Rosewood and Wolf's Bane
Severus Snape was so angry, his hands shook as he turned the page in the Potions textbook as Sirius Black sat, his arms crossed over his chest in annoyance, in the seat where Lily Evans belonged. Severus's jaw was tight. He'd never been given a less than perfect grade in Potion - even times when Sirius and James had meddled with his work, he'd still always managed to pull it off in the end - he was just that talented. However this was a complicated potion, one of the most complicated they'd made in the class thus far, and Severus wasn't sure he had the time to prepare all of the ingredients as nicely as he wanted and still have the preparation time to allow the potion to simmer to it's full potential. He needed a second pair of hands - he needed Lily Evans, though, not Sirius Black! He looked at Sirius there, sulking and glowering at him, having been snapped at twice already by Severus Snape for trying to help out.
"You'll muss it up!" Severus had snarled when Sirius had tried to take the little silver dagger they were using to slice up the mandrake roots.
"Stab you, more like," Sirius muttered.
"Of course you would," Severus had hissed, "You are, after all, a murderer."
Sirius had stared at Severus as though he'd been boxed about the ears and that was when he had commenced to sitting and watching without saying a word or budging an inch to assist, even (or perhaps, most especially) when Severus was struggling.
"We should be halfway through our brewing process!" Slughorn called merrily from the front of the classroom.
Panic swept through Severus. He wasn't even a quarter way through. He looked at Sirius. "Make yourself useful and get a bit of rosewood from the store, will you?"
"What's the magic word?" Sirius asked.
Severus was stirring the cauldron, the brew turning yellow. He stared at Sirius. "Do you want to pass this class or not?"
Sirius shrugged.
Severus's face turned quite red as he drew a deep breath of frustration. "Blast sake. Why are you so bleeding insufferable? You and Potter, you're both alike. Just alike... Bleedin' --" he started to withdraw the spoon from the cauldron, and he colour of the potion began to fade. Really, you can't stop stirring once you've started. He grumbled and started stirring again, then inhaled sharply and closed his eyes, as though in pain. "......please."
"Come again? I didn't catch that? What was it you've just said, Snivellus?" Sirius sat forward, cupping his ear.
Severus Snape forced the words through gritted teeth. "Please. Go. And get. The rosewood. From. The store."
"Ah, but why yes, of course!" Sirius grinned and clapped his palm over Severus's shoulder a bit harder than he really needed to do. "Anything I can do to help, Snivellus. I'll be back in a jiffy!" and he jumped up from his seat and headed for the store cupboard as Severus counted to ten to gain control over his temper. Sirius smirked to himself as he ducked through the low doorway into the store cupboard, thinking how pleased James was going to be when he told him this story and how incredibly annoyed Severus Snape had been by him. James would probably purposely hit himself with a pugnus every Monday for the rest of time just to send Sirius off to Potions without a partner so he could set to annoying Severus all over again.
In the store cupboard, Sirius poked about, looking for the rosewood. He had no idea what the hell he was looking for really - A flower? A branch? A sprig? A bottle? - so he had to keep turning things over and reading labels, searching for something marked rosewood. There were loads of things - every shelf was cluttered with dozens and dozens of clumps of leaves and bottles and boxes and bags and vials and funny looking bits of bone or horn or hooves. Sirius remembered coming up here for the bicorn horn that was still hidden in some version of the Secret Meeting Room, where they'd brewed their potion for becoming animagi. Sirius smirked to himself at what a fiasco that had been, stealing that big nasty horn...
And then he spotted a small box labeled aconite and his heart raced with excitement.
Aconite! That was the stuff that Remus needed when the full moon hurt his bones and made his stomach sick. That was the stuff that was too damn expensive for Remus Lupin to ever have hopes of being able to afford, but had miraculous properties for keeping him from feeling ill. Sirius couldn't believe it the stuff was right here, on a shelf in the potion master's store! Oh what Remus wouldn't have done for that stuff multiple times over the year, when the moon had horribly pained him...
Sirius glanced over his shoulder. He was alone in the store cupboard... nobody was looking...
He reached out and took up the box, opening the latch. Inside, there was quite a lot of the aconite leaves. Great big bunches - at least six or seven times the amount of leaves that Ned Veigler had given to Remus back in the third year that had lasted nearly a year! Sirius's hands shook and he took up one of the clumps and pulled it out of the box. Surely, the gods would understand - he wasn't stealing it for no reason, or even for a selfish reason. It was to soothe the suffering of another! Sometimes bad things can be done for good purposes and this was one of those times!
Quickly, Sirius shoved the aconite into his robes pocket - glad for the first time ever that he'd donned them - and he closed the box.
"What are you doing that is taking so bleeding long?" Severus Snape demanded, suddenly coming up behind Sirius in the store cupboard. "Rosewood isn't that hard to fi--" he stopped mid-word, seeing Sirius holding the box of aconite leaves.
Severus stared at him.
Sirius clumsily shoved the box back onto the shelf and, in an incredible stroke of luck, he spotted the rosewood - a vial of oil with a tiny eyedropper lid - on the shelf directly before him, and he plucked the bottle up and tossed it to Severus smoothly. Severus only just caught it. "Here you are, Snivellus," he said, "Hang onto your trousers." And he quickly shoved 'round Severus, headed back to their desk.
Severus stood in the store for a moment after Sirius had left, his hand clutching the bottle of rosewood oil and looked after Sirius, where he was settling back into his chair... Slughorn was calling out what colour their potions ought to be by now... and although they were still quite far behind, Severus couldn't help himself - he inched over to the box that Sirius had been holding and picked it up.
Aconite, it read, (also known as Wolf's Bane or Monkshood) - Used in Small Doses to Ease or Heal Blocked Shock, Depression, Insomnia, and Issues of a Woman's Blood - High Doses are EXTREMELY TOXIC - Poison.
Severus put the box back down. It wasn't just for those things, he knew, there was a reason it was called Wolf's Bane. It was one of the leaves being studied for healing and treatment of werewolves.
Sirius Black, stealing Wolf's Bane from the Potion Master's store.
But of course.
And suddenly, Severus Snape had his first bit of evidence for when he took his case against Sirius Black to Albus Dumbledore.
"You did what?" Remus was staring at the bunch of aconite that Sirius was holding out to him - like it was a bouquet of flowers - as they sat in the fifth year dormitories later that day.
Sirius was grinning, "Sluggy won't notice it's gone. And technically, Dumbledore said Lily and I could use whatever we needed from the store because of the Remedial Potions lessons. So it's not even really stealing. I needed this to give to you." He waved it before Remus.
"Sirius! You can't just go stealing stuff out of the store! Bloody hell - especially not aconite! All it takes is one person noticing - one person asking questions... and they realize what it's used for and suddenly I'm on my way to werewolf jail and you're expelled and bloody hell. Go put it back!!!" Remus shoved the sprigs back at Sirius. "Hurry! Before anybody notices they're gone!"
Sirius pushed the bouquet back at Remus, "No, Moonpie, you need that lot. If anyone notices it's gone, I'll take the rap for it. Don't worry! You won't go to any ruddy werewolf prison and if anyone even tries to take you to one, I'll bleedin' blast the doors down and take you back my ruddy self!"
Remus looked pained, "Sirius, I --"
"Rey! I've stolen about a hundred galleons worth of plants for you! Just thank me will you!"
Peter's eyes widened - he was sitting on his bed through all this, marking up his potions textbook in places to remind himself what to do differently next time he brewed the potion - and he now looked up for the first time to see the little bouquet of aconite Sirius and Remus were fighting over. "That little bundle of plant there is worth how much?" he gasped.
"A hundred galleons or more," Sirius answered.
"He exaggerates," Remus said.
"Only a little," Sirius said.
Remus thrust it at him, "All the more reason why you need to put it back!" he said.
Peter's eyes were about as wide as they could possibly go. "But - but what if somebody's noticed already? What if they know about your patronus? WHAT IF THEY THINK WE'RE ALL IN ON IT? WHAT IF THEY'RE ON THEIR WAY NOW TO GET US?"
And in the cruelest trick of ironic timing, it was at that moment that the dormitory door swung open.
Peter let out a cry, "I DIDN'T HAVE A THING TO DO WITH IT! IT WAS ALL HIM!" he pointed at Sirius and flung his book across the bed, scrambling to put some space between himself and the sprigs of aconite.
It was just James who walked through the door, though, his hair a mess, shoulders slumped, and skin a bit less glowing than it usually was. He stood in the doorway, looking 'round at the strange postures and frozen actions of his friends and pushed the door closed heavily behind him, "What's going on?" he asked, though with a bit more indifference than he might've done a month ago.
"Sirius stole a hundred galleons worth of aconite!" Peter squeaked, pointing.
James stared at the clump of leaves Remus was holding out to Sirius.
"And he's bringing it back before we all end up expelled for it," Remus said thickly, wagging the clump of it at Sirius.
"Nobody knows I took it, Rey!" Sirius said, "I mean, really, it's the perfect crime. It's a storeroom that every student in the school has been into at some point or another. There's nobody that knows for certain I was in there at all, and there's no way to prove I was. There's no way anybody will notice this missing for a very long while and by the time they do there'll be no telling who took it! Nobody's going to point finger at you. It has purposes besides werewolf purposes and nobody knows you're a wolf anyway, so --"
"Dumbledore knows," Remus reminded him. "You don't think for a second he won't hear aconite's missing and immediately think of me."
James rubbed his forehead and climbed onto his bed, smooshing his face into the pillows.
Sirius looked at Remus, "Look if you don't want it, fine, but I'm not putting it back. Go flush it down the loo or something." His voice came out cranky, agitated, and he turned away, leaving Remus sitting there, holding the stolen goods, and went over to visit James. "Hey mate, I'm glad you're back. I bleedin' missed you. You've no idea. Are feeling you alright?"
James nodded into the pillows, "I'm just... tired."
"You've slept for three days," Peter argued, "You can't possibly be."
"I am." James mumbled, and he kicked his legs beneath his Gryffindor duvet and curled up, hugging his knees beneath it. "I just want to rest."
"But I've had an excellent idea for a prank, Prongsie! I've been waitin' for you to wake up so we could do it, it's really brilliant, listen here --..."
James said, "Can't we talk about it later?" his voice was flat and lifeless.
"I s'pose, but Prongs, I've been waiting and --"
"Please," James whispered, "Just let me be, Sirius."