The Marauders and the House of Black

Chapter Six: Switching Things Up

Things around the castle had been normal, which was simply not good enough for the Marauders. They had been plotting and talking about what the next big prank they would unveil would be and they had finally settled on one. Considering the contention between the two Quidditch teams, they figured they should focus on Slytherin once again. They had all unanimously concluded, despite the tension between Sirius and his brother.

Technically, what they were planning on doing was illegal, but that word did not really mean much to either Sirius or James. On the other hand, Remus and Peter were much harder to convince. Eventually, though they both were persuaded so long as they did not have to participate in the illegal part of the prank.

Sirius was not really convinced that not participating in one part of the prank would make them innocent in front of the Wizengamot court, but who was he to argue?

This particular prank took more research than normal and a whole month of preparation because they were brewing Polyjuice Potion. The point of all of this effort was to impersonate the prefect from Slytherin in order to change their common room password. It was going to be tricky– that was always to be suspected– but the boys had already set their minds on completing this prank, sink or swim.

The first problem that arose was how they were to get their hands on the recipe for the Polyjuice potion. The fact that they knew it existed was already a big step, but they had no idea how to get their hands on a copy. It was not a sure idea, but they figured a good first step would be talking to Professor Slughorn.

Being the favourite of their potions master so far, Remus was tasked with this part of the job. So, that is how he found himself knocking on the door to Slughorn's office in the afternoon hours during break.

"Sir?" Remus said tentatively.

"Mister Lupin, come in! Come in!" the professor said in his usual jovial tone. "What brings you this way, my boy?"

"Well I was thinking about something my father had mentioned over summer break– he's quite the avid potion maker– and we had talked about a kind of advanced potion that altered the way someone looked. I think it was called poly... poly-something?"

"Oh, you must be talking about Polyjuice potion."

"Yes!" Remus exclaimed. "That's the one! Anyway, I was very interested in it and was wondering if you had anything that I could read to learn more?"

"Well..." Slughorn said slowly. "I don't have anything in my personal collection, as it is fairly advanced and could be used to aid dark wizards, but as I understand there was a fairly good book written about it that we have in the library."

"That's great news, what's it called? I'll visit Madame Pince later today."

"Well, that's the problem, my boy. You see... it's in the restricted section."

"Oh," Remus said, trying to sound sadder than he was.

"I suppose I could write you a slip, you are an exceptional student... and this is only for curiosity's sake, correct?"

"Yes sir, just eager to learn more!"

"In that case, I see no problems," Slughorn pulled out a quill and parchment to write down a note for the librarian. "Here you go!"

"Thank you, professor!" Remus said, rushing to leave the room. The longer he had to keep up the charade of lying the more uncomfortable he felt in that stuffy office.

He figured there was no use going back to the dormitories empty-handed, so instead, he headed over to the library. He felt much more comfortable surrounded by the tall stretch of shelves, despite his reason for being there, and with his new-found confidence he strode up to Madame Pince's desk.