..
..
Lupin paced a few times in front of an unfamiliar office, in the dungeon of Hogwarts. The corridors he rarely ventured down except as a member of the Marauders felt unsettling around him. The students he passed on the way were all wearing green ties and glared at the Gryffie prefect who was trespassing on their turf.
He'd come to Peverell's office during his office hour the very next day of the class with the idea of, well, swallowing his potions, so to speak, but he was already regretting it.
He'd purposely avoided Siri, who was suspicious as to why the Slytherin Deputy Head had called him; because if he followed, Jamie would be sure to tag along, and Jamie was still in wand confiscation.
He couldn't afford to pit Jamie against a professor nicknamed 'the Wand Snatcher' in his first week of the post any more than necessary.
The boy hesitated for a few minutes before standing in the doorway to the professor's office. Swallowing hard, he slowly raised his hand. The door...
Bam!
Suddenly, the door burst open, and Peverell stepped out. He smiled cheerfully at the Gryffindor prefect, who was gasping in surprise.
"Well, you came just about the right time."
...Why... is he so nonchalant?
Lupin looked up at the professor, fighting back the hiccups, but Peverell casually gestured for him to follow and began walking down the hall.
"Follow me, Remus."
Lupin blinked. Remus?
Of course... it's not unusual for professors to call students by their first names. But usually, it takes weeks... at least a few days, after they've gotten to know them, sent them on an errand or two and generally been friendly with the students a bit, right?
"Aren't you coming?"
...It does not even seem like he's trying to be extra friendly to me, he's just unconcernedly calling me like an uncle calls his nephew.
The schoolboy stood dumbfounded for a moment, then came to his senses and hurried after Peverell.
The walk was not long. Around a corner, in a hallway less than ten paces away, Peverell swung his wand. A serpentine sigil faintly appeared on a door that hadn't been visible before, and the next moment it swung open.
"This is the personal laboratory I was granted as a condition of accepting the position of professor."
Lupin listened to the professor's explanation with half an ear, and took a glance around the lab.
Honestly, it wasn't his favorite place. The smells of dozens and dozens of herbs, poisons, animal parts, precious metals, heavy metals, stuffs wet and dry, assaulted the boy's acute sense of smell, as they always did in any place that dealt with potions. The materials in this lab seemed to be even more diverse than Professor Jackson's supply room behind the Potions classroom last year, and it was all he could do not to openly grimace at the smells that were several times more potent.
Peverell glanced at his face, then flicked his wand. The windows flew open.
...Windows?
Lupin's mouth dropped open. There were three large windows, almost as tall as he was, on the walls of the laboratory, letting in fresh air. Did potions labs usually have windows? No.
Moreover, wasn't this place definitely, physically, underground?
At that moment,
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The three cauldrons that had been simmering quietly in the corner of the laboratory had suddenly become attached to the professor's side.
...Peverell hadn't gone there, the cauldrons had come. With the blue fire below, and the liquid potions inside.
One of the cauldrons flicked at Peverell's waist, like a large dog flicking its tail at its master, gently enough so as not to spill the liquid inside. Peverell nodded absently, grabbed the potion stirrer the cauldron had given him (Lupin hadn't even seen how it did it), and began to slowly swirl the potion in the cauldron.
Behind him, two more cauldrons bubbled away, waiting for their turn.
Lupin watched in fascination, then jumped at Peverell's next words.
"...So, how many days are left until the full moon? As I remember, it's not on a weekend, this month. Gotta be tough on you."
"Hhccp!"
Hiccupping in horror, Lupin looked at Peverell with reproachful eyes.
"...The Headmaster... he can't..."
"Huh?" Peverell narrowed his eyes, and then.
"...Oops. Drat. Dumbledore hasn't bloody told me yet, that secretive old wanker."
Is he insane? Yeah, he must be. Muttering some lines that justified Lupin's thoughts, the professor went to a small bookcase in the corner of the lab. From there, he pulled out a thin booklet with a black-covered binding and tossed it to Lupin.
"Read this. You don't have to understand it, to tell the truth. About a year and a half ago, I forgot... well, a recipe I was supposed to bring with me, so this is what I ended up with. It is a Wolfsbane, obviously, but it's ineffective at your age, Remus, and the ingredients are so numerous that the cost of production is frankly unconscionable."
"...Wolfsbane? That's the name of a poisonous plant we learn in first year."
Lupin said confusedly. Peverell looked at him for a moment, and sighed.
"...You really should read a potions journal once in a while, Remus."
...
...
An hour or so later, Lupin walked out of the lab, his eyes in a daze.
Okay... Good... well... it was good news. That there might be a hope, not now, but sometime in the future.
At the present, Peverell's potion was not complete. Maybe if it had been developed five years before, when Lupin was at the age of ten, he could have benefited from it. But right now, the inhibitory effect of the potion would not last a minute in the body of a teen-aged lycanthrope once the moon rose, the professor explained.
Hence the potions master's offer to develop and customize the incomplete potion for the young werewolf.
And so, Lupin had just signed a form agreeing to be a guinea pig for the professor, promising to dutifully imbibe the concoction of fourteen poisonous herbs and six heavy metals that Professor Peverell would carefully brew until the Wolfsbane was perfected.
Lupin thought back to tonight's events and nodded calmly.
Peverell was a Slytherin. No doubt at all.
..
.
A day in September. Around nine o'clock at night.
Severus was running toward his potions lab on the second floor when he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of a girl's shrill voice coming from the corner of the hallway.
"...You- wait, you just wait- Slytherin bastards, you fu-"
Most of it was uninteresting, but the sound of the expletive, cut off mid-sentence like a knife, made the boy stop in his tracks.
A silencing spell. Not a trace of a voice, and the magic behind the spell was considerable. Spelled by at least a fourth-year, he guessed.
From the content of the girl's cursing, it was an argument between Slytherin and another house.
'Are they giving a mudblood a 'lesson' or something? Why the hell are they doing it here of all places in Hogwarts, at this hour of the night anyway?' Severus grumbled under his breath.
It was already the start of upper years' curfew, and he was not even in the dungeon, which was Slytherin territory. Which meant that if whoever they are were caught by a patrolling professor, they would be punished without a chance of escape.
He'd pretend not to notice and go his way under normal circumstances. But the potions lab, he and Lily's, was right around the corner. If they got into a fight and made noise, and be caught by a professor or the caretaker, it was all good and no concern of his, but the chances were high that Severus, happily brewing away in his lab, be discovered as well. Then it would be detentions wholesale, and their unofficial potions lab demolished as a bonus.
Severus stalked down the corridor, searching for the source of the voice. Sure enough, the door to an abandoned classroom about ten paces away was slightly ajar.
I'll take a peek, and if they're fourth years or so, I'll kick them out with the threat of curfew, he decided. Let them fight in another part of the castle.
...
SQUEAK-
"-What are you doing here?"
At the sudden voice, the two green-tied boys' hearts skipped a beat; they spun around, and the next minute their faces instantly broke into relieved smirks.
"Hullo, Sev-Sev. You too?"
"Our half-breed Prince can sure smell fun. I guess it's his big nose working."
"..."
Severus snorted, saying nothing. The girl hanging in the middle of the room brightened at the sound of the classroom door opening; then her face turned to despair as she saw the color of the boy's tie as he entered.
So, yes, she was indeed "hanging". A magical rope snaked around the girl's waist, and she was dangling in the middle of the room like a prey caught in a trap. On the floor beneath her was a wand, which was probably hers.
Severus blinked. This is...
He thought a fight was going on, but it seems the fight was settled, in a way, long ago, and it's gone far beyond that to... well, they've moved on to outright abuse.
The girl was vaguely familiar. He'd seen her a few times before, stuck around Lily. Her name was... Mary Mcmac? something along those lines. Just a plain, ordinary girl with no presence in the classroom.
Her tie had flown off already, along with her cloak, but she's a tag-along of Lily, so he knew she was probably a Gryffindor. And obviously a mudblood. The fearless fool.
..
(Note)
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