The Love Potion
Dear Mary,
This is yet another one of my incredibly odd letters, but I’ve been thinking about scents a lot lately. I thought I’d give you a list of sorts, like bringing Kerry just that much closer to London, you know? First that comes to mind is Ma’s soda bread straight out of the oven, warm so that the sugar is still somewhat simmering on top. Sometimes it mixes with Da’s cigars in a way that I can’t quite measure. The greatest way my mother loves us is mixed with my fathers greatest vice. It’s funny, and produces the greatest aroma, though Tuney absolutely detests it. Better still, though, is the flower garden. It smells like blooming, like springtime in its highest form. Anyone to bottle that up would be beautiful.
Tell me, what do you smell in London? I dream of knowing.
(P.S. Please ignore my overactive nose.)
(P.S.S Enclosed is a smelling tab with my perfume on it, if you’re interested in bringing me home.)
Sniffing fabulously,
Lily Evans
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Dear Lily,
I can’t pretend you don’t sound extremely strange, but it is additionally ridiculously true. In London, most things smell quite like shit, but there are a couple things I love. First, there’s the smell of fish and chips, but specifically the most greasy disgusting deep-fried kind imaginable. That scent specifically is particular to London, and particular to me. Then, there’s cigarette smoke from a few balconies off, or a few train cars away. The image of someone lighting up is alone the real smell. Last, (and this one is the most truly heart felt) this particular little cafe always comes to mind. It’s cheap enough and bad enough that I can take my sisters every Sunday afternoon. It smells like grime and coffee beans and some kind of heart poured into a dirty mug.
Still, there’s always more to find. I might add your perfume to the list now, dear.
(P.S. Noses are a wonderful organ.)
(P.P.S. Enclosed as well is a little bit of rose scented me for you.)
Smelling terrific,
Mary Macdonald
Chapter 9: The Love Potion
Potions class was, undoubtedly, the purest form of hell. The Macdonald name was chosen for her family when they landed in London, as was their faith. All those Sunday scary stories she’d received over the years taught her well about what hell would look like, and she was entirely certain that Slughorn was the picture of Satan.
There were already countless classes deep into the course, which meant that all sixth year students were expected to be brewing things that Mary couldn’t exactly dreamed of. This meant that she spent around two hours a day watching people pour strange things into pitch black cauldrons that were bubbling over terrifying fires. Basically, it was the kind of thing that got someone sent to eternal damnation, or at the very least get a Brixton boy put away from cooking up some kind of drug.
Professor Slughorn, the fat pompous twat, was yammering away about the difference in using rose petals or thorns, which would apparently be on the eventual exam. He had them making some idiotic love potion, undoubtedly because his latest inappropriately young mistress had agreed to another six months of their arrangement or something. (She was well-to-do in the gossip mill, and this was a known rumor of fact.) Mary had no use for love potions. Sirius Black was winking at her over his shoulder and Lily was the only one blocking her view, firy hair burning to nothing among the smoke. So in that regard she was oscillating wildly between being ridiculously glad to have taken this class and ridiculously confused on what the hell she was doing in it.
Marlene, who was additionally useless at potions, nudged her in the back.
“What in Merlin’s socks does any of this shite mean?” Mary thought it was funny when Hogwarts kids mixed wizard cusses with regular old muggle swear words, which all of her friends did liberally.
“Ah, couldn’t say I have the foggiest!”
They both giggled, which resulted in Lily’s earnest shushing.
“Exactly girls, that’s why I really need to concentrate!” Even as she told them off, she was laughing too. They were back in all the ways they had been before.
Lily had just finished adding in the rose petals, which were supposed to more greatly stabilize the potion compared to their thorn counterparts. There was a slim list of ingredients left to throw in, which thankfully meant that they were going to get out of this hot, humid room. It was doing a number on her hair, but she did like the lighting it gave some people. The potions room made it feel like she was being punched in the gut repeatedly, or rather exactly how she’d felt when she’d seen Lily as beautiful those nights ago. Basically, every part of her body kept thudding in one painfully rhythmic seizing. She was obsessed with the feeling, and wanted it to stop.
“Moonstone!” Professor Slughorn called, “It’s a beautiful gem, and a magical one at that. In the old times, they had Swiss muggle children mine for them in the Alps under false pretenses. Now, there are much more professional means of doing so, but nonetheless the refinement process is-”
Mary tuned out as quickly as possible. Lily was sitting in the stool right next to her, and she leaned over to whisper in her ear.
“How many more steps are we in for, eh?” she murmured and was met with a sly smile.
“You’re distracting me,” Lily complained, but didn’t mean it in the slightest. Mary could tell by the way the area right next to her temples lit up in a light blush. She’d been doing that even more lately, whenever James was brought up or whenever they stayed alone together for longer than fifteen minutes. Mary fought hard not to notice. She leaned closer only for the volume control.
“Come on, don’t you want to get out of here?” she implored harder. Mary didn’t blush, but she would've had the ability existed for her. Jesus, she would’ve found a spell to do it just so Lily could see.
“Sure I do, but impressing Sluggy is also a grand part of my master plan, you see!” She had a way of laughing, of talking, that made Mary so confident in that master plan. Lily Evans knew things that other people did not.
“Well then dear, tell me the last ingredients then? A practice quiz, you could say.” They both shook with concealed laughter, so much so that Slughorn shot them a confused and disturbed look through his heavy eyelids.
“There are the frozen ashwinder eggs, which Sluggy says are the very most key ingredient to most love potions. Something about undying magical fire.” Mary let out a breathy laugh, which Lily breezed by.
“And then only pearl dust until we’re home free! It’s what gives it the characteristic sparkle.” She smiled, and went back to watching the lecture.
Slughorn was busy talking about how the ashwinder eggs mixed with the peppermint they’d previously added. Apparently it activated the plant, giving it the magical quality of taking on any scent a smeller's overactive imagination could work up. More importantly, that imagination tended to drift to what a person loved most. The potion was made to be attractive, and the first step of that was to smell utterly divine.
She wanted to ask Lily what she thought hers would smell like, but was interrupted rudely by the Professor telling them that stirring was done, and it was time for their final ingredients.
Marlene coughed behind them, clearly full of confusion. In an effort to help, Mary attempted to crack a textbook while Lily made herself busy with the ashwinder eggs and the pearls and all that nonsense. The potions texts were completely senseless, talking about stirring and heating and cooling and congealing and things of that generally disgusting nature.
She turned back to Marlene, “It’s amazing she can understand a wink of this, isn’t it?”
“Jesus, but it is. They must all know another language or something.” She pointed to all of their friends who clearly knew what was going on. Lily, plus Remus and Sirius, plus even some of the Slytherins up ahead were all busily getting their ingredients from Slughorn's storeroom. James, the man himself, was bumping elbows with Dorcas Meadowes as they reached for the tongs, which meant that Marlene was watching them from afar, her eyes trained on Potter’s stupid glasses. Mary laughed that off, and kept talking. It was what she was best at, anyway.
“See, we were at the class for hysterical witticism when they all went to learn the language of intelligence!” Marlene grinned widely and went off to get whatever ingredients she and her random partner needed.
Mary returned to Lily. The potion was beginning to smell like love, like the chippy at night, soft cigarettes out of a window, and the coffee smell of her sister's favorite little dive cafe.
“It smells good, dear!” she squealed, moving closer to take a bigger whiff.
A heady scent floated straight into her, giving way to slight confusion. She’d been smelling this all day long, hadn’t she? It was the scent of perfume Lily was wearing, the same vanilla smell that she always had on. She must be picking it up from the girl standing next to her or there must be some kind of gigantic cosmic mistake with the ashwinder eggs. Mary smelled the potion again, the fumes passing over her face in hot waves. It still smelled the same, still warm as a summer and full of cinnamon and nutmeg, the kind of vanilla that didn’t feel like it could’ve been bottled up alone.
“Oh,” she mumbled. Mary took a step back and watched the spirals of steam rise from Lily’s concoction. And it was her concoction alone, really. It had her smell and Mary already saw her face when she closed her eyes without even taking it.
“Lily,” she nudged her friend earnestly. Lily didn’t budge. She was too busy stirring in even greater loads of pearl dust.
“Lily, Lily, listen,” she tugged on her sweater vest, to no avail.
Finally, she jerked forward and whispered in Lily’s ear. “Does it smell like roses to you, dear?”
That got a reaction, bigger than anything Mary hoped for. She didn’t dare to play at knowing what it meant.
“Why does it smell like roses?” she kept whispering, feeling terrified chills running through her heart.
“Why Mary? Why does it have to matter?” Lily replied in tones so quiet it felt like vibrations. She wasn’t sure what was audible and what was merely in her head.
“Because it smells like vanilla to me. It smells like sweetness and cinnamon sugar. And it isn’t because of how much I absolutely adore bakeries. ” Mary grabbed her wrist, where her pulse lived.
“I-”
“Dear, I could tell you what it smells like for you, can’t I?” She didn’t know why everything was coming out so bravely. There was some sort of force inside of her that wanted to fight. She was angry, and she wanted Lily to know exactly how she felt, if only in the rawest sense.
Lily stopped and stared at her, her eyebrows furrowed in charming fury. “Don’t Mary, don’t you say do it.”
“It should smell like your mothers soda bread, your fathers cigars, fresh cut flowers from the garden at home, and roses, but not from the garden, right?
“Shove off-”
“After all, you have your own personal rose, dear,” she said triumphantly.
Lily was storming off before she could get the full sentence all of the way out, leaving Mary to wonder if she was quite satisfied with herself yet. The potion gurgled to a gentle burn, and the smell of vanilla was gone. All of the lovely things Mary loved so much were gone. She quite wondered what had made her drive them off.
Slughorn gave them both failing marks for the assignment, obviously. The love potion never quite came to brew. Marlene asked her where Lily had gone, and she couldn’t give a straight answer. She didn’t know where she had gone or when she would come back. She didn’t know what idiotic force inside of them was making her leave in the first place.
Lily didn’t come to Charms, nor to lunch. Mary had no doubt she would be missing from Transfiguration too. She longed to solve the mystery once and for all. She longed to walk down the corridor with her friends again and not feel like a bomb was waiting to shoot them off. And she longed, most of all, to find out if Lily would come back to her or not.