Chapter 25
Pitch Perfect.
James stepped into the boys' dormitory that evening looking as pleased as a Niffler on a mountain of shiny pennies.
"Had a good night, then?" Sirius enquired mildly, glancing up over the top of his magazine entitled 'Motorcycle Madness'.
James floated over to his own bed in reply, wafting along on a cloud of happiness.
"I think I'm in love," he said, a dazed expression on his face. He took off his glasses and placed them on the bedside table, before lowering himself slowly onto his pillow. With his hands behind his head and a dreamy stare into the distance he let out a long, contented sigh.
Mike Bartinski stared openly over from the next bed along.
"Bloody hell," he said incredulously. "What happened to you? You look like you've been smacked in the face by a WonderWitch love potion."
Either not hearing Mike or not caring, James gave a slow smile to himself.
"He's been out with Evans again," Sirius said in explanation, looking back to his magazine.
Mike pulled an unimpressed face. "She's is too high maintenance if you ask me."
"Good thing no-one did then, isn't it?" Sirius replied easily, not taking his eyes away from the page.
Luckily James seemed to be too lost in his own world to have heard.
"You'll be singing a different tune when you see what I've got for you," Mike said with a knowing smile.
From his position lounging on his bed, Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
Mike straightened up, "You know I told you my older brother works in Zonko's," he began conspiratorially.
Sirius inclined his head in reply.
Leaning across the length of his mattress, Mike reached over to lift the lid of his large wooden chest at the foot of his bed, "Well take a look what he sent me this morning," he said, straining slightly to hold it open.
With a slight air of impatience Sirius placed his magazine down and walked over to peer inside.
"Well, well, well," he drawled. "What have we here?"
An evil grin spread across Mike's face. "Sweet revenge," he answered.
The door to the bedroom opened and Peter's rounded face walked in. "What's going on?" he asked, looking from James's lovesick expression to the two boys now crowded around Mike's bed.
"Mike's brother sent him a lust tonic," Sirius replied, looking at the decorative glass bottle perched innocently in the chest in front of him. It was filled with a sickly pink fluid that frothed as though constantly being blown into through a fine straw.
Peter frowned. "What you want that for?" he asked, as though worried it might have something to do with him.
"Ready to get them back for the robes prank?" Mike asked Sirius with a smirk.
"The robes prank?" Peter echoed. "But that was ages ago. I thought we were all getting along now."
"After what they did?" Mike demanded. "You can't let a bunch of girls walk all over you." He looked at Sirius, "They had you stood naked in front of the whole school. You really gonna let the Beaver have the last laugh?"
Sirius's grey eyes burned into Mike's. "I'm in," he said simply.
.oOo.
As soon as I walked into the Potions class the next morning I found my disloyal eyes scanning the room. It wasn't long before they landed on what they had been looking for; The Marauders were already sat in their usual spot.
Sirius was thankfully too busy talking conspiratorially with James to have noticed me walk into the room. They both let out a laugh at whatever he had said. I cursed the way it made my insides feel to see him again, like a current of excitement had passed through them. An unwelcome flashback to the night before replayed in my brain. He had saved me.
I made my way over to my seat next to Sally and ordered myself to keep the vow of paying more attention in class. It was just a bit difficult to do this when I looked over only to find Professor Slughorn grunting like a walrus on heat at the front of the room.
"He's been like this for five minutes," Sally told me, her head on her hand in resignation.
The entire class looked on in sick fascination as the professor continued his attempt to heave himself and his chair underneath the desk in order to begin the lesson. Thanks to the overstuffed nature of certain parts of his body it seemed to be an impossible goal.
"Aha!" he cried out loudly all of a sudden, making Sally's head jump up. Sure enough he had finally managed to cram his way in like a cork in a bottle. His stomach was folded over the top of the table as if he would burst out and go flying across the room at any minute.
I distinctly heard James give a snort from over the other side of the room. Slughorn raised an eye to him but James turned his outburst into a short cough.
"Now, what can any of you tell me about the Volubilis potion?" Slughorn asked, trying to pretend it was normal to be moulded around your own furniture.
"Anyone?" he pressed.
A black haired girl called Carolisa raised her hand.
"It's a cure for the silencing charm," she said.
"Indeed," Slughorn replied with a smile. "Volubilis; a cure for the silencing charm, and also a lesser known means of changing one's voice."
He looked like he wanted to get up to put a greater emphasis into his speech, but seemed to remember his struggle to sit down in the first place and thought better of it.
"Possible side effects may include tonsillitis, dry mouth and…can anyone give me the last one?" he asked.
"Erectile dysfunction," Sirius called.
"And erectile dysfunction," Slughorn agreed, before realising what had been said. He cleared his throat, "The correct answer is permanent speech malfunction."
Sirius glanced briefly in my direction and I tried to hide the fact I had found his joke funny.
Slughorn continued to ramble on about the historical uses of Volubilis. I squinted my eyes in a bid to retain concentration.
"I'm going to need a volunteer."
The six most terrifying words in the English language snapped me instantly back into the room. Slughorn peered around at everyone, looking for a suitable victim.
Oh God.
I avoided his eye contact resolutely, focusing instead on an area to the right of his desk. If there was ever any need for unwanted participation, you could bet your last pumpkin pasty I would be chosen.
His beady eyes continue to rove across the class. Out of my peripheral vision I saw them land on me.
NO.
"Miss Morland!" he called with a twisted smile. "Why don't you come up and show the class how it's done."
.o.
I cursed him furiously in my head, resisting the temptation to flat out refuse to move.
Scraping my stool out reluctantly from our table, I stepped around Sally sat next to me. She shook her head in distaste at the professor's extremely loose definition of 'volunteer'.
Trying not to think about the fierce shade of red my face was probably turning, I made my way to the front of the room.
Slughorn looked smug, enjoying his chosen method of torture.
"That's it m'dear, don't be shy," he said.
The class was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
When I reached his desk, he pointed a finger behind his head to the blackboard. Immediately a set of extremely complicated instructions for the Volubilis potion appeared.
"When you're ready," he grinned obscenely.
All eyes were on me as I read through the instructions as quick as I could and started the careful addition of ingredients to the cauldron on the professor's desk.
From this distance I could smell the slightly stale stench of his woollen clothes and the assault on my senses made it harder to concentrate. It also didn't help that I was completely aware of the fact I shared this class with all four of the Marauders. They were being suspiciously quiet. Normally they wouldn't have been able to resist their catcalling by now.
Trying not to let myself be distracted, I added the required Honeywater to the potion. The liquid blushed pink. I chanced a glance up at Slughorn to see if this was supposed to happen, but he was keeping his expression annoyingly stoic.
'Heat the brew' the instructions read. Pointing my wand at the bottom of the cauldron, I did as it had said. The liquid turned orange in response. This time I knew better than to look at the professor for approval. Following the rest of the guidelines methodically, I tried my best to forget I had an audience of thirty other students waiting for me to mess up.
I completed the last instruction with a rush of gratitude and watched as the liquid turned yellow with lively sparks flying up from the surface.
Slughorn's face had gone worryingly grim.
At first I thought I'd got it all horribly wrong, but then he uttered an extremely begrudging, "Perfect". Breathing a sigh of relief, I thanked my lucky stars and went to return to my seat.
But Slughorn's voice called me back, "Aha ah," he said, shaking his stubby sausage of a finger at me. "Every good potions master must be willing to test their creation." His face had regained some of its smugness.
A few people in the class stirred at this new revelation, muttering eagerly to one another.
Slughorn seemed to revel in it.
He flourished his right hand and a short black ladle appeared in it. With a second flourish of the other hand, a glass emerged. He lowered the ladle into my potion with an almost theatrical air. I stared at him mutinously, wanting to tell him exactly where he could shove that ladle.
Instead, I took the now full glass from him in silence.
"Professor," a voice called. "Surely that potion is better suited to those actually suffering from a silencing charm?" I turned around to see Remus's slightly uneasy face, waiting for Slughorn's reply.
The professor chuckled at him patronisingly. "Surely you don't want me to hex poor Miss Morland with a silencing charm first, do you?"
A few people in the class snickered at the idea.
Having purposefully missed Remus's point, Slughorn urged me on with a slightly sadistic grin.
"Go ahead," he said, growing impatient for my humiliation.
I took a breath before swallowing a mouthful of my potion.
.o.
It tasted like fizzy custard.
Slughorn's smile had spread across his face.
"Now speak," he pressed. "Say, 'potions class has me engrossed, potions class I adore the most."
He seemed pleased with his little rhyme, looking around the class again for signs of appreciation.
Openly shooting daggers at him, I did as I was told. "Potions class has me engrossed, potions class I adore the most."
The effects of the Volubilis made my voice come out sounding like a chipmunk on helium.
Just as Slughorn had hoped, the room erupted into laughter.
"Now you may sit down," he told me, finally satisfied with the reaction he had garnered from the class. "Oh, and probably best to avoid speaking too much for the next hour while the effects wear off," he advised as an afterthought.
I scowled at him as he went on to order the rest of the class to attempt the potion at their desks. Refusing to meet anyone's eye I retook my seat next to a helpfully sympathetic looking Sally.
"Self-important blowhard," I muttered viciously, though my harsh words were ruined by the high-pitched helium voice which continued to spout from my mouth.
No longer able to hold it in, Sally let out a burst of laughter. At first I was annoyed, but even I had to admit that my furious chipmunk voice was kind of funny. A little bit. I released a brief chuckle.
It turned out that my laughter in itself was pretty amusing. The more I laughed the funnier we found it, like a vicious squeaking circle. Soon Sally and I were uncontrollable, with my hysterically shrill giggle sounding out amidst the chattering of busy students.
I saw James look over to see what was so funny and an uncertain grin spread across his face at the two of us now doubled over, breathless. He elbowed Sirius to gesture in our direction, but I looked quickly away before I could catch his eye.
It was embarrassing enough, without having to accept the fact that Sirius had seen Slughorn humiliate me in front of the class. Not that it should bother me, of course. Sirius himself had been the one responsible for my humiliation plenty of times.
"Oh Merlin this had better wear off eventually," I said in my new chirruping tone to Sally.
Her mouth squirmed as she tried to hold her amusement in. "I don't know," she replied. "I kind of like it."
"I'm going to fetch the ingredients for you," I said firmly in my baby voice, "this time you can make the bloody potion."
Leaving her to gather herself I approached the designated apparatus table and began to throw the stuff we needed into one of the miniature cauldrons left out. I had just started to carry it back to Sally when a recognisable face appeared in my midst.
"Remus," I cheeped.
"He could be fired for that, you know," Remus said seriously, nodding towards the professor in disapproval for forcing me to drink the Volubilis. "Misuse of power."
"He only did it to show off," Sirius said, coming out of nowhere and brushing past us to get to the table. He started to collect the items for himself and James. "Everyone knows he's just a puffed up windbag."
He picked up a vial of Syrup of Hellebore, "Besides," he continued, his eyes alight as he gestured in my direction, "they seemed to find it hilarious."
Resolutely ignoring the squirming feeling in my stomach I pulled my gaze away from him and walked with Remus back to my desk, which lay en route to his own.
He paused at our table to look at Sally who was still clutching at her stomach.
"Oww," she moaned. "I think I've pulled a muscle."
"From laughing?" I asked uncertainly.
Sally's mouth cracked again at the sound of my voice and she held up a hand, "Don't speak just yet," she pleaded, "it will set me off again." Her pretty face was scrunched up in a mixture of pain and leftover good humour.
Watching her, Remus couldn't resist a small smile. She caught his eye and returned it with an uncharacteristic shyness. It somehow felt like now would be the perfect time for me to vacate the area and leave them to admit their glaringly obvious feelings for one another.
With nowhere to go I pretended to busy myself with sorting the items I had collected into small pointless piles.
A sudden commotion near the front of the room made me drop the piece of mandrake root I had picked up back to the table. All of the students in our class had begun to rush towards Slughorn's desk.
I craned my neck in an attempt to see what the matter was.
"What's going on?" I squeaked quietly, frowning as I got up on my tiptoes.
The noisy commotion at the front began to break out into ripples of laughter.
Moving forwards, Remus, Sally and I all went to see what was happening. Walking to the back of the newly formed crowd around the professor's desk, I peeked through a gap between the many heads.
.o.
At the very front of the room Professor Slughorn had stood up from his desk, but there was clearly something not quite right.
He lurched over towards the apparatus table with his body bent forward at an awkward angle.
Turning to inadvertently show us his side profile it became glaringly obvious what the matter was. Wrapped tightly around his ample backside was his overly decorative wooden armchair. He was stuck in his own seat.
The wooden frame of the chair looked suspiciously smaller, almost as if it had been magically tampered with.
He staggered back and forth on his stocky legs with his arms outstretched, the chair still attached firmly to his rump as though hovering in mid-air.
"Don't just stand there, help me," he cried to the nearest person he could lay eyes on.
Maria, the girl he had ordered to provide assistance, looked around at her friends as if to pass the task onto them, but the surrounding students backed quickly away. Reaching out to grab the two floating back legs of his chair, Maria yanked on it hard.
It wouldn't budge.
Slughorn pulled away impatiently and spun around, nearly knocking her off her feet. Waddling over to his desk he pulled open one of the drawers and rummaged around in it hurriedly.
It was quite a sight to behold. The chair protruded from him like a peacock's tail, bouncing up and down behind him as his frantic search intensified.
The entire class were openly laughing now. Even Maria, who had secreted herself to a safe distance to avoid being asked to help again, was giggling with her friends. The room was becoming raucous.
I started to laugh as Slughorn began flinging random items out of his drawers in frustration. "Where is that blasted wand?" he asked himself.
My laughter came out in the same indecently high pitched way as it had before and my entertainment at his expense doubled. It felt like poetic justice after what he had made me do.
I sensed someone's shoulder come to a rest against mine and tilted my head only to find Sirius stood next me. His arms were folded and there was a roguish smirk on his face as he watched the professor struggling.
"Wouldn't have anything to do with you, would it?" I asked him in my chipmunk voice, shooing away the hitch in my pulse.
Sirius looked down at me. "'Course not," he grinned slyly. "Perhaps in future he'll lay off all the free crystallised pineapple he's been accepting from his precious Slug Club."
I gave another squeaky chuckle in reply and Sirius's mouth tugged up at one side.
There was a magnificent popping noise in the background and Slughorn's huge sigh of relief breezed across the classroom. He had finally managed to blast the chair from his backside and was now busy straightening his abused spine.
The crowd in front of us dispersed in a hurry in case he decided to start handing out detentions after his recovery.
Turning on our heel Sirius and I went back to our respective seats.
"Oof," Slughorn groaned, kneading his fingers into his lower back like he was making bread. He went to sit back down to rest his legs and quickly thought better of it, glaring at the chair suspiciously as though it had conspired against him.
"Just leave," he called out, batting an impatient hand at his class, his normally jovial façade temporarily forgotten. "All of you, get out. I've had just about enough for one day."
Without a single glance back, everyone collected their things and rushed from the room before he could change his mind.
I went to join Sally when someone called me back.
Both she and I turned to find the Marauders leaving the class behind us. Sirius muttered something to his friends and parted ways with them to approach us. He jogged to our side and opened his mouth to say something before he noticed Sally was still stood next to me, staring at him expectedly.
"I need to talk to Cheryl," he told her with a pointed stare. "Alone."
.o.
I froze.
Sally gave me a look as if to ask if being left alone with Sirius was really what I wanted to do right now. Much to her surprise, I found myself nodding. It wasn't that I wanted to be alone with him, obviously. But I did want to know what could possibly be so important he couldn't just say it in front of our friends.
Was it about last night?
"Meet you at dinner then," she said, looking at Sirius suspiciously. Just like with our kiss, I had told no one of the 'moment' we had shared on the grounds last night. For this reason she probably thought he was getting ready to torment me in some way.
Honestly, a part of me was a little worried myself. Even now, it was more than a bit unnerving to be on the receiving end of Sirius's attention that didn't involve snide remarks or vile pranks.
Once Sally had left, he gestured us over to just outside the Potions room door.
He seemed to be weighing up whether or not he should actually say it. Finally he said, "There's something you should probably know."
This did not sound good.
I stared silently back at him, pulse thundering as I waited for him to reveal what he wanted to tell me. But I could never have predicted what Sirius had been about to say. It was just too bizarre.
When he finished telling me, I was filled with a combination of shock and pure rage. Their roommate Mike had planned on spiking my drink with a lust tonic. He was going to put it in my juice at dinner with a strand of Peter's hair so they could all have a good laugh while I threw myself at Pettigrew
My brain raced to catch up.
"Why me?" I said eventually. "I've barely said two words to Mike since I first started at Hogwarts."
"Probably because he knows if he tried it with the other girls, they'd kick his scrawny arse," Sirius replied.
"And I wouldn't?" I cried, offended at their doubts in my ability to kick arse. I could arse-kick. I could arse-kick all day if I wanted to. But once again the severity of my words was spoiled by the high-pitched effects of the Volubilis on my vocal chords.
Sirius looked like he was holding back a smile. "Well then perhaps it's time to show Mike exactly who he's messing with," he said with a shrug.
I narrowed my eyes at him, suddenly suspicious. "Why are you helping me?"
Sirius paused to put his hands into his pockets. "Still no faith in me, eh?" he said with a wry smile, "Hurtful, Cheryl, very hurtful. After all we've been through."
I glanced reflexively at his lips and felt my face flush. The corner of his mouth twitched in reply. He knew exactly what I was thinking.
"I'm not sure if you're aware of just how insufferable Mike is to share a room with," he continued, "but if you were, then you'd understand why I think he deserves to fall flat on his face with this."
I studied his perfect face as if trying to read his mind for the truth.
"You're going to have to trust me at some point if we're ever going to be a functioning couple," he said reproachfully.
Before I could so much as raise an eyebrow at his referral to us as a couple, he had shot me a grin. He was kidding. Of course he was kidding.
Refusing to let the tension of last night come back as we stood on our own in the now deserted corridor, I asked, "What's your plan, then?"
.o.
When Sirius had finished telling me what he had in mind for Mike, a throb of adrenalin coursed through my chest.
"That's brilliant."
Sirius inclined his head modestly, "I have my moments."
"Okay," I said, collecting myself. "Okay. If Mike really is going to try and make me snog Pettigrew then I guess I have no choice."
A grin spread across his face. "Excellent."
I pointed a finger at him. "But if you double cross me on this and I end up locking lips with Pettigrew I will never speak to you, ever again," I squeaked menacingly.
Sirius snorted. "Don't worry. I wouldn't let Pete have that pleasure."
Just then, an irate Slughorn came bumbling out of his classroom muttering to himself and distracted our attention. He was rubbing his generous backside tenderly, obviously still sore from the chair debacle. He went straight past us without even noticing we were there.
Sirius glanced up at the professor's retreating back. "Well," he said, "at least you know it won't be you everyone's gossiping about at dinner tonight." With that, he shot me a wink and walked away.
I stared after him, a line creasing the area between my brows.
Did he hex Slughorn just for your benefit? A voice wondered from somewhere in my head.
Unlikely.