October 1, 1976
1:15 pm
Potion's Dungeon

As the Marauders made their way to Potions class, there was some very heated discussion going on between them regarding a few days ago's howler that the school had been gossiping about non stop.

"All he said was 'love Leo," James repeated to Sirius. "It's not that big of a deal, people sign letters like that to each other all the time."

"Friends don't," Sirius interjected, a sour expression on his face. "Maybe it's an American thing?"

"I doubt it," James scoffed, but was instantly elbowed by Remus and given a harsh glare. "I mean, yea, obviously it's an American thing."

"Why would you even mind if it was?"Peter asked with confusion. "You hate her, remember?"

These words held an obvious wrongness to Sirius, like they were no longer true if they had ever been in the first place. But he didn't feel like pointing that out at the moment.

"Yea, I do," he muttered, and Remus and James exchanged a disbelieving look as they stepped into the sweltering dungeons, where they were the last ones to arrive.

"Hurry in, boys," Slughorn called, waving a pudgy hand towards them. "Mr. Longbottom, be careful with that-"

Frank accidentally knocked over a bottle of beetle eyes with a loud crash against the stone floor, spilling them all over the class and making them titter with laughter. His cheeks turned dark red, and Alice leaned down to help him pick them up.

"Anyways, as I was saying, thank you Miss Fortescue, today we will be brewing-"

There was another smashing sound, and the class turned to see that Dorcas had tripped over Frank's hand and knocked over an identical bottle.

"Another one bites the dust," Anneliese and Sirius said in unison from across the dungeon.

The two of them instantly whipped their necks towards one another in surprise, met eyes, and quickly looked away before they held the contact for too long.

"Did she just make a Queen reference?" James whispered to Sirius as he set his bag down with a wide grin. "You've got some competition, Pads."

"Don't remind me," Sirius replied. "There should be a law only I can make Queen and ABBA references. She can keep her bloody American Pie."

"If you ask me, love is in the air," James said with a dramatic swoon. "By the way-"

"And today, we are brewing amortentia," Slughorn announced once the chaos of broken bottles had finally been amended.

James smirked and readjusted his glasses.

"Told you love was in the air."

"Shut it," Sirius said back, but he couldn't help a smile tugging up at the corners of his mouth as well.

"This potion is complete and utter bullshit," Anneliese muttered to Lily, but a little too loudly. "Last time-"

"What was that, Miss Callaway?" Slughorn asked with vague amusement.

Anneliese's freckled cheeks flushed at being called out, but she didn't change her answer as she replied.

"I said this potion is like a liar bottled," she said. "We brewed it last year at Ilvermorny, and I didn't know anyone who even remotely smelled like that."

"Perhaps you just hadn't met them yet," Slughorn said, a mischievous glint in his eyes before turning back to the class.

The answer caught Anneliese completely off guard as he began to separate them into groups, pairing her with Remus at a cauldron across from Lily and Peter's.

"So that's Slughorn for you," Remus said with a grin. "Bet you hadn't thought of that."

Anneliese scoffed as she started to grind up pearls in a stone bowl evenly to add to their potion.

"I don't want to ever meet someone who smells like wet dog and cigarettes."

Remus's green eyes widened as he jolted his head up to see if Sirius and James had heard her from where they were working. Thankfully, the two of them were so involved in the conversation about whether or not they could use the Reductor Curse to smash their pearls and take a shortcut or if that would be too messy.

"What is it?" Anneliese asked, noticing the odd expression on his face. "Do you know someone like that?"

"Not at all," Remus said, quickly snapping out of his surprise.

He didn't want to meddle where he shouldn't especially not with Sirius's extreme temper when it came to anything even mildly relating to Anneliese, who seemed to make his already short fuse even smaller.

"Then again, I'm probably saying a whole lot about nothin," she shrugged as Remus stirred the potion three times counterclockwise. "Leo had no idea who his smelled like either. Just more evidence that this potion is a joke."

"What did his smell like?" Lupin asked while Anneliese dropped in three drops of essence of rose water.

"Chocolate, old books, and pine trees," she replied, not thinking much of it. "There is nobody that smells like that, I swear."

This lesson was only getting more and more confusing for Remus.

"It's time to add your pearl dust and see what you smell," Slughorn announced to the class. "Hurry up now, no time to waste."

Sirius snatched the little stone bowl from James before he could mess it up and dumped the contents into their pewter cauldron. It fizzed for a few seconds before the thin liquid changed to a light pink, shimmery color that looked like dewdrops on a rose petal.

"What'd you smell?" James asked instantly, looking at Sirius curiously. "And don't even ask me, mine's obvious."

They both glanced over to the redhead working with Alice before Black took in a deep inhale and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Strawberries, ink, and something else that I have no idea about," Sirius described. "It smells kind of sweet? I don't know."

Behind them, Dorcas and Marlene both burst into giggles from where they had obviously smelled one another after hearing Sirius speak.

"What's so funny?" Sirius asked, whipping around. "Who is it?"

The two girls looked at one another with wide smiles before simply turning back around without replying to him.

James sighed with admiration as he looked at Lily, his hazel eyes wide as he propped up his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his palms. Anneliese noticed and followed his gaze to Lily with a grin.

"James," she called walking past their station on her way to return the leftover pearls to the supply closet. "Can't never could."

Potter looked up in amusement, following her into the closet.

"What the bloody hell does that mean?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe as she climbed up the ladder.

"It means that if you say you can't, then you won't be able to," Anneliese said with a grin back down at him. "Don't get discouraged about Lily, it'll happen eventually. I can tell."

Sirius turned around with a glare as his best mate and the girl that was set on disliking him laughed with one another, the sour feeling in his stomach once more.

"What was that all about?" he asked James as he returned to the station with a smile on his face. "You and Callaway?"

"Huh?" James asked, momentarily confused. "Oh, A was just explaining one of her little phrases to me."

"Okay," Sirius replied shortly, and his friend gave him an odd look through his copper frames.

"Is everything alright, mate?" he asked with furrowed brows. "Something happen?"

"Nothing at all," Sirius said tightly.

Because he truthfully didn't know why he felt so upset with James, his best mate for years, all the sudden any more than Potter did.

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October 4, 1976
7:08 pm
Great Hall

Anneliese, Lily, and Alice were all absolutely famished after a long double Potions and exhausting Herbology lesson that day wrestling with Popping Snargaluff Pods, ready to eat a large meal and then get to bed.

"Lily, what did your amortentia smell like?" Anneliese asked curiously. "I just realized I never asked. Perhaps broomsticks, or one James Potter's cologne?"

"Oh Merlin, what did he tell you?" Lily groaned with her head temporarily tilted back. "Who else is trying to join the Lily Potter bet?"

"What's the Lily Potter bet?" Anneliese questioned in amusement as they entered the Great Hall and sat down a few seats away from James, Remus, Sirius, and Peter.

"The Marauders have had a bet since their third year with McGonagall, Dumbledore, Sprout, Slughorn, and Flitwick that Lily is going to be Lily Potter by the time they turn twenty," Alice explained with a wide grin. "And it's quite a large amount of money as well."

"Wait, who is on which side?" Anneliese asked, her grin only growing.

"The professors think it's going to happen, and all them besides James think that it won't," Fortescue made clear. "It's rather funny to watch."

"Where is Marlene?" Lily asked, trying to change the subject as Anneliese and Alice giggled together. "I haven't seen her in a bit."

"Probably off with Dorcas somewhere," Alice said honestly as she dug her golden fork into a large pile of purple and beige roasted potatoes. "Hey, today in Herbology did you guys notice that-"

"Did you guys have tea in America?"

The loud shout coming from James interrupted Alice and made the three girls look down the table at the Marauders.

"Do you guys have quidditch here?" Anneliese replied with a one sided grin.

James's eyes turned wide with outrage as he leaned down the table to look at the southern girl.

"WHAT OF COURSE WE HAVE- oh, I see what you did there."

"Why don't you not yell down the table and just walk over there to talk to her?" Sirius asked, gesturing his spoon in Anneliese's direction. "Go on."

"Fine," James replied, and sat down at the empty space next to A.

Sirius didn't know why he had asked him to do it, because now he just felt even more angry.

"When are tryouts?" Anneliese asked James. "Soon?"

"October eleventh," Potter answered. "Why, are you playing? I'm a Chaser, and I'm team captain this year."

"Yea, I was the Seeker for Thunderbird, and congrats on captain," Anneliese replied. "We didn't lose a match."

Sirius watched with annoyance as the two of them got into a deep discussion about quidditch, stabbing his salad with much more aggression than necessary to pierce through the tomatoes. He didn't like James's friendship with her, it felt like a betrayal of him disliking her.

At least that's what he told himself.

"Hey, maybe let's not break the metal plate in half?" Remus asked, getting Sirius's attention away from Potter and Callaway. "They're just talking."

"I just wish she would let me call her A," he grumbled. "It's not fair."

"When was the last time you insulted her?" Remus pointed out. "Yesterday when you said that she could just drown in the Black Lake after someone laughed at her joke? This whole rivalry thing is getting a bit out of hand, mate."

"Rivalries go two ways," Sirius said as he set down his fork with a clatter. "She doesn't even seem to notice me or care about me."

"Oh, trust me, she certainly notices you," Peter muttered under his breath.

"So if she can't notice you in a good way, you want her to do it in a bad way instead?" Remus asked.

Sirius hesitated for a few moments before he realized that Lupin was right; all he cared about was her attention, whether it be good or bad.

Before he could reply, though, a cylinder shaped object hit him very hard in the shoulder. He deftly caught it before it hit the ground, and looked up to see Marlene standing in front of him with crossed arms.

"Got any idea what that is, Black?" she asked with a sly grin.

Sirius looked down at the object in his hand to see that it was a shampoo bottle with the label Strawberry Fields.

"Shampoo?" he asked dubiously. "What about it?"

"Give it a smell," Marlene continued persistently. "Go on, don't be shy."

Remus's eyes darted between them, starting to connect some dots that Sirius hadn't yet as he gestured over for James to join them. Anneliese and him had just been wrapping up their conversation anyway, and Lily immediately distracted the southern girl from what the Marauders and Marlene were up to intentionally or not.

"Why is there shampoo at the dinner table?" James asked, sliding between Sirius and Marlene. "Is Pads that obsessed with his hair that he's washing it in the Great Hall too now?"

"No, Marlene wants me to smell it," Sirius said with a roll of his eyes as he shut the cap again. "It's just-"

"Strawberries," James finished with wide eyes as he exchanged a grin with Remus. "It smells like strawberries, doesn't it?"

Sirius looked at him suspiciously.

"Yea, why?" he asked, but Potter just turned to Marlene.

"Marlene, did you happen to overhear Sirius say what he smelled in his amortentia a few days ago?" he asked her, and Mckinnon nodded.

"Mate, did you smell strawberries?" Remus asked with a wide grin and shake of his head. "Oh, Merlin."

Sirius was starting to get heated at whatever it was they were all smirking about that he couldn't seem to pick up on.

"Stop exchanging those weird smiles and spit it out before I hex you," he said, looking between the three of them. "What is it?"

They all hesitated for a moment before James was about to burst and simply couldn't hold it in any longer.

"You smelled A's shampoo in your amortentia."

Sirius stood up and stormed out of the Great Hall.

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