The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

Rosewood and Wolf's Bane

Rosewood and Wolf's Bane

 
Severus Snape was so angry, his hands shook as he turned the page in the Potions textbook as Sirius Black sat, his arms crossed over his chest in annoyance, in the seat where Lily Evans belonged. Severus's jaw was tight. He'd never been given a less than perfect grade in Potion - even times when Sirius and James had meddled with his work, he'd still always managed to pull it off in the end - he was just that talented. However this was a complicated potion, one of the most complicated they'd made in the class thus far, and Severus wasn't sure he had the time to prepare all of the ingredients as nicely as he wanted and still have the preparation time to allow the potion to simmer to it's full potential. He needed a second pair of hands - he needed Lily Evans, though, not Sirius Black! He looked at Sirius there, sulking and glowering at him, having been snapped at twice already by Severus Snape for trying to help out.

"You'll muss it up!" Severus had snarled when Sirius had tried to take the little silver dagger they were using to slice up the mandrake roots.

"Stab you, more like," Sirius muttered.

"Of course you would," Severus had hissed, "You are, after all, a murderer."

Sirius had stared at Severus as though he'd been boxed about the ears and that was when he had commenced to sitting and watching without saying a word or budging an inch to assist, even (or perhaps, most especially) when Severus was struggling.

"We should be halfway through our brewing process!" Slughorn called merrily from the front of the classroom.

Panic swept through Severus. He wasn't even a quarter way through. He looked at Sirius. "Make yourself useful and get a bit of rosewood from the store, will you?"

"What's the magic word?" Sirius asked.

Severus was stirring the cauldron, the brew turning yellow. He stared at Sirius. "Do you want to pass this class or not?"

Sirius shrugged.

Severus's face turned quite red as he drew a deep breath of frustration. "Blast sake. Why are you so bleeding insufferable? You and Potter, you're both alike. Just alike... Bleedin' --" he started to withdraw the spoon from the cauldron, and he colour of the potion began to fade. Really, you can't stop stirring once you've started. He grumbled and started stirring again, then inhaled sharply and closed his eyes, as though in pain. "......please."

"Come again? I didn't catch that? What was it you've just said, Snivellus?" Sirius sat forward, cupping his ear.

Severus Snape forced the words through gritted teeth. "Please. Go. And get. The rosewood. From. The store."

"Ah, but why yes, of course!" Sirius grinned and clapped his palm over Severus's shoulder a bit harder than he really needed to do. "Anything I can do to help, Snivellus. I'll be back in a jiffy!" and he jumped up from his seat and headed for the store cupboard as Severus counted to ten to gain control over his temper. Sirius smirked to himself as he ducked through the low doorway into the store cupboard, thinking how pleased James was going to be when he told him this story and how incredibly annoyed Severus Snape had been by him. James would probably purposely hit himself with a pugnus every Monday for the rest of time just to send Sirius off to Potions without a partner so he could set to annoying Severus all over again.

In the store cupboard, Sirius poked about, looking for the rosewood. He had no idea what the hell he was looking for really - A flower? A branch? A sprig? A bottle? - so he had to keep turning things over and reading labels, searching for something marked rosewood. There were loads of things - every shelf was cluttered with dozens and dozens of clumps of leaves and bottles and boxes and bags and vials and funny looking bits of bone or horn or hooves. Sirius remembered coming up here for the bicorn horn that was still hidden in some version of the Secret Meeting Room, where they'd brewed their potion for becoming animagi. Sirius smirked to himself at what a fiasco that had been, stealing that big nasty horn...