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Pumpkin Juice


The Hogwarts Kitchens were busy as could be. Breakfast would be starting in just a matter of minutes, and the students would be expecting their hot sausages and fluffy biscuits, their platters of gravy and beans and bowls of jams and butter and steins of syrups and waffles. It was up to Toddy, a youngish house elf, to see to it that all of the others did their duties so that the meal could be delivered to the tables above them just on time. He scrambled up from one stool to another, dipping a fingertip into this gravy, then sampling a bit of a biscuit from over there, and sipping a bit of hot chocolate and warm butterscotch steaming in large mugs on the counter. “This is needing more salt!” he announced at one table, or else, “Having us any catsup? This is being excellent if it was slathered in catsup!”

The other elves moved about frantically, obeying every order Toddy gave them.

James Potter stepped into the kitchen through the round hole that the painting of the ticklish pear covered. He stared about, wide-eyed and amazed at the steam rising up from the pots and the rows and rows of fireplaces with steaming kettles and bubbling brews. There were house elves simply everywhere. He’d never seen so many of them! It was as though the castle had an infestation that was cleverly hidden out of view. There had to be at least fifty elves clustered about, rushing from one end of the room to the other, all shouting in squeaky little voices as they raced to get the final preparations complete.

“Blimey!” James exclaimed.

Suddenly, Toddy spotted him from across the kitchen and waved his hands, running toward him, “Oh no, no, no, no! It is not good for a student to be in the kitchen so close to a meal! You is being burned being in the kitchen so close to a meal!” He tried to shoo James back out the hole from whence he’d come.

“Wait! Wait, Toddy!” suddenly an ittle bitty elf came rushing from amongst a crowd of elves cutting up pieces of fresh fruit to make a cocktail salad, “This is James Potter, it is the boy I is been telling you about sister is sending to us! For her Master Remus’s birthday cake!” He looked up at James Potter, “I is Toby, Mister James, sir,” he said excitedly and be did a little bow.

Toddy lit up, “Ohhh! I am so very sorry Mister James, sir, I didn’t know! I is be thinking you is looking for extra foods before breakfast!” he laughed, “I didn’t wish for Mister James to be hurt!”

“Well, thanks!” James said, “I don’t fancy getting hurt, so you’ve done good.” He looked around, “This is a pretty brilliant kitchen, actually!”

“We is being proud of it!” exclaimed Toddy. Then he spotted one of the house elves about to pour a spice into a dish that didn’t need anything more. “Excusing me! STOP BINKY! STOP!” He ran off.

“Tizzy is been telling Toby about how good you is being to her Master Remus and doing a birthday party! Toby is been telling all his friends about it and we is been agreeing how you is a very good, very kind wizard indeed!” He smiled up at James widely.

“Well, thanks,” James said, deciding he liked House Elves quite a lot.

“You is being very welcome!” Toby announced. “Come, come see what we is been making for Tizzy’s Master Remus!” He grabbed onto James’s hand and pulled him along through the kitchens to a small table in the corner, which was surrounded by a couple other tiny house elves around Toby’s size. Upon it stood a sheet cake coated with frosting and on top the house elves had taken quite a lot of time to use colourful smarties to create a lovely picture of a dragon with a long spiky tail and yellow-smarties for eyes.

“WHOA COOL!” James exclaimed, “Blimey, he’ll love that! Good job, you lot!”

The house elves round the table flapped their ears happily. “Thanking you sir!” cried one with a bright pink dress on. The others were mostly wearing tea cozies or pillow cases labeled with the Hogwarts crest, though James had noticed that Toddy had worn a chef’s hat and a bowtie.

James looked over the cake - it was huge. “I dunno how I’m gonna get it back up to the dormitory, though.”

“Oh we is be bringing it to you!! Don’t worry! We is be making the plans already for you since Tizzy has been telling us about the party!” Toby said, “We is be bringing up a delicious feast for her Master Remus and his friends!” Toby smiled brightly.

“You lot are absolutely brilliant,” James said and he decided that he really, really liked House Elves. His mum was mental for not letting them have one! They were the greatest! He grinned about at them, “Thanks for all your help! Rey will have a spiffing birthday thanks to you lot!”

“We is been doing our best is all!” Toby replied, smiling, though his little ears flapped and turned a shade or two of red.

They loaded James up with pockets full of treats before he left, thanking them again and again for the glimpse at Remus’s dragon cake and all the help they were being in getting the food for Remus’s party taken care of. He shoved a treacle tart into his mouth and ran happily down the corridor and back up into the entrance hall, still chewing the thick sugary interior of the tart that made his teeth stick together.

James was about to head into the Great Hall when he spotted Lily Evans and Severus Snape sneaking away up the stairs together and he glanced at the warm light pooling on the cobblestones from within before turning his back to it and sneaking along after Lily and Severus. He paused at the top of the stairs to reach into his bag and shake out the invisibility cloak. He rushed along as quietly as possible, tugging the cloak ‘round his shoulders as he went. He didn’t know why he was following after them, it was sure to end in a good deal of snogging, and he didn’t really fancy watching that, but something was compelling him to go along after them.

They snuck to the library, which was still closed until after breakfast, and Snape unlocked the door with the alohamora and led Lily in through the shelves of books. They settled themselves in between some shelves toward the back of the room and Severus turned and caught her up in his arms. “We really should’ve had breakfast before sneaking off, Sev,” Lily said. Her voice was admonishing and not at all the goopy mess it had been for the last month or two since she’d been seeing Severus Snape. James inched closer, interested. Had Snape done something to offend her and distract her from her recent obsession with him?

“I just missed you is all, Lil,” his whispered and he tried to kiss her, but she pushed him off her. He frowned. “Are you cross with me?”

“No… just… I dunno, Sev. Sometimes it feels so odd when we kiss,” Lily said, “Like I’m kissing my brother or something.”

“You haven’t got a brother,” Severus answered.

Lily looked up at him, “Sev.”

He stared at her a long moment, then sighed and reached into his bag and held out a bottle of pumpkin juice. Lily stared at it. “What’s that?”

“Pumpkin juice,” Severus answered smoothly, “Loads of vitamins and the lot if you’re not eating.”

Lily stared at him for several long moments.

“I’m just trying to take care of you!” Severus said, “I care about you! You’re my girlfriend, Lily and I love you.”

Under the invisibility cloak, James snuck closer than he had been, feeling quite suspicious. He was remembering the night of the Valentine’s day tea, when he’d seen Snape pour something into Lily’s tea. Whatever Annalee McKinnon had so naively said, James was still worried about what Snape may be up to and he felt as wary of this bottle of pumpkin juice as he had of the tea that night.

Lily reached for the juice and took it out of his hand, uncorking the bottle top, and took a long pull from the mouth of the bottle. “There!” she said, “Are you happy? Now can we please just have a serious discussion here about this? Sev, you know I care for you as a friend, but I -- I…” Lily’s words paused and she blinked a few moments in silence, her face unreadable. Then she closed her eyes, her face screwing up funny in a grimace, and finally she looked solidly into Severus Snape’s eyes. Her green eyes had lost their fire, but her eyebrows had gone soft and her voice had smoothed over to that silky, gooey tone she’d been using lately. “Oh Severus,” she murmured, “I’m just so very, very lucky that you consider me to be more than a friend!” She sighed dreamily and shoved the stopper into the bottle again, putting it down on the shelf behind her, and rushing up to Severus, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Severus grinned and held her, his hands on her back. “You’ll always be more than that to me,” he whispered. “Always, Lily Evans.” And he held her close, his eyes closed in the peace that her presence brought to his mind washed over him. Severus always felt as though something were missing from his person until she was hugging him, as though he had a Lily-shaped-hole and only her body pressed to his could ever fill it up. For her, he could be good. For her, he could be brave. Tears seeped from his eyes - tears of comfort and contentment, and maybe a little of shame, knowing this was not a natural hug, but too desperate to feel it to be truly ashamed properly.

Neither of them noticed the bottle of leftover pumpkin juice disappeared from the shelf.

James took it and clutched it to his chest, his hands shaking. There was something in this pumpkin juice and he, James, was determined to find out what it was and use it to positively bust Severus Snape once and for all. So he backed away, leaving the two of them as they started snogging, not wanting to see that. He now had a mission anyway, he had to bring the bottle off to somebody that would know how to identify the potion that it contained. Someone besides Slughorn, who was too wrapped around Severus Snape’s fingers to ever be expected to do a proper check if he found out who had brewed the potion.

James made his way back up to the dormitory to think who he could go to with his concern, and he put the pumpkin juice bottle on his desk as he opened up his trunk and pulled out his potion making textbook and started flipping through it, trying to see if there was anything in there about reverse identification. He threw himself onto his bed and flickered through the pages earnestly, determined to find out anything and everything he could on the topic.




Remus woke up a tangle of sore limbs and ripped up flesh. He’d torn his arms all up with scratches and bites - he could see the fresh bites all along the skin of his arms and his legs, which were folded up close so he could see his knees over… over an arm… not his arm… Sirius Black’s arm. As Remus’s mind lifted from the dense fog of a bad moon night, he realized that his body was not the only one he could feel the tangle of limbs that made him up. Rather, Sirius Black’s was a part of the jumble as well. Sirius was pressed face-to against Remus, his arm around Remus’s arms as though holding him down rather forcefully, his leg thrown over Remus’s thighs, keeping his legs in place and his arm keeping his arms pinned and his face pressed into the plane between Remus’s shoulders, asleep. As Sirius snored softly, his breath tickling the sensitive skin of Remus’s back.

Remus swallowed back his surprise and laid very still, closing his eyes to relish the feeling of Sirius wrapped around him like that. He’d never felt so content in all his life, despite the fresh bloody he’d drawn across his own flesh and the scars that would no doubt follow such deep wounds. He wondered what had happened to lead them to this position, for his Furry Little Problem had been so strong that he’d been completely lost to the world the entire night. It had bad moon, after all.

But this… this wasn’t so bad.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last as long as Remus would’ve stayed there for, and Sirius stirred, taking a deep inhale, his face moving to pull back from the wall of skin he’d woken up pressed against. There was a pause while Sirius collected himself. There was this blissful moment that Remus thought perhaps Sirius was okay with having woken up like that in a tangle of limbs with him, and what a heart-stopping moment that was! But then he felt the muscles in Sirius tighten in surprise. “Oh merlin,” murmured Sirius and he slowly was trying to pull his arm and leg away… clearly trying not to wake Remus up with the dissection of their limbs. So Remus decided to close his eyes and pretend to be still asleep, to give Sirius his privacy.

Sirius rolled away onto his back, staring up at the ceiling of the Shrieking Shack, fully aware of the boy laying beside him on the dusty floor. He gnawed on his lower lip, his heart shuddering in his chest with nerves. Every part of him throbbed and ached. It had been a very rough night indeed. Remus’s pains the night before and his dark sunken eyes had indeed been signs of a very bad moon rising. Remus had torn the flesh from his own arm so raw, even with Sirius’s Alpha commands to stop it the wolf had still been stir crazy, biting and snapping at himself, trying to tear away the fur. And so Sirius had ended up pinning him down, forcing the wolf to stop, and they’d spent the night in a sort of wrestling fight, alpha versus beta, struggling to keep flesh and blood where it ought to be. Snuffles’s fur had become matted with Remus’s bloodshed, and it had dried and caked on and now Sirius could feel it dried on his skin.

But the embrace he’d found them in now… it was different… because it was the two of them, changed back at some point in their sleep, and they’d been pressed so tight against one another… it seemed too intimate and it made Sirius Black’s face burn with embarrassment.

He looked over at Remus, thankful that he’d stayed asleep during the extraction.

It could’ve been very bad indeed if Rey had woken up to find them tangled up like that. He might’ve taken their entwined bodies to mean something else… something Sirius didn’t want him to take it as.

The very thought of that made Sirius shiver and he realized how bloody cold it was in the Shack without the fur coat of Snuffles and he noticed every breath he took turned into a frosty cloud and he wrapped his arms around himself and sat up, rubbing warmth into his skin.

“Rey,” he whispered, turning to the other boy’s form. “Rey, wake up, we need to go inside, it’s too bloody cold.”

Remus pretended to wake up, feeling just a little bit heartbroken.




James was still pouring over the potions book, nibbling on the food the House Elves had given him when Remus and Sirius arrived back to the dormitories. James looked up as they came in, each hurrying to his own bed on the opposite sides of the room. “Well hey you lot,” James said, looking back and forth, “How - how was it? No, er, enemy wolves?”

“None,” Sirius replied flatly. He was changing his shirt, throwing the dirty, torn up one on the floor by the desks.

Remus had thrown his torn up shirt that way, too, and tugged on a fresh one. He was now standing by the desks, opening the little box of aconite leaves and taking a couple of the flowers out to shove into his mouth and chew like gum. Then he took a little bottle of balm that Dumbledore had given him way back in first year and dabbed a bit of the cooling lotion of it against the raw cuts on his wrists and arms.

There was something awkward in the air, something hanging just off the tip of the tongue, James could feel it in the tension that existed between Remus and Sirius. He glanced back and forth between them. “Is, erm, is everything alright, you lot?” he asked.

“Yes,” they both said too quickly.

“Okay.” James cleared his throat, and he looked over at Sirius with a very questioning expression indeed, wondering what had happened. Sirius looked back at him with a look that seemed to tell James that yes, something had happened, and Sirius would tell him as soon as he got the chance to… alone.

“James, you mind if I take a sip of your pumpkin juice here? My mouth is so bloody dry…” Remus asked, already uncorking the bottle without waiting for a response from James.

James turned quickly, “Remus, wait, don’t drink that! It’s ---”

But it was too late. Remus had already taken a long pull from the bottle.

James was staring as Remus paused,a funny look on his face. He put the bottle down quickly to the desktop. Sirius turned at the panic in James’s voice and looked between the funny expression Remus wore and the one of mixed fear and curiosity that lingered on James.

“What’s happening?” Sirius asked.

James didn’t reply.

Remus blinked his eyes and the usually bright honey color seemed dimmed and James felt his heart race, recognizing the same symptom that Lily Evans had been showing lately and he crawled a bit closer toward the end of the bed, “Rey… mate… how’re you… how’re you feeling?” he asked tentatively.

Remus paused, closed his eyes and his eyebrows and forehead went all soft… and he sighed dreamily suddenly, and a dopey smile came over his face and he looked over at James, “Oh James, you’ve no idea.”

“No? I don’t?” James asked.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sirius asked, nervously staring over James’s shoulder, “What’s going on? What was that stuff he’s just drank?”

Remus shook his head, “No… neither of you understand how I feel!”

“How is that, mate?” James asked, ignoring Sirius’s rising tone of panic.

Remus exclaimed, “He’s the most incredible person in all of the school and I just adore him… but… but I dunno, I don’t think he much likes me!” This declaration was said with the deepest agony.

Sirius looked like he might be sick, afraid of the answer, afraid Remus was about to tell James about the questionable position they’d woken up in. Neither had said a word about it all the way back to the dorm, but Sirius got the feeling perhaps Remus hadn’t slept through it, that maybe he’d felt Sirius there, maybe got the wrong impression…

James asked, “Who are you talking about?”

Remus’s eyes went gooey. “Well, Severus Snape, of course!”