Hey! I just want to thank my two newest reviewers Kristina321 and Bronze Star for thie lovely reviews, and I hope that I have pleased the evil mice for you CrouchingCrookshanks!

I hope you all like the fifth chapter! They start the Potion!

Chapter 5

During breakfast the following Monday Headmaster Dumbledore had silenced the Great Hall and when he had everyone's attention said. "I am pleased to inform you that this Saturday will be the first trip to Hogsmeade village for our students in Third Year and higher."

There was a collective groan from students below the Year limit and a cheer from those you apply.

The Headmaster continued, "Yes, it is very well exciting. The new Seventh Year will also be delighted to know that they now apply to being able to stay for a few hours into the night whereas students below have a curfew of dusk. Everyone had received a letter of parental or guardian acceptance and can only go if you have had it sighed. Those who haven't are required to stay here."

At the Slytherin table Bellatrix turned to Severus. "Have your parents signed it this year?"

"You know they have not." he told her. His father didn't approve of magic and had no interest in anything his son did. He had refused to sign the letter and had warned Severus' mother not to either.

"I hope that they are the first ones on your list once you leave this place, Severus." Rodolphus said. "I for one wouldn't stand for their treatment of you. Your mother was a fool to marry that muggle but an even greater fool to neglect you."

"She was a blood traitor and a traitor to all pureblooded females." Bellatrix spat.

This, he did appreciate from his friends. They all came from families that cared for their children and tried to get the best for and from them. And though it was true that he himself was the spawn of a traitorous wench they saw through it and appreciated his pure talents and his own adoption of their beliefs.

In Potions Samantha handed back Snape's parchment. It had taken hours to read, dissect and understand. His notes were excessively detailed and nothing seemed to be missing. She tried to think of additions but it was futile, everything was there and if she were honest she couldn't even have corrected it if there had been mistakes or changes to be made. However she had found a word spelt incorrectly and she felt smug about its finding.

Severus glanced over the parchment and found one addition written in curvy opposing red writing. Girlish writing. "Thank you, for correcting my grave mistake, Cromwell." He said derisively.

"Your welcome." She said ignoring his tone.

"Have you concluded to a place then?" he asked as he slipped the parchment into his bag.

She nodded and asked when she should take him to it. They agreed to meet after lunch.

"Where are you and Snape going to be working?" Annabel asked during lunch.

"A room on the seventh floor." She said. For some reason she didn't want to tell anyone about the room. She suspected that not many people knew about the room and perhaps they shouldn't.

"Lily and I aren't going to start until Wednesday, seeing as we have never even heard of our potion – we still have much research to do. Thank heavens ours only takes five months to prepare." Annabel sighed.

"I don't want to sound obnoxious but I think that I would rather have prepared a potion for ten months then sit through Ancient Runes for the rest of the year." Alexis scrunched up her face, "Its hours of reading and pictures in class and then more hours of reading and pictures out of class. I will soon need glasses." She said in horror of the thought.

"I wonder if we get to test our potions when we are finished with them." Sirius mused.

Lupin grimaced, "I for one would not willingly want to test a potion that you and I have produced."

Samantha laughed. Lupin smiled at her. Sirius frowned.

"So Sam, are you going to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Sirius inquired.

"Ugh, yes Sirius I am." She told him. Please don't ask me out, please don't ask me out.

"We should go to the Three Broomsticks." He suggested.

Samantha saw a way around it, "Sirius, we all will be going there." She said with a dopey smile looking over at Lily to make it look like she truly hadn't realized that he had meant only the two of them.

Sirius looked befuddled, "Ugh, no I meant…" he looked like he didn't know what he should say, "Never mind." He said hastily.

Samantha watched the curious look James and Remus shared but didn't try to comprehend it as her gaze drifted to the Slytherin table where Snape had just gotten up. Oh, yes.

"Well I've got to go." She said and walked after Snape. She felt her friends burning gazes on the back of her neck as they watched her leave, not technically with Snape but still with him. It scared her to.

"So where is this room?" Snape asked staring at the floor where he waited for her to catch up down the corridor.

"It's the Room of Requirement, it's on the seventh floor." She informed him.

He looked up at her then, "The room of what?"

She felt secretly pleased that he had never heard of it. "It's a room…well come I'll show you." she said as she reached for his arm.

He quickly shrugged away from her, giving her a stern look. "Sorry." she mumbled and continued down the corridor. Wow that was close, she shivered. It must have been ingrained in her from acting so freely with others. She had to watch that around him.

Once on the seventh floor Severus stood next to Samantha when she stopped in the same area he and his friends had found her in last week. He looked at what she was smiling at and it was just a wall.

"This corridor is were you plan to - " he began incredulously.

"No," she interrupted and began to walk back and forwards in front of the wall. Since Professor Slughorn had hexed all of their equipment she thought of just the room they needed.

Snape was about to leave when he saw a door appear in the wall. He stared at it, slightly shocked.

"Oh my," Samantha said as she looked at his face. "a serpent can show emotion."

He scowled at her as they walked to the door and he looked inside. It wasn't that impressive, it was medium sized, looked like a dungeon room and had a few tables, chairs and a couch. But then he saw the bookshelves with potions book and he changed his first impression.

"The room will only be here for us. All we have to do is walk in front of it wanting this particular room and it will appear. We can leave everything in here and it will stay as we left it. No one else will be able to get access to this specific room that we haven't shown." She told him everything Sir Nicholas had told her.

Snape walked over to the bookshelf and asked, "I assume it can become any room someone requires it to be?"

"Yes, and as soon as we close the door it will disappear on the outside." She said as she closed the door.

He turned to her and gave her a rather odd approving look. It looked severe but she understood it to be of approval. She didn't mind it.

"How long have you known of this room?" he asked as he withdrew a small pouch out of his robe pocket.

"Quite a while." She lied as she watched his fingers remove the contents of the pouch and place it all on the table, then he whispered something and they all enlarged and there stood their best friends for the next six months.

"This is the most useful thing that you have ever brought to the table, Cromwell." He said and his voice actually sounded sincere – not mocking or annoyed.

The sudden change in his tone made her slightly uncomfortable. "Ah, thanks?" she said, not knowing if she should have said anything at all since if she read further into his comment it still had an insult embedded in it- that she hadn't brought anything to the table at all till then.

"We begin tomorrow." He stated.

Snape was giving her that shrewd look again that he should have known that she would be useless. It was Tuesday and they had decided to start the potion during the free period they had together after Transfiguration.

He had given her the responsibility of correctly heating the water that they were to use as the base of the potion.

"Honestly, you couldn't even get the water right?" he was spitting fire at her. "If this is any indication of how you will perform for the next couple hundred steps of the brew then I think that we should stop right here and now."

"How was I supposed to know that you meant Fahrenheit and not Celsius?" she demanded. She hated how she slightly felt embarrassed while it was irrational for him to get so mad. Under any other circumstances she would have told the person off and not felt a thing. She also hated how she seemed to be the yelling child in the situation and he the calm yet stern adult. She wanted to lash out.

"All of my notes were in Fahrenheit." He said as if it explained everything.

"You didn't specify in your notes what degree you used." She said slowly through clenched teeth her anger building gradually.

He stared at her and struck out his hand to catch his notes which flew into his outstretched hand. He looked through it and his expression slackened. He read every line of the two foot parchment and couldn't find one simple word of 'Fahrenheit', not even a symbol that represented it.

A smile spread over Samantha's face as heat spread over his.

He didn't look at her as he said, "Everyone knows that it is more accurate to use Fahrenheit, which is why we will be using it when we work with temperatures from now on."

"Say it." she demanded. She wasn't going to let him get away with it that easily, besides she liked that shade of pink in his cheeks and the way his eyes looked sort of unfocused. She could bet that he was fuming and that if she urged the subject the color would stay a bit longer.

"I have nothing to say to you." he said with a passion that his voice rose slightly.

"I think that you do." she said as she placed a fist to her hip. She watched as his jaw clenched and unclenched a few times and she waited. For this she could wait a while.

From his expression he had made up his mind. What he had decided she couldn't tell.

Slowly he said, "I apologize…perhaps I did overreact."

Point for Gryffindor.

In Care of Magical Creatures that evening Samantha felt empowered. It was childish but it was the best she had felt for the past few days. She could fight back against his obnoxious attitude and she could outwit him. The next few months might just be tolerable.

"Why are you so happy?" Lily and Alexis asked her when the teacher finally turned her back to them to retrieve yet another species of underwater fire-breathing clams.

Samantha hadn't planned on telling them but it bubbled out of her. Sadly she hadn't known that the Marauders were standing behind them listening.

"You made him blush?" Potter demanded.

"He hasn't done that for us in almost a year and we call him out on much worse offenses." Sirius actually looked gloomy.

"You weren't meant to hear that." She said looking at them as though they had caught her in her underwear. "I swear, if I hear back from anyone that you are handing out this information, I will - "

"Why are you defending him?" Potter demanded her accusingly.

"First of all I am not defending the git. But I need to stay on semi-good terms with him, since most of my Potion grade is riding this project. And secondly Potter," she narrowed her eyes at him, "I don't quite appreciate your tone."

Potter looked incredulous, and Sirius gave him a stern look. He slapped him over the head and turned a flashy smile at Samantha, "It is a shame though. It would have been fun getting him to blush like a girl for us again."

She didn't return his smile but asked seriously, "Please, for me, keep it to your selves."

His expression also turned serious, "Alright."

The following day went by quickly and Samantha found herself with Remus patrolling the first two floors of Hogwarts. Like she, Remus was a Gryffindor Prefect, they had been given a duty schedule the second day back to school and tonight was their first time on duty so far.

"Merlin, I never knew this place could be so quiet." She heard Remus say as they walked the corridors of the two floors making sure no mischievous students were running around.

She turned to look at him. He was her height with light brown hair, cut short around the neck but fell into his eyes on top, which in the sun looked sometimes reddish. He had brown eyes and a pale and sincere face which had a few old scars on it. She had known him for six years now but didn't really know anything about him. Sometimes he looked older then he really was and he might have come from a poor family because his robes were always shabby and patched. Out of the four Marauders he was the only seemingly mature one, he kept his grades high and didn't seem to take a direct part in their pranks or bullying.

"So have you and Sirius started your potions yet?" she asked as they rounded yet another corridor.

She watched him smile, "I believe that Sirius and I will just have to fail this one."

She laughed, "Surely you don't mean that."

"No, we have actually started. If we had waited any longer we might have had to carry on with it into the summer." He told her.

"You two did get the potion that would take the longest to prepare."

"Yes, but most of our ingredients should be generally simple to get." He paused then asked, "How is it going with Snape?"

She groaned, "Consistently dreadful."

He laughed.

"Shut up." She said but smiled with him. "I mean there are some moments when we are working that aren't so bad but he's just…there's just too much wrong with him to get into this."

"I can imagine." He said.

"If he wasn't so rude or dull it would make him a bit more bearable." She sighed, "He doesn't like to talk about anything, he doesn't do anything but work and he…I don't know."

"He's always been like that. It's who he is." He said thoughtfully.

"I guess. Perhaps it's the combination of him and me that doesn't allow anything to work out, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if one of us would just back down and shut the hell up. But I would say something and he would react totally absurd or he would say something to me and - "

"And you give him hell for it." Remus laughed.

She laughed to, "Exactly. Too much consistency and no budge."

They were quiet for a while and then she asked, "Why is it that you don't take part when your friends bully him?"

He looked at her, "Should I?"

"No, it's immature and pointless but I was just wondering."

He looked thoughtful; he was the only Marauder that could even pull off looking thoughtful. "I don't like him for many of the same reasons everyone else doesn't like him. He is rude, a loner, a blood and house prejudiced and I think that driven far enough he can be quite sadistic. He is also a hypocrite for disliking blood-traitors, as they so call it, because he himself is a half-blood."

Samantha was perplexed, "Really? I never knew that."

Remus laughed, "Because you don't follow gossip, which is a very un-Gryffindor thing to do by the way."

She gave him a goaded look.

"But yes, his mother was a witch and his father a muggle. I know this from Lily; you probably haven't heard her talk much about him because their friendship was already under strain when you started hanging out with her." he paused and smiled across at her, "With us."

"You still haven't told me why you don't bully him."

"To be honest I also don't see the point. It isn't helping make him a better person it's probably doing the exact opposite. But they wouldn't understand that." He said, shaking his head at his friend's tactlessness.

"Yeah," she agreed as they reached the stairs to the first floor.

"I did mean what I said though. I think that if he is pushed far enough we will all see what he truly is and what he's truly capable of and I'm afraid it won't be very comforting." He said staring ahead.

"So you think he's into the Dark Arts as well." She stated.

"Yes, and if not yet, then he will be. They all will be Samantha." He was the only one that always called her Samantha. She wondered if he knew that she preferred it. "Everyone knows that Slytherins will side with the Dark Lord. All of his current followers came from the Slytherin house and I bet that most of the Slytherin's parents are involved as well. It's only a matter of time that their children follow in their footsteps."

She knew it was true but she didn't what to believe that everyone did as they were expected to do, especially when the expected task would be so obviously the wrong one. She couldn't even imagine what kind of people would actually agree with the Dark Lord's illogical initiatives, but obviously many people do.

As they made their way back up towards the Gryffindor common room and dormitories Remus asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

She smiled, "Sure."

"Why is that you won't even let Sirius ask you out?" he asked point blank.

Samantha didn't want to go through this again. But he didn't seem like he thought she was an idiot not to like Sirius he just sounded genuinely curious. "Well I try to avoid it because I do see him as a friend; a sometimes good friend and I don't want to be that girl that keeps letting him down. Even though I will soon not care about his feelings if he keeps it up." She suppressed a groan.

"How is it that you're the only girl that doesn't want to give him a chance." He asked, looking sideways at her.

After telling her self that he wasn't just getting news for Sirius she felt that it was safe to go on. "Probably because I'm the only girl here with a brain."

Remus laughed but then choked on it as he tried to restrain himself, "Hey, that's my friend your talking about." He said in mock warning.

She smiled and added, "He's a playboy, Remus. We don't have much in common, I don't want to do that to myself and I know that all the other girls out there want him way more then I ever will so he shouldn't waste his time with me. Nothing is there."

Again he looked thoughtful, "What is it that you want there?" at her frown he said, "You don't have to tell me."

"I don't think I will," she looked over to him, "but not because I don't want to tell you – because I don't really know what isn't there."

Severus made his way down the dungeon corridors towards the comforting cold of the Slytherin common room and dormitory. He still felt his disgust at what he had overheard from Lupin and Cromwell. Perhaps she did have a slightly larger brain then most girls when it came to Black but it made him sick to hear someone actually caring about Black's feelings and yada-yada-yada.

Poor Cromwell, it seems that half the Marauders want a piece of her. There she was trusting Lupin, the dog!, with her thoughts and he just looks at her with those same eyes Sirius looks at her with – as if he wants to make her his. Fools the lot of them. Love was probably what she thought was missing, well she had a long wait ahead of her the poor girl – doesn't even know that it doesn't exist and if it did it wouldn't come in a silk wrapped packaging. It would come in a coarse foul smelling wrapping, with nothing fueling it but obsession and one person's dominance over the other persons need for them. It would be a mind game, the strong holding the weak by throat above the ground. Well he wished her luck with that.

AN:- Now I love Remus, but if there are any hardcore Remus fans reading don't get your hopes up!

I mean they dooo sort of try something I mean not realy but in a way there could be a little hope but it will never happen but I can see why you 'will' think so but anyway no.

lol get that? anyone? just me ranting

I hope you liked what you read and leave poor little ol me a nice (but if you'd rather - not nice) review.

I will see how many people actually read this chapter! And if it doesn't add up then....i will join forces with CrouchingCrookshanks and ask to let lose the evil mice on all our souls...those who don't review....

Magic is real people - I know you know this or you wouldn't love HP so much!