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Red, Green, and Blue Bottles


Time seemed to fly by as the semester was coming to an end. The mandrake leaves were nearly ready to finally be spit out of their mouths. James kept checking the parchment they’d been marking days down on to keep track. As it neared the end of the thirty-days, the leaves seemed to be growing more and more bitter and soured up their stomachs with acidic burning. Poor little Peter couldn’t stop belching around his mouthful of mandrake leaves and Sirius kept thumping his chest with his fist with irritation.

It was quite miraculous, Sirius thought, that they hadn’t been caught with the mandrake leaves. They’d received a lot of strange looks from various students, and explained it away with excuses like toothaches and swollen tongues (they actually used the backfiring engorgement charm line Lily had fed them that first day on a couple of Ravenclaws). None of the faculty, however, had seemed to take notice. Except maybe McGonagall, who had given them looks a couple of times when Sirius had accidentally drooled a little down his chin while talking to answer a question and there was once that Flitwick had called on Peter and he’d muffed about trying to answer with his full mouth, but Flitwick hadn’t seemed too suspicious - probably he’d just thought that Peter had snuck a snack into class.

In fact, the only people that seemed to have noticed the oddity of the mandrake leaves at all was Remus and Lily.

“I wish you lot would tell me what’s going on,” Remus said one day when James was lying about, groaning over his stomach ache.

“There’s nothing going on,” insisted Sirius.

Remus only sighed.

Lily, on the other hand, had refused to talk to them until they could clear their mouths, calling the practice of speaking with one’s mouthful obscene. “I could say something obscene but you certainly wouldn’t like that, now would you, love?” James had jeered and Lily had hit him with a bat-bogey hex in response.

All in all, by the thirtieth day, they were quite ready to spit the leaves out of their mouths and Sirius was up before the crack of dawn, shaking James’s shoulder. “Get up,” he said, “Get up.” He ran about to Peter’s bed, careful not to wake up Remus, and shook the round figure heartily. “Get up.”

Once James had shoved his glasses on his face and Peter had shimmied into his slippers, they grabbed the invisibility cloak and hurried out the door through the common room. Bilius and Derek had fallen asleep sprawled over the couch, Derek with his textbook across his chest and Bilius drooling on the pillow, his wand clutched in his arm that hung over the sofa’s edge. They’d been up all night revising for the N.E.W.T.s, by the look of it, and James did not envy them. He was already dreading the O.W.L. and the N.E.W.T. years, just by the frenzy of revising that had been going on in the common room as the exams drew nearer and nearer. The three second years snuck by and out the portrait hole, with only a snorting snore from Bilius.

They made it to the seventh floor and they could hear Mrs. Norris mewling in the distance down the corridor. James hurried to open the Secret Room and they ducked through before her lamplike eyes could find them, shutting it quickly behind them.

Sirius pulled the cloak off them and hung it ‘round the knob of the door so they wouldn’t forget it and they all three hurried to the stools ‘round the counter where the potion stood, bubbling peacefully in the cauldron. Sirius stared in and nodded, “It looks right,” he said. He reached into the cupboard up above, where they’d found some colorful bottles with corks and sealing wax. He pulled down three bottles - a green, a red, and a blue, and put them down on the table. Peter took the green, James the red, and Sirius the blue. “Alright,” Sirius said, “I guess we just spit the leaves into the bottles and add the potion in.” He was consulting the textbook they’d left propped on the counter.

Quickly, each of them leaned forward and spat the mushy remains of the leaves into the bottles. “Oh thank Merlin!” shouted Peter the moment he could. His voice sounded thick and rusty from disuse.

James grinned, having spit his own leaves out, “Hey there’s a voice we haven’t heard in a good long time.”

Peter sighed with relief, “I know! There was so much I wanted to say! And blimey am I hungry - I could eat a hippogriff!”

“They’re rather tough,” said Sirius with a straight face. Both James and Peter gave Sirius a surprised look. “What? I’m joking!” Sirius said, laughing, “I’ve never eaten a hippogriff!”

They looked relieved.

Sirius opened a drawer and rooted about until he’d come up with a large spoon and held out his hand. “Let me see your bottles,” he commanded. Peter held his up first and Sirius filled it with several ladlefuls of the steaming potion, which sizzled as it hit the leaves. Steam came up from the mouth of the vial, dark grey and twisting and curling through the air as Sirius pushed the green bottle back to Peter, who promptly stuck his cork into the top. Next was James’s red bottle and Sirius poured the potion in. The steam came up white, straight and thick from James’s bottle until he, too, had corked it shut. Sirius was last and when he poured the potion into his, the steam that came out was more of a smoke, darker even than Peter’s, nearly black, and in a great puff like a mushroom cloud. He stuck his cork in as well and quickly used a bit of hot wax to seal the bottle closed, passing the little bottle of sealing wax on to the other two.

When they’d finished, they each sat, holding their bottle for a moment, watching the potion inside undulate and mix with the mandrake leaves, which floated in the center of the suddenly quite clear liquid, floating up and down like some sort of seaweed in an ocean current.

Peter looked up from his bottle nervously, “This doesn’t look safe to drink at all.”

Sirius looked at the book and turned it so they, too, could see the page, “It looks like it does in the book, though,” he said, “I think we’ve done it right.”

James held his bottle up to the book, “Yeah you’re right, it looks the same. Stop being so worried about everything, Peter.”

Peter looked like he wanted to argue, but he kept it back. “Can we go to breakfast now, please?” he requested, whiney. “I’m starving - I’ve hardly eaten in a month!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty hungry, too, actually,” agreed James.

Sirius closed the book and turned off the burner beneath the cauldron. “This is a pretty neat place, we’ll have to come back here sometime and show Remus so he can add it to the map.”

“Definitely, we don’t want to forget about this place,” agreed James, nodding, “It’s brilliant. Perhaps we could do some practice and revision for Potions here next term.”

They packed their bottles carefully into James’s bookbag and got the invisibility cloak. It had to be after dawn now, in which case it was perfectly alright for them to be about in the corridors, and they didn’t need to hide going back to Gryffindor Tower. James tucked the cloak safely in with the bottles of the Draught of Change. “C’mon,” Sirius said, and he led them out into the hall and back through the castle to their common room.

Bilius was still asleep on the couch, but Derek had gone. Bilius was muttering nonsense in his sleep as they snuck by, going on about a gnome going up his nose. Sirius smirked as they climbed the staircase and slipped through the door of the dormitory.

“Where have you lot been?” Remus asked the moment the door closed behind them. He was sitting up in bed, already dressed in his uniform and robes, doing up his tie. His hair was a mess still from sleep.

“No where,” Sirius said.

Remus sighed. “Fine, don’t tell me.” He got up and quickly left the room, slamming the door behind him.

James looked at Sirius. “Maybe we should tell him.”

“We can’t until we know that we can become anamanguses,” Sirius answered.

“Animagi,” corrected Peter.

“Look, but it’s upsetting him, though,” argued James. “He thinks we’re leaving him out of adventures.”

Sirius sighed, “I s’pose you’re right. We’ll talk to him tonight,” he promised. “For now, let’s get the potions packed away in our trunks and we’ll get down to breakfast before Peter there withers away.”

Peter nodded eagerly.

They quickly drew the bottles out of James’s book bag and put them into their trunks, carefully folding pairs of socks around them to keep them safe until they were ready to take them. They talked about their plans for the supposed camping trip that they would be having after the term ended, and how Peter would go about convincing his mum to let him go camping at the Potter’s with everything that was going on with the Death Eaters and the Fidelius Charm. “How would I even find where to go?” he asked.

“Obviously, I’ll come and get you and bring you there,” James replied.

They reached the breakfast table and found Remus had wedged himself between Frank Longbottom and Lily Evans and left no space for the other three to join him. Sirius sighed when he saw and looked at James, “Okay, you’re definitely right.”

James nodded.

They sat down a little ways away from Remus and that lot, closer to where Bilius was now awake and telling Dawn Gleason all about a dream he’d supposedly had where he’d cleverly fought off a firebreathing dragon. “Sliced him with a sword like the one Gryffindor had,” he boasted, “Right through the neck - you know you have to hit a dragon in the neck to weaken it, but even slicing it’s head off won’t kill a dragon - you have to go for it’s heart. So once I cut it’s head off and it’s head is bouncing about trying to bite me up, I leaped over and stabbed it in the heart! Just like that!” he jousted the table, making the cups and saucers clatter.

Dawn’s eyes were wide, impressed, “And then?”

“And then I had dragon steak for dinner!” Bilius said.

“Or picked the gnome out of his nose is more like,” muttered Sirius to James and the two of them snickered quietly.

Peter meanwhile had already eaten an entire sausage and was quickly piling more onto his platter, fully intending to make up for lost time.




Remus was distant through all their classes and lunch that day. He had apparently told Lily something of the matter for she, too, kept to herself rather than joking about with them as she sometimes did. She kept shooting them glances and mumbling things that looked like consolation to Remus, too, when the boys were laughing loud enough for them to hear from their separated space.

That night, Sirius went up to Remus while he was studying with Lily in the common room. “Hey, mate, can we have a chat?”

Remus looked up, one eyebrow raised, “Why don’t you have a chat with James and Peter?”

“Rey, c’mon. Besides, its all of us who need to talk to you,” Sirius said.

Remus looked at his textbook, then back to Lily with a shrug, “Sorry, Lil. I’ll be back.”

“No problem,” Lily answered, but she gave Sirius a very stern look to tell him that she would have his head if Remus was further upset by them. She turned then to help Ali Prewitt with something from her Potions book.

Sirius led the way up to the dormitory and Remus followed a bit slower. When they reached the room, James and Peter were already sitting lined up on the edge of James’s bed, facing Sirius’s. Sirius sat and patted the mattress beside him, signifying for Remus to join him there. They faced one another for a couple of long moments, the three of them exchanging glances, unsure how to start.

“I thought you lot wanted to talk to me?” Remus asked pointedly.

“We do,” James said. “Look, Rey, we’re sorry that we’ve been excluding you.”

Remus shrugged, “It’s not a matter.”

“Yes it is,” Sirius said, “It’s clearly upsetting you.”

“Yeah, we’re not trying to upset you,” Peter squeaked, “We’re trying to help you!”

“Help me?” Remus raised his eyebrows, “Help me with what?”

James nodded, “Yeah, we’re only excluding you because it’s a surprise what we’re working on is all.”

Remus’s face looked slightly worried now, “A surprise? To help me? What are you working on exactly?”

Sirius said, “I’d rather not tell you that part until we know for certain it’s going to work.”

Remus looked positively petrified now, “What are you doing? Seriously, guys, is whatever it is dangerous?”

“Most likely,” replied James nonchalantly, “But you’re worth it.”

“If it’s got to do with me being a werewolf --” Remus started, but James interrupted him.

“It’s only slightly related to your furry little problem,” James said.

“Well maybe more than slightly,” Sirius said.

“Only in motivational terms,” James added.

Remus shook his head, “No. Whatever it is, you stop it right now. I don’t want you endangering yourselves over whatever hairbrained scheme this one came up with,” he said, gesturing toward Sirius. “Is this what’s been going on with you lot sounding funny and all that, too?”

Sirius said, “Hey, my schemes aren’t always hairbrained.”

“Aren’t always,” snickered James, elbowing Peter in amusement.

“Only usually,” Peter snickered back.

“Always,” Remus said pointedly. “Whatever it is, just stop.”

Sirius shook his head, “No way, mate, we’ve come too far to just stop. We love you too much! Alas, you’ll have to make do with the knowledge that you are wholly worth the risk.” He patted Remus’s shoulder. “Alright?”

“Not alright,” Remus answered, shaking his head.

“It’s going to have to be alright, mate, you haven’t got a choice,” Sirius said, “We’re doing it anyway, but we wanted you to know that we aren’t excluding you permanently, so you can call off your bloodhound from glaring at us during classes.”

“My bloodhound --? You mean Lily?” Remus asked, confused.

Sirius nodded, “Her eyes are like daggers, man!”

Remus ran a hand through his hair, “So you’re doing something dangerous to surprise me and it’s got to do with my furry little problem, as James says, so -- so when exactly do I get to be let in on this little secret?”

“Next term,” Sirius answered.

“You’re making me go a whole summer worrying about this?” Remus demanded, mortified.

James nodded, “Yeah, I s’pose we are, but look at it this way, if you hear from us after the full moon in June then you know we’ve done it alright and it didn’t do us in.” He grinned.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, “Just be careful not to squash any bugs or anything in that time, just incase.”

“Bugs?”

“Yeah, just incase,” Sirius nodded.

“Incase of what, exactly?” Remus asked, panic in his voice.

“You’ll see!” Sirius answered, “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be fine. Between the three of us, we’ll figure it out. And I’m sure at least one of us will live through it anyway, even if something did go wrong!”

Remus’s fingers ran down his face. “That is not a comfort.”