selenophile || remus lupin

chapter thirty seven

After transfigurations, the Gryffindors had advanced potions with the Slytherins. The four girls walked down the steps into the dark, cold dungeons and walked inside the potions classroom. The classroom was just barely more tolerable than the rest of the dungeons, Professor Slughorn had just a bit of a homely feel which made Ophelia a bit warmer.

Ophelia sat down next to Marlene, who was her assigned potions partner for the term.

"Hello, hello! Welcome! Today we're going to be working on the draught of living death, but before that, I have a few potions up here that I would like to talk about."

He motioned towards his desk where four different potions sat: one that was a pinkish color and had spiraling steam, one that looked thick and bubbly with a dark brown color, one that was completely clear and looked just like water, and one that was an intense gold color.

The students all sat up in their seats, trying to figure out which potions were up there. Professor Slughorn lifted up a small vial, which held the brown, muddy one.

"Now, can anyone tell me what this potion is?"

All four marauders raised their hands, as well as Lily, Alice, Ophelia, Snape, and Narcissa.

"Mr. Pettigrew!" the old man merrily called out.

"Polyjuice potion," he squeaked out.

"Very good, my dear boy, very good. And what does polyjuice potion do, Mr Pettigrew?"

"Well sir, if you put a piece of someone into it, like hair or something, when you drink it, you turn into that person for a short while."

"Very good! Five points to Gryffindor," Slughorn beamed, and Peter looked rather proud of himself, in the most adorable way possible.

He set the vial down and pointed to a small cauldron, full of the pink potion.

"Can anyone tell me which potion this is?"

Once again, the four marauders raised their hands, along with Lily, Alice, Marlene, Ophelia, and a few other Slytherins that Ophelia didn't know the name of.

"Miss Black!"

"That's Amortentia, sir. You can tell because of its pink color and the spiraling steam," she said.

"And what exactly is Amortentia?"

"It's generally referred to as a love potion, but it really technically isn't a true love potion. It doesn't create love, so to speak, but instead an obsession or infatuation. A cool thing about this potion is that it smells different to every person, based on what that person likes the most."

"Would you be willing to come up here and tell the class what it is that you smell in the potion?"

"Sure," Ophelia stood up from her stool and walked up to the front of the classroom. She could feel every students' eyes on her back.

She walked to the potion and put her face next to the spiraling steam, taking a deep breath in.

"I smell new books, that smell during thunderstorms, and baking bread," she said, with a small smile on her face, enjoying the way the potion made her feel. She felt like she wanted to stay and smell the potion forever, but she pulled away and sat down at her seat.

She glanced over at Remus for a few seconds, earning a look from Sirius. She smelled one more thing in the potion that she didn't even register what it was until she sat back down at her seat. Chocolate.

"Ten points to Gryffindor. What about this potion?" Professor Slughorn held up a very small vial of the golden potion.

Not very many people raised their hands at this, only a select few.

"Mr Snape," called out Slughorn.

"Felix Felicis. Liquid Luck," he said.

"And what, Mr Snape, is Liquid Luck?"

"It's quite obvious, it makes the drinker lucky. However, it should be used sparingly, as it can cause arrogance, overconfidence, and recklessness," he glared at the marauders while he said this.

"Very good, five points to Slytherin. Now, who can tell me what potion this is?" he motioned towards the clear vial. "And yes, it is a potion, not water, don't worry. Miss Evans!"

"That's veritaserum! It's a clear and odorless liquid that forces the drinker to tell the truth!"

"Very good, Miss Evans, very good. Five points to Gryffindor, my dear. Now class, this is the prize for today. Whoever creates a successful draught of living death gets this entire vial. But don't be fooled, the draught of living death is a very difficult potion to make. Very difficult indeed. In all my years of teaching, I've had few students successfully brew it. We will go over it in more detail next class, where you will have the opportunity to take notes and such. But right now, open your books and get brewing! You have one hour!"

Over the course of the next hour, Ophelia and Marlene struggled to make the potion, and ended up with an odd orange color in their cauldron. Snape brewed a decent potion, but not well enough to Slughorn's liking. He wrote quite a bit in his textbook, to which the marauders were delighted to make fun of him for.

"Writing in your diary, Snivelly?" called Sirius from across the room.

The only person who managed to brew an acceptable draught of living death was, of course, Lily. She earned the vial of veritaserum which she gratefully accepted.

Over lunch, Lily was questioned by her friends about what she was planning to do with the potion.

"So, Evans, how are you going to use the veritaserum?" asked Sirius, right before he took a large bite of a sandwich.

"I'm not quite sure yet. I don't think I'll use it anytime soon, though, sorry to disappoint. I think i'm just going to wait until I have a reason to use it, and not waste it on something stupid."

"Fair enough," said Alice.

After a quick lunch, Ophelia went to muggle studies where they learned about muggle television. It was rather interesting, in Ophelia's opinion at least. It was fascinating that even though they didn't have magic, they found a way to make pictures move. They learned about something called Disney, which was a muggle movie company, and learned about a few popular muggle movies where there were princesses from far off lands, who fell in love and talked to animals.

They were shown a few examples of movies on a projector that Professor Quirrel brought in. There were two different types of movies, animated and live action. While the animations were rather cute, Ophelia loved the live action movies. She found them very interesting, and decided that she would get a television once she graduated.

The last class of the day was Defence Against the Dark Arts with the Hufflepuffs. Their professor taught them about Protego, the shield charm. Ophelia and the marauders picked it up quite quickly, especially James, but the rest of the class was having a bit of trouble. Ophelia walked around the classroom and helped a few students with the spell.

She helped Lisa Higgs a bit, who picked it up quickly after a bit of help. She showed Marlene who finally understood and went to help Lily. A Hufflepuff with curly blonde hair, named Maisy Walp, asked for help from Ophelia, and it took a while, but the girl got a grasp of the charm after a while of one on one instruction.

After school, James drilled the quidditch team hard, even though they didn't have a match for a couple of months. James' reasoning was to 'not lose skill' and 'practice makes perfect' but everyone knew that he just wanted to be out on the pitch with the others.

It had been a normal school day, or as normal as it could get with Ophelia. There would always be something exciting happening in the wizarding world, that's just how it was.