Until The Very End

Chapter Thirty-One: A Melancholy Valentines Day

Lily's PoV:

It was now Valentines Day. My parents had died about two weeks prior and I was starting to feel a bit better. I still tended to talk to Sirius more than the rest of my friends (even James!) for the days following my little swim. I hadn't told anyone about anything yet and I asked Sirius not to either. Though he didn't one hundred percent agree with my decision, he kept his word. I felt a tad awkward around Marlene still. I did kind of scream at her however many days ago. I wasn't quite sure how to go about apologising either. Sirius told me to just do it, but I wasn't feeling it.

Slowly but surely, the gang started to treat me more normally. Sirius went back the fastest, but that was to be expected. Peter followed along with Remus, Alice, Marlene and James. They were all still adjusting to me being a slightly quieter version of my normal self, but at least they were adjusting at all. I would head to McGonagall's office for tea and biscuits whenever she asked me, which became quite frequent. She seemed quite adamant that I do this with her. Sometimes we talked about heads' stuff and other times about classes or books. It was really nice and I greatly enjoyed it.

Back to Valentines Day. I was one of those people that was not the biggest fan of Valentines day. I thought it was too commercial. Every year I'd get lilies upon lilies and, believe it or not, I don't love lilies. The one time I was kind of okay with getting so many lilies was when James put them all over the Gryffindor Tower a couple years ago. (I wasn't okay with it at the time but people and feelings change). There were some good things about Valentines Day though. Remus and I would eat copious amounts of chocolate all day and some professors provided more interesting lessons that tied into the holiday. Professor Slughorn was among them. Today we were going to be brewing Amortentia.

"Alright class! Settle down, please, settle down," he said as he walked into the classroom. "As I said yesterday, we will be brewing Amortentia. Can anyone remember anything from last year's brief introduction to the potion?"

"It's a love potion," a Hufflepuff boy said from the back sarcastically.

"No shite, Devon," the Ravenclaw girl next to him mumbled with a smirk.

"Shut it, Maddie," he quipped.

"Yes, that is correct. Can anyone tell me anything else?" Slughorn asked.

"You said it was the most dangerous potion that you had with you at the time, sir?" that same Ravenclaw said.

"I did indeed. Is there anything else?" Slughorn scanned the room and his eyes landed on me hopefully. I sighed heavily and raised my hand. "Ah, Ms. Evans. What do you remember?"

"Amortentia is the most powerful love potion known to wizard kind. It does not produce actual love, merely a deep infatuation with whoever they see/think of first. You can tell that Amortentia is in fact Amortentia by its bright rosy pink colour and Mother of Pearl sheen. When someone smells it, it should smell like whatever attracts them the most," I rattled off.

"Stupendous, Ms. Evans! Ten points to Gryffindor!" Slughorn exclaimed.

"Swallow you textbook this morning, Lily?" Sirius teased from the table next to mine and Marlene's. I just rolled my eyes and flipped him off subtly. Marlene smiled.

"Now, whichever pair brews it perfectly first will gain thirty points for their house, as it is a very difficult potion to brew. The pair that does this will also be exempt from the quiz on love potions that will be given at the end of the week. For whoever does not win these prizes, you had better study. It's Tuesday now, so you'll only have three and a half days to so. Any questions?" No one spoke up. "Well, get brewing and good luck!" Slughorn announced with a flourish of his hands.