Moonstruck | marauders era

xii. fluxweed picking

     The second week of November rolled around too soon. After celebrating Skyler's birthday their routine caught up to them. Their sixth year was hard. A lot of assignments and essays were given to them and Grace had her occasional prefect duties. Skyler made herself freak out even more with her paranoid behaviour whenever Sirius Black only dared to enter the same room. And adding to Cassie impatiently wanting to read the book she had – as she would phrase it – 'borrowed', she had no time to actually read it with her focusing on school. She was so wrapped up in schoolwork that she had forgotten one tiny little problem she now had to face – and she felt incredibly stupid for not thinking about it before. Why did she want to do polyjuice potion again?

'After the lacewing flies stewed for 21 days, add 3 measures of fluxweed to the cauldron and two bundles of knotgrass. WARNING: the fluxweed has to be picked during the full moon for the potion to succeed.'

Cassie read the sentence once, twice, three times all over again. Full moon. Tonight. How could she be so stupid? She needed to find James, now.

She shut the book, stuffed it in her bag carelessly and hurried out of the common room. She hurried through the halls all the way up to the 7th floor where the Gryffindor common room was located in hopes to catch him walking around. She stopped in front of the painting of the fat lady.

"I need to see James Potter."

"Password?"

"Do I look like I have the password?" she gestured to the loose yellow tie around her neck with a scoff.

"No password, no entry. Especially with such an attitude."

"Look, I'm sorry. But it's important. I need to talk to James."

The painting stayed silent and she let out another loud groan before turning on her heel and heading back down. Her time was running out. She arrived at the great hall and collided with the body of her brother. He slightly screamed and jumped back, raising his arms towards her as some kind of defensive stand. Cassie furrowed her eyebrows at him.

"Merlin, there you are! It's getting late, come on!" he rushed past her towards the staircase but Cassie stayed put.

"Have you seen James?"

"James?"

"Yes, James. James Potter. Around this tall, annoying brat sometimes, strutting around the halls but actually quiet friendly James." 

Noah rolled his eyes. "I know who James is. What do you want with him, especially now?"

"He needs to pick the fluxweed for our potion tonight or we won't succeed and get minus points for switching the potion in between." she cried.

"Okay, Cassie. I know your grades are important to you but we need to get you to the corridor and-"

"The corridor isn't even safe, is it?" she raised her arms in panic, "there's a huge window, water on the other side-" Noah raised his hand to signal her to keep her voice down and she took a deep breath.

"Listen, we will bring you to the corridor now and make sure to not cross that corner. It worked last month, didn't it? Skyler is already there preparing the corridor. As soon as you're safe I will go find James. Okay?"

Cassie nodded hesitantly. It had worked to protect her from the Octobers full moon. Her eyes however caught something behind her brother's body - more like someone. The boy she was searching for had appeared with Peter Pettigrew and they were rushing through the entrance hall in the direction of the doors.

"Potter!" The boys stopped right in their steps and turned around as Cassie jogged over, Noah following.

"Tonight's a full moon." stated Cassie. Peter's eyes widened for a split second and James swallowed hard. "We need to get the fluxweed."