CHAPTER 1: LOVE POTION NUMBER 9
It was breakfast hour in the Great Hall. Clanky cutlery, yawns and chatter and so forth. James used one hand to stir in his latte and the other to read the news. Nothing that was of any great interest to him had happened. Some interesting findings had been made by wizard archaeologists in Australia, the living conditions at the St Mungos Asylum were still horrific and the ministry parties could still not agree on a budget but that was about it. Then sports. England was doing terribly in the flying carpet world cup as usual. Canada won gold medal in Air curling but everybody saw that coming. Then quidditch. Kenmare Kestrels had beaten the Liverpool Lanterns and made it to the national finals and experts were convinced they owed it to Darren O'Hare's fancy new Defying Gravity 1939 but O'Hare was still of the opinion that they owed it to women players not being able to focus in his presence. James put down the Prophet, overall pleased, and bit into his toast. Across from him Sirius was quietly scribbling digits in the latest puzzle fad: wizard's Sudoku, so absorbed he hadn't said a word all morning. Beside him sat Remus, slowly sinking in his chair and looking a little too awake because he had still not figured out how to realistically paint eyes on his eye lids. He woke up with a jerk when his head hit Sirius's shoulder, drew a book that had fallen to the floor during his brief slumber back to him and took up the fight against the fatigue.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" said Peter and swished his Bladdernut, 6 inches, troll wart. His quill vibrated. Finally he was starting to get results.
"Good morning!"
Cas had come over in the company of fellow classmate and cheer-witch Janine Spoon, who was poorly concealing a tiny flask of pink liquid fizzing with heart shaped bubbles inside her sleeve. Those flasks had been a common sight since they had covered Roofie Potion in class some weeks ago.
"Morning" Sirius replied after having had his puzzle magazine snatched from him, not seeming that interested in making conversations at the moment but having no other way to entertain himself anymore.
"Can I borrow this?" Cas asked, browsing.
"Sure"
But Sirius needed not fear Cas would finish his puzzles and start on blank ones because her interest was very brief.
"Ok I'm finished" Janine whispered in her ear and Cas decided she'd prefer to borrow the magazine again some other time and left. Sirius continued with the Sudoku. This inspired James to attempt to solve the crosswords in the Prophet and he picked it up again as well as a pen and browsed to the last page.
"What time is it?" Remus asked.
"8:15" James replied and cleverly jotted down that sand vessel was a synonym for hourglass and recalled the recently discovered ancient civilization that had worshipped hourglasses he had read about minutes ago when a shatter as well as a splosh interrupted his thoughts. The smell of waffles reached James's nose and when he looked over his paper he saw that Remus had his face in a puddle of tea and that his cup had fallen off the table upon being hit by said face.
"I forgot to tell him not to drink his tea" said Sirius, prodding Remus with his wand more roughly with each poke.
"I thought he totally saw that" said James, wrinkling his nose for the waffle smell from the spiked tea was truly intense. "Or at least… smelled the gum or whatever"
When prodding Remus in the ears and nose triggered no reflexes whatsoever, Sirius gave it up and backed his chair.
"Why, you just can't get enough of the hospital wing, can you?" he said and threw Remus over his back with ease. "I've never heard of anybody passing out from roofie potion before, and I was so looking forward to a drastic change in his usually uptight behaviour"
"Me too but I'm sure there's still hope" said James, also getting ready to leave. Class didn't start until fifteen minutes so they could still get antidote and make it on time and witness that drastic change in that usually uptight behaviour.