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February 1977
“Why’re you lot complaining about double potions today?” James asked over lunch, much too jovially. “I mean, Moony’s shite at potions.
“Ta, mate,” Remus said.
“So I know why he’s complaining, but come on, we’re brewing Amortentia today!”
Sirius rolled his eyes and said, “You’re just hoping Evans will smell you in her potion. We’re complaining about being stuck with you and your preening all afternoon.” Remus smirked. Peter snickered.
“Don’t encourage him, Wormy, you’re not even in potions this year,” James said.
“And you don’t even sit with Evans in potions. She sits with Alice and that Ravenclaw bloke. How would you even know what she smells?” Sirius asked.
“He’s got a point,” Remus said.
“Don’t take his side, Moony,” James whined.
“They always take each other’s side,” Peter scoffed.
Remus rolled his eyes. “I suppose we do.” James had yet to realize they were dating. Peter had noticed some sort of shift in closeness, and had made the odd, slightly homophobic joke about it, but he didn’t seem to believe it. And James had laughed the jokes off. At this point, James seemed so oblivious he could probably walk in on them shagging and write it off as part of their profoundly close friendship. Especially since he’d been so in favour of it once they made up after The Incident and Sirius’s disownment.
“So we should be excited,” James said. “Not just so Lily realizes she loves me. It’s a chance to learn something about ourselves and each other!”
“I already know too much about you,” Sirius said.
James pouted. “A chance to learn something new about Moony, then.”
“His is gonna smell like chocolate, bet you a galleon.”
“No way, that’s a given.” They laughed.
"Pads, you gonna open your mail from breakfast?" Peter asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from a class he wasn’t even in with his friends.
"Oh yeah!" He'd been running late and hadn't been able to read the letter he'd received that morning from his uncle. He tore it open, pocketing the few galleons that had been at the bottom of the envelope. "Alphard says hi," he said.
"To who?" James asked.
"Whom," Remus corrected absently.
Sirius snorted and squeezed his boyfriend's knee under the table. "He says, 'Say hi to your brother (James, not Wally's son).'" James laughed. "And to Remus." He'd actually written, 'and your boyfriend Remus (please tell me you're finally dating, the tension was too much for me when you came to visit)', but Remus could read this over Sirius's shoulder. "'And say hello to Peter and that lovely girl James is hopelessly gone for, Lily.'" Sirius turned to catch Lily's attention. "Evans, my uncle says hello."
She furrowed her brow. "Why? Do I know him?" Sirius shook his head. "Or did Potter just talk about me like a dumbass?" Sirius nodded. "Do we like this uncle?"
"Oh yeah, Uncle Al's the best. You'd like him, Evans. Walburga called him a 'muggle-loving blood traitor' when she threatened to have him disowned for supporting me. Of course, he wrote back a letter that essentially said, 'I disowned you first'."
"He's Sirius's hero," Remus said.
Lily grinned. "Tell him hello from me, and that it's lovely to meet him." She and Alice stood from the table. "See you in potions."
James watched her go with a besotted expression. "She's amazing," he said.
"You say that a half dozen times a day, mate," Remus said. "Maybe if you put as much effort into talking to her like a normal person as you do into mooning over her, she'd actually go out with you."
"Wow, Moony doesn't even have a girlfriend and he's better at this than you, Prongs," Peter said.
Remus rolled his eyes. "What do I know? I'm only her friend. The first of us to become her friend, mind you."
"Moony's right, you know," Sirius said.
"See," Peter said, "they always take each other's side." James laughed and conceded the point.
They called their goodbyes to Peter as they headed off to the Dungeons. They arrived shortly before Slughorn opened the classroom. Not their usual preference as they shared their class with Snape and a couple other distasteful Slytherins. But it did mean Lily was there, chatting with Alice and Terry Standage from Ravenclaw. Lily waved hi, and they waved back, but made sure to keep their distance from her and from Snape.
When Slughorn opened the class, the set-up was a little different than their usual. Normally, they sat three or four to a table, each working at individual cauldrons. Today the number of cauldrons had been halved.
“Good afternoon,” Slughorn called, even more jovial than James. “Today, as you all should know, we’ll be brewing Amortentia. In keeping with the love theme and Valentine’s Day, you’ll be working in pairs for a group mark.” Remus saw Lily roll her eyes at the Valentine’s Day comment. He secretly agreed, but working with Sirius would be fun regardless. “This is a complex potion, so it’s best to work together, and you’ll enjoy it.” He waved his hand. “Pick your partners.”
Sirius and Remus shared a look and it was decided. “Aw c’mon,” James whined.
“I’m shite at potions, Prongs, you said so yourself. If Pads doesn’t help me, I’ll fuck it up. You know I will.” Sirius nodded in agreement.
Before James could continue whining about his abandonment, Lily Evans appeared at their table. “Hi,” she said. “Do you mind if I join you? Alice and Terry decided to work together and I don’t want to end up working with Severus.”
“Not at all, Lily. You’re always welcome to join us,” James said, grinning.
“You’ll have to work with James, though. Remus and I already partnered up.” She smirked at Sirius’s choice of words. It wasn’t new though. Remus had only worked with Lily in the aftermath of The Incident. Otherwise, Sirius had always been the one averting disaster in Remus’s cauldron, so working on the same cauldron would be much better.
“I suppose I can live with that. At least Potter isn’t hopeless with potions.”
James took that as more of a compliment than it was. “Shall I go collect our ingredients?” James asked. “I can get enough for all of us.”
“Thanks, James,” Remus said as he stood to leave.
Lily smirked at them. “He still doesn’t know.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Initially we just thought he was kind of oblivious, but I’m actually worried now that he just doesn’t accept it, so he’s ignoring it,” Remus said.
“Honestly, I don’t think he knows how to not be accepting,” Lily said. She pointed an accusing finger at Sirius. “Do not tell him I said that.” Sirius smirked but nodded. “James is very loyal and sweet, but he is also very, very dumb sometimes. I’m pretty sure he just genuinely hasn’t figured it out. He probably thinks your friendship is just getting closer, again.”
“That’s what we thought, too,” Sirius said.
“Maybe, Lily, would you maybe be willing to see how he feels about it? For us?”
She grinned conspiratorially. “Of course. And I’ll hex his bollocks off if he’s an arse about it.”
“Merlin, having you on our side is bloody brilliant,” Sirius said.
“Don’t push it, Black,” she said, but it almost sounded like teasing. She glanced over to check that James was far enough away. “I could try to tell him for you, if you want.”
“You would do that?” Remus asked.
“Sure, you’re both too awkward to have that kind of conversation with the force of positivity and obliviousness that is James Potter.” They were laughing when James returned.
They split into pairs and began to work. Lily and James worked surprisingly well together, moving around one another as if they had done this half a hundred times. Sirius and Remus had done this at least a hundred times, so their ease made a lot more sense, regardless of Sirius’s casual corrections each time Remus nearly made a mistake. Slughorn passed them and made affirming noises at the colour of their potions and their teamwork.
“I think that’s the nicest he’s ever been to me,” Remus muttered.
“At least he doesn’t constantly tell you he wishes you were in Slytherin so he could have the whole ‘Black family set’,” Sirius said.
“I’m sorry, love,” Remus whispered. “He can have the Black family set and we can have you. It’s much better that way.”
Sirius smiled at him with infinite softness. “Thanks Moons.” He stirred their cauldron for the final time. It glistened with the characteristic mother of pearl sheen and smoke curled upward in spirals.
“We did it right?” Sirius nodded. “Have I mentioned how much I appreciate you being my potions partner?”
“Yes, Moony. You’re always welcome to take advantage of my potions brilliance,” Sirius teased.
Across from them, James stirred their cauldron one last time. It took on the same perfect appearance. Slughorn ambled over with a wide smile.
“Very well done, very well done. Both cauldrons look perfectly brewed. Go ahead and take a sniff before you bring your vials up to my desk.” He headed off to another table, nodding at all of them.
“So, what do you smell, Moony?” James asked.
Remus sniffed his and Sirius’s cauldron, slowly taking a full breath of it. “Chocolate.” The three of them laughed. “And...dog.”
“Like wet dog?” James asked, grinning like it was Christmas and all his presents were blackmail material.
“Not exactly wet, just, sort of, dog.” He glanced at Sirius, who was undoubtedly thinking the same as he was. James might be thinking it too, but maybe not quite the same way, oblivious sod. “And, uh.” He took another sniff. Fuck . Heat crawled up his neck. It was their bed, just the way the sheets smelled when he and Sirius had slept through the night together, warm and tangled up. “I, uh, I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Is it like sex or something?” James asked. Lily smacked his arm.
“No, just, I don’t really have words to explain how it smells.”
“That’s pretty normal,” Lily said. They all looked at her. “I was reading some books on muggle neuroscience and psychology over the summer.”
“To help with your internship as a healer?” James asked.
She nodded. “Sort of. It’s really fascinating anyway. But your sense of smell doesn’t actually go through a logical processing cortex like sight or hearing or touch. It goes pretty much straight through the emotion and memory centers of your brain. So it evokes the most emotion and memory, like when you smell something that reminds you of home or someone you love.” She gestured vaguely at the cauldrons. “But we don’t really process it the same, so we don’t really have dedicated words for it. There’s only a handful. Most other adjectives about smell are borrowed from other senses, or are just literally the word for the thing it smells like. Kind of how you say something smells like roses, but how would you describe roses? Floral? That’s still just the thing it is.”
“Wow, that’s...that’s actually really fascinating, Lily,” James said. She looked at him, trying to gauge how much he was teasing her, only to realize he wasn’t.
“Yeah, I thought so,” she said, for want of anything else to say. “What do you smell?”
James smiled and bent to take a slow sniff of their cauldron. “Oil, like wood polish for my broom.” Sirius snorted, but it was fond. “And the sort of smell when you just light a firework, like the smell of the fuse catching.” He sniffed slowly again, melting into his seat a little. “And vanilla, like natural vanilla scent.” Lily stilled. She loved vanilla, smelled of it constantly. Her perfume was floral with a vanilla base, unique in that it didn’t smell like a cookie. Sweet Merlin, he actually really cared about her.
She quirked an eyebrow at Sirius and said, “What about you Black?” Remus had noticed the look on her face and she wasn’t going to get away with not telling him later. That was clear, but maybe James wouldn’t notice just yet.
Sirius quirked a brow right back. He’d noticed too, but he would answer her challenge. He slowly sniffed his cauldron. “You know that sort of sharp, clean smell just after casting, like, kind of just before it rains or one of those cold sunny days.”
“Ozone,” Lily said.
“Huh?” Sirius looked up.
“Oh, just, the smell. It’s ozone. Muggle science. It’s a kind of, um, super oxygen? I looked it up because I noticed it after casting too.”
“Thanks Evans,” Sirius said. “So that, ozone.” He smelled slowly again to get the intoxicating scent back in his lungs. “Something sort of woody? Like the forest, or fresh cut firewood, or like fallen logs.” Remus smiled as he watched. “And, uhm, I might need to pull a Moony here, because I can’t, uh, can’t really describe it either.” He glanced at Remus and an agreement to discuss it later passed quickly between them.
James shrugged. “What about you Lily?”
She bent over their cauldron. “A, a breeze off the sea. And sort of, warm, wood? Like a room with wood furnishings or something. Like the common room, actually. I think it’s just the way the common room smells, at night when it’s empty.” She slowly sniffed again. “And um, sort of, the mix of a little sweat and a little cologne.” James’s. She tried not to fidget, not to look at him. Remus noticed.
“Ooooh, whose?” Sirius teased.
Lily rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” she shot back.
Sirius laughed. “I guess we’ll both be mysterious then.” Her eyeroll was fond this time.
Once vials of their potions were on Slughorn’s desk and they’d cleaned their cauldrons and workstations, they could leave. They all happily headed upstairs to the common room to try to get in some work (Lily and Remus) or relaxation (James and Sirius) before dinner.
Remus curled up in the corner of their usual sofa by the fire. Sirius dropped into the spot next to him, leaving no space at all between them.
“Hi there,” Remus said, fondness leaking out of him.
“Hi love,” Sirius whispered. “So, what was that last thing you smelled?”
Remus bit his lip. “I feel kind of weird saying it out loud.”
“You literally smelled me as like half person, half Padfoot. It’s me. I’ve said so many stupid and soppy things, Moons, you literally can’t embarrass yourself more than I have. Plus, I feel kind of weird saying mine, so, you have that to look forward to.” Remus huffed short laugh and rubbed the back of his neck.
“It was just, like, how the bed smells in the morning. You know, like the scent of both of us on the pillow. I guess, just a sort of joint smell of us. That’s what I smelled.”
Sirius gaped at him.
“What?”
“I thought you were shite at legilimency.”
“What?”
“That’s what I smelled. Like that exact thing, our joint smell. Like soft mornings in bed, when I bury my face in the pillow and just smell us. And it fucking calms me down so much when I’m upset.” He bit his lip. “I was thinking about smuggling a pillowcase out to the shack for Moony because I think it might make him calmer.” Remus’s eyes got wide and just a little wet. “And, well, now you’ve said it, I think it might make you feel better before and after too.”
“It would.”
“Next full, then, I’ll do that.”
“Thank you, Pads.”
Halfway across the room, James and Lily were having an actual conversation. It was about Sirius and Remus, but it was proper communication.
James watched his friends whispering. “They’re probably telling each other what their last smell was.” Lily scoffed. “You don’t think so?”
“Well, yes, they definitely are, but...how are you this dense?”
“What?” He looked actually kind of wounded.
“Don’t give me that look, Potter. You’re seeing it, but you really haven’t figured it out yet?”
“Figured what out?”
Remus and Sirius looked over at them, hearing their voices rising.
“James Potter, you literally live in the same bedroom as them and you haven’t realized they’ve been dating for six months!”
“Um…” Remus said.
“We’ve only been dating for four months,” Sirius said.
Lily looked at each of them, then at James. “You are all idiots .” She turned around to sit at her usual table where her Charms homework had been pulled out.
James looked between her and his friends, mouth still agape. At a sharp look from Sirius, he trotted over to drop into the armchair beside them.
“Um, you’re dating?” They nodded. “Since when?”
“Four months,” Remus quipped.
James huffed a laugh. “Yes, I got that bit. I’m not that daft. But like, when when?”
“The love potion incident, remember?” Sirius asked. James nodded. “Yeah, we kind of figured our shit out that night, then we went off and had a full together and Padfoot and Moony got settled in the new arrangement.”
“And then we spent the next two days cuddling in my bed and you and Peter didn’t notice or react at all. So we just, sort of, thought you would figure it out eventually. Then we started to think that you maybe weren’t okay with it but you would ignore it because we were friends. Because it’s been so long and you still hadn’t said anything,” Remus finished.
“Oh! No, it’s fine, I don’t care that you’re both blokes if that’s what you’re worried about, or that you’re my best friends. Really, I just didn’t see any difference? I guess. You’ve always been like this.”
“You were right, Moons,” Sirius said. “That’s what he said, the first evening when you guys came back and we were in the dorm. After you went to get us dinner.”
“Right, I do remember that. It was a rough moon and Moony hates people touching you, Pads, so I figured that’s why you were cuddling more than usual.”
“I mean, that is why, but like, because he’s possessive of me as more than a friend.” Sirius furrowed his brow. “I think Evans is right, actually. We’re all idiots. Because Moony’s been possessive of me forever, and we’ve always slept in each other’s beds, and I mean, I had Moony in my lap when we told him we knew about his furry little problem.” Remus nodded along in agreement.
James nodded. “Hold on. You had a hickey that night. Was that actually from Claire or was it Moony marking his territory?” Remus turned bright red. James laughed. “Merlin’s beard, Moony, you really don’t like sharing Padfoot, do you?”
Remus pouted. “It was like six hours before the full, Prongs.”
James laughed again. “I know, Moons. If I’d kissed Padfoot then you probably would’ve done the same. You’ve literally growled at me for less. Hell, you've growled at me for touching his hair .” Sirius tried to stifle a grin. “I was surprised when you didn’t take like a hundred points off her for that.”
“I have some self-control.”
“You made us take the back stairs so other people couldn’t touch me,” Sirius said.
Remus pinched his side. “I didn’t hear you complaining.”
“Oh, I wasn’t.” Sirius leaned into Remus.
James watched them contemplatively. “I think Lily was right. When I sat down I thought this would be awkward? Like you guys would act different, but you’re literally the same soppy, cuddly losers you’ve always been. Which means you’ve basically always been in love, which is adorable.” Sirius tried to roll his eyes, but he was grinning too wide. “I think you might be cuter than me and Lily.”
“Well,” Remus said, “seeing as hexing is not a usual part of our courtship, I’m going to have to agree with you, James.”
James pouted until dinner and Sirius and Remus pointedly didn’t mention that they were pretty sure Lily had smelled James in their amortentia earlier.