When you have it all

Chapter 16...

A cold breeze swept through the bright sunlit room and instantly awoke Alex, who had fallen asleep right where she had been the night before: leaned against the couch in front of the fireplace, the potions book still in hand. She blinked a couple of times as if trying to regain her bearings, before stretching and groaning at the pain in her back. Another breeze flew through the room, and Alex vaguely wondered why and how the window was open in the first place, but was quickly distracted by the rusting sound of flipping pages of the book in her lap. When the breeze suddenly died down and the pages stopped flipping, she looked down, her eyes scanning the page in front of her. She gasped, and quickly turned to wake up the sleeping Sirius.

“Sirius! SIRIUS!” she yelled into his ear. When she only got a mumble in return, she pointed her wand at him and said, “Aguamenti.”

A jet of water splashed out of the tip of her wand onto Sirius’ face, who screamed and shot off the couch. “What the bloody hell was that for?!”

“To wake you up, obviously. And that seemed like the most amusing way to do it.”

He glared at her, “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘let sleeping dogs lie’?”

“You’re a dog now?” she asked sardonically.

He seemed to be caught off guard for a second, but quickly replied, “I said it’s an expression! What, in Merlin’s name could have been so important to wake me up in such a cruel way at…5:37am on a Wednesday morning?”

“This,” she said, handing the book to him, and pointing to the page. After giving him a minute to read over it, she asked,” And? What do you think?”

“I think you’re insane; ‘course, we already knew that,” he replied, giving the book back to her. “How is that potion going to help us separate?”

“It’s not.”

He blinked.

“It’s going to help us win.” When he looked at her with a blank expression, she continued, “Honestly, didn’t you read it at all? Animus Dixere…Soul—or mind—Speak. It’ll let us get into each other’s minds, and we can hear what the other person is thinking.”

“So…?”

“So, if we can hear what we’re thinking, then we can anticipate each other’s moves. That way, you won’t go left when I want to go right.”

He took a moment to absorb the information, and then took the book out of her hands, looking through it with more detail. “This is really complicated, princess. We’d have to nick half these ingredients from Slughorn’s private store, I’ve never even heard of most of the other half—which means they’re probably illegal or rare or dangerous or something—and, it takes a month to brew. We have a grand total of 4 days.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “That can be overcome.”

Without thinking, Sirius hit her over the head with the book. “Are you completely mental?! Sure we can steal some of the stuff, but a month? What are we going to do, stop time while we brew the potion?”

Alex clutched her head and gave him a look of doom, but proceeded to explain anyways, “No, idiot, if you were smart enough you’d see that the reason it takes so long to brew is because of the lacewing flies and nematode roots, but those can be replaced with other things, and we can add some other ingredients that can speed up the whole process anyways.”

“And you’re sure replacing those ingredients won’t affect the potion?” he asked skeptically.

She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then nodded.