AN: For the QLFC Round Seven. This fan-fiction has now been updated to a longer version as it has now been scored. :)

Euphoria

AlwaysPadfoot

i. Felix Felicis

"Felix Felicis." Slughorn explained, holding up a vial of molten gold. "Better known as liquid luck. Drinking it will make the user exponentially lucky for, I'd say, about twelve hours. However that being said-"

"Now that is the coolest thing we've ever been shown in class," Louis whispered. "Imagine what indefinitely lucky would get you?"

I thought about it. Never ending good luck would be pretty amazing, particularly around Halloween, which was coming up soon. Dad told me that I'd inherited his bad luck. Last year I fell off my broom in practice and broke my collarbone; the year before that me and my brother had a huge fight; two years ago my bag split and everything inside got soaked with ink. This year it would have been good to not have any bad luck.

I turned in my seat. "It would be awesome."

"I wonder if I can sneak a vial." Louis muttered; his eyes fixated on the potion at the front. For as long as I'd known him, Louis had always exhibited magpie qualities, but not just for shiny items. He simply liked things that he probably be allowed to have.

"You probably shouldn't," I replied.

Again, I shouldn't encourage him, I should say: no, Louis, you shouldn't steal off Slughorn. Then again, he tended to share with me so...

"But Lily, Slughorn is incredibly old now. He probably wouldn't even notice or care, because he likes us and it's just one vial." Louis explained. "That is six hours of euphoria and good luck for both of us."

"That's what you said about Firewhiskey," I muttered. "That was four and a half hours of euphoria, half an hour of confusion and about an hour of throwing up."

"This is totally different," he replied.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Slughorn, who was now rambling on about the best day of his life or something like that. He did have a tendency to go off on a tangent and it had only gotten worse since we'd been in first year. I kind of hoped he could get the class through our NEWTs without either A, missing half the curriculum because of his stories, or B, he retired (or died).

At the end of class, we headed straight down the corridor towards the Common Room.

Louis tells me he should have asked the hat to put him in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. He didn't like the idea of being under the lake. I told him we weren't actually under the lake, it was far too far away, and on top of that the hat only considered him for Hufflepuff and Slytherin. He just liked to complain, a lot.

We dropped into a corner seat in the NEWT level Common Room. Apparently Slytherin cared about his house's education. It was nice to get away from the rowdy younger years. I closed my eyes, sat back and huffed. "For once, I can't be bothered with practice."

"What is this atrocity I've just heard?" Louis cried.

Someone yelled across the room. "Oi, Weasley, shut up, I'm trying to study."

I opened an eye to see Louis flip the middle finger at Jackel Nott, one of the seventh years, who scowled and told him, rather politely, to go fuck himself.

Closing my eyes again, I smirked. "You should probably not piss him off. He's still pissed I got Captain over him."

I felt Louis leant forward. "Well, you could destroy him in that stupid goal scoring competition you do every match."

Of course, he stole the vial of Felix Felicis.

ii. Performance

We made a vow to take it together. I took the suggestion of tearing Jackel a new one, and whilst I was sure I could do that anyway. A little bit of Felix Felicis would destroy him, besides I was going to take it so it only lasted an half an hour into the match.

The match started at three, so that gave me five and a half hours of luck before the match.

At nine o'clock, with half a vial of Liquid Luck in my stomach, I wandered down to the Great Hall ready to test just how well how this potion worked. The first thing I was going to test was if I didn't get into trouble for things I would usually get into trouble for.

I climbed up onto the bench and cupped my hands around my mouth. "Attention Slytherin team. Hour practice eleven to twelve."

Despite the fact I got, not only the team's attention, but the whole hall's attention, not one teacher stood to say anything. I simply got down off the table, Louis grinning at me widely.

"I cannot believe that worked." I said.

"I'm going to get myself a date," Louis replied.

I scoffed. "No way. Isn't that like cheating or something?"

"Are you kidding? Oscar has been flirting with me for like three years," he said. "Got to stop teasing eventually."

I watched him stand up and take a seat beside Oscar Goldstein. Louis put his arm around him and began talking animatedly in his ear. I stared at them, fascinated, and then, after all of about thirty seconds, Louis raised his free hand in a thumbs up towards me.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

In the time leading up to the match I managed the following things: I aced practice; I didn't get into trouble for changing the entrance hall stairs into a slide; I got an extension on the Transfiguration essay I'd put off to last minute. This stuff was unbelievable. By the time I got to the Slytherin Changing Room, I was psyched beyond anything I'd felt before.

"I am going to destroy you today Nott," I told the seventh year.

"Wanna bet?" he replied.

I stalled, but then turned to him. "How much are you willing to risk?"

"Twenty galleons?" Nott suggested jokingly.

"Twenty galleons." I said, holding out my hand.

He seemed surprised I'd agreed to such a large amount of money, but smirked and firmly shook my hand.

Five minutes later we were up in the the air and I was barreling down the pitch towards the Ravenclaw hoops. I plunged downward towards the ground before pulling up sharply. The quaffle was through the hoop before the Keeper had even realised what I'd done. The Slytherin stand erupted into cheering and chanting before I looped round and threw a smug look at Nott.

This game was about to heat up.

Barely seconds after the quaffle had come back into play, I popped it out from underneath one of the Ravenclaw's arms and into Nott's. We span down the pitch, until he was tackled and the Quaffle dropped down. I plucked it out of the air and span it through the middle hoop as the Ravenclaw keeper shot hopelessly to the right.

The next twenty minutes continued exactly as the first five went.

Slytherin were winning one-eighty to twenty and I'd scored over seventy-five percent of the goals. The commentator literally couldn't stop praising me and I'd even spotted Louis in the crowd looking fantastically smug.

"We're annihilating these guys," Nott yelled to me.

"No, I'm annihilating these guy," I retorted.

Even after the Felix Felicis stopped working, my goal scoring streak continued on what, I was sure, was pure adrenaline.

Both Nott and Derek Keegan (the other Slytherin chaser) clawed back some points for their personal competition, but in the end, when the snitch was caught the score was three-forty to eighty. It wouldn't have mattered whether we caught the snitch or not; we still would have won.

I scored nineteen of thirty-four goals, breaking a Slytherin team record and wiping the floor with Nott.

I was beaming as I have my after-match speech in the changing room and when I left, after showering and changing back into normal clothes, Louis was waiting for me.

"Now that, my friend, was a performance."

iii. Back on Track

I don't know how he did, but apparently he knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knows a guy who owns an apothecary. Earlier this morning three owls carefully delivered a large parcel marked fragile to Louis, who promptly jerked his heads towards the doors of the Great Hall. I followed him back to the Common Room, where in his dorm he revealed a parcel with forty vials of Felix Felicis inside.

I nearly swore under my breath. "You have got to be kidding me. We can't actually take this."

"Last time we took this shit, you almost broke a school record and I had the best night of my life with Oscar," he explained.

I held my hands up to him so he didn't continue with that story. I didn't want to know the details of his night with Oscar; that was too many details. I glanced down at the vials of gold and debated telling him to get rid of them, but I really enjoyed the feeling of Felix Felicis and I was sure that even this much wouldn't do any harm.

I took a vial and passed one to him. "Bottoms up?"

And so the best day of classes began. Louis and I racked up a combined amount of fifty house points and I was sure I avoided at least three detentions. I was certainly interested in just how far we could go before we actually got into trouble.

Five days and three vials later, Louis and I were having the best week in existence. I felt almost euphoric in a drunk kind of way as we reached Thursday and I reached for another potion as I got up that morning. Louis and I were ready for another day of adrenaline fuelled chaos. He was balancing along a low wall on the path down to the herbology greenhouses, nimbly avoiding the loose bricks.

We were removing the thorns from red fire bushes, which spat hot, orange liquid from the flowers, in class.

"Woah," Louis said as he dodged thick liquid. "It's real feisty plant, isn't it?"

"Be careful, Mr Weasley," Longbottom warned.

"Alright, professor," he replied, before turning to me and muttering. "Watch this, Lils."

I watched him run his finger along the bottom of the stem and then put his arm across me and push me back a step. The bush shuddered and then sneezed boiling hot liquid onto the table top leaving back burns. I had the bite back a laugh because Louis then reached across to tickle one of the Gryffindor's plant, without being noticed. It sneezed liquid everywhere and burned holes in one of the class textbooks. I wasn't sure why I found it so funny, but my eyes were watering.

"Milligan, control that plant please," Longbottom scorned, damping the book and replacing it with another. "Miss Potter, please control yourself, this is still a classroom."

The following morning, I got up late so had to run straight to class with any Felix Felicis. By mid-morning, I was sat in Ancient Runes, unable to concentrate. My leg juddered up and down as I tried to focus on doodling in the margin of my textbook. Every so often I smirked at my drawing skills and continued.

Oscar kept throwing me sideways glances before he leaned across and whispered: "You and Louis have been a bit giddy recently."

"Giddy? What are we? Three?" I asked. "Besides, he's made up, isn't he? Being with you."

The Ravenclaw blushed. "Yeah well, the point was: you look a little agitated and pale, and I wanted to know you were okay? You guys aren't fighting or something like that?"

I snorted. "Don't be ridiculous, we pretty much do everything together."

"Potter. Lee." Professor Drathon snapped. "If I could just interrupt your little chat."

"Fuck," I breathed.

I sensed Professor Drathon heard me, but he crossed the room and picked up Oscars work. "Hmm, you've narrowly escaped detention Mr Lee. What about you Miss Potter?"

He looked down at my blank parchment and then to my decorated textbook.

"Um, I can explain," I began.

"Don't," he said, holding up his hands. "You can go explain to Professor Slughorn why you are in a week's detention.

I sighed. "Oh, but sir."

"Now, Miss Potter."

I slammed my book shut and threw it into my bag, leaving the classroom as quickly as possible. A whole week's detention, that was so unfair. I had to get out of it; I had to run the team, I couldn't do that from detention. Maybe I could get Slughorn to transfer the detentions to him and then not make me go to them. He probably would let me off with some of them, but not all of them. Unless...

Unless. Unless, I could run straight the the Common Room, take some Felix Felicis and then go to Slughorn and talk him into getting me off them.

That was exactly what I did, arriving at his office with a spring in my step and ready to talk my way out of detention. I felt confident and there was weird sense of relief that had overcome me since taking the Felix Felicis.

I felt like I was back on track.

iv. Unresponsive

"Stunning practice," I called through the air. "Go get ready for the feast."

The Halloween Feast was tonight. Louis was lying across the seats in the Slytherin stand, waiting for us to finish our practice. I flew across to him, landing at the bottom of the stand and then sitting beside him, lying back in my seat.

After two weeks of taking Felix Felicis daily, I felt substantially more relaxed than a normal Halloween.

I kicked my feet up onto the chair in front. I wasn't in any rush to get to the feast and we had plenty of time to get ready. I would go and get changed in a moment when everyone else cleared out of the showers.

"This was potentially one of my best ideas," Louis said. "Have you ever felt so genuinely amazing in your life?"

"Nope," I replied. "I can't believe everyone doesn't take it."

"The Halloween Feast is going to be fucking awesome."

Once the sun had dipped low in the sky and the torches around the stadium had finally lit, I left Louis to go and shower. The only person left in the changing room was our youngest player and seeker, Henry, an enthusiastic second year that I'd chosen at the start of the year. I was sure that one day he'd be a national level player. After his practices and first game, he'd shown to be a far more capable flier than some of the more experienced members of the team.

"Hey captain," he said, pulling his t-shirt on and then sitting down on the bench to pull his shoes on. "You did pretty sick again today."

"Thanks, you're getting faster and faster," I replied. "You're gonna be a star player one day, just don't tell anyone I said that."

"You got it."

I grabbed my towel from my locker and hit the showers. Setting the shower to my favourite scent (watermelon), I was grateful that the boys hadn't used up all the hot water as the piping down here could be temperamental at best.

Henry was gone when I returned to the locker room so I changed back into my school stuff and tossed my dirty clothes into the washing trolley. I figured Louis would probably be bored by now so I pulled on my shoes and wander back onto the pitch.

"Oi, Potter, check this out!"

Now Louis, who had always been quite the gymnast, had always been quite the show off. I glanced up at the torch lit stand in front of me. He was balancing on his hands along the front barrier.

"Are you kidding me?" I yelled. "Get the fuck down from there you idiot."

"Alright, calm down, mum," he jokingly replied.

His legs came back down, but as he went to stand his foot slipped and Louis tumbled down on the wrong side of the barrier. He hurtled towards the sand at the edge of the pitch, only slowed briefly as his legs hit the edge of the metal torch before he continued the fall down. He hit the ground with a dull thud and I began sprinting towards him.

"Louis!" I screamed. "LOUIS."

I can hear him screaming and yelling. When I slid to my knees beside him and he grabbed my arm, gasping back a pained breath. "How bad is it?"

My eyes slid south to his legs and I had to look away almost immediately. It looked like something ripped a bite out of his left leg; he started screaming in pain again, shaking violently. I was panicking; I didn't have a clue what to do. There was blood everywhere, staining the sand beneath him. I scrambled to my feet and he screamed at me not to leave.

"I'm not a healer!" I yelled. "I'm going to get someone; I'm going to get the nurse."

Louis screamed after me, but I'm already half way across the pitch. I summoned my broom and propelled myself into the air, speeding towards the castle. I tumbled through the front door of Hogwarts, yelling and screaming.

"Miss Potter," Professor Longbottom came out of the hall looking startled."

"Professor, it's Louis. He's on the pitch. He's fallen and he's really really hurt. Blood everywhere kind of hurt," I shouted, grabbing the sleeve of his robes and yanking him towards the door.

He immediately shouted at a kid on the stairs. "Mr Patil, go and alert Madam Pomfrey and Healer Bones that we have a serious casualty on the Quidditch pitch."

Patil whipped around and dashed up the stairs and Professor Longbottom and I ran towards the doors. I grabbed my broomstick and he wasted no time in getting on it with me. It was far quicker than running. At the pitch, we landed harshly, but I sprinted straight towards Louis, terrified that his screaming had fallen silent.

I knelt down beside him. "Louis?!"

He stirred slightly his eyes rolling in his skull. Professor Longbottom knelt beside me, taking hold of Louis' face to focus his attention. "Mr Weasley, it's Professor Longbottom, can you hear me?"

Louis head lolled and Longbottom repeated his name twice more before his fingers moved to find a pulse.

"It's weak, but it's there," he muttered.

The Gryffindor Head instructed me to run up to meet Healer Bones and tell her a bunch of stuff. I was shaking but somehow I managed to get to my feet and run towards the gates. I near slammed into the Healer in the dark, but I managed to stammer out what I'd been instructed to.

"What's his response like Miss Potter?" she demanded.

I swallowed thickly. "He's unresponsive."

v. Experience

Early in the morning of November first, Louis was transferred to St Mungos, Healer Bones with him. Professor Longbottom, as Deputy Head, sat me down the next day and told me that it was likely that Louis would not return to Hogwarts this side of Christmas. They'd got him stable, but the leg was damaged beyond repair; in the early hours of the morning, Louis Weasley's left leg had been amputated.

In some kind of stupor, I wandered back to the Common Room with no intention of going to any classes. I stuffed my remaining four vials of Felix Felicis in my skirt pocket and Louis' three in the other and headed down towards the lake.

Swallowing the first vial whole, I slumped back against the bank enjoying the feeling of the potion spreading through my body. Temporarily it was easy to forget Louis falling through the air and the sight of his leg on the Quidditch pitch. Within ten minutes, however, the feeling faded and I started thinking about how if Louis didn't think that he could be as unlucky to fall off the barrier, he probably wouldn't have got up there in the first place.

I popped the top of another vial, sure it wasn't working, and drank another. I climbed up onto the rocks at the side of me next, to get a clearer view out towards the mountains, standing on the edge. I wouldn't fall because of the Felix Felicis, but I wondered if Louis realised. If he knew when he climbed up there that his luck had ran out. Maybe he didn't, maybe when he started to fall, fear screamed inside him and he instantly knew he was fucked.

I needed to get rid of the stuff, what if as soon as the liquid luck ran out, bad luck was tripled or something.

One by one I swallowed each one, savouring the feeling inside of me and the instant euphoria, if just for a moment. Each one faded a little quickly than the one before and when the last vial dropped to the rock beneath my feet, my vision changed. It blurred, the world seemed to shimmer around me. It was pretty, like nothing I'd ever seen before. I reached up on my tiptoes and at that exact moment someone grabbed me around the middle and tugged me backwards.

"Potter, what are you doing?" a voice said.

It tingled when the noise hit my eardrums and I laughed. "Nothing."

Professor Longbottom's face appeared in front of me, the shimmering making it seem like I was looking through water at him.

"What was in those vials?" he asked.

I tried and get my eyes to focus on his face, but it was like had eight faces all swirling around into one. My ears start to tingle again, a noise like a music box sounding around me.

"What's the sound?" I asked, intrigued by the colours in my vision.

I went to sit up, but I felt something wet underneath my nose. My fingers touched my nose and came away with rains of red.

"Lily, I want you to lie down," he instructed.

"Alright sir," I said. "Can I close my eyes?"

"No Lily, I want you to keep them open."

I sighed. "I rather close them."

And that was exactly what I did, slipping into unconsciousness nearly soon as I did, despite Professor Longbottom's efforts to try and stop me from resting. Didn't he know I've been through a traumatic experience?

vi. Addiction

I felt horrendously dizzy when I woke up; disorientated as I squinted up as my surroundings. I was in the hospital wing and a feeling of dread seeped through me instantly. It was hard to remember exactly what had happened, but my thoughts quickly stopped asking when a pang inside of me told me that I had to get more Felix Felicis.

Pushing that back, I swung my legs from the bed and stumbled across the the water jug on the bed besides mines table. I literally was just about to raise the glass to my lips when someone shouted to stop me.

"You can't drink that, Miss Potter."

Healer Bones hurried across and took it right out of my hand.

My voice cracked when I replied. "Why not?"

"There is an extremely delicate potion inside of you right now," she explained. "You can't have anything to eat or drink," - she checked her watch - "for the next ten hours."

"Oh," I said.

I say back down on the edge of my bed, my feet swinging back and forth. I tried not to make eye contact with her. "When can I go? I feel fine."

Healer Bones sat on the chair beside my bed and took my hands. I stared at her, scared she might tell me that something even more awful had happened to Louis.

She didn't.

"Professor Longbottom would like a word with you a little bit later once he's finished class," she said. "It's important that you rest for a little bit."

Oh God. I suddenly remembered what happened, I remember drinking all that Felix Felicis and Professor Longbottom finding me by the lake. My face, I was sure, turned bright red and I bit down on my lip to stop myself saying anything.

Once she'd gone, I found the minutes passed even slower than I'd ever imagined they would. I found myself seemingly losing focus for what felt like hours before zoning back in to see that only a few moments had actually passed. I tried reading through on of the textbooks from my bag that had been left on the side table, but all of the words blurred together. At ten to four, when classes were almost ready to finish, my brain started to panic and I found my legs juddering against the side of the bed. The chat with the deputy headmaster loomed closer.

What if I could sneak out and go and take some Felix Felicis off from Slughorn's private cupboard?

That would get me through this talk, then maybe I would muster the courage to tell Professor Longbottom and Healer Bones that I couldn't stop taking Liquid Luck.

I stood up, but as soon as I crossed the room. Madam Pomfrey, the senior school nurse came out of her office.

"Back into bed, Miss Potter," she commanded. "You can't be wondering around."

The tone of her voice left no room for argument, so I returned to my bed in and waited. I was more uncomfortable than I'd ever been in my life. It was as though I hadn't eaten in days and was desperate to go as far as steal foods from the kitchen.

When Professor Longbottom arrived, I forced myself to take long, deep breaths to calm myself down.

"How are you feeling, Miss Potter?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

My voice didn't even sound like my own. It sounded like a traitor's voice; like the person inside me knew I should have told Louis to not take any more Felix Felicis weeks ago. God, this was my fault. Louis falling was my fault. My chest seems to grow tighter and quicker as our conversation continued.

"I need you to tell me what happened yesterday," he said calmly. "What was in those vials and how much of it did you drink?"

I was sure he knew. I could see it in his eyes that he knew what it was; he was just waiting to see if I told him. I gripped the sheets beneath my fingers and focused my gaze on the floor between us. "It was Felix Felicis. There were seven vials there."

"Thank you, Lily," he replied. "Is that all you've had?"

I shook my head as I sense someone standing at the end of the bed.

"No," I admitted.

Healer Bones spoke up next. "I need to know how much you've had and over how long."

"Twenty-three vials," I blurted out, tears welling in my eyes. "I've had twenty-three in the last two and a half weeks. I should have stopped him, you can't be lucky and almost die. Oh my God, this is all my fault."

My voice cracked and I hunched over, my hands in my hair. It seemed like it was warmer than normal, my body seemed to be sweating much more than it would when I was nervous. Longbottom and Bones shared a look, the Healer sat on my bedside and put her arm in the centre of my back.

"What happened to Louis was nothing to do with you," she explained.

"But it was probably the Felix Felicis, wasn't it?" I sobbed.

Healer Bones hummed in thought. "Overuse of Felix Felicis, in most cases, causes extreme recklessness. Yes, it's likely that Mr Weasley did what he did getting up on that barrier because of it. I also suspected that's why you thought drinking screen vials at once was a good idea as well. In large quantities, Felix Felicis is toxic."

My body was still shaking. "Is that why I feel like I've got the flu or something?"

"No," she replied. "The potion I've given you is absorbing the excess amount of Felix Felicis in your stomach. It's used when people drink too much alcohol or overdose on medical potions."

"Oh, so -" I began, unsure of what to say

"Lily, the reason you feel sick is something else. It's called addiction."