It was Wednesday of the first week before Guinevere finally had potions class.
Potions has always been Guinevere's best subject. It's very simple, to the point. As long as you follow the instructions to a tee, you'll get the desired outcome every time without fail. It has structure and logic, like the math classes she took in primary school. No matter your magical skill set, you should be able to, in theory, excel at potions.
It certainly doesn't hurt that she's one of Slughorn's favorite students.
She and Lily walk together to potions, their arms slung around each other's shoulders while they joke about a fight between a Gryffindor girl and a Slytherin girl earlier that day that in the Great Hall. It had been a frenzy of fists and hair flying, and when Flitwick had attempted to break it up, he had been dragged into it. Even some of the professors had to laugh at that.
"Flitwick's going to need a new robe," Guinevere giggles as she and Lily take their seats. "I'm surprised there was any of it left after that. Those girls must have had really sharp nails."
More people begin to file into the room. Some chatter away amongst themselves, while others are groaning out loud at the prospect of being back in potions class. Guinevere doesn't pay them much attention. Anyone in an O.W.L. level potions class should at least be slightly competent.
"I never thought I would be able to say I know what's under his robes," Lily whispers. She gives an overly-dramatic shudder after her words, eliciting a chuckle out of both girls.
Without warning, Lily's body juts forward. Her bare knee glides across Guinevere's, and her face goes a pale red with what Guinevere can only assume is embarrassment mingled with anger.
"James!" she hisses, whipping her head around.
Sure enough, when Guinevere raises her head up, she sees James Potter by the side of their table. He's leaning into Lily on his elbow, shooting her one of his famously lopsided grins that makes Gryffindor girls go weak in the knees. Since 5th year, however, Guinevere has always been able to catch a glint of child-like excitement in his eyes when he throws that grin Lily's way. Something about that seems so sweet to her, the way James lights up in Lily's presence. She hopes that one day, someone will have a similar glint in their eyes when they look at her.
But for now, she's content with watching her friend's romance blossom. Even when said friend can't notice it herself.
James gives Lily a slight pout. Guinevere holds in a laugh. It makes him look like a puppy.
"You didn't notice me," he whines. "What else was I supposed to do?"
Lily rolls her eyes and gives his shoulder a shove. And when Lily gives someone a shove, she doesn't play around. The force of it knocks him off the table.
James, however, doesn't seem fazed.
"I have a name, you know," Lily deadpans. "You could use it to get my attention. Like normal people do."
He chuckles deeply just as Slughorn enters the room. Turning on his heel, he walks back to his table, briefly looking over his shoulder to give Lily a wink. Lily rolls her eyes and turns sharply in her chair.
Guinevere's eyes follow James all the way back to his table. She expects him to be sitting with Remus Lupin. He's the only other member of James's Marauder gang that she can think would take an O.W.L. level potions class.
Her large brown eyes settle on James as he plops down next to his partner in crime, Sirius Black.
Guinevere curses her luck and forces her eyes back down to her potions book. She can only hope that he doesn't use that little nickname in front of the entire class. It's bad enough having one person using it. She doesn't need anyone else in the class getting any ideas.
At last, Slughorn clears his throat in order to launch into his 'first day speech'. Guinevere sits up in her seat, welcoming the distraction. With Lily as her partner and Sirius Black far away from her on the other side of the classroom, this class should be one of the most enjoyable parts of her day.
She zones out through most of Slughorn's long-winded speech. She's been taking his class since her 1st year, and without fail, his speech structure mirrors the structure of his first day speech last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. It's always a jovial lecture about the class as a whole, the importance of potions, and the type of potions they'll be concocting this year. Then he usually gets sidetracked with a long-winded, mundane story of some sort. It's often one she's heard before as well.
So, when Slughorn takes in deep breath of air in preparation to begin, Guinevere's mind begins to wander.
As she always does during the first week, she wonders how her mother and stepfather are faring without her. They're not exactly the type of parents to smother her, but she is their only child, and her absence is always very pronounced. Her mother has no one to gossip with while she cooks dinner. Her stepfather has no one to play a mock game of rugby with in the living room. While she's sure they're worried about her welfare, she worries about theirs tenfold.
With tensions rising, who knows how safe a muggle-born witch's parents really are?
"Very well! Please get together with your partners. Chop, chop!"
Guinevere flinches back into reality.
"Partners?" she hisses to Lily. "What is he talking about?"
Lily gives her a strange sort of look. Neither girls are the type to daydream during class. They've never had to whisper answers or words of advice to each other the second the teacher turns away. That's something they would usually expect out of Marlene McKinnon and Mary MacDonald.
"He picked partners for the first potion," Lily explains as she gathers up her books. "We're making a Draught of Peace. I got stuck with Cordelia Jenkins. You're partnered with Sirius."
Guinevere's head whips around, her eyes darting to the table where Sirius sat with James, but his seat is now taken up by a way too pleased Freyja Timbleton. Her long blonde hair falls into her face as she leans her elbows on the table and scoots closer to James. By the look of sheer panic on his face as he leans away from her, she can tell he wants no part of this partner work.
"Well isn't this a pleasant twist of fate?"
And she wants no part in it either.
Without even so much as a glance up in his direction, Guinevere stands up out of her seat and steps to the side to give Sirius room to stand. She feels the sleeve of his robe brush against the back of her hand as he slides in next to her. Though she's staring straight forward at Slughorn, she knows he has that infuriating smirk on his face. It seems to be permanently carved into his features.
She can't count the amount of times she's seen it up close while he hexes someone just for the fun of it.
"You'll find your ingredients on the table in front of you and the directions on page 135 in your book."
Guinevere flinches in surprise when she sees the ingredients required for the Draught of Peace sitting on the table in front of her, an area she is positive was clear just a few minutes before. After an entire summer living amongst muggles, she's still in the process of readjusting to sudden displays of magic.
Without so much as a glance towards Sirius, she flips her book open to the proper page and begins to read.
"Should I light the fire, Gwen-Of-Air?" Sirius asks.
Guinevere's head snaps up, her eyes landing on Sirius's wand pointing straight at the bottom of the cauldron. She scoots to the left on instinct.
In her 5th year, her overeager potions partner lit the cauldron before she had the chance to pull her long, chestnut brown hair out of the way. As a result, it caught on fire and had to be cut to just above her shoulders in order to look somewhat presentable again. Since then, she has kept it that length, just to avoid the embarrassment of having to use Amortentia to extinguish her hair again in the near future.
She had an unusual amount of invitations to Hogsmeade that weekend.
"As long as you promise to be careful," she answers.
Sirius rolls his eyes and mutters a quick spell. The flames shoot out of his wand and wrap around the rounded bottom of the cauldron, delicately crawling up the sides. Sirius pockets his wand and looks over Guinevere's shoulder to read her potions book.
Her body tenses up at the feeling of his soft breath ghosting over the shell of her ear. The knowledge that one turn of her head could result in their lips bumping together is, in her opinion, unsettling.
"We have to add powdered moonstone until it turns green," she declares, grabbing the vile of powdered moonstone off the table. "Everything will go by much quicker if I –,"
Her words catch in her throat when Sirius takes ahold of the vile, still grasped tightly in her hand. Her plump lips purse into a slight frown and her brows furrow. On instinct, she tries to yank the moonstone back, but Sirius holds on firmly.
"It's no secret you're a potions master," he admits with a slight grin. "But I'm still learning, and I can't do that if you do everything for me."
Her grip on the vial doesn't loosen. This could very well be a set-up for another one of his stupid pranks, and Guinevere doesn't fancy her chances of coming out of a potions blow-up with all her hair still intact.
Sirius must have seen the discomfort in her expression, because he offers her a wry smile.
"No funny business, I promise. I would never dream of doing anything to sabotage your precious grade."
She rolls her eyes, but finally accepts his excuse. He seems genuine enough, and she has never really been a main target in his childish pranks. Well, that is, if she doesn't count that incident from 3rd year.
It took weeks to get that stain out of her robes.
He sprinkles the powdered moonstone until it turns bright green in hue, and she doesn't miss the small smile that tugs at the corners of his lips. The feeling of pride when one completes a potions step successfully is a small joy that she often takes for granted. Looking at Sirius's excitement, however, brings a small smile to Guinevere's face as well. She can't help it. Something about it is infectious.
When Sirius turns to her, she immediately wipes the smile off her face, looks back down at her potions book, and clears her throat.
"Stir until the potion turns blue."
Roughly 10 minutes and two arguments later, the potion is white in color and emits a silvery vapor. If Guinevere's book is telling her correctly, that means the potion should be perfect. She lets out a breath of relief as Sirius sets the stirrer down. Though she'd never admit it, she is a bit of a control freak. It took all her self-control not to let the anxious coil tightening in her stomach overtake her and push Sirius out of the way so she could mix the potion herself. This was a lesson in teamwork for her, she supposes.
After depositing the potion on Slughorn's desk for grading, she expects Sirius to have cleared out and gone back to James's side. But he's still standing by her seat, his arms crossed casually. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Lily shooting her a desperate look. The two girls excel in nonverbal communication, and Guinevere knows the message Lily is sending her; Cordelia Jenkins is chatting her ear off, but she can't escape to her own desk with Sirius still there. On the other side of the room, James is still attempting to fend off an insistent Freyja Timbleton and trying to catch Sirius's eye, presumably for his help. Sirius, however, remains oblivious.
Some friend he is, Guinevere thinks, rolling her eyes.
"Class will be over soon, you know," she states after approaching him. He raises his eyebrows at her. She's sure she must be quite the sight to behold; her arms crossed, her chin up, and her eyes narrowed.
"And?"
She grits her teeth.
Never has a single word had such an ability to grate on her nerves.
"And you should probably go back to your seat and gather up your things," she snaps back. "Besides, it looks like your friend needs your help over there."
Sirius's eyes dart over to where James is slowly building a physical barrier of books to keep Freyja's advances at bay. The curly haired boy just chuckles and shakes his head.
"If he didn't fancy Evans so much, he might actually be enjoying the attention," he whispers over to her, as if it's a secret and not common knowledge throughout the entire school. She just shakes her head and gathers up her things.
A bell chime finally sounds from above, dismissing them.
"I'll see you later, Gwen-Of-Air," Sirius murmurs, his mouth right next to her ear. She whips her head around in order to tell him to stop calling her that for the love of Merlin, but he's already disappeared faster than a cloud of smoke.
She purses her lips together in annoyance and marches over to Lily, aggressively linking their arms together and pulling her out of the classroom.
"What has your panties in a twist?" Lily asks as she stumbles over her own feet. Guinevere sighs and loosens her grip on her best friend's arm. So maybe she overreacted, but she can't help that it's Sirius Black's ultimate goal in life to get a rise out of her.
"Nothing," she replies, forcing a smile onto her face. "I'm fine. How did the partner work go for you?"
Lily groans and throws her head back.
"Awful. Cordelia added the unicorn hair too early and the entire potion was ruined. She wouldn't listen to a thing I said. All she wanted to talk about was the next Hogsmeade trip. What about you? Was working with Sirius what got you in this mood?"
Guinevere mulls it over. Actually working with Sirius wasn't half bad. He was eager to learn and, for the most part, cooperative. She's ashamed to admit that she had always assumed that he wasn't interested at all in his schoolwork. He and his friends have always seemed to have different priorities, like pranks and hexing people. It never occurred to her that he could be mischievous and clever.
Her anger towards Sirius is slowly turning into anger at herself.
"No, it was… fine."
Guinevere can tell by the look on Lily's face that she doesn't buy it, but like a good friend, she doesn't call her out on her lie. Instead, she links their arms again and strolls to lunch with her.
"So, about that Hogsmeade trip…"