Chapter Text
The library was not normally a busy place before classes, but there was a steady buzz of energy that morning as Fitz flipped through the pages of the Advanced Transfiguration book Professor Coulson had let him check out of the restricted section. All around him, tables were filled with students working on last minute papers, students not unlike Skye who looked ready to hex her own Transfiguration paper into dust. Glancing over to the librarian desk to make sure Ms. Hand wasn’t watching him, he slipped his last piece of blueberry scone out of his pocket and into his mouth. It wasn’t that he hated helping Skye with her homework, he just hated having to leave breakfast early to do it.
Next to him, Skye groaned under her breath and slid her ream of parchment across the table. “Is this even close to right?”
Fitz batted her hand away from where she was messing up her already uneven black and yellow tie, knowing she didn’t need to lose her House even more points for dress code violations. He looked over the essay quickly, ignoring any impulses to cross out or correct. “It’s mostly right.”
“Good enough!” She dropped her quill into her bag, leaning back into the library chair and sighing. Ms. Hand shushed them, but Skye ignored her. “I can’t work on this anymore. I can’t. I don’t know how you just…get it.”
Shrugging, he handed her his own quill so that she could write her name on it. “Transfiguration comes easy to me. I can just see how things need to change and adjust in order to become what I want them to be. Kind of like Charms is to you.”
“It helps that Professor Coulson isn’t on my ass all the time in Charms,” she grumbled. “You’re so lucky he’s your Head of House.” Running her hand through her hair, she yawned. “I guess May’s not the absolute worst, but she’s kind of terrifying. Sometimes I think she just sits in the common room to watch us. Sits and waits.”
Even not ever having seen the Hufflepuff common room, he could imagine that and he grinned. “Best Defense Against the Dark Arts professor we’ve ever had though.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all, but you don’t have the ex-Auror checking your curfew every night.” Skye scanned her essay quickly, making a face as she noticed a misspelling. She stole Fitz’s quill again, crossing out the mistake and writing over it. “I’ve been here four years and sometimes I feel like I’m never going to get it, you know?” she muttered under her breath. Skye glanced down at her hands, which were blotted with ink. “Fucking fantastic.” She rubbed her palms against her skirt, which just smeared it more.
Fitz smiled sympathetically, then pulled out his wand, tapping the end of it against her hands. “Scorgify.” When she nodded her thanks, he said, “I know how you feel sometimes.”
She sighed, then put her face in her newly clean hands. “Oh, please, you’re a prefect! You’re a fifth year who gets seventh year work from some of your professors! You’re like the second-most smartest person at this school!”
“Hey!”
She gave him a look. “Okay, tied-for-first smartest person here. You know what I mean.”
Fitz nudged her gently. “Yeah, I do know what you mean. But it’s not like I’m popular or anything like that. I mean, people talk to me when they need help with their work, but that’s it.” At her noise of indignation, he rolled his eyes. “Not you, but the other Gryffindors do. I’m like the worst Gryffindor ever, the Hat definitely made a mistake. And I don’t care about Quidditch and that’s all anyone else ever bloody cares about here. I’m only good at Transfiguration and classwork, but I’m not good at anything else. Coulson only gave me the prefect job because I’m good in his class. I’m…I’m not…” He glanced across the library and held back a groan as his eyes fell on the perfect example. “I’m not Grant Ward.”
Skye’s head snapped up immediately. A large grin spread over her face as she followed his gaze. “Well, hello Head Boy.”
“Ugh, not you too.”
“Please, Fitz. Every girl loves Grant Ward. I mean, have you seen him?”
He scowled at her. “Not…every girl.” His trail of thought went to a familiar place and he checked his watch. “I’m gonna head to class. Good luck with that essay, I’ll see you later.”
“This early?”
“I’ve got double Potions, I have to get down to the basement.”
Skye laughed and licked her lips. “Oh, right. Double Potions. With the Ravenclaws.”
Fitz ignored the way his face flushed red as he stood up and picked up his cauldron. “Yeah, what’s your point?”
Picking his quill up off the table, she used the feathered end to tickle his nose. “Say hi to Jemma for me.”
He snatched the quill from her. “Shut up.”
“I hope you two make sweet, sweet potions together.”
“I changed my mind, I hope you do horribly on that essay and get detention again.” Her laugh followed him out of the library. He hoped Hand took a hundred points away from Hufflepuff.
It really wasn’t that long of a walk down to the basement and he was the first one there, even beating Professor Garrett. He set up his cauldron and supplies at the table at which he preferred to work. Today’s shrinking potion was supposed to be one of the most difficult of the year and he had read through it a few times already, making notes in the margin of the text for himself. He almost didn’t notice Jemma coming in until her hair brushed against his shoulder and tingles went down his spine like lightning.
“Morning, Fitz!” she said excitedly.
He loved Potions with the Ravenclaws. She was never happier than in Potions. “Morning,” he said around the lump in his throat. “You’re in a good mood today.”
She shrugged enigmatically before setting up her station next to his and putting her hair up in a ponytail. As the rest of the students started filing in, Jemma leaned close to him and whispered, “Do you want to know a secret?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
“I’ve already done this potion!” she said softly, then grinned widely at him.
He stared at her for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
She giggled under her breath. “After I got the book over the summer. With my parents’ supervision, of course. I knew this one was difficult, so I wanted to get it out of the way. You know Professor Garrett doesn’t really like me that much—”
“That’s not true.”
Jemma gave him a look. “You’re just saying that because he likes you and usually when professors like you they like me too. Except for Garrett. But no matter. I did this potion half a dozen times and I perfected it and even managed to find way to make improvements, if I do say so myself.”
Fitz snorted. “You made improvements?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, setting her jaw with determination. “Yes, I did. There is no way I am not getting the highest marks on this potion, Fitz. He might like you better, but I am better at Potions and he is not marking me down again.”
“You are better!” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You’ve always been better at Potions than me. I just wonder if, even with all your Potions brilliance, you could make changes that would make improvement. It’s kind of an old potion.”
Turning on her stool, she narrowed her eyes at him, but he could see a hint of play in their brown depths. “Fine then. A wager? Whoever receives lower marks buys the other a sugar quill and a butterbeer at Hogsmeade this weekend. And you’ve got a handicap because he already likes you better.”
His heart sped up in his chest. Were they going to Hogsmeade together this weekend? They almost always did, sometimes with Skye, but this mean they absolutely would have to go no matter what. “You’re on.” He stuck out his hand and she shook it firmly.
Smiling to herself, she turned back to the table to reorganize her things, sticking her textbook—which he could only now assume had her improved formula in it—to the other side of their work space, away from him. As she did so, another Ravenclaw walked past their table casually. “Hey, Simmons,” Triplett said, grinning at her.
“Good morning,” she said back, returning his smile with her usually friendly and cheerful air.
Fitz glowered. He didn’t see why Triplett couldn’t have greeted her in their common room. They had breakfast at the same table, surely there had been time then. There was no reason to bother her during class or this even more important time before class when people were trying to get their heads together and get into the academic mindset. Frankly, it was just rude. That’s who Triplett was. He was rude. Rude and disrespectful to everyone else.
Luckily, Professor Garrett walked into the classroom at that time so Fitz was spared having to disparage Jemma’s housemate in front of her. He only half-listened as instructions were given out. He may not have perfected the potion over the summer, but he wasn’t going to blow himself up. Next to him, Jemma sat ramrod straight but he could feel her practically thrumming with excitement. His heart beat double time as he avoided looking at her, but couldn’t avoid focusing on her golden hair on the edge of his peripheral vision.
As soon as Garrett told them they could start, Jemma flipped her book open. He could tell she was barely even focusing on the instructions as she pulled ingredients in front of her. It took all of Fitz’s willpower to shake himself out of his Jemma stupor and open his own book, reading through what was actually written there. He followed the directions exactly and soon the potion was reacting just as it was supposed to. As Garrett walked down the aisles, he patted Fitz on the shoulder and gave him an encouraging nod.
Next to him, Jemma was working furiously. He flipped the page over and swallowed hard, noticing that she was at least three steps ahead of him. Mentally, he tried to attribute that to her experience with the potion and not that the end result would turn out better. Not that he wouldn’t buy her a thousand butterbeers if that was what she wanted (and he could somehow afford it), it was just the principle of the whole thing. He wanted to win. She had already won their last Arithmancy battle; to lose twice in a row would be unseemly.
He picked up his pace as he chopped the onion root, sweeping it into his cauldron before stirring it the requisite dozen times. Jemma was now just sitting and waiting, staring at her watch every few seconds or so. He didn’t remember that as part of the potion. When he managed to catch her eye, the smile she gave him was a challenge and his stomach swooped and his mouth went dry and okay, she was going down.
Looking back at the potion, he went immediately to the next step, which was draining beetles. He hated draining anything that used to be a living creature and would usually ask Jemma to do it for him, but decided that that wasn’t going to be possible today. Steeling his stomach, he squeezed the requisite seven beetles until he got a nice collection of fluid to dump into his cauldron. He wasn’t even that nauseated by it, a personal triumph if nothing else.
The book was telling him that he was only halfway done, but he was already pretty exhausted. It was no wonder that they chose a double class for this. To his right, she was measuring the tiniest bit of unicorn horn powder into her cauldron. That wasn’t even in his recipe, dammit. He took a deep breath, telling himself that he wasn’t starting to worry and that he worked better under pressure.
When most of the ingredients had been added, the cauldrons were supposed to sit on a very specific high heat for fifteen minutes. This, according to the book, was one of the most crucial parts of the potion. Without close monitoring of the heat and the potion, it was easy for it to over-boil or cool off and lose its essence. Luckily, this was one of the parts of potions Fitz was great at and the intense concentration meant that he had to ignore Jemma—normally easier said than done, but in this case the flame acted like a hypnosis.
After finishing out his fifteen minutes, he added the few remaining ingredients to his potion and stared down at it happily. It looked exactly as it was supposed to: yellow, with a light orangey sheen at the top that followed the spoon as he stirred it. Fitz glanced over at Jemma, not surprised to find her already done. Her potion looked slightly brighter, a more butter yellow to his lemon color, but it wasn’t wrong, so to speak. She squeezed his arm excitedly as she bottled it and it was just then that he noticed Garrett going around to collect samples. He had finished just in time. Fitz bottled and labeled his own, handing it to Garrett just as Jemma did hers.
“Good luck,” Fitz whispered to her.
“Thanks,” she said back, a twinkle in her brown eyes.
Garrett placed all the samples on his desk, then floated out an extremely large cart covered in a huge tarp that Fitz hadn’t even realized had been at the back of the classroom. “We’ve got some time left,” Garrett said. “What do you say we test these puppies?”
He pulled the tarp off, revealing tank after tank of huge snakes. Fitz shuddered involuntarily. Snakes were not his thing. Garrett took one tank at a time to his desk, pulling out the creature within and pouring a student’s potion over the snake. If it shrank, they passed at least. There were a few times when it didn’t get that far—one of the Gryffindor’s potions turned out purple and Garrett looked like he was going to pour the potion on the student instead of the snake—but it was mostly a steady line of smaller snakes.
When it got to his, Fitz sat up eagerly on his stool. Just as he expected, the snake shrank quickly in Garrett’s hands to be a much smaller snake. Fitz grinned at Jemma as Garrett called out, “Well done, well done, now that’s how you make a shrinking potion. Five points to Gryffindor for Mr. Fitz.”
Jemma huffed. “Favoritism.”
Somehow two other potions had gotten between theirs, but when Garrett picked up Jemma’s potion, she grabbed Fitz’s arm, holding him tightly. Garrett eyed the color of her potion carefully, but clearly deemed it not a threat as he doused the snake in it. Instantly, the snake began to shrink, not stopping until it was obviously smaller than even the smallest of the other snakes, the size of a large garden worm. “Hmmm,” was all Garrett said and he put the snake back in its tank.
She looked up at Fitz, smiling shakily. “I think that went well?”
“Are you kidding?” he whispered. “That was amazing! You’re amazing.”
Jemma smiled back, but didn’t let go of his arm until after Garrett was through testing potions. “Alright, kids, it looks like most of you actually did okay on that,” he said. “Essays on shrinking potions due by the end of the week. Get out of here.”
As Fitz and Jemma packed up their supplies, Garrett approached their table. “Ms. Simmons, that was very impressive work today.”
She stared at him, eyes wide with surprise. “Th-thank you, sir!”
“Really nicely done, some of the brightest potions work I’ve seen at this school.” He patted her shoulder. “Highest marks today and I’m sure the highest I’ll see on this project. And uh, take fifteen points for Ravenclaw.”
“Thank you, thank you so much!” When he walked away, she threw her arms around Fitz’s neck. “Did you hear that?”
He laughed and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Of course, I’m standing right here.”
“He’s never said anything that nice to me, ever!”
“And it only took you three months of extra work,” he said drily, but couldn’t stop smiling at her as they finished packing up. “You deserved it though, seriously. And I think you deserve a butterbeer and a sugar quill.”
She danced in place for a second before following him out of the classroom and heading out of the dungeon. “This just means so much to me, Fitz! You know how influential he is in the Potions community. Maybe he’ll finally start seeing how much work I put into everything.”
“You mean finally start seeing what everyone else bloody sees in you?” He bumped her affectionately. “He’s the only one who doesn’t realize you’re a superstar.”
Jemma blushed, staring down at the floor. “Well, that’s probably because he’s the one I want to impress the most.”
“Yeah, well, impress him you have I think. I don’t think he’ll forget this,” Fitz said. “’Course, neither will I. I can’t believe you threw all the rules away to basically make up your own potion. It’s very Skye of you.”
“I know! I think she’s rubbing off on me,” she said, throwing her head back and laughing.
“She says hi, by the way.”
Jemma stumbled a bit, then quickly got back into step with him. “What?”
“Uh, Skye. I was in the library with her earlier, she told me to say hi to you.”
She looked at him until he met her gaze. Her expression was unreadable, inscrutable, but all of the previous excitement that had lit up her features and made her eyes shine with exhilaration were gone. “You were with Skye earlier?”
Fitz suddenly wondered what he had done wrong. Had he and Jemma had plans that he had forgotten? Had he told her something else previously and then done something else? Had Skye told her something? He felt like he was standing on a rope bridge above a black hole and had no idea which rung would hold him and which would send him plummeting to his doom. “Yeah, uh, yeah. She had a paper due for Transfiguration and you know Skye and Transfiguration. Apparently she hadn’t turned the last one in or it had really been just that bad and Banner had given her detention, so this one was really important and she asked me for help. Of course, it’s Skye, so she asked me for help at the last minute and the only time we could meet was this morning. In the library.”
Jemma nodded slowly. “Well, I’m sure you were a lot of help for her.”
“It went pretty okay. Her essay definitely was not bad enough to get a detention this time.”
Smiling lightly, she said, “I have to go to Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
Panicking a bit, he quickly said, “Do you want to do something later? We have that Arithmancy paper due for Hill at the end of the week. Or we could just play chess or something.”
“Sure,” she said and this time her grin was more genuine. “I have to meet with Professor Foster and Antoine about prefect duties before dinner, but I’m free after.”
He was extremely proud of himself for not making a face at her calling Triplett ‘Antoine.’ It was very mature of him. “Great. I’ll see you then.”
“Alright. See you later, Fitz.” Jemma gave him one last smile and headed towards Professor May’s classroom. Even though every responsible bone in his body was telling him that Coulson was going to kill him for being late to Charms again, he couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch her walk away.