Entry for the Potions class at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments).
This term we are learning about poison remedies. Write about someone getting poisoned then being cured. NOTE: The cure cannot be a bezor. The minimum is 500 word and the maximum is 2000. No prompts.
A/N: I hope you like it! And this is dedicated to Miksters (MichalK) for being such an awesome and loyal friend.
You see, there's normal days, and then there's not normal days. But the way the Marauders played off everything, it seemed as if everyday was normal, even though what had happened was clearly not normal. It wasn't fair. Severus decided that there had to be a way to put the Marauders into a problematic spot where not even the suave Potter could take and pretend all was normal.
But, in order to put his plan into action, he was going to require his knowledge of potions. Fortunately, Severus was an expert at potions and definitely knew how he was going to break the Marauders popularity.
Of course, looking back at the situation, Severus might have gone a different way about doing so. But he was only twelve, so he has an excuse. Anyway, on with the awesome prank.
Severus decided to combine a bunch of Potions supplies that were not meant to be combined in order to poison a Marauder. They would go crazy and then it wouldn't seem like a normal day for the Marauders and then they would freak out and break apart and no one would ever hear from the Marauders again! It was a brilliant plan...in his head.
So Severus gathered the ingredients and stuffed gillyweed into the mix. Because gillyweed was definitely poison. He stirred the to-be dangerous potion with his wand, muttering some very intriguing incantation that was derived directly from Latin. Actually, Severus never really understood why students struggled with learning and remembering spells so much seeing as it was completely Latin. If anyone would just take the time to read the dictionary, Hogwarts lessons would be the easiest thing to ace. And if the stupid Marauders weren't in the school, then he'd be the top student, so he definitely had the credentials to be giving this valuable information.
After the potion was completed, Severus realized that he had to find a way to put it in one of the Marauders' drinks. That wouldn't be too difficult. All he had to do was walk to the Gryffindor Common Room boys' dormitories and put the poison into, say, Pettigrew's water and leave. How bad could it be? The Marauders did it all the time to his room. They had him covered in pimples, for Merlin's sake!
So, Severus walked over to the Gryffindor Common Room after curfew. For the first time, he was thankful for his sneaky, batlike quality and his black hair, which disguised him from the Prefects. Although, he was certain that the Prefects sucked at doing their job, seeing as he walked right through one of their lines of vision and they ignored him. Must've been a Gryffindor.
It was only when he got to the portrait that he realized he was going to need a password to get in. And that was when he realized what the portrait was a picture of. A Fat Lady. Snape supposed this was the reason Gryffindors were stupid (aside from Lily, of course). They had to deal with the sight of a Fat Lady daily. Of course, though, the Gryffindors deserved this sort of bad treatment.
"Password?" The Fat Lady asked Snape.
"I can't believe Gryffindors get a talking Fat Lady for a portrait," Severus muttered and suddenly gasped when the portrait door opened up, giving him room to walk inside. "What a password..."
Severus walked up the Common Room stairs, surprised that it was completely empty. He expected some drunk Gryffindors or something, but then again, Gryffindors never do anything fun.
He suddenly reached a fork in the 'road'. There were two doors, each with its own staircase. He decided to turn left. Unfortunately, after three steps, the staircase turned into a ramp. Bloody stairs, did they recognize he wasn't a Gryffindor? And that's when he remembered that Gryffindor staircase that led to the girls' dormitory turned to a ramp for boys. Something about them not being able to trust them. Huh. All the more reason not to trust Gryffindors. He ha;f debated finding a way to get to see Lily at night but thought against it. He had a job. Instead, he turned right and opened the Second Year dormitory room.
And then the world went black.
James really had to go to the bathroom. Like really really badly. Like so badly that he was about to pee in his pants. At least, that was what was happening in his dream. But the rest of the dream was so good, he didn't want to get up and relieve himself, because what if he forgot what was happening in his dream? So he tried to watch the rest of his dream, ignoring the pee that was threatening to fall out both in his dream and in real life.
RING RING RING!
Of course, James just had to be interrupted from his dream and in such a way that he nearly peed in his pants. All the Marauders got out of bed at the same time, and the lights flashed on. That ring meant one thing, and one thing only. There was an intruder in the room, and they were being injected with a Muggle poison at this very moment.
"Mary? Is that you?" Peter asked deliriously. "Come back, we're not quite finished..."
Sirius gave Peter an odd look and told him to go back to bed. His help was not necessary.
Remus, on the other hand, had taken absolutely no time at all to go run up to the body on the floor, that was now convulsing.
"I thought you said we would never really need to administer the poison! This person could die!" Remus exclaimed.
"Most important, Remus, is: who is it?" James asked, casually walking over.
Remus turned over the body, which was starting to still.
"It's SNAPE!"
"Oh, leave him then," Sirius said, smirking. "He's been causing a lot of problems lately."
"Leave him?!" Remus was getting hysterical. "James, help me!"
James was too busy glaring at Sirius to notice Remus. "That's pushing the limits, mate. We prank, not kill. This is just a precaution in case it's a really dark wizard. And no, Snape is not a threat to us, seeing as we're all way stronger than him."
Remus fumbled with the needle, finally just cutting the wire to stop the flow of whatever the hell they put in that jug. Snape had gone limp, save for a few raspy breaths, trying to gulp as much oxygen as physically possible.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Fine, let's help the greasy jerk."
"Thanks Sirius," James said, bending down to look at the damage. "Does he have a pulse?"
"Er, I," Remus stammered, quickly checking Snape's pulse. "It's there. Sort of. He's alive. Seriously, this would've been better if we kept the poison the way it was! Why did we have to add more crap into it?"
"To make it unique, Remus," Sirius replied, as if the answer was obvious.
"Okay, so, we, er, we can't go to Madam Pomfrey without getting expelled, so, we have to find some stuff from in here," James said, standing up. "Sirius, you keep Snape in a position where he won't die, and Remus, you put some antidote to this potion somewhere, right? I mean, you insisted. So you should probably go and get it."
Remus looked shaken but was snapped back to reality from his hysterical reverie at James' orders.
"Yeah, I have the stuff, we still have to put it together."
"What about a bezoar? That works for everything," James said. "That would be faster."
"Where the hell'm gonna get a bezoar from?" Remus hissed.
"Okay, fine, just get your stuff, and hurry!" James commanded, kneeling back down to take care of Snape.
Remus quickly grabbed some salt, water, and container of some tablets he had stolen from Slughorns' stores. He stuffed it all in the cauldron and cast a heating charm at the metal, trying hard to stay calm. When the whole potion seemed to be heated up and the water was boiling, Remus pointed his wand at the cauldron and started muttering some words clearly derived from Spanish. In fact, when Remus started tutoring those students who had trouble memorizing spells, he would teach them to speak Spanish. Then they would know to speak Spanish and they would be able to remember the spells. Win-win.
"Okay, open his mouth, I'm done," Remus announced, putting a cooling charm on his hands so that they wouldn't be affected by the heat of the antidote and the cauldron.
Sirius immediately stepped back. "I'm not going anywhere near Snape's face. I already held him."
James groaned and opened Snape's mouth, which was taking the shallowest breaths James had ever seen. "Quick Remus, I don't want him to die!"
Remus tilted the cauldron, pouring the hot substance down Snape's throat.
James flinched from the heat of the antidote, but kept his hands there, while Sirius decided to be helpful and use the 'descendo' spell on his wand to force the liquid down.
"Done," Remus said, putting the cauldron away. "Is it working?"
"It is," James responded, watching Snape intently, whose face was starting to change back to its pale stuff from the blueish tint it had just moments ago.
Remus sighed in relief.
Sirius, on the other hand, decided to look at the more pressing matter at hand.
"Why did he come in here in the first place?"
James shrugged, while Remus pulled something out of Snape's pocket.
"He came in here to poison one of us."
"You're joking, right?" Sirius said, his eyes wide, snatching the bottle from his sandy-haired friend.
"I'm not!"
"Why the hell did we bother saving him, then?"
"Because two wrongs don't make a right!"
"Guys, he's coming to," James said, interrupting Sirius and Remus' bickering, which shut the two of them up immediately.
Severus opened his eyes blearily, his neck stinging slightly. He gently moved his hand to feel what had gone on, and felt a few blisters, as if his skin had been burnt. He blinked a few times, and that was when he saw a sight that made him want to scream. He saw his least favourite people in the world leaning over him.
"WHAT'RE YOU DOING HERE?!"
"Us?" Potter asked. "We should be asking you that. This is our dormitory, and this," Potter motioned to a small vial. "is your poison you were going to use on us."
It was then Severus realized that the Marauders had messed up his prank.
"I'm going to get you for that!"
"Nice try," Black said, scowling. "But we just saved your life, so-"
"How did you save my life?" Severus snapped, genuinely confused.
"You were poisoned," Lupin replied, cutting off whatever lie Black was about to give him. "By a defense mechanism against Dark Wizards."
"It's a really complex spell," Potter added. "It reverses the dark task of whatever the intention of the intruder was."
Severus wasn't sure whether that was a lie or not; he had never heard of such a spell. But he wasn't going to say that to Potter. Then the whole school would know that he didn't know every single spell and then all hell would break loose.
"So what? I'm supposed to be thanking you?" Severus spat.
"Yeah, that's the general idea," Sirius said.
"If you're not going to, can you just leave? You're bothering what should be a nice night," Lupin said at Severus' cold glare. "So yeah."
Severus gave a look to Lupin before slowly getting up and leaving the room. He wasn't a coward, but he wasn't an idiot, he knew when his plans had backfired. But he would get the Marauders next time, mark his words.
A/N: Did you like it? Review with your thoughts, please!