Chapter 26

The Potions Master

School over the next few weeks was exhausting. They had tons of homework and it was beginning to get really hard, even for James which was amazing in its self. Potions was the only thing James and Sirius weren't worried about. They were doing great, though Remus was sure Slughorn was favoring them. The Potions teacher seemed to be trying to get on their good sides and none of them could figure out why. He was the head of the Slytherin house, why would he be favoring Gryffindors. It wasn't long before they found out exactly why.

"James, Sirius, could the two of you stay after class today?" Sirius paused in the middle of packing up his books. Ever since their last after school talk Sirius had shown a strong amount of dislike for the Professor. When they asked he merely shrugged and said the he remind him of his parents. Sirius hated anything that reminded him of his parents.

"Yes Professor." James said worried that this would turn out like last time.

"I would like to speak with you two alone if you would." He said the last part to Remus and Peter.

James was surprised when he heard Remus give a low growl. He was sure Slughorn couldn't hear it though. "It's alright you can go ahead, we will catch up." He told Remus a little worried about what he would do. Remus gave Slughorn a warning look before exiting the room and Peter followed, more than a little confused about Remus' actions.

"What do you need Professor?" James said politely it was difficult, even he had a strong dislike of the man. Anyone who thought the idea of killing people was ok was the kind of person he did not want to be around. Especially werewolves, didn't they already have enough to deal with without having people hate them for something that isn't even their fault. They didn't choose to be bitten.

"I would like to invite you boys to a little party I'm having. It's on..."

"No." Sirius interrupted rudely. Slughorn looked at him in surprise for a moment. Apparently he was expecting Sirius to be as polite towards him as the rest of the Blacks. Believe it or not, to people they liked the Blacks were very polite, something about being an extremely old and proud family. Sirius wasn't like that, at least not anymore. Now he was just polite to the people he thought deserved it, and Slughorn certainly didn't deserve it. Sirius couldn't help but calling the Professor a murderer in his head.

"Now no need to be so quick about it, take some time and think..."

"No." Sirius repeated and walked out of the door with an arrogant strut. Slughorn hid his disappointment poorly and looked to James with little hope in his eyes.

James shrugged. "You heard the man." He said and followed Sirius out the door. When James caught up with Sirius the latter began a long stream of insults towards the potions master.

"How could that lowlife, cowardly, stupid, corpulent, enervated, incompetent, hardhearted, asinine..." Sirius continued. James was sure that Sirius forgot that he was actually trying to form a sentence. When they got into the common room Sirius had begun to add a few swear words into his insults. Words, that he had no doubt learned from his mother.

"What is he going off about?" Remus asked after watching Sirius pace, never ending his rant.

"Slugface invited us to some dumb party." James replied lounging on his bed. He was getting more and more grateful that he didn't understand anything Sirius was saying at this point. It seemed that he had run out of English swear words to say so he moved on to French.

"That doesn't exactly explain it, being invited to a party is not a good reason to call someone every insult in the English language and possibly half of the French insults as well." Remus said watching Sirius move on to Russian.

"He has plenty of reason to hate Sluggy. First Slugbreath thinks murder is a-ok, then he absolutely loves the Black family, then he reminds Sirius of the family he hates, then he is the head of the Slytherin house, and last but certainly not least the only reason he likes us is because we belong to important families." Remus looked surprised.

"How do you know that?" Peter asked before Remus could.

"We had a warning. One of my second cousins warned me that Slugdunce would probably pull something like this. He is a collector, He goes for the ones that have 'potential' now while they are in school so that later he can use that connection for his own personal gains. By potential of course I mean that they are related to someone famous." By this time Remus' mouth was hanging open and Sirius had finally either run out of insults or calmed down enough to stop using them.

"I knew that guy was no good." That was all Remus managed to say. "I vote we all just stay as far away from him as possible."

"I second that." Sirius said like this was some kind of official business.

"I agree." James said "Three out of four wins, we are staying far away from Slugdunce."

"Actually I think It's unanimous." Peter said smiling, he had never liked Slughorn that much anyway.

"Even better. Now lets get to bed, before we end up dreaming about the loser or something scary like that." James said, closing the curtain around his bed so he could get dressed.

"Ohh Now that would be a nightmare." Sirius said back climbing into his bed as well.

Unfortunately staying away from Slughorn was harder than they thought. The teacher seemed to enjoy pestering them about the party. Even after the party date was past he bugged them about coming to the next one. It was at lunch a month later that Sirius had finally had enough of the annoying man.

"Now I know you all have a lot of homework and everything but surely this weekend you can find enough time to..." He began again, Sirius had turned red before Slughorn had even got to the word homework.

"WILL YOU SHUT UP YOU ANNOYING, OLD MAN! I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOUR STUPID PARTIES!" Sirius yelled pointing to his forehead. Suddenly the entire room was watching the two of them. Remus slammed his head into the table and Slughorn was looking positively alarmed.

"Now Now there is..." Slughorn was interrupted again.

"SHUT UP! I AM SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING YOUR VOICE! EVERYTIME I HEAR IT, I FEEL LIKE STRANGLING SOMETHING, NAMELY YOU!" Slughorn was nothing short of terrified by now, only causing Sirius to smile cruelly.

Sirius felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Professor McGonagall giving him a sharp look. James sighed, another detention for Sirius. Now he was twenty detentions short of of beating Sirius' number of detentions. They were having a little competition over who could get the most detentions by the end of the year. Strangely enough Remus was actually willing to keep track of their number of detentions for them. Even stranger, Remus was recording his own as well, thus showing that he was entering into the competition as well. The only rule of it was that they couldn't get the detentions on purpose. If any detentions were found to be on purpose the culprit was disqualified.

"Follow me Black." McGonagall said calmly and Sirius followed her out the door.

"Slughorn ran off." Remus said quietly watching the staff table where the teacher had ran too.

"Coward." James said below his breath. Slughorn thankfully left them alone after this, and to Sirius it was well worth being forced to help Hagrid feed a bunch of unknown creature and getting bit by one of them. Even worth the week he had to spend in the hospital wing because his arm swelled to the size of James' ego, which by the way is huge. James didn't think his ego was that big, but Sirius was sure of it, especially because James was laughing at him most of the time he was in the hospital. Needless to say they were all thankful that they only had to deal with Slughorn during class.

A/N) Yes I did use a dictionary and a thesaurus to think of Sirius' insults can you tell?

I wouldn't expect another update for a while, I just got Sims 2 so I will be distracted. Sorry, I have a problem with my priorities. Reviews make me want to update faster though, so review, review like the wind.

Also can you tell I didn't like Slughorn in the book, I think I made it obvious.

Words of wisdom for the day: Tacos are good for the soul. ^_^