Chapter Two
Peter was good at Potions. He'd always been better at it than James and Sirius. Remus did well with the theory but he'd never been too great with the practical side. Professor Slughorn liked those who could excel within his classroom, so he liked Peter; which made Peter the logical choice for this little mission. Except it was Peter, and he could be a bumbling idiot sometimes, so Remus was worried.
They didn't get a chance to do anything for a few weeks, but that was okay because it gave the boys time to plan their method of attack. It was James who developed the plan. Slughorn needed to be in a particularly giving kind of mood, and James suggested that be done with a potion of some sort. Remus knew the perfect one.
Sirius stole the ingredients from the potion master's cupboard and Peter made the potion during a quiet weekend in late January. The potion had to mature for a full lunar phase (which the boys were all quite good at keeping track of for some reason) so it wouldn't be ready for use until near the end of February. In the mean time, the boys immersed themselves in their usual activities, but nothing seemed to be able to hold their attention for too long.
Coming up to the full moon, Remus looked pale and sick. He kept his head down in class, hiding behind his honey brown hair, and got quieter and quieter when he was alone with the other Marauders until he barely contributed to their conversations at all; which left James and Sirius talking and Peter listening on with rapt attention while Remus sat and read a book or stared into space and didn't hear a word. It was like this every month; he withdrew into himself and fought some kind of internal battle as the pull of the moon grew stronger until he lost over to the wolf as the full moon rose.
Remus could say it was better now that he had the other Marauders there with him as much as he wanted. They could roam the grounds, and Sirius and James could keep him under control, mostly; but Remus was still terrified he'd hurt one of them, or eat Peter, or something equally terrible. Every morning that he woke up in the Shack – covered in new scratches, some of which would scar – he was just glad to be human again.
His mother kept sending owls with letters containing clippings from medical journals with talks of a potion being developed that would help werewolves contain their minds during the transformation, but there was no real progress being made on it and Remus was resigned to spending the full moon with the mind of the wolf. His memory of his time as a wolf was hazy at best – flashes here and there of hungry and run and strange, out of focus pictures of the moon and trees flashing past. And then the pain, that never seemed to really set in until the next morning when he woke up lying naked on the torn up floor of the shack and everything ached and muscles screamed at him when he moved and dried blood flaked off his skin as he pulled on his clothes.
Madam Pomfrey came to collect him after the moon set and escorted him back to the castle as she always did. Remus all but fell into the waiting bed, the exhaustion soon pulling him down into a semblance of sleep, interrupted whenever he tried to move and his body reminded him that it hurt. That was the thing with being a werewolf; the wounds he gave himself during his transformations couldn't be healed like normal wounds. While he was sleeping (or trying to sleep) Madam Pomfrey applied a combination of salves to his fresh cuts to speed up the healing process and lessen the chance of scarring, but she couldn't heal them instantly like she could with anything else and she always insisted he stay for at least 24 hours after each full moon. Not that Remus was ever really in any kind of state to object.
It was a still bedridden Remus who suggested the pineapple. The other Marauders had come to visit him after they had finished their classes for the day, bouncing with the knowledge that classes were over for the week and tomorrow was the weekend, and all they could talk about was how they were going to get Slughorn to drink the Veritaserum. By now Sirius had told them all about the memory a thousand times, and Remus had had all day lying in bed to think about it, so no one was all that surprised when he discovered the solution.
"If we put the potion in the pineapple it will be much easier to get him to take," he pointed out and James made the trip to Hogsmeade the next afternoon, returning with two boxes of crystallised pineapple (and a few boxes of other sweets for himself, plus a chocolate bar for Remus). Peter administered the Veritaserum he'd brewed to the contents of one box. Just a single piece of the pineapple would have Slughorn spilling his deepest secrets, which was just what they wanted.
o o o o o
A few days after they had completed the last few details of their plan Peter got the chance to put it in action. Their potions lesson had been all theory that day and when it was over the students were almost falling over one another to get out the door, so no one noticed when Remus disappeared under the invisibility cloak or that Peter stayed behind. Slughorn had turned around to rearrange some papers on his desk, so Peter cleared his throat so as not to startle him.
"Hm?" Slughorn turned around and saw Peter standing there. "Oh, Peter. Can I help you?"
"No, sir. Well, I just wanted to thank you for teaching us the Restoration Potion last week, and I bought you these," Peter was babbling a little, nervous as all hell. Even though he couldn't see him he knew Remus was standing somewhere in the room with them, and he was terrified that Slughorn would somehow just know that he was, or know that the pineapple was laced with Veritaserum, or have the antidote on him – and oh god, none of them had considered the possibility of him having the antidote! Or, Peter took a deep breath. Remus would have thought of it, and probably hadn't mentioned it because he knew Peter would freak out. A little belatedly he realised he was clutching the box so hard he was crumpling the sides and he quickly held it out to Professor Slughorn.
"Well, you needn't have!" Slughorn looked surprised, and with good reason. Peter might be skilled with potions but he had never thanked the teacher for teaching him a new one with a box of sweets, especially not for a potion as simple and basically useless to him as a Restoration Potion. Even James could make a Restoration Potion without any difficulty. But the Professor took the offered box and looked inside. "Pineapple! It is my favourite, dear boy. How did you know?"
"Oh, uh, just a lucky guess!" Peter glanced around the room wondering where Remus was standing and wishing he could swap places with him and be under the cloak right now. "They're my fa- aather's favourite, you see." He had almost said they were his favourite too, and then realised the potential disaster if Slughorn had offered him one. Luckily Slughorn was too busy picking a piece of crystallised pineapple out of the box to be paying any attention to Peter.
Remus, from where he was standing in the corner, was almost ready to cut his losses and leave. This was a disaster, Peter was panicking, and he should never have suggested him for this job. Even while Slughorn was choosing the biggest piece of pineapple to taste Peter was looking around the room, obviously searching for him, and Remus wanted to smack him on the head with his wand. Luckily for Peter, Slughorn finally chose a piece and ate it. Within seconds his face had relaxed completely and he was staring straight ahead, eyes blank.
"Remus?" Peter's voice was still verging on panic, and he breathed an audible sigh of relief when Remus shrugged off the cloak and joined him in front of the teacher. Remus wasn't entirely sure how to do this, so he took a deep breath and stared at Slughorn for a few moments before he begun.
"Do you remember Tom Riddle?" He asked, because he had to begin somewhere and it seemed anti-climatic to begin in the middle. It seemed anti- climactic to begin here, too.
"Yes. Best student I ever had," Slughorn's voice was flat and emotionless and it sent shivers down Remus's spine. Though he'd read about the power of Veritaserum he'd never seen it used before and he hadn't been expecting this. It sounded like the words were coming from some place deep inside Slughorn, crawling up his throat and spilling out of his mouth without his permission. Remus paused long enough for Peter to turn to him, questioning, and then with a quick shake of his head that didn't quite clear away his misgivings, he continued.
"He asked you about Horcruxes."
"Yes." The professor's eyes were focussed on something behind Remus, and he fought down the urge to glance over his shoulder as he prompted him to go on.
"What did you tell him?"
"Dark stuff, very Dark indeed," Slughorn intoned, voice still empty. "An object in which a person has concealed a part of their soul... he wanted to know how to make one, and I told him it can only be done if you split your soul and hide part of it in an object outside the body. It is powerful magic… you see, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged."
Remus already knew the basics of this from the book he'd found, the one that didn't come from the library – something that was worrying him, just a little. Wherever it did come from, there might be someone missing it. Remus wasn't sure he wanted to try to explain what he was doing with a book on a forbidden subject; especially considering what that subject was. "Did you tell him how to do it?"
"By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart." Hearing those words spoken without so much as a glimmer of emotion was off-putting to say the least. Remus glanced at Peter, who looked a little green, and wished (not for the first time) that Sirius or James were here instead. Whether he meant instead of him or instead of Peter even he wasn't sure. "But Tom wanted to know if he, if it was possible to split one's soul into seven pieces. Seven is the most powerfully magical number, you see."
"Seven Horcruxes?" Peter gaped.
"No, six. Six Horcruxes. The seventh piece would still be within his body." There was no hesitation before he answered, but somehow Remus could feel that the words weren't ones that Slughorn would have ever said willingly and he wondered how he could justify this sort of violation of another person, even if it was for the greater good. Ha, the greater good. That wonderful, unquantifiable thing that seemed to excuse any number of crimes. Remus didn't know if he could excuse himself, but he kept going anyway because someone had to do it and he'd already started. Six Horcruxes? It was enough to make him despair. How was anybody supposed to find six Horcruxes when they didn't even know where to start looking for the first one?
"Did he say what he was going to use to make them?" He asked eventually, because without Peter interrupting the silence had stretched on for far too long and the potion was bound to wear off soon.
"It was all theoretical."
"Of course, of course it was. Ah, if Tom did make a Horcrux, do you know what he might have made it with?" Remus rephrased his question carefully.
"I imagine he'd want to use things of importance to him and to the rest of the Wizarding world. Things that would be unlikely to be destroyed. But I don't know what exactly he would have used, hypothetically speaking you know."
"If you had to guess?"
"Possibly his ring, yes. That ring was very important to him." Slughorn was silent for a few moments and then he added, "He was always fond of grand gestures, you know."
"Okay. Well, um. Thank you, Professor," Remus said awkwardly. He glanced at Peter. "I'll wipe his memory now Peter, switch the boxes." Peter quickly did as Remus had asked and switched the boxes of pineapple so it was the uncontaminated box now on the Professor's desk. While Peter was doing that Remus opened the door at the back of the classroom so he'd be able to get out without Slughorn noticing the door opening and closing on its own.
"Done," Peter told him, moving back from Slughorn's desk. Remus clutched the invisibility cloak around himself and stood in front of Slughorn, wand raised.
"Obliviate."
Remus slipped back under the invisibility cloak and retreated through the now open door, leaving Peter to fend for himself in case he really did hit the idiot on the head with his wand. He found James and Sirius waiting just down the hall, eager to know what had happened, but there were students everywhere and none of them wanted anybody to overhear this particular conversation so they made their way outside to sit under their usual tree and wait for Peter.
o o o o o
Even though James and Sirius were almost bursting with impatience to hear what had happened it was a good half an hour before they got the chance. Just after they had sat under the tree Lily had walked past with her friends and James had bounded off after her like a lovesick puppy. Remus had pulled a book out of his bag and was reading it, ignoring the rest of the world, and nothing Sirius could do would get him to look up until Peter arrived and James finally returned.
"She's amazing," James breathed as he sunk to his knees at the base of the tree. "Just amazing."
"You're amazing. Amazingly sickening," Sirius retorted, but James was too distracted to respond. "Come on Wormtail, you can tell us what he said if Moony won't." Peter looked at Remus guiltily, but Remus just continued to read. He was still replaying the conversation – no, interrogation – from the potions room over and over in his head and at each replay he felt sicker at what he'd done. Slughorn might not be his favourite teacher, and a Slytherin too, but Remus just felt as if he'd betrayed some sort of trust.
"Er, he told us what he told You-Know-Who," Peter said, with another brief glance at Remus to make sure the other boy didn't mind him telling. Not that he really would have stopped; Peter always did anything James or Sirius asked. "Said He wanted to make seven, I mean, six."
"Six?" James stared at Peter and then turned to Remus. "Is that true?" he demanded.
"Mmhm," Remus didn't look up, just turned the page and continued reading. James turned his attention back to Peter.
"Did he tell Him how? Did he know what He was going to use?"
"He did tell Him how, he said to do it you have to," Peter hesitated, "to murder someone. Only murder splits the soul like that." James and Sirius sobered a little at that.
"Well, we already knew He's killed people," Sirius said eventually. "Do we know what we're looking for?"
"Who said we were looking for anything?" Remus spoke up now, still staring at the pages of his book but obviously not reading anymore. His forehead was creased in a frown again and his knuckles were white where they gripped the pages.
"Well, we have to," James pointed out. "I thought that was the point?"
"No, we don't have to. We should take this to Dumbledore; we should tell him what we found from Slughorn."
"No way!" Sirius exclaimed. "Dumbledore wouldn't let us help if he knew! He'd make us sit back and wait while everyone else got to do all of the exciting stuff!"
"Exciting stuff?" Remus looked up from his book now, stared at Sirius, his expression unreadable. "Exciting, is it? People dying? War? You want to be out fighting, watching everyone die around you, do you?" Peter swallowed nervously and James looked uncomfortable.
"That's not what I meant," Sirius replied, but even he looked uncertain for a moment. "I don't think we should go to Dumbledore. He's needed here at Hogwarts; he can't go off searching for the Horcruxes."
"He's got a far better idea of what to look for than we do," Remus pointed out. "We'll just get ourselves killed."
"I think we should tell him," Peter put in. James and Sirius both stared at him for a moment until Peter looked ready to change his mind.
"I don't," James said eventually. "I think we should do this ourselves. We're more than capable. And you do know what to look for Remus, I bet Slughorn told you."
"We are not capable," Remus insisted, but he wasn't really arguing anymore. He knew he'd already lost.
"Sure we are," James said with a grin that seemed entirely unsuitable for the occasion. "You're brilliant at everything, Wormtail's great with potions, Padfoot and I are both well amazing with our wands, and we can use our animal forms when we need to, plus we can get into places other wizards can't with the cloak. We're best suited to do this, better than Dumbledore would be."
"So it's decided," Sirius said before Remus could respond. "We don't tell Dumbledore anything. Now, Remus if you won't tell us what Slughorn said then Peter will."
Remus was glaring at his book now as if it contained something that was of great offence to him. "He didn't know."
"Bullshit."
"All he said was Riddle was always fond of grand gestures. And that He might have used his ring."
"His ring? I saw the ring. He was wearing it in the memory," Sirius said, excitement dancing in his grey eyes.
"Right, because that's helpful. What's to say he's not still wearing it now?" Remus asked.
"Oh." Sirius deflated a little. "But grand gestures? What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
"Come on, Moony."
"No." Remus closed his book and shoved it back into his bag. "This is insanity. I'm going to tell Dumbledore." Before he could get to his feet James was shoving him back down to the ground and Remus hadn't even seen him get up.
"No you're not."
"Let me go."
"Not until you come to your senses. You can't tell Dumbledore, or he'll know Sirius was snooping around his office, and that Peter drugged the Potions master with Veritaserum and that you used a memory charm on a teacher." James pointed out, hands still gripping Remus's shoulders, pressing him down and holding him still.
"Let me go," Remus repeated angrily and James found himself stumbling backwards, tripping over Peter and Sirius and falling into the dirt. They always forgot how skilled Remus was in wandless magic, something none of the other three had ever been able to master no matter how hard they tried. Non-verbal too, but Sirius was moderately good at that, so long as he had his wand. As soon as he'd been released Remus stood up, but he didn't storm off like he'd wanted to a moment ago. James was right, after all.
"Remus, mate," Sirius had gotten to his feet now too. James was regaining his feet and looked ready for a fight, glasses askew and hair even wilder than usual. Peter jumped up as well, if only because he suddenly felt very vulnerable being the only one sitting.
"Just shut up," Remus snapped. "I won't go to him, but I think this is a very bad idea." With that, he pulled his book bag over his shoulder and left. Sirius moved to follow him but James stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Should let him calm down a bit," he advised and although Sirius shrugged his hand off he didn't try to follow Remus again.
