The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

Double Potions

"If you pay attention," said Slughorn's voice from behind James and Sirius, who jumped, having not realized that he was behind them, "Potions will prove to be a fascinating subject." He smiled mildly at the boys as they scrambled to put away the parchment.

"We were paying attention," James claimed.

"Oh and were you?" Slughorn asked, "Even with that riveting game of Quidditch your drawings were playing?"

James's face turned red, "We were just doodling, we can listen and draw at the same time. Helps the concentration." Sirius nodded.

Severus snickered as Slughorn continued up to the front of the classroom, "So you know exactly what it was I was talking about?"

"Yes," James said, though a bit hesitantly.

Slughorn nodded for a moment. "Very well then... What do you get if you mixed an infusion of asphodel and wormwood?"

James stared blankly at Slughorn, who stared back at him with a steady gaze.

"Hmm.. missed that bit of my speech, I see... How about this. When and where might you look for a bezoar?"

Again, James stared blankly. He felt as though he'd momentarily tuned into Slughorn's talk and heard the word bezoar, though he didn't know when. Slughorn's eyes were twinkling with amusement now and Severus was practically falling off his chair with silent laughter up front while Sirius stared down at the grain in the wood table top before him.

"Well, third time's the charm, isn't it, Potter? How about the difference between monkshood and aconite? Do you know?"

But again, James had no idea.

Professor Slughorn chuckled, "Well, James, it seems doodling does not help concentration and therefore I shall ask you to please refrain from doing so in this class as there are very important things that we will be talking about in this room."

James felt his neck go hot as Severus then turned to Lily and whispered, "How humiliating this must be for our new celebrity." He glanced back with a smirking grin on his face as Lily giggled.

James paid much better attention through the second half of the class, and they watched as Professor Slughorn talked about the different plants and tools that had come along with their potions kits and demonstrated how to use the brass scales to measure intricately.

When he'd finished going on about the basic information of potion-making, Professor Slughorn set them to drafting a simple giggling potion, which he said was very similar to the laughing potion but with a few practical modifications. He walked up and down the aisles of students, watching them prepare their ingredients, making remarks here and there, pointing out things that could use improving upon. When he'd made his rounds and arrived back to the front, he marvelled at the natural ease with which Lily Evans handled the silver knife and how nicely she'd cut her alihotsy leaves. "Well done, girl, well done! How did you learn to cut with such precision?" Slughorn asked admirably.

"My mother taught my sister, Tuney, and I how to cook when we were really little," Lily explained.

Professor Slughorn's face had split into an amused smile, "Are you muggle-born then?" he asked.

"Yes, I am," Lily replied.

The heads of the Slytherin students turned to look to the front of the classroom, where Severus, one of their own, was sharing a table with her. Severus shifted uneasily. He'd been doing his best to keep anyone from knowing that Lily, his friend, was muggle-born and how Professor Slughorn had gone and made her announce it to the entire first year. His face felt hot as he could hear whispers in the rows behind him.

"Very impressive indeed!" Professor Slughorn said. He looked over her other ingredients with an appraising eye.

James leaned over and whispered to Sirius, "So she can cut things up, what's so impressive about that?"

Sirius snickered.

The rest of the potions class passed as slowly as the first half as James worked on the giggling potion and slowly one by one the students broke into fits of laughter as their potions finished and Slughorn had them taste them to be sure they'd mixed them correctly. Slughorn was dismissing students to lunch as soon as they'd finished their work. Lily was the very first to finish her potion successfully, followed closely by Severus.

"Good luck, Potter," sneered Severus as he walked by the desk. "Hope you paid better attention to the instructions or you'll be here all night."

Angered by Severus, James managed to put a bit too much puffskein hair into the cauldron and instead of turning sunshine yellow it turned more of an orange color. The result of the excessive puffskein hair was that the potion lasted a bit longer than it should have when he finally finished and gave it a try. He sat laughing at lunch while Sirius complained loudly to Remus and Peter about how boring he found the class to be.

"I thought it was brilliant," Lily said from just a couple people away, her eyes meeting Sirius's.

"That's because Slughorn went on about you for a good ten minutes," Sirius snapped.

"Oh look how marvelously she's cut her leaves," simpered Peter, imitating Slughorn. James would have laughed even if he wasn't already laughing.

Lily rolled her eyes, "Don't be jealous because I'm smarter than you are, Sirius, it's unbecoming."

"Smarter?" Sirius snorted, "You think cutting up a bunch of leaves makes you smarter than me?"

"How long did it take you to make your potion, then?" she demanded.

Sirius obviously didn't want to answer that, though he hadn't been the very last - that honor had gone to Peter, who never did finish the task but had finally been made to clear out because the next class would be coming down from the Great Hall soon - but he'd certainly taken a considerable time longer than Lily had. He muttered something about beginners luck and started shoveling food into his mouth, ignoring the triumphant smirk on Lily's face as she turned back to her second year friends.

James wished he could stop laughing.