I realize the potions thing is a little overused, (along with the friendship with Scorpious) but whatever. *shrugs* Enjoy!

Albus Severus Potter

4) He's a potions prodigy, taking after his second namesake; some like to wager that he's even better than Severus Snape himself was.

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"Lily, I have your medicine," Ginny called, entering the kitchen and glancing around for her eleven year old daughter.

Lily sat at the kitchen table, sipping a thick purple liquid out of one of Ginny's good glasses. Albus stood next to her, watching his sister intently. After finishing off the drink, Lily lowered the glass and smiled at her brother. A bit of the purple drink remained on her upper lip, but she didn't seem to notice. "Thanks Albie!" she cried happily.

Albus winced at the nickname, but appeared quite proud of himself anyway. "No problem, Lils," he said with a smile, accepting a bone-crushing hug from his younger sister.

"What exactly did Albus do?" Ginny asked curiously, taking a seat next to her daughter. Holding up the medicine in her hand, she turned towards Lily and said, "Okay, Lily, ready to take your medicine?"

Lily stubbornly shook her head. "I don't need it, Mum!"

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "You couldn't go more than two minutes without coughing when I last saw you." Though now that she thought about it, Lily hadn't once coughed since Ginny had entered the kitchen.

Lily smiled. "Albie made me medicine because you were taking too long!"

Ginny stared at her son in surprise. "Albus made you medicine?"

Albus nodded shyly. "Yeah. We did a short study on medical potions this year."

Ginny looked at her daughter - who was no longer coughing horribly like she had been just minutes ago - and then to the empty glass on the table, and finally back to her thirteen year old son. "They taught you how to brew a coughing medicine in Potions class?" She certainly didn't remember learning how to brew that. Otherwise she would have simply brewed the medicine for her daughter rather than flooing to Diagon Alley to pick up a potion.

Albus shook his head. "No, but Professor Huntly suggested a book on medical potions for me to read. She said that I would find it interesting."

"Al, could you bring me this book, please?" Ginny asked. Albus nodded and hurried up the stairs to go grab the book. When he was gone, Ginny turned to look at her daughter with concern. She knew that Albus was exceptionally good with potions - and he had been following directions - but it was still concerning to realize that Albus had given his sister a potion he had never brewed with a teacher before. "Lily, do you feel okay?"

Lily nodded. "I feel fine, Mum! My throat doesn't hurt at all, anymore! And Albie managed to make it taste like grape instead of the icky flavor cough medicine usually tastes like. Grape is my favorite, you know."

Albus suddenly came bounding down the stairs and back into the kitchen. He was carrying a thick book labeled Medical Potions For the Experienced, which he handed to his mother.

Ginny flipped through the book curiously, raising eyebrows at many of the potions; some of them she had never even heard of. How in the world did the Potions professor expect a third year to be able to brew any of these? And on his own, no less.

Finally, she found the recipe for cough medicine. She skimmed the list of ingredients and looked up at her son in confusion. "Albus, we don't own some of these ingredients."

"I know," Albus said. "But some of them were in my intermediate potions kit, and the rest of the stuff we didn't have, I just improvised."

Ginny stared at him in shock. "You improvised with a potion you were going to give your sister? Albus Severus Potter, what were you thinking?"

Albus backed away slightly, looking ashamed. "But I knew what I was doing, Mum! I wouldn't give her anything that would hurt her!"

"It worked, Mum! Don't get mad at Albie!" Lily said, backing her brother up. "And I feel fine, now!"

Ginny took a few breaths. It was true that Lily looked much better than she had when Ginny had left. Looking back at the recipe in front of her, she noticed something else. According to the book, the potion was supposed to taste sour, and yet Lily had claimed it had tasted like grape flavoring. "Al, how did you make it taste like grape?"

Albus looked stumped. After a moment of silence, he replied. "Well, I'm not really sure; I just mixed a few different ingredients and managed to make it taste that way. I could give you a list of what I used, I remember everything."

Ginny nodded, staring at him in astonishment, and Albus began to copy the ingredients down onto a sheet of paper. Lily looked back and forth from Albus to Ginny before asking, "Can I go ask Anna to play, Mum? Since I'm not sick anymore?" Ginny nodded and Lily ran off to go owl her friend.

When Albus finished up his list, he handed it to his mother and took the book back from her. "Albus," Ginny called as the boy headed up the stairs. He stopped and looked back at his mother in confusion. "Yeah, Mum?"

"You really haven't brewed that potion before today?"

Albus looked confused by her question. "No, Mum."

"And you didn't find it complicated at all? Not even to improvise or change the flavoring?"

Albus smiled. "No, Mum."

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