Year One: The Brilliant Mind of Remus Lupin

By the end of the week, the others finally stopped pelting Remus with questions.

James insisted the others join him in watching the Quidditch practice early on Saturday. A thin layer of morning dew covered the grass, and the legs of their trousers were soaked by the time they finally climbed the moaning wood stairs into the highest stands. Remus kept away from the edge—at least he had solid ground beneath his feet. Remus had only tagged along to make up for his behaviour in the past week.

The first Gryffindor players already zoomed around the goalposts. Remus reclined, hoping his cloak would protect him from the wetness of the wood and scribbled an outline for his potions essay on a spare roll of parchment. It was hard to focus. Remus had little interest in the material they were studying in class, and the wind constantly shuffled the pages of the book Remus attempted to reference.

Remus’s eyes kept flicking to the others, leaning over the railing, analysing every move the team made. Remus was glad not to be on a broom. The wind was already hard to bear from the safety of the stands. Dread crept up his spine thinking about the flying lessons during winter.

Apart from that, Remus looked forward to the chilly weather. It had always been his favourite. He could spend the rest of his life curled up under a blanket in front of a fireplace. And, since the weather had taken a turn, the funny looks people gave him for wearing thick jumpers everywhere had stopped.

Remus pulled a wrapped muffin from his pocket. The teachers were much more lax about students sneaking food from the Great Hall on weekends. Eating in the rest of the castle couldn’t be forbidden per se since other kids ate sweets they’d been sent from home. Peter got a parcel every other day, filled with homemade treats. Remus picked at the cranberries in the muffin, dropping them below the benches and waiting for the team to land.

It was almost midday, but the clouds stayed stubbornly in place. Remus had no idea how long practices took, but he’d read that one game of Quidditch had lasted several months. Even after memorising all the rules and hearing lengthy recounts from James of famous games he’d been to, Remus couldn’t find interest in the sport.

He was glad when they finally descended from the stands. James was still over-analysing the practice session. Remus fell behind, letting Sirius and James carry the conversation.

“Why can’t you do all our homework?” Peter asked as they made their way back to the castle.

Remus stopped rummaging in his rucksack. Peter was always behind on his assignments and liked to spend more time complaining about them instead of working.

“What joy would school hold then, Peter?” Sirius replied, turning around.

“You haven’t done any homework in weeks,” James said, nudging Sirius.

“That’s not the matter of discussion,” Sirius said. “Besides, we couldn’t exhaust the brilliant mind of our Lupin.”

Remus shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

Sirius shrugged. “Well, you come up with most of our pranks.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You do,” James said. “The interesting ones, at least.”

Remus side-stepped a puddle. “You mean the ones that land you in detention?”

“Exactly,” James said, grinning.

“Glad to be of service,” Remus mumbled.

“I think I know what we’re missing,” James continued.

“Common sense?” Remus said under his breath.

James ran up ahead of them and turned to face Remus. “You.”

“Me?”

“You. Think about it. With your expertise on, well—everything—we’d be unbeatable.”

“That reminds me,” Sirius interjected. “We have to come up with an epic prank for Halloween!”

“Must you?” Remus asked.

“We,” James said, half jumping in the air.

“I don’t know,” Remus said.

“Come on,” James whined. “Just humour us.”

“Please,” Peter said.

“What about the spider thing,” Remus said. “Can’t you do that?”

Sirius shook his head. “We have to think bigger. Something that everyone will notice. We can make maybe a handful of spiders if we’re lucky.”

“So,” James said. “Any ideas would be appreciated.”

Remus didn’t think the pranks were a good way to spend their time, but James and Sirius had never been successful. “I’ve been reading in this book...” Remus thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the widening eyes of the others.

James practically bounced with anticipation. “Oh, just say it, Lupin!”

“I would if you stopped interrupting me,” Remus said dramatically. “I don’t see how we could pull that off—but I’ve been reading in our potions book.”

Sirius nodded. “What are you thinking?”

“Babbling Beverage,” Remus announced.

“Babbling Beverage?” Peter asked. “Where do we get Babbling Beverage from?”

“We make it,” Sirius said, grinning.

“We’d break several school rules only trying to get the ingredients,” Remus said, but none of the others listened.

“And once it’s prepared, we can sneak into the kitchens and pour it into the pumpkin juice!” James enthused.

“Do we know where the kitchens are?” Remus attempted to highlight one of the many obvious flaws in the plan.

“We do, actually,” Peter said. “When you didn’t come to dinner Monday, we packed some food for you, but Filch caught us.”

“And?” Remus asked.

“McGonagall intercepted us on our way to his office—she claimed to have a more fitting punishment,” James explained.

“Yeah,” Peter squeaked. “She took us to the kitchens and made us do the washing up.”

“It’s in the basements, somewhere,” James said. “Close by a hideous portrait. It can’t be hard to miss. McGonagall made us close our eyes, but I bet we can figure out how to get in.”

Peter made sure to recount every detail of their detention in the kitchens, theorising how the entrance worked while they climbed up to their common room. James and Sirius had to use the rest of the afternoon to catch up on their homework, given that they found themselves in detention almost every school night. With furrowed brows, they huddled in a secluded nook of the Gryffindor common room, their assignments out and brainstorming their plan for the most epic prank Hogwarts had ever seen. Peter had also taken to teaching Remus wizard chess.

Finally, Sirius declared he was about to gouge his eyes out if he had to look at another line of his Herbology homework, which curiously resembled more of a collection of plant sketches than the twelve-inch essay they’d been set.

***

Remus made a list of all the ingredients and equipment they’d need for the potion. They’d have to smuggle it all out of Slughorn’s classroom unless they could break into a storage room unseen somehow. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this.

They sat in a circle on James’s bed, their noses buried in Remus’s potions book. It was probably best if he copied the recipe and returned the book soon—Remus didn’t find the recipe in their textbooks, and if it actually worked, the teachers couldn’t trace it back to the four of them if Remus only had the book for a week a month before a prank.

Ingredients:

30 petals of Valerian sprigs

2 Aconite leaves

5 stems of juvenile bouncing bulbs

7 ground Dittany leaves, fine powder

10oz of juice from Candy Leaves

0.5oz of honey from the Giant Iberian Bee

 

Extract the juice from the Candy Leaves by boiling them in a cauldron over a low fire for twelve hours. Measure 10oz of the juice and combine with the honey, stirring clockwise thrice. Bring to a boil until bubbles are wart-sized. Add two aconite leaves and let simmer for seventeen minutes. Chill immediately to just above freezing. Grind seven dittany leaves into a fine powder and add it to the potion no later than eighty-eight seconds after cooling. The potion should assume a fiery red colour. Rekindle the fire, and stir counter-clockwise twenty-one times, adding a clockwise stir every three stirs. Drop in one stem after the fifth, seventh, twelfth, eighteenth and twentieth stir. Leave to brew and return in 33-45 minutes. Take the cauldron off the fire before adding the valerian spring petals. The potion should lose its red colour in favour of a sunbeam yellow. Wave your wand to complete the potion.

They looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

“What do you think?” Remus asked.

“It looks kind of hard,” Peter said.

“Nah,” James said, waving his hand. “We’ll make it work.”

Remus placed the list of ingredients and equipment in the middle. “That’s what we need. I reckon the cauldron and scales will be the hardest to take from potions. Although the mortar will be a challenge, too.”

“Aren’t your parents going to send you a new cauldron soon?” Peter asked. “You know, after what happened.”

Remus could feel the heat pool in his cheeks. He hadn’t even asked yet, but he doubted it would be possible for them. His father had given him the one he normally used. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” James asked.

“I don’t think they’ll get around to buying one soon.”

“Well, we’ll have to smuggle one then,” Sirius said, leaning against the bedpost casually.

“How much potion do you reckon we’ll need?” Remus said.

James studied the entry in the book. His fingers twitched as if he was calculating something. “This doesn’t say anything about dosing the potion, but we might need quite a bit. First, to test if and how it works. It says it’s supposed to be yellow or something, so we could add enough of it into the juice, and it won’t be obvious. I’m thinking maybe ten or twenty cauldronful should be enough.”

“Ten or twenty?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, reckon it’s best if we could use two cauldrons. Then we can work faster.”

“Where would we brew them?” Remus asked. “We can hardly light a fire on our beds.”

“What about the bathtub?” Sirius suggested. “No one will look in there, and it won’t set any curtains on fire that way.”

They calculated the amount of ingredients they’d need to steal to practise making the potion—it was more than would go unnoticed. They divided up the list—their priority was smuggling Sirius’s cauldron and scales from the classroom. Almost half of the ingredients they’d probably find in the student ingredient cupboard where Slughorn kept most of the basic potion ingredients, or in one of the greenhouses during herbology.

Only the honey worried Remus. He’d read about the bees that produced them—they were the size of mice and extremely protective of their burrows. Slughorn surely wouldn’t keep an ingredient like that where students could get their hands on it. Remus left late in the afternoon to find the storage cupboards he’d stumbled upon previously.

Monday morning, the four of them sat at the Gryffindor table with bouncing legs, waiting until potions class began after break. It was the first time any of the four looked forward to spending two hours in the damp dungeons. But first, they had to get through Defence Against the Dark Arts, where they had to focus since they were finally allowed to use spells on one another. Every Monday morning, Bracegirdle assigned partners, and they had to work off a list of spells they were supposed to know by Christmas.

When they finally emerged from Bracegirdle’s class, Remus rubbed his head and elbow, trying to cover the singed part of his jumper by stuffing it into his trousers. They raced each other down to the potions classroom without stopping for a snack. James got there first, nearly bouncing off the walls. They whispered and shivered in the dark until the rest of their classmates finally arrived thirty minutes later.

Peter was so nervous he nearly blew up their potion three times throughout their lesson. Remus only stopped him just in time, but their Rapid-Grow Elixir had a strange neon colour by the end when it was supposed to be a pale green. Remus thought it was likely going to poison any plant it touched.

Sirius and James weren’t much calmer. They sat in their chairs like sizzling firecrackers, although their potion turned out much better. They’d agreed Remus would distract Slughorn while the others would smuggle the cauldron out of the storage room.

Remus stoppered a flagon of his potion and took it to Slughorn as the class cleared the unused ingredients away—the potion needed to stew for twenty-four hours, but Remus was sure his was no good anyway.

“Sir?” Remus stood with his back against a disused blackboard in the corner of the room, clutching his potion.

Slughorn turned around from the papers he’d been rustling, looking a bit disoriented. “Y—Yes?” His moustache twitched when he laid eyes on Remus. “Ah, there you are. What can I do for you?”

Remus held up his flagon. “I’m not sure we brewed the potion correctly. Can you tell me what we did wrong?”

Slughorn held it against a pale flickering flame in a jar on his desk, giving the potion a few swishes. Remus peered past him to see the others crowding by the stores. Slughorn mumbled under his breath.

“Who did you work with on this?” Slughorn asked.

Remus stepped back further into the corner. “Peter.” Professor Slughorn looked confused. “Pettigrew,” Remus added.

Slughor blinked twice. “Ah, of course, of course. How many spoonfuls of unicorn horn shavings did you add to the potion?”

“Four, I believe.”

“And had the cauldron been off the fire for exactly eighty-eight seconds before you did this?”

Remus peered past him to his half-cleaned-up workstation, trying to remember. “I don’t know, sir.”

Slughorn’s eyelids looked heavy, half-drooping in the corners of his eyes. He gave the potion another swish. “Show me what is in your cauldron. I think there’s still something you can do to fix this.”

Most students were crowding through the door, racing to the Great Hall for lunch, hoping to leave the potions dungeon far behind them. Only Snape still stood by the doorway with another Slytherin first-year. Sirius was in the back of the crowd, throwing a wink at Remus as he spotted him and then quickly following Lily out the door.

“Ah, James, m’boy.” Slughorn stopped halfway to Remus’s desk. James turned slowly, his cloak bulging at an awkward angle behind him. Snape snickered. “How are you doing? I must say you show the same talent for potions as your father did at your age. Come join us! Perhaps you can tell us what is wrong with this potion.”

“Black is the brains on our team,” James said halfway to the door. “So, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Nonsense, come, m’boy, come.”

James shuffled over, bent at a strange angle, one of his hands hidden beneath the fabric. He must be the one carrying the cauldron. Remus froze, peering into the cauldron with half an eye. “I don’t know, professor. Was it the temperature?”

Slughorn chuckled, stirring the ladle. “Good, good. Yes, that is what I thought so too. Now, how do we fix that?”

Remus studied the room—they were alone. James put on a strained smile. “Less heat?”

“Quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. Would you be so kind to rekindle the fire?”

Remus tried to step behind James and discreetly take the cauldron from him since Slughorn had forgotten all about his presence, but before he could step around their professor, a loud metal clang filled the classroom.

“Now, what do we have here?” Slughorn leant back. “A cauldron. By Merlin’s beard! What do you need a cauldron for, m’boy?”

“No reason,” James said quickly.

“Come now, James.”

James leaned against the table and scratched his head. “I’m really just trying to improve my understanding of the subject, you know?”

“Well, if that is so,” Slughorn beamed. “You can meet me here tonight, and we will go over everything that troubles you. You have quite the legacy to live up to, after all.”

James clearly didn’t have very much experience with faking agreement. Remus sat on a chair, watching the colour drain from James’s face. “No, no. There’s no need for that, professor.”

“Don’t be shy, m’boy. No reason to be embarrassed. No one starts out a potionmaster.”

“It’s not that.” James’s eyes flicked to meet Remus’s, who had to bite his cheek to keep himself from grinning. “It’s Quidditch practice tonight, sir.”

“Oh, I hadn’t realised you were part of the team. Congratulations. One would have thought Minerva had mentioned a first-year playing for her.”

“I’m not,” James said. “On the team, I mean. I’m still working on it, which is why I can’t miss any practices.”

“Well, then tomorrow evening.”

“I’m afraid that’s Quidditch night, too.”

“Wednesday will do just fine. And I’ll forget all about that cauldron.”

Remus signalled a thumbs up behind Slughorn’s back, and James grinned, rolling his eyes. “All right, thank you, sir.”

“Please, call me Horace.”

“Do you think we could leave for lunch now?” James asked.

“We?” Slughorn asked. James gestured to Remus, waiting at his station. “Merlin’s beard! What are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Remus said quickly. “Just waiting for James.”

Slughorn looked between the two before he patted his stomach and wished them a good day.

They left the dungeons as fast as possible and met Sirius and an out-of-breath Peter in the entrance hall. James cursed Slughorn’s name well into their History of Magic lesson, which had put half the class to sleep. Not Remus, though. He was reciting the list of ingredients in his mind and trying to calculate the amount of smuggling they’d have to do. At any number he arrived, he concluded they’d need a big distraction that would leave at least one of them in detention.

***

Remus had planned a detour to the library after class. He sprinted up the round staircase, clutching at the stitch in his side, trying to keep his head from spinning.  There had to be some secret passageway to the library that didn’t require a five-flight climb up a circular stairway.

Remus tried to steady his breathing as he approached the library’s drop-off corner. Madame Prince looked up, undoubtedly because of the noise Remus made clearing his throat, and looked him over with her eyebrows drawn into a strict line. Remus paid her no attention and opened the covers of his books with trembling hands so the waiting quills could inscribe the return date by his name.

Madam Prince glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. It seemed she was starting to warm up to Remus at last. Indeed, she had stopped walking past Remus’s tables several times a visit, craning her neck over his shoulder. At first, she’d even checked his bag for food and confiscated his last Mars bar. Remus tapped his foot, leafing through ‘A History of Magic,’ when a quill tickled his hand to get him to move on.

He followed two Ravenclaw girls from his charms class out the door. They turned into the left-hand corridor, which led to the round staircase. Remus took the one on the right. It was narrower and wound over only one story before he could run through the astronomy tower and over the suspension bridge. Remus hated that bridge—but it was the quickest way to Gryffindor Tower.

The spiral staircase was narrow, barely wide enough for two people. Remus was focused on not tumbling down the stairs face-first, so he only looked up from his toes when someone said, “Watch where you’re walking!”

Snape stood in his way, his eyes narrowed in a scowl, and a hand hidden in his robes, no doubt gripping his wand.

“Leave me alone,” Remus said, not bothering to apologise for nearly knocking both of them to the bottom of the stairs. It had no use with Snape. Instead, he gripped his wand tighter, running through a list of spells he’d learned so far.

Snape didn’t budge. “What was Potter doing after potions today?”

Remus shrugged. Why was Snape so nosy all the time? “Dunno. Why do you care?”

“What is he up to?”

Remus shrugged and tried to push past Snape. Usually, Snape never wandered the corridors alone. He was always with at least another Slytherin or Lily. Snape’s nostrils quivered, but he didn’t move out of the way.

“Why do you care so much about Potter?” Remus asked instead.

“He’s up to something.”

“And you are not?”

Snape’s eyes narrowed. “None of your business, Loony.”

Remus nearly laughed out loud, but footsteps filled the narrow staircase. Both boys stepped apart, straightening.

“Excuse me,” Sirius had spoken before he’d seen it was Snape he was addressing. Snape made a disparaging noise and turned, whereupon Sirius said, “Snivelly,” with a wide grin.

“And the plot thickens,” Snape muttered.

“Get out of my way,” Sirius said, grabbing Remus’s sleeve and dragging him past Snape. “Come on, I’ve got to show you something.”

A spell whizzed past their head and hit the wall, leaving a scorch mark on the damp stone. Snape stood above them with his wand outstretched and his eyes wide.

They whipped around. Sirius already had his wand ready.

“We weren’t done here,” Snape said.

Remus tugged at Sirius’s cloak. “Leave him. He’s not worth it.”

Before Remus successfully pulled Sirius the rest of the way down the stairs, he’d fired off a series of mostly harmless spells they’d practised in Bracegirdle’s class that week. None of them struck Snape.

“What the hell, Lupin?”

“You wanted to show me something,” Remus said. “That doesn’t end with you in detention again, I hope.”

Sirius’s face softened, but he wouldn’t explain while they were still in the corridor.  Remus half-ran behind Sirius, which drew Filch’s attention. He appeared out of nowhere three floors away from the common room and shouted at them to stop. Sirius broke into a sprint, tugging Remus along.

They stumbled over the portrait hole’s threshold face-first into the safety of Gryffindor Tower. Filch was yelling at the Fat Lady outside. Sirius collapsed, laughing on the floor, and Remus couldn’t help but grin. A few of the students stared. Remus coughed once, twice, and saw from the corner of his eye as a flash of bright red hair disappeared into the dormitory tower.

Remus helped Sirius to his feet, and they climbed the stairs to find a pacing James in their dormitory.

“What took you so long?”

“Snape,” Sirius seethed.

“Wait, what?” James stopped and looked the other two boys over. “What’d he do?”

“Try and hex us,” Sirius said, falling onto his bed.

“Can we not get into this right now? What was so important you had Black fetch me from the library?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely.” James turned and strode to his bed, pulling a box from beneath. “My dad sent me a parcel, but it was late. Sorrel—our owl—brought it straight up to our window. Can you believe it?”

“A parcel?” Remus groaned.

“Not just any parcel,” Sirius said, flipping onto his stomach.

James grinned and held the box out to Remus. “Black’s right. Open it.”

Remus studied the box. It looked ordinary. It was half open already, and Remus suspected he was the only one in the room who didn’t know what it contained. Remus lifted the lid. Fluid and silvery grey fabric was balled up roughly in the box, the ripples making it look strangely iridescent. “A cloak?” Remus surmised. “That’s why we ran—”

James’s smirk grew even wider, if that was possible. “Not just any cloak.”

James pulled the fabric from the box, tossing it idly aside, and swung the cloak around his shoulders. Only his head floated in midair, his body completely invisible. Remus stepped back, trying to wrap his head around what he saw.

“It’s an invisibility cloak,” Peter enthused.

Remus shook his head. “A what?”

“It was my dad’s,” James said. “Mum wouldn’t let me take it. He sent it with a note not to tell her about it. I bet she’s just worried I’ll lose it, or something.”

It was brilliant, Remus had to admit. He wished for something like this if only to walk to the Whomping Willow without fear of being spotted. Or perhaps to explore the castle undisturbed. It wasn’t easy to stay out of Filch’s way.

“The whole castle is open to us with this,” James said, hopping on the spot and making a stray foot appear where the fabric moved. Remus was fascinated, longing to touch the strange cloak. James spun around and said, “We can get the cauldron tonight. And the ingredients.”

“I don’t think it’s a smart idea,” Remus said. “Slughorn just caught you. Plus, Snape suspects something.”

James shrugged off the cloak, placing it on his bed. “Who cares? We’d be invisible. They’d never be able to prove it was us.”

“Until Slughorn goes to McGonagall, and she searches our dorm only to find your invisibility cloak,” Remus said. “She’ll confiscate it right away.”

James blinked rapidly a few times, then dropped onto his bed and stroked the strange-looking fabric.

“Plus,” Remus said. “You’ve got Quidditch tonight.”

“We could go now,” Peter said.

Sirius shook his head. “The older students still have class down there. Lupin’s right.”

Remus took a deep breath and studied Sirius. He lay carelessly on his bed, one hand propping up his head and the other twirling around a strand of his hair. Remus finally slid the straps of his rucksack off his aching shoulders. A patch of fabric gleamed dark and wet. Remus cursed under his breath and yanked the top open.

“What is it?” Peter asked. “Remus?”

Remus was busy digging the books and parchment from the depths of his bag. The books all seemed largely unscathed, only a few ink drops on the covers, but his notes from History of Magic were ruined, as was his quill.

“All fine,” Remus gritted out.

“Need help with that?” Sirius asked, pointing his wand at Remus’s rucksack.

“D’you know a spell?”

Sirius shrugged and scrambled over the side of his bed onto all fours. Before Remus could say another word, Sirius had stuck his hand into his rucksack and promptly retracted it with a whelp and a low, “Merlin’s bollocks!”

Remus hurried over, examining Sirius’s hand. It was ink-stained and bloody, a long gash across his palm. None of the boys knew any healing spells, which left them no other option than to visit Madam Pomfrey.

James, who had turned green the instant he saw Sirius’s messy hand, accompanied them downstairs. Remus dropped them off by the Hospital Wing’s heavy door, taking off to find Peter and clean up the mess in their dormitory.

Neither Sirus nor James came to dinner that night.