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Potions was always terrible in the week leading up to the full moon. Scott’s already heightened sense of smell was especially sensitive during this time. All the scents and fumes, on top of the typically gunky smell of the poorly ventilated dungeons, drove his nose crazy. Unfortunately, it was a required subject to enter the healing profession, and so Scott had to deal.
Today they were brewing amortentia. It was a rather difficult potion. Half the class was over-excited and making mistakes, which meant weird smells hitting his nose from all directions.
A sudden strong burst of floral scent caused Scott to turn to Stiles, standing across the aisle from him on the Ravenclaw side of the room. While the final potion smelled differently from person to person, one could sometimes catch a whiff of what someone else was smelling during the brewing process. Scott wrinkled his nose, waiting for the smell to eventually subside, but he knew it was a hopeless cause. The strength of the smell depended on the magnitude of the brewer’s emotions, and Scott was smelling the fruity scent of Lydia’s conditioner.
Lydia Martin was Head Prefect along with Scott, one of his closest friends, and the girl Stiles had a crush on since they were all eight years old. Lydia and her mother had moved into their neighbourhood, and young Stiles had immediately been enraptured by the girl.
Despite having grown up around each other, Lydia had not really been friends with the boys until the end of fifth year, when she stumbled into the world of crazy werewolf politics (no thanks to the Hale family). Before that, she only hung out with them when her best friend, and Scott’s ex-girlfriend, Allison made her. However, the summer before sixth year, she started to slowly make her way into their small group of friends. She and Stiles, both being exceptionally bright students (bar Stiles’ constant stream of detention records), ended up sharing most of their NEWT classes, and naturally grew close. This of course, only served to mature Stiles’ feelings, as Scott learned one night after his best friend had too much firewhiskey.
The best friend in question caught Scott’s eye, mouthing a ‘sorry’ when he realised Scott could smell what he was smelling. He waved his wand in small circles, muttering a gentle wind charm under his breath to diffuse the scent.
“Still smell it?” he whispered when he was done.
“Yup.”
The answer came not from Scott, but from Stiles’ fellow Ravenclaw, Boyd. Boyd’s workspace was right behind Stiles’ so, being a werewolf as well, he was able to hear Stiles’ quiet words. He too, was scrunching his nose.
Stiles summoned a few more puffs of wind. It didn’t really help, and Scott pointed out as much.
“McCall, it has long been established that you and Mr Stilinski are in love with each other. I’m sure you do not need to confer with him to figure out his scent is wafting from your potion,” Harris, the potions professor (and an all-around jerk, as Stiles liked to call him), called out.
As the class snickered, Lydia turned around from her place at the front of the classroom to frown at them, her red - no, strawberry blonde, Stiles’ voice corrected in Scott’s head - hair flipping over her shoulder. Stiles quickly looked down to avoid her questioning gaze.
Boyd leaned over.
“You know,” he started in his usual low voice. “Some potion masters have suggested that the scent is further strengthened if one’s feelings are reciprocated.”
Stiles turned as red as the Gryffindor crest.
Later that day, Scott was heading to the library when he caught a whiff of motor oil coming down one of the less frequented hallways. It seemed to drift from the haunted and apparently unused girls’ bathroom, so Scott dutifully went to check out the source. To his surprise, he found Lydia standing over her cauldron, waving her wand.
Lydia was the most proficient in their year at nonverbal spells, so Scott didn’t know what she was trying to do at first. However, he soon noticed that the surface of the potion was starting to freeze over, terminating the brew. The gasoline smell eventually left his nostrils once the potion had completely frozen over.
Lydia unclamped her free hand from over her nose. It was then she looked up and noticed Scott.
“Scott,” she said, sounding rather surprised. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Scott answered, still confused about why Lydia was hiding in a bathroom to brew a potion. He glanced at her textbook lying open at her feet, his sharpened eyesight helping him pick out the words on the page. “Uh, why are you brewing amortentia here?”
“Because I didn’t get to finish it in class, because Erica accidentally knocked over a jar of gypsum powder into my cauldron,” she huffed.
“So you decided to rebrew it...in an abandoned bathroom?”
“My common room isn’t the most well-ventilated, being next to the dungeons and all.”
Scott had to agree. The Slytherin common room was not far from the potions classroom and its air circulation was not much better.
He also noticed a prim tone was creeping into Lydia’s voice, the tone that Scott had come to associate with defensiveness when it came to Lydia.
“Um, okay, but why not one of the new open lounges?” he asked. “Or Ravenclaw tower? It’s really airy up there and I’m sure Stiles would have let you in.”
Lydia’s heartbeat jumped when he mentioned Stiles’ name, and Scott frowned slightly, but quickly turned his attention back to the girl as she spoke again.
“I wasn’t going to let someone get overwhelmed by the potential strong odor this potion might create,” Lydia explained. She tried to sound stern, but the slight waver in her voice was not missed by the werewolf. Not this close to the full moon.
“And that was a good thing, because as you noticed, my amortentia happens to give off a particularly repugnant odor.” She forcefully stabbed her wand at the cauldron, turning the ice into an odorless liquid. Then, she levitated her cauldron over to the drain and emptied the contents.
“And it wasn’t even done,” she sighed.
Scott nodded emphatically. Deciding Lydia was smart enough to not cause any disaster despite brewing an advanced potion unsupervised, he left her to work in peace and continued on his own way.
He finally entered the library, spotted Stiles at a nearby table, and then it hit him.
Lydia’s love potion smelled like the oil from Stiles’ jeep.
Scott grinned as he briskly walked over, and made sure to clap his best friend on the back as he sat down.