you have a lot of points in your own house and it doesn’t matter if you lose them all?” I had just finished criticizing Fred and George.

Professor McGonagall appeared there at some point, her gaze sweeping over the mess on the ground, her brows furrowing tightly.

Fred was about to speak in his defense when Professor McGonagall raised her hand to stop him. "No need to say more, Mr. Weasley."

Her gaze fell on the strange caramel-colored liquid in the crucible. With a gentle wave of her wand, the sticky syrup automatically clumped together and floated in the air.

George paused in writing, secretly glancing at Professor McGonagall's gloomy face, swallowed hard, and continued writing.

Professor McGonagall walked slowly to the cauldron, bent down to examine the modifier closely, and asked, "Do you know how dangerous it is to arbitrarily change a potion's recipe?"

Her voice was icy, carrying an undeniable authority: "If anyone were to accidentally ingest this, the consequences would be unimaginable!"

Fred's playful grin vanished, replaced by an unusual seriousness.

He looked down at his hands, which were covered in scales, and said softly, "We just wanted to make the palatability potion taste better. It's so pitiful to see those freshmen vomit after drinking it..."

"The idea may be good, but the method is completely wrong." Professor McGonagall's tone softened slightly. With a light tap of her wand, the suspended syrup was cleared away, and the scorpion butterfly was gently guided to fly out of the window.

“Professor Snape’s class allows no carelessness. It’s about respecting knowledge and being responsible for your own and others’ safety.” She turned to look at the parchment in George’s hand.

“Give this journal to Severus and tell him it’s an account of the Gryffindor incident.” Seeing George’s troubled expression, Professor McGonagall added, “Don’t worry, I’ll explain the situation to him. But a warning is still necessary; I hope you’ll remember this lesson.”

George, Fred, and I exchanged glances and nodded simultaneously. After Professor McGonagall left, the laboratory fell silent.

Fred broke the silence: "It seems we need to think of a better way... without violating the rules."

A familiar light rekindled in his eyes, and George and I exchanged a smile—this was the real Fred, never defeated by setbacks, always full of whimsy.

Sirius grumbled about his ink-stained cuffs, said goodbye to me, and headed back to his office to grade papers.

The moment the door closed, I turned to look at Fred and George, who were still struggling with the sticky syrup. One of them was using a levitation charm to clean the cauldron with his wand, while the other was standing on tiptoe wiping away the splattered powder on the wall. Their movements were as comical as two clumsy owls.

"Stop dawdling." I lowered my voice, poked the mess on the floor with my wand, and caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in a black robe outside the window. "Professor Snape is still waiting around the corner in the corridor to inspect the 'results'."

Fred nearly dropped his wand, and the foam-covered cauldron slammed back onto the table with a clatter: "What did you say?! Didn't he already leave?"

“This is his territory.” I pointed to the ticking hourglass on the wall, the sand almost gone. “How could he possibly let us stay here?”

George suddenly gasped. The potion notes on the parchment had somehow become soaked in syrup, and the writing had become stained with eerie patches of color.

He hurriedly cast a drying spell, and amidst the rising heat, Fred scrambled towards the broom in the corner, but the broom handle got stuck on the sticky floor, leaving a trail of elongated sugar strands.

"Calm down! Deal with the crucible first!" I pressed down on his twitching hand, and my wand drew complex arcs in the air.

The boiling caramel-colored liquid seemed to be grasped by an invisible hand, slowly shrinking back into the crucible, with fine silvery-white foam rising on the surface, faintly revealing the luster that a tempering agent should have.

"What...what kind of magic is this?" George stared in disbelief, forgetting to wave his wand.

"Structure Reorganization Spell from the fourth-grade Transformation class," I wiped the sweat from my brow, the black-robed figure outside the window already closing in, "No time to explain, quickly put the Scorpion Tail Butterfly Scale Powder into the sealed jar!"

Just then, the laboratory door was silently pushed open.

Snape's black robes swept in like a tide, his gaze sweeping across the barely tidy tabletop before finally settling on the gradually transparent liquid in the crucible.

Fred and George stood frozen in place, like frogs that had been petrified.

“It seems Gryffindor’s cleanliness is more praiseworthy than their potion-making talent.” Snape tapped the tip of his wand on the cauldron, and the silvery-white foam burst open instantly, releasing a faint, sweet fragrance from the rising mist. “But I remember that basic calming potions shouldn’t smell like this.”

George swallowed hard, crumpling the parchment between his fingers. "Professor, we...we were just trying to improve the texture..."

“Improvement?” Snape sneered, suddenly pressing his wand against Fred’s chest. “Let me guess—was it a molecular recombination charm? Or were some forbidden ingredients secretly added?”

Fred's Adam's apple bobbed, but he suddenly grinned. "No, Professor. We just... rearranged the order of the sweet molecules." He dipped his finger into the liquid on the rim of the crucible and drew a glowing rune in the air. The tiny golden specks automatically formed the shape of candies.

Snape's pupils contracted slightly, and his wand slowly retracted. The laboratory fell silent, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.

After a long pause, he turned and walked towards the door, his black robe sweeping across the syrup stains on the floor. "Deliver the complete recipe to my office before the next Potions class." Just as the door was about to close, a barely audible additional sentence came, "Deduct ten points—for your lucky success."

The moment the door slammed shut, Fred collapsed to the floor, and George's wand clattered onto the table: "I thought I was going to die this time!"

I watched as the buffer gradually solidified, the golden specks still shimmering on its surface: "Don't make me cover for you again next time."

Despite saying that, the corners of her mouth involuntarily turned up – after all, the Weasley twins were probably the only ones who could make a potion improvement that Professor Snape "approved".

As the candles in the laboratory went out one by one, moonlight leaked through the broken protective barrier, casting dappled silver shadows on Fred and George's robes.

The two exchanged a glance and quickened their pace toward the door, their boots scraping against the freshly cleaned floor with a soft rustling sound.

"Stop." My voice echoed in the empty corridor. The tip of my wand picked up two unruly silver strands and precisely wrapped them around the back of their collars.

Fred bounced up like a cat being lifted up, while George, like a cat that had given up on getting pricked, did the same.

“You haven’t forgotten, have you?” I pulled the two of them back, the parchment slipping out of George’s pocket. “You two haven’t forgotten what I asked you to do today, have you?”

Fred twisted his neck, his Adam's apple bobbing in the moonlight: "Curfew is over! Filch's patrol—"

“Filch is chasing Peeves who stole his stuff.” I pulled them into the corridor leading to the Room of Requirement, where ghosts on the walls curiously floated over to watch. “But you two, you turned the crystal ball into fireworks in Divination class last week, have you finished your prophecy homework for this month?”

George suddenly wailed, "How do you even remember this!" He futilely clawed at the door frame, but I gripped his robe tightly.

The door to the Room of Requirement opened with a click, and warm yellow light poured out, illuminating the piles of review materials scattered all over the floor—from crumpled potion notebooks to brand-new divination charts, and a heap of golden Galleons.

"First, we'll brush up on potion theory, then practice divination, and finally, we'll practice defense against the dark magic." I pressed the two of them down in front of a long table piled high with parchment, tapped my wand lightly, and a floating quill automatically filled with ink. "Each subject completed will be rewarded with ten Galleons."

Fred's eyes suddenly lit up, and he reached for the nearest Galleon, but I knocked him away with my wand: "Finish writing the justification for Snape's improved formula first." I unfolded their previous failed experimental log, the charred edges still emitting a burnt smell. "Do you know how to avoid the backlash from the Molecular Recombination Charm you used today in actual combat?"

George's gaze fell on the "Taboos of Advanced Potion Making" in the pile of documents: "If you adjust the frequency of magic output..." He suddenly grabbed a quill and wrote rapidly on the parchment, oblivious to the ink splashing on Fred's nose.

Fred initially lay there listlessly, but gradually became attracted by the formulas, grabbed the draft paper, and began to work out the calculations.