AN: Ah, Chapter four already, about the time in the story when you finally get to find out what Rose is, precisely. Also bringing you the pepper upper scene, and the one and only actual time that we show a potions class in the story, taught by Slughorn, of course, due to being a past scene. Slowly but surely we near the end of what Kokoro refers to as the "scary, two-years-ago writing," which is a mouthful in and of itself. Still, a good fun chapter awaits you so read on, and do remember to leave us an honest review at the end, whether you loved it, hated it, or felt it was absolutely typical.
Marauders' Fourth Year
The full moon shone over Hogwarts grounds, leaving a nice shimmer on the lake as is inched its way up the horizon. No one was there to appreciate the view it seemed, as all the children of Hogwarts were safely sleeping and all the teachers had no need to watch a moon on its slow journey. And yet in the forest there was a spot, a low valley. Its lush grass grew with spotted flowers and a nice weeping willow whose bottom leaves hit the water of the lake. From this spot one could have a perfect view of the moon rise and all of its beauties, and one did. A unicorn lay under the willow tree, just inches away from the water. Her golden hooves shimmered with the moon, the pearly-white mane swept along her side as she moved her head a bit to get a small drink of water.
She was full grown, older than seven that is, and so she was completely and totally white, so much so that her brightness seemed to be envied by the moon. Her horn, most beautiful silver, was long and thin and made her grayish green eyes sparkle. She was like all other unicorns, pure and beautiful.
A fairly odd wolf stopped abruptly from a previous fast and joyous sprint when it spotted the unicorn. It had made a wonderful discovery on this night, as throwing its full weight against the door to a certain shack had actually caused it to open for once, and it was in a good mood, but the wolf still growled nervously at this unicorn that was in its path and approached it slowly.
The unicorn turned its head casually to look at the wolf. She didn't seem to fear the thing; instead she just looked back at the lake. She was completely calm.
This confused the wolf, which stopped growling. Instead it tried to keep its body low to the ground and quietly approach the unicorn, as if to sneak up on it.
The unicorn made a noise, like a nay, it was just very calm and musical.
The wolf sat down and barked at the unicorn to display its curiosity.
The unicorn stood up and turned around so she was facing the wolf. She lay back down and held her head up so that is was at the same height as the wolves.
The wolf sniffed the unicorn, then sat back down and barked happily.
The unicorn leaned its head in and touched her nose to his, then pulled at and made a happy noise.
The wolf ran around the unicorn a few times yipping happily in a cross-species attempt to communicate its want to play.
The unicorn seemed to laugh and stood up, happy to oblige to the Wolf's wishes, seeing as she had nothing else to do.
The wolf attempted something of a smile, and ran off into the forest.
The unicorn followed him at a trot.
Fall, 1996
Four days later, the day after the full moon, after all classes were over Professor Linyaari sat in Severus's office drinking a potion that would stop pain. She was in there watching Severus work, and sipping the crystal clear potion.
Severus looked up from Harry's paper on the potion that Rose was drinking. "You know, that would be just as effective if you weren't drinking it in my office. You don't really have to stick around here unless you have a reason."
"If you want me to leave I will. I just like being down here." Rose shrugged and stood up. "I'll see you later then. Thanks for the potion." She walked out the door and sat down outside of the office.
Remus walked up to her, seeming more comfortable than he had four days before then. "Ah. Finally I run into you. So, how are you feeling?"
Rose stood up and looked at Remus. "Like how I did four days ago, just with a bunch of pain in my shoulder." She shrugged. "And my head, actually."
"How'd you get injured? Wait, you probably don't know. Anyhow, I'm sorry about four days ago, but you know, before the full moon, everything's just a bit off. Now I'm fine. Especially after that pepper-upper potion, or whatever it's actually called. That and a chocolate rose, they didn't have normal chocolate bars for some reason. Not that, of course, the rose was shaped like you. That would be weird. I would never eat you. . .
"Remus, be quiet." Rose said looking at him, the affects of the full moon still on her, so of course this huge random speech that he was giving her didn't help at all. "I'll be right back." She walked into Severus's office and put the empty mug on his desk. "Thanks Severus, it has helped"
"Oh, good," Severus said absentmindedly as he laughed at some third year's essay on the ingredients for polyjuice potion (which wasn't even the assignment). "This is hilarious, but you probably wouldn't get it."
"Yeah, um, I'll be going back to my death now. Any last words you want to speak to me?" Rose asked as she walked over to the door and waited for Severus to answer.
"Yeah, what's your death?" Severus inquired.
"Remus on a Pepper-upper potion the day after the full moon." Rose laughed at how silly it sounded.
Severus snickered. "You know, you could tell him about exactly how your condition works. I'm sure he'd be forgiving." He kept laughing. 'And I still don't see why no one has cared to inform lover boy before now. It only causes problems. Still, I do kind of want to watch this scene. Hee, hee, Remus on a pepper-upper potion.'
"I could tell him. . ." Rose smiled. "Why hasn't anyone told him yet, anyway? It seems liked something that people would tell, unless it's true and you all do want to torture me." She laughed. "Well back out to dancing with death."
Severus didn't hug her back. "Good luck."
Rose walked out and looked at Remus. "Hey." She sighed.
Remus smiled at her. "Wow, you're almost downright depressing. Really, you should smile a little bit more, or maybe sing. After all, the true trial of the month is over, and I miss your voice. Anyway, do you want to drop by the kitchens and eat something?"
"I'm not that hungry actually." She feigned a smile and started to walk out of the dungeons. "I was actually thinking of going back to my office to rest before classes tomorrow."
"Well, that's probably a good idea too. I'll just go find someone else to talk to for the rest of the day."
"Yeah, well then I'll talk to you later. Have a great day." Rose laughed a bit and started to walk back to her room.
Remus actually sighed as he turned away from her and headed to the great hall.
Marauders' Fourth Year
When the marauders entered the potions classroom, they found that one cauldron and a large batch of ingredients had been set out for every two seats. On the board there was the basic directions:
Sleeping Draught
See page 62
You'll need all the time on this one
There was also, oddly, a seating chart, which gave out pairings in a way that Slughorn probably felt was best to induce the fewest explosions. This required putting some of the worse with some of the best: Remus and Lily, Rose and Severus; as well as splitting up troublesome pairs: James with Alice, Sirius with Alex, Peter with Dimela and trying to still keep enemies apart: Sirius and James were at least a few tables away from any given Slytherin.
They sighed and moved to their separate places, then created paper airplanes and tossed them at each other as they waited for their partners to show up.
Dimela had groaned when she saw that she was paired with Peter and whispered to Lily before they sat down. "Neither of us can do potions, what does he expect?" Lily just laughed and sent Dimela on her way.
Rose looked at Severus and tried to keep from laughing. No one really knew that they were friends; it really was a kind of secret friendship.
Severus looked back at her and smiled.
A paper airplane signed by James and reading "Lucky!" landed on the table in front of Remus, who quickly crumpled the thing and tossed it back at James.
Lily looked at the airplane and then sighed. "Well hello, Remus." She said with a smile.
"Hello, Lily. James still likes you, of course, and will probably ask you out from a distance by the time this class is over, just as a fair warning."
"I think I'm used to it by now." Lily laughed.
Remus laughed too. "Do you ever even think about his invitations anymore?"
"Sometimes, but not really."
"Okay, so how are we supposed to be making this potion thing?"
"Open the book," Lily replied.
Remus opened the book, and it still looked like a lot of nonsense. "So, which of these is beet root, and which is mandrake root?"
Lily laughed and started to show the ingredients to Remus.
Remus listened carefully and managed to memorize a few things. "Okay, so we've got to get the water to boil."
"You can do that right?" Lily asked with a little laugh and then started to cut up the things that needed to be cut.
Remus took the jibe in stride and did manage to get the water hot enough to boil.
Rose couldn't help but giggle after a while as she worked with Severus. "For once I may actually be able to finish a potion," she said after a while.
"I certainly hope so," he replied. "Either that or you may ruin my perfect streak of completing potions." He had never had Rose reference the book, and was mostly making up the way that this potion was going on the spot, but it looked to be about the right sort of purple for this point.
Rose rolled her eyes. "I'm not that bad. Seriously."
"Well, of course not, but I happen to know that you think almost nothing of yourself when it comes to potions. Still, you appear to be doing fine."
"Well yeah, you're here to tell me what to do." Rose laughed.
"Well, it really isn't your fault that the book doesn't give good enough directions."
She nodded and shrugged.
Dimela wrote something on a piece of paper and sent it over to Lily. The thing read "Severus and Rose are cute. Her all innocent looking and him all dark looking."
Remus simply refused to admit to himself how much this comment made him feel hopeless.
Lily crumpled up the paper and laughed a bit, unknowing that Remus had read it.
Remus tried to ignore this. "So, what do we have to do next?"
Peter, meanwhile, had discovered that his potion had a somewhat green tinge to it. "Dimela, do you think this is right?" he asked nervously.
Dimela looked at it and rolled her eyes. "No, it's not. It's not at all right." She groaned.
Peter sighed. "What should we do?"
"Well we could start over." Dimela groaned again.
"Then we'll never finish, and I'll probably mess it up again."
"No Peter it's okay. We can start it over and you won't mess up."
Peter sighed and magicked away their current solution. It was the only thing involving potions that he'd become truly fluent at. "Okay, so we need to get water to boil and make cubes out of the mandrake roots."
"Okay, you make the water boil, I'll make the cubes. Okay?" Dimela sighed and started to cube.
Fall, 1996
The next day, the most wonderful of all days, Monday, Rose sat in her class room finishing up the last touches of her lesson plan and then waiting for her class to come.
A large, fluffy black dog bounded into the room, kicked the door closed, and abruptly transformed into a human. "Rose, how did Remus manage to embarrass himself yesterday? You see, he's done nothing but sit around and mourn the day ever since that potion wore off."
Rose almost fell out of her chair when the dog bounded in. She groaned and stood up. "Sirius I have a headache and I'm not in a very good mood. I am the most moody person you will every meet." She sighed. "He was just being all Peppery on the day after the full moon, my effects take longer too wear off. You know that."
Sirius shook his head. "Well, at least you two are still on speaking terms, right?"
"Sure." Rose shrugged and sat down on her desk. "I guess we are."
"Great then, I'll leave you alone, and tell him that. Try to get rid of your headache, bye." He opened the door partway, transformed into a dog, and walked out, leaving Rose at the mercy of her students.
Once Sirius had left Rose's students filed in and sat down, talking about crushes, parents, the coming year, and all of the normal studenty things. Rose had gotten off of her desk and sat back down on her chair, writing on the very bottom of the lesson plan "two more days, then talk to RL!!!" She sighed and looked up at the class. "So how was the weekend?"
AN2: Here is the place where I, the author in charge of writing author's notes, lecture you, the reader, about reviewing. I am going to take time right now to tell you how very, very important reviews are to us, the authors, and for those of you who write yourselves, you should already know all of this. Positive reviews do give us the satisfaction of knowing that we have kept someone happy, brightened up a boring day, or at least allowed slightly more happiness to pervade the general darkness of the world we live in. Constructive criticisms tell us precisely what we've done right and wrong and give us the satisfaction of knowing that someone cared enough to really sit down and analyze our story. Even negative reviews are helpful, in both that they keep us level headed and tell us where we've gone wrong.
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