Sugar And Spice: An Inquiry

Keith grinned. "Are you kidding? That's hilarious!" He said, already thinking of ways to put his newfound pranking tool to work. "Imagine if you gave it to someone like James! Watching him bounce around the common room would be awesome!" keith began cracking up as he assembled to picture in his mind - James Wake, the guy with the world's biggest stick up his ass jumping around the common room like an overexcited first year.

"Just imagine the possibilities!" Keith said, still laughing. "Who wouldn't want to see that?" He grinned, his eyes flashing an overwhelming number of ideas springing up in an instant, like someone had just cranked his brain into overdrive. "Hell, people would probably pay! I could make people pay for that!"


"I could put it in the pumpkin juice at breakfast...maybe I could give some to whoever's playing seeker this year! They could always use a little extra energy," he said, settling back in his chair. The small vial of liquid pressed reassuringly against his leg, practically heating up with untested pranks that could keep him busy till at least Christmas.

"And what if you combined it with veritaserum? The person would practically be tripping over themselves to tell you their secrets!" He looked back up at Amelia. "Tell me that is not awesome. With a straight face. You can't do it can you?" Keith cracked up again. "Nobody can! That is so cool!"

Keith’s reaction to Amelia’s warnings about such a potion was not at all what Amelia had been hoping for; on the contrary, he seemed excited by the idea of inflicting the punishment of excessive energy on his peers, which immediately had Amelia worried. She frowned disapprovingly, even when Keith mentioned giving the potion to James, who likely deserved such a bit of vengeance if you asked Amelia. Keith’s imagination had obviously gotten the better of him, piqued to the point of spouting off what seemed like each and every idea that passed through his twelve-year-old brain, each one making Amelia progressively unhappier.

She had not at all intended for Keith to react this way, and she was immediately regretting her decision to even get involved in this conversation. She had known something was wrong earlier when Keith had shown interest in an academic subject, and she should have known better than to play into his games. She had been drawn in by the fact that he was asking her for help, which was flattering both because he would think to ask her and because he thought enough of her intelligence to ask, and it was likely this flattery that had loosened her tongue. Now that he was demonstrating just how un-academic his line of questioning was, though, Amelia’s hindsight was already making her want to get a time turner and do all of this over again, but this time, keep her mouth shut.

“There are so many things wrong with that line of thinking that I cannot even fathom where to begin,” Amelia said sternly, looking at Keith in such a way that there would be no doubt that she was not joking. Even her posture had become more rigid, her back straight and her fingers gripping the arms of the chair.
“Veritaserum and the potion you are describing would not be awesome. It would be… awful,” Amelia said, knowing the adjective she had settled on was not nearly descriptive of the true horror she felt for the thought of the combination, but knowing that there was no such word to describe how she felt about the prospect.

“Whatever you’re planning Keith, you should stop now,” Amelia said with a tone of warning in her voice. She did not want to pull the Imperium Squad card, because she hated so much when James did it, but she could not pretend that what Keith had said didn’t worry her. The talk of spiking juice with it, his ideas about being paid for it, the plans to use it to cheat at quidditch - none of these were situations Amelia wanted to encounter in the next year, and she wanted to make sure Keith knew her feelings on the subject before he decided to get carried away.

But then again, with the glint in Keith’s eyes perfectly visible to Amelia from where she was sitting, it was perfectly possible that he was already too far gone.

"Yeah yeah, whatever," Keith said, waving his hand nonchalantly. "You know me Amelia, I hold the Hogwarts rules in highest esteem. Breaking them is the highest offense imaginable and perpetrators should lose their head, etcetera, etcetera, etcera."

He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. "Rules are nice guidelines sure, but ultimately they're nothing more than a challenge. I mean Hogwarts barely comes down on me on the rare occasions I am caught, so what's the big deal? A detention isn't fun sure, but it's definitely not going to convince me to walk the straight and narrow." He grinned. "And besides, we all know you aren't punished for breaking the rules, you're getting punished for being stupid enough to get caught. It's a big game Amelia, except you can't really see the pieces. You know generally where they are, but to be good you have to be smart - and that's why I'm one of the best. No big deal."

Amelia could tell that Keith was no longer taking her seriously, which meant that whatever his motivation had been before, she had either already given him what he wanted, or he had decided to get it somewhere else. She should have seen through his act; afterall, when had Keith ever been interested in his schoolwork? But now it was too late, and although hindsight was 20/20, it was impossible for Amelia to take back what had been done.

Worse yet, she didn’t really know if anything had been done, or if this was all hypothetical. It was hard to tell sometimes with Keith, when he was serious about something and when he was just pushing your buttons. Amelia and Keith had usually gotten along in the past, but Amelia half-believed this was because of the rarity with which they saw one another.

The way Keith was talking now, Amelia could tell that she was not going to be able to make him see eye to eye with this on her. He was going on and on about breaking the rules and not getting caught, and Amelia even caught a glimpse of Keith’s over-confidence when it came to rule-breaking. She had never seen this side of him before, and she wasn’t altogether sure she liked it. It reminded her a bit of her brother, actually, which only made Amelia more concerned about whatever Keith might do with such a potion. Raoul would have run wild with such a thing, and he would have paid about as much attention to Amelia’s warnings as Keith was now.

Perhaps it’s a good thing Raoul left before Keith got to school, Amelia thought to herself, Because I shudder to think what a pairing that would have made if they had ever met.

“I’m leaving,” Amelia said abruptly, standing up from her chair while shaking her head at all that Keith had said. She knew her obligation as a member of the imperium squad was to correct all this nonsense Keith was spewing, but she also knew a lost cause when she saw one. Whatever role she might have played in the development of this idea in Keith’s mind, she was stepping away now. Perhaps then she could claim ignorance if – and at this point, it seemed more like when – Keith’s diabolical mind put even some small part of this plan into action.

“And if you really are as smart as you think you are,” Amelia added as a final note, “You’ll forget about this. You may have only gotten a slap on the wrist in the past, but I have a feeling that the headmaster will not be so kind if you start slipping people a potion that will turn them into uninhibited, cracked-out spider monkeys.”

Spider monkeys? Where did that come from?

Okay, so maybe spider monkeys was a bit random. But whatever. It gets the point across.

And with that, Amelia turned from Keith and headed back up the steps to the girls’ dormitory, wishing now that she had not hesitated to yell at Keith for some mostly-unknown and never-enforced bit of Hogwarts policy, ensuring that this most recent conversation never would have come to pass. It would have been a unkind thing to do, but at least then she could have had a clear conscious today.

As it was, Amelia was already worried about what was to come, and was only barely daring to hope that it would be nothing.