Mad Apothecarist

Hermione started to cram for the OWLs after the winter break – she decided that she will take the exams two years sooner so she won’t be forced to stay in the school longer than me or the twins. Luna tried to look irritated, but she was giggling minutes after her attempt at acting.

Twins would probably wing it, but the bushy-haired Griffin forced them to study with her. I was helping them if asked, otherwise, I spent my time deciphering the hardest puzzle I ever got my hands on, or I was working on various potions I would need to get the title of Master. To get this title, one must create an original potion that is a new discovery or makes an existing potion significantly better – or cheaper, but Severus told me that that is mostly an additional point rather than the main ‘course’. I was trying to find a better cure for what happened in our second year – after all, mandrakes are in season only once a year and there is no steady supply of it – but I was getting nowhere with that, so I was experimenting with Soteria’s venom.

It had the potential of being a great base of a powerful antidote, but most neutralizers were not strong enough and no animal could withstand the potency of her venom. Only the basilisk herself could survive her own poison, which meant I was sweetening her up for a donation of her blood (thankfully, Burkes knows a guy who happily sends me big dead animals that I thaw and animate for the always hungry snake). I was on the verge of asking her if she could inject a different amount of her venom into her pray and then I could look at how it affects the dead carcasses and THEN I could monitor how it affects her and how well her meal is digested…

Luna often joined me when I visited Soteria, her love for magical beings endearing enough for Soteria to let the small blond rub her scales.

Daphne wasn’t thrilled by the studious atmosphere of our friend group so she spent more time with her Slytherin friends.

Working with potent poison was giving me bad ideas in moments of tired, mindless writing and my ideas were often stolen by one of my friends, even though they seemed engrossed in their repetition of basic information. “Henry, poisonous gas?” Hermione sighed after she took my notebook from me. “Could you put off the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to your post-graduation days?”

“No fucking fun,” I yawned and fell on her lap, groaning when she let the notebook fall on my face. “There is always time for murder.”

“Don’t say it too loudly, Heir Slytherin,” Luna smiled. “People might start to call you the next Dark Lord!”

“That sounds fun…” Fred reacted, distracted by Hermione’s neat flash cards. “Although the origin story would be weird.”

“Normally Dark Lords adopt pureblood views but Henry would probably kill without a real cause,” George continued the thought.

“I would kill during my fucking experiments,” I smirked lazily. “That is good enough cause.”

“Oh no, he’s thinking about it!” George groaned and shuddered.

“You gave me the idea, so it’s your fucking fault!” I sing-songed happily before Hermione pushed me off her lap, so I ended up on the floor (partially for the dramatics, she’s not that strong).

“I can be Dark Lady, and you can work for me,” Luna offered kindly. “I would allow you to test anything on idiotic purebloods, half-bloods, muggle-borns, AND muggles!”

“I take you on that offer,” we shook hands on it. “You would make a great Dark Lady.”

“More importantly,” Fred grinned. “What would be your moniker?”

“Lady Moon?” I offered.

“I was thinking Lady Lunacy,” Fred offered. “So, it would be an alliteration! Luna Lovegood, Lady Lunacy.”

“Mouthful,” Hermione snorted. “But I get the appeal.”

“I like Fred’s idea,” Luna hummed, rubbing her chin. “People think I’m crazy and if Henry was my second in charge, the idea of crazy leaders would be even stronger. He would be the… Mad Healer?” That almost sounded like Mad Hatter.

“Batshit-crazy Brewer?” Fred chimed in. “So, it goes with the unspoken rule of using the same letter on both words?”

George’s idea was: “Insane Inventor?”

“Manic Mage? Would that work?” Hermione thought out loud.

“Why not,” I shrugged. “There are no fucking rules. So, twins would be Wild Weasley One and Two?”

“There are too many Weasleys for it to work,” Luna shook her head in negative. “And there is no adjective, that is not only synonym to crazy but also that would also work with F or G, right?”

“Can’t think of anything,” I muttered. “Well, maybe Fucked-Up Fred?”

“Thanks for thinking so highly of me, sweet Henry.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “If we go with something outside crazy, we could be Terrible Twins.”

“And what about Hermione?” George was completely ignoring the book in his lap.

“Horrific Hermione,” was the first that came to my mind. “Goofy Granger wouldn’t sound menacing enough.”

“Same could work on you,” she pouted. “And Horrific Henry is fitting.”

“Daphne is such a lucky girl…” Fred huffed. “Demented Daphne is crazy good.” I never believed we could be jealous of Daphne.

***

The first week of OWLs was behind us and Hermione’s hair was never crazier. Her hands went through it too often and she messed up any braid that Daphne put it into.

“You should have waited, and not jumped into it just because the boys are crazy.”

“We are the right age for OWLs,” I snorted.

“Doesn’t mean you aren’t batshit crazy,” she shrugged.

“You have a point,” my twin grinned at the younger girl. “But you will envy us when you have to do them! And we will have them behind us!”

“You’ll be doing NEWTs by then,” Henry entered the conversation, fingers dirty from the chocolate frog he was torturing the last five minutes. First, he bit off one leg, then another, nibbled on the webbed fingers… I tried to not look at how he licked it off. “I doubt you’ll take on as many subjects as I did but as I know Hermione, she would panic over two subjects.”

“I won’t take just two,” she pouted and batted away Daphne’s hands that tried to stop her devastation of a braided crown adorning her smart little head.

 “Sweetheart,” the only Slytherin in our midst purred, “let me fix your hair.”

“You’ll tug on it again!” Henry started to tactically retreat and I thought about following him.

“Girls, no need to-“

“SHUT UP GEORGE!” My speed could be likened to apparition when they moved their fiery gazes on my dear soon-to-be deceased twin.

“Where are we going?” I caught up to the slightly shorter Ravenclaw.

“I need to go pick-“

“Flowers for a fair lady?”

“-potion ingredients in the Forest. You going?”

“Of course – you need a bodyguard!”

“Oh yes, my brave knight,” he rolled his eyes but smirked a little, not fully hating my joke. “Luna is the smartest of all of us.”

“She has a good gut feeling about where not to be,” I nodded. “We should have been smarter and not stay there when she ran the second those two came.” Those two are Hermione and Daphne, of course. They came, squabbling and hissings like two cats, and Luna bolted out of her seat and with a weak excuse disappeared.

The afternoon was cold so almost nobody was outside.

Almost is an important word, because I noticed my youngest (and most annoying) brother who was running after something. He jumped after it and rolled on his back, laughed, and scrambled onto his legs. “What the fuck is he doing?” Henry summarized my thoughts fittingly.  

“We can only bully it out of him,” I snorted and steered a little, so we would get to him. Henry smirked and followed me, a devious spark in his eyes.

“Fred-“

“AH! HELP!” I stopped looking at the shorter student and whipped my head so I could see Ron getting dragged by a giant black dog.

“RON!” I yelled and ran after him, but I was too slow. The dog dragged Ron into a hole under the Whomping Willow, which started to attack me when I came near it. I took a step back and Henry collided with me, sending us to the ground with grunts and hissed ‘fucks’. “What the hell?” I looked at the stupid tree.

“Don’t ask me,” Henry groaned next to me, holding his ribs. “What are you made of?” I rolled my eyes and stood up, helping him up.

“How can we get inside?”

“How should I know? I didn’t know there was a passage under the Whomping Willow,” he frowned. “We should go get help.”

“What if the dog kills him? We should help him,” I panicked – I might dislike Ron, but he is my brother. I can’t let him bleed out or get eaten by a rabid dog!

“We can try to run past the branches?” He said after a long moment.

“I don’t have a better idea,” I grinned weakly – and so we tried. We managed to duck the first attack, but Henry was caught by a smaller branch and I by a bigger one, which knocked me into him. We managed to scramble from a big swing that would probably kill us.

“Fucking stupid, fuck, fuck,” Henry muttered darkly and healed my ribs, and closed the bleeding wound on his arm. “Fucking- Harry?” We watched the big mean ginger cat elegantly duck all the attacking branches until it pushed something and the tree stilled.

We watched it with big eyes until the cat meowled (I could almost decipher the annoyed tone that for sure called us dumbasses) and we ran to it, sliding into the hole between the roots of the murderous tree. We slid down the tight passage that was too low for us to stand up fully, so we had to continue in a comical hunch. We didn’t want to make our presence obvious by a Lumos, so we stumbled every few steps in our hurry.

“This fucking idea was the worst fucking idea we ever fucking had,” Henry whispered angrily – I could feel his magic vibrating with his intense emotion. Let’s hope it won’t hurt me.

“I know where we are,” I whispered when we got out of that dark corridor and stumbled into an old house that was falling apart.

“The Shrieking Shack?” Henry blinked, surprised. It was comforting that we knew where we were – even though we never got inside, we saw enough through the smashed windows. “There is blood.” I looked down and my stomach almost exited my body at how much blood there was – we could follow it like a trail. I forgot our attempt at stealth and ran up the stairs, followed the blood, and broke down the door, not even thinking about who closed them in the first place.

My wand was out and ready, cutting curse on my tongue when I looked into the shocked eyes of Sirius Black. I stilled, shocked by the man who looked like a walking corpse – and he managed to disarm me with a surprisingly quick swish of his – no, Ron’s – wand. Why do bad people like to steal my siblings’ wands?

I jumped on him, tackling him to the ground but he managed to throw Petrificus Totalus at me and because of the closeness, there was no way he could miss. He struggled to push me off so Henry came before the criminal managed to get free.

“The hell?” Henry sent a silent spell that Black reflected and finally managed to get from under me, backing off from Henry like a scared animal.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the man said in his gravelly voice.

“Really?” Henry must have raised his eyebrow, judging by his tone. “Finite Incantatem,” he cast at me and I tried to get to my feet as soon as possible. “Let me stop the bleeding,” he walked to Ron slowly and Black allowed him, watching the only wand that wasn’t in his possession like a hawk.

“If you don’t want to hurt us, why did you hurt my brother?” I asked, shadowing the Ravenclaw carefully. Henry muttered some healing spells and waved his wand in intricate patterns – it wasn’t the one he used on himself.

“You have to listen to me – it’s not how it looks. I wasn’t attacking the boy,” he said slowly. Like he was putting the sentence together and it made his brain hurt. His eyes reminded me of Henry when he had a really mad idea or was in one of his inventive moods; when even Luna seems like the definition of sanity in comparison.

At least he’s not aggressive.

“I need blood replenishing potions and calming potions,” Henry rose from his squat, going through his pockets. “I have only a headache potion and a light corrosive on me.”

“Don’t look at me – I have nothing,” Black snorted. “Not that I would be able to even brew them.”

At first glance, Ron seemed calm – but his eyes showed how shell-shocked he truly was. He was holding Scabbers too strongly and the poor rat was squealing in distress. I went to pry the rat out of his fingers, but Black yelled “NO!” and jumped at me, only to be stopped by Henry’s wand.

“He’s why I caught your brother,” he told me, this time faster, sounding a lot more unhinged. “The rat, the traitor!” He growled like a dog; dark eyes trained on the small rodent.

“What has Scabbers to do with this?!” Ron finally broke out of his stupor and pushed the rat even closer to his chest, his voice rising in panic.

“EVERYTHING!” Black flailed his arms. “Give him to me, and I’ll show you what you were taking care of!”

“I won’t let you-“

“Stupefy,” Henry knocked out Ron with an annoyed sigh and grabbed Scabbers by the tail before the rodent could run off. This is not hot, Fred, this is. Not. Hot. “Why the fucking rat?”

“That’s not a rat,” said Black, eyes shining madly.

“What else should it be?” I asked. “We had him in our family for twelve years!”

“An Animagus,” said Black, “by the name of Peter Pettigrew.”

Henry and I looked at the rat and then at the criminal, then back. “Isn’t he the wizard you killed together with those muggles?” Henry asked.

“Oh, I tried,” Black growled. “But he managed to evade me. But not tonight, I will kill him tonight!” I was missing a white foam coming from his mouth – that would finish the picture and make it perfect. “I’ll finish what I was imprisoned for!”

“Suddenly, I feel sane,” Henry muttered with a pout and I snort-laughed, before stifling it.

“You are horrible,” I fake-whispered to him. “Do you have a piece of evidence that this pet is a dead man? And why should we let you kill him?”

“He’s the reason Harry’s parents are dead!” At first, I got stuck on the thought of why would Black care about Harry’s parents (as in Harry’s, the cat’s, parents), and then it made sense. Henry was obviously on the same wavelength because he cursed and smacked his forehead with his wand-wielding hand.

“Do you know a spell to show if the rat is truly an Animagus?” I asked him.

“Yeah, of course, I do. I had it on my NEWTs from Transfiguration,” he nodded. “If you’re telling the truth, we will hear you out further. Deal?” I wonder how hard it is for him not to curse up a storm right now.

“Yeah,” Black nodded, surprise clearly etched onto his face. “You have NEWTs already?”

“Homorphus.” A blue-white spell shot from his wand and Scabbers froze, before emitting a bright light that made Henry let go of him. The sound of a falling body was too loud for such a small animal, my brain told me before I saw the disturbing sight of growing limbs and distortion of flesh before there was a rat-like-looking man with greasy hair in front of me.

‘This is going too smoothly,’ I thought.

“P-Peter?” as if we called him, Remus Lupin barged into the room and looked at the short man. “Sirius?”

“Uncle Remus, please, would you restrain the rat?” Henry asked too calmly, eyes on Black. And Lupin was so shocked he did exactly what was asked of him. “Tell me, Black, why do you call this man the traitor? From what I heard; you were the one who held the secret of my biological parent’s hideout.”

“We told everyone that, yes. But I persuaded James to make Peter the Secret Keeper, so the dark side would attack a false bait,” Black answered lifelessly, watching our DADA teacher putting ropes around his… ex-friend? “It’s my fault they died. And now I can finally exact my revenge,” he growled but Henry stopped him by walking between the two animalistic men.

“Why were you in the prison, then? Because of the murder of the muggles?”

“I’ve never gotten a trial.” What? “I killed nobody – Peter orchestrated it to look like I did it.” I could almost see how that saddened Henry – he really wanted to know the spell used for the explosion. “You… you believe me?”

“As long as you will willingly come with us. My dad’s a lawyer so he can get you a fair trial, and because we also have the second suspect, it might even work,” he shrugged.

“No, they won’t let me-“

“I’ll make sure they won’t throw you back,” Henry tried to sound sincere but it was too cold for that. Still, Black smiled.

“Thank you, Harry.”

“Henry.”