Chapter 97

Bad Advice

Sirius pushed the double doors open in a hurry, not quite hard enough to slam them open, but not for a lack of trying.

James pushed through the doors, a half conscious werewolf leaning heavily on him.

"I'll get Madam Pomfrey." Sirius said, already jogging to the healer's office.

James had managed to lie Remus down and pull the curtain mostly closed by the time Pomfrey came out with Sirius trailing behind her.

She quickly pulled the rest of the curtain closed, causing Sirius to have to climb under the heavy fabric, she was muttering something about it being far too early and Remus having just left.

"Oh, it's not his furry problem." James said correctly translating her mumbling. "I think he's allergic to something he ate." James said holding the curtain up to help Sirius get under it.

Sirius rolled his eyes. James swearing his own innocence had been funny when they'd first realized there was a problem with their food, after spending a half hour trying to get Remus all the way down here it became a lot less funny. "Or we accidently poisoned him."

"Excuse me?" The healer turned, just staring at him with an excellent poker face.

"Muggle studies cooking project." Sirius shrugged. "We didn't actually poison him... did we?"

Pomfrey sighed and pulled the curtain back open. "There's always one." She said but didn't respond to Sirius' question. She returned to her office and came back only a moment later, a bright green potion in her hand. It looked about as toxic as the stuff they'd just cooked. "It'll take a while for him to recover but he'll be just fine."

"So Sirius didn't accidently kill Moony?" James sounded relieved, unknowingly infuriating his best friend.

"Don't blame me for this, you arse. You screwed up just as much as I did!" Sirius growled at him, the sound of it making James wonder if they were closer to succeeding in becoming animagi than he'd thought.

"My coffee was perfectly fine!"

Sirius let out a loud groan of frustration at him and flopped onto his usual place at Remus' feet. Where he was promptly told off by Pomfrey as she measured out the perfect amount of a potion to give Remus. The both noticed the irony of it.

Remus seemed better immediately to the two Marauders, but Pomfrey insisted he stayed in bed for a few more hours. Giving James and Sirius a perfect excuse to bunk off their other classes.

By the time Remus was allowed out of the hospital wing he was more than a little upset with his two friends. Not only had they managed to give him food poisoning, but then used his condition to skiv off class. It wouldn't last long though; Remus was wretched at holding a grudge, but he managed to stay mad till they reached the common room.

It was a new record for him.

"Come off it, Moony. It's not like you didn't know we had no experience." James said climbing the stairs backwards to face his upset friend. "Poppycock"

The fat lady's portrait swung open and they, ignoring all the people who greeted James and Sirius, climbed the stairs to their dorm. Peter was already there with a book in front of him, there was a very large picture of a white rat that was glaringly obvious even from the doorway and Remus raised an eyebrow at him.

"I thought you were researching plimpies?" Remus stopped in the doorway, his arms crossed and blocking Sirius and James from entering the room.

"Ah-um, y-yes?" Peter stuttered.

"Yes what exactly?"

"James is right, we didn't ask you to eat it, and we didn't force you to do anything." Sirius said pushing his way past Remus and waving his wand at Peter's book causing it to close. "And for the last time, Peter, I will not let you get a rat. I am not living with a germy rodent for the rest of my school days." Sirius turned fully at Peter so Remus couldn't see his face and mouthed something along the lines of play along.

"But-but," Peter didn't play along very well.

"Get a cat instead, Peter." Remus smiled. "The take care of themselves so you don't have to worry about forgetting to feed them."

He said it kindly but Peter gave him a horrified look and James and Sirius started laughing.

"Yeah, Pete, get a cat." James teased, still laughing.

"I don't get the joke." Remus sighed. "That seems to be happening a lot lately."

James stopped laughing, feeling guilty. "We are keeping secrets," he admitted, "but we'll tell you what it is when we're done, Moony. It's a surprise." James gave him a big hug and draped one of his arms around the werewolf's shoulder.

"Merlin, now I'm not sure I want to know." Remus sighed his hand on his forehead.

"What? Don't you trust us?" Sirius pouted, sounding like someone had just kicked his puppy... or himself, close enough.

"You just gave me food poisoning." Remus said like it explained everything in the universe.

"Oh come on!" Sirius whined. "You knew...!"

"Forget it." Remus shook his head a small smile on his face. "Let's just do that Potions essay."

Peter, being the only one who didn't have it done, jumped at the opportunity to get help with it. James, however, worked on his transfig homework, or more accurately fell asleep on his transfig homework.

Sirius managed some actual progress through, reading up on the charm they were supposed to have mastered by Wednesday. It was a useful little charm that helped you find what you were looking for, James had complained that the summoning spell was pretty much the same thing. Sirius had gotten it to work most times he tried it, but the one percent of the time it didn't work bothered him.

Maybe if he did what Flitwick had suggested he'd actually learn something. Fancy the thought.

There was silence in the dorm for the most part, Remus and Peter talked back and forth every once in a while, but it was quiet chatter. Until, that is, Sirius came by a charm that he'd never heard of, a rare occurrence indeed.

"Moony, what is the homonculous charm? You ever heard of it?" he asked aloud his eyes not leaving the page.

Remus stopped for a moment, thinking about the question. "I don't think I have. A homunculus itself, however, is a small artificially made person. It's an alchemy term."

"What is alchemy?" Peter asked. "We don't study that here, do we?"

"Not at Hogwarts no. But there are some in England who do. Alchemy is like a mix of muggle science and our magic, it was more popular before muggles founded the basic scientific principles they heavily rely on today. Most of it is codswallop, but the real stuff is really powerful. It can change ordinary metals to gold and silver, it's in charge of the studies of the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone."

"The what?" Peter asked once again.

"The elixir of life is an immortality potion and the philosopher's stone is a stone that can create gold and the elixir of life." Sirius explained impatiently.

"Whoa." Peter's eyes were wide and his mouth slightly agape.

"Homunculus, however, do not actually exist, what does the book say?"

"Well I'm looking up the charm we're working on in class and the book mentions as a side note the homonculous charm is the human variation. Maybe someone just named it that way to be funny?"

"Perhaps." Remus shrugged, there were plenty of spells that were named strange names, but most at least pertained to the spell it referred to.

"I'm gonna look it up." Sirius said, moving to put his trainers back on.

"It's really bugging you that there's a charm you've never heard of, isn't it." Remus smiled at his textbook, it was a teasing smile that Remus didn't dawn very often. He usually teased with a straight face.

"Yes, and I'm not too proud to admit it." Sirius stuck his tongue out at him in response before climbing out of the room. He ignored the majority of the people in the common room, giving only Frank and Alice a wave, and he couldn't help but note that Evans was sitting with them.

James was corrupting his brain.

It wasn't often that Sirius went to the library, let alone by himself. The librarian watched him like a hawk, she'd watched them all very thoroughly ever since their first year. She was smarter than most.

It took him longer than he would like to find what he was looking for before he smacked himself in the head remembering the very spell that was the reason he was here. He muttered the incantation, he didn't like saying it out loud, he thought it was silly to let everyone around know what you were doing. After this whole animagus thing was over he was going to learn nonverbal spells.

The book was huge and old. It looked like it hadn't been touched in years. Using the spell again, and making a note to tell James exactly how useful it was, he flipped the book open to the right page.

He didn't know how long he sat there, reading, long enough for the librarian to move on to other things at least.

She probably would have never left if she'd seen the large mischievous grin on his face or the brightness of his, no longer cold, gray eyes.

A/N) If you're a hardcore fan you may already know what the next chapter is about. That I know of there is only one official place the homunculous charm is even mentioned. Pottermore.

And yes I know I used two different spellings of homunculus from what I've found in my research they are both correct. Homunculous is the name of the charm while homunculus is the historical word. This chapter is giving me so many Fullmetal Alchemist flashbacks it's not even funny... well it kinda is but I digress.