Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
There was a great deal of yelping and cursing coming from the back of the classroom which Lily tried to ignore.
Her eyes skimmed across the chalk board at the front of the classroom and she tried desperately to concentrate. This was not made any easier by the loud grunt that came from somewhere behind her. Lily flicked her wrist harder and gritted her teeth. This was going to be a long hour from the sounds of things.
"Merlin's great hairy armpits! What the hell have I done!?"
Her patience abruptly evaporated on the spot and she whipped around to face the source of her irritations.
"Could you keep the bloody noise down, Potter? Some of us are trying to-to.." Her nose wrinkled and she recoiled somewhat as she noticed the mauve fumes rising from his cauldron. "My God, what is that?" A sickly sweet smell, almost like lavender but far too sugary, reached her nose and she tried not to gag. She could almost taste it in the back of her mouth and she fought the urge to scrape her tongue with her fingernails.
"Oh, hello, Evans." He mock saluted her with his ladle and managed to flick a violent green, horrifically lumpy spoonful of liquid towards her. She side stepped the danger with an equally dangerous raised eyebrow. To his credit, he looked incredibly sheepish and his cheeks coloured somewhat in embarrassment.
"What are you doing?" Lily repeated, flicking her wrist again and stirring her own light blue potion with precise accuracy.
"Making my potion. What does it look like?" James asked with a pointed gesture at his bubbling cauldron.
"It looks like a mess." Lily said honestly as she watched the mauve fumes turn fuchsia. Alarm crossed her face briefly until James absently threw in a pickled toad and the fumes morphed back to a strange purple colour. Lily watched with growing horror on her face as James let another whole pickled toad plop into the mix. Her eyes flashed towards the board and she scanned the ingredients list for anything remotely resembling pickled toad. "Potter, what are you doing? You've just put two toads in there and you don't need any!" Her wrist flicked again, the ladle stirring once more in a clockwise direction.
James snorted and threw in another toad simply for effect.
"Loosen up, Evans. Potion directions are more like guidelines than anything...what are you doing?" He frowned as he watched her with worry, for she was crawling under her desk with a fearful look on her face. James bent over his work bench to watch her with amusement. "What are you-" but the question was left forever unfinished as his potion exploded with an awful squelching noise that made the entire class turn to the back of the room. Standing there, covered in what looked and smelt like toad intestines, James glared back at his sniggering peers.
"What? Oh, like your potions have never exploded."
Slughorn, to his credit, looked more amused than angry and, as he marched to the back of the room he clapped James on a slime free patch of his back.
"Oh ho, James, my boy, what's happened here then? Not reading the directions again, eh? Get yourself cleaned up and start over. Perhaps Miss Evans could give you a hand?" Slughorn looked imploringly at the redhead as she crawled out from under her desk, slime free. She looked at him helplessly.
"Sir, I think Potter may be beyond help."
The potions master looked, if anything, even more delighted at her response and laughed, patting his rotund belly.
"Wonderful, wonderful! I shall leave him in your more than capable hands, Miss Evans." And then, completely ignoring the aghast expression on the girl's face, he wandered back to the front of the classroom, muttering about a waste of Slytherin traits. Lily sighed, rubbing her temples as she watched James 'scourgify' himself.
"Right, Potter. Just do the first four steps; they are simple enough and you shouldn't explode anything." She turned back to her own potion, watching it bubble gently until she heard a cough behind her that sounded suspiciously like 'Evans'. She pointedly ignored it. There was another cough and Lily drew a long, calming breath.
"Oi, Evans. You deaf or what?" James poked her in the back with his wand for added effect.
She whipped around so fast that she thought she heard her neck click.
"What?" She hissed, her voice laced with venom.
"Er...do you have the instructions written down? Slughorn's cleared the board."
Lily eyed him with shock and suspicion.
"Do you even know what potion we're meant to be brewing?" At his condemning silence, Lily rolled her eyes. "You didn't read the directions at all?" She stared at him, flabbergasted. "You are such an idiot; no wonder your potion exploded! You know the directions are there for a reason, Slughorn doesn't just like his own hand writing. Honestly, how do you expect to get anywhere in Potions if you have such blatant disregard for the techniques and the rules-"
"Err, Evans?"
"I'm not finished! You need to get your head out of your arse and actually pay attention to something other than yourself. You do realise you need this subject if you want to be an Auror, right?"
"Yes, yes head out of arse but Evans-"
"That's exactly what I'm talking about! I'm trying to help you and you're just making it into a joke. Do you actually take anything seriously? I mean, really." He had started pointed behind her and she gritted her teeth. "What is it, Potter?"
"Your potion is smoking."
"What?" Lily turned back to her bench and eyed the mauve smoke with trepidation. Talking to the absolute prat behind her, she had forgotten to stir the potion clockwise again and now it was rapidly taking on a similar appearance to James' unfortunate concoction. Thinking on her feet, Lily rather hastily threw a pickled toad into the mixture and stirred it three times counter clockwise.
"Hey! I thought you said there were no pickled toads in this potion!" James' indignant cry was drowned out by Peter Pettigrew's squeal as someone dropped a pair of scales on his feet. Lily rolled her eyes, smiling as the potion turned back to a light blue colour.
"Look, Potter, you need to read the directions but you don't necessarily have to follow all of them. It's common sense and the instructions are a good place to start with a potion." She turned to face him, a sly smirk on her face as she regarded him from underneath her lashes, and, to his utter astonishment, actually winked.
"Besides, they're really only guidelines anyway."
~*~