That next day, as the fifth year students sat waiting for Potions to start. Fred and George placed themselves right on the aisle waiting for Professor Snape to waltz in so they could get him. They used a spell to hide it on his seat so that would be another fart sound and plus they made sure it would reek badly.
“All right students, I want total attention on the potion we’re about to…” snapped Professor Snape, as he strode into the room walking right past Fred.
*FART!*
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Snape with a weird look on their faces before one of the Ravenclaw students broke out into loud giggles which pulled the rest into giggles.
“Twenty points from Ravenclaw!” Snape snarled off, as the room went silent. Severus walked towards his chalkboard and waved his wand over the board as words flowed out of his wand and onto the board. There was one thing different the hair or scale of an animal. “Those are the ingredients for the Dictanimal potion. It’s Latin for speak in the tongues of animals, for those who are writing this down. Now start to work! By the end of today’s class, this class will be able to speak in the tongues of a certain animal for an hour.”
The students knew when Snape sat down, he would get a big surprise in hearing another fart going off and whatever goes with it too. They watched as they cut up the ingredients as Snape walked towards his chair and started to sit down. He quickly stood up and started to walk around the class making sure everyone was putting the right ingredients in their cauldron.
Then after he was satisfied that everyone had cut their ingredients properly, he strode back towards his chair and sat down right on the cushion.
*FART*
Everyone went quiet as they looked towards the now fuming mad Potion Master. Then, the next sound that was heard was someone laughing which got everyone else laughing hard. The loud sound of everyone laughing was making everyone’s eyes tear up. Snape glared towards each student and he knew which ones were really responsible for the two pranks that happened in the class for they were smiling big.
“Weasleys…DETENTION! 25 points each!” snarled off Snape, glaring towards the two red headed twins. “Back to your potions or everyone in this class will lose 25 points each!”
Everyone stopped laughing and started to work on their potion. Once, a while Snape would walk around the class and glare at Fred and George who were busily stirring their cauldron. He glared at them as he figured exactly what punishment that they should have.
Severus Snape walked into his office and pulled out a vial, reading the label snake scales. This would be perfect. The only one who would understand the hissing would be Harry Potter. But that would make everyone beyond his Potion class think that they are parseltongue like Harry. He laughed softly under his breath as he looked at the vial. He strode out of his office and placed the vial on his desk.
“When the liquid comes to a yellow color, you may come up here and collect what animal I have picked out for you. You are to stir the ingredient into your cauldron for another five minutes and it should turn from yellow to a pale green. If your cauldron turns pale green, raise your hand,” growled Snape, glaring at the students.
Several minutes later, Fred walked up to Snape’s desk and collected the ingredient for their potion. Fred poured the ingredients into the cauldron as George stirred it. The other students walked back from Snape’s desk with their ingredients and poured it into their cauldron.
Five minutes later, Fred raised his hand as did a few other students. Snape stood from his chair and sneered towards Fred as he strode towards their cauldron.
“Let’s see what your animal is, Mr. Weasley. Both of you drink a vial of the potion now,” Snape sneered, as he looked at them.
Fred and George looked at each other and did what Snape said. “Oh barf, that tasted disgusting!”
The words that came out of their mouths were the hisses of a snake. Snape just laughed evilly as he walked away from them. Everyone looked at them spooked by what they heard could Snape have given them snake scales, instead of another animal. The other students could talk like an owl or some other bird or a dog language. The room was quite chaotic for several minutes before Snape commanded silence.
“The Terror Twins will have detention tonight here at 7pm right after dinner is done. Don’t be late or it’s a hundred points taken off your House points. Class dismissed!” snapped Severus Snape, as he watched as the students all went hurrying out the door still speaking the animal language.
Fred and George walked into the Great Hall and sat down next to Harry and spoke, “Harry, help us! We’re speaking in the tongue of a snake!”
Harry had to look twice at both Fred and George and replied in a hiss, “What!? How are you able to speak like a snake?”
They both hissed back at him. “We can’t understand your hissing, Harry. We can only speak it not understand what is said! The potion is called Dictanimal Potion.”
Harry nodded and asked, “How long will this last?”
“An hour, that’s what Snape said!” Fred hissed, slamming his fist down onto the table knocking over a goblet of pumpkin juice.
“Damn, then, you two will just have to remain quiet for the next…um. Hey Lee! What time is it?” asked Harry, turning to look at Lee Jordan.
“It’s noon, Harry.” said Lee.
“Well, you got only the next forty minutes to go before you can speak without being a pseudo parseltongue. Unlike me, I’m a real one,” spoke Harry, placing his hand on Fred’s shoulder.
Fred and George mumbled something about detention that night in the Potion room with Snape after dinner. An hour later, they regained normal speech but they swore they would pull one more prank on the Potion Master.
Later, that night, they ended up washing out all the cauldrons in the Potion room by hand and also washing the floors by hand. It was three am by the time they entered the common room and fell asleep on the couch not carrying if they were in their own beds or not.
Shara had crept down the stairs to get some extra study time in when she saw the two sleeping students on the couch. She pulled couple of blankets out of the closet where they kept the extra blankets and wrapped them around both Fred and George.
“Thanks mum,” mumbled George, before he snuggled tight against the blanket.
“Love you mum,” mumbled Fred, as he did the same as George with the blanket.
Shara watched them sleep for a few minutes before returning to her room and fell asleep.
© Copyright 2002 Beth Brownell