Amortentia was a pretty hard potion to make. But it was a favorite, according to Professor Slughorn. Slughorn wasn’t reliable, though, not in the slightest.

What teacher has a special club for gifted students and has fancy parties with them? He’s heard Lily talk about them, she says they’re not that bad. He’s never been a party guy, so he’s glad he’s not good enough at potions to be invited.

That’s beside the point.

Slughorn had made some, he wanted the students to smell it and announce what they smelt in front of the class, play matchmaker if he could.

How. Utterly. Embarrassing.

Sirius and James had both gone up, obviously. The two relished in attention. James basically described Lily, though she just gave him a dirty look, poor Prongs. Sirius’ description was pretty vague, like he didn’t know what it was himself. A few others went up but he wasn’t really listening to them.

“Moony, you should go up,” Sirius tells him, poking his shoulder.

“Wormtail doesn’t want to,” James says, nodding to Peter who was staring out a window.

He sighs, knowing that his friends won’t stop pestering him until he goes up. He stands up, walking to the table that Slughorn was standing next to.

“Ah, Remus. Glad you could join us. I’d like you to come smell amortentia and tell us what you smell,” Slughorn says, looking at him expectantly.

Great. He gets to stand in front of the entire class and say what he smells, and what he smells is probably going to be embarrassing. He leans over the cauldron that has the potion, taking a deep breath of the steam that wafts from it.

“Um…” he hesitates for a moment. He could quite place everything.

“Parchment, but new parchment. Not old,” he pauses. “Honey? I think… Uh, something earthy too, like tree bark, maybe. And… apples?”

He swallows and stands back up straight. “I can’t think of anyone that it could be.”