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Poetic Justice


“There’s some justice to the fact that ol’ Snivelly got the blame for the mess in the storeroom,” said Sirius in a low voice to James and Peter later that day, when word had got around that Severus Snape had been caught stealing from Slughorn’s stores. “A poetic sort of justice. He got off for Voldemort’s mirror last term and now we’ve gotten off for Slughorn’s store. Serves him right, being a prat.”

Severus was glowering at them from across the Great Hall, in his seat at the Slytherin tables. Rumor had it that he’d been given detentions for a week - cleaning up the potions room each evening and helping Slughorn with whatever little jobs he may have need of doing. Nobody particularly enjoyed spending time with Horace Slughorn - he was a great, rambling old man with a bulging belly and a hunger for knowing-all-the-right-people. He could be quite condescending and there was a general feeling of not being good enough for him unless you had a famous parent. Sirius couldn’t imagine doing one full session of detention with the man, not to mention a whole week’s worth of them.

Remus had come back in time for lunch that afternoon and heard all the rumors pinging about the castle. “What would anybody want with a bicorn horn anyway?” he asked, confused, crinkling up his nose at the news. So far, the bicorn horn was the only thing that had been noticed for missing from the storeroom. Apparently Professor Slughorn’s inventory skills were not precise enough to notice the missing sheets of Boomslang skin or the bushel of fluxweed.

“It’s an ingredient in Skele-gro,” said Frank Longbottom knowledgeably from down the table.

Bilius had grinned, “Perhaps Snape’s a part of a black market for Skele-gro sales!”

“Is there a black market for Skele-gro sales?” Alex Tinnamin asked with raised eyebrows.

Bilius shrugged, “What the bloody hell else would anybody want with a ruddy bicorn horn?”

“Seems it was an ingredient in some potion Slughorn had told us about,” Derek mused.

“Was it?” Bilius asked, “What potion?”

“Dunno,” Derek shrugged, “There’s a reason I’m sweating the N.E.W.T. for Potions, isn’t there?”

Remus mused, “Odd.” He looked at James, Sirius, and Peter, “What do you lot reckon he wanted the bicorn horn for?”

Peter turned scarlet.

“What would we know about it?” Sirius demanded. “Snivellus isn’t our friend.”

“Yeah, perhaps you ought to ask Evans what Snape’s up to, since she’s mates with him and all,” James said.

“Ask Evans what?” James and Sirius, who were both back-to, turned around to find Lily standing behind them, her hands on her hips. “Ask Evans what?” she repeated.

Remus’s lips quirked in amusement and he lifted a carrot stick off his plate, biting into it with a rather loud crunch.

“Just Remus was wondering what Snivellus Snape is interested in a bicorn horn for?” Sirius replied smoothly, “And James here thought you’d be the one to ask, seeing as you’re friends with the bloke.”

Lily snorted, then turned to walk ‘round the table to the empty seat beside Remus.

Sirius looked at James, then turned back to Lily. “What’s that about then?”

“What’s what about?” Lily asked, reaching for a bowl of the soup that was lunch.

“That - the snort,” James said.

“Nothing - it’s nothing,” Lily answered. But the boys were still looking at her eagerly, so she sighed and put her spoon down before having even gotten a single bite of food. “It’s just that I tried to go talk to him - to find out what was going on - and he didn’t want to talk to me. He never wants to talk to me when it’s convenient. Only when it’s convenient for him, of course, and bloody hell if it’s important to me. Oh but if it’s important to him then -- ohh-ho! The world best stop turning for him.” Lily’s voice was laced with annoyed passion.

Sirius looked at Remus uneasily as though to apologize for Lily caring about Severus Snape enough to give a damn whether he made the time to speak to her or not. Remus just shrugged.

“So what’s he want bicorn horn for, then?” James asked.

“Damned if I know!” Lily replied. “What’s it even used for?”

“Black market trading,” said Bilius, leaning over conspiratorially.

“Black market -- what?” Lily looked confused.

Remus laughed, “Ignore him, he’s being mad.”

After lunch - and a long winded (and highly fictitious) account of the current Skele-gro black market sales trends from Bilius Weasley - the boys were nearly back to the tower when Remus told James that he was tired and needed to get some rest in the dorm. James nodded solemnly, “Yeah, that’s quite alright, I think we were planning to visit the library, anyway. Yeah, Sirius?”

“I think so,” he agreed. “Peter?”

“What are we going to the library for?” Peter asked, confused.

“You know - library stuff?” Sirius said pointedly, pushing Peter in the shoulder.

Peter’s eyes lit up with understanding. “Ohhhh,” he said, nodding eagerly, “Right. Library stuff, yeah!”

Remus stared at them hard as they all grinned as innocent as hyenas. Luckily, his stare was broken by a sudden yawn. As he stretched, the arms of his robes rolled down and they could see fresh bruises on his forearms. “You lot are lucky I’m exhausted and don’t feel like investigating what you’re really up to,” he said through the yawn. He looked over them carefully, suddenly suspicious. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Severus Snape and the bicorn horn, does it?”

Sirius looked aghast. “What? What in the world would us going to the library have to do with Snivellus and some horn thing?”

Remus shrugged, “Dunno. Just that you’re all being awfully dodgey and Snape was glaring over at the table from Slytherin and --” he stopped and shook his head, “You know what? I don’t want to know. If you’ve done something, I don’t even want to know.”

“Done something?” Sirius echoed, “What do you think we are? A bunch of animals?”

“Not yet anyway,” muttered James. Sirius let out a loud guffaw that echoed in the corridor as James grinned at his own humor.

Remus looked between them. “Alright. You lot go do whatever things you aren’t doing in the library,” he said, and he waved them off, heading down the last stretch of hall to the portrait of the Fat Lady.

Sirius, James, and Peter waited until Remus had disappeared through the portrait hole before turning back and heading for the seventh floor as quick as they could. “So tell me about this room again?” Peter asked, breathless as they hurried along.

“It’s ruddy perfect,” James said excitedly, “It’s got everything we could possibly need.”

“I expect it used to be the potions classroom at one point,” Sirius added, “Maybe whoever taught it before Slughorn preferred this room to the dungeons. But James is right, it has everything we could possibly have asked for.”

They reached Barnabus the Barmy and stood, catching their breaths for a moment. Luckily the hall was empty so there were no prying eyes about, other than the portraits that lined the hall. When their heart rates had about turned to normal, James went up to the wall where the door had appeared and reached out a hand for where the handle had been waving his palm about. He and Sirius had agreed that the door must have simply been invisible and perhaps the rising sun out the window had caused the effect of the gold light or something somehow, but there was no handle on the wall. He looked ‘round at Sirius.

Sirius came over and began to feel the wall too, his fingertips running across the wallpaper in assessment. “It was here,” he said, screwing his face up with confusion. “It was. Wasn’t it?”

James nodded, “Yeah mate. You were sitting by Barnabus the Barmy. We were waiting for Peter to come back with the list and I was pacing, making you nervous, remember?”

Sirius frowned.

Peter looked between the two of them, waiting expectantly to see this wonderful room that sounded far too good to be true anyhow. “Did you say a password perhaps?”

“I didn’t think we had,” James said, looking at Sirius. “I was just whining that we needed a place to hide the horn... and you were telling me to stop pacing.” He looked helpless.

They spent the next ten minutes saying random words to the wall. Peter sat himself down beneath the portrait of Barnabus the Barmy and watched as they knocked and and muttered various phrases at the wall. Finally, James, too, gave up, sinking heavily onto the floor and holding his head in his hands, defeated. Peter reached over and patted James’s shoulder dutifully. “It’s alright,” he said.

“It isn’t alright,” James replied, “If we can’t get in, then we’ve lost the horn and the boomslang and the fluxweed and we won’t be able to make the draught and we won’t be able to become animagi.”

Peter was thinking that perhaps that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, but he wasn’t about to say it out loud with both James and Sirius there.

“Alright. So I was sitting there, where you lot are, with the horn and James, you were pacing --” Sirius started pacing, reenacting the scene. “And we were waiting for Peter, trying to remember the list, incase he didn’t come back…”

“I really looked,” Peter injected quickly, “I didn’t know Remus hid it under his mattress. I looked everywhere else.”

James nodded, “As we saw with all the overturned trunks. Under the mattress was the only place you didn’t look in the whole dorm!”

Sirius was still pacing, muttering to himself as he walked, “...saying we needed a place to hide, and I was cranky about the pacing… making me nervous... ‘but we need a place to brew the potion’, you said… and I said we were going to get caught… ‘any place will do, we just need someplace we Remus won’t find’...”

James leaped up, “You’ve done it.” He was pointing at the wall, eyes wide, jumping in place, “Look, you’ve done it.”

Sirius turned ‘round as Peter scrambled to his feet and the three boys stood there in the hallway facing the shivering line of gold, weaving and moving it’s way through the pattern on the paperwork, seeming to be cutting the wall. “We must have to describe the room?” Sirius wondered, unsure even now what he’d done.

“Dunno,” James replied, “But we’ll figure it out.”

As soon as the door had fully appeared, the boys rushed to get inside, afraid that now would be the time somebody would come down the corridor, and Peter took one last glance left-to-right before shutting it behind him. He was amazed to find, once inside, that the other two hadn’t exaggerated in the least. The room was everything they could possibly have wanted for their little project. There was a counter set with an artificial flame and cauldrons with copper and silver and brass and gold bottoms and shelves of books and little knives and spoons and basic ingredients in a little pantry. And there on the counter was the bicorn horn they’d stolen from the Potions Master’s store and the bag of boomslang and the bushel of fluxweed.

James was unloading the other ingredients they’d counted out of their own potions kits and putting the little cups and bags onto the counter from within his bookbag as Sirius withdrew Releasing the Animagus Within from deep in his robes pockets, opening it to the page on the Draught of Change. “Here we are,” he said, balancing it against a couple other books on the little counter. He quickly gathered three stools from the other side of the counter, pushing them to cluster about the artificial flame. “C’mon Peter,” he said, waving him over.

Peter nodded, scurrying to climb up onto the stool alongside his mates as James pulled a copper bottom cauldron over and balanced it over the artificial flame as Sirius turned it on to get the pot heating up. “We’re really going to do this, then?” Peter asked, voice trembling just a wee, “Become animagi?”

“Of course,” James answered, pulling the lids off the jars and opening the seal on the bags that they’d brought along.

Sirius grinned, “Don’t be so nervous, Peter. Sometimes, you have to take risks to do the things you want to do in this life. Living is worth the risk, mate. You can’t always be so careful.”

Peter nodded. “But what if bad things happen?”

“Bad things happen whether you take a risk or not,” James said.

Sirius added. “Sometimes, you gotta follow your heart even if it tells you to do something stupid.”