A Really Bad Idea

They marched into the Great Hall (actually, Remus just wandered aimlessly instead of marching) and all (except Remus, who took refuge at the Gryffindor table) went to stand by the Slytherin table.

Sirius roughly grabbed Snape’s shoulder and turned him to face them.

"What love potion did you give to Evans to use on me?" he demanded.

"Evans gave you a love potion?" said Bellatrix from behind him. He almost had an apoplectic seizure, and then he walked away, leaving everyone else standing around the Slytherin table somewhat confused.

"Wait a minute, Sirius," Bellatrix ran after him out into the hall. "I don’t believe you-"

He stopped and turned to face her.

"Believe me, alright?"

"You expect me," she said slowly, "to believe that Evans- little miss never break the rules- gave you a love potion-"

"Yes." He turned and walked away again.

Bellatrix started laughing hysterically sending shivers up and down Sirius’s entire body.

"Oh SHUT UP!" he growled, and then he unexpectedly turned back around, grabbed her like some kind of carnivorous animal, and kissed her passionately. She made a little alarmed noise and pulled away.

"You bastard!" she gasped highly, and went back for more.

"Whoa!" Sirius said, wrenching himself away. "Don’t make me take off your clothes!"

"Don’t me make you?!" she raged, scandalized. "You’re the one who started this by accidentally giving me that love potion-"

"Wait, Bellatix?" Sirius frowned.

"What?"

"Have you ever had a love potion before?"

She eyed him suspiciously. "No.... Why?"

"No one gave you a love potion for me. If you’d gotten the one we thought you might have, you’d be in love with James. What you’re feeling now... is probably... natural."

She gaped at him, shocked to the point of being frightened.

He wanted, very badly, to rape her.

Luckily, she fled the scene.

Sirius turned back to see James and Peter staring at him.

"You’re related to her, right?" James asked weakly.

"Come on, I was poisoned!" Sirius defended himself.

"But she wasn’t... right?" Peter asked feebly.

"Yeah. But I was, so quit staring at me."

"But, err..." James coughed, "that was... pretty ravishing... that kiss was...."

"Oh, knock it off," Sirius said, irritated, remembering simultaneously how much he had enjoyed it (which made him more irritated). "There’s dinner in there, isn’t there?" he asked, pointing abruptly towards the Great Hall.

"Sure, if you have an appetite," Peter said, sounding ill.

"Hell yes I have an appetite," Sirius said, walking past them. "I could eat an entire person."

James and Peter looked at each other for a while and then, they followed him.

Remus was frowning as he ate.

"What’re you frowning about?" James said grumpily as he sat down.

Remus looked skeptically at him and continued to frown as much as he pleased.

James ate a mouthful of mashed potatoes as if he couldn’t really taste any of it.

"So er... what’d you two... do in there?" he asked awkwardly, trying to sound casual and failing so miserably that he sounded more pathetic than he would have if he’d simply not tried.

Remus glared at him and resolutely continued to eat.

James said something harsh and slammed his fork down on the table.

Sirius sneered to himself.

Peter looked hopelessly around at the three of them, and was just starting to try to muster up the courage to begin the conversation himself when Sirius said,

"Has anyone given Twyla Wilkes a love potion yet?"

"Do you ever learn?!" Remus exclaimed hopelessly.

"I’m willing to go to detention, Remus. This is revenge."

Remus would’ve cried if he weren’t so effing used to this kind of crarnish.

Sirius watched Bellatrix like a hungry wolf as she crept back into the room towards the Slytherin table.

"God," he said, and drank a large glass of pumpkin juice. "That’s a powerful love potion." He stared. "Is she coming over here?"

James looked. "Seems like it."

"Hide me!" Sirius rasped like a rather masculine damsel in distress.

"Where? Under the table?" Remus asked sarcastically.

Bellatrix was suddenly standing beside James.

"Give me the rest of the potion you gave Severus," she said.

"Say please," said James maudlinly.

Sirius, however, had already practically thrown her the vial.

"Now go," he said. She turned away, thick black hair falling in cords down her back.

"I mean stay!" Sirius corrected. She turned back, frowning.

"What are you doing, stupid? Are you listening to me? I’M NOT IN MY RIGHT MIND! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SIGHT!" he scolded insanely. "Ormakelovetomeonthistable," he added.

Bellatrix hesitated about one millisecond too long after this last option was put in the air, which was long enough to make Peter have an anti-incest seizure and to make Sirius reach over the table, pull her in by the back of the neck, and kiss her passionately enough to make her drop the love potion. James caught it and held it for her while she was busy.

Remus glanced up at them, uninterested, as did James.

"I’m glad Snape didn’t do that to me," James said casually.

Peter died. No, I’m kidding. That was a slight exaggeration.

Bellatrix wrenched herself away from Sirius, now that there was a significant amount of people staring at them.

"I think this is yours," James said, still depressed. She took it, stumbled, and walked back to the Slytherin table.

Sirius moaned and slid back into his seat.

"I think Professor McGonagall saw that," Remus said, watching the staff table with mild interest.

Professor McGonagall looked so confused and shocked that it was hard to recognize her.

James started laughing the way crazy people laugh after they’ve been subdued and tied to a wall in a cushioned room. Remus chuckled.

"What if she figures it out?" Peter panicked.

Remus started laughing enough that he had to stop eating.

"Is this honestly the first time you’ve thought about us getting caught?" Sirius asked Peter. "You realize, don’t you, that the rest of us are so far past hoping we’ll get away that we’re not even trying anymore?"

"We’re all going to get detention?" Peter asked hopelessly.

"YES!" Remus yelled, and stopped laughing. He started eating again.

Over at the Slytherin table, Snape only took one sip of his pumpkin juice.

"Is there something in this?" he asked.

"I thought you said your love potions were odorless and tasteless," Bellatrix said angrily.

"There’s a love potion in this?"

The table silenced around them. McGonagall was making her way over to another staff member to confirm that she wasn’t going crazy.

Bellatrix blinked. "Well... maybe not... isn’t that what you meant?..."

"Did I say love potion?" Snape asked softly.

"Wait, have people been making love potions?" asked a young man named Avery.

"Isn’t that what you thought?" Bellatrix defended herself into a corner.

"Oh, I see," Snape said, becoming dangerously sarcastic. "You read my mind? Is that why you said that?"

"How could you tell, you bastard, you said your potions were odorless and tasteless!" Bellatrix gave up and resorted to her first accusation.

"For your information, Bellatrix," (Snape ground his words to a pulp as he spoke) "this particular love potion has a slightly slippery texture, and I felt it."

"With your tongue?" she exclaimed, overly revolted.

"YES, YOU IDIOT, WITH MY TONGUE!"

The marauders looked over at the Slytherin table.

"What the hell is going on over there?" Sirius asked.

"WITH HIS TONGUE, NINCOMPOOP!" James screamed over at them, and everyone at the Gryffindor table started down the road to death by laughter at 600 miles over the speed limit. (Yes, that analogy was also one of Sirius Black’s.)

"DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I WAS FREE OF THAT BEFORE YOU GAVE IT TO ME AGAIN?!" Snape screamed, not really interested that the staff was beginning to get seriously concerned. "HALF AN HOUR! I WASN’T IN LOVE WITH JAMES POTTER FOR HALF AN HOUR, AND HERE I AM AGAIN!"

"HOW CAN YOU FEEL A SUBTLE TEXTURE WITH YOUR TONGUE!?" Bellatrix screamed back, blind to the fact that Dumbledore was now involved in the staff-worrying, and McGonagall was making her way down the aisle to them.

"YOU WANT TO FEEL IT?!" Snape raged, put her head in an arm lock, and force-fed her his pumpkin juice.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" Professor McGonagall cried, prying Snape’s arm away from Bellatrix as Professor Sprout pulled her free.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" Snape yelled at Bellatrix.

"WELL, IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, ISN’T IT? YOU GAVE ME THE POTION FOR EVANS, AND THAT’S WHAT STARTED ALL OF THIS!"

"IT’S MY FAULT?" Snape cried, and laughed until he had to lean on the traumatized Professor McGonagall for support. Everyone was talking and laughing or panicking and dumping their pumpkin juice (paranoid first-years).

"PLEASE, SILENCE!" Dumbledore called, and all noise stopped.

Accept for Snape, who was laughing so hard he was crying.

"Would Sirius Black, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, Severus Snape, Bellatrix Black, and Lily Evans please come with me for a moment?" Dumbledore requested politely as he walked down the main aisle.

Snape stopped laughing to say, "AND Twyla Wilkes!"

Dumbledore smiled sadly. "Miss Wilkes?"

Twyla hung her head and stepped out of the bench. The students obediently fell in step behind Dumbledore as he headed out into the hall. Bellatrix gaped at James’s beautiful figure in front of her.

"That’s a really strong potion, Severus," she said solemnly.

"Yeah. I know," he smiled grimly.

Lily and Remus glanced at each other and smiled meekly as the group passed a certain broom closet.

Dumbledore led them all into a large, empty classroom.

"Now," he said, closing the door behind them. Everyone was standing carefully far away from whichever person they wanted to snog.

"Which people, in this room, are not currently in need of an antidote for a love potion?"

James raised his hand, and Snape boiled with a mix of rage and desire that simply wasn’t something humans were meant to have to feel.

"But I’m still in pain," James said. Sirius snorted.

There was silence.

Twyla raised her hand, smiling guiltily. The rest all glared at her.

"What?" she asked innocently. " I helped all of you!"

"Well, since we were all working against each other, Twyla, that doesn’t really work out," Sirius explained.

"And who here has not been part of any conspiracy to give another student a love potion?" Dumbledore continued.

Everyone chewed their lips.

"Well, that’s simple enough," Dumbledore said lightly. "Detention for all of you, together, after school every day this week. You will be discussing, with various different teachers, why love potions are forbidden at Hogwarts, although you doubtless all know by now, and you will be cleaning said teachers’ rooms ceiling to floor as you listen."

Everyone sunk down another notch or two on the happiness scale. (Some of them, already relatively depressed, actually fell off the end of the happiness scale.)

"Lily, Remus- I could talk to the two of you, but I daresay Remus and I have had enough of those conversations to last us some time, and I believe Lily was present to here all those conversations. Just do me a favor and recall what I’ve told you in the past as you scrub the floors of Professor McGonagall’s room."

He looked around at all of his many students, all of whom (except for Twyla) were fighting against desire for someone else in the room. (Well... Twyla always fought with a desire for Sirius Black, so she can be included in that.)

"Now," he said, "I want you all to realize that I could be very cruel right now, if I was so inclined, and refuse any of you the antidote during the course of your punishment."

Everyone’s eyes grew a little wider.

"So just be glad that I am more merciful than some former headmasters. Is someone here carrying an antidote around with them?"

Everyone was silent.

"I made some," said Lily, "but the antidote has to be taken in much larger quantities than the potion-"

"And it tastes awful," Snape added for the curiosity of the listener.

"So I only made enough for Severus, and there’s none left."

"You made some for Severus?" James cried, wounded.

Lily ignored him.

"I’ll have enough for all of you by tomorrow," Dumbledore said. "For now you’ll have to sleep on it, or not sleep on it, but please stay in your dormitories, or I just might "accidentally" make a dreadful mistake that nullifies the effects of the antidote. Do I make myself very clear?"

"Yes, sir," they said.

"Go to your dorms then, immediately."

The students filed out into the hall and walked quietly towards their home rooms.

"That was a really bad idea, Sirius," Remus said.

"Yeah," Sirius confessed. "That basically sucked."

Remus smiled a little.

"But it was pretty funny," Sirius added.

"Oh my god," Remus said.

The End.