After all their moth-chasing and ingredient-hunting, the most difficult part of making the Animagus potion turned out to be the Mandrake leaf.
Getting the leaves had been easy enough—Professor Sprout raised Mandrakes in the Herbology greenhouses for the second years—but the potion required future Animagi to soak them in their mouths for an entire month before they could be added to the potion, which meant that James, Sirius and Peter had had to learn how to talk and eat and drink without disturbing the annoying leaves resting on the backs of their tongues. Not only that, but the leaves had to be inserted into the potion phials under the light of a full moon, leading to the Marauders having to repeat the entire process when a giant storm rolled in and obscured the moon the night they were meant to make their first attempt. So it wasn't until the final full moon of the year, only a week before final exams, that they actually were able to finish the potion.
With Remus off undergoing his transformation in the Shrieking Shack, the other three boys snuck out onto the grounds under James's Cloak, heading far away from the castle before allowing themselves to return to visibility. The night air was warm and dry, the full moon hanging big and bright over their heads. Each of them held a tiny phial made of crystal, filled with the ingredients they'd already added.
"Can we take the leaves out now?" Peter asked. After two months of waiting, he was getting incredibly tired of sharing his mouth's very limited space with a leaf.
"Yup," said James. "Just make sure the moonlight strikes it after you spit it out."
Peter gratefully spat his leaf into his phial and held it up to the moon, the silver light bouncing off the crystal container and the milky liquid brewing inside of it. James and Sirius did the same; then Sirius pulled out the little box in which they'd stored their hawkmoth chrysalises, each of them frozen solid by a Glacius Charm to prevent the moths inside from breaking out. Sirius handed a chrysalis to James and Peter and took the third for himself—together the three of them plopped them into their phials and watched them dissolve into nothingness.
"Is this how it's supposed to look?" Peter asked nervously, holding his out for Sirius to inspect.
Sirius gave him the thumbs up. "It looks just like mine does, at least."
"Now the dew," said James, holding up a little bottle. The dew, which had to have been untouched by the sun or humans for a week before collecting, had been nearly as hard to figure out as the Mandrake leaves; the Marauders had had to charm a stretch of grass under one of the castle overhangs to prevent anyone from stepping on it, with one of them having to sneak out to reapply the charm twice a day until a week had passed.
James poured a small amount of dew into each phial with a silver teaspoon, leaving the potion nearly complete. There was only one more ingredient, and it was the easiest to collect of them all.
Peter reached up to his scalp, picked out a single strand of hair curling over his ear, and plucked it from his head. Gently he dropped the hair into his phial and swirled it around gently to let the ingredients mix together. A slight haze shimmered across the potion's surface, indicating that it was complete.
Having finished with his, James collapsed back against the grass with a sigh. "That has got to be the world's most difficult potion to brew," he grumbled. "It took us a whole bloody year to finish it."
"Doesn't look like much," said Sirius, frowning at his phial. "Bet it tastes disgusting."
"At this point, I don't even care if it tastes like piss," James replied. "It'll be the best thing I ever drank."
"But we can't drink it yet," Peter pointed out. "We've got to wait for a lightning storm."
"We know, Petey," Sirius said, rolling his eyes a little. "And unless there's a big storm in the next week or so, that means we've got to wait till next year to take it."
"Next year?"
"What did you think, we'd bring them home with us for the summer holidays?" James asked. Peter felt his face going red. "The potion's got to be kept somewhere dark and quiet until we can drink it, remember? It's not going to make it on the Hogwarts Express."
"Besides," Sirius added, "it's only fitting that we all drink them together. Then we can help each other out if something goes wrong." Peter pictured himself half-transformed on the Hogwarts grounds, part man and part rat, and shivered despite the heat. If things were going to go wrong for any of them, it would most certainly be him.
But Remus had to go through a horrible transformation every month, he reminded himself. If he could make it through, then so could Peter.
"We have to remember to say the incantation twice a day," Sirius reminded them. "Until we drink the potion."
"Yes," said James. "Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
Peter laughed a little in spite of himself. "That doesn't even sound like a real spell."
"Maybe it's not, and the Animagus books are all trying to pull one over on us," James said. "But I'm going to do it anyway. We've made it too bloody far to mess something up now."
"My mum will think I've gone mad if she hears me chanting that," Peter murmured.
"My mum already thinks I'm mad," Sirius said, lifting a shoulder. "Join the club, Petey."
"I'd rather not."
James stepped up behind them and gave them each a light slap on the back of the head. "We've got to get back to our room and put the potions away. We can talk about our parents and their concern for our mental stability later."
"Or lack thereof," said Sirius.
"Or lack thereof. Come on, you gits."
The three of them climbed back under James's Cloak and crept back into the castle as they had done so many times before, feeding the password "Amortentia" to a Fat Lady too tired to bother with interrogating them.
"Where are we putting the potions?" Peter asked once they were back inside their room.
"In my special secret hidey-hole, of course." Tossing the Invisibility Cloak onto his bed, James went to the room's back bay window and briskly tapped his wand three times against a pane of wood flooring. The wood shifted and slid out of the way to reveal a small rectangular hole in the floor. Peter blinked; he'd forgotten about James's hidey-hole.
James pulled out a few Fanged Frisbees and other Zonko's products he'd stashed away before gesturing to Sirius and Peter for their potions. He lowered the three phials gently into the hole before sealing it shut again with another tap of his wand. "They'll be safe there till we come back for them. No way the cleaning house-elves will be able to find them."
Sirius glanced down at the floor, his gray eyes twinkling with excitement. "Next year's going to be our best year yet," he said. "Once we're Animagi, we're going to run this entire school. I mean, the possibilities are endless."
"I can only imagine," said James. Wiggling his eyebrows, he grabbed some cans of butterbeer they'd smuggled out of the Three Broomsticks from beneath his bed and threw a couple to Sirius and Peter before popping open his own. "To fifth year."
"To fifth year," Sirius and Peter chorused, clinking their cans against James's with a trio of cheeky grins bright on their lips.
