Waiting For You (A Marauders Story) [On Hold]

Chapter 4 - Potions

Normally I love Potions; the smell of the different ingredients and the different reactions you can get excites me like nothing else. Not today. The bland simulacrum of our Potions master was grating on my nerves. Apparently Professor Slughorn had been called away for a family emergency and Professor Dumbledore had made the most imbecilic decision to replace him for the day with this vacuous ignoramus. My head drooped against my palm as my eyelids fluttered softly across my cheeks. I sucked in a shuddering breath and wrenched my eyes back open. Even if this guy made jumping off the Astronomy Tower look fun, I still needed to pay attention. I focused on staying awake, ignoring my pounding head and listening to the dimwit in front of the class.

"Now, given that a bezoar is found in a sheep's stomach, I expect you all to know its components," he mind-numbingly intoned.

I could barely keep myself from shoving him out the window for his sheer stupidity. Goat's stomach! It is found in a goat's stomach, you halfwit!

I shifted my head on my hand and almost groaned aloud as I was shot in the temple. I rubbed my temples at the pain lancing across my mind like strikes of lightning.

I leaned towards Marlene who was resting her head against the desk next to mine and whispered, "Next time you've got a hangover after a night with Black and three bottles of firewhiskey, I'll go easier on you."

She turned her head to face me but kept her eyes closed as she snorted, "Yeah, right. Like you'd go easy on me. Just 'cause you have a headache now doesn't mean anything. How did you get that headache by the way? It wouldn't have anything to do with you staying up all night with Potter, would it? What could you have possibly been doing with Potter to give you a headache, Lily?"

I groaned into my hands, "Listening to Potter talk would give anyone with two brain cells to mash together a headache."

"Wow, Lily," she opened her eyes and shook her head at me, barely keeping the grin from her face. "You've changed. The old you would have thrown Potter off the Astronomy Tower before listening to him talk."

"Potter seems different this year," I lowered my voice as the idiot perked up at the sound of his name. "At least that's what I thought when he started a conversation last night about books. I thought maybe he might have become intelligent over the holidays but then he opened his mouth again."

She raised her eyebrows, her grin full blown now, "Then why didn't you go to bed? Why stay up until three listening to him talk - if that is what you were doing."

I glared at her. "Do you think I didn't try? He followed me into my room and sat at my desk talking all night! I couldn't get the arrogant toerag out of my room!"

She snorted again, "Ever heard of magic? You could have hexed him out of your room; last year you would have. But ever since that night you spent out with the Marauders last week, you've been different - almost nicer to them."

"What are you talking about? The only two I'm never not nice to are Potter and Black and that's because they're annoying, attention-seeking, two-year-olds."

She shook her head, still cradled in her arms. "Annoying? Attention-seeking? Wow. Your insults get better every year."

I glowered at her, "And I have not been nice to them! I got half an hour of sleep that day because of them!"

Marlene opened my mouth to make a sharp retort but the brainless dolt interrupted her, "How dare you speak in my classroom! You must be Potter."

I glanced up at him but was startled to see him glaring at me. Did he just call me Potter?

He pointed at Potter who was grinning at me a couple of desks away. "I will not have this rudeness. Go sit next to that student - who could only be Evans given the respect he's showing in my classroom - and learn from him what it means to be respectful."

I gaped at him. Did this moronic imbecile just tell me to learn respect from Potter?

As he jabbed his finger in Potter's direction again, and with a face of volcanic storms, I rose from my chair slowly and made my way to my new designated seating arrangement. So that I could sit next to Potter, Remus quickly moved out of his seat into the next empty one. I sat down between them, all the while wishing I could murder this teacher with just my eyes.

He glowered back at me before turning to the rest of the class. "Now that that ignorant student has finished disrupting my lesson, you can all get back to learning."

Potter shifted in his seat and leaned towards me. "I hope Dumbledore lets us have this teacher instead of Sluggy for the rest of the year, because you look hot when you're mad. The need to kill him really brings out the green in your eyes."

I didn't take my eyes off the fool with the brain of a troll who was currently telling the class about how Merlin had taught him everything he knew. Idiot! Merlin lived in the medieval era! That was centuries ago, so unless you're as old as you look, that couldn't have happened! "Potter, if you say another word, I will stab you with that quill you enjoy fondling."

Potter chuckled and threw his arm around the back of my chair but luckily enough, he didn't say anything...for a few minutes before he started up again. "Evans, I was wondering-"

"Potter, you shouldn't let you mind wander, it's too small to be let out alone," I increased the intensity of my glare as the prattling fool in front of the class kept talking.

"Now, it's common knowledge that the Draught of Living Death takes the drinker to the very brink of death so I want all of you to write down the ingredients you need for it."

I closed my eyes to keep from launching myself over the desk and strangling him. Unfortunately for me, he continued. "I'll give you a hint, one of the ingredients is crushed root of Asphodel."

At the same time, Remus and I let out a long drawn sigh but as he looked like he was upset about the teacher not actually knowing anything, I stretched out in my seat, leaned back and slowly raised my hand.

The prat ignored me for a few minutes but as I began to draw stares, he glared at me. "What?"

"Where did you get your education from?" If he really thought that what he was teaching us was correct and that I was the troublemaker of the class, I was going to make this lesson painful for him.

He looked confused at the oddity of the question but that can't have been a new experience for him. "What?"

"Or did you not get one because everyone knows that you find bezoars in a goat's stomach, not a sheep's; we learnt that in our First Year," I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. "We also learnt in our First Year that the Draught of Living Death puts the drinker in a death-like sleep not on the brink of death. And then last year, we learnt that one of the main ingredients in Draught of Living Death is powdered root of Asphodel, not crushed. So I'll ask you one more time; where did you get your education because the stuff you're getting wrong, we learnt when we were eleven."

He glowered furiously at me and he snatched a ruler of his desk before pointing it at me and looking around widely at the rest of the class. "At the end of this ruler is an insufferable idiot who thinks they know everything and is the source of the disruption to your learning!"

I tilted my head to the side. "Which end?"

Remus snorted into his parchment while Black, Potter and Peter cackled uproariously. The rest of the class snickered behind their hands.

He gaped at me like a goldfish as though he had expected me to cower before him before he stammered, "Dumbledore's...office...now."

I gathered my stuff and stood up, levelling my now cool gaze at him before I walked calmly to the door where I paused for a minute.

"Oh, and for the record, my name is Lily Evans," he opened his mouth to say something undeniably stupid but I held up my hand. "No, don't say anything, you'll lower the IQ of the entire castle if you do."

With that, I walked out of the classroom and towards Professor Dumbledore's office.