LUNAR (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

Three. Wolfsbane, A Chemical Analysis

The library was unbelievably quiet. Caiti had the entire place to herself, save Madam Page at the circulation desk. No one had work to do yet. No one had anything to study for. Caiti tiptoed across the room, and towards the rows of books. She wasn't really sure what she was looking for.

    She meandered into the potions section first, but it was largely comprised of recipe books and Caiti didn't think that was what she was interested in at the moment. Not that she really knew what she wanted to do or how she wanted to do it. She only knew that she was lonely and she was missing Marlowe and she couldn't get his words the other night out of her head.

    And that was how she landed in the small section of books on werewolves. There was book in here somewhere that she knew Marlowe had written in, because he'd told her that summer about the inscription he'd made just before graduation. She was almost tempted to find it, but the thought of Marlowe here made her sad. She hoped she wouldn't spy it by mistake.

    She browsed the titles on the row in front of her, only partly paying attention until one thin blue-spined book made her stop. The narrow gold letters read: Wolfsbane, A Chemical Analysis by Porter Montgomery.

    Caiti reached out with one finger and tipped it off the shelf and into her hand. Frowning, she sat down at the nearest table and opened to the table of contents. The book was short, only about sixty pages long, but it contained chapters on each of the ingredients in the wolfsbane potion, and one conclusion chapter about how they all worked together.

    She flipped to the first chapter on the main ingredient, wolfsbane itself, and began to read. It was dense and difficult; Caiti had to read very slowly, backtracking often for clarification, but the research was well done. It laid out in painstaking detail the properties of wolfsbane as a highly lethal poison, and then went on to describe the potential benefits hidden behind the deathly disguise.

Caiti had always tried not to think too much about the fact that wolfsbane was a poisonous ingredient when she brewed the potion for Marlowe. It put her on edge. But now she thought about it, it really was fascinating that anyone had been able to recognize its potential. She wondered what had sparked the idea in the first place, how the inventor - Damocles Belby if she remembered correctly - had even determined the potion was safe to drink.

With every page she turned, that question of how he had done it peppered her thoughts with more and more persistence. How did a person invent such a highly complicated potion? How would someone know what ingredients to use or how much of any given ingredient? How did someone figure out the order in which things needed to happen? How did Belby figure out which ingredients would render wolfsbane harmless, let alone make it useful?

And how, how had he tested the potion to make sure it worked and was safe?

Caiti's head was spinning by the time she left the library for lunch. She checked the book out to take with her and opened it back up as soon as she got to the Great Hall, paying more attention to it than to her food.

She hadn't even noticed that she'd chosen a seat right by Amelia and Miriam.

"What are you reading?" asked Miriam, in her best snotty voice. "We don't have any work yet."

Caiti did not answer right away. She wanted to finish the sentence she was reading for the fifth time, because it had just begun to make sense.

Eventually, she lifted her head to answer, but Miriam seemed to have taken her silence to mean something else and added, to Amelia now, "Bet she didn't finish her summer work yet."

Caiti's face hardened. She had hoped, stupidly, that things wouldn't be this way, that they maybe they could at least be friendly this year. Luckily, Amelia, who wasn't quite as bad as Miriam (though far more annoying) said, "No, that doesn't look like any of our homework."