"So, what are we going to be doing then, you know, since Snape's not here?" Liv asked, choosing the desk in the middle of the first row, no point in walking all the way to the back of the class and getting set up just to be told to come back down to the front again. One of the many lessons she'd learned the hard way.
"You will be doing exactly the same thing here as you would if you were in the potions classroom." Remus replied.
Liv furrowed her brow, "What d'you mean?" She asked in confusion.
"Professor Snape left me very strict instructions concerning your detentions. He unfortunately won't be able to make any of them," He told them with a slight smile.
James scoffed, "Unfourtunate?"
Liv rolled her eyes at him, still peeved at being here in the first place. "What instructions did he leave?" She was fairly sure she didn't want the answer to this question.
Picking up a piece of parchment off his desk and giving it a once over with his eyes Remus answered, "You have to brew one potion every night to perfection," Remus cringed, "If you don't the consequences will be ten points from you house for every potion you don't get correct."
"What?!" Liv blurted out. She looked over at James, his jaw hung open and his eyes were wide. "That man needs to get laid! Honestly, does he really get his kicks out of taking points from Gryffindor?" She fumed.
Remus stared at her in shock. James had also directed his attention to her insted of the sheet in Remus' hands.
"Don't look at me like that, you both thought it, I'm just the one who voiced it!" She defended. Please don't take any points! I've done enough damage for today!
"Be that as it may I'm going to over look the fact that you did voice it." He looked back down to his parchment shaking his head and muttering something about 'Merlin' and 'your mother'.
Liv shrugged determined not to dwell on the fact that he was talking about her mum, she'd probably blow up if she had anymore stress added onto her load right now. "Can we choose the potions or is that also planned down to the very last detail?"
"There's a list here, 5 potions, one for each day I suppose."
Liv closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"What's Tuesdays potion?" Asked James.
"He didn't specify days to potions." Remus said still looking down at the potions.
"Surprisingly." Liv put in.
Remus looked to her, she stared back. He took a deep breath, "Forgive me, I'm not very good with potions, and I don't recognise any of these," He walked around his desk and laid the parchment of punishment on James and Liv's desk. Liv scanned it over with her eyes.
Amortentia
Draught of Living Death
Blood-Replenishing Potion
Confusing & Befuddlement Draught
Elixir to Induce Euphoria
"You got to be kidding me!" Liv blurted. "He's off his rocker!"
Remus looked from the confused look on James face as he stared blankly at the parchment to Livs outraged expression, "What's wrong?"
"This cannot be the list he left you!" She told him in disbelief.
"It is. Why can't this be right?" He asked befuddled.
"Why? Because almost all of these potions are NEWT level potions! And the one, the one that isn't, we haven't even covered yet!" She ran a hand through her hair and let out a long breath, "I take it back, he doesn't need to get laid, I have the greatest sympathy for any woman who has to come within two feet of his-"
"Liv!" James cut her off.
She looked over at him, her expression serious, "Your right, I feel sorry for any woman or man that has to come within two feet of his-"
"LIV!" James interrupted again.
"What?!" She asked, anger lacing her voice. James nodded his head to the left. She looked up to see the pale face of Remus staring back at her.
"Please, please, do not finish that sentence." He said, his voice slightly hoarse.
Liv looked back down at the potion list and sighed. "I suppose we better get to work if we don't want to be here all night." She scrunched her nose up and turned her long navy hair into floppy spikes that fell down over her forehead.
James and Remus looked on in astonishment, "I'll never get over seeing you do that." James breathed.
"Doing what?" She asked without looking up from her cauldron to meet his gaze.
"Morphing." He answered simply.
"Oh." She moved a hand up to touch her hair. "I didn't want to get it in the potion." She shrugged.
"Does it hurt?" He asked her.
"What? Morphing?" She asked, sneaking a glance at Remus. She was well aware of how painful it was for him to transform every month. He was staring at her intently, waiting for her reply.
"Yeah, morphing."
"No." She frowned, averting her gaze and going back to preparing her cauldron. "Its slightly uncomfortable, if its my first time trying a certain body type or hair style, I get used to it quickly though, it's second nature to me. Like changing your clothes I suppose, sometimes they're stiff and you need to break them in, other times its just not the type of thing your used to wearing and you don't feel right in them until you get used to it. Same principal, only difference is I change me."
James mouth formed a silent "Oh.", and he too began to set up for his potion.
Liv looked back up to Remus. He was gazing back at her, a look of fascination and... Regret? clouded his features. She cleared her throat, snapping him back to realitly. "Uh, I need to get a sixth year potions textbook for my potion, I'm pretty sure I can just conjure the ingredients and instruments I need."
"Yeah, and the fire won't be a problem. I can take care of that." James added. "Which potion are we starting with?"
Liv took a deep breath, "Might as well be Amortentia."
James grimaced, "Do we have to start with the love potion?"
Realization dawned on Remus' face, he didn't know much about potions but this one certainly rang a bell. "This is the potion that smells like the person you love?" He asked, feeling slightly nauseous.
"Yes, that's the one." Liv replied.
Remus paled, he knew exactly what it would smell of. Coffee and vanilla. Her.Her smell would linger in his classroom. Did Snape purposely do this to torture him? Did he anticipate his absence and purposely put his daughter on detention just to brew a potion that would remind him of how good her mother always smelled? Of course he did! It all made sense now! This would be the perfect way to cause even more friction between him and Liv, not to mention he probably did get his kicks from taking hard earned points off of Gryffindor. And he even managed to draw James and Lilly's grandson into this! Cruel is the only word that really fits for him. Nevermind what this might do to him but the effect it might have on Liv. Cruel.
"Can I go get the book?" She asked, catching his attention.
He looked at her, startled. "Uh, yes." He cleared his throat, "Actually I'll go get it, you two should prepare... ingredients and such."
Liv frowned. "Are you okay?" She asked warily.
"Yes. Fine." He replied stiffly, already walking toward the door.
James looked over to her, "What d'you think that was about?"
Apparently he was comfortable talking to her again.
Liv shrugged her shoulders and began conjuring the ingredients. She heard him sigh beside her.
"Liv, I'm sorry I got us into this mess. After you rushed off, I was distracted and McGonagall started asking questions, I just answered them without knowing it. I didn't even realise Snape was behind her. I wasn't even looking at her, I was about to run after you. By the time I realised he was there, it was too late. I'm sorry." He apologised.
Liv gave him a weak and slightly forced smile. It wasn't that she held him responsible. No. That would be ridiculous, they were bound to end up here sooner or later. But even though it was inevitable didn't mean she wasn't annoyed about it. "It's okay James, let's just get this over with."
James opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, aparently deciding against it. He frowned, "Liv?"
"Yeah?"
"I need to tell you something."
He sounded nervous. Since when did James get nervous? "Go ahead."
James turned to look her in the eye. "I-"
"Got it!" Lupin said striding back into the classroom and over to where they were stood in front of the desk.
He sat it on the bench in front of them, smiling warmly. His smile however faltered when he saw the flushed face of James and the slightly tense face of Liv.
Liv lunged for the book mumbling a quick "Thanks," to Remus. She flipped the pages urgently to find the correct potion, desperate for a distraction.
Remus nodded and turned to walk rather awkwardly back to his desk. He took a seat and looked up at the two teens clumsily moving around each other to get to varius ingredients and mumbling barley coherent apologies when they accidentally bumped elbows off one another. He shook his head, amused and set to correcting some papers for his first years.
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Two hours later Remus stared unseeing at the very same parchment he had begun to correct half an hour ago. The smell grew more and more intense with every passing minuet. The over-sensitive werewolf smell didn't help much either. The ever present nagging to just run back to her became almost too much to resist. It was harder and harder with every breath to stay in his seat and keep his composure. Severus Snape was an evil man...
Liv breathed in deeply, trying to place the familier scent wafting from her cauldrin. Minty, yet pleasently musky. Why couldn't she put smell to face? It was so familiar! In the back of her mind where she couldn't get to at the moment! She glared at the liqued in front of her, blaming it for her inability to recall the image she knew was there, just out of reach.
James eyes shifted from what he was doing to Liv nervously. He knew exactly who his potion smelled of. Chocolaty and fruity, an odd combination that, in his opinion, only she could pull off right. He closed his eyes and sniffed deeply. Biting back a sigh he opened his eyes to find her attention had turned to him.
She looked at him curiously, her head tilted slightly. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled sheepishly at her before turning away, his face flushed in embarrassment.
Liv cleared her throat. "I think we're done here."
Remus looked up, coughing slightly as he did so. "Well, that's good. I expect you have some, homework or something to get done before tomorrow. Cork your potion and you can get going."
Liv frowned and looked away from him quickly noticing his discomfort. Was it from what he smelled? Could it be? No he left. There's no way he could smell her mother, there's no way he could love her. He left her, he broke her! No one could do that to someone they 'loved'. He must be smelling something else, someone else. That's why he was so uncomfortable, he was getting the scent of somebody other than the mother of his child, who was in the room. It just wasn't possible for him to smell her. Was it?
Liv filled up the beaker, walked over and put it on Remus' desk, keeping her eyes trained to the floor the whole way. Eye contact was not something she needed right now.
Turning around she walked briskly back to her desk and discreetly filled another beaker, putting it into her bag before Remus had a chance to see what she was doing. She cast her eyes around the room. Neither of its other occupants were looking at her, a good sign. She magicked away the rest of the contents of her cauldrin and the remaining supplies she didn't need. Shouldering her bag she walked to the front of the room to wait for James.
"Straight to your comon room now, its after hours." Remus called while James joined Liv at the door.
"Sure." Liv mumbled leading the way out.
"Night professor." James said following right behind her.
They'd almost made it the whole way back before James worked up the nerve to speak.
"So, what's the potion for?" He asked casually.
Liv stopped dead in her tracks, "You saw that?"
James rolled his eyes, "Your not nearly as discreet as you think you are."
"Well if it isn't the pot calling the kettle black!"
"What?" James looked confused.
Liv took a deep breath, summoning the patients she knew had to be there somewhere. "Muggle expression, sorry. Grandad says it a lot."
"That's not what I meant! I know what it means! I just don't know why your using it in this particular context." James replied.
Liv stared at him. "I'm using it in this particular context because you don't have a discreet bone in your body!"
"Oh yeah?" James asked. Did she know how he felt? Was he being obvious.
"Yeah!"
"Like when?"
"Like when what?"
"Like when have I ever not been discreet?"
"Like the time you 'discreetly' tried to do your potions homework in the middle of potions class, and lost us 30 points." Liv pointed out.
"That's all you got?" Maybe she really didn't know how he felt.
"No."
"No?"
"Well I can't think of them right now!"
"That's because that was the one time. I'm the master of discrete."
"In your dreams!"
"And in reality too!"
"Not a cha-"
Liv was cut off. Her mouth not able to form the words to argue with his stuck to hers.
Her eyes widened and she pulled back. "Wh- wh- wh-" She stuttered.
James sighed and dropped his head. "That is what I was trying to tell you earlier."
"That your discreet?" Her brain worked furiously to try and catch up with this change of events.
"No!" He let out a frustrated groan. "Liv I like you! I like you a lot! Probably more than like! My potion smelled of you! I- I- I" He couldn't find the word.
"Love me?" She asked quietly.
"Yeah." He said, slightly hoarse.
Livs mouth formed a silent "O". "Why?"
"Why? What do you mean why?" James tone of voice made it sound like the most stupid question in the world.
"Yeah, why?" Liv persisted. "We argue all the time! Up until this year we hadn't even had a proper conversation in like four or five years, how can you love me?"
"Don't you see Liv?!" He asked desperately. "I love you because we argue. Even arguing with you is easier than pretending to be someone I'm not around my friends! Merlin, why am I even with them?! You were the best friend I ever had! You still are, even without having regular conversations! Those arguments and pranking games mean so much more to me than a lifetime of their friendship! I miss the days before hogwarts, when things were simple, and popularity didn't get in the way. When it was just you and me. I miss you. I didn't realize it before, but this year, even with all the detentions, has been a breath of fresh air, I don't think I can go back to living in a cloud of smoke now."
Liv nodded and bit her lip, prossesing all this information. "Uh-huh."
"Uh-huh?" James laughed bitterly, running a hand through his hair. "That's all you've got to say?"
Liv shrugged, "Well there's this."
She walked up to his closing the distance once more between their lips. They stayed in the corridor until all sense of time vanished, only moving when the light of a wand lit up their locked faces. They broke apart immediately.
"What are you two doing out here after hours?" The head boy asked. He looked amused.
Him and the head girl standing beside him, wearing a wry smile must have been out patrolling the corridors and found them.
"Uh, we were, uh-" James stammered.
"We were comming back from detention with professor Lupin."
"Doesn't look that way to me."
"Yeah, we got sidetracked." James mumbled.
The two older teens chuckled. "Look," The girl said, "Your about fifty feet away from the common room, if you hurry up and go right now, Jay and I didn't see anything, or anyone out of bed."
Liv looked at the girl and smiled her thanks before grabbing James' arm and dragging along the corridor and through the portrait hole.
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Well that's it! Sorry for any inaccuracies with the potion, I don't have my book handy right now.
So... DID YOU LIKE IT? I wasn't really that happy with it, I thought it was kind of sloppy...
Review and tell me what you thought, Pleassssssse??
Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter!! Love you all!
-Katie