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thebestofoneshots · 4 months

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Gilded Constellations | (wolfstar x reader)

Series Masterlist | Previous episode

Pairing: Wolfstar x Reader Word Count: 8.5 K Warnings: None Prompt: Who said potions class was meant to be boring? This IS a Wolfstar x reader fic, but it's incredibly slow burn. They won't start all dating each other until we're very deep into the story, but I promise the long wait will be worth it. Proofread by lovely: @aremuslupinsimp

Chapter 32: Come A Little Bit Closer

You groaned the second your alarm went off, placing a pillow over your eyes as you winced from the light being extremely harsh to your rather sensible senses. You checked the clock, you were pretty sure you had half threatened Sirius with making his life miserable through Moony last night and blinked a couple of times to force yourself awake.

After checking the time one last time, trying to convince yourself that the clock said 4:30 instead of 5:30 so you could sleep another hour, only to realize it wasn’t, you raised yourself until you were sitting on your bed “fuck,” you whispered as you felt the ache on your legs and back. You had rolled yourself into a ball, and while initially, the pain had been drawn out by the stress of the water spirit and the euphoria from the party, it wasn’t anymore. Just when I had started to feel fine, you thought.

You yawned and went to change, rolling your shoulders a couple of times, at least the shoulder wound was a lot better now, and the painkiller potion for that one would also help for the fall, which meant, by the time you were ready, and the meds had kicked in you felt a lot better, except for the fact that you were half tempted to wear a pair of sunglasses even if it was cloudy outside. When you walked down, Sirius and James were already there.

Sirius gave you a look, taking in your demeanour in an instant and smirking, “You sure you still want to fly, Vix?”

You gave him a look and huffed, “Very.”

He chuckled as he walked towards you and placed his arm around your shoulder, “If you say so then.”

James, who had no idea you had threatened Pads but had gotten a threat of his own in the morning from Sirius, to not go hard on you because of the fall –that he still had to speak his mind to you about– was a little confused with the interaction, but decided that it was probably something to do with being in a relationship. And since he had barely gotten Lily to go on one date with him, he really wouldn’t know.

Once you got to the pitch Sirius pulled out a small notebook from his pocket and opened it, handing it over to you, “Memorise this.”

You frowned, trying to figure out why Sirius would give you a notebook, but then you read some of the words and understood, it was the counterspell he had mentioned the previous night. You smiled, at how neatly he had written it down, at how he’d separated his cursive more than normal and paid attention to adding the extra dots and lines he sometimes left out.

Sirius had written it for you, and he wanted you to pay attention so he had been extra careful with it. And you, being as naturally curious as a fox, decided to snoop around the notebook a little more. There were a few silly doodles and for a minute you worried that he had given you his sketchbook, but it was definitely not it, that one was a little wider, and the cover was black, this one, on the other hand, had a wine red cover, a very Gryffindor notebook.

There were lists of songs, with names for mixtapes at the top on some pages, and a few movies some muggle friends had recommended, including some you and Remus had told him about. On some of the pages you spotted your name written on the edges, and you smiled, you didn’t know boys did that too.

“You done?” He asked as he turned to you, he had been pulling out some stuff from the shed with James. You quickly changed the page to the one you had to be on and smiled.

“Almost,” you said before trying to fully focus on the page and the words. They weren’t tricky, in fact, it was kind of a combination of protection spells you already knew, but it was rather long. His thick and delicate handwriting occupies the entire page and then some of the next one.

After a few more minutes you took a deep breath and nodded “I think I’m ready.”

“Good,” Sirius said, “Take your broom and hover for a bit.” You did as told. “Not so high silly, what if you fall?” he asked as he saw you float a few feet above his head.

“I won’t fall,” you said confidently.

“Vix, lower,” James said rather sternly, it was his captain’s voice. You were a little angry at his demanding tone but after a huff, you did as told. They were right anyway, you weren’t looking forward to falling again. You had enough bruising and soreness for the rest of the fucking year. Scratch that, for the rest of this one and the next one, you only had like thirty days left of 1976 anyway.

“Ready?” Sirius asked, you nodded. And then he started mumbling something, at first, there was nothing, you just continued hoovering peacefully, but then you felt it, a soft yank to the side. Slowly the movements got worse and worse and you felt like you were on a mechanical bull. Sirius looked at you concentrated, a small frown on his soft features as he did. Like he didn’t want to push too hard, but he knew whoever kept trying to push you off your broom –Barty– wouldn’t be merciful so he pushed on.

That’s when you started muttering the counterspell, tightening your grip on the handle and focusing your magic on your palms, letting it flow through your body and onto the item that was being jinxed. It wasn’t easy, wandless magic always held a small degree of complication, especially the more advanced it was, and counterspells were no easy feat.

Eventually, you lost the battle and ended up on the floor. Sirius rushed to help but you shook your head, raising your hand to indicate that he stayed in place, and then took a deep breath, “Again.”

“But…”

“Again,” you insisted “I have to master this one,” you added as you mounted your broom and nodded for Sirius to start again. James was watching attentively and allowed it to continue. Even after you fell over the second time, gritting your teeth and whispering “again.”

After a couple more times, it was James the one that stepped in. “How about we call it for today and continue trying tomorrow?” he suggested. You had just fallen from your broom and were sitting on the floor looking impossibly tired.

“But the spell…”

“James is right, we can practise more tomorrow, we’re not playing until next year anyway, we’ve got enough time to master it.”

You sighed but nodded, not even attempting to move from the floor for a bit while James and Sirius batted the bludger over each other a couple of times. You took Sirius’ notebook out of your pocket and went over the spell again, recalling if perhaps you had missed some words on the incantation or maybe it was the execution that wasn’t working properly. So you went over the words, reading them in your head and practising the spell as many times as you could.

“Hey Vix, let that go and come over, I need you to practise this,” James said when he noticed your overly concentrated stance.

It took you a second to pull your gaze from the paper but you nodded, feeling thankful that you’d get a distraction and then guilty for feeling thankful over it. Either way you pocketed the notebook, grabbed one of the beater bats and mounted your broom, flying towards them. After a while of beating the iron ball with as much force as you could muster, and using exclusively your good arm, you felt a lot better.

When you were done, you helped the boys with the equipment and walked alongside them all the way to the common room, where you parted ways to change into your respective uniforms. The entire day went by rather uneventfully, McGonagall had paired you with Remus on the transfiguration project and you were still going over crystal ball reading on divinations, although a bit boring, at least it was something you hadn’t any particular talents with.

Although, and you didn’t want to think much about it, there was definitely something dark surrounding the Ravenclaw tower. You decided that maybe you’d ask Sybil about it later, she had been taking extra classes with Spellman, so she’d probably know if something was up. You considered asking Spellman directly, but you were scared he’d end up blowing it off proportion and decided to just pretend you had seen a field with colourful flowers.

“What colour?”

“All the colours,” you said, knowing that if you said a particular one he might end up finding a deeper meaning behind your lie.

November 30th, 1976

The following day, you also woke up in time for morning practice, this time around you managed to stay on the broom for longer, but fell either way, and James didn’t allow you to practise as much as the previous day since he wanted to focus on dodging that morning, which had ended up on a very fun practice.

Sirius had almost gotten a bludger in the shoulder before you pulled him to the side and James barely managed to dodge one that had flown straight to his head. You were all laughing merrily by the time you were meant to go back to the dorms for breakfast.

Once you reached the common room you spotted Remus on one of the couches and plopped beside him, Sirius doing the same on the other side. “Ugh, you’re both sweaty,” he complained.

You pouted, “It’s magically cleaned,” you said dismissively as you sank a little deeper, neither you nor Sirius were actually sweaty since outside was so freezing cold. Well, perhaps just slightly. And Remus wasn’t bothered by you sitting next to him either, if anything, he loved it, he had to keep up appearances regardless.

“The couch is, I’m not!”

Sirius leaned his head on Remus’ shoulder, “Aww come on Moony, you’ll smell like your two favourite people all day. What’s there to complain about?”

Remus almost pushed the boy off him when Prongs intervened, “What do you mean his two favourite people, where does that leave me?”

Remus frowned at James, clearly interested in where the conversation was going, but it was Sirius who spoke, “On the armchair.”

James gasped, “Yeah, I don’t think you’d fit in here,” you teased further, a tiny smile spreading on your lips while you pointed at the little space of couch there was left. Now, if you and Sirius had been sitting like normal people, and Remus hadn’t had his legs spread wide, perhaps you could’ve found a way to fit Prongs in, but none of you seemed interested in changing position.

“I refuse to be left out!” he said with a frown.

“So what? You’ll use engorgio on the couch?”

“Too much trouble,” James said as he walked towards you and let himself fall on top of the three as if laying on the couch but using your legs instead.

“Oi, watch where that elbow goes,” Sirius complained.

“When was the last time you washed those?” you said with a frown as you stared at his murky-looking socks.

“They get washed every day!” James complained, “That’s their original colour.”

“No way in hell.”

“No,” Remus said as he shook his head. “that really is their original colour, we’ve been teasing him about them since he got them.”

You leaned over to look at James’ face, it was lying on top of Sirius’ legs “Why did you keep them?”

James went red, and Sirius responded, “Lily gave them to him, last Christmas I believe.”

“Yeah,” James said proudly. “They arrived at my house by owl mail. She even wrote a note that said they reminded her of me.”

You threw a side glance at Remus, clearly seeing the irony in Lily’s note, that seemed to completely slip past James, back then and even now.

“We’ve got potions,” you sighed, leaning back just a little and allowing James to accommodate his feet better. They were a bit heavy, but at least they weren’t crashing against any bruises.

“Thought you liked potions,” Sirius said.

“I like hanging out with Rem at potions, but the potion we’re working on is so tedious I swear you need to add another gram of something new every couple of minutes.”

“At least it hasn’t blown up on your face,” James said with a shrug, remembering the way it had exploded on Tom the previous class, and Tom was actually good at potions. Thought, perhaps he had been a little distracted that day.

“We could skip…” Sirius offered.

“No, we can’t!” Remus said, “She’s lost enough classes with last week’s drama!” He then turned to you. “And don’t you dare leave me alone with the veritaserum!”

You took a deep breath and nodded “I wasn’t thinking of skipping,” you defended. “I was merely informing.”

“James Fleamont Potter!” You heard Lily’s reprimanding voice from the stairs. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

James seemed a little confused, leaning up just a little to try and spot the redhead, “uh… Resting?”

“On top of your two freshly injured friends?!”

Both you and Remus started a chorus of “I’m fine” and “Oh… It’s okay Lily, I’m healed now, it doesn’t hurt anymore” but she took none of it. Walking all the way to the couch and forcing James to roll off of it. He fell on the floor and turned, looking at the kneeling figure with his charming little smile, like she was the only witch in the world.

You could tell Lily was fazed by it, especially when a little bit of red started to spread over her cheeks, you smiled, raising an eyebrow towards Remus who clearly had noticed too.

“Enough of that!” She told him with a slap on the arm. “Let’s get some breakfast, you must all be starving.”

“I second that,” you said with a nod.

“Yeah, me too,” Remus agreed.

“Hungry beasts, that’s the kind of people I surround myself with,” Sirius joked.

“If anyone’s a hungry beast here Sirius…” you started and threw him a look that had him gasp “Anyway… breakfast.”

All of you stood up and started walking towards the Great Hall, Peter was fast to catch up with you and Lily told you the girls were already there. Breakfast was as delicious as always, and you were so hungry you even took an extra slice of toast with jam and peanut butter to munch on on your way to potions.

“Pass me the Stewed Mandrake Root, would you? Sweetheart?” Remus asked as he stared at the cauldron with a bit of a frown.

“We’ve already added that,” you responded, leaning forward to look as well, the potion was a weird murky brown colour, not the mossy green that the book described it would be. “Did we measure wrong?”

“Maybe we spun it the wrong way around?” Remus said, just as puzzled as you, “You measured that one, you never measure wrong.”

“Yeah, I checked twice,” you agreed, that was something you had learned from Remus near the beginning of the year. And you were especially careful with longer and more tedious potions like this one.

You saw Snape snigger from the side as he stared at your cauldron, and you were about to flip him off with two fingers when Remus placed a hand over your forearm and gave you a look. You gave him a reproachful stare in response but he just raised an eyebrow at you and tilted his head a little. You huffed in response but held back the insults you had in store for Snivelus. You understood why Remus did it, getting in petty fights with the Slytherins had already gotten you almost killed once.

You sighed and went back to look at your potion, suddenly remembering, “There’s a troubleshooting guide at the end of each chapter, perhaps we can find something there?” you suggested and the two of you went straight to look through the book.

“I think… the only thing that could’ve happened is someone sabotaging the potion…” Remus said with a frown, “If we had added too much of any ingredient the result would be different colours. It would be red with too much Mandrake root, blue if we had undercooked the Syrup of Hellebore, and purple if it were because of the Bicorn Horn powder, but none of these mention brown.”

You bit your lip as you analysed the situation and looked around, if someone had actually sabotaged your potion, you’d have to figure out exactly what they had used to do it, to attempt and revert it, if it was even possible.

You started looking at people’s tables and the ingredients they had placed on them, Alison Prewet and Archie McMillan had a few ingredients that didn’t go in the recipe but neither of them was particularly good at potions so you couldn’t be sure it had been them.

Tim Klum also had some suspicious-looking ingredients, but by his nervous stance and recent rash, you assumed he was trying to brew something to counter it instead of sabotaging anyone else. Besides, you had barely crossed words with him, and you were certain he didn’t have anything against Remus, regardless you wrote down all the ingredients he had on his stable, identifying them by texture and looks.

Then you spotted something mysterious by Sirius’ table. Of course, Sirius would never sabotage you or Rem, but Severus? You wouldn’t put it past him, he could be a jealous little snake, although he had never done such a thing, and you weren’t sure why he would be sabotaging you now, the fact that he had Shivelfig, which was normally used for draught of living dеath made no sense. Unless he wanted to steal it for himself that is.

You turned to Remus “I have a hunch of who might have done it,” you mumbled, almost inaudibly, but he heard, and you knew he’d be able to hear it. He gave you an attentive look, “But I want to test my theory before we make a mistake.”

“What do you need?”

“Just a bit of someone else’s potion, that’s at the same stage as ours.”

Remus nodded, “I can do that, you?”

“I’ll get some Shivelfig.”

Both you and Remus nodded as you looked attentively at the other, he grabbed a small vial and started walking towards James and Lilly while you walked towards Sirius’ table.

“Hi Pups,” you said with a smile.

“Sod off,” Snape said when he spotted you.

“You do it.”

“This is my table.”

“Argh, c'est un idiot, comment tu le supportes?” You asked, looking at your boyfriend.

“I’m intelligent enough to know you’re calling me an idiot,” Severus said impassively.

"Très bien, casse-toi alors."

Sirius laughed at your crassness and Severus just rolled his eyes, not understanding what you said but figuring out you were either telling him to fuck off or piss off, which wasn’t that far from the real thing. “How come you’ve come to visit, Kit?” Sirius asked.

“Missed you,” you said simply, Sirius saw the mischievous smile you gave him and knew instantly you were up to something.

“Aww, you did?” he asked as he placed his hands on your hips and pulled you slightly closer to him, Slughorn was near the back of the classroom helping some Slytherins with a fire they had accidentally caused, which was enough distraction for you to be able to be all over Sirius at that moment.

“Oh, please, I’m going to puke…” Severus said as he rolled his eyes and turned to the side.

You forced yourself to hold back a laugh, Sirius, whose back was turned to Severus, and who had the least serious face you’d ever seen, wasn’t helping. “Devrions-nous lui donner un spectacle?” You asked in a low voice, trying to make it sound like you were flirting rather than just asking Sirius if you should annoy Severus further.

Sirius bit his lip, looking at you with a small frown before nodding, “Mh-hum,” he replied before leaning in to give you a kiss.

“Ugh please, we’re in class!”

“Go be jealous elsewhere, Snivelus,” Sirius pulled himself from the kiss just for a second to say that, going back and deepening the kiss a second after. Severus looked at the two of you in disbelief and then back at Slughorn, but he was way too busy with the fire in the back. Who would have thought adding a little bit of dragon breath to the potion would cause such a complicated mess?

You deepened the kiss, pushing Sirius back just a little and his back crashed against Snape’s shoulder, Snape pushed back and Sirius had to tighten his grip on you so you wouldn’t fall. You could feel he was about to laugh because of Severus’ reaction and you squeezed his arm just a little to get him to focus and he did, even let out a small, rather performative grunt, just to piss Severus further.

Severus was about ready to go get the teacher, or a prefect, or someone to get you to stop snogging in front of his face when you leaned in again, this time pushing Sirius’ arm strategically so it pushed their leftover Syrup of Hellebore, it wouldn’t do any harm to him since it had been cooked, but it would make his uniform stink after a couple of hours, and you knew he knew about it.

“Ugh!” he complained, “You pair of dimwitted animals!”

You pulled back from the kiss, just to give him a side glance, looking only mildly apologetic “Oops, sorry…”

Snape gave you a disgusted glance and stood up. “I’m off to clean this up, Black,” he glared at the boy, Sirius turned to him with an uninterested glance. “Please, for the sake of our passing grade, make sure our potion stays boiling at a steady temperature while I’m gone.”

“Sure Snivelus, I’ll make sure,” Sirius said with a rather indifferent shrug just to piss Severus off a bit more. Severus gave him an untrustful glance, but stood up and left. While he was leaving you went back to kissing, which seemed to piss Severus off even further, which made both you and Sirius smile in the kiss, you were half still kissing, half using each other’s mouths to hold back a laugh.

When you finally stopped, Sirius was biting his lip to hold back a grin while you were looking at him with lips pursed, still trying to hold back a laugh.

Sirius cleared his throat “Now that the crow’s gone, would you care telling me why you’re really here?”

“What? Kissing you passionately in the middle of class is no good excuse?”

Sirius raised his eyebrow “Oh no, I think it’s an excellent excuse, but I’m waaay more likely to use it than you are.”

You gave him a small smile, “I think Severus might have sabotaged my potion,” you admitted, “and I think he used this,” you took a hold of the jar with Shivelfig , “to do it.”

“We should ruin his potion then,” Sirius said instantly. You gave him a look, he raised an eyebrow “What?”

“Sirius, he’s your partner. If we ruin his potion…”

Sirius frowned, “Well, it’s not fair if he gets out scot-free.”

“Remus and I are trying to fix it.”

“And you can do it?”

You shrugged, “If he really did use shivelfig, we could try and find a way to counter its effect, or at least neutralise it.”

“So you came to get some.”

You nodded, “The kisses were a great bonus though.”

“I can give you many more bonuses, darling,” he said and leaned in again, but you felt a hand on your shoulder and turned around to see who was there, thankfully, it wasn’t Slughorn.

“You got that?” Remus asked.

“Yeah,” you said as you pulled a small flask with shivelfig from your cloak.

“Hold up! When did you even…?” Sirius asked, confused.

“I’m a girl of many talents,” you told him with a wink. “See you around, Puppy!” You gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and walked back to your table alongside Remus. “You got the potion?” You asked Remus, who seemed tense for some reason. He had seen the whole thing happen, and his head had started going haywire with so many thoughts running through his head.

“Yeah,” he responded, “James and Lily.”

Once you were both on your table, he poured half of his little flask on a crystal vase and you used a pair of tweezers to add the tiniest bit of shivelfig to the potion. Nothing happened and you frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t Snivelus in the end…”

“No wait,” Remus said, placing a hand on your forearm and taking a small stick, sipping it in the flask and turning clockwise three times, the potion turned the same murky brown as yours in an instant.

“Remus, that’s brilliant!” you said with a smile “The potion didn’t go brown until we spun it, and Severus probably knew, he could have added the shivelfig a while ago, that way we wouldn’t have noticed, and we would have just assumed we did something wrong.”

Remus nodded, “He’s an asshole, but he’s a competent one.”

“So now we know what he used, how do we neutralise it?”

“I’m not sure,” Remus said as he bit his lip.

“Sopophorous bean?” you asked. “Isn’t it used on draught of living dеath to neutralise the shivelfig’s poisonous nature?”

Remus shook his head “Yeah, but combined with Mandrake Root it can be dеadly, our veritaserum would end up being Baneberry Potion instead.”

“Shit, you’re right,” you said almost in a whisper. You frowned, racking your brain trying to find a solution only for it to clash against the rest of the ingredients. Your face started to fall when you started running out of ideas. No matter how much you thought about it, it seemed like there was no solution, which left you dejected since even if you had figured out exactly how they had sabotaged you, you wouldn’t be able to fix it.

“I might have an idea,” Remus said then, he had the same face he made when he was focused on a task, preparing a complicated potion or working on the details of a plan, it was that of absolute concentration. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed, his lips pressed tightly against the other, causing one of his scars to move along with his mouth. He looked cute.

“Wait… really? How?”

“I’ll go get some Moonstone… Do you have the charms book with you?” He asked.

“We… don’t have charms today…” you said. You used to carry it around all the time but after your shoulder wound carrying as little as possible was a lot more manageable, even with the floating spell you had placed on your bag.

“It’s fine, it’s somewhere in my bag, look for it, will you? Find the magnetism spell.”

“The magnetism…” you started with a slightly questioning look and then gasped. “Remus, that’s… has it even been tested before?”

Remus shrugged in response, “It’s either that or we do it over. Besides, we could test it with this,” he said as he pointed at the little vial that you had used to see if it really had been shivelfig what they had used to ruin your potion. He then leaned down and placed his bag –that he had carelessly thrown on the floor– on the table right in front of you. “Just be careful, there’s an extending spell inside so I can keep all my stuff. Might take you a while to find it,” he added right before he walked towards the ingredients cabinet.

He hadn’t been exaggerating, his bag was absolutely filled with things. You dug inside and could feel several books, you pulled them out, one by one, he had some books for classes, some library books that had gone overdue, the copy of The Godfather he had been reading you and Sirius, the copy you had given him of The Portrait of Dorian Grey when you discovered he was a Werewolf.

You’d told him he could keep it one time he mentioned he wanted to get a copy to annotate, which made you wonder if he had annotated the sides and you opened it, you had written some notes on the pages, notes he hadn’t erased, writing around the edges and under your own handwriting. And on ink, it was absolutely clear who had written what, and he’d even responded to some of the things you had annotated. You smiled, you’d have to ask him to borrow it to you one day, just so you could see what he wrote.

As you flipped the pages, something called your attention. Sirius’ name was written on one of the corners of the book, you frowned and looked at the page, there were a few highlighted quotes here and there, but there was something about Sybil calling Dorian prince charming and you chuckled. Yeah, you too would have considered Sirius a Prince Charming. You closed the book and placed it back on his bag, completely missing how Sirius’ name repeated over and over through the pages, how your name was doodled alongside his too.

How in one of the quotes from Basil, he had pointed out that Basil was just like him, fallen in love with the impossible, but that Basil had been lucky enough to only find one of those people rather than two, how miserable would Basil be if he had loved not only Dorian, but Sybil too? Perhaps half as miserable as Remus felt sometimes.

You continued to rummage through Remus’ bag, and you felt a small plastic bag, you assumed it was chocolate and took a hold of some of them out to ask him for one when he came back, you knew he would say yes anyway, but when you pulled your hand out, you were met with a strip of condoms instead. You quickly put them back in, trying not to think of the fact that they were size L or the fact that he had so many of them. Does he not know about the potion? No, he definitely knows about the potion, I mentioned it at the Quidditch party. You swallowed thickly, you were sure you had flushed at least a little when you felt a hand on your back.

“You found it?” Remus asked. You were startled, and had to cough a couple of times to compose, Remus felt a lot taller to you at that minute, as if the size of the… nevermind, erase that thought, erase that thought.

“No, I– you keep a lot of stuff in your bag, Rem.”

“You didn’t find anything weird, did you?”

“Weird?!” you were sure your voice had gone an octave higher by that point. “No,” you coughed again, “Nothing.”

He looked at you as if he wasn’t convinced, “Cause if you did it was probably Sirius’ he leaves a lot of stuff in my bag.”

The idea of them being Sirius’ instead of Remus’ made you gulp, you were sure your cheeks would warm if you didn’t change the subject immediately, so that’s exactly what you did, “Found the moonstone?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “back pocket,” he added as he dug his hand through his bag, “On the left, my left,” he added then, “where you’re standing.”

“Oi! I know where the left is!” you argued as you went for it.

“You didn’t know last time.”

“Though we settled on the fact that I just wanted to grab your ass.”

He chuckled, “You really can’t lose, can you?”

“I jumped off my broom to get the snitch, what did you expect?”

Finally, he pulled out the book, one of the condoms falling on the floor. He looked at it, and then at you, you were also looking at it “That’s…”

“I know what that is,” you said. “Spent last summer on muggle London, remember?” It had been pretty hard to forget the safe sex campaigns all over the bus stops near the biggest schools as you walked past them. And of course you, being naturally curious, had gone and read all the details they offered. At least you had learned a few things in the end.

“Alice gave them to me,” he said as he leaned down and grabbed it, placing it back in his bag as fast as possible.

Remus seemed genuinely flustered about it, which is why you couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tease him. “Oh, so you’re definitely having fun,” you said with a teasing smile.

“What?! That’s–”

“Hey! I don’t judge,” you added with a shrug, “I told you when I found your stash.”

“That wasn’t–”

“It’s fine Rem,” you said as you placed a hand on his arm. “You deserve to relax every now and then, if anything, you should use them up before they go bad… Although you do know the potion exists, right?”

“Please stop,” Remus said as he placed both hands over his face and leaned down on the table. He was flustered over you insinuating such things, more because he always thought about you when he did them with Alice than because you insisted on teasing him about her. If only you knew, heck, you would probably break off your friendship with him. As if anything Remus did would make that happen.

You only laughed and placed a hand on his back “All right big boy,” you didn’t say that on purpose, but it did make you think back on the size of the… no. “Back to the potion…”

“Yes,” Remus stood, the flush on his cheeks fading away slightly. Although the bits of red still made him look adorable, you almost wanted to get a picture of it. And then you wondered what he would look like if he were looking at a person he liked, little did you know that was exactly what he was doing.

All the while, Remus was flipping through the pages. “Here!” he said and pointed at the page, leaning closer to you so you could see the book, “So… the idea is to use the spell on the moonstone, but somehow make it attract just the shivelfig.”

“We could do it by combining it with a locating spell?”

“It was my idea too, but… how?”

“Hold up,” you said as you pulled a parchment from your bag, he pulled the quill closer to your hand and you dipped it in some ink before drawing some runes inside a small triangle. It looked a lot like what the muggles thought whichcraft looked like, and it was a little archaic, inexperienced wizards would say it was dark arts -it wasn’t- and regardless, it was still the easiest way to combine spells.

“Are you drawing a Nimueh diagram?”

You nodded, and he stared as you continued to add symbols and runes and lines around your paper. Once it was done you placed the stone on top. “You’re better with location spells, how about you say that one and I go for the magnetism one?”

“Have you ever done it?”

You shook your head “But I haven’t done a location spell either, you have,” you added with a shrug.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Remus said with a nod and offered his hand. You gently placed your hand over his and gave it a soft squeeze. “In three… two… one…”

Little did you know that while you chanted the spell, and almost with the whole previous interaction, Sirius had been looking at the two of you with absolute fascination. At the incredible team you made, at how cute Remus looked flushed and at how much fun you seemed to have around him, teasing him. It was in those genuine, carefree smiles that you managed to pull out of his best friend, your best friend too, he remembered. It was in the chuckles he pulled out of you, in the way you moved around the table to get the ingredients, in the way you grabbed your parchment and he passed you a quill.

Sirius was so enthralled by the two of you that he didn’t notice Severus returning to his sit right next to him, “I told you to check on the potion you stu-”

Sirius turned around to look at the boy, annoyed. “The potion’s fine,” he said carelessly. “No one messed around with it while you were gone. Vix would never stump as low as that.” He said that last bit with venom, looking straight at Severus who narrowed his eyes. There was no way Sirius could’ve known, and yet…

“Do you think it’ll work?” You asked Remus, you had just finished chanting the spells, your hands sliding off each other a little too fast for his taste and the moonstone -that shone as you infused it with magic- seemed to be slowly fading into its natural state.

“There’s only one way to know,” Remus said as he took the small milky stone and dropped it straight onto your cauldron. You peered in, and slowly, the murky water took back the mossy green colour it should have had initially. Both you and Remus smiled relieved.

“You did it!” you said almost jumping in joy, placing your hand over his arm and squeezing lightly, “You’re absolutely fantastic!”

Remus turned to you, his expression mirroring your own, “We did it,” he remarked “It was a team effort, you guessed what they’d used to sabotage us.”

You were both smiling brightly at each other when Professor Slughorn approached the two of you, “Are you finished with your potion?” he asked, “You seem rather thrilled.”

“We had a bit of a setback,” you admitted, “but we’ve managed to fix it, the veritaserum should be finished before the class.”

“A setback? Of what kind?”

“We got sabotaged, Professor,” Remus explained.

“Outrageous! Who would dare do such a thing, to such brilliant students?”

You were about to speak but Remus intervened “We do not know, but (Y/N) managed to figure out what they had used shivelfig, we used the knowledge for a spell on the moonstone and magnetised the unrequired ingredient to it.”

You gave Remus a look but decided to follow along, whatever reason he had not to rat Snape out, must have been good. You used your wand to pull the moonstone out of your cauldron, it was no longer white and seemed to be covered with a murky slippery substance. The shivelfig clearly had reacted with some of the other ingredients. You levitated it closer to your face to give it a look before letting it fall back down on the table.

“And you used a Nimueh diagram so that the shivelfig would adhere to the moonstone, clever!” He said as he pulled out the paper from the table and inspected it. He could see it was your handwriting, which is why he looked at you when he said it.

“Thank you, sir,” you responded, “But it was a team effort.”

He turned back to Remus as if just remembering he was there too, you narrowed your eyes at him, “Of course, of course,” he said dismissively, which pissed you off a little bit too much. “Please stay after class is over, I need to have a word with you.”

You looked at him, frown deepening but nodded. “Of course, Professor.”

“Excellent, so.. get on with it. I want to see how your potion comes out in the end,” And with that, he was gone, off to talk to some other students.

“The hell was he going on about?”

“It’s probably about the slug party,” Remus said with a shrug.

“The what?”

“His exclusive Christmas dinner, he only invites the best students.”

“You must have gone several times then,” you concluded.

Remus tensed, “No. Never been invited.”

You turned to him with a frown, “What but that doesn’t–”

You were cut off by James, “You done, kids?”

“Almost,” Remus said, you passed him the last ingredient you had to measure and he placed it on the cauldron, stirring the potion three times to the right, finally the colour was transparent.

“You think it worked?”

You shrugged, “Only one way to find out,” you said as you grabbed a pipette, dipping it in the liquid and placing your finger on the hole at the top, moving it to your mouth and releasing your finger, allowing just a drop to fall on your mouth. You didn’t want the effect to last overly long. “Go on then, ask me something.”

“How many fingers do I have up?” James asked, raising his hand.

“Six,” you responded, “that was a stupid question, Prongs.”

James gasped at your reply “Rude.”

“What did you get on your transfiguration mock quiz?” Remus asked with a teasing smirk.

You groaned, not wanting to respond to this one. “I got a Dreadful,” you said, despite yourself.

“Wait, really?! Is that why you wouldn’t show it to me?” James asked as he leaned a little closer to the two of you.

You nodded, “I couldn’t transform the pot into a swan, I made something close to a chicken.”

“Close to a chicken?” James pressed.

“That was actually a dreadful animal,” you replied, trying to find a bit of humour in the situation.

“Well, our trickery worked, the potion’s great,” Remus said pleased as he pulled out a vial to place it in and hand it over to be graded. Pulling out a tag he had previously prepared and lacing some string on it to attach it to the top of the potion. It had “Veritasetum” and then both of your names at the bottom. All in a perfectly elegant-looking handwriting, he’d used caligraphicus to make it extra neat. He always did like the way your names looked beside each other.

You pulled a flask from your bag and also served some inside. “In case it comes in handy,” you told the boys, who both looked at you with rather impressed expressions as you placed it back inside your bag, now filled.

Lily called for James and it was you and Remus alone again, he leaned over, you might be pissed after what he was about to do, “Hey little witch,” he said softly. You were cleaning things around but turned to look at him, his expression unreadable. “Are you really not scared of me?”

You gave him a look, something between a frown and a comprehensive sigh. You took the pipette and let a few other drops fall in your mouth, more than you had done initially, “In case you thought that perhaps it had already worn off,” you said. “And no, Remus, I’m not scared of you, or Moony for that matter.” The boy seemed apprehensive, “Must I drink the entire cauldron for you to believe me?”

Remus sighed, a relieved chuckle escaped from his mouth. He knew you weren’t, you had been reassuring enough at the infirmary when you cuddled him as Vixen, but he needed to make sure. To make sure you weren’t lying just for his sake like he had discussed with Sirius the night before the prank. He smiled, diverted and decided to tease further, “So you definitely still want to be friends?”

You smiled. “Best friends,” you replied, “You couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried.”

“I have, it didn’t work, remember?” You hummed in response. And then he looked at your shoulder, biting his lip, the next question might actually piss you off, “Does it still hurt?”

You thought your answer through, “Less than before,” you replied eventually, it was true.

“But it does hurt.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

You looked at the side, not wanting to answer, closing your eyes and sighing when you realised you wouldn’t be able to hold back. “I don’t know, like getting clawed at by a huge wolf, I suppose?”

“Do you resent me?”

You frowned. “Of course not! And I don’t resent Moony either, before you ask,” you said that last bit with an accusing finger towards him.

“And the fall?”

“More scary than painful.”

“Scarier than me?”

“You’re not scary!” You turned to him.

“Scarier than Moony?” he corrected.

“Yes.” There was silence. “The water monster… it was… nothing like Moony, frightening, hungry, unreasonable. Moony’s different, he– you are beautiful.”

There it was again, you calling him beautiful, you kept doing that over and over, and he thought it was just your protective nature, you wanting him to feel better about it, but with veritaserum, it was impossible to lie. Remus cleared his throat, looking to the side as he felt a flush going up his neck and you smiled, pushing him just a little. “Now stop asking me questions that make me sound all sappy!”

“Does it bother you?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Told you to stop making me sound sappy, how would you feel I had you drink some and ask you questions?”

“I never had you drink anything!” he replied, offended.

“Right, you only took advantage of the fact that I had drunk it to ask your silly questions.”

“They were legitimate.”

“Most of them I had already answered Remus.”

“Only half answered,” he corrected. “You’ve said time and time again that you were fine.”

“I AM fine!” And that was true, again, you couldn’t lie. Did everything hurt? Yes. But other than that, other than the pain, other than the soreness, you were perfectly fine.

“And you truly believe it,” Remus said, surprised.

You smiled and pushed him again “No more questions,” you warned with a smile on your face.

“And here I was thinking of asking you if Sirius was good in bed,” Remus joked.

“I wouldn’t know,” you said before you could stop yourself.

Remus looked at you surprised, “You mean you haven’t–”

“That’s none of your business Moony,” you said as you started to flush. “We said no more questions.”

“Oh, but you’re always teasing me about things like this,” he said as he poked your arm with a sneaky little smile. “So you really never have?”

“Remus!” You reprimanded again and then sighed. “No, have not. We haven’t gotten there yet, okay? We’ve been busy with other things, if you can tell. Now do I have to go into details for you to stop it or…”

“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry.”

You huffed, “you’re too curious for your own good.”

You were right in more than one way. “If that isn't the cauldron calling the kettle black.”

You smiled and shoved him to the side again, he enjoyed the feeling of your hand on his shoulder, he was wondering how much he could tease you before you actually got pissed at him when the bell rang.

“I’ll take this to him and see what he wants,” you said as you grabbed the potion you’d finished.

“I’ll tell Nightshade why you’re going to be late,” he said as he placed the rest of his books in his bag, “I’ll take your bag too,” he said as he picked it up from the floor.

You frowned, “I can take my own bag, Moony.”

“I know, but it still hurts, doesn’t it?” he asked as he pointed at your shoulder.

You narrowed your eyes at him, he knew you’d have to tell him the truth still, you had taken more drops than you needed, you huffed out a “Yes” as you rolled your eyes, “But I’m perfectly capable of–”

“I know, and I don’t care,” he interrupted as he slung your bag on his shoulder. “I made that,” he said as he pointed at your shoulder, “Now I carry your bag.”

You scoffed, now diverted at your friend’s resolution more than anything, you were about to say something when Sirius shouted from the door, “You coming Moons, Starshine?”

“You fill him up, yeah?” You asked Remus just before you gave Sirius a wink, he blew you a flirty kiss in response.

Remus nodded when you turned back to him, and you gave up on fighting for your bag, after one last sight. “See you in class,” you told him with a wave and walked straight to talk to Slughorn, potion in hand.

“You’ve demonstrated to be a remarkable student the few months that you have been here darling.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And not only in potions, you were brilliant at the Quidditch game and I’ve heard good things from Professor Bins and Seraphina. Flitwick also speaks highly of you.”

You tilted your head slightly, a small “hum” escaping your lips, you were sure Slughorn wasn’t done with whatever he was about to say.

“And you’ve demonstrated time and time again to me that you are more than well-trained on potions.”

“It’s only been thanks to my pairing with Remus.”

“Ah… yes, your pairing with Mr. Lupin,” he said. “The way you switched the papers was undoubtedly clever.”

You gasped, “You realised?”

He just smiled, as if it had been obvious, “I picked the partners for everyone, of course, I knew. I just wasn’t sure how you’d managed to outmagic my spell. All at Potter’s request, I believe. He must have convinced you, that boy has been madly in love with Miss Evans for a while now.”

“But you didn’t say anything then.”

“If you had been smart enough to switch my charms, I assumed you’d be able to cope with Remus’ speed at potion making.”

“So you know he’s good.”

“Of course, Remus has always been remarkable.”

“Then why has he never been invited to the–”

“So you know why you’re here.”

“He might have mentioned something like a Christmas dinner.”

Slughorn nodded, “Yes, this is my cordial invitation to our dinner on the 20th of December. I know there’s still some time, but I thought you might want to know since you are always welcome to bring a guest along.”

“Could I bring Remus?”

“You may bring whomever you want.”

“But why isn’t he invited?” you pressed.

Slughorn gave you a look, you didn’t want to press too much, you had the suspicion it might have been due to bIood status, either that or Slughorn knew about his lycanthropy, either way, it just didn’t make sense to you that he wouldn’t invite Rem.

“For reasons that you are not and will not be aware of, I’m afraid,” he responded eventually.

“But I could bring him as my guest?”

“Yes, although I expected you to bring Mr. Black.”

That got you to pull your head back just a little, you had been so defensive over Remus, you had forgotten that the most logical person for you to bring along would be your actual boyfriend.

“Think about it,” Slughorn said with a small smile. “And tell me when you’ve made your choice. Now I don’t want to keep you for too long, it’s time to get to your next class.”

You gave him a courteous nod and left. You’d have to talk to Sirius about this.

Series Masterlist | Next Chapter

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A/N: Well, do we wanna talk about the size or are we all just gonna ignore it like Miss Vixen? Also GUYS! Upon some requests, we have a DISCORD server now and you can all join in and chat about marauders and/or GC with other lovely people. If you wanna discuss a new oneshot or even the new chapters of GC this is your place to go. The announcement for it is here and I'll leave links to it on a reblog of this post ad in the comments.