Captive Audience || remus & evan
The soft murmur that had crescendoed with every second that ticked by since the start of the hour came to a sudden halt when Professor Slughorn walked into the room. Evan trailed off mid-sentence, the arrival of the potions master cutting his conversation with his dorm mate short. Chairs scraped against the stone floor as students righted themselves. By the time Slughorn had reached the front of the classroom, all the students in Evan’s field of vision were sitting at attention. NEWTs were difficult all around but potions had started giving transfiguration a run for its money as the most difficult subject to grasp.
Evan flipped his quill around his index finger as Slughorn launched into that day’s lesson. The auditory scratching coming from behind him told him someone, at least, was taking furious notes. Every word Slughorn was saying was being written down from the sound of things. Verbatim note taking was not Evan’s style, however, so he continued to flip his quill, writing down keywords and bullet points when appropriate. Back when he started at Hogwarts, not having complete sentences in his notes bothered him. The run up to O.W.L.s two years ago had quickly cured him of that idiosyncrasy.
Slughorn tapped the chalkboard. What appeared to be an equation of sorts appeared in the professor’s familiar handwriting. The equation-thingy was filled with letters and symbols rather than numbers. He quickly copied it down exactly as it appeared. When Slughorn began speaking again, he recorded her explanation of the sequence word-for-word.
He snuck a quick glance at his dorm mate as soon as he heard the word ‘partner.’ His dorm mate appeared to be following what Slughorn was saying without any problems. Hopefully he would be able to clear up Evan’s question. The new sequence Slughorn had just introduced seemed to contradict the magical law they had discussed last week. Evidently, the potion they were to make during class would lead them to an understanding of how the sequence and the magical law were reconcilable. Evan had his doubts.
Evan had begun to rise out of his seat when he heard those dreaded words: I will be assigning partners... Luckily, he had only risen about an inch up off his seat so he sat back down, hopefully without drawing too much attention to himself. A piece of parchment listing the assigned partners was now being passed around the class. He had a fairly good idea of who he would be assigned to; Professor Slughorn had told them he had assigned partners based on most recent homework grades.
Evan was mildly surprised, but not altogether disappointed, when he read that he had been assigned Lupin. Either he had done worse on his homework than he had thought or Lupin was more talented at potions it seemed. Regardless of what had caused them to be partnered together, Evan was glad it had happened. He had been wanting to speak to the prefect ever since the Halloween Ball.
“Hello, Remus,” he greeted. “It almost makes you long for the days of Galoplatt’s Third Law, doesn’t it?” Evan sat down and opened his textbook, comparing the text in the book to what Slughorn wrote on the black board. “I’ll prepare the cauldron if you gather the ingredients. I’m sure you know to mind the submerged ones; there’s little doubt you understand water’s ability to emphasize symmetry,” he said, complimenting Remus on his Halloween costume.
“What Slughorn was saying sounded similar to what McGonagall was saying about the Principal of Artificianimate Quasi-Dominance yesterday, didn’t it?” he asked, not bothering to look at Remus as he pulled out his Transfiguration notes.
@remus-whoisleft
