A/N: This is the first in a 31 story collection for the Harry Potter Halloween Collection Competition. The collection will be exclusively about Sirius and Marlene, both as friends and as a couple. I will indicate if any new additions are involved in any other challenges, as well as which prompt I used for the Halloween challenge.
Halloween Challenge Prompts Used: (food/drink) sweets/candy & (plot theme) trick or treating
The Restricted Collection Challenge: prompt used: no more, or less, than one set of brackets (parentheses)
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Marlene held a small vial of potion in her fingers, looking quite skeptical.
"Of course it'll work. Trust me." Sirius gave her his most charming smile. He had a matching vial clutched in his own hand.
"When you give me that look and say 'trust me,' it always means I shouldn't. But yet again, I will trust you against my better judgement, only because you're cute." She looked at the potion uncertainly. "An aging potion that makes us younger? Does it wear off or will we be stuck looking like ten year olds forever?"
"We only have four hours before we start aging up again. Did you get a costume?"
"Absolutely." She indicated a bag at her feet. "Well, let's get this over with."
They went to separate rooms of their house to drink the potion and change into their costumes. Marlene drank the potion quickly. It tasted rather good, a bit sweet but not bad. She hoped this meant that the transformation would be easy as well. She started to feel tingly after a few seconds and everything looked taller than her as she shrank.
She looked down at herself in amazement. Her hands were smaller, she could slip out of her shoes quite easily as they were several sizes too big, and her clothes hung off her very loosely. "Wow." She gasped at the sound of her own voice. It sounded sort of like her, but younger. It had worked.
She quickly changed into her costume and ran back out to the living room, where Sirius was waiting. At least, she assumed it was him. It looked sort of like him. He had the same charming smile, the same dark hair and grey eyes, but like her, he was much younger.
"Nice costume," he said as she entered the room. "Really creative."
"What? I couldn't very well go in my regular clothes and say I was a witch, now could I?" She'd used her old school robes and cloak without the Gryffindor colors, and she'd bought the Muggle version of a witch's hat and a toy broom. Her old cauldron completed the outfit, to be used as a treat container.
"You could've been anything the Muggles could dream up. A zombie, a fairy, even a mummy. But a witch?"
"Oh, well, you've got a lot of room to talk. I'm surprised you didn't just transform and get it over with." She shook her head as she looked over his black dog costume, complete with shaggy tail and ears.
He laughed. "Ok, ok, so we both really went all out. Arguing isn't going to get us loads of candy though. Come on."
As they lived in London, their options were nearly limitless for trick or treating. Nearly every house in their neighborhood was handing out sweets to children in all variety of costumes. Marlene wasn't the only witch (although some had painted their faces green; Sirius wondered aloud if Muggles thought real witches went around looking as if they were about to be sick all the time), and there were many different animals, dogs and cats being the most popular. There were fairies and zombies, as Sirius had mentioned, as well as vampires, werewolves, and an assortment of Muggle occupations, like firemen and doctors.
They walked their own neighborhood and the next, their treat containers getting heavier at each stop. They walked around for about three hours before heading back. They made it home with only fifteen minutes to spare before the potion wore off.
As soon as they'd changed back into their normal selves, they dumped all of their sweets into one big pile on the kitchen table and began going through it. A wide assortment of Muggle chocolates, hard candies, toffees, licorice, and lollipops made up the mound of sweets that was nearly covering the entire surface of the table. They tried a bit of everything, somewhat disappointed that Muggle sweets weren't as interesting as magical ones, but happy nonetheless with all the free goodies.
"You know," Marlene said after they'd had their fill, "we could've just went out and bought a bunch of sweets. It would've been easier."
Sirius smiled mischievously. "But it wouldn't have been quite so much fun, love."
She admitted to herself that he was right.
