Chapter 192: The Aberrants That Appeared in the Room
When all the potion in mid-air had finished falling, the ceiling, walls, and floor of the room seemed as if covered by a layer of black gauze.
A strong potion stench filled the air, and standing inside felt like being inside a cauldron of potion, which was unbearable.
Duncan lowered the long table he had been holding above his head, cast several Cleaning Charms in succession, cleared away the nearby potion, and let the smell lessen a little.
Duncan let out a long breath, looked toward the three people standing motionless not far away, and asked, "Are you lot all right?"
"Duncan, when did you get here?" Fred slowly raised his head at these words. "We might have run into a slight problem..."
"Merlin's most baggy Y-fronts!" Duncan's eyes widened in astonishment, for Fred's face was twisted into an unbelievable state.
His whole face had been kneaded and pulled, hanging in mid-air and swaying with his movements, and his nose had lengthened, as if a carrot had been installed there.
His eyelids were gone, and his eyeballs rolled back and forth in their sockets, testing the brink of slipping out, which looked extremely frightening.
His lips had been stretched long, and his mouth had moved down to his chest, so when he spoke he could only shift his mouth back to where his teeth were in order to make a sound.
Neville and George looked no better than Fred, and Neville was even worse. All the skin over his whole body sagged in loose folds.
Staring at the three of them, whose appearances were like aberrants, Duncan couldn't help asking, "What potion on earth were you brewing? Why is the effect this horrific?"
Pro was frightened by the sight of Fred and the others, but it was also a bit curious.
So it curled up in Duncan's pocket, poked its head out from time to time, covered its eyes with its paws, and peeked through the gaps between its claws.
After being scared, it shrank back into the pocket, and once it had calmed down it popped out again, covering its eyes to sneak a look.
"Professor Snape's classes have all been far too dull lately, so we wanted to make a sweet that, once eaten, would make people think of happy things and laugh heartily," George said, wobbling his head and trying hard not to let his eyeballs slip from their sockets. "But judging by how it looks now, we seem to have failed..."
"A sweet that makes people happy?" Duncan sized up George and the others' faces.
If the potion's effect had even the slightest connection to George's description, it wouldn't be this utterly unconnected.
"Duncan, please help us think of something. How can we get to the Hospital Wing without alarming anyone in our current state?"
Fred asked hopefully, and Neville also raised his head, revealing a rather abstract face, and stared fixedly at Duncan.
If they went out looking like this, it would be no surprise if they shot to the top of Hogwarts' list of terrifying legends in no time at all.
But Fred, George, and Neville all declared that they were still young and couldn't shoulder such a great honor just yet, and would prefer to live low-key lives.
"Good thing I came today, or you could be waiting to become famous across Hogwarts," Duncan said irritably, picking up the suitcase he had set to the side just now. "And next time, could you be a bit more careful? With a situation like today's, I'm afraid that the next time I come in I'll be seeing three corpses, and then I'll have to drag you out with great effort and waste energy explaining things to the professors."
Neville's roving eyeballs froze, and he looked at the suitcase in Duncan's hand with tears in his eyes. "Wonderful, we don't have to walk through the castle to the Hospital Wing. If someone photographed me as I am now and sent it to my gran, she'd be frightened to death..."
"Oh, how touching—familial love!" Fred pretended to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. "If our mum were to learn this news..."
George met Fred's eyes. "Even if we weren't dead, she'd storm the school to kill us herself, lest we continue disgracing the Weasley name."
"All right. Even turned out like this, I still can't shut your mouths."
Duncan rolled his eyes, opened the case and set it on the floor, stepped in until half his body was below the edge, and waved. "All of you, come in with me."
Leading the three down the stairs into the work shed, he found the pixies were playing about on the far side of the building. Hearing the sound, they looked up.
"Mom!"
Several pixies were so frightened that they trembled all over and nearly fell to the floor, crying out in panic one after another, their voices breaking.
They flurried around the room like headless flies, with clattering sounds ringing out as things all around were knocked to the floor.
Seeing how frightened the pixies were, Fred and George froze for a moment, and after they reacted, their eyes suddenly lit up.
In the past, whenever these little fellows ran into them, they were fearless. Now they looked this pitiful...
Fred and George glanced at each other, lifted up their drooping facial skin with their hands, and hooked their mouths into smiles with their fingers.
They suddenly felt that these twisted faces weren't so unbearable after all, and might even be used for some fun.
For example, to scare Filch, so that no one would dare come out to patrol at night again.
With that brilliant idea in mind, Fred no longer resisted being seen with this face, and quickly turned his head to say to Duncan:
"Duncan, let's discuss something. How about we play in your case for a bit first and go to the Hospital Wing another day?"
Duncan, who was calming the pixies' fear, turned around and frowned. "What mischief are you plotting now?"
Neville looked at the two of them in puzzlement. They looked so ugly right now—why weren't they hurrying to get treated, and were still thinking about playing here?
"We want to be a bit better before we go to the Hospital Wing, so as not to frighten Madam Pomfrey," Fred said, speaking nonsense without blushing or skipping a beat.
Duncan didn't believe a single word, but he didn't expose the two either. On the contrary, he followed Fred's lead and said, "All right. Since you're so kind, we won't go to the Hospital Wing for the time being. I'll take you somewhere else to have some fun first, and perhaps that person can also fix your faces."
"Who is it?" Fred stared at Duncan in curiosity.
Being fixedly watched by two bright eyeballs was rather unnerving, so Duncan averted his gaze. "Follow me and you'll know."
He led the Weasley twins and Neville to the Vanishing Cabinet in the corner, opened the cabinet door, stepped inside, and leaned back against the wooden panelling to steady himself.
"What are you standing there for? Get in, quickly—we should set off!" Seeing Neville and the others standing still, Duncan waved and urged them on.
"Duncan, you're not trying to fool us, are you?" Fred eyed the brown cabinet suspiciously. There was nothing unusual about it.
"What are you afraid of?" Duncan reached out and dragged the few of them to his side, then shut the cabinet tight. "Looking like this, even if I abducted you to Knockturn Alley, the lot of you together probably wouldn't fetch a single Galleon!"
George seemed to suffer a heavy blow. "Merlin's beard, Duncan, your words wound our hearts too deeply!"
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