Chapter Text
“PETTIGREW!” Marlene bellowed as the cauldron she was sharing with Peter began to bubble and turn a sickly shade of orange.
The exclamation only made Peter drop the rest of the pomegranate seeds into the already-ruined potion, and he groped for his wand as acrid steam began to rise up and out of the cauldron at an alarming rate.
Slughorn quickly rushed over to Vanish the substance as Marlene groaned and rubbed her eyes with her hands, still sticky with rose oil. The sixth years had been working on their amortentia for three days now, and their phials were due by the end of the lesson.
“Everybody, this is why it is imperative not to let the pomegranate seeds fall into the potion as you are extracting their juice!” Slughorn announced to the class with a sharp tap on the now-empty cauldron’s rim. He moved across the dungeon, stopping by Snape and Mulciber’s cauldron to give it a sniff and an approving nod.
Remus turned to Lily, who was carefully stirring their potion to bring it back down from the boil it had been at minutes prior. “How much do you want to bet that was Sirius messing with Pete’s chair?” he asked as he scanned the textbook for the millionth time that morning to make sure they were not forgetting anything.
“I don’t think so,” Lily replied with a frown, “Black’s not that cruel, this is a huge assignment.”
Remus glanced over to where James and Sirius hovered over their own cauldron. He noted with concern just how close the ends of Sirius’ untied hair hung over its contents; they definitely seemed to be focused on not mucking up the final few steps, and not on pranking their classmates or anything else. They were all so close to finishing, and everyone was too eager to see the results to jeopardize the assignment. Even Remus would be lying if he said he wasn’t dying to know what the potion would smell like to him.
“Alright, we need to add the mixture of moonberry, rose oil, and belladonna now,” Lily recited. The heat in the room had colored her face a blotchy rose, and her baby hairs were looking more staticky by the minute. Remus could only imagine the kind of frizz that was forming on his own head, but he was too focused on pouring in the blend she had described into the potion in a smooth trickle to give it a second thought.
The potion became a pleasant aquamarine, and Lily’s face lit up as she witnessed the update in color. Remus chanced a glance at Snape’s cauldron, which was even more iridescent than theirs. The hair on the back of his neck stood up at the sight of the Slytherin’s perpetual curled-lip smirk, and he moved his eyes across the room, past the bickering Peter and Marlene, to rest on his other two friends.
Sirius was apparently in charge of pouring the mixture for the pair. Remus watched with amusement as the raven-haired boy stuck his tongue out subconsciously in concentration. Both he and James had ditched their robes and rolled up their shirt sleeves, and his mouth went dry as his eyes passed over Sirius’ forearms, wrists, and hands, so delicately holding the glass from which he was pouring. Suddenly, the redness on his neck was from more than just the steam coming off of the cauldron in front of him, and he tore his gaze away from Sirius before Lily called him on not paying attention.
“The pearl now, yes? We haven’t forgotten anything, have we?” Lily said anxiously, glancing between the instructions and their cauldron.
Remus only nodded, still wrestling his thoughts away from his roommate’s arms. His bloody forearms, Remus, really, he chided himself. He huffed. It was getting progressively harder to ignore his feelings for Sirius, and three days of lessons dedicated to love potions were not helping his cause.
A sudden puff of cigarette smoke came from behind them. He whipped his head around to the presumed offender (and object of his highly embarrassing crush) - surely the bastard wouldn’t have the audacity to smoke right in the middle of a high-stakes Potions class? Remus couldn’t see a cigarette anywhere, but he knew what he smelled, and he would demand how Sirius had hidden it after class. Merely out of curiosity, not for any practical application, of course not.
He did not get to dwell on this for more than an instant as Lily’s focused voice snapped his attention back to their work.
“Right, then. I’ll drop it in, and you stir.”
Remus nodded again, watching as Lily held the last ingredient over the liquid. With held breath, she dropped the pearl in, and as the textbook had said, it dissolved immediately. Remus stirred once clockwise, then once counterclockwise, and the potion melted into a shimmery pink.
Lily’s eyes widened with excitement, and she leaned over the cauldron to inhale deeply as her eyes shut. The cigarette smell had only gotten stronger. Remus shot an annoyed glare at his friends in the other corner before mirroring Lily in an attempt to discern the true scent of the potion.
“I’m smelling plenty of pineapple, I think we have some success!” Slughorn brightly announced as he came back into the classroom from the storage closet, holding a few pomegranates. “Mr. Snape, Mr. Mulciber - excellent, as usual… Let’s see here, Mr. Rosier, Mr. Avery… just one more stir there, lad, there you go…” He stopped in front of Remus and Lily and stooped to take a closer look.
“Ms. Evans, Mr. Lupin, very nice. The first three groups to finish, a round of applause, everyone!”
The students whose hands were not occupied with ingredients or stirring sticks gave a half-hearted clap, except for James and Sirius, who whooped and whistled enthusiastically, earning an eye roll from Lily and a chuckle from the professor. And yes, fine, a little flutter in Remus’ stomach, but that was not something anyone else had to know about. How old was he to be harboring a crush like this, twelve? He would be of age in less than half a year, and yet, the grinning boy sitting beside James could make him lose all of his mature, detached facade in a heartbeat.
“Right, then, that’s ten points to Slytherin and five to Gryffindor,” Slughorn stated cheerfully, “Everybody else, keep working, you have just under twenty minutes remaining.”
Remus frowned, staring at the potion. He had smelled a few other things by now - pine trees, and the smell of the sea, chocolate and ink, and a hint of cranberry - but there was another smell he was having trouble identifying, and a rather unpleasant one at that. Not to mention the bloody cigarette smoke that had to have elicited at least a few coughs in the class by now if its strength was any indication of its spread, though he had heard none.
Lily beamed up across from him. “What do you smell?” she asked eagerly, and he rattled off the list, omitting the smoke and other unidentified scent. She nodded, grinning widely. “Oh, isn’t that wonderful? Mine is completely different,” she said. “For me, there’s tulips, leather, and treacle tart like my dad likes, and sunscreen and campfire and fenugreek, if I’m not mistaken.”
Remus smiled at how blissful her face looked as she inhaled the scent wafting from the potion, like she just couldn’t get enough.
“Doesn’t the fag smoke bother you, though?” he asked with a grumble, sniffing again to catch that sea breeze scent he associated with his childhood summers in Cornwall.
Lily’s eyebrows knit together at that.
“Fag smoke? I don’t smell any, Remus, that must be one of yours. I knew you smoke, but that much? Really, it can kill you, you know,” she replied with a hint of disapproval. A very heavy hint of disapproval.
Remus’ insides churned at the revelation, a small blush spreading across his ears. Yes, he did smoke, but he knew that’s not all the smell meant now that he knew it was coming from the potion itself. And he was very sure that this particular smell was not exactly like the one that came from his smoking. He busied himself with trying to identify that other, slightly sour scent that haunted his nostrils. His sense of smell was keener than most - no one but a werewolf could honestly say they could smell differences in tobacco products by brand - but for some reason, he couldn’t work this one out.
The class soon finished, and as Lily went up to turn in their phial of potion for grading, Remus pensively scrubbed their cauldron and packed up the ingredients. He couldn’t help wondering what James, Peter, and Sirius had smelled. Well, mostly Sirius, but if he was going to get over this stupid crush that had been going on for much too long now, he had to stop singling him out, even in his thoughts.