Chapter 3
3.
Remus' head jerked up when he heard the violent fizzing of a potion going wrong, followed by Lily's yelp of shock.
He rushed over to their desk to try and help stop the mess from getting worse, the foam already spitting onto their books.
"What happened? You never get potions this wrong." Remus whispered to Lily as they stood back and watched the professor inspect the mess for what went wrong.
"I don't know, I turned away for a few seconds and when I turned back it was like that." She shrugged and focused her gaze on their teacher, who was now poking the foam with his wand.
The teacher straightened up and faced the two, "You added a wrong ingredient, it'll be best to start again, would it be possible for the two of you to stay after class to redo it?" He concluded,
Remus and Lily exchanged a glance, both knowing that neither of them would even consider it.
Once the lesson had ended and they were left alone, the teacher sitting at the other side of the classroom engrossed in a book, Lily shot Remus a questioning look as if to ask if he saw what happened.
"I saw someone walking away quite quickly just after I turned around, could be them?" He reasoned, trying to get their cauldron ready while Lily crushed some of the ingredients.
She hummed, "Could be, who do you think it was?"
Remus hesitated, "Well, I have an idea but you might think I'm biased."
"Just tell me, I want revenge." Lily sighed in annoyance, her eyes flicking up to meet his, finding her frustration mirrored.
"Your best friend in the entire world." Remus shrugged, finally getting the cauldron to cooperate.
Lily scowled, "I told you, he's definitely not my friend, let alone my best friend."
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow, "that seemed more aggressive than usual, something you need to tell me?"
"I dropped him, because I finally heard what he was saying about you, and me, and other people like us." Lily combed a hand through her hair, pulling it out of the ponytail it was in and causing it to fall in front of her face.
"Here, I'll do it, now how do you propose we exact some revenge?" Remus stepped behind her and scraped her hair into a quick plait before patting her on both shoulders and moved to stand beside his friend.
Lily pointed to the tray of prepared ingredients she'd arranged while he was doing her hair, Remus picked it up and followed her to their cauldron, standing ready to add the ingredients when instructed.
"We could give him a taste of his own medicine?" She suggested, directing him to sprinkle in some sort of herb while she stirred.
"I like that idea, we have a couple of options though." Remus exchanged a grin with her, both liking the idea of revenge a bit too much.
"Do share with the class, Rem."
"Could either pass him the wrong ingredients somehow without him realising, or we could walk past and place something on his table that'd mess it up- without him noticing of course." Remus listed, dumping the rest of the ingredients into the cauldron at Lily's nod.
"I like the second one more, seems more subtle." She stopped mixing the potion and let it be for a few seconds.
"Less likely to get caught or blamed?" He replied, smiling at her similar reasoning when she nodded.
"So, next lesson?" Lily held the vials steady as Remus tipped the cauldron to pour their new, and successful, potion into them.
"Next lesson." He agreed.
"Psst." Lily nodded in the direction of Snape's back, which was turned away from his desk.
"You doing it, or me?" Remus whispered back, not waiting for an answer as he pushed the ingredient into her hand and asked in a louder voice for her to get a piece of paper.
Rolling her eyes, Lily made her way past Snape's desk, sneakily dropping the ingredient next to his unprepared ones, to their teacher's.
She grabbed a piece of paper before turning around and walking back to her friend.
"Well? Did he notice?" Lily hissed at him when she was stood next to him again.
"Nope, well done Lils." He smiled at her, both waiting for their revenge to come into effect.
They didn't have to wait long, a big thick cloud of black smoke billowed out of Snape's cauldron, enveloping him before he could escape it.
Murmers filled the classroom, wondering what went wrong, Snape's coughing the only reminder he was still there and not magicked away by the smoke.
"Now, now children, settle down. I believe it is the end of the lesson, have a good evening all." The teacher, having been alerted of the incident by the violent coughing, stood up and started trying to clear the smoke.
"Mr Snape if you could stay behind for a minute? That would be lovely." He added, finally finding the boy and leading him to sit down on a chair.
Lily and Remus exchanged a smug look as they left the classroom, making their way to the library to meet Regulus.
Once they'd left everyone behind and the only two people walking in the hallway was them, they turned to each other, big grins on their faces as they spun around in a celebratory hug.