"Evans!" A deadly voice rang out in the chamber. A voice so very scary that any death eater would shit himself on spot if they heard it. James raised his eyes to greet Severus Snapes.

"Yes, professor?" He asked sarcastically.

"You let Longbottom muss up his potion to make yourself look better." Snape snarled. As it turned out, James was exceptionally good at potion making with little effort, so Snape had to resort to odd reasons to yell. James burst out laughing, and Snape turned an odd shape of yellow. "Think this is funny?"

"Actually, yes. Quite funny." Laughed james, leaning back on the chair.

"And what, pray tell, do you find so funny." Asked the Snark potions prof.

"I 'let' Longbottom mess up his own potion to make myself look good?" James asked incredulously. "If I had cared enough to help the poor guy you would have yelled at me!"

"Detention for being smart to a teacher." Snape snarled at the boy.

"Yer dumb, proffeser." James replied in a southern accent. "Dumb enough for you?"

"TWO HOUR DETENTION! MY CLASSROOM! TONIGHT! I'LL HAVE YOU SCRUBBING TILL ONE IN THE MORNING!!!!" Snape yelled at James's laughing face.

James exited the class whistling merrily. He pulled out a pen and piece of paper from his leather jacket.

Potions..... CHECK!

It read. Next stop, Defense.

Dinner came three detentions later.

"I heard you stuck up to Snape today. Is it true?" Jack, a ravenclaw, whispered to james as he stuck his head in a book.

"I didn't stick up to him. I treat everybody the same." James said. "He was no different then from every other jackass."

"Hmm." Jack replied, reading. That's why james hung with jack; he knew how much to say, and the silences were often comforting. "Its eight. You should head down."

"Yeah, I guess." James said and left the hall, not touching his dinner and thinking of how dumb a punishment was to scrub cauldrons.

"Mr. Evans, right on time, FOR ONCE." Snape growled. James just smiled.

"You know, Proffesor, I just enjoy spending time with you soo much, I like to arrive early." James grabbed the cleaning supplies that sat in the corner and start to wet the rags.

James, though it was rare he spoke of it, had cleaned cars at car washes all the time, and scrubbed down store walls and other such things back in the city. He had experience with these types of things, and scrubbing some cauldrons would be baking a muffin compared to the other jobs he had done.

"Got family, evans?" Snape asked suddenly. He was sitting on a student desk, watching James work deligintly on a cauldron.

"Mmm. No." James said, squinting slightly at the corner of a cauldron, scrubbing hard.

"Then who do you live with?" Snape asked, flipping threw a potions text.

'Jesus, is this guy gonna breath down my neck all night?' James thought angrily, but answered anyway.

"Nobody. Used to stay with a librarian back in NYC for five years, but that was it. Kakaroff picked me up and I just hung round Germany, livin off odd jobs and such." He replied absently, moving to the next cauldron.

"What are you going to do now that your in the UK?" Snape asked suddenly after ten minutes of silence.

"Pfft, I dunno. I cant afford some plane tickets to head back to NYC, so I figure I'll be sticking around here for a while, not doing anything particular." James replied, standing up and dropping the sponge in an empty cauldron, his first task done.

"That was fast." Remarked snape.

"I've had experience." Shot back James.

"Scrub the ceiling over longbottoms desk. Been here six years, it's a miracle the ceiling above it is still intact." Snape said. James snorted.

"Yeah." He climbed up on the desk and scrubbed, easily dogging the chunks of dust of dried potion that came crumbling on top of him. "SHIT!" He exclaimed at the ceiling around the area crumbled quite suddenly. He leapt from the desktop and took refuge under a near-by bench as the ceiling landed in a dusty mess on the desk top.

"Heh, knew that'd happen." Snape laughed as James chocked. James got up from the floor and glared at the greasy git.

"Jerk." He muttered under his breath, no venom gracing his voice as he grinned. Snape fixed the whole in the ceiling with a swift wave of the wand.

"Anyway, are you gonna stick around, breathing down my neck, or what?" James demanded, iratted beyond redemption.

"Don't be so conceited to think that I am 'sticking around' for the pure purpose of the joy I get from our conversations." Snape growled, but in a teasing way. "I am working on a new potion for promfry. In fact, I have to add the next ingredient now."

Snape gestured to a pot in the center of the room that was an odd pinkish color. He picket up some pre-chopped orioton roots and droped them in. He stirred, staring intently. It turned a sickening gray color. He growled in frustration and retired to his desk. James strode over.

"What kind of potion is it?" He asked, glancing over Snapes notes, using a business-like tone he usually preserved for when he sold stolen goods on the black market in Germany.

"A minor cuts, burns and bruises potion, of the class Puyuthe." Snape said without looking up. James pulled up a chair and stuck out his hand.

"Ingredients?" He asked. Snape shoved the list of ingredients unceremoniously into his hand. James glanced down it.

"Well?" Snape demanded when James made a noise of realization.

"You've got orioton roots and trunito powder. They cancel each other out. That's not good. I would presume that the orioton roots were for the purpose of preventing infection?" James inquired, Snape nodded. "That's what I thought. Well, I think if we were to replace the roots with Placerti leave excretions, we'd get the same effect, even better perhaps."

"True, but don't you think the side effect of the excretions effect the patient?" Snape asked, all hate and anger forgot, completely intrigued with the ideas.

"Well, the trunito powder would get rid of that too. Wanna give it a try?" James asked.

"Absolutley. Finite Step." Snape said, and the potion went back to the pinkish color. "Accio Placerti leaves."

The leaves flew into his hand and they added them. The potion turned a clear, deep blue.

"By jove, I think we've done it." James said sarcastically, sitting down in a chair.

"Now we just have to test it." Snape said, amusment twinkling in his eyes for once.

"hah! You wish!" James shouted and ran from the room.

Unbeknownst to them, deep blue, amused eyes watched in the shadow, eyes twinkling with an idea.