The first years had to make a trip back to the dorms to collect their potion's equipment before they headed to the class. The walk was significantly shorter as the potion's classroom was in the dungeons just like the Slytherin dorms. Gemma and Yedan once again left after dropping off the first years. Unlike transfiguration and charms, the teacher was not there when the children were arriving. The class was shared with Ravenclaws this time and the house of blue were all sitting down reading over passages of their potions book with a stray few chatting. The Slytherins sat down after pairing up, Tom and Ailill naturally being together near the front of the room with Black and Malfoy behind them. The students had taken out their potion equipment and placed it on their desks waiting for the professor to arrive.
"What do you think Astronomy will be like, doll?" Ailill asked Tom as they were sitting down.
"Truthfully, I think it's going to be rather boring. Just staring at the sky for two hours? Lovely." Tom replied sarcastically.
Ailill gave a wide smile at the show of Tom's more cheeky nature, in doing so he displayed dimples that deeply cut into his cheeks that are hidden so often not many know he has them. A choked breath caught Tom and Ailill's attention, behind them Black and Malfoy were holding their chest and gripping the side of their tables.
"He-he's got dimples?!" Black gasped horrified.
"How do we survive?" Malfoy said with a far off look in his eyes.
Tom passed a look with Ailill that screamed 'fucking weridos' before turning back around in their chairs hoping to not catch whatever the two behind them have.
A few minutes had passed before with a bang of a door Horence Slughorn strutted through the room to the top. He smiled wide at the startled looks of the faces of young boys and girls and waved his wand to open the closed curtains around the room.
"Hello! And welcome to potions class," the teacher greeted. "My name is Professor Slughorn and we will be learning the art of potions. Potions do not require high levels of magic. Sometimes it can be required for complex potions but in general, it's not needed. You will follow specific recipes and use various magical ingredients to create potions, starting with simple ones and moving to more advanced ones as you progress in knowledge. This will be one of the more demanding classes of your workload as we deal with not only extensive theory but arduous brewing."
Professor Slughorn raised his wand and once more with a flick he raised a blind that was covering the blackboard, on the board was 'cure for boils, page five' written in white chalk.
"Please take out your cauldrons and place them over the burner. You can then place your box of ingredients on the table and set up a phial by placing it in a holder. After everyone is set up we will be brewing the potion on the board. Once class is done you may leave your potion's equipment here after it's been cleaned as it will have a provided cupboard designated by year. This is to prevent you all from having to drag around your heavy items every time we have class. You will be brewing this potion by yourself and later on in the year you will have to partner up with someone. Are you all ready?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then begin!"
Tom and Ailill set up their cauldrons and ingredient boxes and phials before turning to page 5 in their potions book. Tom let out a sigh of relief at not having to try and persuade Ailill to participate, it seemed like the boy was intrigued enough to do so by himself. That's one less thing to worry about.
"When brewing this potion," Slughorn began as he circled the room. " the brewer must be aware that while being an effective remedy against pustules, hives, boils, and many other scrofulous conditions. This is a robust potion of powerful character. Care should be taken when brewing. Prepared incorrectly this potion has been known to cause boils, rather than cure them...it's rather nasty I must say. If the potion is made successfully, there will be pink smoke rising from the cauldron. Any ingredients you don't have may be taken from the storage closet."
Ailill half-listened to the man as he read the instructions given in the book,
Brewing Instructions:
Slice your Pungous Onions finely and place in a cauldron, then heat the mixture.
Heat the cauldron until the potion turns red.
Pour Flobberworm Mucus until the potion turns pink.
Add a sprinkle of powdered ginger root and stir vigorously.
Add pickled Shrake spines.
Stir gently, so as not to over excite the Shrake spines.
Heat until it turns orange.
Mix the dried nettles until it turns green.
Heat again until it turns blue.
Mix crushed snake fangs until the potion turns pink.
Mix in Porcupine quills only once the heat is off until the potion turns orange.
Pour stewed horned slugs until it turns turquoise.
And last, heat the potion until it turns red before waving your wand over the cauldron to finish the potion. (continuing to heat until it turns pink turns the brew more effective)
It seemed easy enough to do, some of the ingredients were questionable alright but it was a potions class. The only ingredients he needed to get were pickled shrake.
"Aye doll?" Ailill asked Tom.
"Mhm," the other boy hummed while continuing to read the instructions.
"I'm going to get some shrake, you want me to nick you some?"
"Yeah, that'd be great, thanks Ailill."
"No worries." Having confirmation Ailill headed over to the supply closet and grabbed two portions of pickled shrake before heading back to his seat as other students started to flood the tiny supply room.
Once he was back to his seat he handed the shrake to Tom and began to prepare for brewing. As Ailill sliced his Pungous Onions finely and placed them in the cauldron that was heating. He then continued down the list of instructions taking care to follow them correctly and make sure all the colour changes were correct. He and Tom while not partnered as this was a single brewing potion worked seamlessly together handing the other items that they didn't even ask for. Slughorn watched the two first-year Slytherins seeing how they interacted, the two were clearly very close as they worked in tandem around each other not saying a word but knowing exactly what the other needed.
As Tom and Ailill finished up brewing and waved their wand over their potion the professor appeared out of nowhere right in front of them.
"All done lads?" the jolly man asked. "I must say while watching you two working together I could see you'd made fantastic partners."
"Thank you, sir, and yes we just finished." Tom gave a sweet smile preening at the compliment like a cat that got both the cream and the canary.
"Well, let's give it a look then.'' The man took a ladle and passed it through the potion checking the consistency. He then proceeded to smell the potion and even stuck a piece of seemingly blank paper into the cauldron that when it touched the potion proceeded to turn a gold colour. He first checked Tom's potion before looking at Ailill's. "Well done boys! 20 points to Slytherin for brewing the potion perfectly on the first try, not many can do that."
"Thank you, sir, I found this class rather enjoyable," Ailill commented truthfully.
"Well, I'm glad you like it young Peverell," Slughorn said sincerely. "Since you're both done after you've phialed the potion and cleaned up you may start your homework, a four-inch essay of the uses of the boils cure."
"We'll get started right away, sir," Tom said.
Slughorn nodded before heading off the other students in the room, Tom and Ailill worked silently, diligently getting through the cleanup and essay no bother, they had it finished by the time class was done. They packed away their books and writing materials, to Tom's confusion though Ailill didn't immediately leave the room and instead stayed back as everyone was leaving. Slughorn noticed and drew his brows into a concerned furrow,
"Are you okay Mr Peverell?"
"Oh yes, sir, I just had a few questions about the education system here at Hogwarts and was wondering if you could answer them for me. I've been wondering all day but haven't had the chance to ask anyone," Ailill explained as he allowed Tom to hold his hand.
"Of course, ask away."
"So from what I've gathered, there are only two sets of exams that students take here which the results are held by the government and can impact your chances to get a job, correct?"
"Yes, that is correct. They're called your O. which are taken in fifth year and N.E. which are taken in seventh year. A good bit away for you two!" Slughorn nodded.
"Yes, how lucky for us. Do any assignments of homework or class tests count towards these exams?"
"No," Slughorn confirmed.
Tom on the other hand had a horrified expression sitting on his face he knew where Ailill was going with this. If these supposed O. and N.E. were the only things you needed to get good marks in to secure a good job and prove your academic standing then Ailill wouldn't try in school at all because he wouldn't need to! Tom started to slowly shake his head at Slughorn, nearly begging the man in his head to see through Ailill's sly questioning and if so lie to him about classwork having no impact on the exams. All he got from the professor was a weird look.
"Oh, that's perfect, sir!" Ailill smiled all innocent-like. "Thank you so much for clearing that up for me. Well, Tom and I best be off, have a lovely evening! And I must say before I go that you should give some fashion tips to Professor Dumbledore, you have phenomenal style and I'm sure he'd appreciate it!"
"Have a lovely evening too, Mr Peverell." Slughorn chuckled fondly. Horace as much as he tries to convince himself that he doesn't have favourites knows he does and feels like those two will become rather memorable students for him.
Tom and Ailill left the room meeting the gathered crowd of first-year Slytherins along with Gemma and Yedan.
"What took you so long?" Yedan asked, vaguely annoyed.
"I'm sorry," Ailill said, not caring. "It's my fault, I had to ask Professor Slughorn some questions."
"Whatever, let's go, I'm hungry." Yedan sighs as he begins to lead the children away from the potions classroom.
"But it's not lunchtime? How will you get food?" Burke inquires.
"Go to the kitchen."
"Where are they?" Black asks.
"Near the Hufflepuff common room," Gemma informs the curious firsties.
"And where-"
"Look," Yedan cut in. "we'll show you where they are but for now stop talking. Your little voices are gonna give me a headache."
Unsatisfied the first year let the matter go, not wishing to upset the people that are solely responsible for them to get around the castle. The prefects took a detour and brought the first years up to a broad stone basement corridor, brightly lit by lamps and candles and decorated with food-themed paintings upon every wall, Yedan stopped in front of one and tickled a green pear on a painting of a bowl of fruit. The pear giggled in a high pitched squeal and turned into a large green door handle. Gemma opened the door and everyone who was carted inside was greeted by the buzzing of little creatures. House-elves, Ailill heard Avery call them with disgust, were between two to three feet tall, with spindly arms and legs and oversized heads and eyes. They had pointed, bat-like ears and high, squeaky voices. They didn't wear very well made clothing, in fact, what they did wear looked to be pillowcases or tea towels. Once seeing people the little things rushed over all excited like, it was quite endearing to Ailill who dropped to a crouch beside one of them much to the wide eyes of others.
"Hello masters, what can Blinky do for yous today?" the little thing squeaked out.
"Hello, Blinky, my name's Ailill. Could I please have a water bottle and apple slices?"
"Oh! Yes, Blinky will get those right away for Master Ailill." they said before disappearing with a 'pop'.
"Peverell, what are you doing? Don't lower yourself to them." Carrow hissed scandalised.
Ailill ignored her in favour of waiting for Blinky to return who did so soon enough.
"Here's master Ailill's water and apple slices!"
"Ah, thank you so much Blinky," Ailill said before raising a hand to pet the little creature's head.
Blinky stared up at the boy with shining starry eyes, such a kind Master! Being kind to Blinky and petting her head.
Soon after they were ushered out of the kitchens by Yedan who now held a wrapped sandwich and Gemma who had a small cake in her hand. They were told that technically no one was allowed into the kitchens but should they use it they're to be courteous don't the elves complain and they get in trouble with the teachers, especially Dumbledore who was protective of the little things.
They were dropped off at the common rooms due to their free period, Tom decided he wanted to get all the homework assigned for today done and dragged Ailill with him to sit at the low lying table in the common room that was surrounded by chairs, instead of the plush armchairs the first years sat on the floor much to Ailill's distaste. After finding out that class coursework doesn't exactly count towards anything Ailill was rather reluctant to do any work, however he decided subpar work will suffice in keeping the teacher from giving him detention. So he sat down with Tom and produced work that physically made the other boy cringe when he knew just how good Ailill could do. The rest of the first years followed their example offering advice and tibets of knowledge to each other to help get the work done quicker. It took about an hour for everything to be done, after that they just stayed sitting around the table talking to each other.
"So, Peverell do you and Slytherin really live together?" Black asked.
This gathered the attention of all the first years, they were curious about the last of the Peverell line and one of the last of the Slytherin line living together? While it's not uncommon for other pureblood families to take in children of friends and raise them it's less so practised these days, especially with the decline in producing heirs. Families have since become rather possessive of their children while young not wanting them to be corrupted or killed. Centuries of inbreeding left families to struggle producing heirs and in so doing they treasure the ones they have.
"Yes, we do," Ailill confirmed, he and Tom had spoken briefly about what they'd say if this topic was to ever be brought up, they'd stick with growing up together in an orphanage, but then they ran away together and now live in one of the Peverell's properties. It wasn't far off of what they plan to make a reality in the future. "Marvolo and I as you know are one of the last of our lines, unfortunately, we were left to an orphanage after our mothers died during childbirth, we were able to find clarity on our heritage due to inheritance tests at Gringotts during our visit to Diagon Alley. My father was confirmed dead and Marvolo's has gone missing, luckily due to my line being extremely old and therefore thought to have died out there was no cap on what age I could inherit any of the things left to me," A little white lie couldn't hurt anybody. "Morfin Gaunt is the current holder of the Slytherin and Gaunt line but not for much longer," Ailill and Tom share a smile that makes the others smirk. "Fortunately for now Marvolo and I live together away from the orphanage."
"I'm so sorry you two had to go through that," One of the other Slytherin girls, Imra Travers said sympathetically.
"Yes it's horrible what you had to go through," Malfoy agreed.
"Well," Tom said. "I'm just glad me and Ailill are now free of such burdens."
A murmur of rapport rippled through them.
"Now, I have something I've been meaning to ask for a while," Ailill said in a very serious way that had everyone turning sombre and sitting up straight.
"Malfoy," the blond in question flinched. "What do you use on your hair? It's fucking radiant and makes me seriously jealous."
A pause before Black was dissolving into giggles and Abraxas slumped in relief. Melin his life just flashed before his very eyes.
"Mother of magic Peverell I thought you were planning to kill someone, that someone being me!" the blond groused. "And I use rice water, it makes it really soft."
"You've got to go through a whole hair care routine with me," Ailill said. The heir of Malfoy nodded enthusiastically, happy to have someone to indulge in his care routines.
"Peverell! We were told you have dimples, give us a smile?"
"Fuck off, not a chance."
Tom was watching Ailill as he smiled albeit strained but genuine, he was happy for his friend in feeling somewhat carefree in this new world they belong to. Tom's hoping with the nightmares of the orphanage far away Ailill will be more inclined to stick around, to continue living and to let him be held close and by his side. It is not like Ailill will get away anyhow, Tom will make good on his birthday wish from many years ago, Ailill Peverell will forever and always be his through willingness, dubious consent or forceful intents. He will never escape him.