Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
"Honestly, Lily, I don't understand how you can be so incapable of walking over a flat surface," Hugo Weasley said with a laugh, his deep blue eyes twinkling with amusement. Bending down, he helped his cousin, and fellow red-head, up from her embarrassing position on the stone floor of the hallway. Several groups of people passed them, barely glancing at Lily on the floor. It was a resident joke at Hogwarts how remarkably clumsy Lily Luna Potter was.
"Yeah, I seriously fail at life, but this time, I swear that flagstone was uneven," Lily Potter chuckled as she straightened her robes and shook out her mane of unruly red hair. After adjusting her bag of books to a more suitable position, the two cousins continued chatting down the mostly deserted corridor until reaching their potions classroom. Most of the class was already seated. The two cousins moved toward their usual place and waited for their best friend Phineas Malfoy to join them.
Although the trek from the Slytherin common room to the potion dungeons was much shorter than the distance from Gryffindor tower, Phineas Malfoy had the strangest knack for showing up at the very last minute before class began. Hugo had always insisted that sometimes Phineas would wait outside the class then walk in a few seconds before the professor would begin their lecture.
Sure enough, just as Professor Watson arrived at the front of the classroom and began to arrange her things, Phineas walked in and threw himself gracefully into the chair between the cousins.
"Father sent me another bloody owl this morning to covertly remind me to show up the two of you," Phineas said, pulling out his potion's book while rolling his light grey eyes, "Honestly, the man still cannot accept anything having to do with Weasleys."
"I love how you call him Father instead of Dad or something," replied Lily, looking at her blonde friend with a mischievous glint in her blue eyes.
"Yeah, what's up with that, Malfoy?" asked Hugo with grin.
Phineas sighed exaggeratedly, shrugging his shoulders.
"It's only natural for those with Weasel blood not to understand the deep complexity and refinement that is inherent in using the term 'father' instead of something insipid and degrading like 'dad'," Phineas said with a very serious expression. The two cousins laughed heartily at his impeccable sarcasm, however, their amusement was cut short as Watson began prattling away in her cheeriest voice on the properties of the Wolfsbane the class was left to begin what Professor Watson had made clear, would only be feeble attempts to brew the beyond NEWT level potion.
"Alright, boys, wanna go get the ingredients. I'll try to get the temperature right," Lily said businesslike, sweeping her wild scarlet hair up into a messy bun. She had been banned in third year from getting the potion ingredients from the supply closet after a mishap involving high explosive ingredients crashing to the ground. Lily still insisted that she had been tripped by Lucy Midgeon and that she could not truly be blamed for the fire that raged for an hour in the dungeon. Thankfully, that incident had left very few of her classmates injured and Lily managed to slide by with a week's worth of detentions.
Phineas and Hugo left Lily fumbling with the flame to head over to the supply cabinet, where they were last in the line of groups waiting for their in line, they continued their animated discussion on the National Quidditch league with Daithi Finnegan and Timmy Nott.
When Lily had finally achieved a favourable temperature for the cauldron, Lily scanned the instructions to make sure that they were on the right track.
"Shit," she muttered as she reread the ingredients to the potion, she had told them to get the wrong type of slug. She pulled up her head and called to Phineas about ten feet away "Malfoy grab the red ones, not the orange."
"Which?" Phineas asked back, looking through the last remaining jars of slugs.
"Red, it makes the potion-"
"Lily, come here and get them I can't tell," Phineas called back looking frustrated as he moved on to gathering the needed wattlebird feathers. Lily scooted her chair out and joined the two young men. Having selected the correct colour of slug, she turned to leave, but was stopped as she stared into the face of Peeves the resident poltergeist.
"Hello Peeves," Lily muttered nervously. Peeves let out a raspberry and began to look around wickedly.
"Ooooooooo Potty-wotty with her ginger hair!" Peeves said with his mischievous grin. Peeves had a love of harrassing Lily because her two brothers, and occasionally herself, had a prank war with the poltergeist throughout their years at Hogwarts.
In a panic Lily began to tell him off, "Peeves, if you do anything in this classroom, the Bloody Baron will-"
But it was too late, with a deafening crash, the shelves of the supply press came tumbling down. Powders and liquids of every colour, already brewed potions flung into the trio as the stood watching in horror. The three were thrown onto the ground and painfully battered with the contents for about ten seconds. Powder filling their lungs, Peeve's whimsical cackle and the shouting of their classmates were the last thing they remembered before the darkness took over.
The Advanced Potion Class of 1943 stared in unabashed shock at the three unconscious persons who had just materialized in their classroom. For several seconds not a single person waking from his amazement, Charlus Potter hurried across the classroom and knelt beside the intruders. They were completely covered in powders of varying shades and strange items, such as eye of newt. From what Charlus Potter could see, it seemed as if the girl, whose face was covered by wild red hair, had been rather viciously assaulted by a jar of pixie dust.
Charlus placed his fingers on the neck of the blonde haired boy and was relieved to find a strong and steady pulse.
"He's alive," confirmed Charlus, moving onto the red-haired boy. Charlus' voice seemed to shock his classmates out of their reveries and the twelve other students and their professor moved over to view the intruders and began chattering in confusion:
"How did they get here?"
"You can't apparate-"
"Gryffindor and Slytherin? I don't recognize them,"
"The red-heads look! They have Head Badges on!"
The discussion continued as Professor Slughorn turned to the Head Boy and favourite student and asked: "Should we take them to the Hospital Wing, Tom?"
Tom Riddle nodded, moving his wand in one fluid movement to levitate the unconscious persons. Flicking his dark hair from his eyes, Riddle directed the floating bodies out the classroom door.
"Class is dismissed everyone. I have to see to this. Be sure to dispose of your potions properly," said Slughorn, distractedly, following the Head Boy from the classroom.