He had searched the castle again and again. He had ordered the house elfs to search the castle again and again. And neither had found a lemon drop. Severus couldn’t believe that in a place as huge as Hogwarts there wasn’t one bloody damned lemon drop left.
He had wondered where he should go to get the drops when he remembered the note Albus had slipped him during one of their meal-time conversations. He took the note from one of his many pockets and, pondering why he had actually kept it, read the name of the shop where Albus got his lemon drops from. Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.
Somehow Hermione must have found out that he planned a trip to Diagon Alley because she never left his side for two days and asked him every minute whether she could accompany him on this trip.
Irrationally, he had said yes. And now he was standing scowling at the entrance to Diagon Alley while Hermione was trying to do a headstand on a lamppost.
“Miss Granger, come!” he growled.
She abandoned her failing attempts to manage the headstand and ran towards one of the shops.
Several hours later, they still hadn’t reached the Weasley’s joke shop because Hermione kept escaping Severus und running into random shops.
She had thrown herself into the large ice-cream boxes of Florean Fortscue’s Ice-Cream Parlour, sending off several old witches screaming at Severus that he had to learn to control his daughter or else they would take this case in front of the Wizengamot.
She had filched the Firebolt from the shop window of Quality Quidditch Supplies and attempted to fly off with it, which had resulted in Severus earning himself a life-long ban on that shop.
She had stormed into Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions and demanded to get a customised Halloween costume. Severus hadn’t had a clue about where she had been and when he arrived in the shop her costume was ready and he grudgingly had to pay for it.
She had magically locked the doors of Flourish and Blotts and thus hindered the people inside the shop from leaving it. She had refused to tell Severus the spell with which she had done it for about thirty minutes, after which he had managed to open the doors again by testing all unlocking spells he knew.
After Hermione had knocked down several people by running through Diagon Alley to prove to Severus that she was faster than him they finally reached Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Hermione again was faster than Severus and entered the shop before him.
“Hermione! What pleasant surprise!” the twins greeted her. Their smiles lessoned a bit when they saw who entered next.
“Er .. Professor Snape?” Fred was the first to get a grip on himself and close his mouth that had fallen open. “To what do we owe the honour of your visit?”
It was a rather small shop, but the shelves where all chock-full of items “ cakes, rubber ducks, sweeets, books and many other things, no doubt bewitched to do mischief.
“I need lemon drops,” Severus growled silently.
“Of course .. do you want the lemon drops to do anything? Growl, scowl, howl, yowl? Or rather some that change their colour, or we also have lemon drops that turn into badly-written Potions essays once you shout at them to copy something down .. but no, I don’t think you want the last type, do you?” George said.
“I only want ordinary lemon drops.”
“Shall we wrap them?”
“No, I need them for Miss Granger .. by the way, where is she now?”
Hermione was at the moment hiding under the counter.
“What are you doing there, Hermione?” Fred asked.
“I feel there’s something in the air .. something evil is one its way here .. don’t “ don’t you feel it?” she said in a quivering voice, quite like Trelawny’s. “There! There! You have to hide, Fred! Quickly, come here to me!” she pulled him under the counter, not paying attention to all the sharp corners that were on the counter, scratching him.
Severus watched the spectacle, smirking, happy that for once Hermione’s madness was released on other people than himself.
“She’s developed quite a sense of melodrama,” George remarked.
“I still need lemon drops.”
“Of course.” George bent over a small wooden box and took out some lemon drops. “How many do you want?”
“I don’t know,” said Severus, glancing estimatingly at Hermione. “I guess it’d be best you give me all you have.”
George’s eybrows shot into the air (literally, he must have put some charm on them) and Fred, who had managed to disentangle himself from Hermione’s strong grip, asked incredulously, “why do you need them, Professor?”
“That is my business.”
“And why have you brought Hermione if you only want to buy ordinary lemon drops?” George asked, suspiciously. “You’re not“”
“No, we’re not,” Severus answered sourly. “If you must know, Miss Granger has been hit by ‘The Curse Of The Lemon Drops’ and is currently unable to articulate sane sentences. She usually screams, screeches, shrieks, confesses her love for me or demolishes my quarters.”
“The Curse Of The “ wait, she confessed her love for you?” they gasped.
“She’s mad, and I am certainly not in love with her.”
The twins audibly let out the breath they had held. Severus snorted. “You know something about this curse?” he asked.
“Why would you think that?”
“You’re not very good at hiding your thoughts. They’re written plainly on your face,” Severus informed the twins.
They looked at each other, apparently searching for any writing on themselves.
“What do you know about this curse?” he prompted impatiently.
“Well ..” Fred started. “Do you mean you’ve got the book? She’s been hitten by the real curse? The real Curse Of The Lemon Drops, not just the curse of the lemon drops?”
“Yes.”
“Did you brew the potion to find out what she’d eaten?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t go mad like her?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Are you sure?”
“YES!”
The twins burst into manic laughter. “You mean, you can’t rhyme well?”
“Apparently not.”
More laughter. “That’s great, you know. Do you have the book with you?” George asked innocently.
“Yes, of course.”
He handed them the book and they looked at its cover. After some minutes, they couldn’t control themselves anymore and burst out laughing again.
“What’s so funny about this?” Severus asked angrily.
“The book just showed us the conversation you had,” explained Fred.
“Your rhyming is really abysmal,” George added.
Severus’ eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you have to talk to it in rhymes?” he asked, suspicious of the whole situation. Hermione was still hiding under the counter, now persuading another customer to do the same.
“Because we wrote it.”
“You wrote it.”
“Yes, we wrote it. But had we known that Hermione would find it, we would have attached a warning to it,” George said sympathetically.
“It was for fun. Or do you really think anyone would be eating a herring, spinach or lemon drops in the library? Madam Pince would go mad!”
“Hermione seems to have done exactly this,” Severus pointed out.
“Yeah well .. it seems you have to get her there and make her eat lemon drops again.”
“Will she be back to normal then?”
“I hope so,” Fred said. “We never really had a chance to test the curses. Madam Pince chased us away from the library whenever we brought the spinach there. We simply left the book, too.”
Throwing a glance at Hermione, who by now had managed to make two more customers hide under the counter, Severus decided it was time to go. “May I have the drops, now?”
The twins handed him the drops and pulled Hermione out from under the counter. “Unless you want to stay with us rather than with him?” Fred asked her jokingly.
“Nothing separates me from my Sevvie!” she shouted enraged at the twins and stomped out of the shop, following Severus.