I looked at him quizzically. “Er… excuse me… but… am… am I missing something?”

Then, right before my eyes, the stag transformed into James. He stretched casually and then looked at me. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m finding out what you’re doing here!”

“Well, you’ve obviously found out,” he replied as Mr. Orson let me in.

“Nivy, this is Lily Evans, the amazing girl I told you about.”

I blushed and shook his hand. “Nice… nice to meet you. I’m sure whatever James said isn’t true though…”

“Actually, he told me that you were an excellent potion maker. I was rather intrigued by you, but if that isn’t true then…”

“Well… I do make potions… but I don’t know about being excellent,” I said shyly, staring at the ground.

“Trust me, she’s good.” James said, lifting up my chin. “In fact, I bet if you showed her how to make the potion she could do it. She’s a natural.”

Orson looked at me wonderingly, and then said, “let’s put her to it.”

And, to my surprise, I found myself in front of a cauldron with a set of instructions and a cupboard full of ingredients.

“I’ll give you a few minutes to look it over, then you can begin.” Orson said casually, as if this was my potions class and he taught it everyday.

“Is that Remus over there?” I asked James, skimming through the instructions.

“Yes, it is, but work now… questions later. I’m going to transform back because I think it’s kind of degrading to Remus for me to be in human form while he has to sit on the floor.”

I nodded, understanding, and for once I forgot all of the questions that were trying to break free.

This was by far, the most complicated potion I’d ever seen; everything had to be done in a certain amount of minutes and it didn’t surprise me that Orson was the only know wizard to make it. It required a lot of patience to make something like that and the slightest error could create disastrous results.

“All right… ready? Begin!”

After zoning everything out, I did the one thing I’d ever truly been good at and began to make the potion.