ink - sirius black

strangers and curfews

October 25, 1976
8:59 pm
Potions Dungeon

No cauldrons were out in this class period of Potions, only vigorous scratching of quills and clinks of their metal tips against glass ink bottles to keep up with what Slughorn was lecturing them about at lightning speed.

Anneliese and Sirius were sitting next to each other unwillingly after Black had been moved for talking to Peter too much.

Slughorn had been paring them together a suspicious amount.

Trying to win some money, perhaps.

"Now, Golpalott's Third Law states that the antidote for a blended poison will be equal to more than the sum of the antidotes for each of the separate components," he declared from the front of the classroom. "This will be important for you to memorize."

"I think I just had a seizure trying to understand that," Sirius muttered under his breath, writing in scrawling penmanship what Slughorn had just said.

Anneliese didn't reply, but smiled a bit. She understood it perfectly.

"Yes, Miss Callaway?" Slughorn asked, gesturing to her after he saw her raised tattooed skeleton hand in the air.

"But if you increased the concentration of the antidotes to each individual ingredient, couldn't you make it have less volume but the same impact? If not more efficient? And then, having more antidotes to cure even more poison?"

Sirius turned to her with narrowed grey eyes not in criticism, but in thought.

The rest of the student's attention was on Slughorn, curious to hear his answer. Her question proved a very valid point, one they all wished that they could have thought of sooner to ask.

The professor blinked a few times, struggling to answer her question.

"I'll get back to you on that one after class," he said finally, and then continued lecturning.

"Damn, you stumped Sluggy," Sirius whispered to Anneliese. "That takes skills."

"I have a talent for finding holes in logic," she replied simply, jotting down something on her parchment that Sirius couldn't read from the angle she was holding it at.

Black tried to read it for a second, but a withering stare made him stop.

"Classes were never this late on a Friday night at Ilvermorny," Anneliese continued, deftly changing the subject. "Do you guys not have social lives?"

"Sometimes we go out," Sirius shrugged in a low tone. "Plenty to do inside the castle and the grounds."

"Maybe you could-" she started, but was then cut off by Slughorn.

"Enough chitter chatter you two," he said with a slightly amused face. "We wouldn't want to have to split you two up for the last few minutes of class, would we?"

James grinned widely as his two friends started to take notes again, sensing the road that they were on. Sirius, meanwhile, was too busy focused on what she had been about to ask him before their professor had interrupted. He was going to ask her at the end of class, but when he stood up, Anneliese was already yards in front of him with Marlene, Dorcas, and Lily.

"Do you guys want to do something tonight?" Marlene asked, already reading her mind. "I'm bored, and a solid Hogsmeade visit never hurt anyone."

"I agree," Dorcas declared. "Lily, you don't get to say no."

"I wasn't going to," the redhead rolled her eyes as they started to run up to Gryffindor Tower. "Is Alice coming?"

"She's on a date with Frank already," Anneliese told them. "They are the most darlin thing I ever did see."