Forever and a Day ~ James Potter

Rosie Outsmarted

Chapter Forty-Six

08:47

The girls opened the door to the dark classroom at the end of the corridor in the dungeons to find that the number of students studying the subject since last year had halved at least. Of course, Rosie had been aware that the class numbers would inevitably shrink, but she couldn't help but feel a looming feeling of glumness seeming to spread through the air, not wanting to admit that some of her old classmates in other houses might be gone for good.

Although, she knew that this would only be the tip of the dungheap since none of the Slytherins will have been taken out of school, so some of her classes might be down to single digits. The good thing was that the four Gryffindor girls could all manage to sit around one large table together in the middle of the room without worrying that a stranger would have to sit with them - unless they were told to move again.

Slughorn wasn't sitting in the classroom waiting to give her a remark about his dreaded Slug Club either, seeing as even though she'd been up out of bed very late, Lily had managed to get them all there thirteen minutes early. So, they all had the chance to settle down and take out their books and equipment, laying them out on the desk neatly and preparing to start a new school year.

The classroom door was swung open again, and everyone turned around, the chatter simmering for a moment before people noticed that it was only three of the Marauders walking in rather than their rotund professor, chatting loudly to one another and ignoring the dirty looks from the Slytherin students. They all sat down at the only table to the girls' right, as far away from the Slytherins as possible.

Rosie noticed that Peter was missing from the group even though a few weeks ago, he had been telling her that he wanted to take Potions at N.E.W.T level, so evidently, he had received an 'Acceptable' or less on his O.W.L exam.

Snape was sat at a desk with two other slimy-looking boys, seemingly very sorry for himself as he moved his focus between looking very sadly towards Lily – who'd chosen to sit with as much of her back facing him as possible - and scowling deeply at James and Sirius with a look of pure loathing.

James looked over his shoulder and winked at Rosie. However, before she had time to respond with a witty remark, Slughorn waddled into the room with a beaming smile on his face, clicking the door shut behind himself with a non-verbal spell and glancing around at the class to see who had stuck around, "Settle down now, thank you. You will be needing your cauldrons today – one between two."

Rosie and Marlene grinned at each other before reaching under their desks to take out the two medium-sized cauldrons stored underneath to share with Lily and Alice. Rosie loved doing practical work in all of her subjects, especially this one, as whenever they were assessed on their potion-making ability, she actually managed to match Lily's scores with almost top marks every time.

Slughorn had walked behind his desk at the front, where there was a rather large bubbling cauldron sitting below the blank chalkboard. He turned and lifted his wand, levitating the small length of chalk to begin writing, "Today we will be studying both the theory and practicality of brewing the 'Draught of Living Death-"

There was a slightly excited murmur that ran its way through the class for a few moments, causing Slughorn to smile knowingly at his students before continuing, "Now, is there anyone who has done a little extra studying over the holidays that can tell me the ingredients for this potion?"

As always, Lily's hand shot up eagerly along with Remus, who was a little more hesitant in getting the attention put on himself. Though, what seemed to surprise Slughorn was the fact that Rosie lifted her hand confidently as well, and even more of a shock was James's hand being stuck up in the air – although both of them were very good at the subject, they usually had better things to do than contribute to his trivial questions.