Lily hurried to the back of the class with her thermometer, sticking it into the pot of boiling water. She gave it the chance to heat up, waiting there patiently in the back and avoiding eye contact with Sev, who she saw was coming over. All the other students began to stick their thermometers in too.
"Hey!" Slughorn yelled. "You only need one student per table to calibrate their thermometer, since only one potion is going to be made at each table. The other student should be calibrating their scale."
Lily had forgotten to talk to her lap partner, but she realized he hadn't followed her back to the boiling water, but was already sitting at the desk calibrating the scale with the standard weight.
Lily smiled at the sharpness of her partner's mind. Even she hadn't been thinking that far ahead.
Neither had Severus or his partner.
"Go calibrate the scale!" Sev nearly shouted at James, pointing to the weights on Slughorn's desk.
"Okay, okay, fine. Calm down. Jesus." James said, turning back to the desk.
He threw a look at Sirius, rolling his eyes. Sirius laughed, joining him to get a standard weight.
Sev walked back and stood next to Lily, dipping his thermometer into the boiling water.
He looked at Lily, but didn't talk. Lily looked away awkwardly. Too bad Geraldine was also a scale calibrator. She caught herself thinking. Oh god, what was she doing? He was her friend.She looked at his face. Maybe…he was sorry? God, why did this have to happen in the middle of class? She couldn't deal with this drama now!
"Hey, Sev." She said.
"Hi." He said, looking at his thermometer. "I'm kind of busy, so I can't talk now."
Lily felt like she'd been slapped. She hadn't even wanted to talk to him, but did it to avoid an awkward situation. "Well, obviously!" She snapped. "Just wanted to be polite and acknowledge you, friend."
Smooth, Severus. Severus thought, instantly regretting how stupid he'd been. He meant, he couldn't talk now… He knew what he needed to say.
"I meant, I can't talk now. But I want to talk." He pleaded. "I'm sorry."
Lily nodded. "I understand. Yeah, we can talk after classes. My last one ends at three."
"Same." Severus said.
"Okay. I'll meet you at the entrance to the Great Hall then." And she removed her thermometer and walked back to the desk.
"I put out the materials on the front desk. Flip to page 32 for the instructions for the Sooth Aches Draught." Slughorn bellowed, so the students still calibrating thermometers would hear. Sound echoed in the dungeon rooms and made it difficult to hear when students were talking—even if they were whispering.
When Lily had returned to her desk, Remus Lupin, which she found out was the sickly boy's full name, had already started to heat up the water, which formed the basis of the draught.
"We need 2 grams Mandrake tails." Remus said. "And they need to be ground into a powder. Funny, I didn't think Mandrakes had tails."
"What are Mandrakes?" Lily asked.
"Little plants with humanoid roots that actually cry. An adult Mandrake root can kill you if you hear it cry."
"Wow." Lily said.
"Maybe it's a word for the roots that aren't really part of the Mandrake's body." Remus thought out loud.
"I can ground the Mandrake tails." Lily offered. "Hey," she suddenly thought, "If you're vegetarian, can you eat Mandrake roots?"
"I've never thought about it." Remus said. "Maybe? I don't think most witches or wizards are vegetarian. It seems like a lot of things kind of morph together in the Wizarding World—the distinction between plant and animal isn't quite as clear."
"Oh."
"Anyway, I think I'll grab the other materials and start preparing that. And I'll pick up your Mandrake tails too. Once the powdered Mandrake tails go in, a bunch of other ingredients need to go in within the minute, so I'll have those ready to go."
"Okay." Lily said, flipping open the textbook.
She looked at the instructions carefully. It was a simple potion—only five ingredients—but she barely knew any of the creatures or plants, whose parts she was using for the potion, on the list. Acromantula webs—probably to get the potion to coagulate, Lily thought as she read. Ashwinder backbone, frozen Devil's Snare, shredded Umbrella Flowers…?
Lily wanted to spend the class just studying the ingredients, but Remus insisted on following the potion's expedient instructions and as soon as Lily had gently poured the Mandrake tails powder into the simmering water, Remus lowered in the backbone, turned up the heat, and began to stir in the Umbrella Flowers he had shredded while Lily cut up the Acromantula webs into manageable strings, and they left the Devil's Snare to thaw—but not thaw too long, as Professor Slughorn warned. This was mostly why the potion had to be made quickly. You'd think there'd have been enough light in the room, so the Devil's Snare wouldn't begin to attack them, but you'd be wrong. The dungeons were apparently poorly lit enough for a healthy, well slept Devil's Snare to become curious. It latched itself onto Lily's arm, more like cuddling her than squeezing the blood out of her arm.
"Aw, it's grown affectionate with hibernation." Professor Slughorn cooed, actually smiling as Lily removed it from her slender arm.
"Too bad we've got to kill it." Lily said. Remus had finished with the Umbrella flowers.
"Yes, a pity." Slughorn agreed. "But if you can't kill it, probably Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures is more your subject. That's how we lose the dear Hufflepuffs, I think."
"Ready, Remus?" Lily asked, grasping the Devil's Snare by its tentacle-like appendages.
"Go for it, Lily." He grinned.
Lily stuffed the plant into the potion, ignoring its screams. Remus prodded the plant into the pot with his thermometer.
Slughorn watched Lily's expression as the plant slowly cooked alive. Her face was wrinkled, but determined—focusing on the final product and adding the rest of the webs. The life could not be wasted—the life of the Ashwinder and the Umbrella Flowers and the Mandrake. Could they matter any less than the Devil's Snare, though they had not died in front of her? She had seen neighbors butcher chicken and a dog get run over a car. She could handle a magical death as well as any of the muggle world.
"You're not a vegetarian, are you?" Slughorn asked her.
"No. Why would you think that?" Lily looked at his round face with its double chin and high forehead with a receding hairline and scrutinizing eyes—a color she could not place. He seemed such a washed out, intellectual man—faded by years spent indoors among books.
"You seem the type." He said. "Nature-y, spiritual, artsy, hippie…that sort."
"Not really." She said. She didn't like to be categorized as a sort. Like a genre of a book.
"You're muggle born though?" Of course she was! Would she even know the term hippie then?
"Yeah." She said, disliking his questions. What was he doing? She had a draught to finish, and here this professor was distracting her.
"You kill very easily." He said.
"I didn't want to waste the life of the things already killed." She replied, turning back to her potion. Thank god Remus knew what he was doing. He was a bright kid, she was realizing. He had already let the Devil's Snare disintegrate and had even turned off the Bunsen burner, allowing the draught to finish on the remaining heat. The potion had turned a soothing bronze—the color and the consistency of gravy, except for the bone at the bottom.
"That looks good." Slughorn said. "May I?" He took a ladle from a spare pocket in his tattered robes and leaned over Lily to take a sip of the draught. Lily wrinkled her nose. He smelled unwashed and sweaty.
"That is good." He sighed after a long sip. "Can't even feel the bits of mandrake tails. Could be fewer webs thought..." He paused.
"Excellent work, Evans and Lupin. 10 points to Gryffindor." He turned and went to look at the other draughts, some looking quite terrible and poisonous. Slughorn avoided trying any more potions.
Lily looked over at Sev, who was yelling at his partner about having put in too many Umbrella Flowers.
James just rolled his eyes. "You do it then." He said, pushing himself away from the table.
Somehow Severus had managed to salvage it by the end of class. He took out all the Umbrella Flowers and slowly reintroduced half the value than the draught instructions called for. And Slughorn had blessed it with his second honorary sip of a stellar student's potion. "Not bad, Snape. Not bad at all. 10 points to Slytherin"
Severus met Lily's curious eye and grinned. She smiled back. Poor Sev. Having such a terrible Potions partner.